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Bootstrapping B:B:C Style

Posted on Friday, Jul 20th

I promised B:C entrepreneurs that if I saw any silver bullet that might help you bootstrap your ventures and access consumers quickly, I will be sure to flag you. Well, here’s one. Last week, I spoke with Rearden Commerce, a company I have covered before. They showed me an implementation of restaurant reservation service OpenTable,

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Re-engineering the Book Business: Blurb CEO, Eileen Gittins (Part 5)

Posted on Friday, Jul 20th

SM: How did you penetrate the market and get early traction? EG: Word of mouth driven by a great and viral product and turbo charged with amazing PR. SM: What stage are you at now? Revenue? Profitability? Traffic? Titles? Any other metrics you track? EG: Blurb expects turnover between $5-10MM in 2007, its first full

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Taking on Business Intelligence: Lucidera CEO Ken Rudin (Part 4)

Posted on Friday, Jul 20th

SM: What was the market landscape like when you founded the company? KR: When we founded the company in 2005, the BI market was pretty stagnant. Not much innovation had happened in that market in the prior 10 years. It was basically a lot of vendors selling expensive solutions that were difficult and time consuming

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A Service for Active Netizens

Posted on Thursday, Jul 19th

If you are trying to do a web PR campaign, you know you have to pitch to the bloggers. The good news is, bloggers are highly visible, easy to identify, and very reachable. Entering the market is a new service that wants to identify people who are the most active members of various online communities,

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Re-engineering the Book Business: Blurb CEO, Eileen Gittins (Part 4)

Posted on Thursday, Jul 19th

SM: What are your top target segments? EG: We segment the market very broadly into Consumer/Prosumer and Professional. Top segments within consumer/Prosumer are: * photography books of all kinds including travel, fine art, compilations from photo enthusiast communities * wedding (participant books) * yearbooks, student/class books * family histories * cookbooks Top segments within Professional

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Taking on Business Intelligence: Lucidera CEO Ken Rudin (Part 3)

Posted on Thursday, Jul 19th

SM. Where did you get the idea for LucidEra? What is your domain experience in the Enterprise 3.0 business? KR: The idea developed in two stages. First, when I ran my Business Intelligence consulting company many years, it became obvious that while Business Intelligence solutions were common in large enterprises, they were rare in small

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The Mini-Monsters are Coming

Posted on Wednesday, Jul 18th

By Jörg Überla, Guest Author [Note: Jorg reports from Germany on the European Online Jobs scene. Evidently, a lot of Concept Arbitrage under way on the other side of the Atlantic.] Regarding the marketing and financial power of large recruitment sites like Monster, it seems hard to establish competitors. But the opposite is true, at

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Re-engineering the Book Business: Blurb CEO, Eileen Gittins (Part 3)

Posted on Wednesday, Jul 18th

SM: Describe the value proposition of Blurb, including differentiation versus the rest of the market. EG: Blurb is bringing book publishing to the masses by providing an affordable publishing platform that’s accessible to anyone with a broadband connection and modest computing skills. Every family, traveler, photographer, bride, cook, poet, teacher, blogger, and artist has a

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