Its been close to two months since my last post, and wow have there been some changes. I promise nothing too long winded, but let me catch you up with the highlights of the last month:

First up, if you are not already aware, I sold my company Blue Sky Factory to email marketing leader WhatCounts. After 10 years, its a wild experience to finally be an “exited” entrepreneur and have completed the cycle. I am very proud of the company we built, the presence we had in the market, and the kick ass team that I have had the fortunate experience of working with over all of the years. Every single person, past, present and future has played an important part of Blue Sky Factory.

As I mentioned in our final blog post:

It’s hard to fully express how strongly we feel toward our customers and employees. We’ve worked hard to build a profitable and thriving business and are proud of what our customers have been able to accomplish. It’s been a labor of love, and we are grateful we have had the opportunity to work with you as we developed and built Blue Sky Factory. Once again, thank you for your continued support and for joining us as we begin a new and very exciting journey.

Here are links to the video, announcements, and press:

Press:

WhatCounts announcement
Baltimore Business Journal
ClickZ

Here are two interviews I did for some additional perspective:

“After Blue Sky Factory’s Sale, Cangialosi Looks to Help Baltimore Entrepreneurial Community”

“When to Sell – A Conversation with Greg Cangialosi, Former CEO of Blue Sky Factory”

There are a few other flavors as well if you are interested on this Google search.

As a result of the acquisition, I am no longer an employee of the company and have moved to the board of directors of the combined company and will be doing some product strategy work for them on a consulting basis. Pretty exciting times to say the least! Definitely life changes.

So, what’s next?

Well, after running a company for the last decade of my life, the most sound advice I have been getting is “Take a break!!” For me, its really hard to be going 150 mph and to jump right down to 50 mph. So, the short answer is I am winding down many of my day to day affairs at Blue Sky Factory and helping to wrap some of the transition work that is part of an acquisition. As far as what’s next, I am going to give it several months before I jump back into anything serious or semi-full time. I need to clear my head, and take advantage of this opportunity in life and enjoy some time with my wife and daughter, that is just too precious of an opportunity to let fly by me.

Angel Investing:

Outside of some volunteer work I am doing with organizations I am currently involved in, the only other thing I will be actively be participating in is some angel / seed funding. I have been an active angel investor for the past 2 years and am now starting to ramp some of my activity up. If you think there is something I should take a look at, I would love to hear from you. I will also be writing a little more on this subject as I am investing within specific criteria. In the meantime, feel free to email me at gcangialosi at gmail dot com.

New Blog:

Over the next month I will also be transitioning this blog from The Trend Junkie to a new domain – cangialosi.net. I will announce it when its live but stay tuned for a complete redesign, and my attempt at writing on a regular schedule. I have learned a wealth of knowledge over the last 10 years and in particular the last 6 months. I have attempted to share a lot of my entrepreneurial experiences here on this blog, and will continue to do so in the future.

Thanks again for reading and I look forward to staying connected.

I recently had the opportunity to speak at the first Personalization Summit in Mountain View, CA. I was on a panel called “Personalization: Why its Happening Now.” Since I “Evernoted” some of my thoughts in preparation for our panel, I figured I would post an excerpt here in the hopes of getting others perspectives and opinions on the personalized world that is emerging very quickly. Below are some of my notes on the first, high level question we discussed:

How will the world be more personalized in five years?

From a marketing perspective, we have been in the evolution of personalization for years, and even so we are still at the beginning of what I think will be a HIGHLY personalized world in the very near future. Like anything else, it just takes time to get there, because in my mind all parties involved in the personalization revolution must be aligned, and clearly there are still many moving parts around this.

The obvious advancements in personalization in online marketing will continue in the areas of personalizing website experiences, email marketing, social media properties and of course one of the biggest, mobile. I think those three channels – email, social and mobile will be the most active in accelerating the personalization revolution. We are in a world now, where data is BIG. Think about the amount of data that is being generated every single day. Every web visit, every “like”, every “tweet”, every “check in”, etc they all say something about us.

