Congratulations to TechGuy, who’s Marketing Mob idea bounced Web Apprenticeships off the ropes before delivering a mighty body slam!

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The Idea: Marketing Mob

Marketing Mob is a group marketing their skills and assets. Businesses contact this group with press releases or exciting news. The message would then be promoted by the marketing “mob” in return for Royalty Points, Cambros or cash. Marketing Mob members are expected to fully disclose that payments are being made, and will have discretion to write whatever they want to promote or review a business, including constructive criticism.

Mediums this mob can use are:
Blogs, Podcasts, Videos, Forums, Email Lists, Other webpage advertising, YouTube Views, Craigs List, Facebook, etc.

What kind of a man would come up with such an idea? Who is this mysterious “TechGuy“?

No one really knows, but we hear rumors that he lives in Vegas, yet speaks Italian. Word on the street is that his favorite super power is the ability to fly. And by water-boarding random citizens, we now know that TechGuy’s 3 favorite things are: his wife, ultimate frisbee and technology.

For winning the Oracle of Omaha IdeaWarz Tournament, TechGuy receives $1000 in prize money, and an authentic Jessye Cook designed t-shirt. Remember stories about kids getting mugged for their Air Jordan shoes? Well this shirt is one-of-a-kind. TechGuy, watch your back!

We’d also like to congratulate PsychSplash for putting up a good fight. His idea Web Apprenticeships received a lot of support from the community, and definitely has legs.

While the competition was fierce, there is no love lost between the contestants… having already sparred in the Golden Axe Tournament. In fact, PsychSplash is a member of the Marketing Mob team!

Whether you’re a possible contender for a future tournament, or just an avid IdeaWarz fan, you may be distraught to see that we’re not yet announcing the next tournament. Don’t panic! We’re only hitting the pause button momentarily as we address:

• JR getting me (Gord) up to speed on IdeaWarz administration (as he’s now got a new daughter to take care of!), and passing on the ancient traditions of IdeaWarz hosting as he grabs the reigns of Team GWABS!
• Updating the IdeaWarz code base, so that we can easily roll out exciting new features!

Until next time… May the best idea win!

 Gord and JR Accounce Winner [5:47m]: Download

Traffic Stats for Web 2.0’s 25 Hottest Sites May 2007

No big surprises here, but a fantastic look at what the most popular Web 2.0 sites are getting as far as traffic. The only site that makes me scratch my head is Photobucket beating Facebook. WTH!

Ship Floating On “Nothing”?

Take a look at this video, it’s kinda freaky to see a tinfoil ship floating on ‘nothing’. Well it’s actually a gas that is denser than air! My science fair projects would have been awesome had I known this in school.

Amazon reveals DRM-free music store

Apple and Amazon are both coming out with a DRM Free music service sometime very soon. According to Amazon 12,000 independant labels have signed up to this unnamed store. I think it’s about time this happened. Kudos to Amazon and Apple.

Apple iPhone being released June 20th

According to CNBC, the iPhone will be “in stores” on that date. Apple’s iPhone had been officially targeted for “late June”. Unfortunately for Canada the release date is still set for late Q4.

And finally my inapropriate but funny links of the week…you have been warned!

The 22 Worst Place Names in the World

Best Glitch in gaming history

Students playing with $100 laptops around the world

A number of videos of kids in Thailand playing with the $100 laptops. These laptops, made by Quanta, have all of the specs a kid needs to get started with computers. The best thing about these laptops is they’re using Linux as the Operating system!

Flickrvision

By far the coolest tool I’ve seen come out of late. This is a wicked mashup of Flickr and Google. Every couple of seconds new photos are posted to flickr but who knows where they are coming from? This tool places those new photos on Google Maps as they are posted. Very addictive!

Dell launches ultra thin monitor

Super slick, sexy, and super thin. Dell’s created one of the most unique monitors as of late. What can I say…I’m a gadget nut!

Microsoft - Popfly Alpha

From Microsoft: Popfly is the fun, easy way to build and share mashups, gadgets, Web pages, and applications. Popfly consists of two parts. 1) Popfly Creator is a set of online visual tools for building Web pages and mashups. 2) Popfly Space is an online community of creators where you can host, share, rate, comment and even remix creations from other Popfly users.

And finally my favorite video of the week, and yes…it’s totally inappropriate.

Masturbation gesture gone VERY wrong in the office

I mean come on. Macs are popping up everywhere.

Just yesterday I caught my best friend, who has been a proud Mac hater for years (he is also the President of the FireFox hater club), sitting in front of an iMac casually surfing the web, using Safari, asking a colleague whether iMacs comes with dual core processors.

Sheesh! What’s the world coming to? Macs are everywhere!

Is it an East Coast West Coast thing?

Whenever I travel out East (New York, Boston) I feel corporate and safe carrying my PC. PCs seem to dominate the conferences and landscapes out there. At a conference out East, I could sit down at a table in my freshly pressed white collar shirt, dig out my fillintheblank consulting card, pass it across the table to a similar dressed young man, and start swapping squash tips after we talked about rising interest rates and their impact on the economy.

