Croudfund your Business BusinessIdeas

Eurozone crises, UK double dip recession and

•According to the U.S. Census Bureau, there are more women working than men.
•20.1 million women have bachelor’s degrees vs. 18.7 million men
•Unemployment for men: 9.3% compared to 7.6% for women.
•78% of the layoffs in recent years were men.
•More married women have unemployed husbands than ever before, a record 21%.
•Stay-at-home dads have doubled in recent years, making 1 out of 5 stay-at-home parents a father.

Not a pleasent reading for the Men and not a homerun for the Women

The Right Management ran a onnline survey between April 16 and May 15. Only 19% said they were satisfied with their jobs, 44% said they were “unsatisfied.” nearly two-thirds of respondents, said they were not happy at work.

Need I say more, it is time to put our destiny in our own hands and run a business. The same economic fate befalls us all; male and female, young and old.

It is now cool for an MBA graduates to say I am working on a start up business as corporate life seemed to offer neither more safety nor more status among peers.

Funding and cashflow is often a major obstacle for startup businesses, the traditional sources of loans for early stage start-ups have largely dried up. Crowdfunding is starting to become a substantial source of much-needed capital. Crowdfunding will increasingly play a critical role in the entrepreneurial ecosystem — with or without the participation of the more established investment vehicles

You can review the industry data on crowdfunding at www.crowdsourcing.org.

The April 2012 report estimates that 452 crowdfunding platforms (CFPs) raised nearly $1.5 billion in 2011, and the funding volume is on track to double to $2.8 billion in 2012.

Digital goods like softwares, games, films, and literature are the start-ups that can quickly attract these funds. More than 80% of campaigns in this category have raised over $25,000

Also

Check out Pinterest; the site is still evolving but It has already recorded over 10 million online users.
Next time you are on facebook please click on some of the adverts, facebook needs all the friends clicking to stay profitable.

Entrepreneurial ventures are still high risk but it is a risk we can accept as business ownership offer the best way to tackle economic and social problems. We still need talented graduates to reinvent our ailing enterprises as much as we need gifted entrepreneurs to build new ones.

See you on Forbes Rich List

 Be The Next Business Genius Business Ideas

Are you Conceptual or Experimental?


According to Marc Freedman Conceptual geniuses tend to do their best work while young, producing breakthrough ideas early in their careers. But experimental geniuses, by contrast, need a long period of time to reach their peak, moving forward by trial and error, slowly accumulating the elements that will be integrated into their fully realized work


Penniless, recently divorced, and raising a child on her own, she wrote her 1st book on an old manual typewriter. 12 publishers rejected it! one year later a company agreed to publish it but insisted she get work elsewhere as there was no money in children’s books. J.K Rowling, the author of the hugely successful Harry Potter series later said, "You might never fail on the scale I did, but it is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all—in which case, you fail by default."


Americans between the ages of 55 and 64 had the highest rate of entrepreneurial activity of any age group. In midlife, when jobs are hard to find the grey-haired applicants are usually not welcome. Recent research shows that one in four Americans between the ages of 44 and 70 are interested in starting their own businesses or running a nonprofit organizations within the next 5years that is a whooping 25 million people in the race. Guess what!!! there is room for everyone in business but not so with Jobs


How would you rate Mark Zuckerberg against Warren Buffet: conceptual or experimental?

Buffet was the only son of three children born to the four term congressman Howard Buffett of Nebraska. As a kid he went from door to door selling chewing gum, coca-cola and weekly magazines. He worked in his grandfather grocery store and sold golf balls and stamp while in high school.

At age of 11, he bought shares for himself and his sister. while in high school he invested in his fathers company and bought a farm worked by a tenent farmer. By the time he finished college, Buffett had accumulated more than $90,000 in savings. Buffet attended Wharton Business School of the University of Pennsylvania from 1947 to 1949

Warren Buffett was an investment salesman at Buffett Falks from 1954 -56, at Graham Newsman Corporation from 1956-69 as a security analyst, at Berkshire Hathaway from 1970. He became a millionaire in 1962 and merge all his companies into Berkshire Hathaway. He is worth about $39 billion

What about Mark Zuckerberg?