The obvious advantages for personalizing marketing are clear – these channels are delivering incredible ROI, and the data backs up the fact that the more relevant i.e. personalized the message, the better the overall conversion rate. Its simple, think about the conversion rate on a highly segmented daily deal email (Which really hasn’t started yet, outside of location segmentation), or taking the amazon shopping experience to the next level. Now, and in the future, a lot of this will be driven by purchasing intent / peers / influence from a consumers social graph.

Even some of these channels are beginning to go through a personalization revolution – think about the mobile social network Path with its 50 person friend limit – its personalizing the social network. Where facebook is really a list of friends, Path is a network of people you really care about.

We are also going to see a lot of personalization in the offline world as well. There will be a level of personalization on so many things that are just starting – think about travel, auto, clothing, banking, etc.. you are starting to see all of these industries and markets are beginning to personalize products and services in the general sense. One example I discussed was the loyalty program for Kimpton Hotels, as a member when I go to any of their properties, I know when I check in they know I want a high floor, away from the elevator, a certain type of pillow, and the NY Times & Wall St Journal at the door in the morning. Everytime I visit a Kimpton, they simply say “We have your InTouch number here on file” and I know the experience will be the same – that is personalized travel.

Personalization clearly has its advantages. Today, think about how we are constantly being bombarded by media waste that is irrelevant to us. Imagine a world where there is very little to no media waste? It wont be in 5 years but in 5 years there will be a lot less of it.

I also think that more and more brands will continue to shift to implementing personalized communication preferences for consumers. I am talking about the uber preference center / ultimate in personalization across all channels. Let the consumer be in control over what messages they get, on what channel (email, mobile, social, etc), and on what frequency.

Challenges:

The challenges for a streamlined personalized world are vast, and we are seeing lots of moving parts as I mentioned earlier. One of the main issues is that there is data all over the place on consumers, and they are not in control of it. Consumers should be able to own and potentially even monetize their own data, almost the same way they should be able to ultimately control how they are communicated to as I mentioned above.

We are seeing a lot of new innovation and even industries trying to tackle the issue – check out Personal.com for example. This new startup offers consumers “data vaults” that you can share with whoever you want – friends, family, or companies. Once you link up things like this to data exchanges, where the consumer is in control of what they want or are looking for, it becomes a very personalized world. Probably not 5 years out, but I think that this may be where it is going. The question is can there be one place where the consumer controls all of their data?

Privacy & Compliance:

As mentioned, a big issue is that there is so much data about consumers in SO many places. There is no true over site, so that’s one of the nuts that has to be cracked. If industries don’t self regulate on issues like this, then the government steps in and regulates the industry. The bottom line is that the federal government is getting involved and proposing various regulation around this space.

There are obviously large threats that need to be considered, outside of general security, there is also a high risk of identify theft and being able to reconstruct an identity from a variety of data sources, among many others.

In my opinion, we are going to need to go through a real consumer education process on personal data online and make it simple for people to understand. To date, consumers don’t know whats going on out there, and are continuously not included in the conversation. The consumer issues don’t only lie with facebook privacy concerns with 3rd parties. There is a much bigger picture out there. I am not sure how it will all play out but one thing is for sure, personalization is inevitable, and we are only at the beginning stages of its evolution, and its creating a whole new horizons of companies in the space.

Those are some of my thoughts on the future of personalization. I would love to hear what you think and expand on this. Thoughts, opinions, rants in the comments below please. Thanks for reading.

Greetings once again! As the first long awaited follow up post on entrepreneurship and bootstrapping, I wanted to first address the topic of whether or not bootstrapping a startup is right for you. Many of you who know me know that bootstrapping is my preferred method of building a business. In reality, its all I know. That said, I realize bootstrapping is not for everyone.

In this post I will cut to the chase as I have written several posts on the topic in the past. The main themes are pretty direct and are based 100% on my experience. So, let’s get down to the title of this post, is bootstrapping for you?

Tenacity Required: This is not for the faint of heart.

