Some social networking privacy tips
The Associated Press lists some good social networking privacy tips:
Provide enough information for your friends to be able to identify you — but not so much that someone could use information to steal your identity.
Consider making your profile private so people you don’t know can’t “scrape” information and images from it.
Even if your profile is private, remember that your information and photos also can be accessed by third parties through your friends — and through applications developers on such sites as Facebook and MySpace.
Don’t use the same password for social network sites that you do for online accounts that have banking and credit card information.
Check for updates on privacy policies on various sites you use.
Never assume that anything you post online is completely private. Trust your instincts.
Good tips as more and more people are starting to realize they are leaving a trail of data on the internet.
The best rule of thumb is to always assume everyone will eventually see what you post. Keep that in mind and you’ll be fine in the future.
Popularity: 4% [?]
The advantages of being a student entrepreneur
The other day I had the opportunity to have coffee with a student entrepreneur from Virginia Tech. This is the second such meeting in a month and I hope it’s a sign of future trends. Over the past two semesters, I’ve met with three entrepreneurs, all at the end stages of their undergraduate education, and all were pondering this decision - take a “regular” job or start my own business.
In my opinion, the decision is a no-brainer. Follow your passions and start a company. At this point in your career, it will not look bad on your resume if the business fails and you need to go work for someone else. If anything, the experience of starting and running your own company should count for much more experience than the equivalent time in a fresh-out-of-college job. This is generally the case unless the hiring manager is not very good at what they do, but that is an entirely different subject.
The other factors to consider are the opportunity costs and the risks of failure. Starting a business full-time as opposed to taking a job leaves potential salary income on the table. This is the opportunity cost while trying to pursue the entrepreneurial career.
How much do I need the income that a normal job will provide? What are my current living expenses? How long will it take for me to generate enough income in my venture to cover these living expenses? And do I have any savings to cushion this or provide backup? These are the questions to ask yourself.
Graduating students have a unique financial situation for the most part. They have minimal financial responsibilities compared to their older counterparts. No kids, no mortgage, and likely their debt is credit cards and student loans - both of which can be managed with smaller monthly payments. If the business completely fails, the financial ramifications can be much less devastating than if an entire family was supported by the entrepreneur.
I Twittered these thoughts yesterday and received some interesting feedback. One response was that it is expensive to start a company and can be difficult for a young entrepreneur to raise capital even from friends and family. I can’t disagree more with this statement.
The cost of starting a business can be extremely low. It all depends on what you’re trying to accomplish. If the company is going to be in consulting or another type of service business, the costs are minimal. Company formation can be done online inexpensively via services like LegalZoom and many of the basic business management tools are available online from free to low cost.
If it’s a Internet based business, again the costs are low. The same application that would have taken hundreds of thousands of dollars to build a few years ago is now in the tens of thousands (if not less via offshoring). Server and other infrastructure costs have dramatically fallen. And if you’re a technical founder, you’ll be doing much (all?) of the development work yourself, so it’s not that hard to build something and launch it for minimal costs.
Obviously, none of this applies if your business idea is to start a new biotech company or a micro brewery or a semiconductor manufacturer. Yes, these require large amounts of capital to get started. But it’s quite possible, with the right idea, to start small and learn quickly.
It’s easy to get started (especially as a young entrepreneur), but I’m not necessarily implying it’s easy to become successful. That will be the topic of some future posts.
UPDATE: For more discussion of student entrepreneurs, Rob McNealy of Startup Story Radio is currently running a series of podcasts with a successful young entrepreneurs.
Popularity: 11% [?]
Colorado trip and the startup community in Boulder
As I mentioned in my last post, I recently spent ten days in Colorado both looking for a place to live and attending a few events. It was an exhausting trip, but we made a lot of progress on all fronts. Unfortunately, I was sick immediately following my return and have been playing catch up ever since.
