An Application Service Provider is a company that provides on-demand computer-based services to other companies over the Internet, usually software, typically for a usage fee. Because many small- and medium-sized businesses require specialized software but lack the resources to purchase or develop that software, ASPs provide a cost-effective way to integrate expensive software into even [...]

One way to fill your back office needs is to hire people one at a time through an RFP marketplace or job board. You can advertise for an ongoing outsource relationship or just have piece-work bid on one-at-a-time by freelancers or vendors.
While technically not “turnkey” solutions, these marketplaces and job boards as giving you access [...]

So, why outsource your back office? Isn’t it easier just to do it yourself? Hire other people?
The answer is both yes and no. In many ways, it is simpler to do it yourself, but it requires a huge amount of work even at the very beginning of your venture. If you can’t do all that [...]

In the MBA world, they call “what you do best,” core competencies.
Corporations understand that they succeed by doing what they do best and letting other folks, like suppliers or vendors, do the other stuff.
For instance, most hotel chains do not actually own their hotels. Why?
Any moron can own a hotel. The owning part is easy; [...]

Tune-in to Jim Blasingame. Richard will be discussing some tips on how to start a business and the updated Shoestring Venture: The Startup Bible coming out in June 2010.  Here is the link to Jim Blasingame’s interview on May 21, 2010 @ 7:00 a.m. EST.  -  http://www.smallbusinessadvocate.com/show/schedule If you miss it, this link will have [...]

We wish you the greatest success and happiness for 2010.

Depending on how mathphilic or mathphobic you are, we have either entered the last decade of the naughties or the first decade of the twenty-teens. Either way, it seems we all have big plans to close out the decade (or start the new one) with [...]

It’s been a great recession for Wall Street and a truly sucky one for Main Street.

It sounds, I swear, like an Onion headline — in fact, when I read it, I scanned upwards to make sure the date didn’t read April 1.
Goldman Sachs’ president, Lloyd Blankenfein, announced today that it’s sorry for all the [...]

What recovery?

Making the rounds below the radar are the November 11 comments from the ever-wise Jan Hatzius, senior economist at Goldman Sachs, about how the current “recovery” statistics don’t include much of the small business picture, particularly small businesses shutting down.
Today’s comment attempts to gauge whether the recent official estimates might have overstated the economy’s [...]

In the SBA’s new 0-2(b) loan program, eligible small business owners are given a Big Gulp cup, a sheet of cardboard, and a magic marker.

Now that CIT has filed for bankruptcy, who’s filling the void that they leave in small business and supply chain financing, since they were the top dogs in both until very [...]

It is a well-established fact among statisticians, pollers, and market researchers that somewhere around 5% of all survey responders are, in fact, stupid. I kid you not. I learned that statistic in my first marketing research class, my second marketing research class, four more statistics classes, and a consumer behavior class. That’s seven different professors [...]

A Unique Publishing Brand
Shoestring Venture is a new type of brand in the publishing industry that unites several various strands into a unique configuration. A series of books, videos, and online resources dedicated to an audience of bootstrap entrepreneurs, the Shoestring Venture brand includes:
[...]

For the real estate agent, it’s a “starter home.” For the seller, it’s a “fixer-upper.” For the buyer, it’s a “pile of crap.” If they can agree on a price, for the statistician, it’s an “outlier.” Here endeth the statistics lesson.

Housing prices have gone up for the third straight month! Unless, of course, housing prices [...]

It may not be Vegas, but it’s just as much a crap shoot. Or just plain crap.

Anyone who has read this blog for any time or listened to me on the radio can probably surmise that applying for contest money is not a viable funding plan. If you’re not a fan of grants (and I [...]

You don’t want to know who’s in charge at the iPhone Apps store.

Finally, the feds get interested in the black box we call the iPhone Apps store.
Federal regulators want to know if AT&T and Apple worked to together to reject mobile apps for Google’s innovative Voice service, sending letters to the companies asking them to [...]

I have always counseled every client I’ve dealt with that business planning, even from the start, needs to include how the business will close (this is equally true of business planning for individual products or brands). Perhaps because businesspeople are eternal optimists or because no-one wants to face mortality at birth, few have the good [...]

Where the CIT failure will be felt first . . .

In the grand guignol of faltering banks, CIT, which ranks 26th in size, seems little more than a sideshow in the wholesale slaughter of giants like Lehman, Bear Stearns, and WAMU. It’s imminent demise, despite its desperate, last minute loan of $3 billion, however, will [...]

In all our start-up travels — on the consulting side (me) or the entrepreneur side (Steve) — we’ve had front row seats to a million start-up crack-ups. And what we’ve learned from history is that nobody learns from history, to paraphrase a philosopher who year in and year out wins the “Best Moustache on a [...]

Venture capital funding is down 82% this quarter, but Marc Andreeson throws $300 million into the pot.

Andreeson, Marc: “The cash machine is now open.”
In one of the worst recessions ever, Andreeson and his long-time business buddy, Ben Horowitz, open up a new VC shop with over $300 million in funds. Turns out that they have [...]

Jack Zenger and Joseph Folkman of the corporate leadership consultancy,Zenger/Folkman, and authors of