The Venture Edge

If there is a list of the Top-5 Rules of Entrepreneurship somewhere, you'd think this one would be in there somewhere: Don't try to take on the BIG guys. The history of business is replete, after all, with stories of big businesses that have eaten the lunch of much smaller businesses. For example, when Microsoft finally decided to get in on that thing called the Internet, and built a browser to compete against the one offered by Netscape. While it didn't hurt that Microsoft gave away its browser for free, people turned away from Netscape's browser in droves, leaving the relatively small company in its dust. 

A couple of days ago, Millward Brown released its latest BrandZ Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands Study (that's quite a mouthful!). Ignoring for a moment the clumsy name of the study, I found the results to be fascinating. Globally, the United States dominates the top-10 slots, with just one non-U.S. company -- China Telecom -- squeaking into that exclusive group at position #10. I thought it was interesting that of the top-10 most-valuable brands, 7 were technology related (including communications providers), 2 were food and beverage related, and 1 was a drug -- tobacco, to be exact.

As someone who sees dozens of new businesses in the conception stage each week, I’m struck by how many never address the risk inherent in relying on a dominant player’s platform for the heart of their business.  I’m speaking specifically of Google and Facebook.  Whether you’re relying on Google search for customer acquisition or AdWords for revenue, or on Facebook for customer acquisition and marketing, you have put your business at the mercy of the competitive whims of these companies, most often without a backup plan.

Phil Simon is an interesting guy. Among other things, Phil bills himself as a "...futurist, insomniac, polymath, recognized technology and management expert..." and much more. If you take a few minutes to visit his website, you'll quickly see that he is indeed all that. Well, as it turns out, Phil has a new book out, titled: Learn from the Best: Lessons from Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google on Building YOUR Company's Platform. In the following guest post, Simon shares proven things your business can learn from this business Gang of Four.

It's my favorite time of year. No -- not Christmas, though that rates right up there. It's the time of year when trendwatching.com names its 12 Crucial Consumer Trends for the upcoming year, in this case 2012. If you've got a business and you want to meet your customers where THEY are, then this list is worth a look. Here are the top-five trends -- click here for the complete list of 12, along with detailed explanations. 

I want to follow up on Peter’s great post about Google and its march toward brand dilution with its latest venture, a local/online delivery service.  You might scratch your head and ask why are they doing this, but remember this is the same company that is also developing autonomous, self-driving cars so that we can devote our full attention to its search engine while we’re on the road. 

I recently read an article in USA Today: Hackers target small-company sites. According to the article, since early June, a team of hackers has been using an automated attack to inject malicious code on some 20,000 to 30,000 sites, many of them small businesses that rely on the Internet to reach customers. That was 20 to 30 THOUSAND websites hacked by just this one gang in about a month's time. Why are small-business websites targeted in particular? Because few small businesses devote the resources necessary to secure their websites against hacker attacks. Specifically, a survey by Panda Security found that of the small businesses surveyed: 

The new, new thing when it comes to Internet technology is cloud computing, or just the cloud for short. In essence, cloud computing is simply moving applications such as word processing, email, databases, and the like from the computer on your desk to a remote server far, far away from your office. If, for example, you use the popular Gmail, Hotmail, or AOL email systems, the computer program that runs these applications does not reside on your computer -- it actually lives on a huge computer located at the host's facilities. Similarly, if you use Google Docs, the word processing and spreadsheet applications you are using do not live on your computer -- they are hosted on Google's massive server farm. In addition to work applications such as these, an ever-increasing number of companies -- large and small -- are moving their websites and ecommerce platforms to the cloud. By doing so, these companies don't have to invest in buying the equipment and people required to run and maintain their own websites and ecommerce platforms, potentially saving a lot of money in the process. 

Many businesses today get a significant portion of their business via the Internet. And how do customers find these businesses? Often via a search on google.com. But guess what? Google recently made a change to their complex mathematical search algorithm --  a change that has sent many businesses from the top of the search rankings down to the very bottom. And for those businesses in this situation, the resulting dive in product sales has turned out to be a very unpleasant surprise indeed.

Yesterday, a Google employee leaked an internal memo from CEO Eric Schmidt announcing that every Google employee would receive a 10-percent raise AND a $1,000 in the New Year. While the memo says the reason for the raise and bonus was "...to recognize the contribution that each and every one of you makes to Google," I can take a wild guess that the REAL reason was to improve employee satisfaction in hopes of keeping employees from jumping ship to the competition. If this is really the case, then chances are this plan is not going to work.