the reason nobody wants Zune will be the same reason why nobody will like to have any other product (whether it is from MS or google or yahoo or apple doesn't matter) - if you understand why there is no appeal and demand for Zune then you will know that same could happen to other MS products.
let's see whether i can explain properly - the biggest market of 21st century is asian market along with brazil and russia. people over there are increasingly using open source stuff only - linux is becoming popular day by day so much so that government organization only want open source solutions. Also very few know that most of the hotmail users also have gmail as their primary email app. More and more people are using open source docs like Openoffice or StarOffice (free with google app) ... online web-app is also becoming popular (google doc , zoho etc.). MySql is way too popular than anyone can ever imagine. BRIC countries are 3rd world countries and they cant afford XBOX - also this gaming box from MS is not doing that well in north america either. So I wonder if MS stays the way it is right now then in 5 years I don't see anybody buying anything from MS. do you?
People who can run the day-to-day operations, dealing with many dept. (sales, marketing, technology, HR etc.) may or may not be an entrepreneur because my understanding is entrepreneurs are builders because they create something from scratch.
Many people start their career with 9 to 5 job and keep getting promoted to the CEO level, but they may not have ability and courage (at least in the beginning of their career) to build a new business right from the scratch.
While entrepreneurs/builders are the people who start and build something (or help others to build something) from nothing.
Serial entrepreneurs (and builders) are always on the move - from one project to another as they are not interested in doing the same thing over and over again on daily basis - they get excited to build something from scratch and once it is built they find the right person to run it (or they help others to build it and move on to the next project).
Serial entrepreneurs (and builders) to me are like King-makers, they are not interested in becoming a king them self and run daily operations. They are like a Guru who has many disciples (kings) who achieve success with his/her skills and knowledge. It is well known saying that a Guru is equal to a 1000 libraries - they know which book is for whom, and when and how to use it.
from what i know VCs are investors and not donors - they want something in return (always) ... nevertheless you may find few VCs who may want to donate on personal basis. OR you may want to tweak your business/charity model where investors get something, like (90:10 charity:business) model. Also big VCs might have some % of profit spent on charity just to give back to the society, for that you need to contact all big players. The best idea is to get couple of VCs/angels on your management team (or board) - they will raise more funds (just by making couple of phone calls) than you can ever get it by knocking doors for the whole year.
EDIT: the another idea is to put "Donate" button (asking users to donate by credit card) on almost all the web pages - more the people use your service the more the donation coming in. you may also raise some money by putting ads (text and display, related to your service) on the web pages, for example if you're providing online service related to health care then you can get advertisers from health industry (or if u want to keep it simple then use Google's and Yahoo's ad services).
you have many options - something exciting can come from anywhere and anytime, you dont need to join school or new job ... also if u can afford and survive financially then couple of months of vacation/traveling can re-juvenile you completely with may be something more creative and exciting for you.
after posting this for 3 hours - i'm delighted by your motivational responses - thanks to all and i welcome more users to share their views and ideas so that not only me but many others like me can also get valuable tips ..
i dont know why i'm shot down (by down arrow) by the readers - but once again i would like to clarify if u guys have mistaken me ... first thing first, this is definitely 3 way fight (yahoo, google and ms) - the timing is important here as yahoo & goolge is almost there to announce a deal and MS shows up with an alternative to keep google away from the deal (this is no brainier). This gives Yahoo an awesome position (at least for short term) with huge multiple benefits,such as #1 it can get best of the best deal possible either from google or MS (doesn't really matter who as far as good money shows up in yahoo's bank account), #2 these negotiations will put a speed breaker on Carl Ichan's bid for getting a new board (remember shareholder meeting is not far away, again it is all about timing) #3 if any deal is announced (whether with google or MS) before shareholder's meeting then yahoo's stock price will go up for sure and the chances are Carl Ichan will soften his position, #4 the deal (with google or ms) will make everyone happy with win win situation for all 3 important yahoo stake-holders (employees, end-users and shareholders) and #5 the biggest of all is if yahoo and google get in to a deal then stock prices will go up and yahoo will be then able to justify why they didn't budge to sell the company to MS - also now if at all MS wants to buy yahoo (even after a year) then they have to bow down to the price that yahoo wants, also remember this deal (between yahoo and google) will also make all 3 stake-holders happy. So by this analysis i think Yang is proving to be in a very strong position and he is smart enough to get the best out of these 2 bidders to make all 3 important stake-holders happy ....
