Wired News introduces Boxbe - a startup that allows you to whitelist your correspondents, while requiring everybody else to pay up.
San Francisco-based Boxbe lets you set up an e-mail address and add your friends, family and co-workers to an approved senders list, allowing them to e-mail you for free. Anybody else who wants to reach you will have to pay. You set your own price, which can be as low as 3 cents or as high as $99 (if you think you’re all that). Boxbe will give 75 percent of funds collected from advertisers to users, who could optionally direct the money to a favorite charity.
More at:https://www.boxbe.com/ama/home
Monday, June 11, 2007
Document Managment Tool
Cincom iD Solutions helps enterprises deliver high-value, highly personalized customer communications efficiently and cost-effectively. Cincom iD Solutions creates all types of customer communications, both interactively and in batch, from letters to high-volume statements, and delivers them via the web, e-mail, fax, print, and wireless. Leveraging existing systems, hardware, and databases has enabled several of our customers to achieve cost reductions of up to 80 percent.
More at:http://www.capterra.com/document-management-software
More at:http://www.capterra.com/document-management-software
How To Build A Business Plan
Though many successful companies have been started without the benefit of a formal business plan (see "Seat of the Pants," Inc 500 2002), it can be an essential factor in the birth and growth of your company. A good business plan will help you obtain financing, arrange strategic alliances, attract key employees, and boost your confidence. It sells your company to the world and gives you direction as the world answers back.
From the table of contents to the financial tables, a business plan covers a lot of ground. How can you make your executive summary stand out? How much detail is appropriate when outlining your marketing strategy? What is the best way to present the financial projections? Here are Inc.com's best resources to help you create each part of your business plan.
Getting Started
Is Your Business Idea Feasible?
Making a critical evaluation of your business concept at an early stage will allow you to discover, address and correct any fatal flaws before investing time in preparing your business plan.
Telling Your Story
No matter what type of business you plan to start, when your story is complete it will be an important part of the risk management process and a key to effectively understanding your business and its critical success factors.
Developing Effective Vision and Mission Statements
Vision and mission provide direction for a new or small firm, without which it is difficult to develop a cohesive plan.
Simplified Start-Up Plan
Before you do anything else, you need a simple business plan. Here's a checklist to get you going.
Mastering the Basics
Creating Your Business Plan
In a nutshell, here are the areas you'll need to address in a business plan to offer prospective lenders and investors a complete view of your business, as well as provide you with a tool you can use to start and run your company.
The Basics of Business Plans: Sell, Sell, Sell
When viewed as a selling document, your business plan takes on a new meaning. Here, Gumpert provides four compelling reasons for writing a business plan.
The Bulletproof Business Plan
Build a plan that stands up to even the worst economy with these tips.
The Finer Points of a Business Plan
David E. Gumpert, author of How to Really Create a Successful Business Plan, gives a brief overview of what information every business plan should contain.
Filling In Your Plan: What to Say Where
Once you understand the skeletal outline of your business plan, you need to know what to say in each section. David E. Gumpert, author of How to Really Create a Successful Business Plan, fills in the details.
Company Description
Cover All the Bases in Your Business Description
Describing your business in the plan may sound deceptively simple. In reality, a nuanced company explanation is needed, and will serve as a strong foundation for your entire plan.
Executive Summary
Executive Summary as a Guiding Light
It's not an abstract, preface, or introduction, but the executive summary is one of the most critical parts of any business plan. David E. Gumpert argues that an effective executive summary should be the entire plan in miniature.
All Summary, No Substance
Through this annotated example, learn what not to write in your executive summary.
Market Analysis
How do I research my industry?
Where can you find specic data that applies to your industry and its market? Here are a few places to start.
Hitting the Market
To be successful, you have to know your potential customers inside out. One entrepreneur reflects on the essentials of market research.
Segment the Target Market in Your Business Plan
It's a big market out there, so how can you break it down for your business plan? Learn the simple principles of segmenting your market and drilling down to a more precise view of your target audience.
Write a Marketing Analysis that Will Simply Dazzle
After you've crunched the data and analyzed the market, you need a succinct and clear approach to best communicate that information in your plan. This article will help you decide what to include in your marketing section and offers a step-by-step format for doing so.
Competitive Analysis
Competitive Research on a Shoestring
You can learn a lot by researching online and targeting the right people.
Get a Local Look at Your Competition
You can gather endless information regarding potential competition by immersing yourself into the Internet. However, the best strategy is to stay local and get a firsthand look at them.
