TechLifeMashup | Entrepreneurs, Social Media, and Technology

Yammer is a microblogging service offered for business use, which provides companies with a twitter style of keeping in touch throughout the company.   Businesses looking for a quick way to update fellow employees with what different people are working on at any given time will be happy to hear about this new startup launched in 2008.  The entrepreneur behind Yammer has already seen much success with their subscription based service model.   For this and more we take a look at entrepreneur David Sacks in the spotlight this week. We’ll look at just how he did it and highlight what lessons any upcoming entrepreneur can learn. More »

The flow of events that one typically navigates through when looking to start a business is known by heart to the experienced entrepreneur, but to someone new to the game it can often seem quite confusing and overwhelming. To help clear things up, I wanted to share with you an excellent infographic that depicts the process flow one will want to follow when trying to take a idea and turn it into a full blown functioning business. Click the image below for the complete infographic:

The general process involved with staring your own business might be familiar to some, but even with that being so  it’s nice to get a reminder from time to time.  I’m a visual learner myself, which makes something like this a excellent resource.  Hope it helps to put things in perspective for you as well.



Source: HackFwd

Every successful business needs to be able to effectively leverage promotion to some degree at one time or another.  Most folks get bogged down with too many details, techniques, processes, and other thoughts that only end up hurting any real progress they could have made in promoting their business or startup as an entrepreneur.  In an effort to keep it simple, I wanted to share a short (and to the point) presentation given by Derek Sivers at the SXSW Conference earlier this year where he highlights the crucial ingredient to successfully promoting your business.  Best of all, he does it in under 5 minutes.  Take a look!

Gary Vaynerchuk is the host of Wine Library TV and no stranger to this blog as I regularly post about Gary’s work.  Recently, he gave a presentation all about social media and how small business startups can leverage the internet in a number of ways to create a successful business online.  Gary does a great job of breaking it down so that anyone with a passion for something regardless of resources can take action and make their own success.  Check it out here:

Jason Fried and David Hansson are the founders of 37Signals and more recently the authors of a book titled Rework.  Jason and David continue to evolve what started out as a web design company into a multimillion dollar web application company . Rework takes the personal experiences of these two entrepreneurs and puts them into a book that focuses on saying no to the traditional corporate work environment and how we all can change our game to be more productive and more fulfilled with life in the process. The question though is does the book live up to its title and purpose? Keep reading for my complete review. More »

Foursquare is a location-based social networking site designed with the mobile platform in mind.  With the rapid growth expected to happen in the mobile space over the next five to ten years, it’s so surprise that startups like this one continue to pop-up.  Being able to launch a startup that takes into account industry trends such as this one is one of the main reasons this entrepreneur continues to find success.  For this and more we take a look at entrepreneur Dennis Crowley in the spotlight this week. We’ll look at just how he did it and highlight what lessons any upcoming entrepreneur can learn. More »

Angel Investors tend to be the trend these days for promising startups as entrepreneurs behind these businesses look to gather funding early on.  A angel investor is basically a individual who uses their own money to invest in different small business startups in exchange for ownership in the business and the likelihood of a profitable return down the road.  While some will encourage the use of angel investors and others wwill tell you it’s an unnecessary step, the fact is that this business strategy continues to gain grown among entrepreneurs.  So I wanted to take a few minutes to share with you an decent video I came across the other day that further helps to introduce the concept of angel investors.

Nobody ever said entrepreneurship was easy, but many seem to believe it is next to impossible.  This simply isn’t true.  Regardless of who you are or where you come from, anyone with enough determination and hard work can make it as an entrepreneur.  Too many let the myths of entrepreneurship stop them from even getting started down the path to being an entrepreneur.  Most of what stops someone from trying is simply untrue or rather a myth that many mistake as factual information.  Today, I am going to debunk 8 common myths of entrepreneurship with you. More »

Bebo.com is a popular social networking service similar to Facebook that launched back in 2005.  It has since grow increasingly popular quickly climbing the charts to one of the most popular websites on the internet.  While Facebook tends to shadow the social networking space these days, it’s important to point out the success other entrepreneurs like this one have had within social networking.  For this and more we take a look at entrepreneur Michael Birch in the spotlight this week. We’ll look at just how he did it and highlight what lessons any upcoming entrepreneur can learn. More »

Twitter is a startup that has seen tremendous growth in a very small period of time.  Many startups often suffer “growing pains” so to speak as new users or customers begin to arrive on the scene.  Jack Dorsey who founded Twitter stopped by Digg.com this past week to discuss the success of Twitter thus far, how the company got there, and how they adjusted to all the problems along the way.  Kevin rose of Digg hosted the presentation, which turned out to be extremely interesting for any entrepreneur looking for small business insight.

The idea of pair programming to met within the Twitter development team is a concept I found to be a great outside the box solution to solving many of the problems the early version of Twitter was facing.  I always find it interesting to see just specific examples of where startups like Twitter struggled and how they resolved them because in the end most entrepreneurs will have to deal with the same type of problems at one point or another.