The Cheap Revolution (for entrepreneurs)

tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-141595322011-11-23T15:15:24.999-08:00The Cheap Revolution (for entrepreneurs)Armed with limited dollars and a boatload of passion, today's entrepreneurs and startups need winning strategies to help them get to the next level. Using high value, low cost techniques, Cheap Revolutionaries are empowered to make the previously impossible a reality.Skip Shudahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01014000630517640291noreply@blogger.comBlogger291100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14159532.post-7667308191515570582007-03-26T14:33:00.000-07:002007-03-26T14:35:31.782-07:00We've moved!

We've moved! Our new blog can now be found at www.cheaprevolution.comSee you there!

Skip Shudahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01014000630517640291noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14159532.post-68612112131129007372007-01-05T18:36:00.000-08:002007-01-08T18:31:35.025-08:00Entrepreneurial types: quick descriptions and poll

Eight types of entrepreneurs organized by their primary motivations based on my working practice with tech entrepreneurs. - Skip Shuda1) Get Big Fast (Tagline: Scale)Commentary: I've encountered a number of student entrepreneurs who fit this category. Their unbridled enthusiasm and optimism is a double-edged sword.2) Freedom Builder - Industrialist (Tagline: Creating Value in Emerging Markets)

Skip Shudahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01014000630517640291noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14159532.post-1155119727211556212007-01-02T18:08:00.000-08:002007-01-08T18:32:07.850-08:00Quiz: What kind of entrepreneur are you?

A few months ago a strategic planning exercise led me to ask about the kinds of technology entrepreneurs that I have encountered in the marketplace. Since then, I've done some research into typologies that help with understanding ourselves and others. After I describe my eight entrepreneurial types, I include some quick references into this type of research.My work focuses on helping

Skip Shudahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01014000630517640291noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14159532.post-10090567911714613232007-01-02T07:00:00.000-08:002007-01-02T07:24:48.863-08:00New Year Resolutions (hopes, dreams, plans) - A snapshot

This New Year Celebration we placed some large posters in our living room for friends and family to record their resolutions. My wife insisted on providing the option of calling them hopes, dreams, plans... which made the exercise a lot less threatening to people. Below I've grouped the resolutions by ages and gender (Male or Female). Its fun to hear the different inner voices calling out in

Skip Shudahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01014000630517640291noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14159532.post-36329242150412538812006-12-20T16:43:00.000-08:002006-12-20T17:15:44.890-08:00A year-end walk around the four corners of our business life

The end of the year is a wonderful time to take stock of you and your business. We often have a couple of extra days of "down time" from work and are being encouraged to be reflective, make New Years resolutions, etc.The example below provides a framework for a year-end walk around the different aspects of our life as a professional. Starting in the upper left and move clockwise, it takes you

Skip Shudahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01014000630517640291noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14159532.post-1164285878986703072006-11-23T04:37:00.000-08:002006-11-23T04:44:39.000-08:00Case Studies of Startups provides valuable insight

If you are creating an Internet-based businesse, what kind of online model should you pursue? Subscription based? Ad based? Software as a service? A combination? How will you get the word out? What kinds of things make a web site attractive to others?The blog Startup Review by Nisan Gabbay provides examples that are helpful to any tech entrepreneur looking to start a new business on the

Skip Shudahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01014000630517640291noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14159532.post-1162959041051927622006-11-07T20:06:00.000-08:002006-11-07T20:35:23.896-08:00Team and a Dream interns win First Place

Team and a Dream interns Pitchada "Peach" Jindasataporn and Yasmine Mustafa won First Place in the Business Innovation Competition in the area of Innovation Ideas from a field of over 80 entrants. Entries were judged by a panel of experienced entrepreneurs, senior corporate executives, and venture capitalists from the greater Philadelphia area.Yasmine and Peach are Entrepreneurship Majors at

Skip Shudahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01014000630517640291noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14159532.post-1156566843321774532006-08-25T21:30:00.000-07:002006-12-19T23:27:26.430-08:00Evaluating Three Wiki Applications

I was recently given the mission to create a Wiki for a Team and a Dream client using a third party application.I therefore briefly evaluated three Wiki interfaces: http://www.jotspot.com/, http://www.pbwiki.com, and http://www.atlassian.com/confluence.I opened a trial account on each, and spent roughly an hour or so creating and browsing my options for each of my Wikis.I must say, from not even

Ryan Meinzerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00991198307921728349noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14159532.post-1156450260949762362006-08-24T12:48:00.000-07:002006-08-25T09:22:55.080-07:00New Construction: Web Real Estate Basics

Do you own a second home or a rental property? According to Harris Interactive, 25% of American Baby Boomers own more than one property. Thats nearly 20 million Americans with two or more real estate properties. .Do you own any web/internet properties?I was talking to a good friend about a domain name that I owned ( www.destiny.com ). The name is being leased to another party who has not put it

Skip Shudahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01014000630517640291noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14159532.post-1155852752102458672006-08-17T15:10:00.000-07:002006-08-24T13:21:16.360-07:00The Perfect Web Application Partner is found!

