Tag: startup

Emerging Entrepreneurship

Endeavor is a non-profit group based in New York dedicated to promoting entrepreneurship in emerging economies. Endeavor’s entrepreneurs—who collectively now control companies with combined revenues of $2.4b and 91k employees, earning on average 10x the minimum wage in their country—rarely say they would not have succeeded without Endeavor. But they all believe they got bigger much sooner thanks to its endorsement and support. Endeavor has “created islands of hope”. Now it must find ways to “change continents, not just little islands.” This has been recognized by Endeavor’s global board, which recently adopted an ambitious plan to expand to 25 countries by 2015. Endeavor is confident that it now knows how to adapt its model to new countries, having learnt from early stumbles in Chile, South Africa and Turkey. Fadi Ghandour, the Jordanian boss of Aramex, a logistics firm, believes there is much potential in the Arab world, which is full of young would-be entrepreneurs who have “discovered the new thing, that it pays to have an idea, not rely on land or investing.”

endeavor.org gets a nice write up.

Germany Clones

You haven’t arrived until your web application has a German clone, it seems. Web innovation in that country too often distills down to “copy/paste innovation.” And now, Freundfeed, which doesn’t appear to be a joke. Not only is it a ripoff of the FriendFeed name, they also use the same logo. The service hasn’t launched yet, but I’m willing to make an educated guess and say that it will likely rip off the rest of FriendFeed, too.

was ist los deutschland? kein eigener hirnschmalz? between the intellectual bankruptcy that spawns literary criticism about the “google master plan” and these copycats, what has germany ever done for the internet?

Construktiv, the company behind social bookmarking service Mister Wong and Lifestream.fm, has acquired FreundeNews, a German service blatantly modeled and designed after the example of FriendFeed (the startup was actually called FreundeFeed when it first launched in April 2008 but changed its name sometime after, most probably in fear of sparking a trademark dispute).

Fire the workaholics

If your start-up can only succeed by being a sweatshop, your idea is simply not good enough. Go back to the drawing board and come up with something better that can be implemented by whole people, not cogs.

what a bunch of nonsense. if you want to be a lifestyle business like 37signals, go right ahead with the 9to5ers. elsewhere, they are toxic.

Commitment Contracts

stickK is designed to promote a healthier lifestyle by allowing users to create “Commitment Contracts” that oblige them to follow through with commitments such as exercise and quitting smoking.

behavioral econ startup. the contacts pledged so far have an average value of $50. this should be interesting once we are talking real money

Realestate Startup Bros

56.2% of the respondents claimed that they were “seriously considering starting a business within the next 6 months” and 13.4% claimed that they “are [already] in the process of starting a business.” Out of this whopping 70% of workers who have or intend to become entrepreneurs, 42.1% gravitate towards starting something tech-related. Assuming this survey is representative, almost 30% of this demographic can be expected to try their hand at the Silicon Valley Dream over the next year. This news can be taken very positively. The credit crunch has made many of these professionals down on their luck, and entrepreneurship could be a saving grace that will not only provide them with new opportunities but create more jobs for others as well. Before you know it, the crunch actually stimulates the economy instead of the other way around. Such optimism is expressed by a respondent’s remark that “starting a business is an incredibly satisfying experience…it is so great to know that you control your own destiny.”

too funny. busted realtors trying their luck in the internet industry. that will work well, i am sure.

Dumb Startups

ChaCha is a bad idea that has been poorly executed. In a sea of dumb startup ideas, ChaCha stands apart as more awful than just about all of the rest. And that didn’t change with today’s funding news. They simply went from being a bad startup, to a well funded bad startup.

this is why i keep reading TC. apparently chacha is the pride of the midwest media, too. fits.
2017-04-19: nice indictment of the tech industry:

Juicero is basically a $400 machine that squeezes a bag so you don’t have to. But it’s internet-connected! Isn’t that awesome?