A) I can’t believe nobody is doing this yet and;
B) We have a great base of investors, co-founders, developers and business partners to draw on right out of the gate

I can’t say a lot about Presslayer just yet. The market is big. The need is obvious. If we could just “snap our fingers” such that the platform just magically appeared in our lap I have no doubt that thousands of designers and marketers would use the system to make their jobs easier.

If you are a developer, product manager or marketing manager anxious to build a leading online community, please don’t hesitate to contact me at kelly@curiousoffice.com

Like last time, Presslayer will be partially funded by Curious Office. Once we finalize on the rest of the development co-founders and the other investors I’ll share more on this blog. This is an exciting time…that moment when you go from concept to a talented team of people all working to bring that idea to fruition. I’ve been fortunate enough to have been through this a few times and we’re sure that you will love what we are up to.

Stay tuned please!!

Kelly

This is certainly the social network of the over achievers. I was going through their auto classifieds today because sometimes there are some interesting cars. But, I just couldn’t help but smile as I was noticing the listings today.

Let’s see. Just on this one page we’ve got a Lamborghini Reventon for 2 100 000 USD, an SLR Roadster for 430,000 euros, a McLaren F1 LM engine, and a Bugatti Veyron. You won’t see that kind of activity on Facebook my friends.

I hate the type engine in Photoshop. The font sizes in your mock-ups do not reflect the font sizes you’ll actually use when trying to replicate your design. What’s a person to do? Well, in my case I keep Typetester nearby and I’ll occasionally remind myself of a few typography tips just to insure I stay creative along the way. As I get close to a “final”, I’ll compare various type styles on typetester, then grab my final chosen CSS selectors and create a new HTML document using those type selectors. I’ll then enter my placeholder text in my little the html page snippet and finally cut/paste that content directly into Photoshop. Doing this in your final step insures your chosen type in your designs mirror the CSS code EXACTLY. I’ll always go one final step further to get it exactly right. I’ll actually type the CSS into the final comp to really hammer the point home. It usually looks something like this:

Tony Wright, developer of the web-based time management software called RescueTime responded with a great list of SEO resources from his personal SEO bookmark list:

Resources for SEO, Social Media Marketing, & Viral Marketing

If you want the PowerPoint deck, here it is. Please note: I wasn’t getting paid for this speaking engagement, so I didn’t go to great lengths to make a snazzy PowerPoint presentation.

Keyword Research Resources:
SEO Research Labs: (forgive the cheesy design) $99 and most of your work is done for you– a great option if SEO is not core to what you’re doing. You provide a description to what kind of site you have and a few core keywords. They provide a 6-sheet spreadsheet with information about up to 500 keywords, including estimated search volume, competitiveness of the keyword space, and more. Note that their data source is DogPile and MetaCrawler, which means that (depending on your market) the data might not be representative.

Google Adwords (Keyword Tool and Traffic Estimator Tool): Google Adwords provides some excellent tools to for adwords that also happen to be great (but not perfect) for SEO. The obvious benefit is that the data source is Google. The drawback is that the data is less-than-perfect for niche keywords. The keyword tool will give you a list of suggested/related keywords. Microsoft and Yahoo both have similar tools for their search ad offerings.

WordTracker: WordTracker is a suite of keyword research tools which also uses DogPile and MetaCrawler data. You can get an account for $8/day or opt for monthly/annual plans that are a little more cost-effective. Either way, it’s a good deal.

Google Trends: Google Trends (a labs/beta product) is a nice quick and dirty way to compare up to 5 keywords (here’s a comparison of shoes, footwear, and sneakers). Not ideal for heavy lifting, but it’s kind of fun and braindead easy. It also provides a stack ranked list of top regions/cities, which is interesting data for targeting purposes.

SEO Resources:
SEO Ranking Factors (SEOMoz) - This is the mac daddy of SEO resources. Rand & crew (fellow Seattleites!) have turned the SEO world on it’s ear by giving away reams of information about SEO that a few years back everyone was trying to sell via some cheezy ebook. Their ranking factors page is a list of categorized factors that matter in SEO. They asked a pile of SEO experts to rate these factors on importance and then present them to you stack-ranked in their category. If you read one page in this list, this should be it.

WebmasterWorld - WebmasterWorld is a HUGE forum. The discussions around SEO are often useful, but the signal-to-noise ratio isn’t ideal and there is plenty of misinformation to be had here, so take it with a grain of salt. It’s a fabulous place to ask questions if you can’t otherwise find an answer.