i dont know why i'm shot down (by down arrow) by the readers - but once again i would like to clarify if u guys have mistaken me ... first thing first, this is definitely 3 way fight (yahoo, google and ms) - the timing is important here as yahoo & goolge is almost there to announce a deal and MS shows up with an alternative to keep google away from the deal (this is no brainier). This gives Yahoo an awesome position (at least for short term) with huge multiple benefits,such as #1 it can get best of the best deal possible either from google or MS (doesn't really matter who as far as good money shows up in yahoo's bank account), #2 these negotiations will put a speed breaker on Carl Ichan's bid for getting a new board (remember shareholder meeting is not far away, again it is all about timing) #3 if any deal is announced (whether with google or MS) before shareholder's meeting then yahoo's stock price will go up for sure and the chances are Carl Ichan will soften his position, #4 the deal (with google or ms) will make everyone happy with win win situation for all 3 important yahoo stake-holders (employees, end-users and shareholders) and #5 the biggest of all is if yahoo and google get in to a deal then stock prices will go up and yahoo will be then able to justify why they didn't budge to sell the company to MS - also now if at all MS wants to buy yahoo (even after a year) then they have to bow down to the price that yahoo wants, also remember this deal (between yahoo and google) will also make all 3 stake-holders happy. So by this analysis i think Yang is proving to be in a very strong position and he is smart enough to get the best out of these 2 bidders to make all 3 important stake-holders happy ....
i dont know why i'm shot down (by down arrow) by the readers - but once again i would like to clarify if u guys have mistaken me ... first thing first, this is definitely 3 way fight (yahoo, google and ms) - the timing is important here as yahoo & goolge is almost there to announce a deal and MS shows up with an alternative to keep google away from the deal (this is no brainier). This gives Yahoo an awesome position (at least for short term) with huge multiple benefits,such as #1 it can get best of the best deal possible either from google or MS (doesn't really matter who as far as good money shows up in yahoo's bank account), #2 these negotiations will put a speed breaker on Carl Ichan's bid for getting a new board (remember shareholder meeting is not far away, again it is all about timing) #3 if any deal is announced (whether with google or MS) before shareholder's meeting then yahoo's stock price will go up for sure and the chances are Carl Ichan will soften his position, #4 the deal (with google or ms) will make everyone happy with win win situation for all 3 important yahoo stake-holders (employees, end-users and shareholders) and #5 the biggest of all is if yahoo and google get in to a deal then stock prices will go up and yahoo will be then able to justify why they didn't budge to sell the company to MS - also now if at all MS wants to buy yahoo (even after a year) then they have to bow down to the price that yahoo wants, also remember this deal (between yahoo and google) will also make all 3 stake-holders happy. So by this analysis i think Yang is proving to be in a very strong position and he is smart enough to get the best out of these 2 bidders to make all 3 important stake-holders happy ....
oh! this is going to be interesting !!! it will create a clear 3 way fight (yahoo, google and MS) with fair chances and platform to everyone ... on the other side it could also be a tactic by yahoo to divert the shareholder's attention so that any attack on their board thru proxy war can be eliminated. THIS IS REALLY GOING TO BE A FUN !!! (smart one though)
oh! this is going to be interesting !!! it will create a clear 3 way fight (yahoo, google and MS) with fair chances and platform to everyone ... on the other side it could also be a tactic by yahoo to divert the shareholder's attention so that any attack on their board thru proxy war can be eliminated. THIS IS REALLY GOING TO BE A FUN !!! (smart one though)
oh! this is going to be interesting !!! it will create a clear 3 way fight (yahoo, google and MS) with fair chances and platform to everyone ... on the other side it could also be a tactic by yahoo to divert the shareholder's attention so that any attack on their board thru proxy war can be eliminated. THIS IS REALLY GOING TO BE A FUN !!! (smart one though)
first of all i dont understand why this project is taking such a long time ... if someone is really dedicated and committed then anything can be done, just like TATA who created $2500 NANO car right from the scratch from patent to assembly every single thing is innovative (http://www.rediff.com/money/2008/may/14tata.htm) - TATA motivated tens of hundreds of manufacturer and vendors to redesign their auto-parts to fit in NANO car ... OLPC is for poor nations or say for 3rd world countries and i dont think NGOs/Govt./schools have any preference over what o/s it comes with as far as it can launch all educational application. OLPC laptop is not meant for scientists anyway, so what the fuss - just keep it simple and open source and create nice educational material so that kids form these countries can learn something valuable. Also 3rd world countries are very humble and they will be more than happy just to get this laptop (with or without XP).
it depends whom you are talking to - be smart enough to get alert if someone starts asking too many critical questions (especially about business model) ... also you can share only the outline of the idea (to get a response) rather than sharing the real meat. sometime you can also keep it very generic and simple, for example i'm planing to start a social/dating portal - where people get responses right away for their match - now by knowing this no one can figure it out how exactly you are going to do it and how it is going to be different from the rest of the competitor and what will be your business model/revenue stream etc.
the writer is 100% right, the people who want to come on-board with only purpose of selling the company is not good , whether it is short term or long term. These folks to me looks like a joker and none of them have any skills that yahoo founders at least have it.
