So the weather here on Cape Cod has been abysmal all day, so I figured this would be a great opportunity to, what else, look through our twitter @replies and see if there is anything that can be learned from them. There are basically two groups of people we get @replies from: our moms, wives, girlfriends, and other friends and family. Then there are the "others." It's the others that are really interesting.
The first interaction I want to look at is one with @DunkinDonuts from the other day. After I tweeted a tweet (is that the proper way to say that?) about DD using a stryofoam cup to insulate my plastic cup on an iced coffee I ordered the other day, I got an almost immediate tweet back from DD. I was able to learn that, as a company, Dunkin Donuts doesn't support "double cupping." While this is good to know, the bigger issue is why this multi-national company is still using styrofoam in the first place! There are literally hundreds of alternatives to stryrofoam cups, and DD needs to seriously make a change. A followup tweet from someone at Dunkin says they are actively researching alternatives. Good to know, but I'm skeptical of seeing real progress here. Dunkin Donuts, please prove me wrong.
The second interaction I want to look at is one that will directly impact our business. We sent out a twitter poll the other day inquiring about which e-commerce solution people use. We got several responses from users. In addition, two e-commerce companies actually reached out to us. Network Solutions and 3dCart tweeted US about their products. Really amazing that twitter is being used as a sales tool. There is a third company, Shopify, that is in the mix as well. While we will give all three a thorough look, I must admit the scale is tipped towards Network Solutions and 3dCart. Reaching out really does make a difference, and Twitter enabled them to do that quickly and effectively. When we do make a decision, we'll be sure to blog about why.
Finally, it's great to be involved with Twitter as the medium continues to evolve as an effective means of business communication and development.
P.S. This is the second time I wrote this blog. The first time was on my iPhone, and it somehow got lost on the interweb. I think the first version was slightly better, but hey, that's technology. Win some & lose some.
Saturday, August 29, 2009
Thursday, August 20, 2009
9 Things We're Excited About
- Green festivals and events (Boston Greenfest, Greenbuild)
- The Newest Member of bGreen, Maggie
- Inventory
- Warehousing
- Getting our F. Rock bags (should be any day now)
- Sorting through the various web store options (Network Solutions, Shopify, etc)
- PHP
- Giving this blog a facelift
- The positive response to our website
Thursday, August 13, 2009
ReBlog: The Cultural Revolution
Just came across this great article by Scott Kirsner of Boston.com. Thought it really captured how we're trying to operate and create bGreen. We talk a lot about "old vs. new" and Scott hits it right on the mark. Enjoy.
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There's a cultural revolution afoot in the Boston innovation economy.
One culture is dying out, and another kind of culture is emerging.
The old culture was clubby and insular. To get funding, you had to know someone who knew someone at one of the venture capital firms perched high atop Mount Money in Waltham. To get anywhere, it helped if you'd already had one or two successes on your résumé. The typical employee or executive went to work in Hopkinton or Burlington, put in a solid eight or nine hours of work, and went home. They weren't well-connected outside their own company, didn't go to industry networking events, and didn't make time to mentor up-and-coming entrepreneurs. In technology, the focus was almost always on developing products for the world's biggest customers, whether they were banks, telecommunications firms, or health care providers. The old culture felt it needed non-compete agreements to create artificial employee "loyalty." The old culture was reluctant to boast about what it was achieving, or Boston's prominent place in the global economy. And Boston's metabolism was slow: only a year or so after a trend emerged in Silicon Valley, a handful of companies had been formed here to pursue it.
Lots of people still live and work in that culture. They're sort of like people who still break out the seersucker suit on the first hot day of July...people who still wait in line at toll booths to hand over their crumpled dollar bill... or those Japanese soldiers who didn't realize World War II had ended.
Are you part of that world -- or are you part of the new culture? Here's what defines it:
The new culture is open, fast-paced, and encouraging of first-time entrepreneurs. It's about blogging and tweeting and digitized networks of people sharing information about what they're interested in, and where they're investing. It's about informal "unconferences" popping up to discuss the latest tech trend. It's populated by people who see the value in having broad networks of friends and acquaintances across lots of companies. Employers who operate in the new culture realize that the way you keep people motivated and maintain your position in the marketplace is by giving them interesting projects to work on and rewarding them appropriately -- not by forcing them to sign lengthy non-compete agreements. The new culture isn't afraid to spread the good word about the innovation that happens here in Boston.
The new culture is about seizing opportunities, not reinforcing hierarchies.
When I think about things that represent the new culture of innovation in Boston, here are ten that come to mind:
There are, of course, a lot more people, events, and institutions contributing to the emergence of this new innovation culture in Boston -- from Mass Innovation Nights to Hubspot.tv to Betahouse to the Awesome Foundation.