I feel safe, comfortable, and secure with my PC out East.

On the West coast it’s completely different. No one carries a PC. Whenever I attend any event in San Fran I always feel self-conscious when I pull out my PC. People stare. They whisper. They look at me with pity - like I am the only one who hasn’t discovered the Caramilk secret.

I overhear them ask their neighbors, ‘Who’s that poor sap with the PC?’

‘I don’t know?’ their neighbor replies. ‘He must be from out East.’

Then they knowingly stare into each others eyes, and simultaneously turn to their halter sacks, where they every so delicately remove the soft, velvet sheet covering their most precious possession - their MacBook. As they lift the lid the room brightens every so slightly with a divine glow, as if the gods themselves have blessed this sacred event.

Is it a way of life thing?

I want to buy a Mac just so I can hang out with all the other cool people. We would watch An Inconvenient Truth together, talk about the Democrats and how Gore was robbed in that election. We would swap VW stories, share free love, good karma, and feel for everyone currently trying to upgrade to Vista.

I know I am saying nothing new when I credit Apple for creating not just a great technology company, but a great way of life company.

Owning a Mac is a way of life.

So what’s a guy to do?

My wife and I almost bought or first Mac this year (I was so excited!), until a very cheap PC laptop fell into our laps for almost nothing, which replaced our old 400MHz Pentium II Dell Inspirion that I got in 1998 for $4500 (don’t laugh I got my money’s worth).

I further justified the PC by convincing myself that it would be very painful to transfer all my Quiken files, Outlook contacts, Black Berry (not to mention favorite computer games) from my PC to my Mac. So maybe I am not ready to take the plunge just yet.

But I still long to hang with the cool kids. I want to walk into my local Star Bucks, sit down with my vendi-whip-cream-topped-raspberry-mocha-chip-frappuccino, open my knapsack, flip open my brand new shiny MacBook, and seamlessly connect to the global conscious they call the Internet and rejoice with all my other Mac friends.

Am I the only one feeling this?
Has anyone taken the plunge and become cool lately?

Mac or PC?

And where does Feisty-Fawn-Ubuntu fit into all this?

Hiya all,

As part of this week’s Oracle of Omaha tournament I thought I would share my Top 10 Warren Buffet quotes. Read these carefully and tell me whether you agree or disagree with Warren’s advice. If you have a favorite, I would love to hear that too.

1. Look at market fluctuations as your friend rather than your enemy; profit from folly rather than participate in it.

2. We simply attempt to be fearful when others are greedy and to be greedy only when others are fearful.

3. If past history was all there was to the game, the richest people would be librarians.

4. The investor of today does not profit from yesterday’s growth.

5. It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.

6. Most people get interested in stocks when everyone else is. The time to get interested is when no one else is. You can’t buy what is popular and do well.

7. Unless you can watch your stock holding decline by 50% without becoming panic-stricken, you should not be in the stock market.

8. Stop trying to predict the direction of the stock market, the economy, interest rates, or elections.

9. Buy companies with strong histories of profitability and with a dominant business franchise.

10. As far as you are concerned, the stock market does not exist. Ignore it.

3 More Bonus quotes (I couldn’t resist adding these).

11. An investor should act as though he had a lifetime decision card with just twenty punches on it.

12. An investor needs to do very few things right as long as he or she avoids big mistakes.

13. “Turn-arounds” seldom turn.

Hiya all,

This latest release of the website has some new transaction features definitely worth checking out if you are going pro on your idea.

What makes crowdsourcing interesting is that members can compensate one another for each others’ feedback, ideas, work, etc. Wisdom and participation of crowds is worth everything to someone who wants to make their idea come to life, or build a game-changing business.

Reward team members with Cambros

You can now reward team members for working on your business by purchasing and distributing your own Cambros. Cambros can be bought via the My Account tab off of your profile.

1 Cambro = 1 USD. Payments are processed using PayPal (which also supports straight up VISA).

Reward team members with Royalty Points

Some businesses champions might not want to pay Cambros, and some members might prefer being compensated by being guaranteed a slice of the business’ revenue. We’ve designed Royalty Points so you can do just that.

Distribute Cambros and Royalty Points using the Finance tab under your business.

Stay tuned for next week when we release the first version of the Bazaar - your meeting place for exchanging goods and services within the community.

Hiya all,

We’ve created this new category to discuss all things regarding the Cambrian House product (website).

Here you will find:

• new product releases
• feature updates
• tips and tricks
• and good product information

Stay tuned as we will be releasing new website feature information here very shortly.

Ali and Hadi Partovi (of iLike.com) are two entrepreneurs who recently gave a talk called Is My Idea a Winner at the YCombinator startup school.

Ali was a co-founder of LinkExchange which was acquired by Microsoft in 1998. Hadi was a Group manager at Microsoft responsible for Internet Explorer and MSN.com. He co-founded Tellme Networks and eventually joined his brother at GarageBand.com (which turned into iLike.com).

