In the second quarter of 2006, venture capitalists invested $2.42 billion in Silicon Valley companies, an amazing 27 percent increase than they invested in the first quarter. This is the most they have invested in any quarter since 2001. For the thirsty webpreneur out there, the well of opportunity hasn’t appeared this full since 2000 (and for those of you around back then, that may scare you).
Now, whether or not the bubble is back, let us not dwell on that for a moment but let’s embrace the entrepreneural minds out there that are making the web today an exciting and innovating place. These are the motivated people that aspire to bring us the best new and innovative idea. This is what MindPetals is all about - the entrepreneur.
So let’s take a moment to thank those sleepless souls, the idea men and ladies, the caffeine addicts, the work your 9-5 and then go home to work another 7+ hours on your startup, the loan takers, the movers and shakers - (sorry I had to), the I gotta believe working for myself will be more rewarding then working for someone else, the it’s 75 degrees and sunny on the weekend and I hate myself but this idea is so damn good that its worth it so lets crank open the windows and hand me that red bull and lets get back to work people - the true believers.
But how does one succeed? How do I stay focused? How do I get that additional loan, or do I even want one? How do I even begin?
A precocious entrepreneur himself, David Askaripour, 22, would suggest visiting MindPetals - a network he created comprised of young entrepreneural focused blogs that document the startup mind, answers questions, and attempts to foster a community for those running their own businesses.
The Mind Petals network is full of young, ambitious people (average age is about 21), who are starting or have started their own business and document their learning experiences along the way.
With 21 blogs in the current network, and a demographic between 18-21 year olds, Mind Petals is a rather nice marketing niche - I’d have to say. Even though the majority of blogs authors in the network are rather young - there lies the beauty of Mind Petals. These are people doing the legwork themselves and learning along the way. This network is for the ambitious, young and old, who have a great ideas and work very hard in making those ideas become a success. David was kind enough to answer a few of our questions. And for those of you looking for some sound weekend advice to free you brain and step away from the office - check out this post from one of the MindPetal blogs Trizle
Name, role, foot size, hair color, and when you’re sleep you dream about?
I’m David Askaripour, a 22 year-old entrepreneur trying to change the world from my NYC apartment.
Matt Brett, my talented designer who has been there for me as he smashes pixels together to turn my visions into masterpiece.
I’m usually dreaming about something fun and awesome such as flying around the world or jumping off buildings like superman. It’s weird, but I have this uncanny ability to know when I’m dreaming so it’s pretty much a party every night I go to bed!
Right now I’m rockin’ a sweet faux hawk with my brown curly hair. it’s sweeeeet! I’m sportin’ a 10.5 in the foot department… ladies!
I have a team of internal writers who oversee the ‘Preneur Petal columns:
Dan Marques: Bootstrapping column
Angela Gilltrap: Marketing column
Evan Prieskop: Start-up column
Monica Bowers: Life column
I also have a small Advisory Board that help shape the direction of the network. Thanks guys!
How many people worked to build the mind petals network? what were their roles?
I came up with Mind Petals in April 2006. I’m the visionary of the network, but I’m only a piece of the pie when it comes to keeping this network alive. Through the help of my amazing designer, Matt Brett, my internal writers Dan, Angela, Evan, and Monica, and from all the contributing members who maintain their business blogs with insights and lessons, we all play an important role in pushing this network forward. I’m only one man. This network is bigger than me. It’s an idea that can’t be erased even if my databases are wiped out.
What is mind petals?
Mind Petals is that student sitting in his dorm room reading an HTML / PHP book trying to teach himself how to create a website for his business.
Mind Petals is that person designing T-Shirts and saving up money to have a few hundred tees printed to get the buzz going about his/her new clothing company.
Mind Petals is that person working a 9 to 5 in an effort to save up some cash to invest into their business so they won’t have to be trapped in a company that doesn’t bring any joy to their lives.
Why should I visit mindpetals.com?
To share in the insights, experiences, and lessons from entrepreneurs across the globe running a business or in the process of building one. To learn and share what you know about entrepreneurship. To help other succeed.
Is mind petals specificly focused on entrepenuers (webpreneurs?) looking for success via a web based venture?
Nope. It’s specifically focused on entrepreneurship. However, it does have a young entrepreneur/webpreneur slant to it, yes.
