Guerrilla marketing for books
Bestselling author John Shors offers readers more than literary imagery of his novels' settings. He actually takes them there.He leads tours of the Southeast Asian temples and hidden jungles that inspired his books. The idea: Get people excited about his work, and sell books -- a lot of them.Today's authors don't always lock themselves away for two years to write. Tighter publisher budgets, fewer booksellers, more competition and the rise of ebooks has put more pressure on novelists to aggressively market their books. READ MORE
How to tame your workers' wandering eye
The job market is finally looking brighter: Recruiters are circling, pay is climbing and companies are scrambling to keep their best employees from leaving.Tempted by the prospect of landing a better gig, 85% of the workforce is looking for a job or interested in talking with recruiters, according to a survey released Tuesday by LinkedIn. That even includes people who are "satisfied" with their jobs. If you don't want to lose talented employees, here's how to keep them happy and engaged. READ MORE
How to keep your business afloat if your partner dies
On New Year's Eve 2012, Jim Murphy sat in a Los Angeles hospital room at the bedside of his closest friend and business partner Ari Ramezani, who was fighting an aggressive stomach cancer.Not only was he devastated at the prospect of losing his friend, but they had done very little to prepare their company, a voice-over-IP phone provider called Phone Power, for the situation. READ MORE
Fighting co-founders doom startups
Wozniak and Jobs. Gates and Allen. Page and Brin. Many of today's iconic companies were founded by pairs, but cofounders' relationships are seldom so harmonious. In fact, 65% of high-potential startups fail as a result of conflict among co-founders, according to Noam Wasserman, a professor at Harvard Business School who studied 10,000 founders for his book "The Founder's Dilemma." Pairs and groups bring a variety of skills, but there is also more potential for conflict -- over leadership, money, strategy, credit and blame. READ MORE
Get $100,000, give up 6% of your pay
Rachel Honeth Kim dreamed of starting her own business. But since graduating from Harvard Business School in 2011, one thing held her back: $60,000 in student loans. So Kim sold herself to investors. Literally.
Kim sold equity in her personal career using a site called Upstart.com. She uploaded a profile with her transcripts, GMAT and SAT scores, pay stubs, resume and a photo. Then she requested $100,000 from investors to pay off her loans and cover startup costs. In return, she offered a cut of her pretax income for 10 years.
Call it a new form of credit, a new equity class, or even a twist on indentured servitude. Either way, young people with debt and dreams are turning to unconventional fundraising sites like Upstart, Lumni and Pave that let them offer a piece of their future earnings in exchange for a lump sum of cash. They're using the money to pay off loans, start companies -- even train to be professional athletes. READ MORE
9 hot niche accelerators
From energy and education to robots and food, these specialty programs offer startups seed money, mentoring and connections in exchange for equity. VIEW SLIDESHOW
So you want to join an accelerator? Here's how:
Startup accelerators are nothing new, offering intensive programs that promise to help young companies grow faster and smarter. The latest twist? Niche accelerators that focus on a particular industry or mission -- whether it's healthcare services or building sustainable products.
Picking wisely is key, since an accelerator that's a bad fit can wind up being a big time sink and an expensive way to finance your business, since most startups give up a portion of equity to enter an accelerator. The Global Accelerator Network offers an online database to search for programs by region, graduates and focus. We have some tips to find the right fit. READ MORE
Healthy food chain helps get kids off the streets
Josh Saurbier spent his teen years homeless, sleeping beneath highway overpasses in Los Angeles while taking care of his wheelchair-bound mother. When she died last year, Saurbier, then 20, had nothing -- no job, no education, no home.Then he met Erik Oberholtzer. As CEO and co-founder of California restaurant chain Tender Greens, Oberholtzer had been trying for years to figure out how to help young people like Saurbier get back on their feet.Last year, Oberholtzer's company started a charitable program dubbed the Sustainable Life Project. The three-month program targets young people ages 18 to 24 who are transitioning out of foster care, who may be homeless or who could easily end up in prison or prostitution. READ MORE
How to boost your online sales this holiday season
The holidays are coming, and your business is ready. You have the snazzy site, the easy checkout, the social media campaigns. But how do you grab a bigger slice of the $64 billion that online shoppers are expected to spend this season? READ MORE
How do you handle bad online reviews?