After the last several weeks of pain-stakingly grinding through the creation of the "just right" job description, reviewing nearly 40 vendor responses, outlining 2nd and then 3rd levels of screening questions (see recent posts), I had narrowed the choice to five vendors.I layered in a round of detailed information about the project specifics, the budget and their proposal. None of the vendors had

Skip Shudahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01014000630517640291noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14159532.post-1153685819339648482006-07-23T13:16:00.000-07:002006-08-17T15:24:46.753-07:00Gaining a Web Application partner, finding the signal...

One the most enjoyable parts of finding willing participants in The Cheap Revolution is the screening process. I think this is partly because you may be finding a new business colleague, another connection and, maybe even a new friend. When you find someone that just clicks, it is a reward unto itself.To do screening well, you must be part detective work, part psychologist and part businessperson

Skip Shudahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01014000630517640291noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14159532.post-1152663435278188692006-07-11T16:56:00.000-07:002006-08-17T15:22:35.003-07:00Screening Global Development Vendors - Some Criteria & Steps

In our last blog, we had submitted a request to find a global web-application development partner...As of tonight (1 week later), we have collected 33 responses.Here are a few ways in which the respondents stood out:- one group's answer to "how will your employees benefit from this project?" was "our marriage will improve!". Turns out to be a husband-wife team.- only one of the respondents used

Skip Shudahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01014000630517640291noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14159532.post-1152106047488377192006-07-05T06:10:00.000-07:002006-08-17T15:19:00.880-07:00Experiment: Recruiting a global development team (part I)

On Monday night, July 3rd, I posted a description to Guru (see below) to find a qualified web-development team to help me with a series of Internet Property Development initiatives. I tailored the description to the ideal Cheap Revolution development team (for my needs). Twenty four hours later, I had 21 respondents (nearly 1 per hour).I thought it might be interesting to track our progress in

Skip Shudahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01014000630517640291noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14159532.post-1150286449405787882006-06-14T04:21:00.000-07:002006-06-14T05:00:50.580-07:00Creating Significance in a World of Abundance

At the Global Creative Economy Convergence Summit in Philadelphia yesterday, Author Dan Pink (A Whole New Mind) talked about how design was a combination of utility and significance. In today’s economy, much of the value and margin in a product or service is created by significance. In the course of doing business, the differentiators I often hear are along the lines of: We have great

Skip Shudahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01014000630517640291noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14159532.post-1148128860668552212006-05-20T04:33:00.000-07:002006-05-20T05:41:01.816-07:00On Trust: Astronauts don't launch their own rockets

Years ago, I wrote this piece to illustrate the importance of trusting others while building an organization. Sometimes your own self-importance gets in the way of growing a thriving business.If you want to find other ideas like this, check out the Startup Advice page at Team and a Dream.- SkipThousands of years ago, people could only get around on foot. They could cover maybe 15-20 miles with

Skip Shudahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01014000630517640291noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14159532.post-1147711252186405332006-05-15T09:32:00.000-07:002006-05-15T09:40:52.196-07:00What is a real VC meeting like?

I thought it would be interesting to include this exchange staged between two people from the Philadelphia tech entrepreneurial community. I've worked with Nate Stevens at NatPal - and his energy and enthusiasm has propelled him forward in a dynamic, online marketplace. Doug Alexander is an incisive technology VC insider who has been around the block. The two squared off as part of the Wharton

Skip Shudahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01014000630517640291noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14159532.post-1145646777427219902006-04-21T12:10:00.000-07:002006-04-21T12:12:57.440-07:00Web 2.0 Startup Fever

My friend Andrea provided this link on how Web 2.0 Startups are growing up with minimal capital - and making minimal revenue. A great view in the first paragraph of all the great tools available for FREE. Cheap is Good!Thanks, Andrea!Web 2.0 Startup Fever by Wade Rousch

Skip Shudahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01014000630517640291noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14159532.post-1143633066104156522006-03-29T03:37:00.000-08:002006-04-03T10:56:53.193-07:00The World is Flat and The Cheap Revolution

Tom Friedman describes ten flatteners that have shrunk our world to a tiny size. He advocates that this is a critical inflection point and that Americans had better wake up to it or watch the world pass us by.See more about the ten flatteners at David Graves blog or, for more in-depth, check out The Illumincated Innovant: The World is Flat.You can also get an excellent overview of Friedman's talk

Skip Shudahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01014000630517640291noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14159532.post-1142775625653862722006-03-19T05:29:00.000-08:002006-03-19T05:40:25.666-08:00The cost of sharing information: an experiment

To test out the concepts of “Democratization of Knowledge”, I decided to do a spontaneous experiment. At 6:52 AM, I decided to use my new digital camera to record a digital video of myself and send it across the country to a friend. I had never used the digital recording feature of this camera and I had never shipped such a video to anyone.I bought the previous generation Kodak DX6490 camera for

Skip Shudahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01014000630517640291noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14159532.post-1141159548810966892006-02-28T12:37:00.000-08:002006-03-21T12:12:49.213-08:00Guest Blog-Posting by David Miller on Competitive Intelligence

