273

273 would like to extend a big congratulations to our classmates Lennart (and his brother Loren) of IC3D Media  and David of Tailorbet  who came 2nd and 3rd respectively in the Venture Cup Syd business plan competition.  Having spent time with both of these teams learning about their concepts, all I can say is that they are truly amazing.  These are definitely companies to watch  (and they all happen to be great guys).  If I had the money, I would be investing at an early stage!

It was a very strong competition and I am glad to have been involved.  It is also a great endorsement for the Entrepreneurship Program here at Lund University, which is only in its second year and is going to get stronger and stronger as it continues to develop.

Congratulations again guys!

Yes. I believe there is.  More importantly, Geoff Davis of Unitus thinks there is.  Even more importantly than that, the numbers back it up.  Currently, only 20% of the people that could benefit from microfinance are being met with loans.  It is a rapidly growing industry with a $50 billion dollar a year industry.  3 billion people in the world live on less than $2 per day.  Microfinance is a business opportunity with the potential to make significant social change.  I highly recommend this lecture given at Stanford on microfinance (ecorner has loads of amazing lectures).  Think about the potential opportunities in this area.  Stay tuned to 273 because we will be implementing some new strategies to try and get more loans funded.

This is one of the most moving TED talks I have watched so far (and I have watched a lot!).  If you have a cause you want to promote, or a business you should be passionate about it, if not why would anyone else be?  I remember studying environmental justice when I was at the University of Alabama, it was a really interesting class, but I think this speech really shows the principles in action.  I hope you enjoy Majora Carter’s presentation ‘Greening the Ghetto’, I’ll leave you with my favourite advice from the talk:

‘It’s better to ask for foregiveness than permission’

Hey 273sters, here’s another great freebie from Mixergy.com, I’m addicted to this site.  It is an interview with Tom Szaky, founder of Terracycle a company that takes garbage and turns it into products.  He got the idea for starting the company when he started selling worm poop which he’d been using to help grow pot in his basement during college.  I really like the way he talks about creating a profitable marketing department, and putting a lot of effort into communicating with journalists.  Free publicity is the best publicity.

I am going to try and start posting freebies like this on a regular basis.

To ideas which I really love have either gone down or changed over the past couple of days.  Hoongle, got a great review in the New York Times which unfortunately seems to have led to its demise - it grew so quickly that it became unmanageable for the two college student/social entrepreneurs that started it.  Hopefully someone can step in to help them and they will be able to get it back up and running again.  I wish them luck and will keep you guys updated.

Last.fm a great social music player and more importantly (for me at least) discovery service, has started charging subscription fees to users outside of the US, UK and Germany because they cannot run profitable ad supported streaming music from those countries.  I am sad because I love that service and would be happy to pay if I wasn’t on a student budget, at the same time, I wonder if they could implement a different strategy - get the users to sell ads.  Basically you could receive a free subscription if you could support the cost of that subscription with ads you sold that were relevant in your country.  If the ads sold generated more income than the cost of subscription, these could be shared between Last.fm and its users.  I’d be interested to hear what you think of this, please vote in the poll below.

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What other creative ways could Last.fm use to increase its revenues whilst keeping its service free?