It's not uncommon to receive a few negative reviews, but what's the best way to handle it? READ MORE
9 apps every business traveler needs now
You don't need a personal assistant or a corporate travel department. These apps will change how you get around, saving you time -- and money. READ MORE
Sharklet: A biotech startup fights germs with sharks
Forget chemicals or pills in the fight against nasty bacterial infections. Entrepreneur Mark Spiecker is betting that the secret lies with sharks. Those fast and carnivorous fish just happen to have microscopic textures on their skin that make them highly resistant to barnacles, algae and, surprisingly, most human bacteria.
Spiecker is CEO of a six-year-old company called Sharklet Technologies that has copied those mathematical patterns to create germ-deflecting surfaces for everything from medical devices to computer keyboards. READ MORE
SGB's jatropha vision: Jet fuel grown from seeds
Call it the jatropha bubble.
When word got out several years ago about the promise of a small subtropical tree called jatropha, it became a biofuel sensation. Advocates claimed the fruit tree was hearty, drought-resistant and could be grown on marginal land. Its oil seeds offered a promising biofuel that wouldn't compete with food crops. READ MORE
Wave-propelled robots patrol ocean waters
Joe Rizzi first heard the underwater songs of humpback whales a decade ago while scuba diving near Hawaii. Enthralled, he decided to pipe their migration music into his beachfront home.
Here's the difference between Joe Rizzi and your average souvenir seeker: He's a rich venture capitalist. Rizzi's quest to capture the whalesong started with a glass pickle jar, a hydrophone and a kayak. It ends with Liquid Robotics, a Sunnyvale, Calif., company with $22 million from investors, 80 employees and customers like BP Oil and the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration. READ MORE
What?! Car Parts Made of Mushrooms
Hybrids and electric vehicles were just the beginning. Next up: the mushroom mobile.
Ecovative Design, a startup in Green Island, N.Y., is collaborating with the Ford Motor Company (F, Fortune 500) to develop a fungus-based, biodegradable foam for automotive bumpers, side doors and dashboards.
"You would be able to compost your car," says Gavin McIntyre, 25, chief scientist and co-founder of Ecovative.
The secret? Mycelium, the strong root system of mushrooms, is a natural binding agent that can knit together agricultural by-products, including corn and oat husks. READ MORE
Robot workers take over warehouse
Long after Webvan.com's legendary flameout in 2001, the online grocer's biggest problem never left Mick Mountz's mind.
As employee No. 400 at the dot-com, he knew that it simply cost too much to fulfill online orders. Labor was the killer cost: Employees had to go pick out products on shelves before they could be packed into boxes, and those minutes cost money. "That 89 cent can of soup was costing us $1 to get it into the tote," Mountz remembers. While working at his next job at a consumer electronics company, the " eureka moment" suddenly hit: What if products could walk and talk on their own? You could design a completely different kind of warehouse. And you could staff it with robots. READ MORE
A universal language for robots
Tired of waiting for the day when an android will show up and start doing your laundry, like Rosie the Robot on "The Jetsons"? So is Scott Hassan. The Silicon Valley entrepreneur and early Google architect is trying to fast-track innovation in the personal robotics world with his 50-employee company, Willow Garage. Their first robot, the PR2, hit the market in September.
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IdeaPaint all over your office
In 2002, a group of Babson College entrepreneurship students ran out of room on their whiteboard. They had spent hours brainstorming new business possibilities, and the sudden space crunch threatened to cramp their creativity. Instead, it sparked a new idea: Why not make paint that turned walls into giant whiteboards? The ideas kept popping: you could paint chairs, doors, tabletops, playrooms, entire corporate offices. Any surface could be a canvas for inspiration. The company would be called IdeaPaint. READ MORE
Urban farming 2.0: No soil, no sun
Forget the conventional wisdom that says veggies must be grown on vast farms in the Midwest. What if commercial-scale crops took root inside cavernous city warehouses, without sunlight or soil?
