Chicago incubator hopes to SPARK startups
Think you can form a technology company from scratch in just a week? That’s the idea behind SPARK, a new incubator program launched by a group of Chicago-area entrepreneurs.
The program is aimed at seeding viable ideas for Web-based and mobile applications during an upcoming startup competition that runs from July 22 to 27 in the Windy City.
“SPARK is about doing, not talking,” said 29-year-old Maliha Mustafa, a former investment banker turned entrepreneur and SPARK co-founder. “What we’d like to do is actually execute.”
Toward that end, Mustafa and her fellow co-founders, including Seth Kravitz – who started a Web design company from his dorm room at Ohio State that later grew into a 55-person operation – are winnowing down contest applications to 60 participants.
During the six-day competition, the chosen candidates will form teams, decide on business models, build working prototypes and present their elevator pitches in front of angel investors and venture capitalists.
“What makes an organization, what makes a startup successful? We want to give them every fighting chance,” said Mustafa, noting there is no entry fee.
In the end, three final teams will face off, with the winner receiving a cash grant of $10,000 or more. The fledgling companies will also receive donated mentorship services in marketing and development.
Scoutmob tries to outdeal Groupon
Despite Groupon’s virtual stranglehold on the group-buying space, David Payne thinks it’s vulnerable.
The co-founder of rival startup Scoutmob said Groupon’s margins aren’t sustainable and feels he has a better solution for deal-crazy consumers and businesses.
“When people look at this space they see it as a zero-sum game,” said Payne, who has heard all the naysayers since launching his Atlanta-based company last year. “They see it as Groupon’s raised a billion dollars in private capital and some (other) companies have raised one, or ten or twenty (million)… how can they compete?”
Payne said the group-buying, or “local,” space is large enough to accommodate newcomers such as Scoutmob, DailyCandy, Gilt City, SCVNGR, GroupPrice and others. He added that Scoutmob is part of this “next wave” of deal sites that are following in Groupon’s oversized footsteps and changing the business model to better suit their clients.
“I think what’s happening is that Groupon started allowing local merchants to really monetize and drive traffic in a measurable way and that was a baby step into something much larger,” said Payne, whose service uses Groupon-type deals, but makes them free to consumers and charges business owners $2 per converted customer, compared to the 50-percent cut taken by Groupon (on a typical $25-for-$50-worth-of-food coupon, Groupon pockets $12.50).
Scoutmob works primarily as a free mobile app on an iPhone or Android device. Users scan deals by city (currently available in Atlanta, New York and San Francisco) or neighborhood and then redeem the virtual coupon when they arrive at the business, just as they would do at a bar using Foursquare. An invoice is issued to the business for every confirmed check-in.
Its 500,000 users pale in comparison with Groupon’s 70 million or with Living Social’s 26 million, but Payne said Scoutmob is at least doubling its user base every six months and projects hitting 1.5 million by year end.
Deal site like this are popping up everywhere! In my opinion it’s a good thing because it may mean that one of them will offer a deal closer to where I live…
You see, I thought for a lon time I was missing the Groupon boat because I live too far away from town. But after doing a little research, I found http://steals4all.com a site that gathers all the daily NATIONAL Groupon deals available to buy, regardless of where you live.
Now I can get an exhausted list of national deals that I can buy. Now I just hope one day these types of sites will venture off into my little community.
Want free publicity? Try these websites
- Adam Hoeksema is the founder and CEO of ExecutivePlan and a contributor to Under30CEO. The opinions expressed are his own. -
Entrepreneurs are always looking for an easy way to make a big PR splash. If you are a local business that only serves a specific geographic area, then your local newspaper is still probably your best option for some free publicity.
On the other hand, if you offer a product or service that is available in multiple locations or via the Internet, then you must consider the following websites in which to submit your company to, and gain free publicity.
7. StartupWizz was founded in 2009 as a place for entrepreneurs and investors to stay informed about startups on the web. The goal of startupwizz is to find some of the most disruptive, niche and interesting startups that their peers and investors want to know about.
6. GreatStartups writes about startups entering the market with growth potential or startups that have already been keyed as success stories. They also will cover startups that may be having problems or simply did not succeed due to various reasons. They note that some of the startups written about are not necessarily “great”, however, they do posses a quality that may be appealing to various readers.
5. KillerStartups.com is a user driven internet startups community. Entrepreneurs, investors, and bloggers stay informed on up-and-coming internet startups using this blog platform, where internet entrepreneurs submit their startup to see what others think about it.
4. StartupWorld.com is dedicated to helping start-ups and developing businesses market their product or service. By joining StartupWorld.com you will be able to list your business for free.
Nice article indeed, but I suggest StartupTunes.com in your list. Its a dedicated startup review blog that writes only one to three articles per day maintaining quality in their writing. People can submit their starup at http://startuptunes.com/submit-new-start up/ with a description but the startup must qualify to get the review. And at the end it worths for the long run.
5 reasons your website isn’t attracting leads
- Lisa Barone is co-founder and chief branding officer at Outspoken Media and a contributor to Small Business Trends. The opinions expressed are her own. -
So, what are your big Internet marketing plans for the New Year? Will you be investing more in social media? Will you start blogging? Will you take a more proactive stance with self-promotion? Whatever your online marketing plans, the end goal is likely to attract more people to your website in the hopes that the influx of new eyes will translate into new customers, new leads and new opportunities for your business. However, you won’t be able to do any of that if your Web site is turning people off, instead of turning them on.
