How Would You Use Community Boards?
If you haven’t noticed, our Blogs have received a bunch of comments from fellow entrepreneurs in recent weeks. It’s basically become our best place to have community dialogue — take for example the comments on the Blog entry about Jan and her startup conundrum. You have really poured on the support in a very productive way.
Last night we were in NYC at a Borders doing a discussion and book signing. Several people attending asked said, "StartupNation NEEDS COMMUNITY BOARDS!!! We want to find other entrepreneurs to network with!!!"
Well, not to fear. We’re going to launch our Community Boards… but we want to make sure we do it right!
Help us with your thoughts: When we introduce the Community Boards, what will you want to get from them? What special features will you hope we provide?
We want to make sure that, as we’re constructing them, we’re building in all the bells and whistles that would make them most helpful to you.
October 20th, 2005 at 12:56 pm
Hi All,
I would like to see a Community Board on how one should pitch an idea to the media.
It seems these days, it is imipossible to get the media to pay attention to your business/idea/product, unless you are a "celebrity".
What are some tricks?
How do you make your product "newsworthy"?
Look forward to your input.
Warm regards,
Kim Banks
President
The Pet Set
Elegant Cards and Stationery for Our Fabulously Socialized Companions
http://www.the-petset.com
October 20th, 2005 at 2:59 pm
I think that community boards would be helpful for Kim so that she could share her ideas with humans - and give her poor pooch a break! (Just kidding Kim, I talk to my dog too! However, she isn’t much of a critic - she seems to love all my ideas based on how her tail wags).
Like the folks you met in NYC, I agree that community boards could be a useful tool. I participate in a couple of local networking groups. Community boards could be a good way to reap some of the same benefits I find while working with the networking groups.
1) Brainstorming - similar to how you use your blogs - it’s great to have a place to share ideas and obtain feedback. It’s helpful to get ideas from others when your having trouble finding the answers on your own.
2) Referrals - our local networking group is a great source for referrals. In our group, each of the members brings referrals for the other members to each meeting. Perhaps a community board would be a good place to share referrals.
3) Marketing - StartUp Nation offers callers a chance to do elevator pitches to practice their pitch to a potential investor. Having a place to "pitch" your business ideas and services to potential customers would be very beneficial as well.
Thanks Rich & Jeff for your continued support for those of us who are "going for it"!
Linda Case
Night Hawk Security
October 20th, 2005 at 3:12 pm
After listening to your Angel Investor Podcast, I was struck by the idea of having a forum for entrepreneurs to pitch their ideas both to the investor community and other entrepreneurs. As a professional angel investor, one of my biggest issues is having outside experts filter and evaluate business proposals. By giving the pitch to other startup owners, you get an immediate feedback on the state of the industry from others who may be in similar businesses. Yes, there may be issues with trade secrets or "stealing" ideas, but getting others to review your pitch, not to mention putting your pitch in front of potential investors should outweigh this problem.
October 20th, 2005 at 5:22 pm
I agree with both Linda and Marc, each of you has very intelligent viewpoints.
The issue of "stealing" ideas is an interesting topic all on its own…I am so fearful of that aspect, that I think I may be self-sabotaging myself by avoiding such venues as trade shows.
A community board would be a great way to talk about strategies to protect your business eg. How to learn to keep your cards close to the vest, while mining for valuable information.
That kind of thing.
Kim
The Pet Set
http://www.the-petset.com
October 23rd, 2005 at 9:58 pm
I happened to have been at the discussion in New York. Thank you Sloan brothers for coming to the big apple and holding the discussion.
I mentioned the "Community Board" issue to Rich because I find myself wanting to find like-minded people, and hearing what they have to say on a variety of issues is appealing.
The website is informative, and a Community Board would allow visitors to the site to delve deeper into their entrepreneurial interests, get to know other entrepreneurs, and find valuable answers and opinions. We all have questions, regardless of where we are in the Start-up process, and where better to discuss anything on our mind than in an environment that fosters creativity in the business realm.
As Rich and I discussed, I take part in a message board on surfing at the surfermag.com website that is, I believe, unique. It’s not simply a message board, it’s literally a community of surfers with its own culture, etiquette and "feel." Besides being fun to visit, It does several things at once:
1. it creates a place for both beginners and experts to look for answers they haven’t been able to find elsewhere: The experiences of other surfers render their opinions more valuabe than others. The same goes for entrepreneurs. If someone else’s advice can help us avoid mistakes, then the community creates tangible value.
2. it creates an environment that fosters ideas: people feed off each other’s ideas regardless of what is being discussed. a new board shape that’s growing in popularity, something noteworthy that has happened in the sport or industry. This gives the feeling of being connected to the larger surfing community. We’ve all found ourselves searching for people to collaborate with and bounce ideas off of. There are business partners just waiting to be connected.
3. it creates goodwill among community members: surfing is one thing, but people post pictures of their new babies, talk of rough times in their lives and of exciting things that happen to them. This creates an environment that transcends surfing. There are people who have posted on the community board for years, this should be the goal of StartupNation and is the mark of a "successful" online community.
I believe these are interchangeable with entrepreneurialism. When creating a Community Board, I would want to see a focus on the creation of a favorable community culture. It may be difficult to control, but it simply won’t work to its potential unless community members have goodwill among each other. It can’t just be a place I go to have a question answered and that’s it, it needs to be engaging.
Entrepreneurs are interesting people, it’s time we had a space online to get together and see what everyone else is thinking.
October 26th, 2005 at 10:30 am
I’m definately for the community boards. I’ve been to a few off of Idea Cafe, Young Entrepreneur, etc. Most of them seem to become a marketing fest for MLM and Get-Rich-Quick schemes.
I would truly love to find a good board with hard working and like-minded entrepreneurs as we blaze our path to success!
Great idea!
~Allen
October 26th, 2005 at 1:42 pm
This would be great!!! I’m just getting started and having a place to go to and ask questions would be wonderful!!! I can’t wait!
Marcy Shuler
Scrapbook Space Station
A Scrapbook Space For Everything…And Everything In It’s Space!
October 26th, 2005 at 1:50 pm
I would like to see a "Mentor" section…people who have been there to help people who want to start their own businesses (like me) answer questions. Furthermore, I would like to see a networking board that would be diverse so that it can reach the maximum number of people in different careers and positions.
October 27th, 2005 at 3:18 pm
What Greg said, exactly.
Kim.
November 4th, 2005 at 12:40 pm
I like the community board idea too!! I mostly scroll through the posts looking for topics I am interested in, others who are having the same problems as I am, or (maybe more importantly) topics or issues I havent thought of. So even if one does not post a message or reply to one, the community boards are a huge asset. Besides, isnt it great to see that you are not the only one with (your problem here) problems!?!?
November 5th, 2005 at 6:56 pm
A really good book on the value of having a community of users is [u]Creating Customer Evangelists[/u]. It features one chapter on the concept. The authors also have a Web site and blog.