Zuckerberg will likely be worth around $25 billion when Facebook goes public in 2012. In 2010, advertisers spent about $1.8billion on facebook alone. Mark Zuckerberg's base salary will receive a dramatic pay cut to just one dollar when he goes public. Zuckerberg's pay cut would reduce his income tax burden to zero.

Zuckerberg's salary cut is being compared to similar moves by other tech titans. Google's Eric Schmidt and Larry Page who are paid just $1 annual salaries. Steve Jobs took just $1 in salary from 1997 until his death last year. Other members of the one-percent/one-dollar club include Oracle's Larry Ellison and Hewlett-Packard's Meg Whitman.

Zuckerberg was born in 1984 and in febuary 2004 he started facebook from his Harvard Dorm at just 20years of age.

During Zuckerberg's high school years, under the company name Intelligent Media Group, he built a music player called the Synapse Media Player that used artificial intelligence to learn the user's listening habits, which was posted to Slashdot and received a rating of 3 out of 5 from PC Magazine. Microsoft and AOL tried to purchase Synapse and recruit Zuckerberg, but he chose instead to enroll at Harvard University in September 2002.

What about YOU?
Are You Concetual or Experimental?

Research shows that most people made their wealth from, banking, retail, property and creativity.

BUT!!!!!!!!!!!!
"Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not, nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not, unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not, the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent"


See You at the Top

Developing MicroMutinationals Business Ideas

Let us consider two recent issues around Human Resources and new employees;

1. Submit your facebook password

2. Remove your resume from Linknd.

As a new employee what would you do?

As HR would you make such demands?

In my opinion HR needs to evolve into a consultant to the business with clear understanding of business growth while matching and recruiting personnel to meet those needs. Otherwise HR should face the axe in most establishment.

Micro Multinationals is a term used by Google economist Hal Varian; meaning small companies operating globally. I guess it is a good season to be an enterprenuer.

With mobility, internet access and cloud computing even the smallest companies can now afford the communications and infrastructural requirements that would be an envy of any bluechip company few years ago.

As mature economies continues to stagenate the biggest risk may be over reliance on domestic demands. Businesses and small companies need to look particularly at emerging markets (BRIC) and fast growth markets (Poland, South Africa, South Korea, Mexico and Indonosia)

The rising middle class promises sustained business growth and an opportunity to tap into a large consumer base; It may not be an easy leap for new entrants because business models for emerging markets are yet to be developed but keep the following in mind:
Go where your customers are going - Global wealth is moving from west to east

Use familiar territory as springboard - For intance if starting business in Asia, it might be a good idea to launch from HongKong

Reverse Innovation - Your approach to product development is critical, where products developed for emerging markets can be adapted to domestic needs

Leverage local Partners - Partnering with local knowledge and talents can boost competitive advantage

Perform Due Diligence - There are institutional voids in emerging markets, such voids can be both an opportunity and a risk, it s a good idea to watch where the big players are expanding.
According to PWC; Here are a few challenges you may face, finding the righ business partner 68%, cross cultural management 63%, finding adequate local talent 56%, security risks 49%, local regulatory requirements 48%, corruption 46%, local tax policy 42%, poor infrastructure 39%, supply chain 38%, contract dispute 36%, protecting intellectual property 32%.

With the challenges covered, what is the risk/ reward ratio?

Like the biblical lepers at the gate "if we stay here we would die, if we go we could die or we could live"

My Advice - Go

2012 Business Ideas

The Intelligent Business Ideas Business Ideas

One in every nine people on earth is a Facebook user and Twitter manages an average of 190 million tweets per day. If you’re not communicating with your customers via social channels as well as through email, you’re not reaching your audience where it lives,works and plays.

Berners Lee, the originator of the world wide web said that "the web is more of a social creation than a technical one, I designed it for social effect - to help people work together and not as a technical toy. The ultimate goal of the web for me is to support and improve our web like existence in the world. While businesses, governments and other social bodies often wish to control the web to further each of their interests, they are the background to the web, as far as I am concerned not the foreground..........the web university leads to a thriving richness of diversity."

