The Venture Edge

I have been missing in action for the past week and a half and Peter stepped in to fill the void.  My father passed away last week after a long life of 93 years (WWII vet at Guadalcanal) and a valiant battle for the past two years to overcome a disease that cut short his wish to live to 100.  I hope you’ll permit me a bit of a deviation from my normal posts because going through this transition with my father was a life-changing experience that taught me some key lessons that anyone can and should apply in their lives, especially in these times. 

As you may know, I have been teaching MGT453 -- Creativity and Innovation -- at San Diego State University this semester. It's been a lot of fun, and I suspect I am learning as much about the topic as are my 51 students, most of whom are seniors who will be graduating in the summer of 2012. 

In case you didn't notice, next Saturday -- November 26, 2011 -- has been officially designated as Small Business Saturday. Officially designated by whom? Well, by credit card giant American Express for one, which has dedicated an entire Facebook page (with more than 2 million followers!) and more to the day. 

Ready for some good news on the entrepreneurship front? According to a report released last Thursday by the Kauffman Foundation and Young Invincibles, 54 percent of Americans aged 18 to 34 -- the generation commonly known as the millennials -- want to start their own businesses. Okay, there's just one thing. Of this 54 percent, only 8 percent of them own businesses now, and only 11 percent intend to start businesses within the next year. And what about those other 38 percent -- the potential young entrepreneurs who want to start their own businesses but who don't plan to do so anytime soon? Why have they delayed their dreams of entrepreneurship? 

Well, that title is going to irk some people.  Actually, I can’t claim to have thought it up. No, a friend in Madrid sent a link to this post on a Chilean site called PilarSordo, written by Armando Fuentes Aguirre.  The title is “Hay Gente Pobre, Pero Tan Pobre, que lo Único Que Tiene es…Dinero,” which translates to there are poor people, but so poor, that the only thing they have is money. Given that in 2006 Chile had the highest GDP per capital in Latin America and the Global Competitiveness Report for 2009-2010 ranked the country at 30^th most competitive in the world, I thought Aguirre might have something interesting to say.

I am convinced that there is almost always a guaranteed market opportunity for a new product that fulfills the needs or desires of a large group of people, is reasonably priced, and that is reliable and works well. Such is the case with a new product that I just found out about: the Mailstop Envelope offered by Berkeley, California-based CatalogChoice.org. The Mailstop Envelope promises to do something that I personally am very interested in: shutting down the flood of grocery store circulars, catalogs, phone books, credit-card offers, and other junk that fills my mailbox every day. All you do is buy a Mailstop Envelope for the quite reasonable price of $6.75, fill it with up to 15 address labels clipped from your offending junk mail, and then drop the Mailstop Envelope into the mail. That's it -- CatalogChoice.org takes care of the rest. Before long, that flood of junk mail will slow to just a trickle.

It’s not often I get to write about proposed legislation that will actually make something less regulated, particularly when it comes to the SEC.  But, it’s true.  Read on. 

I read in an article in the Wall Street Journal that pelletized ice cream maker Dippin' Dots just filed for bankruptcy. I was personally never a fan of "the ice cream of the future," but I can remember the first time I saw it, and how much my kids wanted me to buy it for them every time we went to the shopping mall. For several years, Dippin' Dots was hot. Now they're not, and the company's boom-and-bust story is a reminder of the need to continually innovate new products. 

Only two days left until Groupon begins trading on the NASDAQ exchange under the symbol GRPN. Their highly anticipated (and often panned) IPO, scheduled for November 4, is important to investment banks that have another 14 ventures in the wings waiting to launch their IPOs.  If Groupon fares well, companies like Zynga and Angie’s List will head out with some confidence.  On the other hand, given all the negatives around Groupon in the past few months, there are no guarantees that this party will last beyond the initial bump.