E-mail is a great way to reach out to certain segments of your consumers. It is useful and beneficial when you are able to communicate information that is of value.For instance, company updates, product updates and offers. The idea is not to push information but to tailor relevant information and use e-mail as tool to build up communities.
As well e-mail is a great tool to test copy. When you do A/B splits to see how you can use certain copy to drive the most action out of that segment.
I would still recommend E-mail over having Facebook Fan pages because it is easier to maintain, less time consuming and communication is easier to control.
Great tool to use for small businesses to publish newsletters/e-mails.
http://mailchimp.com/
A few other ideas to use e-mails are
1) Trigger e-mails by Sign in. If the user has not accessed their account after x period of time send gentle reminder
I don't see how title of the article is relevant to the content.
And on the issue of the bubble it's the natural flow of the market, based on supply, demand and competition. There are so many flavors of pop, do we have a "pop" bubble?
Should be retitled, "Do you need an incubator?" or "On selecting an incubator"
Alot of good comment here, Giving and using criticism are both definite skills. I think another one is the ability to filter good criticism from the bad ones. Kinda like reading a book and picking and choosing what you want out of it.
Reminds me of something I learned as an Undergrad. TYFQO Thnk For Your Self Question Others
Before we get into a big discussion between expert/guru (I do find these names silly, I especially hate the title Guru). How do you define social media expert.
I feel this article had great potential, but it somehow strayed away and missed a lot of important points. As well, the title should be along the lines of “Understanding Entrepreneur Values” or of such. And Swombat I would love to hear your thoughts on the concept of “how to stay true” “questioning values” and digging deeper into the basic concepts we have build around the idea of “Entrepreneur”
That being said, here are my thoughts.
1) I don’t feel the notion of “Good Vs. Evil” is remotely relevant. They are labels we put on Social accepted behavior. Instead, the argument should revolve around then notion of how Entrepreneurs respond to incentives, for instances in the case of “Should I sell my company for x million, and leave my employees in the cold” or dealing with pressure “My company is not doing so well, shall I cut back on my CRM program, or fire employees”
These are more related to the notion of “entrepreneur value” where as serving the customers and having good employees are high value tasks, and choosing between one may come down to what is “valued” higher for the founder.
2) I would also like to take a minute to explore some of the entrepreneurial values as listed by OP and dissect reasons behind the actions. If we are talking why some Entrepreneurs put “treat customers right” above the “bottom line” or vise versa, it really isn’t much about being a “good” entrepreneur or a “bad” entrepreneur. In the book “Confession of an Ad Man” by David Ogily, he argues that the reason behind why companies are not putting a lot more marketing dollars into their marketing programs is because often consumer sentiment and marketing results is an un-measureable thing. As a business student, I can tell you that we are trained to be scientist, in the sense that we are taught scientific methods that are based on quality research that someone somewhere has quantified. Something that is unquantifiable is a scary thing, because
A) We cannot prove it’s success
B) We are not sure if we are doing it right
C) Shareholders would have a hard time grasping the results
As humans, we like to be right in the most efficient manner. Therefore anything unquantifiable, like investing behind raising consumer values is a scary thing. Hence why a lot of businesses care more about bottom line then customer experience. Although this trend is changing =]. Now you might be thinking, can’t we peg a value against returning shoppers and aren’t there a lot of studies in the recent support the notion that returning customers have a high value. Yes and yes! Again, companies are slowly moving toward that direction and almost all (and their shareholder) still measure success based on bottom line. Overall, It’s not the notion of Good entrepreneur vs Evil entrepreneur, but external and personality traits that affect action.
I honestly want to challenge you to define the term "better." Is "better" measured by the degree of "feasible execution," "profitability," "match to consumer needs" or a combination of those?
Other than that, here are my thoughts
1) Ideas aren't cheap. Not good/executable ideas anyways. Those ideas are sparked by work, experience, time invested into research, fostering a good environment that encourages ideas/competition.
I'm sure you can ask a 5 year old on his ideas on how to end world hunger and compare that of someone who is 30 or 40 something. Both ideas were cheap, but who's is better?
2) As mentioned by someone else here, not all ideas are executable or worth executing.
3) Personality traits. Not everyone find pleasure in thinking, have you had a friend who brushed you off every time you bring up an ideas? In addition there are many internal and external factors that help create or hinder ideas such as level of conformity at the work place, tolerance to risk etc
There are a lot more factors to look into other than the level of proficiency in programming: I would hire a so-so programmer who have room to grow in addition to being able to follow directions and schedule over any super star.
Thanks for the advice about signage. Did not know that.
My thoughts towards choosing the best and brightest is that higher education defined it one way (via grades, involvement etc). There is def opportunity to re-define it, but a difficult process none the less.
Let me weight in on what I think are the pros and cons to higher education. (I go to a Canadian University so this is related to my experience in Canada)
Pros:
Life goals/direction - Growing up, going to university has definitely given me a direction and goal to peruse. How dangerous would it be if the younger generation had no direction, but simply just aspired to be an "entrepreneur"
Networks - University has given me access to a huge network of professors, established industry professionals (through events/networking sessions etc), role models and up-and-coming talents
Exposure - Exposure in terms of being exposed to different types fields, career options, co-op program is a +
Career Opportunity - Whether we like it or not, going to higher education and advertising that you go to a reputable school is a criteria for HR to weed out good candidates from the bad. Just showing that you can get into a better university says something about you.
Fundamental thinking/critical thinking skills - While uni has not taught me what I needed to know for my career it definitely has built the foundation.
Fun + social experiences
Cons:
Cost - ridiculous, in a recent convo with my friend he describe it to be a $40,000 party
Career learning - not there, I learned more from on-job training, reading blogs and interviewing industry professionals
Like-mindedness - esp with the management program, I find that the teaching is based on measuring units, quantifying experiences and not giving people the room to grow as artists. In the marketing field, you can't quantify everything, we are training too many scientist and not enough artists
Overall, I can't generalize that without higher education the younger generation will be lost for directions. There is definitely a lot of young talents who are already well developed into the senior years of their high school or even prior. But remember this is a confusing time and chaotic time for us. teens now days have so much more to worry about. Not everyone is made to be an entrepreneur, you have to give the opportunity to the right people. For the rest, it is just like giving wings to Icarus, he will fly too close to the sun and be burned.