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Guess what, you’re new best friend is LinkedIn

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ThunderSnow! What Your Business Needs!

The past few weeks the U.S. as seen its fair share of Winter weather.  Last week D.C. shut down and KikScore co-founder, Raj, had to take refuge at a bar for several hours.  Not really sure how that is different from a normal day with perfect weather, but I digress. 

But the biggest storm of the season was the blast this week.  20 inches of snow hit Chicago, but more importantly, so did“ThunderSnow!”  This is a combination of a snow storm and thunder.  It’s happened twice this year (that have been televised) and the Weather Channel is freaking out about it.  Why?  I have no idea.

Neither of these two things (snow or thunder) really are that exceptional.  It’s not like a hundred foot wave crest that sunk the Andrea Gail.  No, it’s just the combination of two ordinary things that rarely happened together.  Or if they do happen together, it’s not ordinarily captured on tape. 

So, you have two common things, that may or may not happen concurrently.  I guess that’s exciting.  But what really is the sizzle is the name — ThunderSnow!  I think you have to include an exclamation point after you right that.  ThunderSnow! sounds like a  lame cartoon hero.  It sounds so much more awesome than it really is….sort of like the McRib (mmmm…McRibbbbbb).

That’s the beauty.  The name has you hooked.  The idea of ThunderSnow! is way better than the reality…sort of like my Toyota Prius…in traffic…in a snowstorm…or under ThunderSnow!  So, I guess my point to this (other than getting to write about the ThunderSnow!) is that you can have a decent, ordinary product, but if you market it correctly, or have the Weather Channel freak out about it, it can turn into a sensation. 

Speaking of which, maybe we should change our name to KikSnow!!

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Try Shopkick on Your Smartphone, Almost 1 Million Others Have!

I have been using the Shopkick application on my smartphone for the past few months and then I saw this article in the Wall Street Journal the other day and realized that 750,000 people have also downloaded and used the application since it was released in August.

Basically, the idea behind the Shopkick application is that users can login and see which local retailers are closest to their current location.  Users then also have the option on clicking on each of the retailers near them to see what specials the merchant is currently offering to Shopkick customers.  It seems like some of the larger retailers that have close relationships with Shopkick include Best Buy, Macy’s, and Sports Authority.

The other idea behind the Shopkick application that is used to encourage users to access the application daily is driven by rewarding users with Shopkick points just for viewing the retailer’s specials by using the Shopkick application on their smartphone.  Users can obtain additional points by physically visiting the retailers and checking in and also by scanning the barcodes of various products in the stores that the retailers are advertising.  Shopkick users can then redeem these Shopkick points for products and gifts cards from the various retailers.

I found the Shopkick application to be interesting and useful but after attempting unsuccessfully to scan the bar codes of a few advertised products at a local Best Buy I was a little frustrated by the application as well.  I can definitely see a lot of good uses for the Shopkick application and I hope that they expand the functionality included in it to possibly included automatic price comparisons and possibly an easier way to scan the barcodes of advertised products.

Have you ever used the Shopkick application in a store or any other smartphone application while shopping?

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Lego Models: The New Windows Phone 7

Anyone checked their homepage recently? Anyone have an iGoogle homepage?(Wonder if they ripped that off Apple…?) NO? Well if you do, you know you can customize it and get various news feeds from different news sources.

I have a PC World news feed on my homepage and when I was looking at it this morning, the headline said Microsoft sends out Windows Phone 7 Mockups Made Of…Lego Bricks. So, I clicked on it and found this article. PC World speculated that the Microsoft folks were inspired by the Lego iPad, shown here. I don’t think so. Looking at the photos provided by Engadget, the Lego version of the Windows Phone 7 is one ugly thing. The picture of the real one shown in the photo looks way cooler than the Lego model.  According to PC World’s article , the new Windows Phone 7 launches in New York(Figures,the day someone launches a cool tech product in DC, I will show up to that event.) on October 11, of this year. PC World is still speculating on the list of carriers for the phone, but the list includes all four major US cellphone companies.  The phone manufacturer is still unknown, but the list includes HTC, Toshiba, Samsung, LG and Dell to name a few.

So what exactly is the Windows Phone 7?  PC World has a neat little slideshow explaining that.(Quick little shout out to PC World, you guys are great!) Some of the highlights:

• a mobile Windows Office
• the only(currently) Xbox live app on a phone
• the phone lets you manage its content from the web
• makes it easier to find your lost

The rest is just what every other phone can do. Why buy it? I have no idea. Because it’s new and shiny? Because you’re an early adopter? Because you do a lot of work on your phone? Surprisingly enough, I couldn’t find a PC World article that dealt with that issue. If anyone has a good reason for buying this phone, let me know.

