Up and Running:

I posted an iPhone app success story here a couple of days ago. Following up on that, if you want, you can now get an iTunes video podcast version of a Stanford University course on how to build iPhone apps.

To find it on iTunes, go to the iTunes store, search for Stanford, find the Stanford University main page, and look in the “What’s New” area on the right, about the middle, for the course on programming the iPhone.

And my thanks to TechCrunch for catching this and posting it in “Stanford Course On How To Build iPhone Apps Will Soon Be Available On The iPhone” a few days ago.

Intuit is offering a $25,000 first prize to the best business story. The company says:

It’s easy–just write up a short story about a real situation and a short tip that other businesses could use, and enter it into our contest.

When you create a story, you’ll also help promote your business to the entire Intuit community.

Over the weekend, Intuit extended the deadline to April 24, so there’s still time.

There’s more information about that at this link: Share Your Story and Win.

Here’s a contest with a prize that a real entrepreneur will love: a chance to showcase your new product. And it’s open for entries.

Specifically:

Dallas Market Center, the world’s largest wholesale merchandise resource, today announced a call for entries for its national product search contest–The Next Big Thing. Three finalists will show their products in front of more than 50,000 attendees during the upcoming Dallas Total Home & Gift Market being held June 24-30, 2009.

Sure, money is better–I’ll be blogging next month from two big-money venture competitions offering a half a million or more: Rice’s from Houston and the University of Texas’ Moot Corp in Austin–but eyeballs, publicity and promotion are pretty good, too.

Does this sound like you?

The contest is for anyone who has The Next Big Thing–an artist, product designer, entrepreneur or your next door neighbor. It offers the opportunity for those with great ideas to make their dream a reality.

They’ll be taking applications until April 8, so there’s still time. You can click here to download an application, and click here for more information.

See? I’m trying to do what I can here to get you up and running. These days the whole world needs your new startup.

Somewhere in the foundation of business startups is the idea that one of the best foundations of a good startup is actual customer need. Somebody needs or wants something, and you figure out how to get it to them or do it for them. One of the strong principles of business success.

With that in mind, here are a couple lists of things people need or want.  One of them is for Web 2.0 offerings, the other for mobile tech offerings:

1. Talk about great ideas. Starting with Rafe Needleman, who came up with this one on CNET. He asked the world for Web 2.0 ideas, offering a free pass to Web 2.0 2009 conference. And that produced a really interesting list. People wrote in suggesting things they’d like to see. And that’s a great way to start a business–with something somebody wants.
2. The other is a collection of Windows Mobile ideas, posted here. They are presentations in video, nicely done. It gives me the impression that Microsoft has money to spend on this.

So if you’re in the tech world and have capabilities, here are some ideas. Offered to you free, which is, by the way, what an idea is worth. You add technology, management, capital, operations, marketing and getting it all done, and you have a business.

Examples are around if you look for them. Even with all the economic indicators looking bad, businesses that do something people need done still work.

Brent Bower of The New York Times had a nice piece along those lines over the weekend. He called it Business Opportunities Abound, Even in Bad Times. He features three specific small businesses that are growing right now. One focuses on medical discounts for low-income people, one on data security, and one is looking to invest in new business in a down market.

And it isn’t just needs driving business, either. There’s also some obvious growth in cool technology. Things that change the game. Specifically, another piece of news this weekend is a new $35 million investment in Twitter. That’s along with a series of commentaries and analyses on how Twitter can, someday, eventually, make money.

What Twitter has, in the meantime, is a huge growth in buzz and users. And it’s free. So it makes no money now, but its investors figure it will make money eventually.

No, it’s not crazy; or at least, I should say, I’ve done it. I spent many hours during business travel using my t-Mobile PDA phone as an ebook reader, compatible with the Microsoft Reader format. It worked for me then (several years ago), and might still be convenient now. And that’s even despite the fact that I also own a Kindle.

That comes up because a Canadian company is introducing a digital book application that makes e-book readers out of smart phones. And the iPhone (hooray) is first.

As several providers rush into the e-book reader market, a Canadian company is preparing to take advantage of a huge population of stealth e-book readers — smartphones — and launch its Shortcovers service, which lets consumers read books on their handsets.

The digital book platform has been tested for Apple’s iPhone, according to people who have seen the service. Shortcovers is a division of Indigo Books & Music, which operates a Canadian nationwide chain of bookstores.

I like to post about ebooks and related new things on this blog because I think this is a market that has a lot of future to it. Or maybe it’s just me, that I like this technology.

Of course this is too big and too tall and too long, but how can you argue with a list of 50? Particularly when it comes from somebody who knows the territory. Take a look at 50 Essential Strategies For Creating A Successful Web 2.0 Product on Dion Hinchcliffe’s Web 2.0 Blog.

He starts with a pleasantly nerdish diagram, which I can’t resist (sorry, it’s the MBA in me, even 25 years later) reproducing here (from his blog, by the way):

Don’t worry, he explains software architecture and product design, as follows:

Software architecture determines a web application’s fundamental structure and properties: resilience, scalability, adaptability, reliability, changeability, maintainability, extensibility, security, technology base, standards compliance and other key constraints, and not necessarily in that order.

Product design determines a web application’s observable function: Usability, audience, feature set, capabilities, functionality, business model, visual design and more.  Again, not necessarily in priority order.

