Startups.com

Rob Mulda leaves slashdot.org…
Steve Jobs resigns from Apple…
and Paul Graham grows his startup army at Y Combinator…

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.

http://www.bcbusinessonline.ca/management/business-planning/pivoting-your-business-higher-level

Our Business Pivot to Freemium: Insights from the Process | The …
Last week, author and tech fan, Tom Taulli of Forbes posted “Should Your Company Go Freemium”, a summary of discussions we have had on the topic. Genius.

http://www.genius.com/marketinggeniusblog/5266/our-business-pivot-to-freemium-insights-from-the-process.html

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…

Pivot and Profit – The 3 Key Habits of Success for Entrepreneurs

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 …

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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…

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/

Articles 20VN | The Top 5 Benefits of Working at Home | work time …
How many people do you know that earn their wages working from home
A simple Google or Bing search will return hundreds of thousands of..

http://www.20vn.com/internet-businesses-online/the-top-5-benefits-of-working-at-home-d91.htm

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:

1. 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?)
2. What’s your favorite biography or autobiography?

A post on Slashdot about Virtual Land today got me to thinking about how strongly some games take over the player’s “actual” lives. We’ve all heard the stories about World of Warcraft fanatics (and the girlfriends who leave them)… and if you’re a fan of the American television series Office Space, you probably remember when Dwight became obsessed with Second Life…

And then there’s the story of Ailin Graef, the world’s first virtual millionaire. She has made a fortune selling virtual real estate as well as handling tons of virtual currency to real currency exchanges every day… 

Foursquare is working monetizing their site by on incorporating coupons into their app as well the option to link your foursquare and Amex accounts…

I can’t help wonder… what happened to paper money?

I won’t lie. I pay my bills online and use a debit card a lot of the time rather than carrying cash. I can’t help but wonder though… isn’t the virtualization of money causing us to become even more detached from our spending? Paying for something with physical cash money is an entirely different experience than paying with your iPhone or tap payments.

And what will be the eventual outcome of this virtualization of spending? Are we all on the road to a deep dark pit of debt (like some governments seem to have fallen into…)

Entrepreneur Anshe Chung Makes $Millions Selling Virtual Land …
Anshe was the first person whose virtual property exceeded a real world value of 1 million dollars, and Anshe Chung Studios is perhaps the single largest third party developer of virtual property ever. … http://singularityhub.com/2011/08/23/entrepreneur-anshe-chung-makes-millions-selling-virtual-land-banking-and-fashion/

Virtual Property Tycoon FAST Online Money Making Masterplan …
Exposed At Last: The Invisible Secret That Online ‘Virtual Property‘ Millionaires Are Using Mercilessly To Turn FREE-TO-ALL Information Into Huge And Fast Lump Sum Payouts Without Any Marketing Know How, Customers

http://doublenature.com/internet-marketing/virtual-property-tycoon-fast-online-money-making-masterplan.html

I’d love to hear your thoughts. Do you think that the virtualization of spending will be the downfall of us all? And… I suppose a bit of a follow-up to my previous post about Security in the Cloud… what’s the risk of our personal bank and credit card information falling into the wrong hands?