Extra!(because this post is way too short)

Want more Lego models? These sites have some incredible and strange ones.

Popular Mechanics: I liked the Lego Difference Engine and the Lego Air Conditioner(which actually works!)

Huffington Post: I liked the Lego Capitol, the Lego Man(actually Iron Man, but made out of Lego’s),Milk and Lego’s( is that actually milk in that Lego glass?), and the Lego Soccer Stadium(someone had way too much time on their hands)

Mashable: I didn’t know the Twitter mascot was named Ollie. I’d like to see the Google logo made out of Lego’s in a museum somewhere. See the iPhone unpacking slideshow(Mashable has a link) and the Google Chrome Logo video is epic.

Anyone else feel like a five year old watching/looking at these?

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The Holiday Birthday… How do you separate??

It’s almost Christmas and yet we’ve been inundated with presents since the 18th due to it being my daughter’s birthday, she just turned 2. My husband and I have a strategy in place (or so we think) to make her birth “day” special and still keep the holiday spirit. On the 18th (we started it last year) we go to pick out the family Christmas Tree… there’s a great tree lot right in our neighborhood, so we don’t have to venture far. This year, Tallyn seemed quite excited about the whole ordeal. We took the tree home, heated up some chili and started to decorate. After all the morning excitement, it was naptime, during which we actively assembled birthday presents to surprise her upon awakening. Our little plan worked and she immediately wanted to ride her new tricycle (fondly found on CraigsList for a steal!) and get messy with her Painting/Chalkboard easel (from Grandma).

Now the tricky part comes in… family from all over the continent then begins to send birthday AND Christmas presents and we (my husband and I) are forced to ‘decide’ which is for which holiday and when does the present opening stop? Toss into the mix her ‘friends’ party (seven 2-3 year olds running around for 2 hours at our house on Sunday) and all the gifts that go with that… which we ended up opening last night since Sunday was much too chaotic. So now she gets 4 days separation between Birthday and Christmas and we are running out of room and wrapping paper…perhaps we are destined to a week of present opening for the next 16+ years… should we be more diligent on the separation of holiday at this early an age?

I fear poor Tallyn will end up one of those horror stories where the birthday and Christmas celebrations get blended into one… I have a co—worker whose 2nd son was born on Christmas day and they’ve had to make a habit of reminding relatives to get him a Birthday present too… his mom almost forgot one year, poor kid. The Holidays are a magical time of year and still Birthdays are the #1 holiday for all of us… we hope to keep the spirit alive for both for our daughter. Are you a ‘Christmas Holiday Birthday Kid’? Or do you have a relative or child that is? How do you separate the celebrations? Have a Merry Christmas and HAPPY Birthday to any and all!

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Social Media & Your Biz: Open Up So You Can Close

Though the Internet seems to be overflowing with blog posts, tweets, and Facebook updates, there are a good number of businesses that don’t use social media in any manner.  Initially, I wasn’t the biggest evangelist for social media.  In all fairness, others on the Team are much more sophisticated about how to properly use blogs and Twitter. My initial feeling on social media was “Why the hell would I want to read the thoughts of a complete stranger?”  The past 6 weeks, however, we’ve gone live with our site/service and my attitude has completely changed.  Initially, we did very informative, yet sterile, blog postings…ones that no one actually read.  My prejudice seemed to be confirmed.  We then became more candid and casual in our postings, linked them up to Twitter and Facebook and all sorts of good things started to happen:

1.  Our traffic and overall visibility to the site is growing exponentially

2. We have come across several companies that are reaching out to similar small business owners.  Two such partners are Shustir and MyBusinessAssistant — services that are helping small business grow faster and with less headaches.

3. We are getting direct feedback from the marketplace.

4.  Our customers have a good understand with whom they are doing business with — not just a slick website (though our site is pretty slick).

5.  I’ve been able to share my drinking stories and show pictures of my dog online under the guise of being helpful for small business.