What else am I missing? How are you contributing to (or participating in) this new culture? What are the signs that the old culture is stumbling towards irrelevance? (Or perhaps you believe that it's here to stay...) When did this cultural revolution begin?
Leave a comment if you would--
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The Cultural Revolution: Which Side Are You On?
There's a cultural revolution afoot in the Boston innovation economy.
One culture is dying out, and another kind of culture is emerging.
The old culture was clubby and insular. To get funding, you had to know someone who knew someone at one of the venture capital firms perched high atop Mount Money in Waltham. To get anywhere, it helped if you'd already had one or two successes on your résumé. The typical employee or executive went to work in Hopkinton or Burlington, put in a solid eight or nine hours of work, and went home. They weren't well-connected outside their own company, didn't go to industry networking events, and didn't make time to mentor up-and-coming entrepreneurs. In technology, the focus was almost always on developing products for the world's biggest customers, whether they were banks, telecommunications firms, or health care providers. The old culture felt it needed non-compete agreements to create artificial employee "loyalty." The old culture was reluctant to boast about what it was achieving, or Boston's prominent place in the global economy. And Boston's metabolism was slow: only a year or so after a trend emerged in Silicon Valley, a handful of companies had been formed here to pursue it.
Lots of people still live and work in that culture. They're sort of like people who still break out the seersucker suit on the first hot day of July...people who still wait in line at toll booths to hand over their crumpled dollar bill... or those Japanese soldiers who didn't realize World War II had ended.
Are you part of that world -- or are you part of the new culture? Here's what defines it:
The new culture is open, fast-paced, and encouraging of first-time entrepreneurs. It's about blogging and tweeting and digitized networks of people sharing information about what they're interested in, and where they're investing. It's about informal "unconferences" popping up to discuss the latest tech trend. It's populated by people who see the value in having broad networks of friends and acquaintances across lots of companies. Employers who operate in the new culture realize that the way you keep people motivated and maintain your position in the marketplace is by giving them interesting projects to work on and rewarding them appropriately -- not by forcing them to sign lengthy non-compete agreements. The new culture isn't afraid to spread the good word about the innovation that happens here in Boston.
The new culture is about seizing opportunities, not reinforcing hierarchies.
When I think about things that represent the new culture of innovation in Boston, here are ten that come to mind:
- TechStars Boston, a summer program to help give young entrepreneurs a jump-start. It's taking place for the first time this summer, with support from people like Bill Warner (founder of Avid Technology), Shawn Broderick (founder of TrustPlus), and Brad Feld (an MIT alum co-founded the Colorado VC firm Foundry Group.)- Web Innovators Group, a free monthly gathering that attracts roughly 500 people to see new start-ups demo their products. Run by venture capitalist David Beisel of Venrock.
- Stay in MA, a program funded by Flybridge Capital Partners that makes it free for students to attend seminars, workshops, and conferences.
- Blogs exposing the inner workings of venture capital and entrepreneurship, from local leaders like Larry Cheng, Bijan Sabet, Jeff Bussgang, Dharmesh Shah, Healy Jones & Prasad Thammineni, and Leah Busque.
- OpenCoffee, an entrepreneurs' gathering that happens every Wednesday morning in Central Square, introduced to Boston by Bijan Sabet from Spark Capital and Conduit Labs founder Nabeel Hyatt.
- Biotech Tuesday, a monthly schmooze-fest for life sciences types, founded in 2002 by Seth Taylor and Peter Kolchinsky.
- The Mass Technology Leadership Council's annual Innovation Unconference, held for the first time in 2008. One focus of the event is on encouraging successful entrepreneurs and executives to share their experience with up-and-comers.
- Microsoft's New England Research & Development Center (NERD). Yes, it's surprising that the Redmond, Washington behemoth would be contributing to the new culture of innovation in Boston, but the honchos at Microsoft's Kendall Square outpost have made it clear that they want to be part of the fabric of the community here. Their first-floor conference center has regularly hosted conclaves like CloudCamp Boston, a forum on how federal stimulus is affecting the cleantech industry, a June dialogue about the future of IT in Massachusetts attended by Gov. Patrick, and this weekend's GameLoop conference. (Many events are free, and they're listed here.)
- Highland Capital's Summer Entrepreneurship Program and Spark Capital's Start@Spark, two programs designed to support fledgling entrepreneurs.
- EurekaFest and the Cambridge Science Festival, two local events targeted at young people and families that celebrate the excitement of invention, science, and engineering.
There are, of course, a lot more people, events, and institutions contributing to the emergence of this new innovation culture in Boston -- from Mass Innovation Nights to Hubspot.tv to Betahouse to the Awesome Foundation.
