Companies that are starting out in new fields, breaking new ground cannot be looking for a secret formula. Because it doesn’t exist. Especially for companies that are breaking new ground, doing something that hasn’t been done before.

There are places where formulas for success exist. They are the franchises and other well established industries. They don’t require much thinking or experimenting. You just follow a basic formula and success (to some degree) is guaranteed. This is not the case with most startups today.

The Bag Strategy – today the formula for success is the bag strategy. You throw a whole bunch of good stuff into a bag, mix it up a bit and hope that something useful comes out of it. Take product development, marketing, personal networking, promotion, coincidence and a bit of luck, mix it all in a bag and see what comes out.

Sometimes it’s useless crap, sometimes it’s a half-successful company. Once in long while you’ll get a company like Facebook or YouTube.

What’s going into your bag?

(Post by André Nosalsky.)

So you have an idea for a product that will make you rich. Now, what do you do?

• a) You invest in developing the entire product. You buy servers in case you get DUGG. You purchase phone lines and equipment. Hire a secretary. Get business cards printed with the product name on it. Brand wrap your car. Etc etc.

  OR:

• b) You test the product in one weekend to see if there’s any traction at all with minimum investment of time, money and other resources.

How to test your product in one weekend:

1. Write out what your product is. Describe it, how would the user interact with it. What does it do? Who’s the target audience? Etc. Writing your thoughts down will make them clearer and more concrete.
2. Use the above information to create the following pages about your product: 1) general information page, 2) Preview page, 3) Order page. On the order page, take their name/contact info and say that the product is currently in “beta� and they will be contacted when it’s ready for purchasing.
3. Spend $100 on AdWords to get some traffic and see the results.
4. If you have friends, contact them for a review of your product/preview pages. Most of them will come back with “it’s a great product�, “wonderful, why didn’t I think of that�, and “YouTube killer�. They are saying this because they are your friends, so the next step is you ask them to pay $20 for a year of service. This will really tell you if your product has any value or not.
5. “But my product is viral and it will be based on advertising so I can’t test it.� No problem. Alpha versions of Facebook and HotOrNot were built in a weekend, so build it and email all your friends, if your server crashes in a week you have a winner, if not test something else.
6. “I’m not a developer and my product needs programming.� No problem. Spend $100 at Elance.com and it’ll be done for you.

There are other variables that come into play here but this should cover most of the products out there.

Disclaimer: This is for entertainment, informational and educational purposes only. Do not do this at home or anywhere else. Seek professional advice before proceeding. Ok done.

(Another post by André Nosalsky.)

According to many scientific papers, what Edison was referring to was active thinking. Active thinking is when you deviate from automatic thinking. Automatic thinking is not necessarily bad. It makes out lives easier everyday because we don’t have to think about tasks that we had done before.

Active thinking is when you thinking about something that you have not thought before, or thinking in a new way. It is when you allow new thoughts to enter your mind and “play around� with those thoughts.

Sitting for ideas – Dr. Gates (NOT Bill), who held many patents, would be called a startup guru if he was living today. He had the practice of going into a quiet, dark room, bringing only a pen and paper and actively thinking about a problem. He was so good at this that corporations started paying him to think for them.

Active thinking is a skill; some develop it automatically based on their social environment. Others, such as people living under dictatorships, have significantly lower scores on active thinking tests. Since it is a skill, it can be developed.

For Startups – Active thinking can be used by startups to solve problems and come up with creative solutions. When money and other resources are tight, thinking might be the only solution.

Questions – your brain has the “feature� of wanting closure. Anything that is incomplete takes up RAM. This could be a task that you are putting off or a big project that is looming ahead. Advertisers know this, that’s why so many ads include questions; they want to take up RAM so even if the ad is done running, you’re still processing their information.

You should use this feature to your benefit. Ask yourself a specific question and don’t be quick to answer it. Let it sit in your mind and you’ll soon receive many different answers. Some of the questions to consider: What am I good at? What value can I bring to people’s lives? What product can I bring to market? Where will this industry be in five years?

What are your experiences with active thinking?

(Another post by Andre Nosalsky)

I’ll be writing from my personal experiences of working in a startup, from what I’ve seen and heard from friends and from what I’ve read about other companies. Please email me tips or ideas, and if it’s not on my list, I’ll make sure to cover it.

