Paul Graham has another brilliant and lucid essay on the genius of startups and business ideas at the margin.

...great new things often come from the margins, and yet the people who discover them are looked down on by everyone, including themselves.

It's an old idea that new things come from the margins. I want to examine its internal structure. Why do great ideas come from the margins? What kind of ideas? And is there anything we can do to encourage the process?

I really can't say that I ever created a great or long-lasting business, but the most fun I've ever had in business (including now) has been in the businesses at the margins. My first and only 'startup' was my bicycle shop in the 'margin' of the garage of my parents' business. It was actually a highly profitable enterprise that was actually the only bicycle shop to serve rural Kewaunee county, WI, including service contracts with the high schools and it's own charity ride and junior mountain bike team. Not bad for something that was built in a marginal space, with marginal funds serving a marginal market offering marginal services and selling marginal brands.

Read more of Paul's essay. It's worth a few minutes out of your day. (via Fred Wilson)

Stowe Boyd on Advisory Capital
- Simply brilliant. Really. Read it.
***

Reminded of an SNL skit with Mike Meyers during a Scotland bit during the Olympics
"If it's not Scottish -- it's CRAP!"
***

Technorati Tags: advisory capital

If you're free from whatever you're doing next week on Wednesday, February 8, from 1:00-2:30 Pacific (4:00-5:30 EST), Scott Allen, co-author of "The Virtual Handshake: Opening Doors And Closing Deals Online" will be doing a free teleseminar with Steven Van Yoder, author of "Get Slightly Famous (review), on how to use blogs, social networking sites and online communities to increase your exposure and position yourself as a thought leader in your field.

The teleseminar is free, but seats are limited, so you will need to register in advance.

Technorati Tags: get slightly famous, virtual handshake

According to this morning's VentureWire:

Venture capitalists poured more money into U.S. companies in 2005 than in any year since 2001, reflecting a growing appetite for Internet-related start-ups and later-stage deals.

The amount raised by U.S. venture-backed companies hit $22.13 billion, a 2.2% increase from the $21.65 billion recorded in 2004. The investment total rose despite ten less companies receiving funding ˆ 2,239 versus 2,249 - according to industry tracker VentureOne, a unit of Dow Jones & Co., also publisher of this newsletter.

The traditional sectors eyed by venture capitalists health care and information technology experienced a dip in funding for the first time in several years. But the far smaller consumer and business-services sector, which encompasses Internet commerce companies, produced gains in 2005 not seen since the dot-com boom days.

Technorati Tags: statup, venture capital

My good friend Mark Kohls, owner of one of the most unique companies I've ever known of, Document History, gets a great blog mention today from the Chicagoland Genealogical Consortium.

Mark is a budding entrepreneur with an awesome little company. Document History offers you an affordable and powerful way to gather together your special reminiscences for your children, grandchildren and friends. Through Life Story RecordingTM, they provide a structured process to help you record your life story in your own voice.

Cool. Way cool.

Online social networking tools give you the power to expand and manage your network with an efficiency and effectiveness that were virtually unheard of even a decade ago. It's no longer who you know but who you know online that counts when closing deals, making a career move or organizing a local charity function. The authors of The Virtual Handshake -- Teten a CEO and online networker extraordinaire; Allen an entrepreneur -- tell their story from hard-earned personal experience and research that spanned over 300 sources.

Settling into our careers, we were taught the old school methods for networking. Glad handing and card flashing at evening mixers where all you could do was hope to meet someone with whom you could form a connection. Not to mention that most networking events seemed tailor made for extroverts only! According to Teten and Allen, online networking, already a fast-growing professional tool, proving to be a highly effective means for growing, cultivating and managing personal networks many times larger than most of us ever dreamed possible.

Seriously, I had no idea that Coyote Ugly was a real place. Hmmm. "Advice" from today's StartupJournal.

Buying a run-down dive bar in New York's East Village - $195,000

Medical bills from bar fights in an environment of controlled chaos - $2500

$40 million in free national and international advertising when Disney makes a movie about your business - Priceless!

Seriously. This story makes a strong case for building a business on what you believe in (whatever that may be!) and going for it!

Rob Levinson, and independent marketing consultant, wrote an interesting article in Startup Journal on just how much is at stake when you pitch as an independent, and how to make the most of your pitch by doing some self reflection beforehand.