Financials
Making It All Add Up
Even if you find finances intimidating or tedious, they're critical. The financial section of a business plan is not the time to add creative flourishes; instead, this author advises, stick to a conventional approach.
Persuasive Projections
Predicting the future is hard. But when you're making financial projections, that's exactly what you need to do. You can avoid some of the most common mistakes by following this list of dos and don'ts.
More at:http://www.inc.com/guides/start_biz/20660.html
From the table of contents to the financial tables, a business plan covers a lot of ground. How can you make your executive summary stand out? How much detail is appropriate when outlining your marketing strategy? What is the best way to present the financial projections? Here are Inc.com's best resources to help you create each part of your business plan.
Getting Started
Is Your Business Idea Feasible?
Making a critical evaluation of your business concept at an early stage will allow you to discover, address and correct any fatal flaws before investing time in preparing your business plan.
Telling Your Story
No matter what type of business you plan to start, when your story is complete it will be an important part of the risk management process and a key to effectively understanding your business and its critical success factors.
Developing Effective Vision and Mission Statements
Vision and mission provide direction for a new or small firm, without which it is difficult to develop a cohesive plan.
Simplified Start-Up Plan
Before you do anything else, you need a simple business plan. Here's a checklist to get you going.
Mastering the Basics
Creating Your Business Plan
In a nutshell, here are the areas you'll need to address in a business plan to offer prospective lenders and investors a complete view of your business, as well as provide you with a tool you can use to start and run your company.
The Basics of Business Plans: Sell, Sell, Sell
When viewed as a selling document, your business plan takes on a new meaning. Here, Gumpert provides four compelling reasons for writing a business plan.
The Bulletproof Business Plan
Build a plan that stands up to even the worst economy with these tips.
The Finer Points of a Business Plan
David E. Gumpert, author of How to Really Create a Successful Business Plan, gives a brief overview of what information every business plan should contain.
Filling In Your Plan: What to Say Where
Once you understand the skeletal outline of your business plan, you need to know what to say in each section. David E. Gumpert, author of How to Really Create a Successful Business Plan, fills in the details.
Company Description
Cover All the Bases in Your Business Description
Describing your business in the plan may sound deceptively simple. In reality, a nuanced company explanation is needed, and will serve as a strong foundation for your entire plan.
Executive Summary
Executive Summary as a Guiding Light
It's not an abstract, preface, or introduction, but the executive summary is one of the most critical parts of any business plan. David E. Gumpert argues that an effective executive summary should be the entire plan in miniature.
All Summary, No Substance
Through this annotated example, learn what not to write in your executive summary.
Market Analysis
How do I research my industry?
Where can you find specic data that applies to your industry and its market? Here are a few places to start.
Hitting the Market
To be successful, you have to know your potential customers inside out. One entrepreneur reflects on the essentials of market research.
Segment the Target Market in Your Business Plan
It's a big market out there, so how can you break it down for your business plan? Learn the simple principles of segmenting your market and drilling down to a more precise view of your target audience.
Write a Marketing Analysis that Will Simply Dazzle
After you've crunched the data and analyzed the market, you need a succinct and clear approach to best communicate that information in your plan. This article will help you decide what to include in your marketing section and offers a step-by-step format for doing so.
Competitive Analysis
Competitive Research on a Shoestring
You can learn a lot by researching online and targeting the right people.
Get a Local Look at Your Competition
You can gather endless information regarding potential competition by immersing yourself into the Internet. However, the best strategy is to stay local and get a firsthand look at them.
Financials
Making It All Add Up
Even if you find finances intimidating or tedious, they're critical. The financial section of a business plan is not the time to add creative flourishes; instead, this author advises, stick to a conventional approach.
Persuasive Projections
Predicting the future is hard. But when you're making financial projections, that's exactly what you need to do. You can avoid some of the most common mistakes by following this list of dos and don'ts.
More at:http://www.inc.com/guides/start_biz/20660.html
Bill Gates Vs Steve Jobs
This year was the 5th addition of Walt Mossberg's and Kara Swisher's "All Things Digital" conference. I'm sure that it will come as no surprise to you that I have attended all five and intend to attend the next five as well. They say that first year conferences are a huge crap shoot because of the chicken and egg problem of attracting fantastic speakers and a fantastic audience -- you need one to get the other but can't get one without the other. By force of personality and reputation, Walt and Kara blew that away the first year by simply getting the most amazing speakers ever. The fabuloous audience quickly followed. But they created a problem for themselves.
