How to Choose a Business Incubator |  |
- How to Choose a Business Incubator
- Gathering Customer Information Via Web Forms With Adobe FormsCentral
- Fear Factor 201: Who’s your CEO?
- Creative People, We Need You Says Elance Report
- LinkedIn Rolls Out New Features For Marketers
- Is Your Business Offering Something Better?
| How to Choose a Business Incubator Posted: 17 Apr 2012 01:30 PM PDT Everyone would love their startup to be the next Pinterest or Instagram — a business that rockets to the top quickly. But getting a startup off the ground depends on many factors. Among them, you need a talented team, a great product or service, strong marketing and sales, a business model that’s feasible — and some money and even business partnerships to make it all work. Sometimes you may think the planets have to align just right! That’s where startup accelerators or business incubators come in.
Business incubators (for our purposes we will include “startup accelerators” under this term) can give startups and small businesses access to tools, office facilities, administrative support and mentoring. Most offer a significant financial boost. Incubators can save your startup money (examples: free or subsidized office space and Internet connections) or even serve as a source of seed funding or a way to connect with investors — all to give your startup that extra edge and much needed support. What Is an Incubator? A business incubator is a program designed to provide support to new businesses to help them succeed. Every incubator program is different, but incubators and accelerators typically include access to mentors or experts from different areas of business (finance, marketing and management, for example) who provide guidance on the startup. Some incubators are place focused, and provide office space and even light manufacturing or technical facilities for a period of time. They may provide shared access to servers and software, high speed internet connections, telecommunications, and other technical support. Some also provided shared services, such as administrative or marketing support. Other incubators are more of a process. They may focus more on mentors, seed funding, introductions to business partners, and opportunities to present your business to qualified investors. One example that falls more into this latter type of Incubator is Y Combinator, which puts on Demo Day at which its high-tech startups get to pitch to and connect with investors. Getting investment is a significant end goal of that type of incubator. While business incubators date back as far as the 1950s, the explosion in growth began with the dot com bubble of 1999. Today, there are more than 1,500 business incubators in North America, and around 7,000 globally. Each incubator has a different aim. The majority in North America are nonprofits focused on economic development. Some are supported by state and local communities. Some are supported by large corporations or corporate foundations, such as the Citrix Startup Accelerator. And while the media tends to focus on the technology-centric incubators (approximately 39% of North American incubators are tech-focused), there are plenty of others if you are in services, manufacturing, food production, green tech or other niche markets. What Incubators Do For Startups In some ways, incubators are like business school on steroids. But instead of spending two years writing fake case studies and research papers, you're learning hands-on … with your own business. And unlike with business school, the stakes with a startup are higher — after all it’s your livelihood and that of your employees. But like business schools, business incubators often have programs for a set period of time. The program is led by teachers (i.e., mentors) who walk participants through the process of taking a fledgling business and developing it to the point that it can fly on its own. You learn from the teachers. You learn from other students (i.e., other startup founders) who may be in different stages of business than you are. You learn how to tweak your business idea, make it a profitable or successful one, and sometimes “sell” your idea to investors. Meanwhile, depending on the program, you may have access to worldclass facilities, tools and technology. At the end of the incubator program, you and your startup “graduate.” This may mean getting enough investment in your business to grow to the next level. Or it may mean that the business is ready to stand on its own two feet without assistance. Either way, your startup leaves the nest. Not All Roses and Unicorns While you hear a lot about the benefits of incubators, there's not a lot of focus on the level of commitment and hard work you will endure. It's by design. Some incubators involve an intense training or immersion program for a period of time. In them, an objective is to weed out any participants who aren't up for the challenge of a startup. The idea is: if you can't handle this business crash course, it's possible that you won't be prepared to meet the challenge of seeing your startup all the way through to growth and success. If you have a family, you may not have as much time to spend with them, given the sheer workload some incubators will put you through. Additionally, if there isn't an incubator in your city, you may have to relocate for the program, separating you from your family. Participating in an incubator may bring you to the realization that your business model is bad. No one likes his or her business being criticized, but if you're not up for it, don't join an incubator. It's actually a good thing, being run through