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Gigwalk: Make money on your morning commute
Most people make a living while they're at work. But what if you could earn a few bucks just walking to the office? READ MORE
EcoScraps' $1 million business built on trash
What if you could take out someone else's trash, then sell it back to the same person who threw it away? For most entrepreneurs, that sounds like a pipe dream. For Dan Blake, it's the business model behind EcoScraps, the fast-growing startup he launched in Provo, Utah, last year.
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Want a minion? There's an app for that
Dread disposing of the kitty litter? Too lazy to write a love letter? A new wave of startups lets you outsource such chores to strangers. READ MORE
Barefoot shoes try to outrace the black market
Imagine: You make a really ugly shoe, but one that takes a unique approach to ergonomics. A best-selling book heaps praise on your funny-looking footwear. A scientific study in a national journal confirms your shoe's structural excellence. Athletes go ballistic about your shoe, creating fan websites and buying the shoes faster than you can supply retailers.
Suddenly, you run smack into one of the perils of innovation: you've created such a heavy demand that someone else is trying to take advantage of it. In other words, you've attracted counterfeiters.
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Forget India, outsource to Arkansas
Looking for skilled, low-cost labor? Forget about India and China. How about Jonesboro, Ark.?
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An eco-friendly lawn you don't have to mow
It's hard to imagine anything more innocuous than a lush suburban lawn. That's what 63-year-old entrepreneur Jackson Madnick used to think -- until a golf course killed his cat. READ MORE
A search engine for global e-commerce
In 2005, Harvard Business School student Josh Green was working as an intern at E Ink, the Cambridge, Mass., company that developed displays for the Amazon Kindle. His boss asked him to find an overseas manufacturer of electronic display components. How hard could that be? Very, it turns out.
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Online dating without the creepy strangers
Katherine Woo was hanging out with two former PayPal coworkers at her San Francisco loft last spring, brainstorming business ideas on the sofa. Then one got distracted by a cute girl on Facebook. "Who's that? Brian Phillips, 35, asked.
Skye Lee, 38, peered over his shoulder and shook her head. "I've got someone better for you," she told him, logging into her account and showing him another potential match. Phillips asked for an introduction.
The subsequent date didn't go very far, but it gave the three friends an idea. Why not make it easier to do what they were already doing: using Facebook to pair up their single friends? READ MORE
Robocall 2.0: Live messages from sports stars
Whatever your political leanings, chances are you share one thing with most Americans: You don't like robocalls.
Neither does Steve Patterson, and he's heard a lot of them.
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Your own personal $129 cloud
Daniel Putterman is a data junkie.
The San Francisco software entrepreneur knew he'd collected too many files -- videos, photos, songs, documents -- to keep on his personal computer. But for all his digital savvy, he couldn't figure out the best place to store his heaps of information.
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Want to create jobs? Import entrepreneurs
Many of America's biggest tech employers were launched by immigrants. So why do we make it so hard for foreign entrepreneurs to do business here? READ MORE
Call center revolution
When Jim Ball ran a traditional call center in Golden, Colo., in the late 1990s, he was forced to hire just about anyone who walked in the door because few people were willing to commute to the call center and sit in a sterile cubicle for minimum wage.
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Goodbye, grocery store price tags
In 2001, Sunit Saxena made a midnight run to the grocery store for wonton wrappers. When he couldn't find any, he went looking for a clerk. The aisles were empty. He discovered the workers holed up in a back room tearing price tags off merchandise to reprice it for the next day. READ MORE
One small company reinvents a $30 billion market
Sometimes one bright idea -- and a whole lot of work to implement it -- can reshape an entire industry.
In 2006, roofing salesman David Carlson vented to his brother-in-law about his frustrations from climbing onto rooftops and manually measuring to give estimates on repair work. Measuring by hand is a tedious process. Plus, people fall off roofs. Carlson's brother-in-law, Chris Pershing, happened to be a software engineer. He did more than listen: Pershing set out to build a software program that would literally change the way the $30 billion roofing industry views America's rooftops. READ MORE
$10 app can save hours of commuting
Landscaping company owner has cut Chip Galloway hours off his weekly travel time with a low-cost multimedia conferencing app. READ MORE
WePay is the anti-PayPal
Look out, PayPal. Two young entrepreneurs are gunning for you. READ MORE