The speakers at their first "D" were just too good: Gates, Jobs, Diller, Larry and Sergey, Meg Whitman, Terry Semel, Mark Cuban. I mean, give me a break. Year two: Gates, Jobs, Ellison, Carly Fiorina, Masa, Henning Kagermann. Year 3: Gates, Jobs, Mel Karmazin, McNealy, Zander, Diller, Jerry Yang and Dave Filo. Year 4: Gates, Al Gore, Howard Stringer, Terry Semel, Vinod Khosla, Bob Iger (Jobs couldn't make it and was sorely missed). So what were Walt and Kara going to do to make their 5th anniversary "D" a special one? They touted the answer on their homepage -- "Bill Gates and Steve Jobs to Make Historic Joint Appearance at D5."
Now I have to admit that, as much as I looked forward to seeing Gates and Jobs spar on stage, I thought that perhaps Walt and Kara had gone a bit too far calling the Gates/Jobs smackdown a "historic joint appearance." The cardinal rule of showmanship is to under-promise and over-deliver. It is hard to imagine that calling a chat "historic" could be viewed as under-promising, and harder still to imagine that after advertising a talk as "historic," one could possibly over-deliver. But I was wrong.
The "historic" joint appearance of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs wasn't just historic, it was, in fact, awe inspiring. I envisioned a half-hearted quarrel, punctuated by clever but cynical jabs at one another. What I got was a history lesson taught by the principal protagonists of the story. As I sat and listened to Gates and Jobs recount their 30 year journey to bring the best possible personal computers to the world, it struck me that no two living humans have had a bigger impact on my quality of life than they (case in point, I am typing this blog post on my MacBook on Microsoft Word).
It would be hard to replicate the energy and mood of the room with simple words. It may even be hard to replicate with video. Nonetheless, I strongly urge you to watch the videos of the conversation over at Kara and Walt's great new "news and opinion site" called AllThingsD.com. In the videos you will see a pair of mature, thoughtful moguls. Bill Gates was erudite, statesmanly, and utterly charming. Steve Jobs remained the consummate performer, yet managed a bit more humility than is his norm. They traded fours like an old married couple. And their recounting of the history of the personal computer industry had the cadence of an on-again off-again romance. In the end, Jobs had the turn of phrase that brought us to our feet -- a snipped right out of a love letter -- "There's that one line in the Beatles song, 'You and I have memories longer than the road that stretches out ahead,' and that's definitely true here."
Great conferences are all about great theater. And I have never seen better theater than Jobs and Gates on stage together, modestly recounting how they changed all of our lives, in incalculable ways, forever. Hats off to Walt and Kara for orchestrating this once in a lifetime event. When can I register for D6?
The speakers at their first "D" were just too good: Gates, Jobs, Diller, Larry and Sergey, Meg Whitman, Terry Semel, Mark Cuban. I mean, give me a break. Year two: Gates, Jobs, Ellison, Carly Fiorina, Masa, Henning Kagermann. Year 3: Gates, Jobs, Mel Karmazin, McNealy, Zander, Diller, Jerry Yang and Dave Filo. Year 4: Gates, Al Gore, Howard Stringer, Terry Semel, Vinod Khosla, Bob Iger (Jobs couldn't make it and was sorely missed). So what were Walt and Kara going to do to make their 5th anniversary "D" a special one? They touted the answer on their homepage -- "Bill Gates and Steve Jobs to Make Historic Joint Appearance at D5."
Now I have to admit that, as much as I looked forward to seeing Gates and Jobs spar on stage, I thought that perhaps Walt and Kara had gone a bit too far calling the Gates/Jobs smackdown a "historic joint appearance." The cardinal rule of showmanship is to under-promise and over-deliver. It is hard to imagine that calling a chat "historic" could be viewed as under-promising, and harder still to imagine that after advertising a talk as "historic," one could possibly over-deliver. But I was wrong.
The "historic" joint appearance of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs wasn't just historic, it was, in fact, awe inspiring. I envisioned a half-hearted quarrel, punctuated by clever but cynical jabs at one another. What I got was a history lesson taught by the principal protagonists of the story. As I sat and listened to Gates and Jobs recount their 30 year journey to bring the best possible personal computers to the world, it struck me that no two living humans have had a bigger impact on my quality of life than they (case in point, I am typing this blog post on my MacBook on Microsoft Word).
