Which angel investor group is the right one for you?
Posted by Elisha Terada in Business, Entrepreneur on August 20th, 2009
Before you even submit your business summary to angel investor groups, you should consider several factors to see if you can build mutual relationship with them.
1. Funding focus
Any group has its own characteristics, and angel investors are not the exception. Depending on the region and on the people comprised of, angel groups may be focusing on funding startups in specific industry. For example, Zino society only invest in the technology startups. One of the biggest reason why they are specialized in few industry is because there is a concentration of experts in the specific field in the angel group. So you are better off applying for the angel group that’s specialized in your industry.
2. Funding trend
As economy shifts back and forth, the funding trend of angel investors shifts as well. At Keiretsu Forum, less companies get funding these days in exchange for larger amount of investment for the one that gets invested. Unless you think your company is outstanding, you might want take different route.
3. Number of investors
No matter how many angel investors the group has, you are going to spend same amount of time preparing for the pitch. So it is better to approach large investor group so you can get the most exposures even if your company fails to obtain any funding lead. The more members they have, the better you are connected with other potential leads.
4. Fee
Depending on how big meeting is going to be (room, food, etc), and depending on how far you have to travel to get to the meeting, you will end up paying couple thousand dollars at the end. One good way to measure the cost performance is to use the following formula: sum of the cost you pay / # of angel investors specialized in your industry. You can always ask how many members would be interested in your company, or you can simply multiply the total number of angel investors and the percentage of the total number of investment your category. For example, if you run a software company and are looking to present your company at Keiretsu Forum Northwest, your cost performance is: $6000 / (100 investors * 42%) = $143 per investors specialized in your industry.
5. History
In my opinion, it is better to contact the angel group that’s been there for awhile for several reasons. First, an organizing committee most likely knows the characteristics of the investors well, so they can tell you what is going to be expected. Second, angel investors are likely to be familiar with the funding process and many of them can share you their experience of going through funding process. Third, it is self evident that both investors and entrepreneurs have been satisfied with the system. One thing to be careful is to not assume that it’s going to work for you just because it worked for others.
Conclusion
There are obviously more things to look at besides the profile of the organization, but you must at least study these factors before you apply. Otherwise, you will regret for paying large sum of your money for the outcome you have not expected.
A single reason why you should be networking
Posted by Elisha Terada in Business on August 19th, 2009
I learned the benefits of networking in the business world when I was a high school student. Since then, I’ve been slowly building up my network of people. As I add more people on my LinkedIn account, I start to wonder what I’m supposed to do with the list of the contacts I have built so far. To me, building up network that’s not adding value to me and to my contacts seemed rather wasteful. Sure, I never know who’d turn out to be my business partner five years from now, and maybe I’m just not seeing it happening since I’m just 22, but I don’t feel excited about networking unless I can find someone who can build mutually beneficial relationship with me the moment I meet them. So I came up with a simple conclusion: keep networking, no wondering. By constantly networking with new people, I will simply have more chance to meet someone I can do business together immediately, and it will build up my future contact list at the same time.
Please note that I’m not suggesting you a shot-gun approach where you just talk to whoever you see and hope someone will turn out to be helpful. Instead, I’m suggesting you to be motivated to constantly meet new people even if it doesn’t seem to benefit you immediately. The key is to build mutually beneficial relationship to increase your quality contact list.
Dell’s Inspiron 11z fails to fill the gap
Posted by Elisha Terada in Business, Tech on August 18th, 2009
Dell Inspiron 11z
Dell has released a new laptop Inspiron 11z at $399 that obviously tries to target the gap between the netbook and laptop. The specs are: 11.6 inch screen (1366×768), 1.2GHz Celeron 723, 2GB DDR2 RAM, 250GB HDD, 3 cell battery (usually lasts 3 hours or less), and Windows Vista as pre-installed OS. This laptop is hard to be categorized as either netbook or portable laptop and here is why: the battery lasts much shorter than the other netbooks in the same price range, and the spec is much weaker than the other portable laptop. To describe Inspiron 11z verbally, it’s a portable laptop squeezed into the body of netbook with no added value. My recommendation: don’t even consider to buy this.
