Who says whining doesn’t pay? Starbucks chairman Howard Schultz just announced that the coffee king will be offering free wifi to Starbucks cardholders. Coffee and wifi … these are a few of my favorite things. See you at Starbucks! 
Thursday, February 14, 2008
Starbucks frees up WiFi
Intuit is bullish on small business
I enjoyed Intuit’s report on The Future of Small Business, and I’m excited that the next installment, The New Entrepreneurial Economy, was just announced.
The most interesting aspects of the first report were:
- The idea of the “personal business” – no-employee businesses started by outsourcing roadkill and the other castoffs of corporate world. I’ve always felt awkward calling That Software Guy a sole proprietorship, because it’s actually a corporation – but a one person corporation. Maybe SoloCorp is a neologism we should add to the lexicon!
- The idea of the “accidental entrepreneur” – someone who started doing something as a hobby (or to improve the world, i.e. the “social entrepreneur”) and turned it into a business.
- Coworking facilities like The Hat Factory. I love this idea and I’m anxiously watching the Coworking Wiki for a Tampa Bay facility.
- The idea of entrepreneur education – for the young, college students and mid-career types like me. I actually wrote to Intuit and suggested the develop this idea more deeply.
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Top Ten E-Commerce Mistakes
An interesting list from AllBusiness.com. The usual suspects are mentioned; what caught my eye was the fact that they listed customer service as a key success indicator; this is the opposite of what I quoted ShoeMoney as saying last week (original post here). Who’s right? I believe AllBusiness is correct; poor service eventually harms you.
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Gladwell on customization
Embracing the diversity of human beings leads to true happiness … and profit. Here’s Malcolm Gladwell talking about how to squeeze an extra $600M out of the spaghetti sauce market.
Monday, February 11, 2008
~MMM: How to guarantee failure
I got the biggest laugh out of this post from Brad Isaac’s excellent blog.
Saturday, February 9, 2008
Dale for Dummies
The Positivity Blog posted a great summary of Dale Carnegie’s most important tips for improving your social skills. By the way, if you haven’t read this book yet, it’s one of the best selling self-help books of all time – it might be worth your time to give it a look.
Friday, February 8, 2008
Shoemoney: Customer Support Doesn’t Matter
I’m not sure I agree with Shoemoney’s argument, but it’s interesting food for thought. I’m normally very open to the reasoning that “Amazon has trained us that this is the way it should be,” but there are so many things that require handholding that I don’t think you can apply Jeremy’s rule universally. But I may be biased because That Software Guy is a service provider.
What this question ultimately resolves to is, “is your relationship with your customers transactional?” If you’re selling commodities, then it is whether you’d like it to be or not. But if you’re not selling commodities, perhaps service can become a differentiator for your business.
One thing is for sure: service is expensive. You must have a model for charging for it, or you’ll lose your shirt.
Thursday, February 7, 2008
Tiny Malta hands cash to entrepreneurs to convert to e-commerce
SMEs given €12,000 tax credit to use e-commerce. What an interesting story. Go Malta!
Hillary, are you listening?
Wednesday, February 6, 2008
Inc. Magazine
I was talking with my friend Matt, who’s an artist in North Carolina, about Inc. Magazine. Both of us feel the same way about it (namely, “yeah, baby!”). I guess you know you’re an entrepreneur when you’re more excited by Inc. than by Maxim.
Tuesday, February 5, 2008
Pricing power and substitution
I just finished reading an updated version of Michael Porter’s classic paper The Five Competitive Forces that Shape Strategy. (Unfortunately at the end of last month, HBR moved it to behind their paywall. They did, however, retain public access to a video of Professor Porter discussing the five forces. You can read a summary of five forces analysis at QuickMBA.com.)
I was thinking about this in the context of wifi at Starbucks. Now I love Starbucks coffee, and in fact, I prefer it to pretty much any other substitute. It’s a premium product at a premium price, and I accept that. What I can’t accept is their use of T-Mobile, which requires you to pay $30/month to use their wifi while drinking their coffee. The less-costly substitutes (free wifi at Panera, for instance), are so plentiful that it just seems silly to pay to use wifi at Starbucks.
Now I know that some locations (NY and Chicago) need to have a pay policy to keep students from loafing around there all day and driving away paying customers … but I live in Tampa, and the stores aren’t that crowded. So what’s a good solution? Would $10/month be tolerable? How about $1/hr?
Howard Schultz has just re-taken the top job at the java vendor; perhaps he’d be open to creative suggestions. A thirty dollar per month recurring charge just seems way too steep.