It would be hard to replicate the energy and mood of the room with simple words. It may even be hard to replicate with video. Nonetheless, I strongly urge you to watch the videos of the conversation over at Kara and Walt's great new "news and opinion site" called AllThingsD.com. In the videos you will see a pair of mature, thoughtful moguls. Bill Gates was erudite, statesmanly, and utterly charming. Steve Jobs remained the consummate performer, yet managed a bit more humility than is his norm. They traded fours like an old married couple. And their recounting of the history of the personal computer industry had the cadence of an on-again off-again romance. In the end, Jobs had the turn of phrase that brought us to our feet -- a snipped right out of a love letter -- "There's that one line in the Beatles song, 'You and I have memories longer than the road that stretches out ahead,' and that's definitely true here."
Great conferences are all about great theater. And I have never seen better theater than Jobs and Gates on stage together, modestly recounting how they changed all of our lives, in incalculable ways, forever. Hats off to Walt and Kara for orchestrating this once in a lifetime event. When can I register for D6?
Escaping The Resource Curse
Messrs. Humphreys Sachs and Stiglitz explain why countries with lots of natural resources tend to do worse than countries with less resource wealth.
This vade mecum for governments advises on how to gain advantage over oil corporations and how to effectively redistribute (oil) revenues. Foreword by George Soros.
More at:http://www.columbia.edu/cu/cup/catalog/data/978023114/9780231141963.HTM#cart
This vade mecum for governments advises on how to gain advantage over oil corporations and how to effectively redistribute (oil) revenues. Foreword by George Soros.
More at:http://www.columbia.edu/cu/cup/catalog/data/978023114/9780231141963.HTM#cart
Apple's style of innovation
Economist.com has a good story about Apple's style of innovation.
Listening to customers is generally a good idea, but it is not the whole story. For all the talk of "user-centric innovation" and allowing feedback from customers to dictate new product designs, a third lesson from Apple is that smart companies should sometimes ignore what the market says it wants today. The iPod was ridiculed when it was launched in 2001, but Mr Jobs stuck by his instinct. Nintendo has done something similar with its popular motion-controlled video-game console, the Wii. Rather than designing a machine for existing gamers, it gambled that non-gamers represented an untapped market and devised a machine with far broader appeal.
The fourth lesson from Apple is to "fail wisely". The Macintosh was born from the wreckage of the Lisa, an earlier product that flopped; the iPhone is a response to the failure of Apple's original music phone, produced in conjunction with Motorola. Both times, Apple learned from its mistakes and tried again. Its recent computers have been based on technology developed at NeXT, a company Mr Jobs set up in the 1980s that appeared to have failed and was then acquired by Apple. The wider lesson is not to stigmatise failure but to tolerate it and learn from it: Europe's inability to create a rival to Silicon Valley owes much to its tougher bankruptcy laws.
What I find interesting is that Apple does two things that most companies don't. First, they sometimes ignore the current state of the market when designing products. Second, they learn from failure rather than stigmatizing it. That sounds like a pretty different corporate culture than most companies.
More at:http://economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9302662
Listening to customers is generally a good idea, but it is not the whole story. For all the talk of "user-centric innovation" and allowing feedback from customers to dictate new product designs, a third lesson from Apple is that smart companies should sometimes ignore what the market says it wants today. The iPod was ridiculed when it was launched in 2001, but Mr Jobs stuck by his instinct. Nintendo has done something similar with its popular motion-controlled video-game console, the Wii. Rather than designing a machine for existing gamers, it gambled that non-gamers represented an untapped market and devised a machine with far broader appeal.
The fourth lesson from Apple is to "fail wisely". The Macintosh was born from the wreckage of the Lisa, an earlier product that flopped; the iPhone is a response to the failure of Apple's original music phone, produced in conjunction with Motorola. Both times, Apple learned from its mistakes and tried again. Its recent computers have been based on technology developed at NeXT, a company Mr Jobs set up in the 1980s that appeared to have failed and was then acquired by Apple. The wider lesson is not to stigmatise failure but to tolerate it and learn from it: Europe's inability to create a rival to Silicon Valley owes much to its tougher bankruptcy laws.
What I find interesting is that Apple does two things that most companies don't. First, they sometimes ignore the current state of the market when designing products. Second, they learn from failure rather than stigmatizing it. That sounds like a pretty different corporate culture than most companies.
More at:http://economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9302662
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