(We invited Corporate Weather COO David Miller to talk about the importance of Competitive Intelligence and the latest offering from Team and a Dream.)Wikipedia.com describes competitive intelligence as “researching the business environment a (usually private) firm operates in, in order to influence its emerging strategy for business development.” All companies today are now playing a market

Skip Shudahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01014000630517640291noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14159532.post-1139030465817097402006-02-03T20:36:00.000-08:002006-03-18T07:03:34.883-08:00Student Intern or COO - Eight Steps to a student-COO

In late 1994, Web browsers were less than a five year old invention. I had decided to build my first web-site for a client. I needed an web expert! Since Monster.com, Guru.com and eLance.com were still several years away, I ended up searching resumes in a Usenet newsgroup.It was there that I found one of the first HTML-based resumes ever posted. I hired a kid fresh out of college to help me

Skip Shudahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01014000630517640291noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14159532.post-1134844919597639852005-12-17T10:22:00.000-08:002005-12-21T08:57:49.780-08:00Spirit and Business

Does a discussion of Spirit belong in the business world?After all, business is about making money. Right?Wrong.Business is about making meaning. Read what Guy Kawasaki says in The Art of the Start about the story of Arthur Rock, builder and investor ofworld class companies like Intel, Fairchild Semiconductor and Apple."If you want to get an investment, show that you will build a business. Make

Skip Shudahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01014000630517640291noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14159532.post-1133468396570218512005-12-01T12:02:00.000-08:002005-12-01T13:14:11.586-08:00Top 10 Ways to Retain IT Talent

I've been asked to serve on a panel hosted by Alan Preston of Preston Performance next week on "Keeping your Best and Brightest Technical Talent".So I asked myself - in the best situations I've been in, what are the most effective strategies for keeping IT people around in the numerous tech companies I've worked with?There were only three (legal) ways I can think of for employers to retain IT

Skip Shudahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01014000630517640291noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14159532.post-1132672387060216012005-11-22T06:59:00.000-08:002005-11-22T11:54:23.880-08:00Are you competing on price or value?

"Are you competing on price or value?"My friend "Mikey" asked me this about a new offering I plan to roll out to my Team and a Dream clients. It seemed like a good, solid question.But the more I thought about it, the more I thought that the answer was "both". Of course, with traditional offerings, you are either trying to provide "good enough" value at a low price point (competing on price) or

Skip Shudahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01014000630517640291noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14159532.post-1129936844411396832005-10-21T14:06:00.000-07:002005-11-05T14:18:22.433-08:00Different kinds of Cheap

Say you want to create a new logo for your startup. You type “Logo” into your web search engine and Voila! The World Wide Web provides you with 1.8 Billion choices of sites that talk about logos.You find logo guides, logo generators, logo books, logo clip-art, logo designers and logo strategists! Which one is right for you? In theory, you end up with a logo no matter which one you choose?Is a

Skip Shudahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01014000630517640291noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14159532.post-1128866126978740642005-10-09T06:54:00.000-07:002005-10-09T06:55:26.983-07:00Extreme Outsourcing: Another way to participate in The Cheap Revolution

Extreme Outsourcing is a concept that embraces the principals of The Cheap Revolution. Our good friend, extraordinary technology entrepreneur and unit of 1 founder Andrea Michalek is profiled in this article as well.Extreme Outsourcing - Forbes.com

Skip Shudahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01014000630517640291noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14159532.post-1128533143154380392005-10-05T10:25:00.000-07:002005-10-05T10:32:57.403-07:00Are there dangers in going "Cheap"? Pixelgirl warns about one service.

This article was sent to me by a designer who is worried about questionable practices from online Logo firms like Logoworks. I can say that I've used Logoworks with decent success. While I didn't choose their design for my Team and a Dream Logo (www.teamandadream.com), I did use their Logo for the Business Services Network page. Check out http://www.teamandadream.com/Services.htm.The Team and

Skip Shudahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01014000630517640291noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14159532.post-1127743525632558922005-09-26T06:49:00.000-07:002005-09-26T07:13:48.950-07:00Five Lessons from The Cheap Revolution Panel

We had a fun time at Villanova talking over the Cheap Revolution. See the press release for details. Here are five takeaways:1) Information wants to be free... and it will be! from author Lee Devin (Artful Making) relaying a quote from a recent innovation conference speaker he heard.I like the revolutionary feel of this. It is, I think, a driving force behind The Cheap Revolution.2) You can't

Skip Shudahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01014000630517640291noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14159532.post-1125342294363023862005-08-29T11:56:00.000-07:002005-08-30T07:34:55.180-07:00The half-life of a business event

"We've been making progress in fits and starts!","Just one month ago we had great momentum!","When are you going to stop planning and get going?!"If you hear these thoughts running through your head or business conversations,then you may be suffering from the side effects of the half-life of business events.The half-life of business events is the observation that significant entrepreneurial

Skip Shudahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01014000630517640291noreply@blogger.com1