Amazon vs. Sony on e-book reader
Posted by Elisha Terada in Business, Tech on August 14th, 2009
Amazon Kindle
Not only that Sony plans to release a $199 e-book reader, $100 less than Amazon’s entry model Kindle, it is planning to standardize the e-book format called ePub that is accessible by other applications. Up to this point, Amazon has been selling its e-books in the exclusive format that other devices cannot access to. While Amazon is selling books, Sony is trying to sell convenience to its consumers.
Amazon’s Strategy
It is no doubt a smart move for Amazon to release its own e-book reading device, Kindle, in the first place. Although analysts were skeptical about the demand of the product, Amazon has successfully tied its contents and the device to approach the target customer right. If it wasn’t started by Amazon, e-book reader would not have become so popular in this age of the internet. The strategy is very similar to the success of Apple selling cool gadgets with attractive contents in a package. However, an exclusive deal is always opposed by an open deal such as Google’s Android (open) for Apple’s iPhone (closed).
Sony’s Strategy
Just as Google promoting open-source mobile platform to benefit users and developers, Sony is promoting open e-book format that will be potentially accessible by any applications. If you are aware of what Google is doing with its Google Books, you may have already realized that it is no coincidence that Sony has been supporting Google’s open book project. Not only that the e-book format will be open, Sony is for the first time selling electronic device that is considerably cheaper than its consumer. So exactly, what is Sony selling to its customers? Assuming that the project will take off successfully, readers will be able to read more books at a cheaper price (since the book file is not exclusive anymore), and it is easy for customers to actually start reading e-books on a device that has competitive price.
Conclusion
It is very challenging to standardize the e-book format, but Sony has already shown its success in its history including the recent Blu-ray win over Toshiba’s HD-DVD. The market is still at early-adopting stage but it’s showing great traction, so it makes sense for Sony to enter in this market at this time.
Read more about Sony’s e-book reader
Sony readers to use open e-book format in move against Kindle
LAVVA tries to be the next gen social search engine
Posted by Elisha Terada in Business, Entrepreneur, Tech on August 13th, 2009
LAVVA
LAVVA is a new search engine which claims to be social. While Google weigh the relevance of website by the coding of the website and its popularity measured by number of links, LAVVA relies on user inputs to determine what’s hot among them.
The concept of using user inputs to show the result may seem new to Google users, but it is already being implemented by big players such as Yahoo (w/ del.icio.us) and Wikia Search Engine. Users on LAVVA can input their opinion about their website by clicking buttons for ‘good’ or ‘bad’ and they can add comments, but these features are also implemented by Wikia years back. Was Wikia successful with social search engine concept? Not really. Nobody really seems to contribute to enhance the search result probably because it’s too much work for users to add their inputs. It is much ‘easier’ for users to simply use Google.
LAVVA plans to read user contents from other social website such as Facebook to make it as easy as possible for users to contribute, so it could potentially be the first social search engine to do it right.
Read More about LAVVA
Samsung N510 could satisfy back to school college students
Posted by Elisha Terada in Business, Tech on August 12th, 2009
Samsung N510
It became clear that Samsung will produce its new line of netbook series called Samsung N510 with ION platform in September. What’s so exciting about this product is that it comes with NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphic card, which can play HD contents. The screen size is the 11.6 inch with screen resolution of 1366 x 768 which I think is far better than 10.2 inch screen with lower resolution from my experience. The rest of specs are pretty standard including 1GM RAM, 120GB HDD, and 1.66GHz (ATOM N280). The downside of this excitement is the price: possibly $599. One of the reason why people loved netbook is its portability AND its low price, so I do not know how this pricing will help customers purchase this netbook. However, I do see that the college students will possibly be interested in purchasing Samsung N510 because it is so handy to carry it around between home to school and they can enjoy the HD contents.
