ajit verghese

@hannibalburess has the right idea

Hannibal Buress is one of my new favorite comedians. I was first introduced to him when he performed with Aziz Ansari in Boston . He is doing something interesting with his Twitter bio that I just noticed today when researching his next show in Boston (It’s Feb 24 at Great Scott).

Buress included the first 4 dates from his 2012 tour in his bio (screenshot above) -  this is interesting because a Twitter user who either follows the comedian or sees a retweet of content that he shared is apt to click on his profile for more info. I don’t have hard numbers, but would assume that the conversion from viewing a Twitter user’s bio to clicking on the link within the profile is low. Making the bio portion of a Twitter profile dynamic and useful as opposed to some static blather is a creative use that engages THIS user. I would love to know if it ends up converting more Twitter users into going to see Hannibal Buress perform - my bet is that it probably does. This only works if the content is always kept up-to-date. I hope that it ends up generating more attendance for Buress.

Setting aside risk, more launching own companies

There’s a nice article in Sunday’s edition of the Boston Herald about entrepreneurship.

GoodEatsFor.Me and I both get a nice shout out at the tail end of the article. Full text of the article is below (original link.) Thanks Jennifer!

Typically, it’s the entrepreneurs and the small- business owners who pull an economy out of a recession. But this one has been different.

Housing values dropped. Bank loans to small companies declined. Markets around the world that might have picked up the slack stumbled. Many would-be entrepreneurs were either too scared to get started or they couldn’t find the funds.

That appears to be changing, according to a report released last week. The number of people launching or running young companies worldwide grew about 60 percent last year to nearly 400 million, according to the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor Report.

Rather than being an indication of how good things are now, however, it’s a sign of how bad they’ve been. The number of new entrepreneurs in the United States hasn’t been this high since 2005, well before the economic plunge.

“It could be that people delayed starting businesses,” said Donna Kelley, a co-author of the report and Babson College professor, explaining the jump. “It could be that people don’t see their jobs coming back.”

In the United States, more people saw opportunities and planned to start businesses, even while the fear of failure climbed to 31.2 percent from 26.7 percent in the previous year.

“People may see more risk in starting a business, and this may be linked to the recession,” Kelley said.

New business owners agreed that there’s risk, but said they couldn’t wait.

Matt Chatham had been working on his plans for a SkyCrepers, a crepe franchise, for more than five years when he finally launched the company in 2010. During that time, he was going to school and developing the concept.

“I would be hesitant if I were coming to the market with something that already existed,” said Chatham, a former Patriots [team stats] linebacker. “I felt more comfortable because we’re unique and we’re filling a void.”

Michael Norwood, who has launched two companies in recent months, said he’d rather face the unpredictability of launching a business than that of the job market.

“I figured if I can succeed in an uncertain economic environment than I can survive in good times,” he said.

Norwood is building Type-U, a social movement for families of people with diabetes, and runs a mobile flip-flop store called Woodywear Mobile Merchandise.

Some have hesitated to start because they didn’t think they could raise enough money, but attitudes have changed, said James Hilton, co-founder of Jacox-Hilton Producer Consulting, which provides analysis tools for life insurance advisers.

“Folks are starting to get used to the idea that they will have to bootstrap,” he said.

GoodEatsFor.Me founder Ajit Verghese said entrepreneurs have had to get creative about financing.

“The realities of launching a startup is that regardless of how lean you can make your operations, you still require capital,” he said. “So to fund myself and the business, I became entrepreneurial, went back to my digital roots and started consulting with big and small brands.”

Verghese’s venture, which helps hospitality companies track their social media, started work on the company in 2009 and went live with the beta site in 2010.

“I’ve spent the past 32 months working, traveling and speaking with many established and budding entrepreneurs, angel investors, venture capitalists and large brands,” he said. “I’m seeing a lot of innovation, new ideas launched and more risks taken from entrepreneurs in and outside the U.S.”