MyStrategicPlan is a web based strategic planning tool that enables users to plan and implement their strategies through a host of features. MyStrategicPlan caters to any business size and does so without isolating itself to large corporations based on their ability to pay. The software tool includes such relevant features as the ability for decision makers and staff to assign and monitor accountability, set measurable targets to assess success, effectively communicate strategy & establishment of consensus, develop a concise and specific method for achieving goals, and provide specific tactical steps for management to undertake. The comprehensive plan can be build in a short amount of time, even days, and the implementation of the plan can be monitored year long.

I had a chance to talk to the creator and VP of Marketing for MyStrategicPlan, Erica Olsen, and this is what she had to say:

Why did you start MyStrategicPlan?

MyStrategicPlan helps everyone run a better business. By the time someone is finished setting up their plan, they’ve learned the equivalent of a mini-MBA. The company started with the idea of giving even small businesses the chance to have a “Virtual VP of Strategy” who keeps things on track. We’re not just running a website, our plan is to start a strategy revolution.

What is MSP’s Business Model?

We use an annual per-user licensing model. Similar to many web applications, we offer a free trial after which billing begins.

How do you differ from your competitors?

Our industry contains either limited desktop strategic planning software that’s little more than an excel spreadsheet, or massive enterprise level strategic planning solutions that are far too expensive for medium or small businesses. We are the only affordable solution, and we provide so much more than just a platform to build a plan. Our software improves each month, and learning resources are added constantly- we do this because we truly want to start that strategy revolution.

Anything else you would like to share about your tool?

Tasks in MyStrategicPlan cascade from wide-reaching organizational objectives down to individual action plans, once the plan is done, MSP acts as a Performance Management System as well. We have been in business for 3 years, but are definitely still a startup- each day presents its own challenges for a young web application carving out a place in its industry!

MyStrategicPlan offers its services at a reasonable price point as indicated on their website. Navigating through the web pages, I found the features useful to new entrepreneurs as well as those who have an established web presence. It is surprising how the market has not capitalized on strategic planning tools, which essentially is the backbone of any business. If you have ever asked yourself three questions, “where is my organization now?”, “Where do I want to take it?” and “How will I get there?” then this tool will definitely prove to be a viable solution to your queries.

Click here to visit their blog and here for the homepage

RuffPC.com (California, US) - a virtual PC sales site that caters to buyers who are interested in durability and quality engineering in their portable computers. In that regard, RuffPC.com offers a product line consisting of ruggedized, semi-rugged, and fully rugged brands to emphasize their nicheness. RuffPC.com and the associated product lines are a welcome addition to the market, where unique portable computers are literally non-existent. The ruggedized laptops will definitely gel well with the market gap with such unique offerings: water-proof, sunlight readable display, capability to withstand against shock, dust, and even mud. 

For those still weary of such a brand, take note that the brand has even gained popularity among notable enterprises: Boeing, SCE, NASA, U.S. Navy, U.S. Coast Guard, U.S. Geological Survey, Mississippi University, Rutgers University, J.L. French, Rocky Flat, Stealth Engineering, GEO Systems U.K., RACAL Defense Electronics, Lynch and Sons, Herzog Electric, U.S.R.D., and Kansas Department of Health & Environment.

In addition, research composed by the International Data Corporation (IDC) reported that among the most common causes for notebook damage are drops at 64%, followed by spills at 38% and the component most cited for damage is the HDD and LCD display. The brands focus on durability brings to mind Volvo’s focus on safety. Anyhow, a unique approach to building portable PCs or any product for that matter is the right way to go especially considering the economic costs associated with poorly crafted computers. Surprising, however, is the fact that it took so long for someone to change focus from the conventional perception that the next slim laptop is all that matters to actual quality workmanship, safety and durability.

Click here for reasons to go ruff with portable computers and here for a listing of their product line, and here for features that set ruff apart from the conventional brands.