the wringer, as it helps you focus your business idea and get advice from seasoned entrepreneurs who know the makings of a solid business. Going through an incubator program (if it involves an intense period of mentorship and training, for instance) may take time away from running your startup. Some startup founders resent the time taken away from the business to go through intensive bursts of training or meeting other program requirements. Incubators vary on the program requirements they place on founders. Understand the program requirements thoroughly in advance, and be realistic about your expectations as you shop for an incubator. Are you willing to have a doubled workload and scheduling inconveniences in exchange for knowledge you won't get anywhere else and access to investors? It's worth the price of admission if you're willing to put in the time and effort. How to Choose The incubator that will best serve your startup depends on what you're looking for. Here are some criteria to keep in mind: Geography: Look close to home first. If nothing is available, consider relocating if relocation will not be an issue for your family. Note: some incubators have very specific “place of business” requirements. Fits With Your Needs: Does the incubator offer what your startup REALLY needs? If what you need is investors and industry partners, then an incubator that focuses on mentoring, providing seed funding and making connections with influential investors should be your focus. If your greatest need is access to physical facilities, utilities and telecommunications/Internet, then focus your search on incubators that provide those benefits. Be sure to make a list of your needs first. Difficulty to Get In: Of the thousands of applications that the most successful accelerators receive, only a fraction are accepted. The more difficult ones to get into tend to be the most rewarding. Track Record: You'll want an incubator that has successfully helped businesses launch, find funding or otherwise succeed. Research to find out what percent of graduates have accomplished these milestones, and what the incubator did to ensure that success. Speak with graduates to get their take on the program as well. Who's Running It: If you're going to dedicate time to an incubator, you want to be assured that the people running it have their own proven track records as entrepreneurs. What experience do they have that will help you run your company better? How much time do they spend with participants? Amount of Time You'll Need: Some incubator programs will sap all of your mental energy and time, so consider that this will be time spent away from your startup (in the sense of daily operations) and family. Niche: Many incubators focus on tech and Web companies, but there are others that focus on other niches. You want one that will connect you to leaders in your industry, has mentors who understand your industry, and/or can provide industry-specific facilities. There's no rule saying you can only apply to one incubator, or even the same one once. Make a list of those you'd get the most benefit from and apply to any you'd be willing to relocate for. Some startup founders attend multiple incubator programs, getting more contacts and more experience they can apply to their businesses. Click on Page 2 below to continue reading . . . From Small Business Trends |
| Gathering Customer Information Via Web Forms With Adobe FormsCentral Posted: 17 Apr 2012 11:30 AM PDT Creating a website form should be a fairly simple task, but it eludes most of us. We get started, then stop, mostly because I think we're afraid of all the spam that will follow. Spam will follow, too. Spammers build robots to mess with the forms, even with captcha technology in use. So, if you are a small business owner trying to sort out adding a form to your website, this Adobe FormsCentral review is for you.
First, it bears repeating that this web form technology is from Adobe. The brand alone conveys trust and strength, to me, after many years of serving customers with desktop software. The three areas that really caught my attention:
You can do most of the shiny, new things that web-based forms allow today, such as, embed it in a web page or share it on various social networks. In my test account, there were plenty of templates to choose from and an easy drag and drop interface. I found it interesting that I could “share” my form with colleagues or employees to let them work on the form creation, too. Unexpected, but potentially useful. Things I’d like to see:
It takes a while to realize how many choices or options you have to customize each part of the form. Adobe has made it incredibly rich with granular, detailed options not only to make your form “pretty” but useful. The FormsCentral technology lets you gather and organize the data in ways that will make the report building that comes after the survey. Come to think of it, they made that elegant, too. As you create the form, a report structure is generated at the same time. As responses come in, they populate a report like the one you see below. I thought I would have to create my own using tools they provide, but no, they do it for you.
You can run one form for free, then paid plans start at $14.99/month, but the next plan is only $16.58 ($199/year billed annually) for unlimited forms. Learn more about Adobe FormsCentral. From Small Business Trends |
| Fear Factor 201: Who’s your CEO? Posted: 17 Apr 2012 08:00 AM PDT This is a continuation of a discussion originally started here, in a piece titled, “Fear Factor 101: Is Fear a Factor?” So let’s proceed by picking up where we left off.