We’re not just the only ones seeing the positive impact of opening up to social media.  One of our customers, www.17thandRiggs.com has a great blog and is active on Twitter https://twitter.com/RebeccaSM).  In under a year, Rebecca has transformed her site from a passionate hobby to a destination site for interior designers and those who want to keep up with the latest design trends (as well as a full-time business).  If you don’t like my anecdotal examples, do you prefer the Wall Street Journal’s anecdotal examples?  In a recent WSJ article, a featured small business discussed how her wedding planning business was significantly buoyed by using social media. 

Feel free to share your favorite social media success stories…or tips on using social media.

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The Rise of Nights and Weekend Entrepreneurs

While entrepreneurs may share various character and personality traits, there are may types of of entrepreneurs.  Some exist under the radar while others get all of the hype.  The one that probably gets the most news coverage and are therefore the most well known is the startup entrepreneur. The startup entrepreneur is the person that takes an idea, may get some angel or VC funding (or even self fund) and creates and launches a product.  These types of entrepreneurs get a lot of coverage as they sometime have high profile exits where other companies buy their product for millions of dollars. The recent Mint.com story is an example of this.

Other Entrepreneur Types

Of course there are many other types. One that is getting a lot of recent attention is the home based business entrepreneur.  Businessweek just had an article that covered some surprising stats for this group.  There are also the small business entrepreneurs that have stores, shops, bars and restaurants that we all visit nearly everyday of our lives.   Then there is the purely unintentional entrepreneur that due to job loss are forced into starting a business.  There has been a lot of coverage of these unintentional entrepreneurs lately due to the huge amount of job losses during the economic downturn.

Enter the Night and Weekend Entrepreneur Warrior

The entrepreneur that floats under nearly every radar is the person who has a full-time day job, but still is an entrepreneur through a side business. As demonstrated from this clip from the cult classic Office Space, Milton Waddams exemplifies where some people get their motivation for their side business while they work their full time job:

While nights and weekend entrepreneurs have various motivations for starting their businesses, they all face very similar experiences:

1) Time Crunch – Even more than other entrepreneurs, because of their 9-6 day jobs,  nights and weekend warriors can really only fully focus on their side businesses during limited time periods.  That can be used as an advantage because since time is so precious, these types of entrepreneurs must be even more focused on time management and efficiency when they do work on their own business.

2) The Constant Pull Away From the Business– Each night and weekend these entrepreneurs face the temptation when they come home from work or on that weekend, to turn on the TV or to go into procrastination mode.  It is even more tempting to the nights and weekend warriors because of the fatigue that sets in from the day job.  Nevertheless, there are successful entrepreneurs that overcome this temptation and beat the fatigue and procrastination demon that is there every time you come home from the day job.

3) Beating the Not Doing Enough Syndrome – Because the nights and weekend warriors do not have a dedicated 40 hours of time for their business, they constantly are fighting the guilt that they are not moving fast enough or getting enough done.  The way these warriors get through this syndrome is keeping that eternally optimistic side that is in the small business psyche and saying, I am moving forward and doing all I can.  Otherwise, this guilt will overcome and doom you.  Night and weekend entrepreneur warriors battle this syndrome every time they look at their “to do” list.

While these are common challenges, nights and weekend entrepreneurs also share the same hunger to create something that they can set the direction for and grow.  We imagine that we will increasingly hear more about these entrepreneurs in the future.

Examples of Nights and Weekend Entrepreneurs

Here are just a few examples of Nights and Weekend Entrepreneurs we know about:

KikScore is a company that is made up of nights and weekend entrepreneurs and see here and here for some background on our experience.

Design 2 Print – which is KikScore’s hats and bumpersticker vendor.  Rush at Design 2 Print offers a lot more promotional items such as apparel, glasses, mugs, badges, calendars and much much more. Their slogan is “Our Business is Promoting YOUR Business.”

Simply Astro – Shiv who owns this site and a host of others spends nights and weekends devoted to fine tuning his astrology, horoscope, match making and Feng Shui site.

Know of any more, please leave them in the comment section below.

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Diary of a Tech Start-Up: Disagreement Over Product Features

Lord of the Flies

If you’re doing a start-up with other people, I guess it’s unavoidable to have disagreements with your team. If you’re lucky, the biggest disagreements center around where to go for happy hour. Personally, I like Chili’s. I know it’s not necessarily cool, but the chips and salsa is really good (very salty chips) and the margaritas are big (and unlike I’ve mentioned in previous postings, the glasses are very easy to hold onto). It’s also very unlikely that you’ll run into your competitors at Chili’s — as these weak-kneed companies can’t buck peer pressure and social convention and won’t be caught dead there.

