My Real Xperiment @ NoPay!

As an Individual we are born with abilitiy to have "Ideas". Most of us never persue them. Primarily due to fact that we do not know how to go about it or we don't have money or don't know how to raise money to commercialize the idea. Knowing that it is kind of impossible to execute, we just move on with our daily lives and never fathom persuing our ideas. I was one of those individuals as well and but few decisions changed my path.

Well, I just realized that I have never mentioned in my blogs about my startup passion and xperimentz. Tonight, I felt like letting you all know what has been my driving force, what makes me feel alive everyday I wake up.

I was about to give up almost two and half years ago when I was frustrated with fact thatmedyantraa.com, my medical tourism startup was a failure. While pondering over the reasons of this failure, the obvious answers were: bandwidth, the 'I cant do it alone' words and money obviously. Something clicked and as usual I started writing, by evening I had the name NoPay! Next day I made a decision to leave Iowa and move to the valley, the silicon valley. 

Couple of months down the line I was here in the valley settling down with my new job and simultaneously working on NoPay! Being in valley did help to an extent but it was not easy to bring a complex business idea to reality. This time I decided I wont quit, I found hacker dojo, a community of entrepreneurs or would be entrepreneurs. It infused new energy and ideas into me. Instead of knocking investors doors I decided to do an experiment with NoPay to prove it works,www.NoPayStartups.com was born in next few minutes and my first meetup was scheduled. I was not sure if people will show up so I requested few friends to rsvp yes and be there. My good friend and roommate then, Chai showed up with Padma, his wife and helped me setup the place. Over 25 people showed up, it was a success. 

I continued this xperiment for over one and half years till July this year, when I realized its time to take it to next level. Thanks to some of my mentors and great startup gurus who agreed to join me in taking NoPay to where it deserves to be. With over 7 success stories, today we are a great team of individuals helping new entrepreneurs to achieve their goals without spending any money at NoPay. 

I will write again to let you all know when NoPay is ready to help more startups and that would be soon. Wish NoPay team good luck!

Cheers!

Chet Jain

When To Dump That Great Idea!

A while ago, you had an idea for a new company that would change the world. You stayed up all night feverishly sketching your plans for global domination.Yet there you are, months later, still sitting in your cubicle, that brilliant flash a distant memory.
Wake up: Not every idea--even a great one--turns into a money machine. In fact, it's often just as useful to know when to dump a good idea as it is to pursue one--if only so you can get to work on that next "great" idea.
Here are three ways to know when enough is enough.


Paying Customers Never Show Up
So your friends are high-fiving, investors are salivating and the media is gushing. So what? The difference between having an idea and having a real company is a throng of paying customers.
The classic case of early exuberance later squashed was the Segway--that two-wheel, stand-up "human transporter." When Dean Kamen unveiled the Segway in December 2001, top-tier investors like venture capitalist John Doerr and Amazon.com's (nasdaq: AMZN - news - people ) Jeff Bezos applauded. The media blared that the device would change the way cities were built.
Customers were less enthralled. The Segway sold less than 30,000 units in over six years: not exactly a revolution.
Some ideas are simply ahead of their time. Remember the Apple Newton? One of the first "personal digital assistants," the Newton was a brilliant idea that the market didn't yet appreciate. A few short years later, Palm (nasdaq: PALM - news - people ) re-introduced a similar concept, to huge fan-fare; now PDAs are a fact of life.
At bottom, it doesn't matter how ingenious your product is--if you can't communicate its value, it may as well not exist.


You Can't Sustain a Competitive Advantage
Novelty alone is not a competitive advantage. A new idea is bound to attract competition. (If it doesn't, chances are the idea wasn't as good as you thought.) The key is being able to survive the onslaught.
Launched in 2002, Friendster, the pioneer of social networking Web sites, was a brilliant idea that couldn't sustain a competitive advantage. Ultimately, Friendster's strategy and technology were easy to replicate and extend. That's why News Corp.'s (nyse: NWS - news - people ) Rupert Murdoch was happy to shell out $580 million for rival MySpace in 2005.
Remember: Your idea is what gets you in the game; your competitive advantage is what keeps you there. If you can't figure out how to stay ahead in your market, start looking for a new one.


You're Not Ready To Quit Your Day Job
You can only moonlight so long before your kids start calling you "that weird guy in the garage." At some point, you actually have to trade in the comfort of a two-week paycheck for the uncertainty of starting your own shop. If you can't muster the courage to make the leap, it's time to dump your idea.
Here's why: When you're really, really ready to head out on your own, your day job seems like a millstone. Heck, you're so consumed with your new project that you're probably a liability at your job anyway.
Chances are, if you're going to make that leap, you'll do it sooner rather than later. Commitment to an idea spurs action. Driven entrepreneurs can't wait to hit key milestones--incorporation, building prototypes, drumming up customers. The uncommitted take the "Mr. Rogers" approach: They sit down, take a shoe off, talk a while, slide a sock off, and maybe, someday, they might be ready for action.
If you're not moving fast, it's probably time to move on.

Few Ideas for Writing Great Blogs

1. Write a “how to” blog (much like this one). Share your best tips about how to do something you know all about.

2. Lists. For some reason, people absolutely love to read lists. Think of a topic relevant to your field of expertise (”The Top Five Faux Pas of Networking,” for example) and start listing.

3. The Straw Man argument. Set up a premise and then argue against it. This always makes for interesting reading, and you get plenty of blog comments if you choose a controversial subject.

4. Case studies. Discussing case studies from your professional work and the lessons you’ve learned from them makes for a great blog. Just watch the word length. Ideally, blog posts shouldn’t be much more than 500 words, so split the case study over two posts if you need to.

5. Interviews. Have you interviewed anyone knowledgeable or well-known recently? What did they say? Write about it.

This content is from blog of Ivan Misner!

Cheers!