Image via Wikipedia

Capital Underdogs are businesses that need capital or private investors (private equity) and havent been able to find it.

My blog at CaptialUnderdogs.com has plenty of valuable advice for businesses in this situation.

From reading and deciding upon hundreds of Capital Raising Applications I see Venture Funding as based around 7 stages …

1) Evaluating – Could the business raise capital
2) Preparing – Getting the business Investor Ready
3) Discovery – Finding information to support the capital raising
4) Building – Getting the story, events, credibility and lists straight
5) Telling – Spreading the story far and wide
6) Collecting – Receiving and distributing the money
7) Delivering – Fulfilling the promises made during fundraising

For the second stage “Preparing – Getting the business Investor Ready”

I’ve just written a blog post on the topic.

Enjoy!

Dharmesh Shah, Chief Technology Officer & Founder of HubSpot wrote a blog post where he reflected his experience to produce 9 Quick Tips Learned While Raising $33 Million In Venture Capital.

I thought I would take a slightly different approach and rewrite these relative to my experience at the Australian Small Scale Offerings Board. At ASSOB we are a step or two before Venture Capitalists get involved. Some do in some matters but it is mostly Private Equity investors.

You can read my post entry here.

Ironing

A chore to many, a vocation for others.

Beautifully captured here by the meanest indian.

Her blog is worth subscribing to as well!

Just imagine ironing all the fabrics below with the iron above!

My cousin Hilary Niederer has been building a new blog for her fabric sourcing business in India.

What has amazes me has been how many niches are just in the area she works in.

The niche can be as narrow as …

Ikat weaves from orissa

… or as broad as Jewellery

In itself sourcing fabrics for films in India is a narrow niche but as you can see from the rich variety of products there are hundreds of sub niches. If you want to build a social marketing profile for yourself then the narrower the better but it has to be wide enough to have a few thousand raving fans.

Social proof is a psychological phenomenon that occurs in ambiguous social situations when people are unable to determine the appropriate mode of behavior. It is also known as informational social influence. People often make the assumption that surrounding people possess more knowledge about the situation, they will deem the behavior of others as appropriate or better informed.

As an example, say we have a person who has been unemployed for a long time.

Even though they are highly skilled and qualified they may have a hard time finding a new job

The “social proof” is assumed to be that if the guy hasnt got a job even though he is highly qualified he is not worth employing.

This causes the potential employers to search more intensively for flaws or other negative characteristics that are “congruent” with or explain the person’s failure and to discount the applicant’s virtues.

Other examples are ….

- Advertisers tell us they have the largest selling album, care etc

- Milgram, Bickman, and Berkowitz (1969) conducted a social contagion study on 42nd Street, New York City. Varying numbers of passersby (all confederates) were staring at a sixth floor window. The dependent variable was the percentage of persons who stopped to stare. As the number of sources increased, the percentage of persons who stopped to stare also increased. Forty-five percent of passersby stopped if one confederate was looking up, 85% of the passersby stopped if 15 confederates were looking up.

- Waiters and waitresses often put a few coins in the “tips” jar to say to others that lots of people tip us

- Bandura, Grusec, and Menlove (1967) used the principle of social proof to treat young children who were terrified of dogs. The treatment was very simple. They merely watched a boy play happily with a dog for twenty minutes a day. After only four days, 67 percent of the clients climbed in a playpen with a dog and played with him.

- Joshua Bell the famous violin virtuoso played in the Washington DC subway during the morning rush hour. He took his $3.5 million Stradivarius violin and played. Almost no one noticed or stopped to listen. He collected a total of $32 for an hour of playing (not counting a $20 bill that was given by a person who recognized him). Without his posters and huge venues and fans he was totally barren of the fame that he would have encountered in another venue. The commuters responded as if he was needing the money rather than judging his playing ability and the violin.

Occasionally I drop in on TomPeters.com

He has an excellent blog and over the last 25 years has stayed true to his passion and message.

Here is an excellent video on two rapidly emerging and important markets.

Seven Trends That Are Warnings for Publishing Houses and Why Everyone will be an Author and Publisher in the Future

or …

How We All Can Be Authors and Publishers!

