And now it’s in print

I caught up with all round good guy Ned Dwyer yesterday. We chatted about many things, of which the top of the list was the recent launch of “And now it’s in print.” A project Ned is heavily involved with. Let me just say this. It’s one of my favourite startups this year. The world over. For many reasons, but here’s one:

I asked Ned what the business model was, and this was his reply:

“It’s too important to have a business model. We decided instead to just make something awesome and see what happens”

That’s it my friends, the startup ethic we all need to aspire to. Doing it because it matters.

A couple of other smart ideas entrepreneurs can take note of.

- They limited their production run to 500 copies (invent demand through limiting supply)

- All the articles and visuals are from content they found on line (blending off line & on line worlds)

- The idea was borrowed from South by Southwest (share ideas, re-interpret)

- They proved print can still be awesome. (Print isn’t dead, print industry management is brain dead)

- They set themselves an impossible launch deadline, and made it. (Don’t think too much, get it out there)

Kudos from me.

Some fun pics from the launch here. More info here: andnowitsinprint.com

Revolutions and pleasure

In the October 1994 Issue of Wired, Gary Wolfe said in an article,  article about Mosiac (the worlds first GUI web browser) and the coming internet revolution.

“When it comes to smashing a paradigm, pleasure is not the most important thing…

it is the only thing.”

Startup blog asks this:

What kind of pleasure is your startup bringing to its people?

Retail startups are rad

This guest post by Michael Fox. Michael is a co-founder of the design your own women’s shoe business Shoes of Prey. He blogs about the adventures of running a startup at www.22michaels.com.

5 reasons why retail startups are rad

Prior to starting Shoes of Prey, Mike Knapp and I were working at Google and were brainstorming industries that would be good for an online startup. We settled for online retail and here are the 5 reasons why:

1. There is so much room for innovation
Retail is an industry that’s 1000′s of years old and while there have been innovations, there hasn’t been an enormous industry changing event in that time. Online retail has the potential to change the industry more than anything else in it’s history.

Whether it’s offering products in a way that has never been possible before, like Pandora do with music, the brilliant use of customer and sales data at Amazon to suggest highly relevant products to customers, a new retail model like offering only 1 product (Woot) or deal (Groupon) per day, or tearing up old business models as Alice is attempting to do with grocery and Apple did with music retailing, online retail has enormous potential for innovation and there are so many ideas out there waiting to be executed.

2. Online retail is a growing industry
Figures can vary depending on exactly what is classified as ‘retail’, however online retail still makes up only a small percentage of total retail sales, in the order of 5%-6% in the US and less in countries like Australia. This is only going to grow.

3. An online retail business is easy to monetise
In addition to the difficulty of getting people to use your product, many online startups face the problem of how to make money from their business. Take Twitter and FourSquare. They’ve each built a fantastic user base, but they now face the challenge of working out how to make money from their product.

Like countless retail businesses for 1000′s of years, an online retail business sells a physical product so there is no need to develop a whole new business model for the business to be profitable.

4. There’s not a great deal of competition
The lure of getting rich quick by hitting on a winner in Apple’s Appstore or building the next Google or Facebook draws most top developers into those spaces resulting in a huge amount of competition. Most good web developers, when brainstorming what sort of business they want to start will avoid anything that involves a physical product like the plague.

If you and your team have the skill set to build a great website, and manage physical operations like sourcing physical goods and a physical supply chain, then you’ll face a lot less competition in the online retail space.

Of course you’ll potentially face some competition from traditional retailers moving into the online space, but particularly in Australia, that’s happening at a very slow pace. To help minimise that risk, but an innovative spin on your product and odds are you’ll stay well ahead of most traditional retailers.

5. The industry is small enough that you can have an impact early on
Online retail, particularly in Australia, is only just starting to develop. There are a number of industry groups and websites that have only recently started like Internet Retailing, Inside Retailing and Power Retail. Because these sites are relatively new it’s not too difficult to get coverage from them. It’s a similar story with conferences and industry awards. If you do something new and interesting in the online retail space you’ll soon be presenting at conferences and find your startup a finalist amongst some fantastic industry players.

If you’re thinking of doing an online startup I’d recommend considering online retail or applying a similar thought process to the industry you’re thinking of launching in.

Click here to follow Michael on twitter.

