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Today I’m going to discuss two more services for handling your startup’s email. These options are for those of you who need a little something more in your email hosting. Looking for Exchange and Sharepoint hosting? Got it. Need tons of mailbox space because you never delete email or attachments? Covered. In addition, I’m trying to keep your costs low. Let’s dive in.
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My first startup involved hosting websites and offering email accounts to users, so I had to set up an email server and programmatically add/remove email accounts, filter spam, and knock it with a wrench then mail got stuck in its innards.
These days setting up an email server is pretty easy. But just because it’s easy doesn’t mean you should do it.
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I don’t speak much about raising capital at Startup Next Door. For goodness’ sake, the tagline is “Venture without Capital”. But Wednesday night I spoke with a gentleman who had been involved in a few startups (most of them huge), and who has raised funds and is currently raising funds for another ambitious startup. In speaking with him about a business idea and how to raise funds, his advice was to create a story about what you are trying to accomplish, and a part of that story MUST involve making money. That old chestnut – the business model.
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Like any “real” company, you’re probably publishing a phone number for your customers. For the stealth startups out there, and those who are running a business from your home, services like Kall8 or Grasshopper make this easy by providing an 800 number that can ring your home number or cell when people call. you may be dumping these to voicemail and calling customers back later. If so, you customer sees your home number or cell number on caller ID. Doesn’t sound too good, does it?
So how do you keep your real phone number anonymous and still your customers from your home or cell number? Read on for the solution.
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Welcome to the first segment of “Ask Startup Next Door”.
Today’s question: “We’re doing a datacenter move in order to handle more capacity. How much of this should I tell the customers, and to what degree?
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Not all business partners are going to have the same “get it done” attitude that you do. Some will be lazy or get bored with your startup idea. Some will just need to quit for honorable personal reasons, like to take care of health or family. So how do you approach them to take the business out of their hands? Read on.
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I’m a BlackBerry. I’m a phone now, but years ago I was nothing but a glorified pager. I’m all grown up now. I now can make calls, take pictures and video, and utilize GPS and wi-fi.
As a BlackBerry, I’m not as sexy as the iPhone. I don’t have a philosophy that praises aesthetics, and I have way too many buttons compared to an iPhone.
My philosophy is “Let’s get your sh** done”. I’m not made to provide an experience. I’ll help you send an email, listen to a podcast, and fetch updates from Twitter all at the same time, so that you can go have real experiences.
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See this box? It’s the reason you’re here.
Once you click it, you can never go back.
As a newsletter subscriber or “insider”, you’ll get startup opinion and information that won’t be published anytime soon, or maybe ever. You’ll also get beta invitations to upcoming services that will be available on Startup Next Door in the near future.
What are you waiting for? Embrace your destiny and click the button.
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Back in my first startup where we were accepting credit cards, we purchased an SSL certificate in order to assure our customers that their credit card information was being transmitted securely.
We bought that SSL certificate from VeriSign for $495 per year. That was 2003.
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Today we feature an interview with the founders of KnowEm, a rapidly-growing startup that has found great success without venture capital or outside funding.
KnowEm is a brand protection service that allows you to create your brand’s user account on 300 popular social media sites and will not only help you secure your name but they can also show you how to contact each site in order to have the name released and returned to you in the case where someone creates an account in your brand’s name.
KnowEm is headquartered in Morristown, New Jersey and was started by Michael Streko and Barry Wise after a user account-checking website they had been using went offline. They decided to create their own and improved on the concept.
