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Here is a link to my latest blog post on Prat Perch. It’s been an exciting few weeks so just sharing an update.

Team Lotus Formula 1 and GE get together

It looks like GE has decided to sponsor Team Lotus.

The nice thing appears to be that they are aiming to use F1 as a kind of technology showcase for the GE products.

It will be interesting to see what comes of this relationship as there is a lot of potential for both sides to gain much.

Being that it is GE, my anticipation would be this does have the potential to extend further than typical “partner” agreements, where one or either side sometimes pay lip-service to the agreement, people don’t really learn much from each other at all.

This relationship strikes me as potentially being something better, with my guess that in the future GE might even take a stake in Team Lotus if things work out well.

You read it here first folks! …

This is a good article by Elias Chelidonis. It tells the partial story of his internet start-up, although which one is not named. It seems like he had good success but in the end was a victim of that success. The lessons learnt and shared by people like Elias are really great. Each case is unique, each business unique but I try and learn from everyones story, and hope to give a little back to this community myself through my blog on the Prat Perch journey. Enjoy.

Read the article but his points are summarised below – yes there are 13 but you could argue some over lap …

1. Paid too much attention on web design – keep it simple
2. We had a solution for everyone, consumers, businesses, free users – be specific
3. We had very low prices. This was one of the most crucial mistakes.
4. Focused on growth and not profitability – focus on profit.
5. We did major changes in the user interface without asking our users first – don’t surprise customer. keep it simple.
6. Did not hire support team and did not have in place a good support platform – put support in place early.
7. Wasted time trying to be acquired – don’t bother.
8. Did not have a good backend system – be able to interrogate what’s happening in the business at all levels.
9. Did not keep in touch with our users – keep in touch via email.
10. Had too many features – keep to 4-5 core features

1. How fast your business can grow – Have option to scale instantly (i.e. per minute).
2. Be prepared for the unexpected – Backup
3. How service would be a year from launch date – be prepared to change

To follow on from my post on infographics, that happened to be about raising money through twitter, I had a little success with the service myself. Read my blog post over at Prat Perch to find out more.

Here is a booklist on the Prat Perch blog for those interested motorsport. It will evolve overtime but hopefully there are a couple of useful titles to get people going.

… this infographic helps you decide how to go about getting it made (or not!) … good humoured.

I have decided to chart the start-up journey of Prat Perch on its blog. So far I have written two articles, the second of which might be interesting in the context of my recent information design / infograhpics article I wrote here before.

Please let me know your thoughts and I hope it can add value to people thinking of starting on the same journey.

For those who watched the GP qualifying in the UK and heard the slight fumble by Martin Brundle and David Coulthard over the term slip angle, I thought what better subject to start the Prat Perch technical articles on the Prat Perch motorsports blog. Here is the link. Let me know what you think.

This “infographic” presents in a clever way, some otherwise potentially boring statistics. What I like about it is that the illustrator has guided the viewer into what they feel is important in the messages – i.e. the value and success tactics of social media fundrasing. I feel this helps you interpret the message quickly and helps answering the “so what” question nicely. All good inspiration for the core approach of my new motor sport company Prat Perch.