Below are some very common reasons small and medium-sized business (SMB) websites fail to attract customers and how to avoid falling prey to them.
1. There’s no conversion path in place.
One criticism of many SMB sites is that they don’t include a clear conversion path for their customers. If you want customers to take a certain action, you need to create a funnel intended to guide them to do that. Simply stringing together a number of content pages won’t necessarily put someone on the path to buy. Your conversion path may be as simple as a solitary landing page paired with a call to action, or as complex as an entire microsite. Either way, you are in charge of designing the flow of your website. Creating a clear conversion path not only helps customers feel more comfortable on your site, it also gives you clear data to track so that you can see where people are abandoning, where they’re engaging, etc. The more data you have to act on, the better you can design your site to attract new customers.
2. There’s no sign of life.
Customers are discriminating. You can bet that when they land on your website they’re going to kick the tires a little to see if they can trust you. They’re going to check your copyright date to see if it lists 2011 or 2006. They’re going to look for old statistics or other signs you haven’t taken the time to update your content. They’re going to check your company blog to see how often it’s updated, if you reply to commenters, if people are talking back, etc. They’re going to look for signs that you’ve created a dynamic website, instead of one lying around in stagnant water. Before your customers get there, take a look around yourself. Would you hang out with you?
This is a great article, like many others I’ve read. The biggest problem I, as a small business owner, have is the amount of time this all takes. I’ve participated in seminars to learn more, and have implemented a lot, but there is still so much to do! Time is my biggest barrier, other than the high cost of hiring someone to do it for me. Thanks, though. Every little bit helps.
Your app likely won’t make you rich
– Paras Chopra is an entrepreneur and the director of online analytics startup Visual Website Optimizer. The views expressed are his own. –
Sorry for crushing your dreams but your Web app for tracking happiness levels (or for “social-aware” to-do lists) is probably not going to make enough money to let you retire in Hawaii.
Many programmers and developers find making a Web app very satisfying and there is nothing wrong with that – as long as you are doing it for fun, it’s OK.
Making apps is the trivial part. Afterall, most are nothing more than a slick interface for CRUD (create, read, update and delete) operations. The key to making money is to find a market where people are willing to pay for those simple CRUD operations.
The usual approach for making apps (or “startups” as some like to call them) is this:
- Have a “cool” idea
- Implement it in X number of hours
- Try to justify its need by finding users who may use it
I am just making up a statistic here, but I have seen nine out of 10 efforts losing hope after the third step and the Web app just languishes with the creator giving up on it after his initial euphoria.
Great article. Along these lines, the Idea needs to match up with an opportunity. Essentially, finding the market need as you mention. I would one additional step to your list. Prior to “Make a Web app, market it, refine it based on feedback and monetize the app”, I would suggest you conduct a feasibility analysis of your proposed app to your target audience. Validate that the direction your want to go and the problem you want to solve meets the needs of your intended audience. If so, then put the effort into app development. You are exactly right in this article. “Cool” does not sell – or pay the bills – in this market. People buy to satisfy a pain or a demanding need.
http://www.jeffweberventures.com
Ex-Googlers seek traffic for how-to video startup
The Web is full of user-generated video, but for Sanjay Raman’s tastes most of it is too bland and poorly produced to actually watch.
That’s why Raman launched Howcast (http://www.howcast.com) – a high-quality, how-to video-sharing website – last year with former Google colleagues Jason Liebman and Dan Blackman.
While at Google the three Howcast co-founders noticed how popular do-it-yourself content was, but how little of it was in video format.
“How-to content is something that is really popular in terms of user search queries,” said Raman, who left his job as product manager for Google Apps to launch their startup nearly 18 months ago. “As video was really exploding online we saw the opportunity to marry those two concepts together.”
Unlike other DIY sites that predominate search engines, such as About, eHow, Expert Village, Videojug and 5min, Howcast utilizes a more entertaining and humorous approach. Some of its most-popular videos are less practical and more tongue-in-cheek in nature, such as “How to find out a girl’s name after you’ve slept with her” and “How to grow grass in someone’s keyboard.”
“We try to take the format of a how-to and make it more exciting and engaging than it would normally be,” said Raman.
In order to boost its video content, Howcast pays filmmakers, mostly students, between $50-100 to produce videos for them.
Assuming to begin with that the hunger for how-to videos is sufficient to be monetizable, I think its safe to say that the market will have to weed out a few of the players here. Thus success over the other video sites that can do the same thing seems to rest with their differentiation. It seems like this differentiation is the quality of videos and entertainment value of the videos–so they have to be able to establish some sort of loyalty from the most creative and talented video producers. Given the immense competition in this area, it seems like this is an exceptionally difficult goal. Furthermore, this seems like a differentiation that is more aligned with some sort of entertainment video site–say one focused exclusively on comedy or drama–than one that ostensibly has a practical “how-to” purpose. Perhaps a focus on making it easy to learn and teach through the site would be more strategically aligned than making the videos funny and in claymation.