Basically it also depends upon relationship - going forward non of you have to feel like not compensated appropriately.
Job description for non-hacker could be anything and everything but coding (and/or web designing). So the list can go on and on ...
Sales,
Marketing,
Advertising,
HR,
Finance, etc.
Most of the time will go in to preparing business plan, research about your product/service & competition, sales & marketing and contacting angels/VCs.
i totally agree with you - also if you're trying to get my baby (for whatever reason and price) then I would certainly make sure that my baby grows healthy, but the history says that chances of growing healthy with microsoft is very rare. Yang would also make sure that people (shareholders, employee and end-users) who love my baby so much today, keeps loving in the future as well - but it looked like only one person was loving the deal and other two (employees and end-users) were certainly not that happy with the deal so....
Yahoo shareholders should notice couple of things that i think is important to know:
1. "your hand-picked nominees to take control of Yahoo! for the express purpose of trying to force a sale of Yahoo! to a formerly interested buyer" --- if the new Icahn's board is only interested in selling the company then it could be dangerous as MS may not show any interest to buy yahoo or may offer low price, in either case it is not beneficial to sharholders.
2. "Following that meeting we also provided to Microsoft a list of key non-price deal terms that our board believed were critical items to be addressed in a deal to provide reasonable protections for our stockholders." --- i wish Yahoo explained what were the non-price deal terms, nevertheless it shows that they (yahoo) did due-diligence very well.
true, one size can't fit all - though i think major YC cos. are mass consumer base (than enterprise soln.) so buzz creation tool for most of them will be more or less the same (may be i'm wrong).
yup, i know that and there are many ideas with their own pros and cons, so it would be interesting to know from pg what he thinks is the best tool in today's time and age!
this is very generic things to do to begin with - the idea is to know what exactly pg recommends to use as a powerful tool, such as PR firms, facebook, twitter, blogs, buying email list (not spam), google ads, display/banner advertising, other social media etc. The marketing scene is changing extremely fast - what works today may not work tomorrow - so it would be interesting to know what pg suggest if any company has to start today.
Picture speaks 1000 words - for the readers who dont like it can click on "Read the full story" link on the same webpage - for example for this article you may click the link and goto:
i think you should contact PrototypeInvest (http://www.prototypeinvest.com/default.aspx) - they are like VC but instead of giving you money they will develop your application (against equity) - now because you have source code it should not take much of a time for them to develop a prototype for a reasonable amount of equity. This option will save you time, money and energy. If you decide to try them then write a review about them over here as more people like you can use them (if they are good). - GOOD LUCK.
Without leaving your full-time job start developing (part-time) ver 1.0 of one of your idea that has market and can get some revenue (either by ad or subscription etc.). As soon as you start getting revenue you may leave your job and find a loan that has minimum interest rate - on the other side start looking for angel investors to expand your startups. Make sure you do this with minimum debt and maximum chances of revenue starting right away so that just in case if you cant find angel or if your startup doesnt get you the revenue enough to sustain then you're still safe as you can go back to your full time job. Alternatively you can start thinking about increasing your household income by selling stuff on ebay, preparing your other family member to start working (may be part-time), if you have extra space in your house then rent it to earn some money, etc.
This is the best thing that could have happened for everyone (MS, Yahoo, Yahoo's stakeholders, Google, Apple and all new startups) ... there are 3 major stakeholders (shareholders, employees and end users) and two out of 3 stakeholders weren't happy with the deal - it would have been irreversible disaster if MS bought yahoo by borrowing money from outside...i think MS knew that Yahoo won't come below $37 and walking away is the best face saving tactic - it was like heads i win, tale you loose... it seemed that MS was having cold feet after realizing that yahoo brains and end users may leave the company after acquisition. Also it was uphill battle to integrate 2 businesses with totally different culture and technology. MS can do much better with $45Billion.