Read More about Samsung N510
http://gizmodo.com/5334738/samsung-n510-ion-netbook-arriving-next-month-for-599
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10307347-1.html
http://www.liliputing.com/2009/06/samsung-n510-pictured-hdmi-port-spotted.html
How to back up your computer files
Posted by Elisha Terada in Tech on August 11th, 2009
I’m sure many people are excited about official release of Windows 7 on October 22nd as it is much superior to its successors. But before you install it on your existing computers, you should always backup your computer properly.
1. Microsoft Outlook
If you use POP email client that you can only access by downloading emails onto your desktop, you need to backup all the emails that you’ve received and sent so far. You should also backup your calendar and any other information you store on the Outlook. The easiest way is to export everything into PST format that you can later retrieve all the information including emails and calendars easily. You can use Microsoft’s official tool that backs your PST file periodically or manually back it up.
2. Data files
Make sure you backup all the data files you have on your computer including documents, pictures, videos, music, etc. You do not need to back up programs such as Microsoft Office because it is not going to work unless you install it again because programs are not simply data files. Although you can simply upgrade vista to Windows 7, it is usually better to clean install the new OS to keep your computer clean.
3. Passwords
If you are used to make browsers remember your passwords, you should stop that habit and instead use software like Roboform to store passwords. What often happen is that you lose all the password information you saved on the browser when you install new OS, most likely because you don’t know how to back it up. Roboform will store your password as a protected data file, so you can easily back it up as you always back up other files. You can try free version first (up to 10 password records) and then decide if you want to buy it or not. The alternatives can be found on add-ons for Firefox if you’d prefer that solution.
4. Favorites
If you are Firefox user, you can always export your favorites as a single favorite archive. If you are Internet Explorer user, you can back up Favorites folder under C:\users\(your user name)\Favorite. Alternatively, you can use Firefox add-ons, Google bookmark, and similar services to keep your favorites online.
If you forgot to backup files…
No worry, you can still recover files even after formatting your drive. I highly recommend you to use TestDisk which goes really deep, but make sure to ask your family or friends who is familiar with technology.
This fall, Smartbooks maybe a better choice for you
Posted by Elisha Terada in Business, Tech on August 5th, 2009
This fall, Acer plans to produce its latest portable computing device series called Smartbook that is similar to Netbook. So why is it called a Smartbook? While Netbooks are slim & portable version of laptops, Smartbooks are big & powerful version of smartphone. Therefore, smartbooks will come with OS typically used in smartphones such as ARM (i.e. Blackberry) and Android (i.e. T-mobile G1, myTouch 3G). Also, it will come with built-in 3G connection and GPS just like popular modern smartphones.
To better understand the differences, I put together a chart that compares the typical configuration of Netbook with Intel Atom (N270) chipset and ‘claimed’ specs of Smartbook with Qualcomm Snapdragon (QSD8X50) chipset.
| Smartbook | Netbook | |
| OS | Windows Mobile, Android, etc | Windows, Linux, etc |
| Resolution | 1280×720 | 1024×600 |
| CPU | 1GHz | 1.6GHz |
| Battery | All day? | 6 hr+ |
| Network | Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, 3G mobile broadband. | Wi-fi, Bluetooth |
| Weight | Under 2.0 lb | Over 2.5 lb |
Conclusion
If you travel a lot and only plan to do a light job such as browsing website and email outside, you are almost better off going with Smartbook. However, I still see Netbook to be better choice if you are going to edit documents or pictures on your laptop for work or for school.
What is so great about Google Voice?
Posted by Elisha Terada in Business, Tech on August 4th, 2009
FCC has started an investigation of Apple and AT&T after rejecting Google Voice to be made available to iPhone users through AppStore. Some users raise their concern about Apple’s unfair control of the market, and as a result, several Google Voice users are declaring to quit using iPhone unless Apple accepts the application. The purpose of this article is to briefly explain what’s so great about Google Voice.