1. Who am I?
Companies hire consultants for their insights, business intelligence and experience or to gain resources they don't have in-house. To meet those needs, I always present myself as a seasoned expert who has "been there and done that" -- whatever the issue may be.

2. What am I selling?
As a consultant, and not, for instance, a toy manufacturer, my ideas are my product. They're what I sell, so I need to be judicious about what I charge for and what I give away.

3. Why buy my service?
Prospects believe I have something to offer or they wouldn't invite me to make presentations. However, they often need prodding as to why my services are required. To pre-emptively answer this, I do extensive research on a client's industry, competitors, company culture and infrastructure -- noting in particular its vulnerabilities or "pain points."

4. Why buy my service today?
I can't tell you how many times I've brought the dang horse to water -- but I couldn't make it drink. That is, until I started instilling the "fear factor," or the suggestion that waiting could have dire consequences to a company's health. No company wants to be behind the eight ball, so suggesting that tomorrow is too late is always an effective approach.

I'm finding that Wisconsin has some great resources for people starting a business. As I move closer to kicking things off with BlogSavant, I'm happy to announce that I'll be working with a couple of fine companies out of the gate.

The first is Betuitive Marketing. Todd Smart and his crew are some amazing people and I've been having a lot of fun getting things going there. The project will be in the form of a weblog with a solid business model. Look for more on this in the coming weeks. Peter Davidson also runs a weblog for them that you can find here.


Secondly, I've been working with 21Publish, the creator of some innovative and very easy to use BlogPortal creation software. 21Publish is a hosted service that's a spinoff of the very popular (hosted) UK weblogging service 20Six. 21Publish comes to the market with a robust and super easy to use interface backed by tremendous support. 21Publish is targeting their hosted BlogPortal service at groups and businesses who are engaging in blogging or are about to.

Lastly, I want to thank everyone with whom I've consulted with in the blogosphere over the past few months about my projects. I appreciate all of your honest words and supportive feedback.

Look for more to come on both of these projects in the very near future.

Ryan Allis, the 19 year old entrepreneur extraordinaire, wrote a great, quck article on the execution of ideas. As someone who's always been more of an ideator than an excutor (but, I did start a business at 13 that I ran until 21, so there's a little execution in my past...) I can attest to Ryan's point of view that it's all in the execution.

"In 1967, an angel investor, Fred Adler, received over 50 business plans for entrepreneurs who proposed to start microcomputer firms. Only one of the teams presenting this idea ever made it. Its name was Data General. But why did so many entrepreneurs pitching a plan to sell microcomputers either never receive funding or if they were funded, never succeed?

They didn’t make it not because the idea was per se bad or didn’t have the potential to be a good opportunity. It was a great idea and enormous opportunity. Rather, it was because the other entrepreneurial teams were unable to execute."

Joe Kraus at Bnoopy relates a story on persistance, denial, and belief in your ideas. We should all be so "unencumbered by reality" sometimes.

Does free shipping make sense for YOUR business model? Entrepreneur.com tries to help figure that our with this article and a list of a few questions.

• How much are you charging for them?
  
• What kind of profit margins do they yield?
  
• How big and bulky are they?
  
• Most importantly, how much do they weigh?

As a former youth entrepreneur (started a business before I was a teenager), I like to encourage high school and college students to get with the program and start something.

Bill Slawski lists a couple of resources for youth entrepreneurs that are a great start. If any of you have additional ones, please post them in the comments.

There's a new startup (as opposed to an 'old' startup) in our building that's opening today. They are called "Trio Innovations" and have a relatively unique service. I'm not 100% sure that I latch onto what they are doing, but from what I understand, they are a new type of personnell agency that makes "digital video resumes" which they then distribute to recruiters. I wonder how much the market needs this? In fact, I'd like to pass this one by Heather to get her thoughts, but in any case, they are a great case of some young entrepreneurs seeing a problem and starting a business with the intent of solving the problem. Bravo!

More to the point, Loren Hoff, one of the founders, is a fellow St. Norbert grad, so I'm a bit biased.

[via the Green Bay Press-Gazette]

Mark Cuban discusses his 'rules for success.' Post #1 in the series is really worth a read.

