The Creative Connector Blog - Creativity in Marketing and Entrepreneurship

RareShare Featured in the Toronto Star

David Isserman — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 20:57:42 +0000

I hope everyone is having a great holiday weekend!

RareShare, the social enterprise I launched last month for patients with rare medical disorders, was featured in last week’s Toronto Star. Click here to read the article.

Your Mom is Not a Valid Test Market

David Isserman — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 14:00:27 +0000

VCWear.com, which started as a joke by Andrew Hyde (StartupWeekend.com) and Matt Emmi (OneButtonLife.com), sells thought inspiring t-shirts poking fun at the venture capital industry and tech-entrepreneurs. New t-shirts can be “funded” for $500, which gives you:

Your shirt “made” and will be available for sale to everyone at $25
40% of all future revenue from your shirt ($10/shirt)
Your name/company info and “message to the world” on the shirt page
The shirt you chose to fund
Bonus “iFunded this shirt (over your startup)” shirt

Some of these are so clever, I may even decide to fund one!

The Word of Mouth Manual Volume II - A Free E-Book on How to Build Buzz around you Company, Product or Service

David Isserman — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 12:00:58 +0000

Dave Balter, one of the leading specialists on “Word-of-Mouth” marketing and the founder and CEO of BzzAgent, has published a free e-book (approx. 119 pages) on the how to successfully use word-of-mouth marketing to build buzz around a company, product or service. This is a great resource and best of all, thanks to Dave, it’s free!

Click here to download the book. (approx. 2.4MB pdf)

For those that require a hardback copy, click here to buy it online at Amazon.com.

Be Good and Become Great

David Isserman — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 16:00:31 +0000

Here is a must-read essay by entrepreneur, Paul Graham, which explores the principle that, as a startup, if you make something people want before you worry about making money, you will have a much better end-product and a greater chance of succeeding. He relates this concept to that of a charity organization, but goes on to differentiate the two. He uses Craigslist and Google as examples.

Thanks to my friend Josh at EventVue for sending this to me.

http://paulgraham.com/good.html

RareShare Goes Live as Social Network for Rare Medical Disorders

David Isserman — Wed, 21 May 2008 16:00:00 +0000

After months of working on our early beta, I’m pleased to let you know that RareShare is now LIVE!

The Site is free to all and works to connect those affected by rare medical disorders by creating micro-communities for each specific disease.

Currently, there are just over 500 communities (the most common of the rare disorders). We’re planning to add many more over the next several months…

SeatGuru Helps You Find the Best Seat on the Plane

David Isserman — Mon, 05 May 2008 16:00:22 +0000

For those of you that are avid travelers, whether for business or pleasure, it’s time for you to check out SeatGuru. The Site let’s you review seat maps for 45 different airlines and helps you figure out which seat has the best legroom, access to power outlets and other amenities…

Here’s a sample seat map from SeatGuru

SocialThing! Helps You Organize Your Digital Life

David Isserman — Fri, 02 May 2008 16:00:12 +0000

Congratulations to my friends over at SocialThing! I remember meeting the founder when they first arrived out here in Boulder (from my hometown of St. Louis). Since then they’ve managed to raise over $500k in venture capital and create one of the best aggregators for social feeds (FaceBook, Flickr, etc.) on the Web.

A Must Have for Your Blog

David Isserman — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 16:00:05 +0000

Over the past several months, I’ve had the opportunity to test out quite a few plug-ins for The Creative Connector. While I was impressed by many of these, by far the one that proves to be most important to The Creative Connector is FeedBurner. It not only manages your email subscribers, but also manages all of your RSS subscribers.

Everything you Ever Wanted to Know About Venture Capital

David Isserman — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 16:00:53 +0000

If you’ve ever thought about raising venture capital for your startup, then you must pay a visit to Ask The VC. The Blog is managed by venture capitalists Jason Mendelson and Brad Feld and acts as a knowledgebase for everything VC.

Selecting Board Members

David Isserman — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 16:00:10 +0000

Fred Wilson, Managing Director of Union Square Ventures, has published a post titled “Thoughts On Choosing Board Members” on his blog. It offers some great insights into how to go about selecting board members for your company.

Some of his thoughts include:

Avoid “big names” For the most part, they are useless.
Select people who will attend each and every meeting, who will pay close attention to the business
Select people who have an affinity for your business, who understand your challenges and your opportunities

Be sure to check out his post for more good ideas…