When one-time Apple evangelist turned entrepreneur Guy Kawasaki launched AllTop a year ago, I remember reading some pretty bad press. Headlines like Guy Kawasaki Launches AllTop. Wow, it’s Bad. and AllTop – A gimmick site with marketing flair aren’t exactly what one hopes to launch to.

When I myself visited the site I had the impression that it wasn’t as bad as some of the tech press made out, but it didn’t appear to be anything to write home about. If asked I would have summed up the site as a so-so idea with a decent execution and a famous founder. So I expected AllTop would go the way Guy’s other venture Trumors went – that is to a small but relatively successful end in a quiet acquisition.

In the intervening months however, I’ve been impressed to see the site growing and improving rather consistently. To this day AllTop is still not a site I personally use, nonetheless there does seem to be an audience for it, and Guy and his team have been doing a really good job of persistently pushing the site in the right direction. (more…)

A useful classification of online startups is to put them in two groups: Scale-First and Monetize-First. The first type is all about getting as big as possible, as fast as possible and then figuring out how to make money from the market. This Scale-First approach requires an often significant amount of capital to fund until either monetization or acquisition occurs. The other is about producing income as fast as possible and then using that cash flow to grow larger. This Monetize-First approach tends to be slower but comes with far less risk.

In his post Are you a Seesmic or Balsamiq Entrepreneur, blogger Jeremy Chone gives a good roundup of the pros and cons of both these approaches, using two well known startups as examples of each. Of course a brilliant example of the Scale-First approach is Google, who for a long time had a big question mark hanging over them regarding their business model. If you flip back to December 2000, you’ll find BusinessWeek published an article that literally had the words “But how will Google ever make money?”

Personally I fall most definitely in the Monetize-First camp. I like a business to be self-sustaining as soon as possible, and that means you need to have a clear plan from the out-set about how to actually make money. In startup literature this is called a business model and this post is all about finding one! (more…)

The FWA: Favourite Website Awards is a site founded in the heady days of 2000 with the goal of showcasing brilliant web design on the cutting edge. Now approaching a decade online, the site has become something of an institution in its field and to have one’s work featured there is high praise indeed. Thanks to paid submissions, a popular job board and advertisers to the 80,000 odd daily visitors, the site has not only achieved popular but also financial success.

TheFWA’s founder Rob Ford comes from a background in finance, sales and project management and created the site without external funding. Rob took time out, 9 years on to tell us about his experiences building not only a respected awards site, but a solid business around it. (more…)

A common refrain for people thinking up business ideas is that all the good ideas have already been done. This of course isn’t true, but it sure can feel that way!

On numerous occasions I’ve had what I thought was a lightening bolt idea only to find that someone has not only thought of it before but has even gone out and built a really great business out of it. While it is rather vindicating to see that your idea really did have merit, it is also a bit disappointing. But should you give up? And if you don’t, then how do you go about taking on such a challenge?

Finding an established competitor is not necessarily cause to quit on the spot. It is however reason to think very carefully, and assess whether you have the resources, energy and ingenuity to go for it. Make no mistake, having an established and successful competitor will make things much harder. On the other hand, they prove that a market exists, and for larger competitors, even the left-overs can be very worthwhile. In one of the biggest markets – internet search – even a measly 1% of the market is apparently worth $1 billion dollars in market cap – sort of explains why companies like Ask keep at it when Google seems to have won the market hands down. (more…)

One of the best sources of information on startups is the obscenely talented Paul Graham who has written a wealth of essays on the subject. If you read a lot of these though you start wondering if the only route into the world of web startups is to be a developer or computer engineer of some kind. When I think of top web entrepeneurs, people like Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, Page & Brin of Google, Jeff Bezos of Amazon and Evan WIlliams of Twitter & Blogger all spring to mind. Even less-obvious founders like the internet media personality and Digg founder Kevin Rose actually began in computer science. So it all begs the question, if you’re not from a tech background do you even have a shot at starting a web startup?

Non-Technology Driven Startups

The first question to ask is, is your startup idea technology driven? Are you inventing new technical solutions to a problem? In the cases of all the founders I just mentioned the answer was yes. Facebook was a new way to manage social interaction, Google was a new way to search, Amazon was a new way to purchase, both Twitter and Blogger were new ways to communicate, and Digg was a new way to determine the relevance of news. They were all completely new technologies or applications of technologies.

But it would be a mistake to think that that is the only kind of web startup there is! (more…)