NetBooks is a software system that is meant for an entire company to run an entire company.
It often happens that NetBooks is compared to Quickbooks, however NetBooks replaces the need for QuickBooks and provides more. While QuickBooks was designed to address the bookkeeping problem, NetBooks was designed to solve the whole business management problem: sales, customers, vendors, production, inventory and shipping.
They raised:NetBooks Raises $6.9 Million for Small Business Management Software from CMEA Ventures and Integral Capital.
More at:http://www.netbooks.com/
Sunday, September 9, 2007
How Two Friends Become Entrepreneurs
BusinessWeek chats with two young entrepreneurs who aim to 'Feed' the masses quality organic granola
How many times have you come up with an idea that causes your friends to say: "Hey, that could be a business!" How many times have you agreed with them? But how many times have you actually gone out and transformed that idea into a real business? Well, that's exactly what former models turned business partners Jason Osborn and Jason Wright ended up doing. In 2005, the pair turned the granola that they made as a snack in their New York City apartment into a three-flavor organic line they named Feed Granola.
Now sold in eight states at stores including Whole Foods Market (WFMI) and Wegmans Food Markets, Feed Granola earned $110,000 in sales in 2006, and is projected to make $2 million over the next 12 months, according to Osborn and Wright.
Recently, BusinessWeek.com's Stacy Perman spoke with Osborn and Wright about making the leap from a home kitchen hobby to a full-time company. Edited excerpts of the conversation follow.
How did you come to turn a homemade snack into a business?
Osborn: In 2003, our modeling agency put us together and we were living as roommates in the West Village. We started making granola as a healthy snack for ourselves. We would pass it out to friends, and it kind of caught on in the neighborhood. We gave it to a local restaurant to sample, and they ended up putting it on their menu. We realized that we had something special at that point, and we talked about making it into a serious product. So we took the granola to a dietician and gave her the formula. She said we had a really healthy product here and that there was a real need in the marketplace. So we put our heads together to make it a business in 2004.
Wright: And we formed a business corporation in December of 2005.
Did either of you have any prior business experience?
Osborn: After I moved to New York, I worked for an ad agency for three years. And in college I majored in business management and advertising.
Wright: I went to the University of South Carolina and majored in hotel, restaurant, and tourism management, and minored in business. But in college they don't teach you to be an entrepreneur. When I graduated I had no idea that I would have a granola company one day. But I did want to own my own business and to work for myself. I didn't know what I wanted to do, and I got into modeling because it got me to travel. I was managing an Abercrombie & Fitch (ANF) store and that led me to modeling, which led me to New York.
How did you initially finance Feed?
Osborn: In the beginning we financed it ourselves.
Wright: We spent about $10,000 between us from 2004 to January of 2006.
Were you still making the granola in your kitchen?
Osborn: Yes, at first we were making it in our sixth floor walk-up. And we'd go around the neighborhood offering it as samples at gyms to get feedback from people who weren't our friends. That's how we hooked up with a local natural-foods store that put us on their shelves. But at that point we'd gotten too big for our kitchen, so we partnered with a meal delivery service in the city and bartered (BusinessWeek, 7/18/07) to use their kitchen space. We'd bake our granola during the night when they weren't using it and we paid for the usage in granola. That's how we paid rent on our first facility.
Wright: We did that for a year until the end of 2005, and then we outgrew that facility and moved to a cooking company in the Bronx. We trained their staff and worked with them until August of 2006.
Since you were growing, what did you do for capital?
Osborn: We approached the U.S. Small Business Administration and applied for a small-business loan. We were approved for a $75,000 loan, and the money got us to the point where we could launch the product at Natural Products Expo East, a national trade show in Baltimore. We made a plan to spend the next 10 months working on the brand and packaging in order to launch it at the trade show. We came up with the brand name and hired a designer friend of ours to execute the vision we had put down on paper.
Did you have a business plan or did this just evolve? Did you seek advice?
