Startup Next Door

Let’s face it. We want to make all our customers happy.  More happy customers means more money and fewer complaints.

So what happens when you discover that a feature isn’t working properly in one obscure browser?  If you’re like me, you let it go. 

There are quite a few obscure browsers out there, and my obscure meaning that the percent of the overall users using them is very little: Opera, Konqueror, Seamonkey, SRWare Iron, K-Meleon, Lunascape, FlashPeak SlimBrowser, Songbird, Beonex, Camino, Galeon, Epiphany, Kazehakase, Avant Browser, Maxthon, and I’m sure the list continues.  Even well known browsers (though older versions) fall into this category: Firefox 2, IE 5.5, etc.

Read the rest of this entry »

This is Part III of the Delaware LLC series. Start series here.

OK, this is where the real action happens. Once you’ve got your business and personal accounts separated, it’s time to take the plunge and get your LLC.  There are any number of companies that would jump to help you: The Company Corporation and LegalZoom are just two.  But since I’ve had good experience with LegalZoom in the past I used them.

I’ll guide you through the whole process, which takes about 30 minutes.  Let’s go!

Read the rest of this entry »

This is Part II of the Delaware LLC series.  Start series here.

In order to protect your personal assets, it’s vital to separate your personal money, expenses, and debt from those of your business, or you may forfeit the legal protections that LLCs and corporations offer.

Read the rest of this entry »

Part I: Why you need one, and your options

This is the first of a three-part series on how to set your startup with a Delaware LLC. I recently did this, and will guide you through the process. Let’s get started.

Sole Proprietorships are good if you are very small

When you’re first starting your business and you’re making a few bucks, you don’t have to worry too much about getting sued. For one, you may only have a few customers, you’re making them happy, and they are paying you. But as time goes on and your customer base grows, it’s realistic to expect that something will go wrong.

Read the rest of this entry »

I was dumb.  There was once a thriving forum on zKorean.  In an attempt to make some money from the heavy forum traffic I announced I would charge members a monthly charge to use it.  This was met with protest, as many people had contributed a lot of time helping others on the forum.  I analyzed this to mean that people would not pay to use the site because I’m just a guy, not a business.  But I was wrong. It was just a dumb thing to ask users to pay for.

Read the rest of this entry »

When I first moved from a shared host to a dedicated server, and had my sites set up to send email (to customers), I immediately received rejections from Yahoo, Hotmail, AOL, and many other email servers (this was before there was Gmail).  The rejections all shared the same reason.  The IP block my server was in was blacklisted.  That means that the IP address of my server was within a list of neighboring IP addresses that was blacklisted.  It seems people grabbed dedicated servers and used them as spamming machines.

Read the rest of this entry »

You may not be aware that placing your email address on your “contact us” page is a sure-fire way to get yourself truckloads of spam.  As we speak, there are bots traversing the web, looking for email addresses that have been published publicly on web pages.  These email addresses (and items that resemble email addresses) are stored and sold to spammers.

Read the rest of this entry »

As I mentioned a few months back in I’m a Startup Rancher, I tend to create startups, let them run for a while, and see if they have any traction.  Some flop due to difficulties in the business model, or in the marketing, or just because I didn’t solve a problem that many people had.  So the failed startups get taken offline and are heaped onto the compost pile.  But once you have paying customers, turning off a service that people depend on can have big consequences.

Read the rest of this entry »

He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing.

  – Paul Atreides

And if that thing is valuable, you become the monopoly.

Providing a reference tool is a good business idea.  I’ve been in organizations where having a large-size data repository and searching capabilities keep people coming back.  This is a solid method for building a long-term SaaS (software as a service) where you can charge a monthly subscription for its use.

Read the rest of this entry »

Before the web, everyone had a Rand-McNally map in their car.  Once the web was prevalent, MapQuest was the destination for getting maps online.  Then around 2005, Google began to pull market share from MapQuest and is finally now surpassing MapQuest.

If you go to Rand-McNally nowadays, it looks like MapQuest did back in 2005.

Read the rest of this entry »