SharedWeddings.com – an innovative and free wedding site, founded and launched in early 2007, with a host of features for couples planning their auspicious wedding day. Included in SharedWeddings.com are important elements such as fully featured wedding websites, various website templates to choose from, an easy to use wedding website design interface, guests can RSVP online, create multiple photo albums, create a wedding poll and quiz, and receive automatic emails when a visitor to the site leaves a message, comment, or RSVPs.

For those interested in spreading the wedding buzz; SharedWeddings.com helps connect friends and family. The site is quite interactive and the features as mentioned is often on the top of the list of brides and grooms. Also, the fact that family and friends can take part in the buzz long before the days leading to the wedding is priceless. In addition, the site has a Wedding Budget Planner. With this tool, you can categorize all of your wedding planning spending, record deposits paid, assign a due date, and make notes about each individual item. Furthermore, new templates are being planned and added to the lot of templates available. Overall, its a welcome addition to have this site as a form of relief aid for those planning their weddings, which can often be exhiliarating and at the same time be quite exhausting.

Click here to view a actual wedding website, and here for the feature list, and here for a list of sample templates

TeamEffect.com (New Zealand) – a visual drag and drop style project management tool is definitely a pleasant diversion from the complexity and lack of usability of the traditional online project management tools. System developers, management and IT teams would find the tool effective in the following critical areas: project scheduling, forecasting team requirements,  maintaining a tally on task progress, and in sharing and assigning task responsibility. In addition, the management tool has essential project categories such as analysis, design, development and testing to reap the benefits of a planned undertaking. 

I had a chance to talk to the creator of the site, Joel Macfarlane, and this is what he had to say:

Why did we build such a thing? What could be the business model?

Until nine months ago I owned a successful software company providing Project and Portfolio Management software to large companies like Tecos. We made a pretty good living selling software locally and charging big money to install and maintain it. It was never a particularly easy business living from one big sale to the next. Meanwhile we observed the industry trend of moving away from large expensive applications to smaller cheaper SAS product. Watching other companies like BaseCamp and FogBugz sell millions of copies online for a small per month cost just make sense. I exited the company and spent the next nine months creating TeamEffect from scratch with the goal of being in the same market as these projects but with something completely visual and super easy to use.

We finished this month and have gone into Beta with the goal of giving the software away till it’s perfect. Check out the project video on our web site for a quick demonstration.

Why is your site different than your competitors?

The currently market leaders are very clunky as the web has not traditionally leant itself to good client side interactivity. Typically these apps give you text boxes and calendar pickers rather than a good old fashion start to end bars. I used to draw staff schedules up against projects on a white board where I could draw lines and rub things out with a finger rather than stumble my way through these lists. TeamEffect gives you the same features and more but presents them on a visual calendar with all of the interface smarts we all expect from Web 2.0 applications.

How are you planning to market it?

With experience selling this sort of software in person we are going to apply the same sales techniques online. We will be running a social forum based campaign over the next month to gather a few eyeballs. Then when we can hone our message and drive our conversion rates up we will start a formal branding PR campaign on some of the large Project Management sites.
 
Project Managers and Team Managers are busy people and generally hate scheduling and forecasting software since it adds workload, the campaign we have planned plays on this.

Any other information that you believe is relevant to your startup?

We are inviting 100 people to sign up this month for free to start our advisory community. We need all the feedback and help we can get to make this software really stand out. So get on board and give us a hand.

It’s a pleasant surprise that TeamEffect.com is offering these services for free until the site is perfected - a great approach to building loyalty and user acceptance. The site, built using a fair bit of client side code and ofcourse, Ajax technology for user interaction, can be said to be usabilitiy and technology driven. Overall, it is great to see a real world tool to aid management in planning the initial and subsequent stages of the project development process. 

Click here to visit TeamEffect.com and check out the demo videos.

Guitarati.com (Chicago, US) - an innovative music site, launched in private beta on February 14th, 2008 and in public beta on April 8th, 2008, introduces a new approach to music. That is through our perception of colour. Guitarati asks us to look within our soul and discover the colour that corresponds to our feeling at any given moment. Similarly, colours that correspond to a particular musical element will be discovered and then begins this interesting relationship between colour and music.

