Kiva: Microloans for third world entrepreneurs.

Kiva is an organization that makes microloans to tiny businesses in the third world. The repayment rate is 97% according to the site. I'm using Kiva for our extended family project this year, something you might wish to think about.

If you're a blogger and you'd like to post a banner like the one above on your blog, here's the code: <SCRIPT type='text/javascript' src='http://www.kiva.org/banners/bannerBlock.php'></SCRIPT>

If you would like to loan to Maria or any other entrepreneurs please head to Kiva.org. 100% of your loan goes directly to the borrower and you can loan as little as $25. Why not get started as an international financier today? With repayment rates around 96% you don’t have much to lose but you do have many lives to change.

Fight Club's moving over here.

The four blogs that I'm writing are proving to be something of a headache so I'm consolidating. The Fight Club blog will be moving over here and be accessible as a complete thread including the entrepreneur fights.

Fight Club: Wednesday the 27th

Fight Club for entpreneurs is going to be next Wednesday the 27th. Regular place in SL at 6.

Click fraud is increasing for everyone except Google and Yahoo.

 NY Times article >

Instead of actual prospects, the clicks were coming from fraudulent sources. The fraud, which cost DiamondHarmony $17,000 over seven months, was uncovered through analytical software the company installed from ClickTracks of Santa Cruz, Calif.

Click fraud most commonly happens when renegade partners, who get a portion of the fees earned by a search engine each time a paid link is clicked, deliberately generate excessive clicks with no chance that any of the clicks will result in a sale for the business that is paying for them.

The spurious clicks can be generated through automated programs or by paying people to spend time clicking over and over on a link.

The best series of posts on entrepreneurship I've ever read.

Josh Steimle of MWI is writing:

75 entry series on What It Means To Be An Entrepreneur.

I started this blog with Josh's list of 75 since it hit so close to home. You'd be wise to read it before he starts charging for the book. 

Name this blog.

I need a better name for this blog. Something catchy. Something Quirky.

If anyone has any ideas about what I should call this site, comment on this post and leave the name.

If I choose a name from among the comments, I'll give the lucky namer a $1000 dollar gift certicate good at my other business, Surface Medical Spas. That's no joke. Your wife will love you for at least a year. (some restrictions apply.) < you always have to put that in. 

CEO Fight Club is next Tuesday

CEO Fight Club is going the rounds next week. If that means something to you. Good.

If you're interested in attending Fight Club, you'll need to have a personal invitation from a member. (ie. No sales guys unless they're on a leash.) You can read the recap and the comments from the last dinner here.

Apparently I'm decended from Muhammad... and so are you.

It seems that it's possible that every person in the Western World may be a decedent of Muhammad...and other notables

Click to read more ...

Is Google killing the internet?

Google's been a golden child for a while. But the Motley Fool folks have some compelling arguments that detail How Google is killing the internet.

Venture Capital Term Sheets

From Nathan Nelson's LAWntrepreneur blog a post on VC term sheets. Nathan's a solicitor specializing in startups and corporate yada.

Click to read more ...

The Billy Barty Memorial Knock-out Hernia Belt...

Judd Bagley loves Fight Club. Funny, he didn't look like a boxer.

His comment on the Fight Club blog:

 Sweet Sassy Mollassie! That was one of the best times I've had with a bunch of dudes. Seriously, dinner lasted like four hours but could have gone on for ten, as good as the conversation was. I'm hooked on Fight Club. Thank you Jeff for organizing it. I intend to challnge Ryan Coombs for control of the Billy Barty Memorial Knock-out Hernia Belt. What an honor.
See you in three and a half short weeks.
Judd

Barriers to imitation

Excellent post on 'Barriers to Imitation' from Early Stage VC.

From the post: So what do we really mean when we say what’s your barrier to entry?  I think what we mean is really the reciprocal. What’s everyone else’s obstacle to imitation?  Competitive imitation erodes your uniqueness as in Unique Sales Proposition. It raises the cost of differentiation and it gives the customer more perceived choices.   You have to spend more to stand out and get less market share for it.

Imitation comes in many forms. It can be a current claim, as is “we do the same thing.”  It can be a future promise, as in “we will have that feature, too.” Worst of all, it can be a rapid replica of your actual product.  It is the latter that most investors care about when they fear competitive “entry” or imitation.

Re-casting the question as obstacle rather than barrier also points to how to address the issue.  There is rarely a single obstacle that is so insurmountable as actually to be a barrier.  However, you can often outline a series of speed bumps that will slow down even the fastest fast follower.

Free alternative to Basecamp. Is there a flaw in 37 Signals business model?

Here's an alternative to 37 Signals popular Basecamp project managing software: ActiveCollab (Absolutly terrible name.) TechCrunch article link.

 A flaw in the newfound "simple" business model? Seems when somethings so simple it's easy enough to knock off. And since there are any number of programmers ready to provide a free service, where are the barriers to imitation?

Post directly to your blog using the ultimate speech recognition.

I have recently put to a new form of blogging using a pay service called Copytalk.

Copytalk uses a transcription model for which I pay around $50 a month. I am able to call up a phone number and just talk. The transcription is sent, I think to India, although I'm not sure, and typed by a real person who then deposits it in my e-mail box.

Since I'm using Squarespace for my blogs, I don't have the option of posting directly from email. However, there are a number of blogging options that allow you to e-mail a post directly which means that it can be set it up so that instead of coming to my inbox, it just appears on the blog. Now to post a blog, all I typically do is type 8 on my speed dial and start talking. That is how this post is generated. I'm curious to see after I have posted for a while using this method whether my blog post become more or less coherent.

Somebody stole my domain name.

Somebody stole my domain name, that dirty son of a bitch. I've had the domain www.ren-man.com for the last eight years from a former stint as an artist, it was my art site. Since I've been so busy lately, somebody came along and as soon as that domain expired, they snapped it up.

I can't really say I blame anybody except myself. I'm sure a bot snaped up a domain that's been registered for a long time immediately, as soon as it goes offline. I do have something of an ethical problem with the people that do this, since really, they're adding no value to anything the damn parasites. So now I'm going to have to register another domain and switch over my site. It could be worse, of course, but I still think it's kind of screwed up that these guys are allowed to register a domain, make a dead end with a bunch of paid advertising links on it, so that when you get there you have no option except to click a paid link. I hate that.