Where did the name come from and what were some runner ups?
It came to me after weeks of thinking about possible names, then one day in my garage (office back on Long Island) then name just came to me and I rolled with it.
The tagline “Infinite Ideas to Bloom” came to me after watching the movie An Inconvenient Truth - the Al Gore flick.
Why did you create mind petals? where did the idea come from?
I graduated from college a semester early in January 2006. After that semester, I moved back home and cleared out my garage to set up a mini office. I was a bit depressed seeing all my friends go back to college and there I was all alone at home without a job and money - just a notebook filled of ideas and memories of my last venture that failed.
I became very interested in blogs, notably entrepreneur-related blogs. I began reaching out to many young student entrepreneurs and building relationships with them, subsequently starting my own blog called Flush the Toilet: Young Entrepreneurs where I began sharing my ideas, insights, and experiences and a young entrepreneur trying to make it big.
After a few months of writing on my blog and networking like a mad man, there I was back on the drawing table thinking about starting a new business. I began looking around the blogosphere to see if I could find a network that was filled with young entrepreneurs telling their stories, but I couldn’t find one.
So guess what? I decided to create one.
Define “entrepeneur”
The hungry, ambitious, knowledge-craving person doing anything and anything in their power to build a successful business, help as many people as he/she can, and to change to world in the process.
What makes a good one?
The persistent, determined, and the strong-minded entrepreneur who can grow from failure and punch through obstacles without being slowed down.
How long have you considered yourself an entrepenuer?
I remember selling candy in school at the age of 10. But my heart tells me that I have been one only since January 1 2004 when I remember sitting at home thinking about how I can build a website to create my first company. I’ll never forget that cold Long Island afternoon. There I was in my living room armed with a yellow legal pad, a pencil, and my mind - it was an amazing day that I will never forget. It was my spark.
What was your first entrapeneurial gig that failed?
That would have to be Cashcampus. It was my idea to build the first nation-wide site that would allow any student that missed class to be able to instantly purchase the notes and study material from another student who made it to class that day. It’s never been done and I was set on making it happen.
At the time, I knew absolutely nothing about web development and how to go about finding the right designers and programmers, so I got ripped of by outsourcing to India for about $6,000 then again in Europe for another $6000. I even sold my car, leather jackets, camcorders; everything that I owed that was valuable.
I just kept on selling and selling, even raising some capital from my family. I ended up over-extending myself, getting a pretty buggy site that took a year to build when it should have taken 1 month (talk about getting raped).
After the site launched it found some success as it scaled to about 6 colleges in the U.S. However, the site started breaking as the code was so weak, the payment system wasn’t working properly so I was paying students manually after hours of digging through SQL databases looking for their paypal information, and on top of that, the site was turning into one of those cheesy paper selling sites as it diverted away from notes and study material. It turned into a money-burning mess.
I decided to shut it down in June 2005 and more onto something else.
The lessons I learned that year would prove to be priceless. After that debacle, I really stepped things up by learning the ins-and-outs about web development and business on the net.
What was your first entrapeneurial gig that succeeded?
Hmm. I guess that depends on how you define success. I would say that Mind Petals is the first business that I created that’s on the path to success. It has a ways to go, though.
What were some the lessons you learned both professionally and personally throughout the entire experience?
From January 2004 when I started Cashcampus to this day, I have learned more than I have in my entire 22 years of existence.
I have learned how people can be so unreliable and the only person that you can truly depend on is yourself.
I have learned how to grow from failure and use it as fuel to empower yourself to keep on creating.
I have learned that if you’re an internet entrepreneur, you better get a solid grasp on web development and how systems work. You need to be able to intelligently speak to programmers and designers.
I have learned that all good things come with patience and well, thought out planning - there’s no need to rush things.
How many unique visitors is Mind Petals receiving per day? what are the combined RSS feed subscription statistics for all the blogs in your network?
We’re still a baby - we receive upwards of 1300 visits per day and expect a dramatic increase as the fall semester begins.
We don’t track the RSS feeds from our members. We could?but at this point it time it’s of no value to the network.
What are the demographics of your reader base?
Not exactly sure. From what I understand our readership is mostly 18 - 28 year olds in the process of starting a business.
How many blogs do you now have in your network? What’s the average age of the bloggers?
