13/01/06 00:02
It's after midnight. So if something I type doesn't make sense, please let me know. The Entrepeneurial meetup was a lot of fun tonight. I met a lot of interesting people. I kept telling myself to shutup and listen, but I was having way too much fun participating in the conversation.
For the most part, the conversation centered on getting things done on the Internet, but each person had his or her own angle. Sitting next to Gil, the host, I started things off by attempting to describe my idea for a travel site that provided a local point of view. Several suggestions were brought up on how to attract and keep and audience, as well as possible ways to monetize the site's traffic. Next we talked about an ePionions-like site, but for small items like peanut butter, shaving cream and such. It sounds like a small idea, but several members of the group mentioned ways on how to present the items in a way that attracts a market segment. Next up, Joel mentioned that he and some partners had bought, improved and sold some properties. He sees an opportunity to market software that teaches the new investor about the how to make a business of investing in real estate. The software would use traditonal instruction and role playing simulation. Vincent then told us about how he just finished working for IBM in product development of software for locating the right human resources for projects IBM is working on. The answer lies in the metadata and having a lot of it. Kevin Savetz and Mariva H. Aviram talked about their two successful sites,
Free After Rebate Info and
Mariva's Guide. Besides illuminating the topic of how a money-making site is run, these two pointed out the fact that good content needs money to fuel it to pay for good writing. At a dollar per word (yup, that's the going rate, according to Mariva), a series of short articles can get expensive. Kevin and Mariva hope to find an angel investor to free her up and let a good writer fill Kevin's pages with great content.
Speaking of angel investors, the next person in the line-up (sorry, I cannot remember his name) says that there is no such thing. In fact when you go talk to someone about venture capital, bring a lawyer.
There were a few more people at the meetup, but my eyes grow tired and I cannot hold off sleep any more...