Lil'Shares - Microfunding for Entrepreneurs

Master class – how to open your digital doors

admin — Mon, 28 May 2012 15:04:05 +0000

This is a guest post by @andygauk, digital strategist for Freestyle Interactive.

“I’m going to sell stuff, but how!”

The business process of yester-year would say you buy the stock, you rent a premises, you kit out the shop front and you open the doors and start selling.

Businesses that are launching today are online and often they don’t have a bricks-and-mortar shop to open the doors of. The businesses of today still need customers but those customers have a much highly likelihood of being online. So how do you open your online doors and get customers in to buy?

1. Pay for advertising

If no one knows about you, you won’t get customers. Advertising is the quickest way to build awareness. Using PPC (pay per click) advertising means that you only pay for a customer who actually clicks on your advert and you can be very specific who sees the advert by picking targeted and relevant keywords. Targeting keywords that people are using to search will help you generate traffic and gain understand of the types of words customers use when searching for your products.

There is a couple of good free tools for planning your paid advertising campaign. The Adwords keyword tool and Double Click Ad planner.

2. Find the community

Who is out the social web that should buy your product? What do they look like and how do they speak? By finding people to engage with you can build your awareness and drive not only customers but potential advocates!

Use a tool like Hootsuite to search Twitter for hashtags or keywords people type in when writing about your product – follow these people and send them a message (not too saley though).

3. Get on Google

This is actually the most important and PPC advertising and community management will give you the tools you need to be able to do this well.

Google is the world’s biggest search engine – they work by creating formulas to measure the best content on the web. If a user finds your website when searching Google they are significantly more likely to respect and trust your website – thus making them more likely to buy from you.

Getting to the top of Google is a long process but well worth it! Start by asking every customer you get to mention you on Social Media, blogs and forums. Then start spending 20 mins a day searching for your competitors and comparing their online shop to yours – figure out why they are ahead of you – and improve what you do. After you’ve dove this check out SEOMoz. It’s a great website for teaching you how to improving Google rankings and developing content marketing plans.

Mopapp

admin — Mon, 28 May 2012 13:49:54 +0000

In the Spotlight this week: Mopapp. Lil’Shares provide a platform for startups like this to get the essential funding they need to launch, join the private beta launch now.

Why are Mopapp in the spotlight?

When you build an app for the iPhone or other mobile device, you want to be able to track your performance from all angles. With basic numbers, you only see how your app is performing on a very high level. Mopapp gives you the power to change all that. You can now track app sale performance that shows how you are doing on a daily basis, and target your analytics right down to specific markets and customers. Look at your revenues, profits, performance of ad networks, and even watch what users are saying about your app. Get real-time data from Mopapp, along the option to track in-app purchases.

Introduction from Mopapp

What Seedcamp say?

Mopapp tracks & analyzes your mobile apps’ sales, generating easy-to-understand reports. Know more about your market and customers.

Contact them:

Website: www.mopapp.com
Twitter: @mopapp
Founders: Federico Sita, Alessandro Rizzoli, Marco Bellinasso

Famigo

admin — Thu, 24 May 2012 11:43:27 +0000

This is a review of Famigo. Lil’Shares provide a platform for startups like this to get the essential funding they need to launch, join the private beta launch now.

What we say?

It’s time to be able to protect your children from being exposed from inappropriate games and apps on your mobile phone. Famigo is a review site that gives you full reviews about software you or your child are considering downloading. Apps are sortable by both free and paid versions, as well as sorting by age, so you can customize your search results depending on how old your child is.

Additionally, Famigo offers Sandbox for Android, which makes your phone completely child-proof. Now you can block purchases, texts and more with one click, simply by installing this easy to use app.

What Crunchbase say?

Famigo’s vision is simple: mobile technology should simply work for families.

Famigo provides a platform for families to safely discover, manage, and enjoy content and apps on smartphones and tablets. We want everyone from toddlers to grandmothers to have successful interactions every time they use a smartphone or tablet in a family setting.

