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Site of the day - PickyDomains.com, world's first risk free naming agency http://www.bigcommerce.com/ All venture capitalists have got startup business plans piling on their desks every single day. But how many of them are the breakthrough ideas worth investing in? Australian BigCommerce has proven right to the Massachusetts based venture capital firm General Catalyst. “We quickly signed up our first 1000 customers within three months,” says Eddie Machaalani, the co-funder and co-CEO of BigCommerce, “and now we’re about to hit 20,000 customers after just 17 months. Mitchell Harper, the other co-founder and co-CEO, explains “you can set up your own online store in a few clicks. We’re growing so quickly because we’ve made it really easy to sell online.” If you’ve got a product and you need an easy way to sell it and advertise it, BigCommerce might be exactly what you’re looking for. All ...

Crazy Startup Of The Day - PickyDomains.com http://www.contextmediainc.com/ Shradha Agarwal and Rishi Shah were writing an article on out-of-home media for their university's business magazine in 2006 when it dawned on them: This would make a great business. TV screens had become de rigueur in taxicabs, shopping malls and high-rise elevators. But the Northwestern University undergrads saw an untapped opportunity to bring multimedia content to a more targeted audience: patients in waiting rooms. "My grandmother passed away young from diabetes complications," Agarwal says. "Rishi's father is a diabetes specialist. We saw how small bits of information at the right time and place can make a huge impact." Their idea was to sell doctors' offices prepackaged video segments containing tips on diet, exercise and other lifestyle tweaks patients could make to improve their health. A TV screen in the reception area would broadcast this programming, modeled after seg...

Startup Of The Day - PickyDomains.com http://www.hitbliss.com/ With only a few legal options for accessing TV programs and movies over the internet--pay upfront (Netflix, Amazon, iTunes) or sit through advertisements (Hulu)--it was inevitable that an alternative model would emerge. HitBliss, an online streaming site developed by husband-and-wife team Sharon Peyer and Andrew Prihodko, offers popular shows like NBC's Battlestar Galactica and hit movies from the likes of Paramount Pictures, Focus Features and Universal Pictures. Users can purchase titles from the HitBliss Store for roughly $4 per movie or $2 per TV show. But the revolution starts with the HitBliss Earn service. Viewers in Earn peruse the same titles but sit through advertisements to bank money--about 25 cents per ad viewed--that can later be used in the HitBliss Store. To earn payouts up to twice as quickly, Earn users build a profile, adding their location, gender, age, income and browser search history. With that in...

Daily Advice Link - How I Increased Sales 350% With Press-Releases    There are few investments less sensible than car ownership. A new purchase loses close to 9 percent of its value the minute it leaves the dealer's lot, according to automotive-information site Edmunds. Further, most cars sit idle the majority of the time. Two San Francisco-based startups, RelayRides and Getaround, are working to change these inefficiencies--and snag a piece of the nation's $20 billion car-rental market. Similar to Airbnb, both companies facilitate peer-to-peer transactions through which car owners can rent out their vehicles to those who need them by the hour, day or week. Owners set the rental price for their vehicles; both companies say the average rental runs $8 to $12 per hour and lasts 40 hours. The model offers big savings for customers--generally half of what a local car-rental agency would charge. Plus, the range on offer allows renters to get exactly the vehicle they want, whether...

Startup Of The Day - PickyDomains.com http://www.republicwireless.com/ David Morken admits that the promise he made to reward his kids with iPhones if they brought home straight A's was no stroke of genius. But the business concept inspired by the ensuing $1,000-plus phone bills may well turn out to be. Launched nationally in December 2012, Morken's brainchild, Republic Wireless, is a $19-per-month voice, text and data service that relies on Wi-Fi as its primary network (for more disruptive startups, read about DudaMobile ). When Wi-Fi isn't accessible--roughly 40 percent of the time for Republic customers, according to Morken--calls automatically bounce to Sprint's 3G cellular network. The pillar of the low-cost Republic model is a solid but no-frills Android handset, the Motorola Defy XT , which allows Republic to offer a low-cost, contract-free wireless service package with unlimited voice, data and texting after paying an initial $249 for the phone. In taking on the...

