Things we can learn:

1- Outside the Valley. I don’t think many people realize how big the pharmaceutical market really is. So many valley companies are creating some social this or game that and neglect large opportunities of “unattractive/sexy” lucrative markets.
2- Exits. They are good. How many companies get them vs fail?
3- Media = blah. Techcrunch disappoints me sometimes. They ripped him for selling it. Uh. Right. Just like how they wrote Facebook developer verification was genius and then said it sucked. I realize the media needs an angle for people to engage / read but this seems unnecessary. Regardless, media helps you and hurts you at times.

Your thoughts? Best comment will get a copy of Entrepreneurs Journey which was a good read. I really liked the history of kayak.com in there.

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Let’s compare some differences between app users:

Which kind of user do you want?

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Anyways, people complain about gas prices a lot now, myself included and I wanted to put some #s behind it. Leave a comment about how much your gas costs you to fill up and what kind of car you have. The lowest and highest amounts win a copy of Ori Brafman’s new book Sway.

Disclaimer: Noah why are you a) referencing yourself in third person b) giving away so many copies of Ori’s book. 1) it’s good 2) he’s my friend and I am supporting him 3) you may like the book 4) giveaways are fun.

• there’s no design in the sense that anyone gave thought to ergo-dynamics or functionality
• there’s no design in the sense that they look even mildly pleasing
• most of these devices seem like a tv remote, only smaller
• most of the cheaper ones still use IR in stead of radio, and I don’t think any do Bluetooth, which just seems silly

With the number of people making a (part of their) living doing presentations, you’d guess that someone would have jumped to this opportunity and created a device worth paying for. Presentation pros are bringing their own $500 wireless mics, they sure would be willing to spend on a well designed clicky thing. No one wants to be stuck behind their laptop, and no one wants their style cramped by clinging on to a clunky device that doesn’t fit one’s paw.

There’s only one candidate to do this right, really: Apple. They make the superior presentation software (are you still on Powerpoint? come on!), and their sense of style and design knowledge makes one suspect that they’d be the ones to figure out just how thing needs to be shaped and controlled. So please Mr. Jobs, tell your peeps to create a device in the $50 range that is easy to hold and use, looks nice and works like a charm. Maybe not a 100 million units to be sold, but you’d sure as hell get a big bunch of new loyalistas from the biz users.

Just my $0.02.

I have been searching for a while now for a one stop site that allows collaboration between students to share notes. I still haven’t found anything worth getting a class excited about. Here are some of the tools I’ve found and rated on a scale of 1-10.

• mySchoolLog – 5
  • Design: 5 – very bright and big; seems like it would be great design for middle schoolers
  • Collaboration: 0 – although they plan on implementing collaboration they currently lack it
  • Notes: 5 – although the editor is fairly well decked out with with formatting tools and such they currently lack any way of tracking revisions – a feature that might come with collaboration
  • Speed: 4 – the Ajax is a little unstable and gets stuck sometimes
  • User Interface: 7 – The interface is pretty intuitive, though the design is distracting
• NoteMesh – 6
  • Design: 6 – simple, but fairly dull
  • Collaboration: 8 – entire class can be involved with editing notes and interacting on a message boar
  • Notes: 5 – the wiki has the basics of a text editor but doesn’t go to far in depth; offers history and revision tracking
  • Speed: 9 – well built site
  • User Interface: 4 – confusing navigation, especially for new users and classmates not so prone to Internet usage

These are two of the only mediocre sites I have found – all other sites are less than mediocre. If you have any worth using, let me know.

Someone should really take this idea and develop it though. I would love an application that would really aid students.

People like me want to speak at conferences. People coordinating events want to get speakers. Sometimes it is hard to find conferences or the right people to speak.

I know this won’t work well for Guy Kawasaki, Seth Godin and big name speakers because people come to them. For everyone else this might be an opportunity to make life easier.

What do you think? As always, if you do this idea please buy me a burrito.

Side note: I am going to speak at O’Reilly’s Web 2.0 expo in SF next month if you are attending.

Submit your idea to the Business Challenge by March 30

Your head is full of great ideas. Put your business idea on a paper napkin and enter the Women 2.0 Napkin Business Challenge. DEADLINE TO SUBMIT IS MARCH 30! (Details)

Two winners get $1000 each and a meeting with Tim Draper of Draper Fisher Jurvetson, or Michael Moritz of Sequoia. Six finalists will present to the Judging Panel of Silicon Valley’s top-shelf VCs and successful entrepreneurs at a Pitch Event on April 25th at CNET. Everyone is invited to attend.

Submissions are accepted worldwide but finalists must present on April 25th to our top-tier Judging Panel. See who’s in!

Don’t think you can submit because you’re not a woman under 35? Not a problem. Pick up your cell phone, poke via Facebook, or send an SMS to that dynamic, intelligent entrepreneurial young woman you know. Convince HER to join your team. If you’re not eligible to compete as an individual, build a team of 2 to 4 people and make sure half of you are females under the age of 35. Bring this team together with that brewing idea and VOILA! You have what you need to participate.

Visit Women 2.0 for details. Get drawing on that napkin! A paper napkin covered with scribbles and an emailed entry form are all you need to enter to enter by March 30!

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Women 2.0 connects like-minded, motivated young women in the Silicon Valley to swap energy, ideas, and experiences with each other. We promote the collaboration and growth of women in entrepreneurship, technology, and business and provide opportunities for young women to interact with successful women from a broad spectrum of industries. More information about Women 2.0 can be found here.

Women 2.0 holds women-only wine & cheese networking mixers to catalyze connections and provide resources for your own ongoing projects. We know how hard it is to be young professional working your tail off in the Silicon Valley, and to be energized to work on through the nights on your own stealth-mode projects and other priorities.

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Opportunity: Master installing, upgrading, fixing, programming WordPress and become the Guru.

To even hyper specialize further would be to solely be the plugins person or the upgrades WordPress guy. I feel this could be a great business for someone if they focused and specialized.

What do you think? As always, if you do this idea please buy me a burrito;)

Problem: With the advent of local review sites, such as Yelp, Judy’s Book, Smalltown, and various foodies blogs, there’s more and more buzz being generated from the web that pushes people to go out and eat somewhere. Some times people are willing to go to reviewed businesses even if they’re just mediocre rather than businesses not reviewed or, worse, not even listed and mentioned on these review sites.

Opportunity: A local Web 2.0 publicity/PR firm that can cater to clients who are small businesses such as dentists or restaurants that can do two things:

1) Be able to help their client establish a presence online.

A good PR firm will be able to place relevant information, such as operating hours, menus, and locations, on review sites or to blogs as well as facilitating tastings.

2) Be the liaison and maintain a good reputation online.

When an ill comment or review is found, the PR firm should be able to locate who made the comment and how best to address the issue, such as coaching the business to do something better.

The great thing is, Google and other search engines regularly aggregates review sites in conjunction to a search term. Maintaining a good reputation on these sites will count towards keeping up your SEO and the reviews will definitely help find your clients achieve efficiency and better customer service as well as generate new business.

What do you think?

Opportunity: Companies pay for your gym membership in return you wear shirts with their logo while working out.

Seriously, I am running on the treadmill for 2 hours and I always stare at the people around me. Companies should take advantage of this time.

An alternative to this business idea is for a t-shirt company to focus solely on making shirts specifically for the gym.

Ie. “Stop looking at my ass” or “You should see how you look from behind.”

What do you think?