Famigo creates a better mobile experience for parents and kids by providing them with the tools to discover, manage and enjoy content & apps on smartphones and tablets. They simplify app discovery through reviews and recommendations on Famigo.com and make Android devices kid-safe with the free app, Famigo Sandbox.

Famigo executives comprise a unique blend of experts in child entertainment as well as family behavior, giving it a keen ability to market and deliver compelling and fun products designed specifically for families.

Company Vitals:

Website: www.famigo.com
Twitter: @Famigo
Email: info@famigo.com

Minimum viable product – a lean startup strategy

admin — Wed, 23 May 2012 12:46:55 +0000

What is mimimum viable product? It’s an approach to launch a product which allows a business to quickly get to market and then in market iterate their product development based on market data.

Market research had long been the back bone of product deployment – go to the market, ask people what they want and build it. Problem is time and money. Time from asking people to building can, in some cases, cause people to beat you to market and then you lose your advantage. Money because it takes a lot of money, upfront, to survey people as to the products they want to see in the marketplace.

Really that approach was the best of a bad situation, the alternate being launch a product and find there was no audience (just ask these guys)!

Lean startups need to blaze a different trail today – understanding audience need doesn’t have to be expensive and time in the Internet sense is not in your side – first to execution is better than a great idea.

Iteration is the lifeblood of the digital ecosystem. Products that stagnant are disposed of in days not in months anymore.

So if iteration is so powerful, why launch a “complete” solution on day 1. Try it, test it, improve it… Repeat!

Some examples of early products that you should try out are:

A brief introduction to Little Shares

admin — Tue, 22 May 2012 11:16:37 +0000

Little Shares, you say…

Little Shares is a microfunding platform bringing together investors and entrepreneurs. Little Shares is born out of a struggle by entrepreneurs trying to turn business ideas into a reality. Money is the fuel that turns ideas into reality, without money to get started you never will!

Little Shares removes the need for high value investment from venture capitalists and angel investors because now the community at large can vote on an idea and buy shares in it. If the idea is good enough the community invest in the idea so the entrepreneur can create their business.

As for the investors, what’s in it for them? Well think about being able to own a stake in an idea at the very earliest of stages – think about how much your startup shares in Facebok would be worth today – a lot.

Little Shares isn’t simply about money though, we work with the most creative of people to help them through the legal and financial terrain that is business setup. Our projects show off some of the best works of our team and you can instantly see not only the passion but the monitary recompense available by helping these creatives launch the next great ideas.

Intro Video

Also below is our intro video which will be available on the homepage in the coming days:

Screenshots

As a little sneak preview to what Little Shares will look like here are some screenshot, hot off the coding press:

lil’shares

UberVU

admin — Sun, 20 May 2012 15:34:47 +0000

In the Spotlight this week: UberVU. Lil’Shares provide a platform for startups like this to get the essential funding they need to launch, join the private beta launch now.

Why are UberVU in the spotlight?

Marketing pros know that the way to engage their audience is to capture the trends that people are following through social media channels. Often, this is a more daunting task than it sounds, as marketers always seem to have their plates full, and don’t have time browse around news feeds. UberVU takes care of the work for you, but notifying you of stories that can influence your brand in real time, and even alert you to any chatter around your brand throughout dozens of social media resources. You also have the option to search all streaming in real time, with an independent dashboard for you to work off of.

Introduction from UberVU

What Seedcamp say?

uberVU gets comments, reactions, mentions around a story from all over the Web, puts them on a timeline and shows the relationships between them, so you have a more complete image of the conversation that’s going on all over the Web. uberVU means participating in distributed communities from one place.

Contact them:

Website: www.ubervu.com
Twitter: @ubervu
Founders: Dan Ciotu, Vladimir Oane, Dragos Illinca
Email: hello@ubervu.com

This week in Lil’Shares

admin — Thu, 17 May 2012 19:06:28 +0000

It’s been a good week at Little Shares this week, we’ve been getting all excited by Seedcamp Berlin, we’ve been helping out Matt Lakey and The Whatever and we’ve had our first 6 people join the investor team! So in the vein of not keeping good news to ourselves we wanted to share some of the Twitter highlights with you:

Stormpath

admin — Thu, 17 May 2012 12:34:18 +0000

This is a review of Stormpath. Lil’Shares provide a platform for startups like this to get the essential funding they need to launch, join the private beta launch now.