The fact of the matter is that the lessons are usually in the failures. Bill Gates himself said that success is a lousy teacher. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not suggesting you look to fail for the sake of learning lessons. The failures will come along the way to success in business and in life so IF you want to start, build, or grow a business, just be prepared for some failures along the way. Build for the long-term. Invest in yourself and your business. Be a student of your craft. Become an expert. I personally think it's hard to argue that two of the most important ingredients of business success are leadership and credit (both personal and business credit). Cash, education, and having good people around you might round out the top five. You don't need all of these ingredients to succeed in business but I'm not sure you could find me a successful business owner that didn't have at least some combination of these necessary ingredients. Having as many of these ingredients as possible will help you weather your storms. Our company has some clients who are real estate investors. As of the date of writing this article, it is arguably one of the best times ever to buy real estate. Some would argue that we're in the midst of the best time ever to buy discounted real estate. They're not making any more land and the population continues to grow. There will certainly be peaks and valleys along the way but, bottom line, real estate over time increases in value. To that end, we all need a roof over our head. So you do the math and tell me if real estate is a good or bad long-term investment. Again, any good thing can get messed up and done the wrong way but we're not talking about a business that's already seen its best days like some industries (like manufacturing and industrial businesses perhaps). I do not think it is a business for everyone but it is certainly a good business for someone who will treat it like a business and not a weekend hobby. I say all of that to say that even in a great industry, at a great time, with a bright future, it's easy to find reasons "not" to buy real estate right now. Watch the news, talk to a former investor who was "speculating" and lost everything, or try doing it on your own without good mentoring. All these will discourage you if you let them and fear will jump into the driver's seat and a year later you will still be in the same place you are today. For today's serious real estate investor there are deals, deals, and more deals out there. So, as a good friend of mine likes to say, "whatchu gonna do?" It's all in the action. Think about it like this, if you do 100 deals you're going to have some that make money and some that don't. But you'll certainly have more winning deals than losing one’s unless you don't learn from your mistakes and repeat the same mistakes that caused you to lose money. Will you get discouraged if your first deal doesn't make you the money you wanted or planned on? Most people throw in the towel if things don't go as planned – fear gets the best of them. I recently heard a story from a real estate agent who took a new client into a property that was inherited by heirs of an estate. The client was a new real estate investor who was looking for a "fixer-upper." The sellers (the heirs of the property) were in another state and had no interest in real estate and simply wanted to liquidate and have nothing to do with managing a vacant property. The house was structurally very good and was in a good neighborhood but it was outdated. The sellers were "negotiable" on the $95,000 price (which was already aggressive since the sellers just wanted to unload it). The estimate to replace the wood paneling, drop ceilings, install new kitchen cabinets, new carpet, and update the bathroom was about $25,000. The houses in that neighborhood sell in the $200,000 – $250,000 range because it is a solid area with good schools and low crime. Because of the condition of the property (mainly the bathrooms not working well) the agent said it would not qualify for FHA financing so they were targeting an investor to buy it. When the agent took the new investor through the property he seemed concerned about what he would find after they took off the wood paneling and pulled up the old carpets. He told the agent he would "think about it" and get back to her. When he called her back 3 weeks later to go "look at the property again" the agent informed him that it was already sold. Apparently, it was put under contract for $90,000 and then went to settlement 2 weeks later with the end buyer being an investor who paid $105,000. The buyer was a seasoned real estate investor who bought the property from the person who got the contract for $90,000 (the wholesaler). The wholesaler had sold other properties to this investor and because of their good relationship, the property was purchased without the buyer doing an inspection. Which one of these businesses are you? There's the tire kicker who was obviously motivated by fear who wanted to "look again" after 3 weeks, the wholesaler who got the property under contract for $90k and made a quick $15k, and the final buyer who paid $105k and will easily make over $50k in profit or equity from the deal (after some good, honest hard work and labor of course). Fear is a great crutch. You can lean on it whenever you need an excuse. The problem with the crutch is that if you lean on it forever you may never do without it. It's like a security blanket if you don't wean off of it. How many of your decisions are influenced by fear? Who's the CEO of your business?
