Fred Wilson, venture capitalist and blogger, did this talk at the Future of Web Apps conference in Miami in February. The reason why I wanna share this with you is that some of the 10 principles he describes have often been key reasons for me to choose a certain web app over another. I think these principles are actually very basic but nonetheless extremely important. I will use them as a basic checklist for all future web apps that I am going to develop. (more…)

Category: Videos by Stef | No Comments »

I recently watched a video of Josh Petersen talking at the Seattle Startup Day 2009 where he mentioned the concept of finding business ideas by solving your own problems. When I thought about this concept I realized that this is quite a powerful but simple method which I have already used many times without even being aware of. When I started my first project Movie-Trade in 2001 I just solved my own problem because I wanted to show people a list of movies I owned but excel or word files were just so damn inconvenient. Josh explains in his talk that by solving their own problems the founders of startups/projects like Basecamp (www.basecamphq.com) and Ruby on Rails (www.rubyonrails.org) found their (business) ideas. Pretty simple but very effective. (more…)

Category: Business Ideas, Creativity by Stef | No Comments »

I found this video quite a while ago and I thought it might be worthwhile sharing with you on this blog because it really gives you the motivation you need when you have one of those moments where all the potential drawbacks of starting your own business come back to your mind. The guy is a little crazy but that probably makes him one of the most interesting people on the internet. He started off running a video blog on http://tv.winelibrary.com which was and still is a huge success. He now regularly speaks at web conferences sending out his message that basically anyone can start a business online. He also stresses that creating your own personal brand is key to sucess. I guess some of his advice is not for everyone but just seeing how passionate he is about what he is doing makes me wanna start my own business right now. (more…)

Category: Videos by Stef | No Comments »

Have you ever wondered why it was not you who started this new crazy buzz business thing that everybody is talking about? Have you ever used a product and service and thought: why didn’t I come up with this idea? Or even better: I had this idea years ago, why didn’t I start my own company with this back then? I guess most people could quickly come up with one or two reason why it was just not the right time, idea, place, environment, why there was just too little money to pay the bills while setting up the business. I’m personally an expert in ‘finding fatal flaws of business ideas’. To this date I’ve had tons of ideas and every time I got really excited about a particular idea it just took me a few days to find enough reasons to drop this fantastic idea. But I think I have finally found the reason for this: I’m a chicken – and being a chicken in business sucks! (more…)

Category: General by Stef | No Comments »