I have come to hate that name “blog” but let’s use it for now. We have 17 “blog” members and small internal team of writers who maintain the ‘Preneur Petals columns - that’s another 6 writers (some of which overlap into the “blog” member section). So all in all, I’d say 21 members total.
Average age of core bloggers is 21 years-old.
Out of all your blogs on your network, what are the top 3 most read?
This isn’t “my” network. I like to think of it as “ours”. I’m just a man, one person. However, it’s the collective pool of thoughts, insights, and experiences that make this network the worlds. I don’t have a top list.
How do you make sure the blog authors in your network continue to publish quality content? For example, we noticed that the mind petals blog network was very busy in early june, a little less so in july, but of recent there seems to be much less blogging being published within your network (please correct us if we’re wrong). Do you monitor the quality and quantity of each the blogs and is there a review and possible cut for not producing?
Yeah, that’s a hard one. You’re absolutely right, the network was moving very fast during the first month and then slowed down a bit. You have to keep in mind that its summer and many people would rather be at the beach that writing on their blogs.
Additionally, our content is coming from entrepreneurs who have priorities to their business, so it isn’t always easy to write daily - we understand that.
Yes, we do in fact monitor for quality. We are actually in the process of building a filtration system to weed out any non-related content that may appear on the network. We haven’t had a real problem in that area, but we are taking all measures to present the best possibly content we can - that’s my job!
We’ve also created a new section called ‘Preneur Petals which is comprised of various entrepreneurial columns updated on a daily (weekday) basis.
If you could tell one new entrepeneur one piece of advice, what would it be?
Listen to yourself first.
What was the best piece of business advice anyone gave you?
Never give up.
what book should someone read who is starting their own business?
“Think and Grow Rich” by Napoleon Hill.
After a failure, does one look back or just leave it behind?
One learns from the mistakes made and grows stronger just as a torn root comes back even thicker. You look back, of course, but you better be running and moving forward at the same time.
Your design is very similar to a succesful blog network called 9Rules, is this coincidence or are you just emulating something that is done well?
Blah’Blah’Blah - I respect 9rules and everything that they are about. There is no coincidence or emulating and that’s that. It’s sad when people even take the time to bring that up. We’re both networks trying to help people and provide useful content — Period. What’s with all the superfluous comparisons and drama - what a waste of time.
What was the most recent good business idea you came across?
I come across so many that it’s hard to keep track. I’m really impressed with what Cyworld is doing over in Korea. Geezz’ $300,000 a day in revenue from people purchasing intangible items (have to love it!).
What is the most recent WORST business idea you came across?
Someone trying to set up another auction or social networking site - that sums it up.
Are social networks like myspace a fad, if not then why do you think they will succeed? if yes, why will they fail?
I strongly believe that there will always be a place for social networking sites. Whether it’s Myspace or Facebook, people will continue to use these sites to connect to their friends - that will never stop. Humans will always connect, it’s in our nature to do so and these sites just make is so damn easy. However, people are fickle and I wouldn’t depend on loyalty to keep users from switching to the next “cool” thing that pops up.
Without breaking out your magical crystal ball…what’s the next big thing in the websphere?
RSS content delivery - it’s only the beginning.
In 5 years from now, what will be all the rage on the web?
Impossible to tell. Heck, I don’t even want to know. The web is a glass of wine constantly gaining complexities and structure on an ever-evolving basis.
What’s the best blog right now that we don’t know about?
There is no “best” blog. But one that rocks is Trizoko.
What are some sites you must check out everyday?
Mindpetals, Techcruch, techmeme, digg, myspace, and gmail.
How many blogs do you read per day?
Too many.
What is a wombat? (please draw your creative interpretation of a wombat)
In five years from now where do you see mind petals? how about yourself?
I see Mind Petals in the school system as we extend the brand to national entrepreneurship conferences. I see it in the bookstores with our own series of entrepreneurship guides and magazines. I see it in the hearts and minds of those young entrepreneurs trying to start a business and not letting anything stop them.
As for myself, my vision and mission will still be the same: “Doing all the good that I can. In all the world that I can. As long as I can.” As cheesy as it sounds, I’m not only on the road to success for myself, but I’m also on the road of helping as many people as I can every single day of my life - everything else is icing on the cake.
On the web, if content is king, then what is queen?
Innovation.
Thanks David for taking time out to answer our questions.