The first topic I’d like to discuss is that of Prerequisites for a startup. Just like in college, before you could take any classes, you had to meet certain requirements. It’s the same in the startup world. Let’s say you are thinking about starting a company or joining one, what should you have covered before doing so.

(If some of these posts are too elementary, you are welcome to skip through )

Having Curiosity – Wikipedia defines curiosity as behavior that leads to exploration, investigation and learning. This is one of the qualities that person needs to have in a startup world.

Some of the signs of being curious are asking questions, such as: how does that work? Can I make it better? Why isn’t there a product or service that does this or that? Making statements, such as I can do that much better, I can do that better, cheaper, faster, or I bet others will like this widget that I built.

Curiosity didn’t kill the cat and it’ll help you if you are thinking about joining a startup.

Specialization – Being able to do general tasks is a requirement in a startup (and I’ll discuss this next time), but having a specialty is a must. Specializing in one area makes you an expert in that area. Obsessing about something and you will start seeing holes in it. When you’re a specialist, and not a jack of all trades, you will come to a point where you’ll know everything about your area and then you’ll want innovate.

Being a generalist will not allow you to dive deep enough into a field to be able innovate in that field. Steve Jobs is a specialist in marketing. Google guys were specialists in search. You could be a specialist in databases, programming, marketing, or any other field, but pick some area to specialize in.

Next post: More prerequisites.

(This post written by Andre Nosalsky.)

“Shakespeare was wrong. A rose by any other name would not smell as sweet . . . which is why the single most important decision in the marketing of perfume is the name.”
- Al Ries and Jack Trout

Research from the business world and from the scientific community gives evidence towards the fact that a name of a product is very important. It is important in the decision making process of the consumers.

Framing: Researchers have found that if they take a generic product, and “frame� it towards the positive or the negative by simply changing the words on how they describe the product to the consumer it changed the behavior of the consumer. Based solely on words the consumer chose one over the other. The one that was chose most was framed in a positive way. The consumer felt a sense of gain from this.

Categories: A product name can also invoke the emotions of the consumer. Consumers typically categorize everything internally based on their previous experiences. If your product name has a positive association with it, it will be put into the positive category in the consumers mind. If it carries a negative name, it will automatically be classified in the negative category. Taking the time to test the responses from consumers will give you an idea of how it is categorized by the target consumers.

Color: Color has been found to influence people, consciously and unconsciously. Colors can elicit different moods and affect responses. It has also been found that when a name is generic is it less effective than if it is fancy, such that “mocha colored cake� would be more appealing than “brown cake�.

When you are name your product, it would benefit to test the above factors.

In today’s world of instant messaging, twittering, transworld communications and expedience, it’s sometime difficult to think ahead, even a month or two, but taking the time to see what’s really important in this hyper world is critical to our survival.

Here’s a few thing that I think are critical to focus on in the long term.

The web – it’s here to stay. It’ll be here in five years, and in ten; in some way or another in fifty and one hundred years. Your business plan should have some kind of tie-in to the internet, because young people don’t know a world without the Net. The first step should be getting your name as domain name, like Noah and I have done. The second is coming up with a general internet strategy for the next ten years.

Personal relationships – with all of the innovations in personal communications, there is a lot of research showing that people are lonelier than ever. How can that be? It seems like personal face-to-face relationships can’t be substituted with a txt message or an email. How do the top people know each other in almost every industry? By their first names! These relationships take time and in person emotional connections to build.

Building Metaskills – skills are changing so fast, that strong metaskills are required to keep up. What are metaskills? It’s those larger, critical, underlying skills. They include skills such as fast learning, critical thinking, decision making, being curious and others.

How far ahead do you think? Plan?

