Since the blog’s launch in June, the site has seen over 10,000 pageviews from over 5,0000 unique visitors in 114 countries and the RSS subscriber base has grown to over 200. THANK YOU! Below are the two 5 posts from this year… take a look if you missed them or want a refresher.

1. Personal productivity
2. How to become a search marketing pro
3. Add Bing search to your site
4. 11 plugins every WordPress blog should have
5. Startup Weekend

I read somewhere that publishing your goals for all to see greatly increases the chances of reaching your goal. So, my goals for 2010 (”twenty ten“) are to:

• Take a vacation from work/life and totally unplug from everything. No phone, laptop, etc. Just beautiful scenery and my thoughts.
• Publish 15 posts on this blog.
• Attend 3 entrepreneurship, online marketing, or startup conferences.
• Start to learn a spoken foreign language. (I took Latin in school.)
• Travel to 2 other countries for either work or pleasure.
• Donate $200 and volunteer 8 hours to/for a non-profit.
• Write 3 business plans for business start-up ideas I have.
• And most importantly…. HAVE FUN AND ENJOY LIFE!

Below is an excerpt from the “New Year’s resolution” article on Wikipedia on success rates. It’s quite interesting, especially if you’re setting goals for this year.

Recent research shows that while 52% of participants in a resolution study were confident of success with their goals, only 12% actually achieved their goals. Men achieved their goal 22% more often when they engaged in goal setting, a system where small measurable goals are used (lose a pound a week, instead of saying “lose weight”), while women succeeded 10% more when they made their goals public and got support from their friends.

This post is part of a series on my notes from Startup Day 2009, a conference for pre-entrepreneurs interested in founding or joining a tech startup in the Seattle area.

What is bootstrapping? Self-funded thru cash flow, not VC or angel backed.

Why bootstrap?

1. No money. It’s very difficult to raise funding, especially in today’s economy.
2. Retain control. Taking funding will likely give you more “bosses,” all with different agendas. Most VCs have backgrounds in things that aren’t probably relevant to your org.
3. Cash-poor leads to better decisions. Limited cash drives better decisions earlier, must cut all non-essential expenses, must generate enough cash to pay the bills. Company DNA is set very early and being cash poor creates the right type of DNA.
4. Reduce risk. No strings attached.
5. Don’t get ripped off. Most entrepreneurs don’t understand the impact of liquidation preference, etc and can easily get ripped off.

Bootstrap tips:

• Build a team with complementary skills
• Start with a one-year runway of cash
• All decisions are based on $ today
  • Not revenue focused = not customer focused
  • Technical IP, product features, team expertise are all secondary
  • Be creative
  • Don’t write a business plan. Do, don’t plan.
  • Imitate best practices of VC-funded companies
    • Maintain big aspirations
    • Distribute ownership among employees: stock option plan
    • Don’t mix personal/business

Why NOT bootstrap:

• Capital-intensive business
• You’re willing to make your business your life
• You have NO other alternatives

First of all, congrats to the Windows 7 group for launching an amazing product. I’ve been using it for over 3 months now after using a Mac for over 2 years and can say it’s the best operating system I’ve ever used.

Secondly, one of the neatest features of Bing is the homepage image. Every day I come into work and open up Bing just see the most awesome pictures. Turns out, a lot of other people do that as well and ask us for desktop versions of our homepage images. And now they’re available! The homepage team selected the top images from June, July, and August, and then worked with the Windows 7 personalization team to create a theme pack (download here) featuring these 20 gorgeous wallpapers:

Wow! That’s really the only way to describe Startup Weekend Bizspark, a 54-hour startup event that was held in Redmond a few weeks ago. It was much more “work” than I expected, but I learned a lot around people/project management and demos, particularly. I would absolutely recommend Startup Weekend to anyone who is interested in tech startups and entrepreneurship.

My advice to anyone doing a Startup Weekend

1. Pick a project you can actually complete in a weekend. I saw some really great ideas that never came to fruition, because it’s only a weekend.
2. Your demo shouldn’t have slides. I saw some great projects, but some of the demos fell flat. You shouldn’t go up and talk about market size/opportunity, how much investment you need, etc. Focus on the weekend. Show people what was made and maybe what’s coming out next.
3. Have fun. Work hard, network, and make a really cool product, but make sure you have some fun, too!

Meet FriendMosaic

FriendMosaic is a site that makes awesome mosaics of your Twitter profile picture using the pictures of your friends and followers. You can then share your mosaic with friends via the built in image hosting, and purchase merchandise with your mosaic on them.

The founding team at #StartupWeekend team was @royleban, @hidatch, @scottdw2, @josephch, @zanes, @karenxcheng, and @drigotti (me). The picture above is all of us.

We got our first sales during the demo — we auctioned off the first shirt for $200 and sold another 150 shirts, one for each person in the room, making FriendMosaic one of the few profitable companies at a Startup Weekend demo!

After the weekend, @royleban and @hidatch decided to continue with the concept, and officially launched “for real” September 21st, 2009.

