Bill Gates : Is Google taking your best talent?

I find it humorous that Bill is making a big stink about this..I didn't see Sergei or Larry complaining? Makes you think about his motivations...

clipped from www.horsesass.org

Microsoft founder Bill Gates testified before a Senate committee today about education. He did digress, however, into a topic that has perked my interest for some time:

Gates said the nation’s economy depends on keeping the country’s borders open to highly skilled workers, especially those with a science or engineering background. Federal law provides 65,000 H1-B visas for scientists, engineers, computer programmers and other professionals every budget year. High-tech and other employers say that’s not enough.

“Even though it may not be realistic, I don’t think there should be any limit,” Gates said, adding that Microsoft hasn’t been able to fill approximately 3,000 technical jobs in the United States because of a shortage of skilled workers.

Cool Marketing : What do you think?

Tonight I was watching Real Housewives of Orange County . I know I know.. but it is really amazing to see these people in the twilight zone...it is crazy..and quite hilarious.

Any way I was watching a scene in which one of the moms was drinking a beer ..when a bubble popped up with the following text "It will take Jo (the mom) 20 minutes on the elliptical machine to work of that beer" next bubble "Renew your Membership at Jackie's Gym. I have never seen this kind of co-marketing while a show was on before very slick how they tied the two shows into the bubble.

Startup Progress : The Office Setup

Ok.. so we signed the LLC documents today and the checks are being cut (Two months in the making) .. I am stoked to say the least. The web development team is all in place and ready to roll... Now my focus is on our actual office setup.


Just a little background.. our main investors and some of the executive team will be located down in Atlanta. Myself and 2 other poor souls will be located near Portsmouth NH. This has already proved to be quite a logistical challenge so far..I am thinking of ways for us best to incorporate a efficient collaborative environment.

Our Office space is conveniently located across the street from a main Verizon hub..which we will be using FIOS for business 30mbps/5mbps up/dwn . So we will be cookin for sure.. :)

Next is Voice Comms... I really want to go w/ Skype. I have been a Skype user for almost a year w/ Skype in/out . The only problems I ever have is w/ my slow Comcast connection.

We will be extremely reliant on our phone system so this is extremely crucial to our day to day ops... I plan on using Plantronics Voip headsets comments would be greatly appreciated on this..

We also plan on using Google Apps $50/yr program for all of office needs. I have a jotspot account as well for collaboration.

So now I have to choose PC's for the three of us.. we are on a limited budget so I would welcome any recommendations on a good setup .. i.e low maintenance etc. We will be primarily using browser based applications so we don't need any monsters. Can we save in this area to spend in the dual monitor department?

I already have a Lexmark X5470 combo setup.. so we are good to go in that area.

Any thoughts on a setup would be greatly welcome!

45 Days to Launch!

Some of you may know that I am in the process of launching a E-commerce membership based site for Automotive enthusiasts. The unique factor for our site is that we will be essentially selling parts for our cost or close to it...In the automotive aftermarket there is a lot of price gouging so a typical e-tailer will make 10-15% on a product. When all is said and done and w/ CC fees customer acquisition and customer retention cost you end up at like 7%.

Not so hot to say the least...so are goal was to simplify a problem for most of our target audience 17-30yr Males. PRICE!PRICE!PRICE! they will hunt through forums dive through ebay and scour thru hundred's of online choices to get the proverbial "Hook Up" . Our audience is only loyal to one thing price.. I think that they are young in their consumer experiences and haven't come to other value added differences as deal changers for them in their buying habits.

So I thought to myself how can we solve this problem...and were there examples of retailers that have solved it. Costco was the first thing to came to mind...it made sense we have relationships w/ the biggest distributors in the country all who drop ship from multiple whse's across the country.

What sets us apart from other online retailers is the fact that not only do we sell the best in performance parts for all late model imports (Asian/European) but we carry all OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) parts...basically parts you can get from the dealer. So a member can get anything for his car from a power steering pump to a high end turbocharger kit.