After listening to the podcast, I thought their advice was good, and worth sharing.

Here are some of the highlights (along with my own commentary and thoughts):

Can you easily explain your customer’s needs in one or two sentences

As Ali and Hadi point out this is different than an elevator pitch. The elevator pitch is great at explaining what you do. But a customer pitch is focused purely on what’s in it for the customer.

Google – finds stuff
eBay – auctions
iPod – brings music to your ear

In just a few words, try to summarize what your product or service does for your customer. This exercise can be harder than it sounds, but it prevents you from trying to be everything to everyone and feeds all other aspects of your business from marketing, to sales, to pitching investors.

Look for ideas that scale

There are lots of ways to build profitable companies off human labor. You are not going to change the world however starting another law firm. Ideas that truly pop are ones that scale.

It may cost Microsoft $1Billion dollars to cut the first version of Vista, but each one after costs a dollar.

Web 2.0 startups have huge upside, if they can figure out how to use software and technology to reach and influence many people, with little relative effort (i.e. FaceBook).

Will your product naturally recruit new users?

How viral is your product?
Will people talk about it?
Will the value each customer gets increase as the community of users grows?

If you can do that, you have the elements of a natural monopoly. It is much harder for competition to enter your space once you have all the customers. eBay may not have the best UI, slickest design, or the greatest technology, but they have locked up almost all the buyers and sellers.

What’s your added value

I love this definition of added value:

Added value = Size of pie when I am in the game – size of pie when I am not

An advertising company may make $10Million/year by having Proctor and Gamble as a customer. If they were to fold however, P&G could simply take their advertising dollars somewhere else.

Compare that now with Google. Google has thousands of customers who each spend $100/month. If any one customer were to leave Google, it wouldn’t really hurt them. If Google were to fold however, a lot of people would be hurting – that’s added value.

The brother’s advice is to try and look for opportunities where you bring all the value. When you are dependent on a single customer, they have you by the short curlys and get all the leverage and value from the relationship.

A piece of a smaller pie, is better that no piece of a bigger one

One of the brother’s jobs at their startup was to negotiate strategic deals with Yahoo and Microsoft. Something he learned early was that it was better to leave something on the table, and get the deal signed quickly, instead of holding out and trying to wait for the perfect deal. He recommends startups let the other side get a bigger piece of the pie, and accept a less than perfect deal, but get it done.

Make sure you love what you do

The brothers strongly encourage entrepreneurs not to start companies for money or fame. They should start their companies because they literally love what they do.

Success is 1% inspiration, and 99% perspiration – Thomas Edison

Working at a startup is like a roller coaster. There are ups. And there are downs. And unless you love what you do, you’re not going to make it through the downs.

Check out this and other YCombinator podcasts here.

As I was riding my bike to work this morning, I noticed my knapsack felt a little light. I reached back, and much to my dismay, realized I had forgotten my laptop at home.

Rats!

I hate it when that happens. I could picture it sitting at home, on the kitchen table, open to the BBC news where I left in a rush.

Instantly my mind started to race - what was I going to do? My laptop is my life!

Everything I do is on there:

• email
• the web!
• build our product
• instant messaging
• my music
• my blog
• other peoples blogs
• iTunes

How was I going to work without my laptop?

The thought of returning home to pick it up hurt too much. I was just going to accept that for one day, I wouldn’t have my laptop. As soon as I accepted my fate, a funny thing happened. My brain instantly started constraint resolving. My brain started to figure out ways I could be productive without my laptop.

Without my laptop, I could do things like:

• interact more with the team
• write a blog on paper and pen
• plan ahead
• talk to people
• think about how to improve our product
• pitch in and help out others
• test our latest release pairing with someone else
• review our latest designs

Suddenly the day didn’t look so bad. I could contribute. I could be productive. Man has worked for thousands of years without laptops. I can work for one day without mine. Laptop smaptop - look out day here I come!

It was with that attitude that I took on the day and had the most productive day ever.

So don’t despair if you forget your laptop at home - all it not lost. Think about all the other productive things you can do and prepare yourself for one of your most productive days ever.

Greg McAdoo, of Sequoia Capital, is a big fan of startups who find customers whose hair is on fire, and then sells them a fire hose.

When someone’s hair is on fire, they don’t care if the fire hose is not the right color, leaks a bit, or has all the right government certifications. They just want to put the fire out and are willing to pay a lot for it.

When searching for ideas for your startup, if you can’t find examples of customers whose hair on fire, try a different approach.

Set the fire yourself.

Cirque du Soleil did this with the traditional circus.
Apple did it with the iPod.
Reddit did this with news.

So when trying to come up with that new killer startup idea, don’t worry if you can’t find customers whose hair’s on fire. Start your own and be ready with the hose.

To explore these ideas further check out:

Blue Ocean Strategy

And the YCombinator Startup school podcasts.

The Fire hose metaphor came from the 2007: Greg McAdoo Sequoia Capital podcast (13:50 min).