So that’s cool enough by itself, and it’s a nice introduction to a thought-provoking list of 50 strategies. They’re actually more like tips, or snippets, all of them worth thinking about. “Start with a simple problem,” for example, and–my personal favorite–”release early and release often.”

If you’re anywhere near product development for the web these days, read this list. You won’t accept all of them, for sure, but you’ll think about some of them.

So this was obvious but worth noting because it’s what you and I expected, and it shows that the right kind of business is going to go on. Toyota has announced plans to build an electric town car. Let’s see a show of hands now: Who’s surprised?

So everybody is pretty much set on what’s getting the most investor interest, market interest and new efforts to start new business. And it’s what we’re now calling clean tech. And green business.

(photo credit: Toyota)

It’s hardly surprising, given the obvious need, that investors are ready and willing to put money into green clean technology. That’s not a hard prediction to make. Still, given the down economy and the generally down numbers and poor outlook on investing, how about this:

During 2008, green-tech venture investments jumped to $8.4 billion, a 38 percent increase, according to preliminary figures released Tuesday by the Cleantech Group.

Cleantech Group’s senior research director, Brian Fan, said in a statement:

2008 saw solar take a 40 percent share of clean-technology venture investment dollars, led by mega investment rounds in thin-film solar, concentrated solar thermal and solar-service provider companies.

Investors also continued to migrate from first-generation ethanol and biodiesel technologies to next-generation biofuels technologies, led by algae and synthetic biology companies. Other sectors with healthy investor interest included smart-grid companies, small-scale wind turbines, plastics recycling, green buildings and agriculture technologies.

So that’s good news to me, on two levels. First, it’s hard evidence that some business is doing fine, still growing; second, I think it gives us hope that there might eventually be real solutions to some of the global problems that plague us all.

Seems like I’m getting a new flow of e-mail lately from well-meaning people asking for “tips on new business” or “tips on starting a business,” as if there were some storehouse of generic tip treasures that are waiting to be distributed.

Here are two examples:

I ran across you on [the web] and wanted to send you an e-mail and see if you would offer any advice in, well, any part of this new direction I am taking. I read your “About Me” section on your site and you have seen it all! This is something completely new to me and I am looking to do better than most right out of the gates. Anything you can offer would be appreciated!

I have been working in my field for more than a decade now. I believe I am quite adept at meeting challenges, too, but I get numb when it comes to starting up a new venture or business of my own. Basically, lots of ideas just scatter away. I always get this feeling that a paper plan is good enough only if it’s simple, actionable and time bound. What do you think? I need some sound advice and tips from a man like you who has seen it all.

How do I answer requests like those? As soon as I start to even think about it, the obvious platitudes well up in my brain like a flood of useless, boring, obvious advice: Give value. Be true to yourself. Do something you like doing, something that people will pay for. Buy low, sell high. Bootstrapping is better if you can get away with it, but can be bad if you end up stifling a business that might have prospered with more capital. Don’t spend more than you take in.

Business, and particularly startup business, isn’t generic. Every case is different. I like answering questions–you can see a bunch of my answers at Entrepreneur.com and at bplans.com–but I don’t have a stock answer for a request for general generic wisdom.

I suppose it should have been obvious, but still, I liked reading YouTube Videos Pull In Real Money last week in The New York Times.

The story puts up examples of several people bringing in very nice incomes and owning their own business, in effect, by working with YouTube, gaining an audience and living off the advertising revenue.

One year after YouTube, the online video powerhouse, invited members to become “partners” and added advertising to their videos, the most successful users are earning six-figure incomes from the website.

For some, like Michael Buckley, the self-taught host of a celebrity chatter show, filming funny videos is now a full-time job.

Buckley started on local public access cable TV but moved to YouTube when he saw the opportunity. He’s had 100 million views–and that was before the feature in The New York Times; and I’ll bet I’m not the only one to pick up on that.

Like so many other things, though, Buckley’s success doesn’t mean there’s an easy path for you or me. You have to be good, you have to get there early, you have to be (well, sort of, and usually) original.

Then there’s Cory Williams, 27, making $17,000 to $20,000 a month producing YouTube videos.

… he said his big break came in September 2007 with a music video parody called “The Mean Kitty Song.” The video, which introduces Mr. Williams’ evil feline companion, has been viewed more than 15 million times. Half of the profits come from YouTube’s advertisements, and the other half come from sponsorships and product placements within his videos, a model that he has borrowed from traditional media.

So there we go again. The business landscape changes, the cyber landscape changes and, if you can do something that people want, there’s money to be made.

But don’t copy these people. Do the next big thing. What you get from these people is the reminder that it’s out there.

Greenbiz.com reported yesterday on a new group building a program to generate $500 billion in clean tech investment and 5 million green Jobs:

The New Apollo Program is the creation of the Apollo Alliance, a coalition of business, labor, environmental and community leaders promoting clean energy, energy efficiency and green jobs.

The five sections of the program include numerous recommendations, ranging from expanding and continuing existing programs to developing new funds and systems for cutting carbon. An underlying theme throughout the plan is improving conditions in the U.S. through better infrastructure, education and good jobs.

Obviously this is a lot more than the $15 billion per year that President-elect Barack Obama proposed during his presidential campaign, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t also important.

I’m seeing a theme emerging here. Opportunities are coming, particularly in some key areas that–everybody agrees–the world needs.