Ventureweek

Lawyers provide an expensive service that most people need at some point in their lives. Consumers and entrepreneurs are always looking for ways to answer their legal questions without having to hire or pay a lawyer until they have to. This Google backed startup is looking to fill that void, by connecting people with qualified lawyers who will give them legal advice—for free.

Participants can go on the site, draft their confidential legal questions, and tag them with keywords and the general subject matter. Once submitted, the LawPivot search engine will recommend up to 10 lawyers to answer the confidential query, and the startups can use the suggestions and detailed lawyer profiles to pick the attorney they want to answer their questions. Answers to their questions to be in their inboxes within 24 to 48 hours. For the lawyers, it’s an introduction that will hopefully develop into a long-term relationship.

The service is set up so that attorneys can only join the network if approved or invited by the LawPivot staff.

But in 2011, breaking into the established scene requires a fresh approach; a few companies are doing just that, by replicating the daily deals model within their own tight knit community. Which community?  The Jewish community. With headquarters in North Miami, Florida, Jewpon offers deals in Toronto, Miami, L.A., New York and Jerusalem. They will be launching in Baltimore, Boston and Philadelphia at the end of February.

Jewpon sends out discounts of up to 75% off on events, kosher restaurants and activities, stores, hotels, photography, fashion and stores.

To this date, Jewpon has partnered with 20 merchants and takes 30% from each deal, unlike giants like Groupon that can take up to 50%.

The site services 6,000 subscribers, 3,000 of which are in New York City, 1,000 in Israel, 700 in Miami and the rest are spread across the U.S. For every city, Jewpon offers one daily deal and then provides a backlog of other still active deals. This is a fresh approach to building a brand in a hot industry.

Check out the Franchise Show this weekend. For more information got to www.cfa.ca

Originally posted excerpt on Businessweek.com

1. Meet angels via the entrepreneurs they’ve funded.

Referrals carry weight, but for those without a long list of angel contacts, getting access to angels via entrepreneurs they’ve already funded can be equally powerful.

2. Avoid approaching investors in July, August, and December. ”

The high-net-worth individuals [who] make up the angel universe tend to take extended vacations in the summer and the period between Thanksgiving and New Year’s,” says Jennifer Naylor, an angel investor with Golden Seeds in New York.

3.Let investors help you refine your pitch.

“Don’t enter the process blind,” says Jamie Rhodes, an investor in Austin with Central Texas Angel Network, which invested $5.5 million in 2010.

4. Skip the jargon.

Most early angels will not have domain expertise in your industry or technology.

5. Be coachable.

 ”Angels aren’t focused only on ROI,” says Tech Coast Angels’ Sudek. “Most have a strong desire to mentor and help build companies.”

6.  Entice friends and family with merchandise discounts.

To persuade friends and family to support your business, consider offering an investor discount.

7. Tell a story.

People relate to stories, and it’s amazing how many entrepreneurs who are trying to raise cash just dive into the details of their business without first creating the emotional connection that comes from a story.

 8. Recognize that investors come from unlikely places.

9. Concentrate on landing a lead.

Your lead investor can help set the terms and draw in other sources of capital

10. Target investors that have invested in your field.

“History is the best predictor of the future,” says Satya Patel, a partner at venture capital firm Battery Ventures in Silicon Valley

George Favvas and his stealth web site Rewardli is heading to the new tech incubator 500 Startups. Favvas  won a spot in the program, which provides startup companies with office space and access to mentors and experts.California-based 500 Startups provides investments of between US$10,000 to $250,000 in exchange for a two to 10 per cent stake in a company. We will keep you posted on this his progress.

 Excerpt from Smartbrief.com by Art Markman

• Before you get together as a group, have each member write down as many ideas as they can. Each idea should be on a separate sheet of paper, and those sheets shouldn’t have any identifying marks. That way, nobody knows who originated a particular idea.

• Encourage group members to write out their ideas, but also to draw sketches and diagrams. This combination of words and pictures allows people to express things that might be hard to say with words alone.

• When you do get together, start by taking the sheets of paper and passing the ideas around the room. Let each group member build on the ideas. Have everyone look for common themes that are emerging across the many ideas.

• Start the group discussion only after you have gone through this whole process. Focus the group discussion on the ideas that people think are most promising.

• Don’t let the excitement of the group meeting cause you to settle too quickly on a particular idea. After you figure out the most promising directions, let them sit for a day or too and see if you are still as energized about them. Separate the intrinsic enjoyment of working with a group from the evaluation of the new concepts.

With minuscule marketing budgets, small businesses are flocking to low-cost social media as a key channel for marketing outreach, according to a new study by local business networking site MerchantCircle.

According to the company’s “Merchant Confidence Index” for the fourth quarter of 2010, which polled 8,456 small-business owners in January and February, 70% use Facebook for marketing, up from 50% in the same period a year ago. Twitter was used by 40% of local businesses, up from 32% the year before.

In addition, social marketing is perceived as being highly effective by 37% of respondents, second only to search engine marketing (42%) and ahead of email (36%), according to the MerchantCircle report. This is an American study but the findings would probably be similar in Canada as well.

A new startup funding challenge has just been launched in Toronto, thanks to the creative forces at VenCorps. Canada’s and probably North America’s only crowd sourced venture capitalist company. Ryerson University is also a sponsor of the program.

Unlike other venture capital funds, VenCorps invests seed capital (typically $25,000) based on the collective opinions of thousands of entrepreneurs, students, professional service providers and angel investors (whereas traditional venture funds rely on a handful of experts.

The winner, as chosen by the community, will receive a $25,000 equity investment. VenCorps will take a 5% equity position in the winner and allow them to leverage the VenCorps community to facilitate rapid growth. Top of Toronto is one of twelve challenges VenCorps plans to pursue in 2011, with future challenges focusing on: mobile software, mass collaboration and women lead startups. Check it out atVenCorps.com.