StartUp Beat

By Charlie Born, vice president of marketing at Plimus

The ecommerce landscape is quickly transforming as customer expectations evolve and new forms of digital goods and services grow in market share. Much of this transformation is happening with software-as-a-service (SaaS) and or cloud e-businesses that are taking over from traditional software in venture and equity firm investments. These fast-growth companies need to ‘take charge’ of their business and assume full control of selling digital goods and services online, yet do this in a cost-effective way. By adding the growing market popularity of the social web, it becomes even more important to reach the correct prospects with the correct offers and make the online shopping experience as frictionless as possible. Converting shoppers into paying customers is a big challenge; however, creating repeat buyers is truly a science. 

Continue reading "Guest Column: Cloud commerce fundamentals" »

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By David Galvan, president of Schedulicity

Daily deal services have become a multi-billion dollar industry and have reestablished focus on the local marketplace since late 2008. With Groupon and LivingSocial leading the pack, there were, as recently as a year ago, more than 350 players in the space providing deals, platforms, data, analytics and aggregation.

But that was then. The current state of the daily deal industry has quickly shifted, creating challenges as well as brand new opportunities for small businesses.

The daily deal site pool is shrinking at a remarkable rate. According to The Wall Street Journal, nearly one-third of all daily-deal sites in the United States have shut down. This consolidation of the industry cannot be ignored, and when the daily deal dust settles, those who’ve discovered how to deliver benefits to both the merchant and the consumer will ultimately be the last men standing.

Continue reading "Guest Column: What the Daily Deal Empire Decline Means for Startups and Small Businesses" »

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Editor’s Note: The following article is part of a new series of guest articles on StartUp Beat by experts on startups/entrepreneurship who have something to say about any and all things related to the technology startup world. This article is not a sponsor post and the writer has not paid for space on StartUp Beat. This series is intended to serve as a point of discussion and consideration of issues that affect the technology startup sector.

By Laura A. Schoppe

Laura A. Schoppe is president of Fuentek, LLC, a consulting firm she established in 2001 that provides intellectual property and technology transfer services with a specialization in technology commercialization. Fuentek: www.fuentek.com.

“Crowdsourcing” is a trendy term these days, and like all trends, has its positive and negative aspects. Although trendy terms tend to take on several meanings, the ones I’m referring to are web-based systems where organizations with a technical need (seekers) can post their problem (challenge) and allow “the crowd” (solvers) to offer up their ideas for a solution. It is basically the open innovation or “spin-in” equivalent of posting technology licensing opportunities on your organization’s website or through online services to achieve “spin-out” success.

As an example, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) recently experimented successfully with crowdsourcing to develop a new combat support vehicle. In this case, innovation from solvers allowed a company called Local Motors in Arizona to select the best out of 162 designs submitted through crowdsourcing, and then build the vehicle in only 14 weeks. Victor Garcia (the solver) received $7,500 for his Flypmode design, and Local Motors (the service provider) received about $350,000 from DARPA (the seeker) for the project.

Continue reading "Crowdsourcing works…for a few" »

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Editor’s Note: The following article is part of a new series of guest articles on StartUp Beat by experts on startups/entrepreneurship who have something to say about any and all things related to the technology startup world. This article is not a sponsor post and the writer has not paid for space on StartUp Beat. This series is intended to serve as a point of discussion and consideration of issues that affect the technology startup sector.

By Doug Mellinger

Douglas Mellinger is Vice-Chairman and Co-founder of Foundation Source and Trustee at Cogswell College.

Amidst a sea of graduations occurring this month, many graduates who majored in art, science, engineering, and other non-business disciplines are the ones most likely to start their own businesses. The irony is they most likely did not receive formal business training because those courses and experiences were housed in their colleges’ business school and not their own departments. So when they start their own venture they must become a quick study in understanding the elements that make a business successful.

Most entrepreneurs don’t come from the business school world and have had no formal business training. In many cases, learning how to project profit and losses, balancing the books, and creating a business plan are all done through trial and error. This experience could be different if more colleges were focused on providing every student with the basic entrepreneurial skills to start their own business regardless of their major. 

Continue reading "Entrepreneurship: It’s in the teaching" »

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MyCorporation.com CEO Deborah Sweeney offers her take on the growing importance of intellectual property protection in today’s startup sector.

I know I am probably a bit late with this reference, but The Social Network, while being a great film, really helped to reveal the gritty underbelly of being an entrepreneur of a tech start-up. Everyone wants to be the next Mark Zuckerberg, but no one wants to be sued for infringing on intellectual property rights. While you may not be able to get to a million friends without making a few enemies, you don’t want those enemies coming after you in civil court, demanding a percentage of your profits.

As the tech-boom has grown, then died, then rose from the ashes, the rise of intellectual property has been an interesting one. Google Labs shows that it wasn’t until the early-1990s that the actual words “Intellectual Property” began to appear in books and other documents. However, the idea of protecting… well, an idea, goes back way before the advent of technology. If you told your buddy of an idea for a great invention, and he blatantly stole it, you would probably argue in court that the idea for his product was rooted in your idea. You don’t need a computer to get your idea stolen. But tech start-ups are a new type of beast; most of you reading this have probably tossed ideas around over drinks with a group of friends. The generation of entrepreneurs who are founding most of the new tech companies do not have the same beliefs regarding the protection of ideas as previous business owners. I doubt anyone has woken up in a cold sweat, frantically searching for their phone to call their group of friends, demanding that they promise to not steal the two or three pitches that came up which you particularly liked.

Continue reading "Intellectual property and the new technology entrepreneur" »

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