A Stanford Professor quit his job. But he doesn't plan to go to another prestigious university. Nope. He, like others has discovered the power of teaching online; in his case, he reached 160,000 students in a single online course on artificial intelligence. This is more than a story of online learning or mass dissemination. It proves a point: What once required a badge and a title within a centralized organization no longer does.

One of the medieval sages, Socrates believes that the interchange of speech leads to truth, he cliams that the written word by contrast to the spoken word is unturstworthy and corrupting because it is detached from the actions, honours and chracter of whomever offered it.

Here is a rare opportunity to validate or disprove Socrates and crystalize your business idea by having a chat with Richard Branson: Register your interest here http://www.huddlebuy.co.uk/competitions/richard-branson/share 

For key Speeches on Business Ideas:

Sir Richard Branson - Founder of Virgin
Martha Lane Fox - Founder of lastminute.com
Sir Terry Leahy - former CEO of Tesco
Rt Hon the Lord Heseltine - Founder of Haymarket Publishing and former Deputy Prime Minister
Steve Felice - President, Consumer, Small and Medium Business at Dell Inc.
Paul Lindley - Founder of Ella’s Organic
Robin Rowland - Founder of Yo Sushi!
Lara Morgan - Founder of Company Shortcuts
Doug Richard - Founding Dragons’ Den Panellist and Founder of School for Startups
Ashok Rao - Chairman of TiE Global Board of Trustees

For more information go to http://gec2012.com

Most modern institution promote mass education, one sze fits all, an international curriculum that remain eurocentric. However; the cyber culture is here to change that and it bears similarity to the early adoption of letters that broke free from the religious medieval universities.

Steve Jobs statement on intelligent ideas "Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn't really do it;they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That's because they were able to connect experiences they've had and synthesize new things."

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Understanding The Business of Marketing Business Ideas

Just like your offline personality, your online persona now forms a significant part of your professional identity. Understanding how those personas align, diverge, and complement one another is crucial to ensure your professional effectiveness, on- and offline.

According to a study by the Boston Consulting Group in a study supported by web giant Google, it is assumed that in four years 3bn people will be using the internet, or nearly 50% of the world's population. Right now, every year about 200 million people are going online for the very first time

Before we can maximise our online footprint, let us try to understand the business of marketing in a basic offline setting:A Professor at one of the Business school was explaining marketing concepts to the Students:

1 Direct Marketing: You see a gorgeous girl at a party. You go up to her and say: "I am very rich. Marry me!"

2 Advertising: You're at a party with a bunch of friends and see a gorgeous girl. One of your friends goes up to her and pointing at you says: "He's very rich. Marry him."

3 Telemarketing: You see a gorgeous girl at a party. You go up to her and get her telephone number. The next day, you call and say: "Hi, I'm very rich. Marry me."

4 Public Relations: You're at a party and see gorgeous girl. You get up and straighten your tie, you walk up to her and pour her a drink, you open the door (of the car) for her, pick up her bag after she drops it, offer her ride and then say: "By the way, I'm rich. Will you marry me?"

5 Brand Recognition: You're at a party and see gorgeous girl. She walks up to you and says: "You are very rich! Can you marry! Me?"

6 Customer Feedback: You see a gorgeous girl at a party. You go up to her and say: "I am very rich. Marry me!" She gives you a nice hard slap on your face.

7 Demand and Suuply: You see a gorgeous girl at a party. You go up to her and say: "I am very rich. Marry me!" And she introduces you to her husband.

8 Competition: You see a gorgeous girl at a party. You go up to her and before you say anything, another person comes and tells her: "I'm rich. Will you marry me?" and she goes with him

9 Market Restriction: You see a gorgeous girl at a party. You go up to her and before you say: "I'm rich, Marry me!" Your wife arrives.

I hope you will agree that the professors explainations are accurate and non complicated.

Your offline personality as well as your activities on twitter, linkdn and facebook will go a long way in deciding if you will succeed at the next project

Healthy Man, Healthy Business Business Ideas

wellcome to 2012, most people in the new year make healthy resolutions. Here  are a few tips that can help.

Dream Big, Give Big, Pray Big.................For Faith is superior to Fear and Love is superior to All .......Emmanuel Sodipo

There is strong evidence that certain fruits and vegetables rich in plant-based nutrients can both prevent cancers from starting and halt their growth.