I had a chance to talk to the creator of Guitarati Sonal Pandey, who also brings to the table her software industry background, this is what she had to say:

Why is your site different than your competitors?

Guitarati provides an offbeat, intuitive way of music discovery based on music-color co-relation. Amidst a world of music discovery dominated by tag clouds, 1-10 rating systems and so forth, we wanted something that enabled users to easily find music that others had ‘felt’ the same about. In this way, we work orthogonally to the heavy number crunching music discovery algorithms and other social music discovery methods out there.
 
What is your business plan or model?

Users can listen to full length tracks for a cent, and these cents get deducted from the download price when they download the song. Or they can listen to free, high quality samples. Guitarati provides multiple means of revenue for bands and labels, as they get paid for song downloads as well as streaming. Bands and labels decide the price of their music and retain 75% of the earnings. We earn money through a cut of the music streaming and download sales.
 
Why did you start this website?

We want to create products and services that are fun, unconventional, perhaps even bizarre. Music discovery is one such step. On a serious note, we think that the future of massive data classification could be more intuition based. Of course, we don’t mean intuition in a woo-woo new-agey scaring-people-off way, but in a way that lets people follow their instincts. People use their instincts so often, may be more than we realize, that making a choice of music based purely on what color they feel attracted to at any given time is not so far-fetched after all.
 
Music color relation has been studied for ages and explored by the likes of Newton and Plato. Research and experience show that music and emotions are tightly coupled. The thought of color based music discovery occurred to us one day and then we started reading up on the this intriguing topic. And so we began working on the website 6 months ago.
 
How are you planning to market it?

We believe that simple, quirky means attract people’s attention better than somber campaigns costing thousands of dollars. We are using the power of social media and since our target visitors frequent social websites, we are benefitting from this approach. Other than this, we are regularly being written about in blogs.
 
   
Any other information that you believe is relevant to your startup?

We utilized the private beta period to invite bands and record labels to upload their music while we parallelly tested and finished our back-end systems. The website is now open to everyone who has an interest in music or color or both. Responses from website users have been ranging from ‘love it’ to ‘I don’t get it’ and everything in between. But the bottom-line of all feedback has been curiosity. That we think is a good start.
 
Certainly Guitarati is an innovative and interesting approach to music that will definitely build hype among music enthusiasts and surfers alike. In this day and age, building sites that cater to a different perspective on a known concept or perhaps an entirely different concept is a promising approach. Also, having a sense of creativity and a honest desire to present ideas and concepts in a different light are really praiseworthy. In that regard, I have much anticipation for Guitarati and the curiousity it creates.

Jey

In the mist of planning for a new startup, it is easy to forget the “customer satisfaction” component of the business plan. Securing funding and other ”must do” items will take up most of the time and energy; however, you must keep your “target” - “your customers” - “your visitors” in mind at all times. Don’t follow the startup examples of those who would work so hard to secure funding and then burn through it by spending on advertisements but don’t even think about satisfying their customers to retain them - to make the customers visit the site on their own. In this article I am going to discuss about one thing that you must plan as part of your rollout plan for your new business ventures. 

Have you ever shopped at amazon.ca? Amazon follows up with their customers through email whenever there is a new book related to their previous purchase. E-mail marketing hasn’t gone anywhere, what has gone is the way someone writes messages to the customers. Too many spam messages with no content. You should have a plan to engage your customers as you grow from day one - appreciate them for joining your venture, thank them when they buy a product or sign up on your site, send them frequent updates about the new things that are happening on your site and definitely ask them for feedback. When you write, make sure to present a “message” in a way that the customer will actually read. 