It’s safe to say that starting a business, any business, is not easy. Starting one with limited funds makes it that much harder. That said, many entrepreneurs, like myself, go for it without raising any outside money. However, I’d like to briefly clarify what I define as “bootstrapped,” as there seems to be some fluctuating definitions out there. To me, you truly are a bootstrapper if you:

- Did not raise a DOLLAR of investment (of any kind).
- Used existing savings or your own personal funds to launch.
- Used credit cards or existing credit vehicles to fund your business (bank loans, etc)
- Sweated out the start up phase and made it work.

You are NOT a bootstrapper if you’ve:

- Raised friends and family money (No, you didn’t bootstrap, you raised money)
- Raised angel investment, venture capital or private equity money of any kind.
- You get the point…

Bootstrapping to me means five simple, yet tough words: You Are On Your Own.

This is a position that many people are not willing to put themselves in. And believe me, I completely understand why. In many cases, you need to be willing to risk putting it all on the line, which is a lot to swallow. This varies of course depending on where you are at in your life. When we started Blue Sky Factory, I was 27, single, with a very simple lifestyle, and I had the “what do I have to lose, this is the time, lets go for it” attitude. Today, I am married with a 2 year old and a mortgage. For some folks, those factors alone are enough to reconsider entrepreneurship altogether, especially bootstrapping a business.

While there may be higher risks to bootstrapping, the good news is that today you can launch a startup very light if you are doing a tech startup or web app. Look at what Graham Lawlor’s Ultra Light Startup’s is doing in NYC and Boston. This is the modern day startup ethos. You can launch light and in more cases than not, there is no need to put it all on the line!

Be Relentless: You must BELIEVE:

There is a common trait in many of the successful entrepreneurs that I know. They act as if failure is not an option. This is a simple yet very powerful trait. The BEST entrepreneurs will work at it until they get it.

As an example, when we started Blue Sky Factory back in 2001, we were a “web shop.” Which back then translated meant we would do anything (web related) if the check cleared. If we couldn’t do it, we would find people who could. We hustled and struggled our way through the pure startup phase until there was some sustainability (i.e. revenue). It was raw, but we never stopped believing and quickly pivoted into a pure play email marketing company (we don’t build websites anymore).

The point is, although at one point we had less than $100 in the bank (yes, you read that right), we kept going, relentless, where many others would have given up, we rode the fiber that held it together and moved the ideas and the business forward. Failure to us, was not an option, and it its not to the best entrepreneurs out there. In my mind all great entrepreneurs have to be optimists, all of the time. Frankly, there is no other way to be.

So, the real question to any prospective boostrapper is as follows. Even though the landscape has made the startup barriers easier and less risky, if you do kick off a real business are you in the right frame of mind, and do you have what it takes to power through the tough times with the FULL drive that failure is not an option? Simply said, are you ALL IN?

The rabbit hole on boostrapping goes much deeper, and I plan on writing more about the subject, but that’s all I have right now. Please share your thoughts, comments, opinions, etc in the comments below, and thanks for reading.

This came to me the other night as I was thinking about the ways I’ve been interacting with social tools lately and confirming with other’s that they operate in much of the same way. The idea is that there is a “disparate community syndrome” taking place with the behaviors of people who use social web platforms.

I’ll characterize my use of the word “syndrome” from the following definition:

“the pattern of symptoms that characterize or indicate a particular social condition.”

The general idea here is that people are fractured or splintered in their social networking. Each tool or channel has a unique set of friends / followers / connections and each network means something different, and brings different comfort zones and specific behaviors for each individual when it comes to their participation.

Think about it, many of these platforms, and I will just focus on the big ones, can be baselined by the following assumptions (at least based on my real world / practical research):

Linked In ( It’s all business / professional life – trying to be more social)
Facebook (The “happy place” social utility, loaded with people from the past & the present)
Twitter (A wide and vast universe of the followed & followers -many shapes and sizes)
Foursquare (Lots of crossover connections with a wide degree of NEW/ unknown contacts)

You get the point. Though there are many similarities, they are all completely different. And yes, this is nothing new, but the launch of Facebook Places has me thinking more about it. After Places launched, I suddenly realized that as cool as I thought it was, I didn’t necessarily want my Facebook community to know where I was at any given moment. It reminded me of when I first started using foursquare and originally had it linked to my twitter profile. That didn’t last long. Why? because the relevance wasn’t there, not only for me, but my Twitter network. Hence the disparate community syndrome. Each tool / channel / network has its own place for many of us.

So, here is how my DCS (disparate community syndrome) works on me. Keeping in mind of course that I totally get the need to participate in order to truly understand a medium.

Foursquare:
I’m actually using foursquare to evaluate the location based marketing opportunities of the future, not to find out what bars my “friends” are drinking in (though I do get a little protective of my Mayorships, so I guess the gaming aspect of it has me reeled in ). The medium is so new to truly understand the major implications of it, but you can guarantee it will be integrated with mobile carriers, retailers, and businesses of all shapes and sizes if they so chose. This is a watcher for me.

Twitter:
I use Twitter as an open forum to share ideas, learn about new ideas, find new content, and most importantly to engage with others. I do daily searches in twitter on different terms that are relevant to me, I connect with new people on an almost daily basis, I engage with customers, prospects, brand ambassadors, etc. There is lots of personality with Twitter. Twitter is awesome. Period.

LinkedIn:
LinkedIn is a work in progress.Like many, I set up a profile many years ago, accepted lots of connections and vice versa but never really used it. As of late, I am co-managing the Social Email Marketers group that I founded along with DJ Waldow, using the network to spread news about the company, and also as a recruitment vehicle. And of course, I am linking up with people from everywhere. Again, all 100% professional. I think their MAJOR UI enhancements and feature updates are positioning them for more social activity thereby making the connections within LinkedIn more meaningful to its users.

Facebook:
Facebook is by far the most – to my knowledge – diverse network from my life. I have family, friends, colleagues, some close some far, some from waaaaaay back, some from present time, and I am sure some who I’ll be connected closer with in the future. It really is an interesting social utility. There you may occasionally see a glimpse of my personal life, a photo or two, but overall it is a personal branding and another network of information dissemination for me. Though, I am increasingly using the chat feature within Facebook.

So, What About You?

How are you using the social web? Do you have your own version of DCS? Maybe the tools were just designed to be completely different, but I know many folks who put it ALL out there regardless of the community they are engaging with, while others are a bit more reserved depending on which platform they are using. What kind of social user are you? I am curious to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

Thanks for reading.

There really is no time like the present. In today’s landscape, things are changing around us all of the time. The most successful organizations operate under a sense of urgency in order to take advantage of being ahead and staying ahead. In a world of continuous change, urgency is another critical, yet often overlooked element of growing a sustainable business. Urgency, defined as: “the state of being urgent; an earnest and insistent necessity,” is something that every successful business should live by.

They say in life, why put off tomorrow what you can do today? When you focus that towards business, the ramifications can be very risky. Think about it, in just “one extra day” a competitor can get ahead, steal your business or get an advantage over you in a situation. In “just another week,” the competitors wind up announcing the same killer feature just a few days before you did, getting all of the press and attention. And in this day and age, “another month or two” could potentially mean the rapid rise of a disruptive competitor.

In today’s business climate, the game has changed. Operating under a sense of urgency is a vital aspect of any company who wants to win. There are too many tools available now that lower the barrier to entry and create fierce competition in almost any industry. This creates a need to stay ahead and to move fast with the tasks that will give you an edge.

Need another motivation for operating under a state of urgency? How about approaching each day of business knowing that every one of your customers is getting a call from a competitor. In many cases, this is the case. This type of thinking will help keep you on edge. Protect your house.

Does your team want to win? Once again like all aspects of business, the core of operating under a state of urgency comes down to people. Getting alignment throughout your organization that leads to a state of urgency is a lot easier said than done. Slower organizations weed themselves out naturally, the pace and approach and leadership is different. If you are ok with the status quo, or the comfortable job, then you should work for one of those types of companies. Many people though, like to be challenged and thrive to be involved in new and exciting industries. And new and exciting industries are the ones that need to operate under the most extreme urgency as they are the drivers of all innovation and change. Where do you want to be?

In an effort to clearly articulate my point, here are some of the actions you see from companies who operate under a sense of urgency:

- They provider killer customer service.

- They are continuously innovating their products and services.

- They take customer feedback seriously, act on it, and are better for it.

- They are transparent with their communications and actions.

- They actively engage with customers, prospects and the larger community.

- They are involved in philanthropic causes (the world does need to be saved, and sooner rather than later).

If you operate with some urgency you will most likely always stay in the game, operate under a sense of urgency, and you will win.

What do you think? Is a sense of urgency too extreme in your eyes or do you feel the same way? Give me your thoughts in the comments below.

Thanks for reading.

As CEO of a growth company, one topic that never falls off my radar is sales. Sales is the lifeblood of every company. As our COO, Doug Broujos likes to say, “if you’re not growing, you’re dying, and no one wants to work for a company that’s not moving forward.” I couldn’t agree more, and that’s the core of why sales is critical to every business.

You may have heard the old saying, “sales solves everything.” Well, I’ve come to learn over the years that it does. When your company is selling, building momentum, and closing business, then you can do things, like grow, if you so choose. That’s how Blue Sky Factory has grown, through sales. We never raised any funding to grow either, we sell and grow through revenue generation. We do that by providing stellar customer service and powerful technology solutions. We do good work, and the word spreads.

Sales is hard. It is the front lines, it’s holding down the fort, fighting off the competition, making your case, each and every day. As a founder, I know what it takes, and I also know that the only way to scale the kind of “hustle” that stems from the founder / CEO level, is to have incredible people around you representing the company, selling your solutions, over-servicing your customers, all while continuing to deepen the relationship with your customers. This practice eventually evolves into the development of a large, vast community of evangelists that not only enjoy, but take pride in, amplifying your company’s signal. There simply is no better marketing than that.

My personal approach to sales, has always been that unless I am asked directly, I don’t sell, anyone, ever. Instead, I develop relationships and nurture them and add as much value as I can when asked or when I see an opportunity. For me, this this has paid off incredibly in terms of growth, and it will always continue to be the core backbone of any business that I personally develop. It’s a great feeling when I first speak with a prospect and learn that a trusted member of my network gave my company and I a glowing endorsement. To me, that is the ultimate business development. Be there before the sale.

Scaling Sales

I’ve also learned over the years that the “Kumbaya effect” (something that will be further articulated in another post) of word of mouth and referrals, isn’t a scalable sales model. In the sense that its only one channel, a VERY important one, but unless your are looking to be a lifestyle business, it can’t be the only one. A growth company should have many channels working towards attracting people to their sales pipeline.

As an organization grows, it becomes critically important for marketing to fill the top of the funnel with prospects, ideally qualified ones. It is then up to the sales team to engage with those folks, identify real opportunities, and bring in the customers. Sometimes, and more often than not, in order to achieve your goals you need to be aggressive on the sales front. This clearly speaks directly to the team you have in place. From what I have seen at my company and others, successful sales people have a lot going on, all of the time. This is no 40 hour work week if you want to win.

What can seem like a potentially overwhelming schedule, ie. a high volume of people to connect and follow up with, managing multiple opportunities at various stages, writing proposals, having meetings, traveling in some cases, etc., is really the regular schedule of a successful sales person. In fact, a successful sales person wouldn’t have it any other way. They thrive off of this type of schedule and activity, and they love building momentum. That said, the most important activity of a successful sales rep is their ability to manage all of that, while continuing to build the top of their funnel.

Building the Funnel

While marketing may fill the top of the funnel, its the job of sales to build their own pipeline of prospects and opportunities – ideally from both inbound and outbound channels, (though I know many organizations differ on their philosophy of inside / outside sales, etc). The importance of this is critical to building momentum and to ensure that once you have a good quarter, a good month, a good week, or a good day, that more good ones follow. This is key to a continuous flow of success. All to often though I hear about sales people who peak and valley with success all year long because the front end of the funnel never has enough time and energy put towards it. In order to win, you need a large pipeline of opportunity at every deal stage.

The Bottom Line

At the end of the day, the reality is, in the words of Alec Baldwin, coffee really is for closers. I’m not going to sugar coat it. Sales is hard. It takes tenacity, resilience, and a passion and motivation to succeed. If you are in sales and you don’t have these things, you will never be as successful as you can be. If your sales team lacks those traits, then you might want to take a hard look at whats going on.

Sales is a very large subject, and I realize I haven’t deep dived into everything, and there are many factors involved in successful sales, but there are some fundamentals that I have come to learn over the years.

To recap, here are 10 fundamental elements of sales:

1. Sales is critical to every organization and must be treated as such.

2. Having a great product & service helps the sale every time, but that’s not enough.

3. People buy from people (and brands) they trust. Be one of those people & brands.

4. While word of mouth and referrals are great. Never rely purely on the good will of your network.

5. Everyone in sales should strive to “be there before the sale” as often as possible.

6. Marketing fills the funnel, sales BUILDS their own funnel from that (individually).

7. Sales must never neglect the top of their funnel. This is the seed for all future success.

8. Sales is hard. It takes time, patience, resilience and dedication. You can’t be on and off from one day to the next.

9. Sales success doesn’t come in 40 hour work weeks (Though I have seen it done in much less than 40, but that’s Ninja status )

10. Sales isn’t for everyone. Coffee really is for closers.

These are just some of my thoughts. Whats your take? Am I wrong? Want to add your own flavor to this? Let me know your thoughts below.

Thanks for reading.

I wanted to put up a quick post to mention a couple of great events I will be participating in this week. I’ll be posting my March schedule shortly as well. In the meantime, hopefully you can join me at one of the below. Looking forward to it!

February 25th – Webinar: “Email & Social Media: Community, Content & Killer Campaigns”
DJ Waldow and I will be presenting this on behalf of Awareness, Inc.

Attendees will learn:
• Why email is the digital glue of social media
• How to integrate email & social (tactical, low-hanging fruit)
• Strategies for using email & social media as complementary channels
• How to optimize content to encourage sharing
• Strategies for effective community building using email + social

You can register here.

February 26th – “Got Effective Email Marketing?” – A Panel Discussion
Hosted by ThinkBusiness Media, join me as I moderate the following panel of marketing rockstars:

Jeanne Jennings, Principal, JeanneJennings.com
Raj Khera, CEO, MailerMailer.
Jeffrey Lupisella, President and CEO, Vizual, Inc.
Bill McKay, Vice President, Direct Media Millard.

The event is in Tysons Corner, VA from 7:30-9:30. You can register here.

As Bob Dylan sang, the times they are a changing. For marketers, now the times are a changing more than ever before. Think about the landscape shift we have seen in marketing communications over the last 24 months alone. There have been incredible amounts of change and evolution in marketing mediums, and most importantly the connections, community, trust and influence that the social web has brought to the forefront.

The future is now:

Today, if you are a marketer, and you are ignoring this fundamental shift in communication, you are doing both yourself and your company a large disservice. You are putting your job on the line, and it will be just a matter of time before your organization “shifts” with or without you. As marketers it is our duty to leverage all of the tools that are available to us today.

Are you on the bus or off the bus? That is the question any savvy marketer must ask themselves these days. Sure, every market and industry is different, but everyone is going to be affected this time (they already have, many just don’t know it yet). This marketing communications landscape shift isn’t just another “tactic” to include in your media plan, this is the new frontier of marketing communications. We are in the future now.

Is your marketing department adaptable?

To me, one of the secrets to success in today’s marketing landscape is having the willingness and ability to adapt. The ability to change, hence the marketers “new normal.” What is the new normal? According to me, the “new normal” for any organization should be the ability to constantly change, with the times, the technologies, and the mediums that are literally evolving the way that we think about communicating and engaging with our customer base.

The “new normal” should always be morphing. They say, the only constant is change, and that is so true when it comes to today’s marketing landscape. As marketers, we can no longer be set in our ways. In today’s world, our ways need to be constantly changing because the optimization of our efforts is never complete. As our VP of Strategy & Innovation Chris Penn says, there is always more juice to squeeze!

Are you taking action?

Now is the time of new thinking, experimenting, evaluating and adapting. This is the time. Your company’s marketing department should be morphing into a publishing organization, and leveraging the power of your customers and subscribers networks. As I have said several times this year in my speaking, 2010 is the year of social acceleration, and TRUST and INFLUENCE in the social web will drive more purchasing decisions than EVER before.

So, as we move forward in 2010 and the landscape continues to change, it is important that we as marketers stay nimble and light. Now is not the time to “over process” your marketing function, but rather to test the waters on new mediums, learn more about your existing subscribers (social graph), build brand ambassadors and evangelists (easier said than done, yes), and most importantly LEVERAGE what is beyond your control…… the thoughts, opinions, recommendations and influence of your existing base.

Think about it.

Am I off? Tell me what you think in the comments.

I recently had the opportunity to speak at this years Web 2.0 Expo in NYC. I was part of the Web2Open sessions that were organized by the Podcamp Foundation (Hats off to Whitney Hoffman), and in traditional “unconference” fashion, those of us who were asked to speak could do so on any topic we wanted.

The theme of this year’s Web 2.0 Expo was “The power of less,” and with that in mind I took this opportunity to do something I’ve been wanting to do for a while, get back to my roots and start talking about my experiences with entrepreneurship, starting a business, bootstrapping, and all of the lessons I have learned along the way…. so far. The Web 2.0 Expo theme was a perfect fit to “beta” a presentation I dubbed: “Bootstrapping: Building a Business Funded by Revenue.”

The Web 2.0 talk was the first step in developing a series of posts and presentations that I will be focused on throughout 2010. Though my story is still very much “in progress,” I have started several businesses, and have been building my most recent company, Blue Sky Factory, for almost 9 years. I’ve learned a wealth of lessons through my experiences building a business from the ground up with zero funding.

The Framework:

As mentioned earlier, the Web 2.0 talk was in “beta,’ as I am still very much flushing out the various topics and segments I would like to cover. As I have been thinking through things, there have been three main topic areas that seem to encompass the spirit of what I would like to talk about. They include the following:

1. Start-up Lessons

Just as it sounds, and what essentially encompasses most of the presentation below, there are oh so many start-up lessons to discuss, and every entrepreneur has their own. Sometimes, more often than not, they all have their own version of the same lesson. I plan on discussing several of the ones that I have experienced and have processed.

2. Building a team

At the end of the day, any good entrepreneur will tell you their company is only as good as its people. It is so true. Over the last 9 years there have been many different people who have joined my company, and each one of them play a key role in our operation. I plan on talking about building teams who are aligned, motivated and constantly executing.

3. Managing growth

It is often said that managing growth is simply the act of trading one set of problems or challenges for the next. There is a lot to be said for that statement. Growth isn’t easy, but if you find yourself managing it, then you are doing something right! There are a several “stages’ of growth to be discussed in a variety of topics (team, technology, infrastructure, finance, sales, etc).

Below, are the slides from the Web 2.0 talk, which tend to focus mostly on the first topic of “start-up lessons.” I would love to hear your input, or questions in the comments below. I will be continuing on this topic organically, and hope to begin to drill down on the high level topics listed above shortly.

This coming week I will again be heading to one of my favorite places on the planet, NYC. I will be attending Ad Tech on Wed and Thur, and will also be speaking on a panel at Graham Lawlor’s Ultra Light Startup’s on Thursday November 5th at 6:30 at Sun Microsystems. The event is dubbed “Email Marketing for Startups”.

I am looking forward to it and I will be joined by some incredible folks who I can’t wait to meet. The panel looks like:

Moderator:

* Maisha Walker, President of message medium and e-commerce columnist with Inc. magazine

Panelists (alphabetic order):

* Greg Cangialosi, CEO of Blue Sky Factory
* Neil Capel, Founder and CEO of SailThru
* Lisa Klieman, Vice President, Business Development at Innovyx, Inc.
* Adam Rich, Co-founder and Editor-in-chief of Thrillist

If you are coming let me know and lets be sure to link up. If you are going to be at Ad Tech and want to link up as well drop me a line. I will be roaming the exhibition floor most of the time. See you in NYC!