The Internet is rapidly changing the way your customers work and play. The Internet is also enabling anyone with a story or specialty niche to become both an author and publisher.

Drastic changes to markets

A few years ago businesses could not see the part the internet would play in their future. But take a look below at the drastic changes being made in a few markets allied to publishing. Until recently most of these businesses were run by 50 or 60 year-olds who couldn’t quite grasp the context of who their market was shifting. A bit like the buggy whip manufacturer that stayed manufacturing buggy whips while the car makers took over. They could have shifted to upholstery or a number of allied fields supporting automobile manufacturing … but they didn’t and died.

It is the same with “Self Publishers“. But more on that further down the page.

Firstly though , here are seven paradigm shifts that are taking place so we have a bit of context to what is going on.

1) Newspaper Advertising Revenues Decline. As Goggle’s Adsense revenue leaps forward in leaps and bounds Newspaper’s ad revenues for the two major categories of “employment classifieds” and “car sales classified’s” are under threat. In Australia carsales.com.au has been snapped up by a large media group. Bill Gates said recently to media companies in London that the “future of advertising is the internet”. Meaning the debate about internet versus non-internet advertising will soon become obsolete. According to PriceWaterhouseCoopers global internet advertising would grow about 16 percent annually over the next five years to $44 billion. Rupert Murdoch recently expressed that he wants to turn News Corporation into a “global digital powerhouse”

2) Traditional Postage declines. There is no longer growth in the number of envelopes posted in most western countries. Postage companies blame email communications for taking away the growth in their postage stamp sales.

3) RSS News Feeds Abound. Tailored news delivery is now underway and growing rapidly. News bulletins in the future will deliver stories about the news, sports and political events directly of interest to the individual subscribers. No need to wade through 70 or 80 pages of the paper to get what you are interested in the 15 minutes you have allocated to “catch up”.

4) Travel Bookings Go it Alone. Maybe you remember when you had to go to an airline travel agent, book and pay for a ticket and wait for it to arrive by mail. Witness now! You pick up your ticket / boarding pass just before you board your flight. What a huge change! Now travel agents have to focus on areas where personal service and recommendation are required as simple flight bookings can be done by even novice internet users.

5) DVD Rentals go Digital. ISP’s (the people who connect you to the internet) are getting into video rentals. Witness national Video /DVD rental stores feeling the pinch. Even the Blockbuster chain recently introduced a monthly flat rental fee for as many films as you would like. This is to match online offers emerging more and more each day. Factor in the iTunes/iPod ability to buy episodes of TV shows and films and we have the beginning of a “click and view” process that doesn’t put you through the frustration of having to return a video/DVD.

6) Music Sales Downloaded. After the U.S. , Canada and United Kingdom, Australia is often the third or fourth “English Speaking Market” targeted by product marketers. When a book is published there are often two editions worldwide. One “American” edition with America spelling and a “British” edition with English spelt as the English spell it. What is often not realized is that when the first print run is planned quantities are rounded up to get a decent size print run. Maybe 20,000 for the UK, 5,000 for Australia , 2000 for New Zealand and volumes for South Africa and other countries to take the total up to a 30,000 print run. This puts the books in the bookstores at a decent price. Australia is still fairly tightly controlled by publishing houses. This was seen clearly in the delay in the launch of Apple’s iTunes Music Store. Even though it opened with 1 million songs available for download, 1000 music videos and 20,000 podcasts one major publisher Sony Music was absent from its catalogue. As there are many sought after local artists contracted to this label it is only a question of time before Sony Music give up and jump on board. The music industry is finally submitting itself to a digital revolution after years of trying to fight the tide as it was rolling in and ever onwards. This is a wake up for Book Publishers also who may find their market diminish almost overnight if they do not embrace a digital future.

7) Online Betting Explodes. Global online betting returns exploded from $US400 in 1998 to $US4.1billion last year, according to Global Betting and Gaming Consultants. Again no need to get in the car to go and place a bet.

In the above examples strong trends are evident. The context is that individuals can now do many of the tasks themselves that were traditionally done by people sitting behind desks taking your bookings or your bets. Picture the travel agent taking your booking, the betting agent taking your bet, the music store assistant selling you a CD, the Video Store person helping to supply a video, the newspaper office person forcing you to enter your advertisement in the carefully spaced form they provide you at their office, the postage clerk selling you a postage stamp, the newsagent selling you newspapers and magazines so that you get a full coverage of your interests. All these services can now be obtained by you via your computer on the internet.

