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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

This is a great article for those looking at a tech start-up. It is a little biased towards young people starting a tech start-up but generally the 18 mistakes that kill start-ups is a good read.

Two parts resonated particularly strongly with me, and other (non-programmers) might have found the same:

Tip 6: Hiring Bad Programmers – the issue here is how to find a good programmer if you are not a programmer yourself, because you don’t have the skills to recognise one (if you can even find one!)

Tip 17: Fights Between Founders – “Don’t start a company with someone you dislike because they have some skill you need and you worry you won’t find anyone else. The people are the most important ingredient in a startup, so don’t compromise there.” - something I totally agree with but (as a non-coder) rather related to the above point.

This though could be the reason its so difficult to find good people who want to help you because “no one really good wants a job implementing the vision of a business guy.” And so lies the problem! … Perhaps its a case of ‘can’t beat them join them’ who knows.

Comments, thoughts and suggestions welcome!

Peldi at Balsamiq is a funny Italian chap. He is a programmer who is passionate about UX – odd given I have been repeatedly been told was impossible (left brain / right brain etc etc). Prior to starting his business, named after the Italian vinegar, he has worked solely at large corporates – also odd because “real entrepreneurs” don’t do that apparently.

Peldi is a great working case study of Guy Kawasaki’s philosophy around creating a business around “making meaning” not about making money – the philosophy is that the money will follow and it seems so in Peldi’s case (20,000+ customers, 6 staff and $3m Turnover from zero in 2 years!)

I am a fan and I recommend, if you’re in any way entrepreneurial or looking to (or are) working for yourself, finding the time to watch his talk.

He references a open list of free advice for entrepreneurs that he has created – the link is here in case you miss it.

Now, if anyone reading this knows of an awesome programmer, with great UX skills and a passing interest in motorsports, I have a great project needing their help and I am stuck …

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is something that I have dabbled with a fair bit over the years. The first step in any SEO process is to identify your keywords, or, the words people put in Google that you feel represent what you have to offer.

Normally this starts with a bit of a brain storm. Typically people don’t take this further but if you do there is a lot of information and online resources around to help you add objectivity to your keyword selection.

The reason you’d want to do this is because it takes a lot of effort to get to the front pages of the search engines and you should want to make sure that people are at least thinking along the same lines as you when they are searching for your products or services – assuming they are searching online for what you have to offer, but that is a story for another day …

Assuming you do want to get a feeling for the best keywords to target then this starts a quite involved process to find information and then filter and present it so that you can make a choice of what to go for.

This is a link to a post from a guy who is really at the cutting edge of this field and it makes an interesting read – assuming, like me, that you are into this kind of stuff! Its also a bit of a lesson on how to use Excel …

Here is a link to a great chart on where people are planning to spend on their marketing tactics in 2011:

I have been after something like this for a while. Makes a nice pretty picture but is useful too.

http://www.linkedin.com/share?viewLink=&url=http://lnkd.in/GJWHZS&sid=s240371248&urlhash=3bep

It seems all the motorsports events are happening next week. I have now confirmed I will be at Motorsports Symposium, MIA Clean-tech and Autosport, including the various dinners during the week. I hope to be networked out come Friday night!

Get in touch if you are attending any of these events too.

VC business feasibility analysis chart

This is a chart I have prepared that shows my guess at a typical VC or larger Angel investor decision making process. The chart is progressive and likely to have key steps along the way – i.e. if you don’t score 4 or 5 out of 5 for market you get binned straight away.

The objective is to get to the bottom of this high level filtering process with a high score. Hopefully armed with this knowledge you can tune your business planning activities to cover all these areas.

Hope it helps.

It is worth remembering that investors typically invest in things they understand well. They also consider how an investment will balance with their portfolio of investments. Therefore, you could do everything well and still not get interest from an investor because of these considerations, and not because they don’t believe you’ll be successful.

This is a theory I have been working to. It is a process for selling consultancy services and one that aims to side step the hourly / day rate hurdle completely. Its a concept, an idea and a way of approaching this thorny subject. Credit for its inception must go a friend of mine who is working as a Director at a major consultancy firm, although, interestingly this isn’t they way they do it. I like the idea so thought I would put it in a slide and share it.

Please let me know what you think, or try it even and let me know how you get on.

How to sell consultancy?