Osborn: In the beginning, we were just flying by the seat of our pants. Early on we sought out SCORE and spoke to them literally via e-mail. They helped us with questions about incorporating and starting a business plan. Then we created the business plan ourselves. It was really just cursory. It laid out how we'd run the business and outlined some of our market and financial milestones. We used that plan to secure our loan from the SBA.
What was the best piece of advice you received?
Osborn: Before we actually launched at the trade show, we attended a few other trade shows and we went to the educational programs and seminars that they had on how to take a product to market. We were able to ask people firsthand how they did it. They helped explain how to go to the next level from where we were. It was very helpful to attend those seminars.
Also, going to the trade shows allowed us to introduce ourselves to markets and distributors and chains. They could see that we were a viable company and became attracted to our brand.
Were there any blunders along the way?
Osborn: Yeah, of course. I think our biggest challenge was finding a facility that fit our needs. If you are constantly growing and changing, you need a manufacturer that allows you to do so. Also, I think our lack of experience allowed us to be more innovative, but I think if we had more experience we could have answered a lot of questions that came up.
Wright: When you are a small, growing company, cash flow is always a problem. Trying to balance receivables vs. payables is always a big challenge.
Many people have an idea but not everybody turns it into a business. What would you say makes that leap possible?
Osborn: In our case, we had a very good partnership. We both bring different things to the table. But I'd also say that you have to go with your instincts and vision and guts and stay true to them. Everyone has their own opinion and advice and it's always different. I say, stay focused.
What's next?
Wright: We'd like to go national by mid-to-late 2008.
Osborn: We also want to expand our product line once we've established it as a quality product. And we want to enter into brand extensions.
More at:http://www.feedgranola.com/
How many times have you come up with an idea that causes your friends to say: "Hey, that could be a business!" How many times have you agreed with them? But how many times have you actually gone out and transformed that idea into a real business? Well, that's exactly what former models turned business partners Jason Osborn and Jason Wright ended up doing. In 2005, the pair turned the granola that they made as a snack in their New York City apartment into a three-flavor organic line they named Feed Granola.
Now sold in eight states at stores including Whole Foods Market (WFMI) and Wegmans Food Markets, Feed Granola earned $110,000 in sales in 2006, and is projected to make $2 million over the next 12 months, according to Osborn and Wright.
Recently, BusinessWeek.com's Stacy Perman spoke with Osborn and Wright about making the leap from a home kitchen hobby to a full-time company. Edited excerpts of the conversation follow.
How did you come to turn a homemade snack into a business?
Osborn: In 2003, our modeling agency put us together and we were living as roommates in the West Village. We started making granola as a healthy snack for ourselves. We would pass it out to friends, and it kind of caught on in the neighborhood. We gave it to a local restaurant to sample, and they ended up putting it on their menu. We realized that we had something special at that point, and we talked about making it into a serious product. So we took the granola to a dietician and gave her the formula. She said we had a really healthy product here and that there was a real need in the marketplace. So we put our heads together to make it a business in 2004.
Wright: And we formed a business corporation in December of 2005.
Did either of you have any prior business experience?
Osborn: After I moved to New York, I worked for an ad agency for three years. And in college I majored in business management and advertising.
Wright: I went to the University of South Carolina and majored in hotel, restaurant, and tourism management, and minored in business. But in college they don't teach you to be an entrepreneur. When I graduated I had no idea that I would have a granola company one day. But I did want to own my own business and to work for myself. I didn't know what I wanted to do, and I got into modeling because it got me to travel. I was managing an Abercrombie & Fitch (ANF) store and that led me to modeling, which led me to New York.
How did you initially finance Feed?
Osborn: In the beginning we financed it ourselves.
Wright: We spent about $10,000 between us from 2004 to January of 2006.
Were you still making the granola in your kitchen?
Osborn: Yes, at first we were making it in our sixth floor walk-up. And we'd go around the neighborhood offering it as samples at gyms to get feedback from people who weren't our friends. That's how we hooked up with a local natural-foods store that put us on their shelves. But at that point we'd gotten too big for our kitchen, so we partnered with a meal delivery service in the city and bartered (BusinessWeek, 7/18/07) to use their kitchen space. We'd bake our granola during the night when they weren't using it and we paid for the usage in granola. That's how we paid rent on our first facility.
