Top Startup

Three things to prevent your downfall in the recession

Things will get better. Things WILL get better. You can keep wishing, clicking your heels, rubbing a rabbits tail. Whatever keeps the spirits at bay, keep doing that. The people who survive the next year, 2 years, 5 years… are the ones who have future-proofed their lives.

I’m going to focus mainly on tech, but these principles apply elsewhere too. In tech I can make a differentiation between hard skills and soft skills.

Drop yourself into a bucket. If you’re on the “hard skills” side and you have a decent resume, congratulations! You might have to work for less money, but you should be able to find work.

But wait, you say “I have soft skills. I’m the Chief Inspiration Officer. I inspire people!” You might be ok too. BUT, only if you did a lot of work in the years leading up to right now.

Here’s where you should be:

1. You’re a known voice in the conversation on your areas of interest. Think Guy Kawasaki, Merlin Mann or Fred Wilson. If you’re a known voice, people seek you out and will likely offer you a job, even in a down market (if you need one). Achieving this status is the highest form of social capital. I’m not in that position yet - but having my words online helps me with potential employers. All other things being equal someone with a industry related blog is better than someone without.

2. When you walk into an industry event, everyone knows you. Networking is a 24/7 activity. Take a look at your linked-in profile. Are 90% of the people there from your current employer? *gulp* That’s not good. Those people can’t help you if you get let go. If you started networking only after you lost your job, it’s going to be a long uphill battle. People are wary of what you want from them. Meet people when you’re in a position to help them and it’s much easier to ask for their help or advice in the future.

3. Family is a last resort fall back. I’m extremely lucky that my Dad needs help at his business. If I get let go and can’t find a job, he could always use my help. My parents would also feed me, and make sure I don’t become homeless. If you don’t have family to fall back on, then work extra hard networking while you still have a job. You don’t have the last safety net.

Times are going to be tough but the strong will survive.

Will you?

Popularity: 1% [?]

It’s time to Thrive.

Amidst the financial crisis and impending fire and brimstone of the economic apocalypse (isn’t the media great), I’ve started a new chapter in my journey towards a Top Startup. Thrive.

Avi Karnani, our tenacious CEO convinced me to forgo dreams of the west coast and join the team in New York. I started in the beginning of September as the Product Manager.

What are we doing?

…we’re building the first on-line, 24/7 financial advisory for young adults. We help people in their twenties and thirties gain control over their financial lives by helping them figure out what to do with their money-aside from spending it!

The Loudwater Labs team had been hard at work with Thrive before I joined, and I’m honored to be working with such a talented group of people. The website is ready for you to use it, so try it for free and tell me what you think in the comments below.

p.s. We’re also looking for talented software engineers to join the team.

Popularity: 3% [?]

Im biking across the United States

I’m going biking… for the next couple of months.

It has been a long time coming. I first publicized this trip in October, 2007 and have been preparing since.

Topstartup won’t be updated, but watch and support our trip as we cross the US at: bikeacrossthe.us

Thanks for reading!
Colin

Popularity: 7% [?]

Location is the web’s new frontier 2.0

Where are you tweeting? Where are you blogging? Where was that picture taken? Where are your friends?

It’s a big world out there and location is an axis on which everyone is dying to slice you up.

You don’t have to be on the terrorist watch list to get value putting your location online. I’ve picked my horse and it’s Fire Eagle.

There are a bunch of other horses for storing your location. They are irrelevant. Everyone else wants to trap “where” in a walled garden. Fire Eagle allows developers to create applications around providing your location. I’m using Navizon on my iPhone to update Fire Eagle. Fire Eagle also allows developers to create applications that utilize your location. Dan Choi helped me build the map to the right using Fire Eagle ->.

Why should I tell Twitter where I am and Google Maps where I am. I want to tell Fire Eagle where I am and let Fire Eagle tell everyone else - at the level of granularity I choose.

Developers take notice: Support fire eagle for location based services or you are a second tier web 2.0 app.

Popularity: 11% [?]

good2gether wins Audience Choice award at Web Inno

Last night I attended the Web Innovators Group, Boston. Our client, good2gether presented as one of three “main dish” presenters. Im thrilled for good2gether and thrilled for Virosity. We won the Audience Choice award!

After months of working on good2gether, it’s exciting to have several hundred industry peers voting (by cell phone) for the product we (Virosity and good2gether) built!

• Web Innovators Group
• Greg McHale’s (CEO of good2gether) blog

Popularity: 9% [?]

What do women want on the interwebs

I attended a talk at Harvard tonight by Lisa Stone of BlogHer entitiled “What Women Want”. Much of the time was focused on what women don’t want. This made her seem angry. Angry at the world for marginalizing women on the internet. Angry at Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama for not doing an interview on camera with BlogHer (a lot of time was focused here). Im not sure what made her so angry, but it was a little offputting. She did throw in some great stats about how women are using the net.

Steve Garfield captured the event, so check out his 20 minute video if you’re curious.

Popularity: 11% [?]

Where am I blogging now?

Topstartup has been sparse recently. Not necessarily because I am not blogging, more because I am really busy and blogging elsewhere:

Work

• Virosity blog - the blog for my employer
• good2gether product blog - the blog about new releases of good2gether, our current project

Fun

• bikeacrossthe.us - the blog (work in progress) about the upcoming cross country bike trip
• colin.nederkoorn.co.uk - my tumble log. Short blog posts and cool things I come across on the web. This is the one place that aggregates everything I do on the interwebs, including this site.

Not to say that I won’t be spending my time writing articles for Top Startup. I intend to post now more when I have something meaningful to say, rather than to keep to a schedule.

Popularity: 12% [?]

I’ll be attending ROFLcon

… because entrepreneurs need to have fun too! ROFLcon is a conference all about internet culture and memes. Last night I cracked. I bit the bullet and signed up while at a bar on my iPhone. If you have no idea about these types of things, you’ve probably missed out on the following: Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 12% [?]

Email Etiquette for dummies

The father of an old girlfriend of mine and I were discussing email etiquette. He is the President of a large pharmaceutical company. I asked him how he dealt with the volume of email that I assumed he received.

He told me that he asks people to follow a few simple rules when sending him email. These seem obvious, but Im amazed at how many people don’t know them. Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 14% [?]

Yet another good reason not to use stock images

Thanks ben for this one!

Popularity: 10% [?]