What else am I missing? How are you contributing to (or participating in) this new culture? What are the signs that the old culture is stumbling towards irrelevance? (Or perhaps you believe that it's here to stay...) When did this cultural revolution begin?
Leave a comment if you would--
You said what? Getting Schooled in Website Development
I wrote the below post a few days before our website launch but never posted it. We got busy trying to get the actual site up. In all we are really happy with how it turned out but we still have some work to do. We look forward to the comments and feedback now that we are officially out there.
------
We are days away from our initial website launch and, as we put the finishing touches on the site, I can't help but reflect on the decisions we’ve made that have gotten us to this point.
Like many new small businesses, we have accepted free help when available. One individual who’s been a huge support to us is my brother Stephen, our website developer. Quick shout out - check him out here: Greenstein Consulting. He'll create a killer website for you and, at no extra charge, tell you you're stupid. Oh, I kid. That's special treatment only brothers get.
Starting off, we had some very clear items we wanted to incorporate into our website. Being avid users of social media, we were insistent on our site incorporating as much social media as possible. And we’ve done just that. One social media item we are not sure how to utilize, though, is Facebook. It's easy to use for a personal account, but man they make it a pain to set up for a business. We'd write the whole thing off if they didn't have so many subscribers.
In our past lives, we both have had experience building websites, either writing the HTML code or working on a design with a developer. With that experience behind us, we thought creating our own website would be a piece of cake. Not exactly. We certainly had the knowledge in terms of what general things to include but here's where we got schooled big time: the back-end of the website. Basically, what's under the hood...what makes our website work. We finally had the website to a point where we thought it was good to go only to find out that we hadn't made sure it was put in a code that would give us the flexibility we need for the future. We need .php and have .html. What is that you ask? Everyone tells us something different. What the hell does php stand for? According to php.net, "PHP is a widely-used general-purpose scripting language that is especially suited for Web development and can be embedded into HTML." I know what you're thinking - that clears things up. Needless to say we still have some learning to do, but what we have gathered is that php will allow us to have a dynamic website and just plain html makes our site static. Static = bad, dynamic = good.
Now, it's easy to sit back and say "why didn't your web developer advise you on this?" Fair question and to some extent a good point. However, as a small business owner you should NEVER fully trust a task to your vendor. At the end of the day, it is your job to know every aspect of what you are getting yourself into. We should have done the research to know what type of website we needed.
So, yes we got schooled. Our website has been delayed a few weeks and, once it's launched, we will have to fix some stuff behind the scenes. As stressful as this has been overall, it's good that it happened. I'd rather learn this lesson now than later, when serious time and money have been invested in the job.
At the end of the day, our website is going to be awesome and Stephen has been a huge help, but in the interest of full disclosure, these are some of the hiccups we've encountered along the way.
------
We are days away from our initial website launch and, as we put the finishing touches on the site, I can't help but reflect on the decisions we’ve made that have gotten us to this point.
Like many new small businesses, we have accepted free help when available. One individual who’s been a huge support to us is my brother Stephen, our website developer. Quick shout out - check him out here: Greenstein Consulting. He'll create a killer website for you and, at no extra charge, tell you you're stupid. Oh, I kid. That's special treatment only brothers get.
Starting off, we had some very clear items we wanted to incorporate into our website. Being avid users of social media, we were insistent on our site incorporating as much social media as possible. And we’ve done just that. One social media item we are not sure how to utilize, though, is Facebook. It's easy to use for a personal account, but man they make it a pain to set up for a business. We'd write the whole thing off if they didn't have so many subscribers.
In our past lives, we both have had experience building websites, either writing the HTML code or working on a design with a developer. With that experience behind us, we thought creating our own website would be a piece of cake. Not exactly. We certainly had the knowledge in terms of what general things to include but here's where we got schooled big time: the back-end of the website. Basically, what's under the hood...what makes our website work. We finally had the website to a point where we thought it was good to go only to find out that we hadn't made sure it was put in a code that would give us the flexibility we need for the future. We need .php and have .html. What is that you ask? Everyone tells us something different. What the hell does php stand for? According to php.net, "PHP is a widely-used general-purpose scripting language that is especially suited for Web development and can be embedded into HTML." I know what you're thinking - that clears things up. Needless to say we still have some learning to do, but what we have gathered is that php will allow us to have a dynamic website and just plain html makes our site static. Static = bad, dynamic = good.
Now, it's easy to sit back and say "why didn't your web developer advise you on this?" Fair question and to some extent a good point. However, as a small business owner you should NEVER fully trust a task to your vendor. At the end of the day, it is your job to know every aspect of what you are getting yourself into. We should have done the research to know what type of website we needed.