I have made e-mail marketing a key component of my rollout strategy for all of my new ventures. I try to send out a newsletter once every two weeks to my visitors/customers containing recent updates and some freebies to make them appreciate knowing my business. E-Mail marketing, in sort e-marketing is really one of the most effective ways to keep your customers knocking on your door at all times. It has also become cheaper to do e-marketing with all of the competitions out there. The key is to create messages that your customers will actually read.  Make your message compelling - short with catchy words. Stick to your core business, don’t try to sell or write about something else, if you do, you’ve just lost your customer. They will feel that they have just signed up for a spam site or business - encourage them, not discourage them. 

Basically it should be customers first, then the operations and revenues for any new business. Building customer relationships and loyalty is very important for startup businesses - it will be the glue that will make you grow in no time.

Yesterday, TechCrunch wrote about a rumour about a possible announcement of FBOpenSource; today they’ve confirmed that Facebook will indeed go Open Source for their one year old platform.

What does this mean for you?

Well if you are operating a social network site, users can now run Facebook’s applications on your platform. This is a great news for the creative minds. A year ago Facebook launched their platform where it allowed users to create their own applications to run on their platform, which allowed other users to use many applications to interact with other users.

This is probably a response, a strategy to fight back to the “Open Social”, a Open Source Social Networking platform which is backed by Google, Yahoo and MySpace.

Facebook has issued the following statement:

“We’re working on an open-source initiative that is meant to help application developers better understand Facebook Platform and more easily build applications, whether it’s by running their own test servers, building tools, or optimizing their applications. As Facebook Platform continues to mature, open-sourcing the infrastructure behind it is a natural step so developers can build richer social applications and share what they’ve learned with the ecosystem. Additional details will be released soon.”

Stay tuned folks, lot more details to come in this fight to hold the ground in social networking.

This really means, the face of social networks will soon be changing to even a more comprehensive, more effective tools that will be available for the people who will continue to use it everyday. This really is good for the end-user.

Jumptomap.com (United States) is a one stop map site that incorporates via a non-cryptic link various viewable mapping sites for your particular address.  These mapping sites include Google, Yahoo, Mapquest, Ask, MSN, Multimap, Maporama, Maps.com, Randy McNally, Maps On US, and Map24.

I had a chance to talk to the site founder Rahul Dhesi and this is what he had to say:

Why is your site different than your competitors?

It appears that there are no direct competitors at this time. My algorithms are patent pending (see more below) and that should give me a competitive advantage in the long run.

What is your business plan or model?

The plan unfolds in two stages. In stage one, this web site will simply provide a free, fast, reliable service that people can use with confidence. Everywhere on the Internet, that anybody provides a street map link to anybody else, they can use a simpler link instead. If stage one succeeds, then we get to stage two. Here, some of the algorithms behind jumptomap.com, currently patent-pending, can be generalized to apply to other services. If the underlying patents become commercially valuable, then the business plan succeeds and the monetization of the patents can occur.  The jumptomap.com web service itself remains free, and acts as a showcase for the patents. In the worst case, we may need to sell a little advertising. In any case: The jumptomap.com web service was carefully designed to have a very cost of operation, so it can be kept going essentially forever.

Why did you start this website?

I found it quite annoying that I had to manually type a street address into each different web site that provided street maps. A search engine could easily take a street address and provide links to multiple mapping sites, but they were not doing it. I decided to provide this service.

How are you planning to market it?

First, through publications like yours, which bring new and interesting ideas to the attention of readers. Second, by providing fast and reliable service. Once a person sending email or designing a web site decides to use a jumptomap.com link, ideally they should never have a reason to stop using it. It should just stay there forever, quietly in the background, acting as a marketing agent to keep traffic coming to jumptomap.com.

Any other information that you believe is relevant to your startup?

Start-ups get funded at various scales: tens of millions of dollars; millions; hundreds of thousands; sometimes tens of thousands. This one was funded by me at approximately $600 (which includes $105 to file a provisional patent application). At the rate we are burning cash, this will last for about a year. By then, we will know how well this venture will succeed.

Jumptomap.com, launched on December 19, 2007, is a simple site that will definitely cater to those who utilize multiple map sites and are looking for a straightforward interface. Definitely looking forward to seeing this site grow!

Click here to visit jumptomap.com