From Small Business Trends |
| Creative People, We Need You Says Elance Report Posted: 17 Apr 2012 07:31 AM PDT If you are a freelancer with creative skills, you are highly marketable today. And if you are in a small business needing to hire a freelancer or service provider with creative capabilities, you may find the competition for talent heating up. That’s according to the first quarter 2012 Online Employment Report released this morning by Elance, the well-known online marketplace for finding freelance talent and outsourcing work. Creative work now accounts for 42% of all jobs posted on Elance. Quarterly growth is 32% overall for jobs in the creative category, with Web design leading the way. Other notable creative skills in demand include content writing, graphic design and video production. This chart from the Elance Quarterly Online Employment Report shows key growth categories:
Notable factoid: demand for business card design is up 51% (who says print is dead?). Go here for a detailed look at more skills in demand. Here are other highlights from the report:
In the words of Fabio Rosati, CEO of Elance, "We believe this data helps people map career and vocational paths in entirely new ways." I agree — if you want to see where companies are investing their marketing and IT dollars, and where those looking for work should build marketable skills, this Quarterly Report provides helpful signals. From Small Business Trends |
| LinkedIn Rolls Out New Features For Marketers Posted: 17 Apr 2012 05:00 AM PDT I already told you – if you haven't created a LinkedIn presence for your business, it's time to stop ignoring it. LinkedIn isn't the old resume site you think it is; it's transformed into a full blown business networking site with powerful marketing potential. And with the addition of two new features just announced last week, business owners can now find even more ways to take advantage of the site. The first of the new features is LinkedIn Targeted Updates. This gives you the ability to target status updates to followers based on criteria like industry, job function, company size, etc. Similar to the way you can target Facebook updates to certain Lists or by demographic, now you can do the same on LinkedIn.
Where might this be helpful? It's helpful if you're a local florist and you're creating content/updates related to an upcoming holiday or the summer wedding season. It's helpful if you sell blue widgets and you're trying to use content marketing to show Niche X why blue widgets are what they need to take their business to the next level. It's helpful if you're a consultant trying to increase your client base in a certain industry. If you can target updates to the right audience, it allows you to create more customized content for those niches. This helps to increase your relevance to people in that group, which in turn boosts engagement. The other new feature is called Follower Statistics, which will provide detailed information about your follower base. For example, through the self-service dashboard you'll have access to stats about demographic information, engagement, comments, follower counts, shares, etc. The new tools mentioned above will no doubt be welcomed by companies who use LinkedIn to build relationships, create new partnership, and even to scout for employees. But, too many companies aren't using LinkedIn for these purposes. Instead, they stick their necks in the sand, wondering why someone would ever want to follow their business on LinkedIn in the first place. In doing so, they miss a valuable marketing opportunity. If you're not sure why someone might be looking to interact with you on a business network, consider this:
People follow you on LinkedIn when they're interested in your business and when they're interested in doing business with your business. This is what you need to be thinking about developing your LinkedIn profile. These are the people watching. What benefits is your LinkedIn profile giving them? From Small Business Trends |
| Is Your Business Offering Something Better? Posted: 17 Apr 2012 02:30 AM PDT We all want to offer something better in our small businesses. But what form should that “something better” take? How do we connect with our customers in a unique way? Here is a wrap up that will hopefully offer some inspiration. ValueBeating the big guys. One way to stand out against bigger businesses like Amazon is simply to offer something different. Here one smaller Web company talks about outdoing Amazon.com by offering visitors a totally different experience. Bloomberg Businessweek Adding value. This advice for content marketing, especially as part of a blog, is also applicable when considering any other business you may want to launch. Are you truly offering your customers (or readers?) something worthwhile? Small Business Trends TrendsBeing an outsider. Often innovation has trouble happening from within. That’s why this former academic turned entrepreneur decided it was time to leave the hallowed halls of academia behind. What he offers may change things forever. WSJ Going even greener. Building an environmentally responsible business requires greater commitment these days. The latest trends in green business offer new opportunities, but pitfalls as well. What green initiatives have you undertaken? Open Forum StrategyTracking your success. Offering better products and services should translate into higher profit and better business for your company. You should also consider better methods of tracking your success. Here are some thoughts. Dr. Shannon Reece Keeping it simple. If there’s one thing you should remember, along with the need to create products and services that are better than anything available to customers before, it’s the importance of keeping those products and services simple. M4B Marketing CommunityKnowing your prospects. An excellent first step toward offering great products and services is knowing your customers. This is easier than you might think, even in the online world. Here’s where to start. Copyblogger Listening to your tribe. The group whose members follow you, who are passionate about what you’re passionate about, can also help you make your business better. Listen and they will tell you what’s needed next. Firefly Coaching OutreachUsing great tools. Many tools give you the opportunity to deliver something better to customers with simplicity and ease. Here’s one example of how you can offer something special to your local fans. Small Business Marketing Tools Offering customer loyalty. Customer loyalty programs are another way to offer something better. Here is a guide to making customer loyalty programs work and bring in more business. Intuit From Small Business Trends |
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