not just random

Seattle 2.0 has a post on Most Influential Entrepreneur-Bloggers of Seattle.

I am not at all clear how influence is being measured here, but that’s okay. There are some very useful and/or informative blogs on the list.

When reading a startup’s blog, I enjoy both the personal bits and the posts describing technical issues, business discoveries, and so forth. A startup founder is by necessity putting a lot personal energy into the venture, so any sort of self-reflection or personal life issues are really an important part of the story.

What I find least interesting is a blog that provides nothing more than marketing pitches. I am sure that sort of content serves a purpose, it is just simply not, what I hope to read, when visiting a startup founder’s blog.

Every tech startup should have its own blog. Not just because I am curious about their stories (though chances are I am), but also for more useful reasons: Other people are also interested in the stories and it makes sense for your business.

• If you are a startup chances are pretty good that you are the underdog. That by definition makes you pretty interesting. People in general enjoy a good underdog story, especially on with a happy ending.
• You probably don’t have much of a budget for PR campaigns. Blogs, especially if you manage regular updates as well as useful content, tend to achieve pretty decent Google PageRanks. Traffic is good. You increase the likelihood of people knowing about your product.
• The posts or essays you publish can motivate you to regularly reflect on what you are doing and how things are going. Most activities that allow you to understand yourself (or your business) better are to be recommended.

All of this is old news. Back to the stories. Go, read Founders at work for some very good examples.

So far I have only experienced startups from an employee’s perspective. It presents a tremendous learning experience (so much to do, so little time; frequent learning and exploring of new things; etc.). I am sure that is probably even more so for a founder.

It’s in the stories.

Here’s something inspiring. Randy Pausch talks about childhood dreams and living life as part of what used to be the Last Lecture series at Carnegie Mellon University.

Fail pictures are a current, somewhat popular Internet meme. I first really came across them at the now no longer updated uncov, but there are other examples here or there.

Why is there no opposite meme - essentially images depicting success and triumph, rather than the failure and/or humiliation of some participant of a situation? Could there be?

At the end of last year, my wife and I were shopping for Christmas trees. We found an artificial, but very real looking tree - only to find out the store did not have a packaged one in storage. Checking their system, an employee was able to point us to a different store location that *may* be able to help us. We ended up going for an alternative at a different store altogether.

More recently, I was shopping for a new jacket. I found one online that I quite liked and ended up visiting two local store locations without success. The size I need is currently unavailable online. I know there are quite a few more store location within a driving distance of maybe two hours. How do I tell which store carries the item in the required size and color?

I could call them all until either I find a store that has the jacket or I run out of stores, in which case I am entirely out of luck. The amount of effort is directly proportional to the number of stores I need to contact. Besides, there may be a store that is further away than I am willing to drive, but that might still be willing to send me the jacket via mail. How would I know?

One solution for this may be a web service that allows me to search for a product based on geographic area, i.e. users get to specify a product name and a zip code and the system provides a list of stores in the area that carry the item.

There are a few companies that work on services like that, including: Yokel, NearbyNow and Krillion.

Some websites, such as Best Buy can show you, which nearby stores carry a specific inventory item. Amazon.com provides a local pickup option for lots of their products.

None of these options helped me with my jacket, but it did get me thinking: How would one go about getting access to product availability for brands that are not already providing it? How much interest is there from manufacturer side? How about potential customers?

More on this later.