While on the trip, I attended three great events starting with TechStars For A Day. I’m not applying to TechStars this summer, but getting a chance to meet a lot of the current companies and the TechStars mentors was a wonderful experience. I was very impressed with what they have put together and their track record with the first set of companies is nothing short of amazing (I think 8 out of 10 receiving funding and are going strong).
The number of tech events in the Boulder area also impressed me both with the variety and the strong participation. I missed the big New Technology Meetup as well as an OpenCoffee Club meeting, but I did manage to make it to both the Founders Meetup as well as the Tech Cocktail event organized by Eric Olson and Frank Gruber.
On the house hunting side we didn’t expect to find much, but by the end of the week managed to at least narrow down the areas we liked best. We were hoping to rule out some of the towns within a 30 minute drive of Boulder, but unfortunately it was quite hard to do that! They all had their charms and great views of the Rocky Mountains to boot. We finally decided we liked the Superior / Louisville area the best with their quick access to both Boulder and Denver.
It looks like we’ll be renting when we move until we find a house we like. The positive of not finding a place this trip was that we have nothing pulling us to move faster. While I can’t wait to move out to Boulder, we’ll save some money by waiting until the house sells here. If anyone is looking for a nice, new house in Blacksburg (with great views of Brush Mountain I might add) let me know!
Popularity: 16% [?]
Moving to Colorado
I recently wrote about closing my business and the failure of our product, FeedCraft. It may have sounded somewhat abrupt, but these were decisions that have been in the works for many months. The process of our moving started after deciding to close the business itself and reflecting on what our next steps were.
After looking at our situation, my wife and I realized that we had the opportunity to live wherever we wanted as long as it met our criteria. If I was going to be starting over, we might as well consider changing location.
After living almost ten years in Northern Virginia, I felt the move to Blacksburg was a great opportunity and a welcome change. I still believe it was the correct decision, both personally and for the business. But as I’ve lived and worked here, my wife and I have come to realize that this is not the best fit for us. There are numerous reasons behind this and I thought I’d lay them out here. Hopefully, it will help others considering moves to either location.
Many factors came into consideration when thought about this, but only one area really stood out for us - Colorado, specifically Boulder. The decision to move to the Boulder area of Colorado is part personal and part business reasons. Let me start by discussing the personal reasons for the move.
Personal Reasons
We wanted to be close to a major city - at least within 1 hour driving distance. Roanoke, after living in DC for so long, was too much of an overshoot for us. While there are many nice aspects to southwest Virginia, there is a lack of dining, shopping, and recreation options that we were too accustomed to living near a city. We’re looking for homes within a 30 minute drive to Boulder which also puts Denver within an hour drive.
From a more recreation point of view, I’m an avid rock climber (my wife not so much, but show enjoys hiking and the outdoors). I guess avid is not the best word. I’m a passionate and obsessed rock climber. Almost every weekend, I drive 2 hours to the New River Gorge in West Virginia for rock climbing and bouldering. This is starting to take its toll as I always ask myself why can’t I just live closer to such world-class climbing. Living less than 15 minutes away from the same caliber of climbing and shaving four hours of roundtrip driving will really add up over time. I can’t begin to describe how excited I am to have the entire Front Range of Colorado as my new playground.
While I think I could have survived a bit longer with making long drives to great climbing, the lack of accessibility to winter sports in this area has been killing me. From the time I was in high school, I have been skiing on a regular basis. When I moved to the DC area after college, I also picked up ice climbing and took numerous trips to Pennsylvania and New Hampshire for the sport. In southwest Virginia, there is little skiing and no ice climbing. Moving to Colorado obviously satisfies that aspect of my outdoor interests.
Access to a major airport is also important. Blacksburg is 2.5 hours to Charlotte and 4 hours to Northern Virginia, but this is not really convenient for regular trips. So while the Roanoke airport is decent for a small regional airport, the costs of flying in and out are much higher than a larger airport. Additionally, there are few direct flights out of Roanoke, making most air travel a major pain. For examples, my total trip time to Austin last year for SXSW was over 14 hours one way.
