startup hustle

I have been following YCombinator’s News section almost since its inception. I have seen the YC community in action; from the switch of “Startup News” to “Hacker News”, to the disappearance of nickb and his return. It is one of the best sites on the web for startup information. The members are passionate about the community they have built, the articles are often right on par and spam is kept to a minimum.

I recently noticed a shift of the material making its way to the front page. Almost a quarter of the Top 30 submissions were “Ask YC” questions (aka Ask HN and Ask PG). Instead of posting an article from the web, members ask each other startup advice. This is why YC News is a step above other article submission sites. Digg, Reddit, Yahoo Buzz and Sphinn all have a dedicated community, but not the level of involvement and support that YC members provide.

At a time when sites are doing whatever they can to grow, Paul Graham and the YC community make an effort to keep the population small and focused. This allows the material on the site to remain at such a high level instead of bogging it down with volume. That in it self is a lesson to every founder on the site. Volume instead of quality is a common objective that startups focus on that led them down the wrong path from the beginning.

A trend I am starting to see among young internet entrepreneurs as well as more established startups is a lack of understanding how customers use the internet to research and buy. This information is more basic than understanding your target customers, it is common consumer processes.

There are many reports written on how consumers use the internet to buy products and services. Its not new information, but hardly any of us (us = startups and entrepreneurs) use that knowledge to our benefit. I recently sat in a meeting with a colleague to help weed issues in his startup marketing plan. Before the meeting, someone was mentioning the new purchases they had made on the internet. The amount of research this individual conducted was what you would expect from a twenty-something that is internet savvy. This startup didn’t build a product under the assumption that their customers would do the same product research. They did not do it on purpose, they just didn’t put themselves in the consumers shoes.

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Startup Weekend has opened the voting for the next cities that could hold the event. There are over 20 cities currently on the ballot with the majority in the North America and a few in Europe.

Startup Weekend gives you 54 hours to build a company. The company is equally divided by the founders. Startup Weekend was created by Andrew Hyde and has already held 13 weekends in the United States, Canada and Europe.

Check out the Boston Startup Weekend Blog and the Boulder Startup Weekend Blog to get a better idea of all that goes into the a “traditional” Startup Weekend.

I have been floating the idea of dabbling in the domain game. As I discuss domaining with fellow entrepreneurs I get the usual talk, it is hyper competitive, all the low hanging fruit is gone…blah. This is a common question many entrepreneurs face when trying to find an industry or idea to attack next, is it too late to in get in?

The majority of entrepreneurs most likely wouldn’t want to tackle the search engine industry. Who would want to compete against Google? If Sergy and Larry had this mindset about Yahoo in the 90′s we wouldn’t have Google. I know the counter argument, for every Google there are 1,000 failed attempts. But what fun is that?

I just read an article about Frank Shilling on DN Journal. If you don’t know Frank, then get ready for a great story. The short version is about a German immigrant in Canada read about the money that could be made selling domains. He got into the domain game 2002, not 1997. Frank was told not to waste his time. All the good domains were gone and the industry was super competitive. So where did Frank end up?

Frank now owns a small company called Name Administration Inc. that has $20 million a year in revenue all from his domain portfolio, and that revenue is not from selling domains. Read Frank’s blog, Seven Mile, if you get a chance.

So the big question is, is it too late to get in?

Most of my friends growing up were artistic and creative, I was not. The one thing I can bring to the table is internet marketing knowledge. When you put that together with a great designer named Gabe Shultz, you get a sketchbook company called Bored Sketchbooks. The site (and idea) was designed by Gabe and the sketchbooks are products of designers from the East Coast to the Midwest.

Each of the 5 designs were limited to 100 prints and are individually numbered. Once the current sketchbook designs are sold, they will not be reprinted (so if you like what you see, buy one soon). The next series of sketchbooks (which can also be used as a notebook or journal) will be released next year.

The BORED site also has an artist gallery section, free graphics to use for whatever you please, and Gabe’s Blog which is usually a documentation of the humorous events in his life.

Visit the site and let me know what you think.