Our pricing will be lowest prices found online period. This will allow members for $9/month for 1 year contract or $99 up to have access to our wholesale pricing. Of course our main revenue generator will be from the recurring billing model. So it is key that we gain traction as soon as possible.. our goal is to sponsor between 35-45 car community's . Our goal is to have the users drive this site..we will giving away free memberships to highly active users in each community to openly discuss w/ the community the pros's and con's of our service.

Also instead of offering $5000 shopping spree ...which we originally thought of but then reconsidered it due to the fact that we might lose our identity w/ that promotion. That got me thinking on what we can do to show people what we are about without becoming members. My answer thanks to some surfing on Me.dium was a site called Woot! . They sell one thing a day for amazing prices but have a platform where the community really drives the site. We are going to be creating "vertical woot's" for our communities i.e Honda/Subaru/Nissan/Toyota etc...

Once we have gotten a chance to let people see what we are all about we have instituted a member referral system that will let members refer friends and family and get bonus points towards future purchases.

For those of you who are not familiar w/ the Automotive Aftermarket Industry it is a $30 Billion Industry.. and the Sport Compact Market is $6 Billion market and growing at 10% rate a year.

I have been in this industry for the last 6 years and the company I left last year has annual sales of $10 million in a very targeted niche market.

In the next couple of weeks I will reveal the name of the site and updates on the progress of the web development.

P.S Another company who is using a business model similar to us is CFares an online Air Travel site that has recently launched.

Ning : My answer to Social Commerce?

Today I watched two video's by Robert Scoble ..The first was an interview w/ Marc Andreessen of Netscape fame and Gina Bianchini CEO of Ning . The second was the actual demo of this new and very provocative service. The reason I bring this up is that I recently wrote about how I could build a "bridge" to other social networks for our new member based site.

This service is unique in the fact that it is a simple, cheap and has a great set of tools like being able to have widgets embedded (meebo/flickr/videos/twitter) . It really allows the community creator to really tailor and be nimble towards his or her own community needs. I really like the fact that I can essentially white label this for our upcoming startup. I can make a private site if I want and the best part is our Web Developer can totally customize it from the original source code.

What I really like about this service is the ability for a relative non-technical adept person can do this quite easily.

I believe that this could be the next evolution in Social Networks due to the extreme niche targeting that can take place.

Blendah Search Engine

Well over the weekend I played w/ my Google Custom Search Engine(CSE) some more and came up w/ Social Tagging Based Search Engine. I am not very technically competent when it comes to programming etc so this is pretty easy stuff.. I registered this site on Google and use there Apps for Domain service's. I think the whole site cost me $10 for everything..

It was pretty easy to setup up the CSE. I use the refinements as Del.icio.us / Reddit / Wikipedia / StumbleUpon / GooTube / Technorati / Flickr. I would like at some point to have an nice Ajax version of this search...

Let me know what you think?

Do you see Google CSE/CoOp as a move towards a social based search algorithm for Google?

Google Office .. We ain't seen nothin yet!

Well as most people have heard by now Google has launched a premium service targeted at small and medium size business. This is the key difference between the all out war some are calling this w/ Microsoft Outlook. Microsoft has the medium to large size business's locked up.


Google is very smart in their approach going after the long tail..a place where most of their ad revenue comes from almost $1 billion a quarter. Here is a qoute from Eric Schmidt “The surprising thing about The Long Tail is just how long the tail is, and how many businesses haven’t been served by traditional advertising sales,”.

Most small business crave a simplified office environment. Gmail is simple to use and makes life easier. Docs and Spreadsheets on the other hand is a little rough around the edges but I have a feeling enhancements will be made available quickly.

I am surprised what hasn't been talked about more is the non integration of Jotspot's Wiki tools. This is a great set of tools for a small or med. biz as a virtual intranet for resources etc.. I also expect a rumored Power Point clone very soon as well which would give Google Apps a very powerful set of tools to really take it to the next level. Now this Premium package would be very attractive to larger business's.

I think that Google is counting on people who don't want to upgrade to Vista/Office 07 but see it as inevitable as an alternative solution. Could Google really be positioning itself better than we think w/ Google Apps?