Recently, our team has been caught up in a larger kerfuffle.  It centers around how we promote and/or explain the shopper experience that can be expected on our customer sites — via a numeric score. Some of the customer feedback is the concern that shoppers may equate an 820 (which is a really high score) with a “low B” rating (which would get you valedictorian status at my high school).

A contingent of our team believes that, because we already spell out the guidance of the numerical rating (“great experience”, “good experience” and “poor experience” expected), to remove customer confusion, we could eliminate the actual score. Other team members argue that the numeric rating shows the precision and sophistication of our scoring model (see posting on our algorithm), and it is something that our customers need to accept.  Take a look at one of our customer’s sites, at www.17thandriggs.com to see the current version of the user experience.

We’re working through how to please all the team members, but this disagreement doesn’t seem to have a clear mid-point. I guess that’s the point of working with the right team. If everyone has an opportunity to express their views, whether the decision goes the way a particular team member wants really isn’t important. It’s that there’s an underlying level belief that ultimately, with enough deliberation, the group can reach the best decision for the business and the customer.

On the other hand, instead of thoughtful deliberation, we’re also thinking of implementing Mixed Martial Arts in our team meetings. I may have a bit of a paunch, but I have a pretty good reach.

Feel free to give us your opinion in the comments below on your feedback on this issue.

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The Glass is Half Full, Because the Other Half is on My Pants

Optimism.  That’s the number one characteristic of most entrepreneurs.  Is it raining today?  No worries, because I look great in my raincoat.  No food at the party?  Not a problem, people just come for the beer.  The economy is on the verge of the second Great Depression?  Hmmm…I guess, no worries, because I look great in my raincoat. 

What made me think about the preponderance of sunshine in most entrepenuers’ outlooks?  Well, as usual, it began with a margarita (actually 2 and 1/2 margaritas).  My wife and I were having lunch at Rosa Mexicano.  And as the saying goes, “When in Rosa, order at least three pomegranate margaritas.”  It could have been the humidity, or the sheer weight of the glass, but as I gripped the drink and raised it to my mouth, it just fell into my lap.  I could have quit, but I started scooping the pooled liquid back into the glass (see above drink picture and realize most of that was sitting on my jeans prior to being salvaged).

So, how does this relate to small business and optimism?  I guess it’s a bit tenuous, but making the best of whatever the economy or marketplace throws you (or what you throw on yourself) appears to be a cornerstone for successful entrepreneurs. 

The University of Chicago Graduate School of Business did a thorough study on optimism as it relates to an investment stnadard for start-ups.  The outcome of the study is not shocking (but when you have a GSB study to back you up, you sound more impressive).  The overall gist was that entrepeneurs generally are overally optimistic in their assessment of their own businesses.  This has both good and bad implications for investors in these start-ups.  The Bad:  optimism makes it difficult for the founders to truly asses market acceptance and overal value of the business.  The Good:  Because of their optimism, most founders will work the required nights and weekends to make sure the business is successful.  Of course, the study hedges the overall take-away by claiming that “realistic” entrepeneurs will have a better ability to value the business.

So, is optimism a curse or a blessing?  And did I actually drink the salvaged margarita?

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Will Online Shopping Be on the Upswing in 2010?

Here’s an original question for you to ponder — Is the recession over?  I know, your head hurts because you’ve never thought about this.  But pick yourself off the floor, take an aspirin and think about the question.  We all have our favorite gauges of whether things are getting better.  Mine is the restaurant test.  Throughout the economic apocalypse, my wife and I continued to go out to dinner.  And since we are creatures of habit, we go to the same 4-5 places.  In March, you could get a table at any time and the service was great.  This Fall, we’ve noticed it is getting harder to just walk in on a Thursday night (especially when I forget to wear a shirt…dang Houston’s dress code can be picky).  So, by my very scientific calculation, we are heading out of the recession.  My Grandma Nanners also claims that times are getting better, because they are charging more that the Country Harvest Buffet.  Let me tell you, Nanners can eat about 5 servings of mashed potatos…what am I writing about?  Oh yes, the recession.

Well, according to a recent report from eMarketer, things are looking up for online shopping in 2010 and 2011.  In 2009, U.S. online shopping was $139B.  While that is a lot of activity, that number is actually down .4% from the 2008 number.  In 2010, eMarketer projects an improvement from 2009, with U.S. sales going up significantly in 2011.

We’d like to know what you’re seeing out there — are you planning for a better 2010?

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