To get on the mobile marketing bandwagon early and beat your competition to the punch, you will need to prepare yourself for a bumpy road ahead in the short term. You will need to communicate with the many different devices in use today from different manufacturers as well as different carriers and their specifications and competing protocols.

I don’t think even the biggest optimists out there will challenge the assumption that we’re in a recession now.  Hard to look at the stock market, here or abroad, and deny that.  So what is an entrepreneur to do?  Selling can be pretty hard normally, and during a recession it can be even more challenging.

One of the frustrating things about running a venture capital fund is that your ability to help entrepreneurs is generally tied to your ability to deploy capital.  That’s the business of venture capital – investors make fine distinctions and try to back companies that in your business judgment have the best chance – at the time of investment – of being successful high growth companies.   While that is the right way to approach things for a venture investor, there are two big problems with that business model  from the entrepreneur’s standpoint– company and entrepreneur picking is at best an inexact science, and in the course of the year an investor will meet many more deserving entrepreneurs than could reasonably be funded. 

As I thought about this problem last year it came to me that one of the best ways that I could help entrepreneurs was to combine my own network of relationships with the types of technology Amplifier Ventures was investing in:

It’s a sad, sad time for entrepreneurs, at least it is if you read the press.  Here’s just a small selection:

·         The VC boom is ended – entrepreneurs should forget about raising “easy money,” so says Sequoia one of the best regarded venture capital firms in Silicon Valley.

·         “It’s just too hard”, says an entrepreneur in a press release announcing the closure of his start up.

·         Early stage businesses won’t be able to get capital due to the current market down turn, says the National Venture Capital Association.

Have you ever thought about how an entrepreneur diversifies?  Not their financial investments, but their company.  if you've not thought about it, you should!

Naming is integral to branding and to your overall strategy and mission, and this is no easy task. With a financial crisis looming, doing it right is critical to your success. 

Before you name your business, products or services, it’s wise to have the answers to many questions – most of which you have already dealt with if you’ve written a business and/or marketing plan.

You’ll need to have all your major stakeholders in mind: customers, the public, investors, etc.

With all the programs and conferences about social media, social networking and new media for business, one thing I almost missed, and perhaps you did too, was that on June 26, 2008, The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), overseer of domain naming, announced a relaxation of its policies.

Around a week ago I wrote an extensive piece on the current credit crunch. In it I suggested that the Fed and Treasury were doing a great job, and that we were on the path to a stronger economy in 2009.  And, for those of you who read it, I did suggest that the government take on those toxic mortgages.  I will leave it to others as to whether Mr. Paulson read my blog – the great thing about punditry is that you can leave the inference of a connection for others to make.  Of course, you know that he didn’t read my blog, and had most likely been hatching his plan for quite some time.  But that’s not the point here.  The point is that I made a prediction that at the time might have been far fetched, and it came true.  And, therefore, I could, if properly motivated, claim to be a market savant.