Blueberries- Brazilian acai berries, raspberries and cranberries come from phytochemicals that protect against numerous types of cancer. In studies particularly important to women, cranberries have recently been discovered to be an important weapon in the fight against deadly ovarian cancer.

Green tea- have been known for some time to prevent and reduce recurrence of breast and other cancers. With just two cups a day a chemical known as EGCG inhibits breast tumor growth.

Garlic- The strongest evidence so far has focused on digestive cancers, but garlic appears to protect against all types of cancer, including breast and prostate. The more raw and cooked garlic a person consumed, the lower his risk of stomach and colorectal cancer; one study found that middle-aged women who regularly consumed garlic had a 50 percent lower risk of developing colon cancer. Two active ingredients in garlic, allicin and allyl sulfur, prevent and fight cancer in both animals and humans. Add crushed, fresh garlic to your meals whenever possible; some experts also recommend waiting 15 minutes between peeling and chopping the garlic to get the full effects of the active compounds. A diet high in garlic,onions and leeks shows a direct relationship between high consumption of "allium" vegetables that reduces the risk of many common cancers

Broccoli- Consuming broccoli four times a week prevents the growth of prostate cancer. Other studies have shown anti-cancer benefits from eating cabbage, brussels sprouts, and other cruciferous vegetables.

Tomatoes- lowered the risk of many different cancers, particularly prostate, breast, lung and colon cancer. The good news is that cooking tomatoes seems to enhance the effects of lycopene, qualifying tomato-based spaghetti sauce as a nutritional powerhouse.

Red wine- centers on an antioxidant called resveratrol that's present in grapes and grape juice, but is most concentrated in red wine. Cancer Prevention Research demonstrated that resveratrol suppresses the abnormal cell growth that leads to most types of breast cancer. Breast cancer is fueled by estrogen, and resveratrol acts to block the action of the estrogen, preventing it from feeding tumor growth.  87 percent reduction in the risk of developing prostate tumors of the most dangerous kind.

Recommended solution? One glass of red wine a day,

Soy- the active ingredient genistein, which is a phytoestrogen that protects against hormone-dependent cancers. It's also a powerful inhibitor of several proteins that are implicated in the uncontrolled growth of cancer cells. To get the anti-cancer benefits of soy, you need to consume about 50 grams per day of the whole food, such as raw fresh soybeans, known as edamame, dry roasted soybeans, or tofu.

Turmeric- spice best known for its role in Indian curries and other Asian dishes, fights cancer because of an active ingredient, curcumin, that's a powerful antioxidant. Researchers concluded that curcumin demonstrated anti-cancer effects at virtually all stages of tumor development. The great news about turmeric is how easy it is to work into the diet, because you don't need very much. Add a teaspoon of the spice to soups, salad dressings, meat and pasta dishes and you'll reap the preventative effects.

Watercress- consuming watercress everyday can prevent the DNA damage that leads to cancer. Research  found that antioxidants in the nutrient-rich greens prevented free radicals from damaging healthy cells. Spinach, which we're all more familiar with, is also a cancer-fighter; research conducted showed spinach to protect against bladder cancer. The chemical that gives spinach its dark green color, chlorophyllin, proved to reduce the risk of liver cancer

None of this is to say that an anti-cancer diet or nutritional supplements should be used in place of doctor-recommended treatments such as chemotherapy and radiation.

A great resource for those interested in learning more about making dietary changes to prevent cancer or cancer recurrence is a new book, AntiCancer: A New Way of Life by David Servan-Schreiber, an MD, PhD, and professor of psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.

What is good for the body is good for the brain is good for the business; To a healthy business in 2012.

Season Greetings Business Ideas

Seasons Compliment; may all your ideas lead you to a perfect relationship for Business Succcess in 2012:

Richard Branson is the founder of Virgin Group and Companies, such as Virgin Atlantic, Virgin America, Virgin Mobile and Virgin Active.

He plans to personally respond to questions from business owners through The New York Times Affiliates.

Please send your questions to Richard.Branson@nytimes.com

Include your name, country, e-mail address and the name of the site where you got this info.

Please enter your name and email on the right column titled "BrainStorm" so that we can follow up.

Have a great season and a Profitable 2012

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