Business Reasons
One of the main draws to move to Blacksburg from Northern Virginia was entering my company into the VT KnowledgeWorks incubator program. While in the program, I launched EvolvePoint’s second product (FeedCraft) and learned a great deal in the process. Unfortunately, after about 18 months the market for RSS feed marketing was not what we had forecast. While the product was a technical success and we have thousands of customers, we’ve not gained enough traction to make this the sole sustainable focus of the business.
My business passions lie in the Internet and in creating web applications. There are few companies working in this industry here in Blacksburg (though there are some great success like Mailtrust and Click & Pledge). In the Boulder/Denver area, however, there is a very strong Internet and technology startup community. Simply take a look at the related events listed on Meetup.com to see how strong. Just basic things like finding partners, employees, and other like-minded people will be easier when there is a much larger community.
The final issue is having a backup plan when being an entrepreneur. If my next venture fails, I need to recognize the fact I’ll potentially need to find a job. Regular jobs with big companies are pretty much out of the question at this point in my career, so I’d be looking for something with a startup in the Internet space if it ever happens. Once again, there are many companies of this type in the Boulder area which provides some safety net knowing there will be opportunities.
Finally, I hope readers of this post don’t take away that Blacksburg is a bad place to live or do business. This area is a great place to live with many qualities that have been attracting an increasing number of residents each year. Unfortunately, it just doesn’t meet my personal and business needs anymore so we’re making the move.
Popularity: 24% [?]
Closing EvolvePoint and FeedCraft
Last month I announced to all our FeedCraft customers that EvolvePoint would be shutting down the service. I’ll be writing more about why I think the product did not become as successful as planned; but regardless of the reasons, the economic realities made the decision inevitable.
I founded EvolvePoint in 2004 initially performing management and IT consulting work in the Washington DC area. In 2005, I moved the company to Blacksburg, Virginia to be part of the VT KnowledgeWorks program and focus on our main product, FeedCraft.
Now that FeedCraft is closing, I have also decided that it’s appropriate to close EvolvePoint and start fresh with the next venture (more on that in an upcoming post).
I learned a lot over the past three years and even though the product failed, the entire process was a success in many ways. Throughout the process I made many mistakes and hopefully learned enough to avoid making them in the future. I’ve already started writing a series of posts covering some of what I learned. Not only do I hope this helps other entrepreneurs, but I also believe by writing these lessons down they’ll help me in the future.
As a side note, we’re selling the FeedCraft assets. If you have interest, please contact me.
Popularity: 24% [?]
Small Business Backup System Using Amazon S3
My friend Thomas Myer has a great article up on the Amazon Web Services Developer Connection on Building a Small Business Backup System Using Amazon S3.
When you run a small business, you’re usually running too fast and hard to think about data backups. Then something terrible happens—a hardware failure, an employee or contractor gets sloppy and kills a month’s worth of work—and you realize that you better slow down and figure out a few things.
If you’re like me, you’re not exactly an expert in backup systems. All you know is that you need to have something in place in case of emergency. So you stand there looking out over the yawning precipice of possible solutions. There are USB and FireWire external hard drives, network-attached storage machines, Linux machines you can repurpose as backup machines, thumb drives, and hosting solutions to which you can rsync files. From a distance, they all look pretty much alike, except for maybe price point and storage capacity.
The article covers getting set up with Amazon S3, understanding how the service works, and some PHP to perform the backup.
Another excellent resource once you have an account with Amazon S3 (if you don’t want to roll your own backup scripts) is Jungle Disk. Jungle Disk is a desktop application (Win, Mac, and Linux) that enables you to use Amazon S3 storage as a mapped drive on your computer. Think of it like a USB drive with unlimited storage.
Popularity: 25% [?]
Free Wifi at Starbucks with AT&T
There’s been a lot of buzz about Starbucks partnering with AT&T to offer two hours of free wifi with a purchase.
