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I’m crazy about new businesses. The passion, the excitement, the discovery involved in starting something new, figuring out what works, pursuing a passion. I’m known in the office for exuberant introductions to a favorite new customer. I carry pictures in my briefcase of my favorite old customers. Starting a new business is hard as hell (I have first hand experience), but it is a special breed of person who can weather that perfect storm. And those are the people I want to spend my professional life with.
So why, you might ask, would someone this loopey for the little guys hang out with the corporate suits? Do I want to get bought? Do I want to get financed? Do I want to get customers? Do I want to get free lunch? Yes to maybe a few of these things, but the real reason is that there are some amazing things that can be done when the industry stalwarts are working with the young innovators. And I want to be the small company in on the big conversations.
And so co-upstart Sunir Shah from FreshBooks.com and I are proposing a SXSW Conference panel presentation titled “Dancing with Giants: How Start-Ups Do Deals with Industry Titans”. Our plan (and you can support it by voting for our session) is to spend our hour talking with 3 of the mega giants in our industry; Google, Intuit and American Express about how small and big businesses can work together to build small business greatness.
There can be many pitfalls in doing “game-changing” deals with large corporations; they can disrupt your product plan, delay development efforts, cost money in legal fees, then change directions, abandon your project or launch a competing product. Not to mention your 3 person development team working with a 50 person “rule by committee” scenario on the other side. Not ideal.
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Tags: batchblue, small business, small business web, start-up, sxsw12, SXSWi
In what has become a yearly tradition here at BatchBlue, we are once again hosting our Small Business Super Hero Contest. This is our chance to recognize those folks who dare to not only dream, but who also take the leap and fly to build their own businesses.
This really is a favorite time of year for us as we get the chance to read all the great stories and be inspired by those who follow their entrepreneurial spirit and forge out on their own to do great things. We also like to reward their efforts with some cool prizes which this year include:
In honor of National Small Business Week we encourage you to share your own stories, or nominate a Super Hero in your life who is running their own awesome business. Tear off the disguises and share your stories with the world!
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Tags: batchblue, Contests, MOO cards, small business, small business superhero, small business week
We’re just getting back from our second stop on the BarCamp Tour: the 6th annual MinneBar held at the Best Buy headquarters in Minneapolis. MinneBar is the largest BarCamp in the country, with about 1,000 people attending this year’s event.
The conference itself was great; lots of interesting sessions, fantastically smart and engaged attendees, and the Best Buy headquarters blew me away with how eco-friendly and employee-focused it was by design. Fellow BarCamp Tour busser and Shopify‘s Tech Ambassador Joey DeVilla wrote up a great post about the day’s event over on his blog Global Nerdy, and Stephanie Bullis from Grasshopper posted on 5 Ways to Make Your BarCamp the Next Minnebar.
The thing that impressed me the most from a sponsor’s perspective, though, was how the event organizers Ben Edwards, Luke Francl and Adrienne Pierce really took the time to make us feel welcomed, included and appreciated.
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Tags: batchblue, Community, marketing, sponsorship
Last week’s trip to Atlanta was a whirlwind of Realtors, Batchbook customers and monkeys (more on that later!). Pamela and I were there to attend the 4th annual ReTech South conference, where Pamela was presenting on panel with some other Small Business Web friends.
The thing that struck me the most about the conference was the great enthusiasm and energy from both attendees and presenters. Pamela and I attended a different real estate conference a few years ago, and I was amazed at how far the industry has come in terms of its adoption of technology in general and social media specifically. Most of the sessions were standing-room only, as panelists discussed ways to use blogs to attract leads, using Facebook to build network and of course, how web applications can help grow their businesses. Plus, you will not meet a nicer, more network group of people than Realtors. These guys are definitely in our wheelhouse!
Here’s some thoughts on the conference from Realtor Jim Duncan, who made a short video while driving home from the conference. Please note: we do not condone videotaping and driving!
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Tags: batchblue, mailchimp, small business
BatchBlue is on the road again, this time heading to Atlanta to attend the Real Estate & Technology Conference & Expo (RETech South). Pamela will be speaking on a panel about The Small Business Web and using cloud services with MailChimp, Expensify and IfByPhone. I’ll be there, too, armed with lots of stickers, shirts and stories and talking to folks about how they’re using Batchbook to manage their real estate contacts. If there was ever a well-connected group of folks, it’s Realtors! And judging from photos of past conferences, they’re fun, too. We like that.
We can’t wait to meet some Realtors doing cool things with technology in the real estate industry. We’ve even re-vamped our Batchbook for Real Estate page and added a new case study so folks can see how one tech-savvy Realtor is using a variety of web-based services to run his real estate agency.
As always, we’re interested in meeting our friends and customers, so if you are going to be there please let us know! We may put together a hosted Drink-up Thursday night – follow us on Twitter (twitter.com/batchblue) for details as they shape up.
Tags: batchblue, batchbook, Community, mailchimp, real estate, realtors
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