Time to share your thoughts:

If you run a startup, I’d love to hear about the factors that influenced you to choose the industry you operate in?

Unsynergy

Guest Post from Mick Liubinskas from Pollenizer.

—————————————————————–

Department of Startups – Community Announcement

Unsynergy – where the whole is less than the sum of the parts. Often caused through too many features aimed at too many people with too much information.

86.3% of startups are injured or killed each day due to Unsynergy. Please help us stamp it out once and for all.

The worse thing about Unsynergy is that the person who is inflicted with it is unable to see the symptoms. They keep adding more things to their startup – more features, more content, more options – whilst they are slowly (or often quickly) committing suicide.

Most people on the outside, looking in (e.g. customers) can see Unsynergy for what it is. Though sadly, they rarely care enough to let the founders know. (Or can’t find the feedback button amongst the 100 other options.)

Founders, please understand, more is less. Less is more. Less is great.

To bastardise a great quote, “Great products are finished not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing more to remove.”

Fight Unsynergy, Remove a Feature Today!

Thanks, Mick Liubinskas.

pollenizer.com
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Kevin Rudd & getting stuff done

As most of you will know former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd was ousted this morning by his deputy Ms Julia Gillard.

It was a whirlwind event that seemed to start and finish within 24 hours. Though, upon deeper consideration the evidence of such an event was mounting. During the media frenzy last night I made a tweet which is full of relevance for this blog and every entrepreneur. I thought I’d share it below.

Startup School… tweetstream

You may be aware that I recently ran my annual Startup School in Melbourne.

During the event we ran a tweet stream of the ideas and soundbites coming from the forum. A lot of people followed the hashtag #melsus and said they got some great stuff from it. One person in particular Josh Moore, took it to the next level and pulled together a great PDF of the event via what appeared on line from it. Entirely his idea and work.

We both thought it was worth sharing here as a small entrepreneurs e-book made up of tweets and links in different categories.

Click here to download – Startup School tweetstream ebook PDF

PS: there are some pictures of me in it *red face*, which Josh saw fit to include…. and who am I to moderate his work?

You can follow Josh on Twitter here. And see his blog here.

Mixing it up

I’ve decided to run a few guests posts on startup blog.

I’ve never done this before and on the surface it my seem to lack purity. But here’s what I think.

The blog isn’t about me, it never has been. It’s about providing valuable information to those interested in the topic (startups, entrepreneurship, marketing). Which the guests posts will do. Heck, it might even facilitate spreading the startup blog word a little further and connect a few people…. Yep, that would be cool.

How hard you worked is irrelevant

It’s what we create for the people who care. The truth is we never know how hard it was to deliver the right product, at the right place at the right time. We only care that it was.

What we (the entrepreneurs, producers, marketers) had to go through is not part of the consideration set. It isn’t charity, it’s about them. So if we nail it and deliver the project quickly, we needn’t feel guilty or less deserving. Likewise, if it took us 5 years of hard working weekends and nights, that’s also no reason to feel a level of entitlement. We need to feel what they feel – underwhelmed or overwhelmed with what we deliver, how we got there is far less important.

How to pitch

There is more good than bad in these hilarious Ali G pitches to Venture Capitalists.

What to look for:

• His tone of voice and pausing when speaking.
• His reliance on talking. There is no powerpoint.
• Taking them on a journey. Story telling.
• Simple visuals. Having samples / props.
• Supreme confidence

I’d seriously recommend this video on how to pitch versus most other examples we see on the web so long as we understand the context.

Why spreadsheets are the enemy

Spreadsheets cause far more problems in business than they solve. When we sue spreadsheets too much we start to believe our business is the numbers we make up to fill in the columns. Turns out the numbers on the tidy little sheets have very little to do with our business. Our business is about people, emotions and serving needs. It’s about human movement and insight, not predictions and forecasts.

In recent times brand managers and entrepreneurs have become spreadsheet managers. Busy forecasting, doing profit and loss statements for upcoming launches and estimating sales revenue and market share for the upcoming quarter. The problem with most of these activities is simple, they are predictions. They rarely turn out to be correct, and they suck time we should be investing in getting our products to the market, talking with our customers and promoting what we do.

In startup land there are only two colums we need. Expenses and revenue. Once we have these we just need to make sure the revenue side is greater than the expense side. After that we ought leave the spreadsheets to our accountants.