One-Number
One of the key benefits of using Google Voice is that you can hold on to a single phone number you create for free. You can own many different kinds of numbers searchable by Zip code, Area code, numbers, or even letters. Once you create your unique phone number, you can forward any calls to your existing cell phone to receive calls. For example, I have 206-412-XXXX from T-Mobile, and I created 425-522-XXXX at Google Voice. If you call me at 425-522-XXXX, your call will be instantly forwarded to my T-Mobile number. So even if I change my cell phone number, you can still reach me by calling 425-522-XXXX because it will not be forwarded to my new cell phone number.
Flexible-Number
Talking of having one unique number for life, you can actually change your phone number provided by Google Voice anytime you want to change.
Local-Number
Do your friends or families live in outside your state, and they are not using Skype? If so, you can obtain their local number and have them call you to the number, and you will only be charged for a local call fee.
Screening
You can screen callers by checking to see if their number is stored in your contact list of your Gmail, and it will ask unknown callers to state their name. You can enable or disable this option anytime you want to.
Voice Mail / Text Message
What’s very unique about this service is that the Google Voice will transcribe the voice message into text format that you can later read on the website. This feature is very helpful when you can’t quite understand what people are saying or if it’s hard to write down their phone numbers. You can send text message to other phones easily and track the conversation just like how you talk on the email. Both the voice mail and text message will be saved on Google server, so you no longer have to delete them.
Mobile Phone Integration
Of course, the most important feature is its mobile phone integration (Android, Blackberry, etc) that synchs with Gmail contact account. For example, you can see face pictures of caller when you receive a call from someone on your Gmail contact. You can also call, send text message, and access to contact list through Google Voice application installed on your phone.
Conclusion
If you already use Gmail as a primary email account, and even if you are an iPhone user, you should definitely consider signing up for Google Voice here and receive the invite to the service. It is still possible for Apple to later accept Google Voice and you should at least give it a try.
Startup Tips: Cats and Dogs of your business
Posted by Elisha Terada in Business, Entrepreneur on August 3rd, 2009
I’ve seen many mistakes entrepreneurs make when they start their business, and I’d like to discuss about understanding a pain and customer driven approach.
Understanding a Pain
Every morning, one of my sister cats starts to cry for her breakfast. She obviously has a need for hunger fulfillment, or perhaps one can call it a pain in the market. So every time I feed her, her needs are fulfilled. This particular need will occur periodically as long as she lives, and she will do anything to get food from me. Although she can catch her food outside as an alternative, it will not offer her a greater benefit. That is the moment I feel like I’m an Entrepreneur fulfilling the unmet need of the ‘niche’ market, for free.
Wait, how would you call it a business if you get no return? No business can survive without cashflow but many startups offer its product or service for free. They will call it a ‘radical marketing’ to justify the expense, but they are doing it as an excuse to avoid being rejected. Sure, everyone will love you for receiving something for free, but would they still love you once you start to charge them? As I illustrated in the story about my cat, customers will beg you to get what you have if that’s truly what they are looking for. You are not doing yourself any favor by giving stuff away for free. If you got a great product, they will pay you to get it. If not, don’t waste any more money than you’ve already wasted.
Customer Driven
I noticed a lot of people walking their dogs in my neighbors, and I say 4 out of 5 dog owners are ‘lead’ by their dogs. If you have not known, dogs who lead owners actually think that they are the master of the house hold. If you think you are letting them walk around freely, you are wrong: you are driven by dogs.
You’ve probably heard about ‘customer driven’ approach of a business. It is true that things will only work if it starts from customer. But your business cannot be really ‘driven’ by customers. You got to be in control of your business and you got to make things happen for them. For example, I see a lot of entrepreneurs and management team that put too much faith in the power of social marketing. They think things magically happen overnight when you show them your product. Unfortunately, you won’t see the magic. First of all, customers will not drive your vehicle for you; you got to drive them around to show them exciting visions they’ve never seen. Second, your business will cease to exist if you simply implement suggested solutions from your customers who know nothing besides their needs. You got to listen to your customers, but you cannot let them drive you around.
Conclusion
A successful path to startup business, or perhaps to all size of the business, is to understand the nature of your customers beyond their psychographics.
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