So, yes we got schooled. Our website has been delayed a few weeks and, once it's launched, we will have to fix some stuff behind the scenes. As stressful as this has been overall, it's good that it happened. I'd rather learn this lesson now than later, when serious time and money have been invested in the job.
At the end of the day, our website is going to be awesome and Stephen has been a huge help, but in the interest of full disclosure, these are some of the hiccups we've encountered along the way.
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Getting Schooled in SEO
While we acknowledge that SEO is a hot topic and is totally necessary, we also acknowledge that we know very little about it. We think the goal of any site is to be at the top of the Google food chain. Currently, we're not even on the plate for consideration. So, continuing with our "Getting Schooled" series, below is a conversation we had today with Mike Gerstenblatt. Mike is helping us along with this project and a few others related our existence on the Interweb.
So this is what we'll be working on in the coming days, weeks, and months. Hopefully with Mike's help, we'll soon be at the top of the SEO world. Stay tuned.
bGreen: Opening this up for discussion. What can we do in the short-term to get our SEO going? Currently when you google "bgreen" we don't come up. Let's figure out how to change this.
Mike: Well google page rank is determined by many things, but I think the most important is inbound links, proper use of keywords, and properly structured pages (including H1s and images with titles, alt tags, etc)
First, I think the site should be optimized to follow the guidelines established in Google's SEO Starter Guide.
Second, you need to organically build up inbound links. That is, find ways to get other sites to link to bgreenlifestyle.com. Use twitter, facebook, yelp, blogs, whatever. This is obviously harder and takes more time. I'm not sure if there's an established methodology to get this done, but I think it begins with great, dynamic content that people will want to link to. (Speaking of which, I think you need to move your wordpress blog so that its under your own domain {so its blog.bgreenlifestyle.com not bgreenstore.wordpress.com} or at least link to your main site from the blog in the meantime.)
Lastly, you need to identify relevant and popular search terms and modify your content appropriately. For example, if people are searching for 'Boston green stores'. Have "Boston green stores" somewhere on the site.
SEO isn't that hard, it just takes an investment of time.
So this is what we'll be working on in the coming days, weeks, and months. Hopefully with Mike's help, we'll soon be at the top of the SEO world. Stay tuned.
Monday, August 10, 2009
bGreen Launches! World Domination Begins.
With great excitement we are officially launching bGreen lifestyle + building! What began as a conversation on a cold winter night in January 2009 has now become a reality. Our mission at bGreen lifestyle + building is to provide the latest green and eco-friendly products for everyday living, construction, & renovation.
Being green isn't just for Ed Begley Jr. anymore. Green is going mainstream and bGreen will help you get there. Within every aspect of your life there is an opportunity to make a "greener" choice. Why not try Bio Bags in lieu of your regular trash bags? They offer 100% biodegradable kitchen and dog waste bags. Or, if you're getting ready to redo your kitchen, try Paperstone countertops made from 100% post-consumer recycled cardboard.
Be an active participant in the products that you use in your life. Good decisions now will ensure a greater world later.
We invite you to follow our progress as we begin to build this business. Please check out our Website, Twitter, Blog, and YouTube. If you would like to receive email updates from us, please sign up here.
Today we launch our Website, later this summer our web store, and next Spring our super secret phase 3!
We welcome your comments and feedback.
bResponsible
bConscious
bSmart
bGreen
- Barry and Lee
(Please forward this to anyone else who might be interested)
----
bGreen Group LLC
Boston, MA
bGreen@bgreenlifestyle.com
bgreenlifestyle.com
twitter.com/bgreenstore
Being green isn't just for Ed Begley Jr. anymore. Green is going mainstream and bGreen will help you get there. Within every aspect of your life there is an opportunity to make a "greener" choice. Why not try Bio Bags in lieu of your regular trash bags? They offer 100% biodegradable kitchen and dog waste bags. Or, if you're getting ready to redo your kitchen, try Paperstone countertops made from 100% post-consumer recycled cardboard.
Be an active participant in the products that you use in your life. Good decisions now will ensure a greater world later.
We invite you to follow our progress as we begin to build this business. Please check out our Website, Twitter, Blog, and YouTube. If you would like to receive email updates from us, please sign up here.
Today we launch our Website, later this summer our web store, and next Spring our super secret phase 3!
We welcome your comments and feedback.
bResponsible
bConscious
bSmart
bGreen
- Barry and Lee
(Please forward this to anyone else who might be interested)
----
bGreen Group LLC
Boston, MA
bGreen@bgreenlifestyle.com
bgreenlifestyle.com
twitter.com/bgreenstore
Friday, August 7, 2009
bgreenlifestyle.com Launch
Today we launch http://www.bgreenlifestyle.com. After several months of design and development, we really like the way this came out. Please share your thoughts and feedback.
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