Mike Stopforth

Thanks to Neville’s Muti link I’ve just picked up on a very intriguing post by Y Combinator, the seed-funding venture firm built around Web 2.0 startups, talking about ideas they’d invest in.
Being a bit of an entrepreneur myself I was immediately drawn to the post, and a couple of things surprised me…

First of [...]

…because after this he’s going to be hard to get hold of.

Henk is the founder and MD of Skyrove (who I advertise on my blog not because he pays for it, but because I love them so much :P) and without doubt one of the nicest, smartest and most humble people in the industry.

I hope this compliment to him and his hard work will mean even more success. Well done bud!

For some reason I’ve been ignoring MyGenius.com - the Southern African social network for business people. I have been a member since late 2006 - MyGenius’s very early days - and never quite got in to it. I get the odd message from a MyGenius member wanting to connect but have spent little no time on updating my profile or adding content to the site.

Recently I decided to give MyGenius another go based on two realisations. Firstly, the value of social networking is undoubtedly found, or much easier mined, in niche communities. The quintessential example is Charl Norman’s Zooped Up community for owners of modified cars and suchlike - completely useless for me but absolutely invaluable and addictive to people entrenched in that community. MyGenius cannot be compared to MySpace, for example, because it’s not trying to be a globally dominant player. It’s simply trying to do what it does well.

One of my professional speaking colleagues, Erik Vermeulen, forwarded a very cool email newsletter to me the other day. Normally that would tick me off but the newsletter, produced by Scott Ginsberg (check out his site and blog, they’re awesome), had an article titled 46 Marketing Mistakes Your Company Is (Probably) Making that caught my eye. I read it an thought I’d share it with you - some of it ought to be familiar already but there are a bunch of cool thoughts I thoroughly enjoyed…

I don’t have an MBA but the little I do know about business tells me the ultimate goal for anyone starting or running a company is that it be profitable. Everything else - production, people management, marketing, accounting - is fashioned around that single purpose. I want Cerebra and Afrigator to make money. Sure, I want them to be fun, interesting and progressive - but they must make money.

I think it’s fair to say that websites like Facebook, YouTube, Zoopy, Twitter, Technorati, Digg and others aren’t meaningful and/or popular because of their technology (although good tech helps), but rather because of the vast networks of human beings using them. It’s humans that make Web 2.0 apps popular, not code. But looking at the significant list of apps and services I use daily, it’s hard to pick out any that are making money, never mind profitably so.

So as usual I’m the last person to get around to posting that our little project has grown up again.  But then again I’m the only person who really works for a living

Charl Norman scooped the launch announcement this morning, and Justin updated the Afrigator blog with a list of cool features the new version boasts.