Starbucks today announced a deal to offer AT&T WiFi service at more than 7,000 locations in the U.S. Starbucks card holders get up to two hours of free WiFi access per day; customers of AT&T broadband and AT&T U-verse will have unlimited access. Additional hours will be available at pricing starting at $3.99 per session for a two-hour period.
AT&T displaced T-Mobile as the wireless provider at all Starbucks. While this is great news for the average customer, it reduces the attractiveness of T-Mobile’s data plan. Included with the $20 a month data plan I have for my Dash was unlimited access to all of T-Mobile’s hotspots. This was a great deal especially if you travel a lot.
Now I have one less reason to stick with T-Mobile. I was hoping to get an iPhone when the new 3G models come out and potentially unlock it for T-Mobile. But now, other than the contract breakage fee, I don’t see many reasons to stay with T-Mobile.
I love T-Mobile’s customer service, but losing this deal with Starbucks may be a another sign that they will never move beyond last place in the wireless race in this country.
UPDATE: Apparently, AT&T will offer free roaming access to T-Mobile’s Hotspot customers. I just wonder how long this will last.
Another update: apparently T-Mobile has signed an agreement with AT&T to provide roaming access to T-Mobile Hotspot customers for the next five years. (via Thomas Upton)
Popularity: 24% [?]
Changing the name of your company
Pat Matthews writes about changing the name of Webmail.us to Mailtrust:
“The first challenge in the naming process was coming to the realization that we needed to change our name. Even though we knew our name was flawed, we spent a lot of time, money, and energy building our brand over the years. And all things considered, I think we did a pretty good job. We’re no Nike or Yahoo!, but in our industry, people know who we are. Starting from scratch seemed like a daunting move. But then one of my business mentors said something I will never forget. He said, ‘Pat, it’s never too late to change a bad name.’ He’s right. As soon as I heard him say that, I never looked back.”
Great advice. I’ve been through the name change process (both companies as well as products) several times across a few different companies. This is always a challenging process, but it appears Pat and company have nailed it. I love the change to Mailtrust as it much better indicates what the company is all about.
Popularity: 23% [?]
Don’t send me calendars when all I want is respect
I was doing some cleanup around the house this weekend and finally got around to a large pile of junk mail sitting on the counter (you know you have one too). One of the items sitting there was a set of calendars and a form letter from the sales agent of the builder of my house (bought two years ago).
Realtors are trained that this farming is a good sales practice. Send out something to every potential prospect on your list and keep multiple touch points. While I question the actual returns of this tactic, it really only works if there is at least a neutral opinion of the salesperson.
The problem is that this realtor was not helpful during the sales process. Additionally, she was not pleasant (I actually thought her to be mean) and generally gave me a very negative impression.
So no matter how many calendars she sends me, I’m never going to do business with her. In fact, any time I’m referring someone to a realtor I make sure I mention her name as someone to stay away from.
For no cost at the time of our interaction, she could have turned me into a potential customer simply by her actions and how she handled herself. Sending me a useless calendar is not going to win my business when all I wanted was some respect.
Popularity: 25% [?]
Customer experience in retail
I read that Circuit City, despite its troubles, was continuing its multi-quarter turnaround plan.
Here’s my free advice to Circuit City - copy Best Buy. Yes, it’s quite simple advice. Just hang out at your local Best Buy (Circuit City management you may have noticed they’re everywhere now) and start taking notes.
The last time I ventured into a Circuit City store I felt the atmosphere to be dark and depressing. Additionally, the sales people pounced on you as soon as you neared their section.
Contrast this to Best Buy - bright with good lighting, well thought-out store layout, friendly and non-pushy sales people. Where I was once loathe to talk to a Circuit City employee, I happily seek out Best Buy workers and pester them with questions and opinions.
The lesson? Place a high priority on the customer experience. Returning customers are always a good starting point.
Popularity: 24% [?]
