Roundtable Recap: May 20 – Validation, Validation, Validation

This morning the roundtable ran very smoothly.  The five entrepreneurs who presented are all in various stages of validating who their best customers are.  The best conversations during these roundtables usually stem from the businesses that have already been validated to some degree, simply because I am often not the target customer for a product. All entrepreneurs need to speak directly to their real customers, the people who are willing to pay money for their product or service, in order find out if they are solving a real problem. It is your potential customers who will give you the most valuable feedback and these conversations should happen very early on, preferably before you have spent precious time and money building a product or service.
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Innovation – Need Of The Hour Now On Amazon

Readers,

May 20 Roundtable Recording

In case you missed it, here is the recording:

Roundtable Starting In 30 Minutes

Today’s roundtable is starting in 30 minutes, at 8 a.m. PST/11 a.m. EST/8:30 p.m. IST. Click here to join.

Monetizing People Search: MyLife.com CEO Jeff Tinsley (Part 1)

Jeff Tinsley is the founder and CEO of MyLife. He created the company in 2002 under the name Reunion.com after meeting his wife at his 10-year high school reunion. The company now has a membership of more than 50 million. Prior to MyLife, Tinsley was a founder and CEO of GreatDomains.com, the world’s leading secondary domain name marketplace. At the end of 2000, the company was acquired by publicly-traded VeriSign, the Internet’s leading domain name registry, for a reported $100 million. Tinsley is also involved in a number of private Internet companies as an investor and advisor.

SM: Jeff, to begin, tell me about yourself. Where does your story begin?

JT: I am an Internet geek. I have been in the Internet space since 1994. >>>

Online K-12 Education IPO In The Great Recession: Archipelago Learning Co-founders Cameron Chalmers, Dave Muzzo, And CEO Tim McEwen (Part 7)

SM: What is your sales model? Do you do direct sales, telesales, or other approaches?

DM: We have a marketing group that does a lot of Web optimization, e-mail marketing, and direct mail marketing. We generate leads that go directly to the salespeople. They get an appointment at the building with the principal and the department heads, where they do a demo and close the account. >>>

Higher Revenues But Also Higher Costs For Indian IT Players

Gartner estimated recently that worldwide IT services revenues declined 5.3% over the year in 2009 to $763 billion. Revenues for all players in the industry declined, with HP and Accenture reporting the biggest drops of 10.4% and 11.8% respectively. But India-based service providers saw revenues increase 3.6% for 2009 in dollar terms. However, growth was lower than the 15.4% rate reported a year ago. Cognizant Technologies (NASDAQ:CTSH) managed to increase its market share in the period from 0.3% in 2008 to 0.4% in 2009. The company’s performance remained strong in the most recent reported quarter as well. >>>

Online K-12 Education IPO In The Great Recession: Archipelago Learning Co-founders Cameron Chalmers, Dave Muzzo, And CEO Tim McEwen (Part 6)

SM: After you became CEO, did you have a different content strategy?

TM: We introduced reading and math first, and then we followed with science and social studies. We also focused first on elementary schools and then on high schools. Two years ago we started addressing kindergarten, first, and second grade programs. >>>