Ventureweek

Netflix has become a big hit south of the border. Its online video rental business model has spawned a number of new companies in various industries utilizing the same business principles. A new start up in California uses the Netflix model to help parents keep their children aged 9 months to 10 years old challenged and entertained.

 SmartyRents rents out educational video games including Little Leaps, Clickstart, Leapster and Didj—and from Vtech, including V.Smile Baby. While they focus on educational games, they do have some standard video game titles as well. Prices range from USD 9.99 for one game at a time to USD 24.99 for four games at once.

SmartyRents, however, currently serves only the US; one to emulate for kids and parents in other countries? Such as Canada.

American Express Open Forum:

Zappos.com has created one of the most successful online firms in the world.There are definitely some lessons you can take away from their 10 guiding principles. Here they are along with some thoughts on how you might be able to apply them to your small business:

1. Deliver WOW Through Service. This is all about doing more than the expected. Solving a customer’s need is the baseline and of course you always want to try and do that through customer service. Delivering a “WOW” is open to interpretation, but certainly means doing more than the basics.

2. Embrace and Drive Change. In many businesses, people are afraid of change. Change means more work. Change means you might do something wrong and potentially lose your job. Embracing change, however, is about adapting to your circumstances and not being afraid. Innovation comes from embracing and driving change.

3. Create Fun and A Little Weirdness. Nothing is as empowering for employees as encouraging them to have fun and do things in a different way. Fun and wierd are not two words you typically see in any sort of customer service group – yet for Zappos it is a strong part of why they have such a fiercely loyal workforce.

4. Be Adventurous, Creative, and Open-Minded. Encouraging creativity is something that can often be frowned upon because you are trying to enforce rules – but this flexibility is also a big part of making employees feel empowered to do their job and think outside of what their job tells them to do.  

5. Pursue Growth and Learning.  The most successful organizations are ones that allow their people to grow their knowledge in order to do their job better. Making education, training and knowledge building a priority in your business sends a message that you care about working smarter and are willing to support your employees who try to find ways to do that.

6. Build Open and Honest Relationships With Communication. Honesty is the key word here, as it is easy to think it is better to keep specifics of your business to yourself and not share them with your employees. Being honest about the state of the business can help you to get more commitment from your employees to do what needs to be done to make it better.

7. Build a Positive Team and Family Spirit. Most people would agree that a team should be like a family, but in practice they don’t act that way. A family spirit means a level of trust and dedication that should be your goal at your business. Positivity is something that comes with that. 

8. Do More With Less. Too often, it is easier for employees to rely on resources being provided by “the company” in order to get their jobs done. Encourage them to think about how they can do more with less, and then reward them for it. Those dollars they end up saving the company can really add up. 

9. Be Passionate and Determined. There really is no substitute for passion when it comes to getting things done. Sometimes you can inspire that passion with employees, but the best way to get it is to hire people who are passionate themselves about what they do and about what you do. 

10. Be Humble. Humility is attractive for employees and for customers. It means that success doesn’t go to your head and that you can maintain a real perspective on what is truly important. This is also one of those qualities that comes from the top, so to inspire

Steve Jobs and The IPAD

The tablet is finally here! After months of rampant speculation, Apple Wednesday announced a touch screen tablet computer, the “iPad” for consumers who want to take their movies, TV shows, music, games and reading with them, be it around the house or on the go. This will is a huge opportunity for entrepreneurs in Canada and the United States. Several uses of the tablet were shown during its unveiling, including e-mail, games, video and reading newspapers or magazines on it. This will be the next great platform for technology start ups here and in the United States.

There are a variety of characteristics that an entrepreneur should have to achieve start up and management success. While no person is a like here a few characteristics that an entrepreneur should have.

 1.     Attention to Detail:  It’s attention to details that can make all the difference. From landing a new client, to saving your company money.

2.     Perseverance: To develop any new product, service or company you have to have the discipline to follow through. Even on those difficult and frustrating days.

3.     Risk Tolerance: Every start up has an element of risk. Every entrepreneur from Bill Gates, to Richard Branson has endured extensive risks I order to build their successful companies. Risk is life and to succeed every entrepreneur needs to take calculated risks.

“The key to success is for you to make a habit throughout your life of doing the things you fear.”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890), Post-Impressionist Artist

Iphone Apps are everywhere. From the commercials to various articles on the latest and hottest Apps. Yet there are only a few developers who make real money of them. Apple doesn’t release individual sales figures for its App Store. Newsweek recently reported that 18 months after it launched and online prospecting began, the App Store isn’t developing many new millionaires. Not only have most sellers failed to turn a profit—a fact that is perhaps not surprising given the difficulty of making money in any retail environment these days—even developers with high-ranking games and applications have made far less than commonly thought. Many come nowhere near recouping their investment at all.The iPhone’s popularity means that mom-and-pop programmers must now compete with some of the world’s biggest brands and game developers, many of whom have recently decided that the mobile market is too important to leave to the little guys. This will effect how successful a start up can be. The question is not if but when will some entrepreneurs figure you the right method to really make money from the App business.

