Category Archives: Entrepreneurs

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Bradley attended Berkeley’s startup school last weekend and mentioned that he enjoyed Paul Graham’s talk about what it takes to start your own startup.

Paul wrote up notes from that talk (and another similar one) into one of his essays. His essays are usually a good read but really long and this one is no exception.

I’ve been lucky enough to meet a few of Paul’s Ycombinator-funded companies and have been impressed by the founders’ enthusiasm. They are usually really young and they always come in pairs (Paul requires two founders). And they always feel that they CAN do it.

Paul takes aim at all the reasons why we say we CAN’T do a startup. It’s a fun read. Why to Not Not Start a Startup.

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While that video conference last week wasn’t that productive, I did get a chance to meet an interesting entrepreneur who shared a great story with me (and hopefully he doesn’t mind me sharing it here).

He runs Diet.com, a great URL and a community site targeted at–you guessed it–dieters. The site has lots of features, from diet blogs, to reviews of diet products, recipes and diet tracking tools.

The most interesting thing he shared however was how he approached his new video feature on his site. His staff produces little videos (like this week’s “Kitchen Raiders” which helps you cut bad foods out of your house). They then take these videos and post them on YouTube. THEN, they embed them on their own video page and their own homepage.

So what? Well, first they don’t have to deal with the mess of hosting their own videos. Second, by posting it on their homepage for their millions of users, all of their videos end up in the youtube “most watched” list for that day. It’s a great free marketing tool for them – they produce high quality content that people want, they show it to their own very interested audience, and their audience makes it popular on YouTube, which introduces them to lots more interested people. It’s creative and really simple. I like it.

Oh, and here’s that video. Remember no costco size bags of transfatty foods.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWAWbCsdPys]