Here is a great post published by famous french blogger Loic Lemeur, where he gives a great piece of advice about having a successful internet business startup.
Loic definitely knows what he is talking about as he is currently developing his fifth startup with “Seesmic“, which is pretty much like a Twitter.com but with video. Actually, he raised around $5 million just to launch his company and he moved to Silicon Valley so he could get much closer to the Venture Capitalists there.
In essence, Loic’s advice is centered around two major ideas which are:
1) Thinking Global instead of “local” 2) Launching an original idea
About thinking globally, I agree with him, we need to think internationally from day one, when talking about an Internet Business Startup. I think Loic is well aware of this as he is French, and had he remained thinking only for the French market there wouldn’t have been any way that people like me, that have no idea about speaking French, could have known him. As he is blogging in English this allows him to get connected with people not only from the US but with people from all over the world.
This one of the reasons why I’m writing this blog in English and not in Spanish which is my first language. I want to reach a global audience and being English, the equivalent of Latin in times of the Roman Empire, it is very important to think in English, as it is a mean for being global.
In summary, here is Loic’s Video as well as the listing of Loic’s 25 tips for a successful internet business startup.
- Think global as you create the business
- Move to Silicon Valley
- Create an original product: new and different
- Do not create a copycat, unless your goal is only to get acquired
- Try to raise funds from world-class VCs
- Hire people from all nationalities as much as possible
- Register your domain names in the key countries you are interested in (and the large ones you are not interested in)
- Protect your brand Worldwide
- Make a site that is language ready day one, even if you launch in English
- gather an international community since day 1
- Talk to the most active members of the community to help you understand their market and become evangelists there
- Create an application that lets your community translate the site by themselves
- Languages are not the same in all the countries they are spoken
- Do not think that Europe is the U.K.
- Manage costs properly
- Never do a 50/50 deal with anyone
- Do key partnerships with large local players
- Never trust that if the partner is large your service will be a success
- Create an international reseller program
- Kill your local copycats
- Buy your local copycats if you can’t kill them
- Be very pragmatic
- Do not apply any of this to Asia
- Do not apply any of this to Russia
- This advice only applies to Internet startups
Héctor Sánchez is a blogger from Ocotlán, Jalisco and he is currently residing in Guadalajara. Héctor is a Public Accountant from Universdidad Panamericana with a Posgrade in Corporate Finance from the same university, and he is currently working as financial analyst for Hewlett Packard. Even though he works in Finance for a living, in his spare time, he is a geek and he likes to build blogs, websites and studies everything related with Internet Marketing and several ways of building businesses online. He is also an active member of Toastmasters, where is the President in turn of his local club, Toastmasters Atlas Chapalita Club.
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