1) Being optimistic improves your immune system. In a study of women right after breast cancer surgery, researchers found that those that were optimistic had stronger immune system than those that did not. Actual blood results were used in this study. (Source: Research in Nursing & Health Vol 30(1) (Feb 2007): 72-83)

2) Being optimistic improves your emotions. Inmates who shared their feelings and looked at the positive of situations had better emotional lives; which in turn caused better psychological and physical health. (Source: Criminal Justice and Behavior Vol 34(5) (May 2007): 697-708)

3) Optimism can predict your future. Based on how optimistic, neurotic, stressed and your coping style, it can be predicted how your life will be in the future. Specifically, will you turn out to have a positive or negative well being overall. (Source: Personality and Individual Differences Vol 43(2) (Jul 2007): 277-287)

4) How much weight do you want to lose? Researchers found that your level of optimism towards your weight losing goals, such as how high you set the goals and your belief in achieving the goals, were predictors in whether you would lose the weight or fail. (Source: Journal of Applied Social Psychology Vol 37(4) (Apr 2007): 844-861)

5) Increase sales through your Positive Mental Attitude: One study found that people having a positive mental attitude (being optimistic) helped them easily overcome problems in their sales jobs and thus increase sales. (Source: Sociological Quarterly Vol 47(1) (Feb 2006): 41-68 )

6) Optimism helps the entrepreneurs and startups get going. A research paper found that entrepreneurs and investors often have to have blind-optimism in future enterprises otherwise nothing would get done. Not investments would be made and not new companies would be form. (Source: Creativity and Innovation Management Vol 14(4) (Dec 2005): 405-412)

Your Experiment: Decide to be totally positive for one day and see what results you get that day.

(There such a thing as being overly optimistic, and it can be a negative thing at times, maybe I’ll write about it next if there’s interest.)

Are you an optimist? Why or why not?

This post written by Andre Nosalsky.

There’s a lot more comparisons between the daemon and Google and I would urge everybody to go read this book, it’s novel and reads fast. In the book you’ll also find a lot of future technologies that are currently being developed and interesting and their application in the real world.

This book was recommended by Mr. Google himself: Matt Cutts.

First of all, the credit goes to the late marketing genius Gary Halbert for this idea. I couldn’t find it in any of his online material so I’m going to give it to you like I remember. (Warning, gets kind of graphic, but that’s the point.)

You will need the following material: 2 white envelopes, two pieces of clean, crisp white paper, two 41 cent stamps and a ball point pen.

Take out the first sheet of paper the write the following letter:

Dear Mother,

Your mean the world to me. I am so lucky that I am your son/daughter. The world means a lot to me because you are my mother and are a blessing to me. You have raised me and nurtured me and now I have turned out to be a great success.

You deserve all the credit, thank you!

Your loving son/daughter,

(Your signature)

Now, write the second letter:

Dear Mother,

Don’t bother responding to this letter as it’s the last communication that I want with you. Ever since I was born my life has been a curse because of you. Everything bad that has occurred in my life somehow finds its way back to you. Please forget that you even have a son/daughter.

(Your signature)

Now, put the letters into the envelopes, address it to your mother, and you probably don’t want to send the second one.

What’s the point?

Everything (the envelope, writing, paper color and size) being equal, the “marketing� message is the only thing that is different here, but it will trigger significantly different reactions from the recipient of this message. The recipient of this message will not only have a different psychological experience, but their biological experience will be different too.

When marketing is done properly, it will target the right people, with the right message at the right time and it will generate the response that you are looking for. Just as the letters would have produced totally different responses, so should your marketing.

What’s some compelling marketing that you have experienced? (and don’t say Apple )

The idea is to have a different goal card for every goal. (See end of post for example). A goal card should be a regular piece of paper and contain the following information.

Previous successful goals or tasks – this section contains a one sentence summary of previous goals or tasks that you successfully completed that are related to the goal that you are trying to achieve. These goals or tasks should be the ones that provided you with the most emotional satisfaction, something worth calling mom about.

The actual goal – the actual goal needs to be stated in a positive, personal and present tense format. This is not some crazy “fuzzy thinking� idea, but comes from the fact that your brain can’t tell past/present/future programming, it only knows NOW. You have to work with the existing wiring. Another component is setting a timeline; this will make the goal more critical and important.

The first steps – the last section of your goal card should contain the next 5 to 10 steps that you will take that are critical to gaining momentum for your goal. As each step is completed you should check it off, this will give you a visual indicator that you goal is moving forward and it’s only a matter of time and you will have achieved what you set out.

How do you set and keep track of goals?

Goal Cards for Faster Progress was written by Andre Nosalsky.