Monday, October 31, 2011 – Startups.com is pleased to announce that we have acquired StartupDelight.
Members of StartupDelight will now join our Startups.com Community, I would like to take this opportunity to welcome them and let them know how glad we are that they have joined us. For those of you who are unfamiliar with StartupDelight, some background info:
“StartupDelight was hatched from the nerdy love of collecting various promotional items combined with the love of startup logos. Founded in March 2011, StartupDelight was kick-started by two Texas State University graduates excited about new ways of exploring startup life through special, unique opportunities. The company is based out of San Marcos, Texas, located 15 minutes from the ever-booming tech corridor of Austin.
Our goal as a business was to harmonize the shopping and advertising experience by creating a community that was both rewarding to consumers and merchants. From the beginning, our intent was to create unique promotional offers that featured daily deals from startups such as private dinners and company tours to unique, one-of- a-kind startup products.”
The more people we have in our community, the better Deals we are going to be able to get on the apps, services, and tools we need to grow our businesses.
Again, Welcome! And please don’t hesitate to Contact Us if you have any questions.
Most entrepreneurs have at least heard of Napoleon Hill and/or his most celebrated book, Think and Grow Rich. Surprisingly few people I meet, however, are familiar with William Clement Stone,
Stone (seated at right) with President Gerald Ford in the Oval Office
In 1960, Stone teamed up with Napoleon Hill to author Success Through a Positive Mental Attitude. I have found his work and life inspirational for a long time (He lived to be 100 years old!) and I’d like to pass on some of that inspiration to you as a way to remember this great man. (He passed away in September 2002)
The 5 Quotes I Read When I need Motivation (or when I feel frustrated with my business) are all from William Clement Stone:
“No matter how carefully you plan your goals they will never be more than pipe dreams unless you pursue them with gusto.”
“Tell everyone what you want to do and someone will want to help you do it.”
“Try, try, try, and keep on trying is the rule that must be followed to become an expert in anything.”
“Everyone who achieves success in a great venture, solves each problem as they came to it. They helped themselves. And they were helped through powers known and unknown to them at the time they set out on their voyage. They keep going regardless of the obstacles they met.”
“Regardless of who you are or what you have been, you can be what you want to be.”
I don’t know about you but that’s magic. Although I didn’t grow up in the States, I’ve always had that sort of “American Dream” attitude I guess. I’ve always believed that whomever I want to be, whatever I want to do… I CAN do. It’s just a matter of figuring out HOW. How to get there. How to make it work. How to be the man I want to become.
Finding inspiration and motivation can be hard. I have a dear friend who is an artist and he told me recently that he’s been struggling with finding the motivation and inspiration to work. We talked a bit about what’s been going on in his life recently and it occurred to me that he’s closed himself off from the art world.
I got to thinking about how hard that would be for me – to work without a community of folks to bounce ideas off of and to draw inspiration from.
I guess what I’m trying to say is Thanks. Thanks for being here. Thanks for being part of the Startups.com Community. And please… share your stories… your successes… your favorite quotes… with us. We’d love to hear ‘em.
It has been an eventful day in the world of business and startups… and it has got me thinking about change and specifically business changes and pivots. Which brings me to:
Pivoting Your Business to a Higher Level | Business Pivot… A business pivot is an operational change driven by a combination of observation, information, and inspiration. With the pace of change today, it should be considered regularly by all businesses.
The Pivot With Aaron Batalion of LivingSocial LivingSocial CTO and Co-Founder Aaron Batalion shares the story of how LivingSocial changed it’s business or in lean startup terms “pivoted” to become the social commerce business they are today at the Tech Cocktail Startup Mixology Conference in Chi…
Think you’re an entrepreneur? Do you have the passion to go the distance and share that with others? What about the boring stuff, the organization and delivery of a business that creates replicatable, predictable results? Blog post at declandunn.com …
Obviously, LivingSocial is one of the biggest business pivots in recent memory. You may or may not remember them from their Visual Bookshelf app on Facebook a few years ago. It let you post a list of books you’ve read and the stuff you’d like to read to your profile. It was sort of fun, if you read a lot or cared what your FB friends were reading.