The same goes for publishing. So many people ask me. Paul, your a publisher, how do I get my book published.

How Do I Get My Book Published?

Up until recently most people without contacts were at the mercy of a publishing house. You pretty much had to either pay for a 5000 print run yourself or let them publish your book with little chance of anything coming to you from the first production run.

Ask Children They Author and Publish Every Day

However the game is changing rapidly and children are very much both authors and publishers and they don’t even know it. They create their webspace, load up what interests them and tell their friends the web address. Friends tell friends about cool sites and away it goes. Most children probably have their own “MySpace”. They get this at MySpace.com. And if they don’t have their own “MySpace” they soon will as around 130,000 new accounts are opened every day. It is here they can publish their writings, photos, poems, videos etc for their selected friends to see. They are both publishers and authors.

So the Message Is?

As adults we can learn from our kids and what they do in MySpace and of course recognise the power in the seven trends listed above. With “on-demand” book printers popping up all over the place the traditional publisher may very well go the way of the buggy whip manufacturer.

A suggested path for you to become an Author and Publisher.

1) Choose the niche you are PASSIONATE about.

2) MAKE IT YOUR OWN, determine the target market and subscribe to lots of Blogs and RSS feeds of news and ramblings about YOUR niche.

3) Grow it in to a BLOG that really is interesting and sought after by a segment of the population.

4) Add a few free reports and other goodies to WARM UP those subscribed to your Blog.

5) WRITE A BOOK around the subject of your Blog.

6) Put some parts of the book out into the internet world with your blog plus SYNDICATED articles.

7) Set up a web site to SELL THE BOOK either via your own sight or Clickbank.

START OVER AGAIN with more free reports and your next eBook

9) TALK about your latest book at breakfasts, seminars every opportunity

10) Get to the stage where you SHARE THE STAGE with well known people in your niche or an area closely associtiated with your niche.

11) GROW from there!

12) Once you are comfortable with your presintation at seminars and bootcamps film the event and produce a DVD and Book set or in other words a “Big Ticket Item Package”

13) GROW from there!

Traditional publishers will not be able to generate the energy you can by doing all the steps above. Just as people will no longer visit Video Stores or Travel Agents Book Shops will only sell high volume generalist publications. Niche products will be totally the domain of the Internet.

As an author with a niche product book all the tools are available on the internet to promote your publication.

But … you must build now, one Blog entry at a time!

Self Publishing Angle? Start you Blog now in an area you can share and inject energy and enthusiasm. As your subscriber base grows add free reports and eventually an eBook. Follow it with seminars and High Value DVD / Book packages.

I’ve been following a series of blog posts from Peter Burow.

He has written a book called the Human Operating System and the series of blogs he has just finished on Patrons started in September 2006. His last post today ends a mammoth blogging fest with today’s posting “A Final Word on Patrons“

His very first post on this topic was headed Duality back on September the 1st 2006.
What I liked about the posts was that he pointed out how much we evolve as human beings and all of us have our own gifts to offer the world. For some of us who master these gifts we become “Patrons”

I liked his quote ….

Just when the caterpillar thought the world was over, it became a butterfly.
Anonymous

In 1993 Steve switched from print journalism to online media.
For someone into online journalism so early he is in a good position to reflect on where things are at.
Citizen journalism is another word for self-publishing for all of us and the paragraph below from Steve is a good indicator to the future.

Online-News: Have We Come Far Enough?

My prediction is that another 10 years out, we’ll see that media has incorporated citizen media with mainstream journalism, and journalism as a whole will be better for it. And most of those traditional journalists who argue against the worth of citizen media today will be won over. But I expect that history will show how mainstream news companies lagged while other Internet companies ran with the concept and figured out how to make it pay.

Reading this article on Virtual Business one wonders if the age old “penname” may eventually morph in to an Avatar. Maybe all of us will have a virtual presence that is an Avatar!

Marketing to us will depend on which particular space we are in at the time.

Virtual Business » Blog Archive » Marketing to Avatars