What we say?

Stormpath is one of the first cloud services that allows any developer to create access control for any application that is far more secure than previous possibilities. Using common API client libraries, Stormpath has made the process of access control and authentication extremely simply, allowing you to streamline the security behind managing groups as well as roles of each user.

Rather than building out your management features, the Stormpath cloud service, lets you harness years of security expertise in just a few minutes, so you can get back to work with peace of mind before your morning meeting is over.

What Crunchbase say?

Stormpath is a cloud service that developers can use to manage users and simplify authentication and access control in your applications. We contribute to and support Apache Shiro, a powerful and easy-to-use Java security framework that abstracts authentication, authorization, cryptography, and session management within an application. Together, Stormpath and Shiro power user security from your smallest mobile apps to your largest enterprise applications.

Company Vitals:

What Is Going To Be Big In 2012 In The Digital World?

admin — Wed, 16 May 2012 19:54:49 +0000

It’s a real privilege to be providing Lil’shares with a Guest Post.

There is no denying that the digital world is expanding and developing fast and a lot of smart money is being ploughed into whatever “the next big thing” is likely to be in the digital market.

From the huge success of digital downloads from the likes of iTunes to the unbelievable story of the likes of Facebook, everyone is rushing to find the next big entrepreneurship start-up that hits the right mark and pulls in the next big haul of cash. The problem is knowing where to start. With so many digital investors and even more people looking to become a “digital creator”, it’s hard to know what will be the next gold mine and what will just be the next mine full of fools gold.

However, smart money has to look at mobile technology. Mobile telephones have quickly evolved into personal computers that we keep in our pockets and the likes of the iPhone and iPad have revolutionised the way in which we view data, download data and purchase data. Just look at the amount of money now being spent on digital downloads through Apple’s App Store and iTunes to understand how quickly digital media can stack up large sums of money.

It looks like the next big leap will be to merge into mobile 3D. With 3D films taking ever-growing profits at the cinema, the next rush is to develop 3D mobile phones which will have 3D gaming capabilities and downloadable 3D films and video clips. With cinemas charging a small premium to watch a 3D film over a 2D film, it is expected that a small premium could also be levied on mobile devices, instantly generating additional profits and stimulating huge demand in the market of consumers all hungry to feast on the next big gadget innovation!

What is seedcamp?

admin — Tue, 15 May 2012 09:16:35 +0000

Seedcamp is a startup incubator based primarily in the UK. They are one of the biggest and best startup incubators because of the number startups they have funded over the years.

Some of the big names to come out of Seedcamp in recent years include:

Seedcamp don’t limit their program to London, they have different events across the world through the year. There is an event calendar of the upcoming activity.

What is the mentoring program?

Seedcamp invests several times a year through events they call “Mini Seedcamps”, which are hosted in different cities throughout the year and the Seedcamp Week in September held in London. Every event includes 20 startup teams selected from all over EMEA to attend and compete for seed funding and garner world-class connections for startups plus 60-80 mentors.

At Mini Seedcamp startups pitch their business to a group of investors. Startups can receive funding at any point during the interview process – either at Mini Seedcamp or the big Seedcamp Week. After a Mini Seedcamp, the winners are invited to begin a three month program with Seedcamp where they are given mentoring and guidance in the process of launching their startup.

Teams coming to London also have the opportunity to spend time at Campus, the new startup building in Shoreditch, as a soft landing.

After winning Seedcamp, you will work and function as an independent company. This is your baby and we expect you to run ahead full force with it. Seedcamp provides you will operational funding and helps you build a strong network for yourself and your company to get you in a VC position in an accelerated way.

An intro video

Here is the intro video from seedcamp:

Find out more

Find out more @seedcamp and www.seedcamp.com.