LetsBuyIt Blog

It is very difficult to avoid news about the financial crisis nowadays and it gets “frustrating” to read the whole banking and finance sector is collapsing. However when it starts hitting home at the foundation of the internet entrepreneur scene, as mentioned by Om Malik, all the start-ups need to listen up.

As Handelsblatt pointed out, the funding of most projects is in jeopardy because the investors and business angels are losing money elsewhere and need to concentrate on reducing the damage. Qitera had to find this out the hard way now after having already shifted to the Silicon Valley to be closer to the investor, stated Handelsblatt.com. That implies that either they stop funding new projects and/or the investor needs to focus on the projects in the portfolio and start cutting costs. The difference to the many industry sectors is that internet start-ups always take significant time to gain a critical mass and break-even because the margins are usually in the cent-area and not hard dollars.

Therefore the financing is very important in the initial start-up phase so get what you can now because the tech-bubble is not actually a bubble but sonner or later as exposed to the harsh financial conditions as everybody else. Be ready because reducing staff in an already small team, really hurts!

Last Thursday we participated in the OpenCoffee Roundtable in Hamburg, which treated the topic “PR for start-ups”. It was an interesting get-together because entrepreneurs from Hamburg met to discuss how the PR should be handled for start-ups. Those exchanges of experience in a small group are very inspiring because it gives you the chance to also see what others are thinking, who they know and what mistakes have already been made. These were the participants of last week along with their companies:

• Frank Felix Debatin www.1000mikes.com

• Monte Miersch www.mikestar.com

• Lars Wehmeyer www.formatune.com

• Achim Schnell www.formatune.com

• Ulrich Tekniepe www.tekniepe.com

• Anne Arndt www.digicol.de

• Tobias Caldeweyher www.letsbuyit.com

• David Cordes www.sightseaing.de

• Christine Stumpf www.weblin.com

• Jonas Bandick www.docinsider.de

• Mirco Beisheim www.postalo.de

• Paul Watzlaw www.meetya.com

• Matthias Henze www.jimdo.com

• Jan Milz www.sixgroups.com

• Thomas Promny and Jürgen Lankat www.gimahhot.de

• Tobias Worzyk www.hamburg-startups.de (organiser)
  

Without getting too much in details our conclusions are somewhat the following:

1) When you want to do PR then you better be well prepared for it and have a significant impact on the agency, in case you use one, because only the founders can really communicate and reflect the “spirit” of the company.

2) Only when you are really creative will the PR be successful because nowadays every is overloaded with great ideas, events and stories so it is difficult to stick out.

3) When you want that a journalist writes a story about you then you must deliver them a story, that can mention you as an example, because they will definitely not write an ad about you for you.

4) In case you want to use an agency you better a get a good one that actually knows all the individual journalists and bloggers, one that does those tedious follow-up calls and knows WHEN to contact the press (Mondays and early mornings are just the worst time, according to this great Techcrunch article).

You’ve compared feature lists and read all the consumer reviews. You’ve narrowed your choices to one or two models. Now you wonder: Who carries this product near me? Is it on sale?

You’ll find the answers at Krillion, but that’s for the US.

Krillion is the leader in actionable local search; local search that results in consumers taking action to buy. Krillion’s mission is to transform the way ready-to-buy consumers find and buy national brands, locally. Based on its unique Krillion Localization Engine, Krillion search results are more accurate than any local search information available on the Internet. Krillion, founded in February 2006, is funded by Hummer Winblad Venture Partners.

You have a similar service for the UK with Ask The Local.

What about the rest of Europe?

Of course LetsBuyIt studied this trend closely … stay tuned

We talked about JOOST in one of our previous entries on this blog and now we tried it! First impresion, it rocks!

Red Herring wrote a complete article concerning Joost. If you want an invitation to try the service, lets us know!

Logoworks automates the design of logos, business cards, and stationery. Proprietary software helps Logoworks streamline the process and charge less than old-line competitors.

SpotRunner is a one-stop online shop for low-cost 30-second TV ads. Local businesses can browse a library of premade spots and personalize them for airing in their local markets.

JOOST! Forget the three-minute video blog. The 30-minute, broadcast-quality Web 2.0 TV show is coming in all its full-screen glory. And if serial disrupters Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom have their way, neither television nor the Internet will be the same.

How do you feel with these business model? Did you know them?

Adify is an online marketplace for highly targeted ads. Businesses can sell ad space directly to advertisers; advertisers can target specific market niches while Adify handles the back-office work.

JanRain has developed a single sign-on service for multiple passwords that lets people hop freely from site to site. Business demand for JanRain’s services is expected to grow as Web 2.0 entertainment and social-networking sites proliferate.

Rearden Commerce sells a Web-based “virtual personal assistant” application that smoothly integrates hotel and flight reservations, meetings, and other events into your daily agenda. Some 150 companies and 500,000 employees use Rearden’s software.

Will they be successfull in 2007?

More to come!

Companies may talk about embracing Web 2.0, but they’re slow to invest in blogs, wikis, and many of the other new collaborative technologies that are generating headlines. Instead, they’re putting their resources behind technologies that enable automation and networking, according to a McKinsey Global Survey, “How businesses are using Web 2.0.”

Read the complete article.

Meebo lets users manage multiple instant-messaging services from one site. Meebo’s killer app is a widget that places an IM window on your blog or webpage.

Metacafe’s service ranks uploaded videos by popularity and feedback from a community of 17 million monthly visitors - and pays the creators for the success of their work. The authors get $100 after 20,000 viewings and $5 for every 1,000 subsequent views. Since September, Metacafe has paid a total of $250,000 to 200 contributors.

SoonR! Access your home or office PC from your mobile phone. SoonR allows you to use your phone to pull up and search data on your desktop - everything from Word docs to Photoshop files.

You know them? Would you invest in these businesses?
More to come in the coming days!

According to you what are the different web2.0 companies that we should watch in 2007?
In the coming days, we’ll put some interesting business on our blog, feel free to comment them!

Let’s start with these two:

Dabble has designed a tool for organizing videos into playlists of favorites. Users share them across the network, so, say, food lovers can dabble in one another’s video collections.

Slide has developed customizable and easily assembled slide shows of photos that can be embedded in a blog or a MySpace page, sent out in an RSS feed, and streamed to a desktop as a screensaver.

The old saying is wrong-winners do quit, and quitters do win.

Every new project (or job, or hobby, or company) starts out exciting and fun. Then it gets harder and less fun, until it hits a low point-really hard, and not much fun at all.

And then you find yourself asking if the goal is even worth the hassle. Maybe you’re in a Dip-a temporary setback that will get better if you keep pushing. But maybe it’s really a Cul-de-Sac, which will never get better, no matter how hard you try.

What really sets superstars apart from everyone else is the ability to escape dead ends quickly, while staying focused and motivated when it really counts.

Winners quit fast, quit often, and quit without guilt-until they commit to beating the right Dip for the right reasons. In fact, winners seek out the Dip. They realize that the bigger the barrier, the bigger the reward for getting past it. If you can become number one in your niche, you’ll get more than your fair share of profits, glory, and long-term security.

Losers, on the other hand, fall into two basic traps. Either they fail to stick out the Dip-they get to the moment of truth and then give up-or they never even find the right Dip to conquer.

Whether you’re a graphic designer, a sales rep, an athlete, or an aspiring CEO, this fun little book will help you figure out if you’re in a Dip that’s worthy of your time, effort, and talents. If you are, The Dip will inspire you to hang tough. If not, it will help you find the courage to quit-so you can be number one at something else.

This book will teach you how to ask the right questions.