Matt Cutts - Matt is the voice of SEO from Google. His blog is a wealth of information about SEO, but you should recognize that Google has an agenda (a relatively level SEO playing field), so he’ll be less forthcoming about tricks that might give you a competitive advantage.

SearchEngineWatch - A great resource. There is plenty of content that you have to pay for, but there’s lots of free content too. Be careful when searching for content here– this resource is old. SEO advice from 2002 is probably not as authoritative as a more current article.

Search Engine Spider Simulator - JavaScript/AJAX are lovely and all, but they can destroy your SEO if you’re not careful. Google has been promising to have their spiders actually render JavaScript, but for the time being you should understand how your site (and the links on it) display and perform with JavaScript is turned off (!). Check it out on Lynx or run your pages through a spider simulator like this one.

SMM Resources
Guide to Linkbaiting - A slightly irreverent guide to the art of linkbaiting.

30 Social Media Venues - A list and description for 30 of the top social media venues. Each one is unique!

SocialPoster - A bookmarklet that lets you easily cross-post your content.

NoFollow Attribute (wikipedia) - A description of the nofollow attribute ( an HTML attribute that essentially removes SEO juice from a link). Nofollow was a response to SEO spam (comment spam in blogs being the prime example). You definitely want to have an understanding of this before you seriously engage in a concerted linkbuiding campaign.

Viral Marketing Resources
Viral Marketing is not a Marketing Strategy - Great blog post summing up my thoughts on trying to be overtly viral with a non-viral product.

What’s your Viral Loop - Great post on the “engine of adoption” concept by the same author as the above article (Andrew Chen).

Guarav Oberoi followed with a great SEO link of his own. His email:

I am an SEO newbie too and often find myself referring to a highly useful post on SEOMoz that summarizes various basic SEO techniques into a cheat sheet format:
The Web Developers SEO Cheat Sheet.

Thanks to Vanessa Fox - a respected Seattle-based SEO expert for her subsequent follow up email:

For keyword research, you can also check out this article on search engine land:
http://searchengineland.com/070709-082957.php

I previously linked to the SEO checklists we have on Jane and Robot in another thread, but mixed in with all of that are some SEO tools we recommend, including keyword research tools and diagnostic tools:
http://janeandrobot.com/admin/Pages/seo-developer-tools.html

As for the death of SEO, I mostly try to stay out of that conversation (although I think it’s ultimately going to just become standard best practices in webdev, marketing, and usability, rather than a siloed activity), but I did give in and do a blog post a while back on the supposed evils of SEO:
http://www.vanessafoxnude.com/2008/03/03/seo-is-the-worst-thing-ever-invented/

Also Rajat Garg from http://www.pilotoutlook.com had some great links:

Try out SEOpen, SEO Quake (Firefox plugins) and SEODigger for getting lot of useful information on competitors.

You must do twice as much.
Twice as good.
With half as much resources.
In half as much time.

No. I’m not kidding. This really does summarize my experience. You can go ahead and read between the lines to flesh out some of the less obvious things that make all of the above possible. For example, how can you do twice as much in half the time if you don’t have an unusual ability to be good at several different crafts that (would otherwise) require twice as many people in a “normal” organization? In a start-up, for example, there is no place for a CEO who is not at least exceptional at most marketing disciplines OR is exceptional at shipping high quality products that people like to use. Preferably, the CEO has an uncanny knack at both of those things. Similarly, there is no place in a start-up for a marketing exec who can’t actually execute on his or her own ideas. If you have to send all copy writing and creative out to a firm, how does that help the start-up do twice as much on half the budget? I’m not a big fan of start-up ceo’s and execs who are only capable of being strategists. Being good at strategy is a necessity. An assumption. Being able to do all the other tactical things well within the confines of massive constraint is basically the key. If you’re one of those few, you just might have a shot. Just remember that gravity will always conspire against you in the process. Gravity doesn’t want start-ups to succeed. That’s why most do not. And that’s the last thought I have on this start-up founder question. If you give up at the same point where “normal” people give up, you’ll wind up being another unhappy statistic.

It’s been awhile since my last blog post and in fact this week I’m in Hawaii. But, I wanted to congratulate Max and Alexis over at Wishpot on the closing of their round. As a side note, I got a chance to meet with another firm involved in this project - H Farm in Italy. Very cool company, nice guys and beautiful work.

In their estimation, approximately 40-45% of all entrepreneurs pitching deals on Sand Hill Road do so on Macs. 40-45%! That seems pretty astounding huh?

