I'm Your BlackBerry

I’m a BlackBerry. I’m a phone now, but years ago I was nothing but a glorified pager. I’m all grown up now. I now can make calls, take pictures and video, and utilize GPS and wi-fi. As a BlackBerry, I’m not as sexy as the iPhone. I don’t have a philosophy that praises…

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Subscribe to SND and Alter Your Reality

See this box? It’s the reason you’re here. Once you click it, you can never go back. As a newsletter subscriber or “insider”, you’ll get startup opinion and information that won’t be published anytime soon, or maybe ever. You’ll also get beta invitations…

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SSL Certificates on the Cheap

Back in my first startup where we were accepting credit cards, we purchased an SSL certificate in order to assure our customers that their credit card information was being transmitted securely. We bought that SSL certificate from VeriSign for $495 per year. That was 2003. Nowadays, you can get an…

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Startup Spotlight: KnowEm

Today we feature an interview with the founders of KnowEm, a rapidly-growing startup that has found great success without venture capital or outside funding. KnowEm is a brand protection service that allows you to create your brand’s user account on 300 popular social media sites and will…

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There Will Be Blood... from your Server

If your reaction to my last post was “screw you” or words to that effect, and you plan on running a site that will attract large amounts of traffic without a business model, you will suffer as Twitter has suffered. But in your case, users will probably never see your cutesy version of…

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The Niche is Your Friend

When someone imagines a business idea that launches a startup, many times it’s a “big play” - which means it’s a large idea that will need many people to build, and will likely serve a huge market. Such ideas cost a lot of money. And you’ll either need a lot of…

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Startup Spotlight: Interview with Earndit

Our first Startup Next Door interview features Earndit and its founders, Andres Moran and Harry Kautzman II. Earndit is a site that rewards you for exercising – specifically runs, walks, jogging, and bicycling. Here’s a listing of current rewards. ▶ 0:00 …

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Video: Finding a Startup Co-Founder

So you’re a businessperson and you have a great idea but you know nothing of the IT nerd world. Or you’re the nerd but have no business acumen. Here’s a great video segment on finding someone to fill in your partnership. From This Week in Startups with Jason Calacanis…

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Why You Should Never See a Credit Card

Back when I did my first startup, we were pretty hardcore about data privacy. We had an overpriced SSL certificate, we encrypted credit cards and other customer data, encoded our PHP code with Zend Encoder, and disallowed SSH connections except from specific IPs. We were in charge of…

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How to Get a Mailing Address for your Startup

Back when my startups were under the radar, I wanted to display a mailing address on my contact pages, but not my home address, of course. My assumption is that a mailing address gives customers the impression that you have an office somewhere, even though you’re actually working from a…

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