Jason Stitt of The Wisconsin Technology Network wrote a glowing stoy on INSPIRE, the web-based project management software that we've created here at epicsoft. This is a great case study (for us at least) on how well timed and thoughtful PR efforts can work in your favor.

I wouldn't be me without doing some shameless promotion of something we've worked for so many months on!

INSPIRE, the first web-based, project team collaboration tool designed to specifically serve the business of creativity; the core business of ad agencies, design studios, video and media houses, and all other creative service providers that collaborate in-house and with clients.

INSPIRE was designed with the foremost goals of simplicity, accessibility and usability to facilitate user tasks, expedite the approval process and stimulate project collaboration within the creative environment. INSPIRE is the first web-based, hosted solution to deliver creative team collaboration seamlessly integrated with online asset approvals, content management and project management tools within the context of an easy-to-operate Macromedia Flash based application environment.

Developed in the latest Macromedia Flash, FlashORB and Microsoft .NET technology, INSPIRE is designed to cut costs and speed up the creative process through utilizing faster, more secure, and more reliable collaboration processes than current methods such as FTP, e-mail or overnight deliveries. Online functionality saves time and money by eliminating travel time and expenses, service fees, delayed approvals, and missed deliveries.

From what I can tell, INSPIRE does compete, somewhat, with Basecamp, but I think that the file upload/content management capabilites and the easy to use interface (I've run through both, and then some - I like INSPIRE better) give us a bit of an edge.

ePrairie.com: Wisconsin Technology Start-Up Delivers Project Management Relief

WTN: The "Big Squeeze" - Look for a job or be an entrepreneur?

Tony DiRomualdo in todays edition of the Wisconsin Technology Network newsletter, discusses the fever pitch of sentiment surrounding offshoring. Having just reviewed the presentation of the St. Norbert College SIFE (Students in Free Enterprise) group last night, and having listed to the stories about finding jobs in this economy, it seems to me that promoting entrepreneurship is a damn good idea. Which, in short, is the point of Tony's article

Despite two years of recovery, our economy is not producing anywhere near the number of new good-paying jobs needed. How then can America begin to redeploy and grow our human capital and economic assets? First, stop depending on big corporations for job growth. To create more jobs we need to start more businesses. Business ownership needs to be as much a part of the American dream as home ownership. It is vital to encourage entrepreneurship and help displaced workers to venture out on their own or join with others to start businesses.

It's ironic that SIFE members are going out into the community pitching entrepreneurship but come back to school, hit the PC, and troll for jobs online while feverishly updating their resume, trying to eek out every last bit of relevant experience that will land them a job. While I realize that it takes money, luck, and balls to venture out as an entrepreneur, I know for a fact that I had less of the former and more of the latter when I was graduating.

There are other benefits to democratizing business ownership. Trust between workers and top management is gone and can't be restored simply or easily. Instead, new kinds of companies and organizations must be created that blend people-centered management practices with commercially sustainable business models. These principles need not be mutually exclusive, but can be synergistic engines of economic growth and human development. They define what we call Next Generation Companies. America's future depends on our ability to renew and redeploy our economic, human and knowledge assets and to move away from the dysfunctional behaviors and practices so prevalent in mainstream business

A new report on the changing workforce by the Families & Work Institute indicates that small business owners are better paid and more satisfied with their work than salaried employees. While entrepreneurs work the longest hours, with 38 percent working more than 50 hours a week, small business owners and self-employed independents find their jobs more creative, have more opportunities to develop their skills and abilities and greater freedom to decide what to do in their jobs.

Fresh Inc: Dorm Room Entrepreneurs

Many businesses have started in dorm rooms, but not in dorms specifically dedicated to nurturing the entrepreneurial dreams of students. The University of Maryland has opened a dorm that fosters the formation of companies as part of the Hinman Campus Entrepreneurship Opportunities program, the Boston Globe reported today in "Great Ideas 101." Outside of the dorm, the students study typical college topics like English, engineering, business, but at the Hinman dorm, they're encouraged to start innovative businesses through a series of weekly seminars on starting and running a business, and the help they receive from UMD faculty. The dorm includes wireless Internet service, conference rooms, and a state-of-the-art computer lab. Hinman students have already started a number of businesses, from developing a wireless emergency alert system to a GPS that measures athletic performance in the field.

Sounds like a promising way to get today's young business owners off to a good start. Do you think this could be the future of teaching entrepreneurship?