Thanks

A big thanks to the awesome FriendMosaic team, Clint and the rest of the Startup Weekend crew, Microsoft for being such an awesome sponsor, and the many other people behind the scenes that helped make the event a success.

If I were to run a major this fall (I’m not), I’d change that way politics are done. We like to think politics are run bottom up, but it’s really top down. I’ve been very keen to city level politics lately as my curiosity and passion has developed. I’ve lived in Toledo, OH, on and off, for the past four years. Toledo, like many other U.S. cities, is a dying city that’s is still run top down, rather than bottom up. In addition to “regular” politics, this post covers what I’d do / change if I were to be mayor of a city. It’s not a complete list, but will hopefully inspire other city-level politicians.

Commitments

Most companies have their employees establish clear and measurable commitments. This should be no different for politicians, since the people are the boss of politicians. If I were to be mayor, I’d set and publish a list of yearly and term commitments so at the end of my term I could either say I completed them, or didn’t. No more spinning what was done over the past years for my benefit. Talk about transparency.

Moving to a bottoms up structure

A mayor should take a salary equal to the media salary of those residing in his or her constituency. Six figure salaries, especially in cities that are dying, places a major out of scope with the current situation and the difficulties some are facing.

Additional pay should be based off performance against commitments. Most CEOs have performance-based pay, so why not politicians? This will make them (me, if I were one) more accountable and more committed.

Surveys and feedback

I’m sure it varies greatly across the country as to what and how feedback is gathered, but the most often reported numbers are “approval rating,” which hoestly paints a crummy picture. Approval ratings are a one-way street and provide almost zero constructive criticism to the elected official. To be a truly great mayor, I would:

• Conduct monthly townhalls in various parts of the city, where I answer a few pre-screened questions to get the crowd warmed up, then open it for a real question and answers session.
• Collect feedback through a digg.com/uservoice.com style site, where people can submit feedback on what could make the city better and others can vote on specific feedback. Then, if I implemented the feedback, I’d invite he submitter to conduct the unveiling of the project.
• Conduct yearly surveys on city happiness, general welfare and condition, and performance against accountabilities.
• Actually check my own email and make my personal cell phone number public. Anyone can call or email anytime. I might not answer every time, but I WILL get back in one-way or another.
• Start a yearly “mayor summit” with me and other mayors coming together to discuss issues, challenges, and possible resolutions to those challenges. I’ve never heard of this happening and it’s ridiculous.

Entrepreneurship

I studied entrepreneurship at The University of Toledo and one of the biggest eye-openers was how big of an economic driver small / family-owned businesses are. I don’t have the exact statistics, but know that over 80% of the jobs in the USA are provided by these two sources. If I were mayor of a city, I’d provide major incentives for businesses, especially startups.

What would you do to be a “kick-ass” major of a city?

Would you rather own a company with the most employees, or the best employees? The most number of products, or the best products? The most customers, or the best customers?

Best is bar none. Hard to replicate. Unique. A competitive advantage.

Most is a number. It can easily be bought [by a competitor]. Not sustainable.

This is the business high-end sports cars. Their looks, engines, chassis… everything about the car is the best. The car company may only sell a handful of cars a year. And they are fine with that.

The best fetch the highest price. It’s difficult to be the best, but even harder to continue being the best. But, the best are remembered.

Be the best. It’s worth it.

(Photo by carzphotos)

It’s now possible to add Bing search to your site via the Bing Box. The Bing Box allows searchers to query within specified site(s) and the web. To get started, just to go the advanced search setup. It takes about 5 minutes to completely set-up, install, and test. It powers the search on this site. I’m considering writing a WordPress plugin that adds functionality and utilizes some of the features within WordPress. Would you be interested in this?

Here’s what the set-up page looks like:

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This post is part of my notes from the Online Marketing Summit I attended in June 2009 in Cleveland, OH.

Interactive Advertising Bureau local committee

US online ad spend rising with increased broadband penetration. Local advertisers generally conservative, slower to adopt, and buy more based on trust. Large amounts of spend in direct mail, however there is no “face” so it is often overlooked. Large SMB growth with online marketing, especially in customer ratings and reviews, blogs, and more.

• Email = retention / loyalty
• Search = lead generation
• Display Ads = brand awareness

Search: Engage in multiple activities for maximum gains. Get listed in local (natural) search and paid search.

Display: National clients use display to increase brand awareness and local advertisers tend to illicit a direct response.

Mobile: advertising or marketing messages delivered to portable devices. Features text messages, ringtones, wallpapers, mobile video, etc.

This post is part of my notes from the Online Marketing Summit I attended in June 2009 in Cleveland, OH.

Chris Caputo, Optiem

Attention levels with social media are high and ad spend is increasing very rapidly. Identify the right social networks – niche sites may be best. Connect with “experts” in these communities. Join the conversation and focus attention. Break through background noise and optimize perceptions. Influence opinion and behavior. Foster credibility.

Social media strategy:

1. Assess the landscape through internal and 3rd party analytics
2. Align marketing efforts with consistent messaging
3. Define goals for specific social media campaigns
4. Develop the plan by identifying major influencers, monitoring content, and develop a strong team
5. Execute