Since the first Internet boom, the ultimate goal of every start up or technology based entrepreneur, was to take their company public. We saw many venture backed companies go that route over the last decade. However, with the recent recession, and financing difficulties that start ups have had, many founders are forgoing  the public markets all together. 

They are looking to sell their companies or start ups to bigger players in their industry. Founders usually own between 10 to 20 percent of their companies, so if they sell them for $ 50 to $100 million, that a big payout. At the end of the day entrepreneurs on both sides of the border are starting to realize that there are other options than going public.

From Entrepreneur Magazine

These 12 attitude attributes can put you in the right mindset for achieving entrepreneurial success.

1. Have passion for your business.
Work should be fun. Your passion will help you overcome difficult moments and persuade people to work for you and want to do business with you. Passion can’t be taught. When it wanes, as it surely will in difficult times, take some quiet time. Whether it be an hour or a week, take inventory of all the reasons you started the business and why you like being your own boss. That should renew your passion.

2. Set an example of trustworthiness.
People have confidence in trustworthy individuals and want to work for them in a culture of integrity. The same is true for customers.

3. Be flexible, except with core values.
It’s a given that your plans and strategies will change as time goes on. This flexibility for rapid change is an inherent advantage of small over large businesses. However, no matter the pressure for immediate profits, do not compromise on core values.

4. Don’t let fear of failure hold you back.
Failure is an opportunity to learn. All things being equal, venture capitalists would rather invest money in an individual who tried and failed founding a company than in someone who never tried.

5. Make timely decisions.
It’s okay to use your intuition. Planning and thought are good. But procrastination leads to missed opportunity.

6. The major company asset is you.
Take care of yourself. Your health is more valuable than the most expensive machinery or computer software for the company. You don’t have to choose between your family or your company, play or work. Maintain your health for balance and energy, which will, in turn, enhance your mental outlook.

7. Keep your ego under control.
Don’t take profits and spend them on expensive toys to impress others. Build a war chest for unexpected needs or opportunities. This also means hearing out new ideas and suggestions no matter how crazy they sound.

8. Believe.
You need to believe in yourself, in your company, and that you will be successful. This confidence is contagious with your employees, customers, stakeholders, suppliers and everyone you deal with.

9. Encourage and accept criticism graciously. Admit your mistakes.
You need to constantly work on convincing your employees that it’s okay–even necessary–to state their honest opinions even it if conflicts with the boss’s opinion. Just stating it once or putting it in a mission statement won’t cut it for most people.

10. Maintain a strong work ethic.
Your employees will follow your lead. It will also help you beat your competition by outworking them, particularly when your product or service is very similar.

11. Rebound quickly from setbacks.
There surely will be plenty of ups and downs as you build the business. Learn from the setbacks and move on. You can’t change the past.

12. Periodically get out of your comfort zone to pursue something important.
Many times you will feel uncomfortable in implementing a needed change in technology, people, mission, competing, etc. For the company and you to grow personally, you sometimes have to step out of your comfort zone.

Entrpeneur Magazine, has recently released their top 10 Franchises.

Here you go!

1. Subway Restaurants

2.McDonalds

3. 7-Eleven

4. Hampton Inns

5.SuperCuts

6. H&R Block

7.Dunkin Donuts

8.Jani-King

9.Servepro

10.ampmMiniMarket -

10 intersting consumer trends for 2010 from Trendwatching.com

Business As Usual
Forget the recession: the societal changes that will dominate 2010 were set in motion way before we temporarily stared into the abyss.

Urbany
Urban culture is the culture. Extreme urbanization, in 2010, 2011, 2012 and far beyond will lead to more sophisticated and de-manding consumers around the world.

Real-Time Reviews
Whatever it is you’re selling or launching in 2010, it will be re-viewed ‘en masse’, live, 24/7.

(F)Luxury
Closely tied to what constitutes status (which is becoming more fragmented), luxury will be whatever consumers want it to be over the next 12 months.

Mass Mingling
Online lifestyles are fueling and encouraging ‘real world’ meet ups like there’s no tomorrow, shattering all cliches and predictions about a desk-bound, virtual, isolated future.

Eco-Easy
To really reach some meaningful sustainability goals in 2010, corporations and governments will have to forcefully make it ‘easy for consumers to be more green, by restricting the alternatives.

Tracking & Alerting
Tracking and alerting are the new search, and 2010 will see countless new INFOLUST services that will help consumers ex-pand their web of control.

Embedded Generosity
Next year, generosity as a trend will adapt to the zeitgeist, leading to more pragmatic and collaborative donation services for con-sumers.

Profile Myning
With hundreds of millions of consumers now nurturing some sort of online pro?le, 2010 will be a good year to introduce some services to help them make the most of it (financially), from intention-based models to digital afterlife services.

Materialism
2010 will be even more opinionated, risqué, outspoken, if not ‘raw’ than 2009; you can thank the anything-goes online world for that. Will your brand be as daring?