Traveling down in the Valley today! Oh, you can feel the energy in the air…

SEO Book.com - http://www.seobook.com/rss.xml
SEOmoz Daily SEO Blog http://feeds.feedburner.com/seomoz
Matt Cutts: Gadgets, Google, and SEO http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/feed/
–others–
Graywolf’s SEO Blog http://www.wolf-howl.com/feed/
:: Link Building Blog :: http://feeds.feedburner.com/LinkBuildingBlog
BlogStorm http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogstorm
Blue Hat SEO-Advanced SEO Tactics http://www.BlueHatSEO.com/feed/
Copyblogger http://www.copyblogger.com/feed/
Dave Naylor a UK SEO http://www.davidnaylor.co.uk/feed/
EricWard.com - Content Publicity and Link Building Expert Commentary and Tips http://www.urlwire.com/articles/ericward.rss
Greg Boser - Search Marketing Consultant - aka WebGuerrilla http://www.webguerrilla.com/feed/
Jennifer Slegg - An SEM Consultant http://www.jenniferslegg.com/feed/
Jim Boykin’s Internet Marketing Blog http://www.jimboykin.com/feed/
LinkJuicy http://www.linkjuicy.com/feed/
Linklove http://www.vdgraaf.info/feed/
Scoreboard Media Group http://feeds.feedburner.com/scoreboard
Search Engine Journal http://www.searchenginejournal.com/feed/
SEM Seattle http://feeds.feedburner.com/semseattle
SEO Class http://seoclass.com/feed/
SEO Egghead by Jaimie Sirovich http://www.seoegghead.com/blog/feed/
Shoemoney - Skills To Pay The Bills http://www.shoemoney.com/feed/
Stuntdubl Business Search Marketing Consulting http://www.stuntdubl.com/feed/
The Funnelholic http://funnelholic.com/feed/
Tropical SEO http://tropicalseo.com/feed/
Wiep.net - SEO & Link Building blog http://feeds.feedburner.com/Wiep

The results of their recent survey show some interesting questions and a familiar name most common:

What brand would you most like to sit next to at a dinner party?

Apple.

What brand, if sent back 100 years, would have the biggest impact on the course of history?

Apple.

Which brand inspires you the most?

Apple.

If you were to describe yourself as being a brand, what brand would you be?

Apple.

What brand can you not live without?

Apple.

What brand is most likely to revolutionize the branding industry in the next five years?

Apple.

The company you would most like to argue with?

Microsoft.

No. I am not making this up.

According to preliminary data from NPD, Apple reportedly achieved 14 percent of the U.S. retail PC market share in February 2008, up from 9% just a year ago. This represents 60 percent unit growth and 67 percent revenue growth year-over-year.

This data is probably accurate but my day to day observations suggest that many in tech circles are switching. Low and behold, Apple’s stock isn’t in that bad of shape given what’s happening to the economy. I’m buying a little bit more stock today and will continue adding to the position over time and as I see how the economy unfolds this year. All I know is that I can’t recall other MP3 players, mobile phones or computing equipment where people were as religious as they are about these products. With Apple pushing business features into the iPhone, releasing a 3G version soon and positioning itself strongly for the utopia that is video-on-demand then it seems a reasonable bet to assume that this stock will keep pushing higher.

Elements of Sustainable Companies
Start-ups with these characteristics often foretells the success of a business and the likelihood of it becoming a sustainable, enduring company. We like to partner with companies that have:

Clarity of Purpose
Summarize the company’s business on the back of a business card.

Large Markets
Address existing markets poised for rapid growth or change. A market on the path to a $1B potential allows for error and time for real margins to develop.

Rich Customers
Target customers who will move fast and pay a premium for a unique offering.

Focus
Customers will only buy a simple product with a singular value proposition.

Pain Killers
Pick the one thing that is of burning importance to the customer then delight them with a compelling solution.

Think Differently
Constantly challenge conventional wisdom. Take the contrarian route. Create novel solutions. Outwit the competition.

Team DNA
A company’s DNA is set in the first 90 days. All team members are the smartest or most clever in their domain. “A” level founders attract an “A” level team.

Agility
Stealth and speed will usually help beat-out large companies.

Frugality
Focus spending on what’s critical. Spend only on the priorities and maximize profitability.

Inferno
Start with only a little money. It forces discipline and focus. A huge market with customers yearning for a product developed by great engineers requires very little firepower.