Wright: We did that for a year until the end of 2005, and then we outgrew that facility and moved to a cooking company in the Bronx. We trained their staff and worked with them until August of 2006.
Since you were growing, what did you do for capital?
Osborn: We approached the U.S. Small Business Administration and applied for a small-business loan. We were approved for a $75,000 loan, and the money got us to the point where we could launch the product at Natural Products Expo East, a national trade show in Baltimore. We made a plan to spend the next 10 months working on the brand and packaging in order to launch it at the trade show. We came up with the brand name and hired a designer friend of ours to execute the vision we had put down on paper.
Did you have a business plan or did this just evolve? Did you seek advice?
Osborn: In the beginning, we were just flying by the seat of our pants. Early on we sought out SCORE and spoke to them literally via e-mail. They helped us with questions about incorporating and starting a business plan. Then we created the business plan ourselves. It was really just cursory. It laid out how we'd run the business and outlined some of our market and financial milestones. We used that plan to secure our loan from the SBA.
What was the best piece of advice you received?
Osborn: Before we actually launched at the trade show, we attended a few other trade shows and we went to the educational programs and seminars that they had on how to take a product to market. We were able to ask people firsthand how they did it. They helped explain how to go to the next level from where we were. It was very helpful to attend those seminars.
Also, going to the trade shows allowed us to introduce ourselves to markets and distributors and chains. They could see that we were a viable company and became attracted to our brand.
Were there any blunders along the way?
Osborn: Yeah, of course. I think our biggest challenge was finding a facility that fit our needs. If you are constantly growing and changing, you need a manufacturer that allows you to do so. Also, I think our lack of experience allowed us to be more innovative, but I think if we had more experience we could have answered a lot of questions that came up.
Wright: When you are a small, growing company, cash flow is always a problem. Trying to balance receivables vs. payables is always a big challenge.
Many people have an idea but not everybody turns it into a business. What would you say makes that leap possible?
Osborn: In our case, we had a very good partnership. We both bring different things to the table. But I'd also say that you have to go with your instincts and vision and guts and stay true to them. Everyone has their own opinion and advice and it's always different. I say, stay focused.
What's next?
Wright: We'd like to go national by mid-to-late 2008.
Osborn: We also want to expand our product line once we've established it as a quality product. And we want to enter into brand extensions.
More at:http://www.feedgranola.com/
Spactor is a media search engine that scans television, radio, Internet TV and podcasts to display results
Spactor is a media search engine that scans television, radio, Internet TV and podcasts to display results showing how often and when a particular term was used in a program.
Based in Germany, Spactor is built on MediaClipping’s technology that is used by businesses for PR and other purposes, giving stats on the use of certain terminology and names are used in media. Now the search functionality of MediaClipping is being offered as an engine for you to use. Type in your query and you’ll see video and audio results where your term has been used. Results can be emailed to a friend, and you can go to the original source link or play the media directly. It would be convenient if these results could also be bookmarked directly.
As video and audio search becomes increasingly necessary for online media sharing, this type of technology will become more commonplace and used for purposes outside of B2B necessities. Spactor is currently available for 75 German-speaking radio and television shows, and the company has plans for International expansion. Plugged and Vlingo are other companies that are utilizing speech recognition for search and other personal uses.
[via blognation]
Based in Germany, Spactor is built on MediaClipping’s technology that is used by businesses for PR and other purposes, giving stats on the use of certain terminology and names are used in media. Now the search functionality of MediaClipping is being offered as an engine for you to use. Type in your query and you’ll see video and audio results where your term has been used. Results can be emailed to a friend, and you can go to the original source link or play the media directly. It would be convenient if these results could also be bookmarked directly.
As video and audio search becomes increasingly necessary for online media sharing, this type of technology will become more commonplace and used for purposes outside of B2B necessities. Spactor is currently available for 75 German-speaking radio and television shows, and the company has plans for International expansion. Plugged and Vlingo are other companies that are utilizing speech recognition for search and other personal uses.
