TechLifeMashup | Entrepreneurs, Social Media, and Technology

Gary Vaynerchuk was in New York the other night where he sat down for talk not just about how he became a successful entrepreneur, but also how everyone else out there looking to make their next startup a success can do so.  It’s a great interview with a strong Q&A from the crowd in the second half of the video.  If you’re curious to where internet business is going or looking for advice on your next business, then take a little time to check out the video below:

Entrepreneurship is the backbone to societies across the globe.  It’s through all these small business startups (both online and offline) that billions of dollars in revenue are generated and millions of jobs are created.  It might come as a surprise to many that there currently isn’t any type of official day set aside to recognize the bold hard work of this work population.  Grasshopper is a web software company who designs software with small business in mind, and they are the ones behind a growing effort to make November 19, 2010 National Entrepreneurs’ Day across the country.  Whether you’re an entrepreneur yourself or just someone who appreciates all the hard work and positive impact these folks make,  I would strongly encourage you to take a look at entrepreneursday.org and participate in signing the virtual petition get this day made official.

Aaron Patzer of Mint.com created a free online personal finance management system for the everyday person who wants a simple way to manage their finances.  Mint has since seen massive mainstream success, was bought recently by Quicken, and now continues to grow doubling nearly every several months with no sign of slowing down.  Aaron quit his job when he was 25 to venture into entrepreneurship full time.  The journey was long and hard, but he came out of the other end of the tunnel as a successful entrepreneur.  This past Thursday, Aaron Patzer did a Q&A session with online participants answering everything and anything with regards to how he started his business, how he promoted it, and many other great questions any budding entrepreneur could greatly benefit from hearing.  So pull up a chair and take the next hour to get the REAL answers  to all those questions you’ve had about starting your own business.  Check it out here:

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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 »

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.

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.