Daily Advice Link - How I Increased Sales 350% With Press-Releases FreshBooks ( claim your $50 FreshBooks coupon here ) is known for weird titles.Corey Reid, for instance, is Chief Cat Herder. That's Director of R&D Talent for us mere mortals. Saul Colt is Head of Magic. Perhaps you'd prefer Marketing and Customer Experience Design. And don't even ask me what Freshbooks CEO goes by. So perhaps it shouldn't be a surprise that FreshBooks isn't really about bookkeeping. Instead, FreshBooks is really one of the first timekeeping and invoicing software turned SaaS (it'll be interesting how FreshBooks reacts to the recent onslaught of free CRM with invocing ). FreshBook is now used by over 5 million users and known for it's "braindead simple" approach. One of the reasons for that that one year after being launched in 2003, it had only 6 clients. That's six. And 24 months into operation, it had only 10. This is how Mike McDerment recalls these day...

Site of the day - PickyDomains.com, world's first risk free naming agency http://mailigen.com Regardless of size, shape or form, whether that’s a mom-and-pop shop you’re running or a conglomerate, marketing is an integral part of any business. One marketing strategy that works, if properly implemented, is e-mail marketing. If that got you furrowing your eyebrows in protest, and since I’m a betting man, I’d bet that you’re one of the many people who think spam has killed the effectiveness of e-mail campaigns. Viagra, Bangkok pills … I’m sure you’ve got your fair share already. The very purpose of e-mail marketing can be broken down in four: maximize your ROI (return on investment), build a trustworthy brand, drive sales and boost social interaction. Inasmuch as a good percentage of the global population is equipped with a working e-mail address, e-mail marketing is one of the simplest and most cost-effective marketing methods. But remember, it has to be do...

Site of the day - PickyDomains.com, world's first risk free naming agency http://swipp.com You probably remember how free social intranet provider Bitrix24.com has become the fastest growing social enterprise tool in 2012. But it's 2013 now. Aside from being “social,” Facebook, Google+ and just about every company in the social arena have something in common – to become the social layer beneath every service on the Internet and provide real-time social data that’s measurable, can be referenced and helpful to marketers and data analysts spanning a broad range of industries. Facebook’s recent release of Graph Search and everything else Google has been doing since Google+ was released in 2011 are adding up to this mounting evidence. Launched on January 23, 2013 in 45 countries and 5 languages, Swipp is a brand-new social media analytics and sharing platform whose main objective is to find out how the general population feels about a given topic real-time. User sentiment is analy...

Daily Advice Link - How I Increased Sales 350% With Press-Releases http://donanza.com Freelancing can be a lucrative career, if you know what you’re getting into. Advantages to freelancing include the freedom to choose your work schedule and the projects you agree to, how much time you invest in each of the jobs you take on, the freedom to work anywhere you deem conducive – at home, at a coffee shop, even out of town. You may also start working straight out of bed, if you so please, with your pajamas on. That said, however, don’t let the good stuff lull you into believing freelancing is all milk and honey or where the grass is always green. Freelancing comes with disadvantages, too – the most common of which is failing to land regular, if not long-term, gigs to keep your money vessel replenished. There are sites like oDesk and Elance that connect clients and freelancers. And then, there’s DoNanza.com, a freelancing search engine that allows anybody to find...

Site of the day - PickyDomains.com, world's first risk free naming agency http://www.bigcommerce.com/ All venture capitalists have got startup business plans piling on their desks every single day. But how many of them are the breakthrough ideas worth investing in? Australian BigCommerce has proven right to the Massachusetts based venture capital firm General Catalyst. “We quickly signed up our first 1000 customers within three months,” says Eddie Machaalani, the co-funder and co-CEO of BigCommerce, “and now we’re about to hit 20,000 customers after just 17 months. Mitchell Harper, the other co-founder and co-CEO, explains “you can set up your own online store in a few clicks. We’re growing so quickly because we’ve made it really easy to sell online.” If you’ve got a product and you need an easy way to sell it and advertise it, BigCommerce might be exactly what you’re looking for. All the marketing tools have been built in and t...

  BizHacks - How To Use Bitrix24.Com As A Free CRM, Intranet And Task Manager . http://www.justbecauseapp.com/ If you’re an entrepreneur, when launching a startup, one of the early challenges involved are getting the word out about your product or service, letting your target consumer know of the benefits that come with it and getting people to try it out – all in the name of converting them into lifetime customers. On the other hand, if you’re somebody thinking of sending a gift to someone special, one hurdle you need to clear is figuring out what this trendy friend of yours would be thrilled to receive. And this means ensuring the gift isn’t something he/she already received from someone else, which, needless to say, can sometimes be a tough one to pull off. JustBecause, a newly launched iPhone app, bridges the gap between the two. With JustBecause, users can now offer their friends gifts from startups worth $10 to $100 for just $1. Yes, you read right – for just $1! Why? Well, s...