[via blognation]
Travellers have the potential to bring much-needed supplies to underfunded non-profit organisations around the world
Travellers have the potential to bring much-needed supplies to underfunded non-profit organisations around the world, but usually they don’t learn about those needs until it’s too late to pack for them. StuffYourRucksack hopes to solve that problem by showing travellers--before they leave on their trips—how they could help out in a particular region.
The site was recently founded by BBC presenter Kate Humble, who recognized how often travellers end up thinking, ‘If only I had known!” She explains: “How many times have you been travelling and visited a school or community or local charity that you would love to help? The school needs books, or a map or pencils; an orphanage needs children's clothes or toys. All things that, if only you'd known, you could've stuffed in your rucksack. But once you get home you forget, or you've lost the address, or worry that whatever you send will be stolen before it even gets there.”
The concept is simple: local organisations around the globe can visit the site to register what they need, as can travellers who have been there and discovered the need first-hand. Travellers planning a trip can then search to see what they can bring along to help. There are no fees to be paid on either side, and a feedback section of the site allows for the exchange of tips and advice.
StuffYourRucksack is still in the process of getting off the ground, so there are no listings yet for many countries. One look at the listings that are there, though, shows how easy it could be to help. An Indian school for street children, for example, needs children’s clothing. An educational charity in Tanzania needs pencils and used mobile phones. Nice example of a grassroots initiative using the internet to help small-scale aid find its way around the world. Related: Family-to-family aid.
Website: www.stuffyourrucksack.com
Via-Springwise
The site was recently founded by BBC presenter Kate Humble, who recognized how often travellers end up thinking, ‘If only I had known!” She explains: “How many times have you been travelling and visited a school or community or local charity that you would love to help? The school needs books, or a map or pencils; an orphanage needs children's clothes or toys. All things that, if only you'd known, you could've stuffed in your rucksack. But once you get home you forget, or you've lost the address, or worry that whatever you send will be stolen before it even gets there.”
The concept is simple: local organisations around the globe can visit the site to register what they need, as can travellers who have been there and discovered the need first-hand. Travellers planning a trip can then search to see what they can bring along to help. There are no fees to be paid on either side, and a feedback section of the site allows for the exchange of tips and advice.
StuffYourRucksack is still in the process of getting off the ground, so there are no listings yet for many countries. One look at the listings that are there, though, shows how easy it could be to help. An Indian school for street children, for example, needs children’s clothing. An educational charity in Tanzania needs pencils and used mobile phones. Nice example of a grassroots initiative using the internet to help small-scale aid find its way around the world. Related: Family-to-family aid.
Website: www.stuffyourrucksack.com
Via-Springwise
Web Confrenceing Solutions
Persony provides advanced conferencing products such as the Persony Web Conferencing 2.0 solution. This web conference solution is flash, so you do not need to download it. You can conduct an online seminar, provide online training, and give a presentation with participants from any computer. Persony Web Conferencing 2.0 gives your company private labeling and hosting, have your customers assist a web conference at your site not someone else’s. Once you purchase Persony web conference software, you are done, there are no monthly fees to hassle you
Persony's patent-pending "smart-client" technology puts the intelligence of a collaborative application on the client side and uses standard Web servers to connect remote users. By leveraging the millions of Web servers and service providers in existence, Persony's solution can be deployed anywhere and at a fraction of the cost of other solutions. The smart-client approach is a disruptive technology that allows individuals and small businesses to afford applications that were once only available to larger corporations.
More at:http://www.persony.com/
Persony's patent-pending "smart-client" technology puts the intelligence of a collaborative application on the client side and uses standard Web servers to connect remote users. By leveraging the millions of Web servers and service providers in existence, Persony's solution can be deployed anywhere and at a fraction of the cost of other solutions. The smart-client approach is a disruptive technology that allows individuals and small businesses to afford applications that were once only available to larger corporations.
More at:http://www.persony.com/
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