Later they came out with PickYourFive and a few other poll-type apps for Facebook and then a couple of years ago, folks really started to take notice when they acquired BuyYourFriendADrink. (Because really, who wouldn’t want to buy their friends a drink, right? Especially when they send one back to you. Not to mention that some of the drink choices were hilarious in aืd of themselves. Virtual party, actual fun.)
After their success with BuyYourFriendADrink, they launched a daily deals business and now they’re projected to make $500 million this year. From a less than thrilling app about a bookshelf to $500 million in like 3 years. Is this the most dramatic business pivot in history or what? Possibly not but it’s certainly the most interesting.
LivingSocial recently launched a Family edition and plans to launch a college edition for their daily deals as well. They’re working on expanding into new markets and countries and show no sign of slowing down.
Chris Dixon (from Hulu and other startups fame) said “In my experience, the most common mistake is to pivot too late.”
So I’d like to hear from you… have you pivoted a business? Was the pivot successful? What are some other great Business Pivot stories? You all know how much I love a great success story…
I’m going to admit something here but don’t hold it against me…
I’m slightly addicted to slashdot.org. And I really do hate to bring it up again (after just mentioning it yesterday), and no… I’m not at all affiliated with them… BUT… Their poll today:
I do my best coding after…
0 beers
This got me to thinking… (no, not about beer!) about the benefits of working from home and entrepreneurship in general. Sure, we all know there are pitfalls and struggles in the lives of Startups and Founders but there are also some really great aspects of working for yourself… on your own terms.
Source: Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda, cropped by Remember the dot
A totally strange yet hopefully interesting tangent here for a minute… I was talking to one of our writers the other day and apparently she went to Hope College with Rob Mulda (the creator of Slashdot). I’ve been reading Slashdot since probably about the time they started (as I was just getting into the Online World myself then) and I tried to get our writer to tell me some interesting info about this huge legend and inspiration in my eyes.
As you probably have noticed, I love biographies and autobiographies of entrepreneurs and other successful people and I thought this was finally my chance to really get the inside info…
Do you know what our writer told me? “He can’t smell.”
That wasn’t really the sort of information I was looking for and I don’t know if that’s even true, so I don’t want to start rumors about the man.
Back to the benefits of working at home… Personally, I love the freedom it allows me. I also really appreciate that working from home (at least part of the time) allows me to adapt to all the little things that come up during the day.
Browsing the net today, I found some great stories and articles about some of the other benefits of working at home…
Financial and Environmental Benefits of Working from Home Financial and environmental benefits of working from home- work from home, work home, working from home, benefits of working at home, how to work from home. http://www.renewable-energy-news.info/financial-environmental-benefits-working-from-home/
The Benefits of Working With Home On the web Business The Benefits of Working With Home On the web Business. August 14, 2011 By admin Leave a Comment. Home primarily based online business has later been essentially the most sought-after strategy for those who are searhing for an … http://www.smoosh-online.com/the-benefits-of-working-with-home-on-the-web-business/
Starting a Home Business – Exposing the 5 Big Benefits of Working… From a survey done by Home Office Computing Magazine, 98 % are happier working from home. Here are the 5 big benefits of a home run business. 1) Money: On average the earnings of a home run business in America is … http://www.zuzana-hulka.com/0820-starting-a-home-business-exposing-the-5-big-benefits-of-working-from-home.html
The Remarkable Tax Benefits of Owning a Home Business – eVolv The remarkable tax benefits of owning a home business are often overlooked and this short video explains those benefits for you. The Rich have a secret, do what they do… The Health & Wellness Market is one of the Best Markets to be in as a Home Bas…
Today’s slightly rambling post (sorry about that) has led me to two questions I’d like to ask you, our Readers:
What do you enjoy most about working at home (or, if you don’t work at home, What do you enjoy most about owning your own business?)
October 31, 2011 
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