The Profit Prophet

The new-new in fundraising is crowdsourcing, and what makes crowdsourcing so powerful is a concept known as the long tail. Traditionally, the concept of the “long tail” was used to describe the declining part of the product life cycle (see below). It is usually called “end of life” or declining phase. It might have been used to describe the portion of product distribution that represents a period in time when sales for less common products return a profit due to reduced marketing and distribution costs. That would make a “tail” a period of time when sales are made for goods not commonly sold as standard products. The period could be short or long. This term was hijacked by Chris Anderson in 2004 when he coined the term “long tail” to describe a phenomena where products that are in low demand or have low sales volume can collectively make up a market share that rivals or exceeds the relatively few current bestsellers and blockbusters, but only if the store or distribution channel is la...

When most people think of start ups they think of a couple of young kids working in a garage or basement (or now Starbucks), eking out a living until they are purchased for billions of dollars, but this is more fiction than reality. As published in Time's March 14th, 2013 issue, according to research by Vivek Wadhwa, an academic and tech entrepreneur, and the Kauffman Foundation, the average age of successful start-up founders of start-ups and other high-growth industries was 40. And high-growth start-ups are almost twice as likely to be launched by people over 55 as by people 20 to 30. How can that be?  Well firstly, most startups take founders with multiple skill sets and know-how. Yes, dreaming is important, but execution is paramount to success. As an example of this, I thought I would share a story about an old dog and if you can draw the conclusion about age. A wealthy old lady decides to go on a safari in Africa, taking her faithful aged poodle named Cuddles along ...

While starting a company has never been easier, the same facts still remain.  Most close in six months, and only about 10% will ever get to a break even state.  Still, here are some interesting facts about tech startups (hardware, software or internet based). First, most are started by 1 or 2 people; second they spend less than $1,000 per month on development, and if they make it past 9 months, have a good chance of making it a year.  I hope the infographic below adds some additional light on the subject.