Editor's Blog

At a recent London dinner for geeks there was a sharp intake of breath and a flurry of questioning hands raised when Richard Moross, ceo of web 2.0 darlings MOO.com, revealed his company made a 70% margin on its mini-cards.

But as Moross was rightly keen to point out, MOO has had a fully functioning business model from the off, turning over hard cash since the moment it took its first order.  So it makes sense that despite being a poster child for web 2.0 chic and a culture where free is the new expensive, it’s also a company that is proud to be associated with one of the world’s oldest professions - printing.

For those that haven’t yet discovered MOO, it’s best known for printing cards for work or personal use with designs or imagery you upload to its site in a format that is about a third the height of a traditional business card.

They were originally conceived as ‘pleasure cards’ - a name that sounds extraordinarily louche or worse like something strippers or members of a profession even older than printing might dish out.

Fortunately they settled on MOO as a name and a brand took shape.   The design ethic, the tone of voice, the hidden Easter-egg like messages on packaging, the adoption of blogs and social networks, and the sense of a family of customers all resemble the Innocent Drinks ethos. In many ways the two companies are very similar. Both possess a knowing subversion of the traditional ‘business voice’.

At the recent Fuel conference, when asked about branding, Moross said:

You don’t need to get someone in to manage your brand, if your brand is what you are.

And MOO and its customers are very much part of the second web revolution. A revolution where the personal brand is more important than branding and a human voice deafens corporate slogans.

Despite all this and despite the shrewd partnerships with Flickr and other social networks to get access to a ready-made audience, my abiding impression is that the guys at MOO are not Web 2.0 geeks, they’re print geeks.

Get Moross onto the subject of choice of paper, the printing technologies they’ve perfected and the inks they choose and you see real passion shining through.  Then look at the cards themselves. Even though printed digitally, there’s none of the cracking often associated with the medium.

And I say this, not because I’ve any reason to plug MOO - I don’t use their cards and don’t plan to - but because put simply their product looks great and stands out.  And that’s what matters most - a simple lesson.

That and the fact that web 2.0 allows businesses to go back to the future, to a time when business was more intimate and products had pride.

It’s always good to discover new British business voices blogging. One such is Nick Saalfeld, founder of communications company Wells Park. His new blog True Business, sponsored by Microsoft, is already shaping up to be a good read. I’ve known Nick for a little while as he’s been a supporter and proponent of podcasting.  He’s a great character and knows a thing or two about building successful businesses, having sold his first web business back in 2000 for £9 million. Well worth checking out.

A weekend treat for BizPod TV fans out there, the latest is now live. Quirky stories for entrepreneurs wrapped up in PacMan mayhem.

Despite the hype around the launch of the iPhone 3G by Apple CEO Steve Jobs on Monday, there were also some serious nuggets aimed at the business community. So is a battle looming between Research in Motion (RIM), the makers of Blackberry, and Apple for the hearts and minds of the small business user?

Although Blackberry’s core constituency is the corporate world and Apple’s is the consumer, both clearly have an eye on the sizeable SME (small to medium-sized enterprise) market.  The fact that they’re coming at it from different directions makes for an interesting contest.

Other than being much cheaper than its predecessor, the new iPhone also has three key elements for business: integration with Exchange Server allowing push email (i.e. email that arrives automatically and near instantly); the ability for developers to make business-focused applications for the phone, and; MobileMe, more of which later.

While a challenge to Blackberry, most of this is not new.  RIM has built its business on push email, security and business focused applications for years.  It is quite simply way ahead.  Indeed recent US data from IDC showed it increasing its US market share for business smartphones by 9.4% to 44.5% in Q1 2008, at the expense of Apple and Motorola.

It already has its Independent Software Vendors programme churning out business specific applications e.g. CRM integration via salesforce.com, mTem, a mobile time and expenses tool and ‘Work and Repair’ which gives field workers one touch access to job, customer, inventory and warranty information.

It remains to be seen whether Apple can attract significant volumes of developers through its iPhone Developer Programme interested in creating practical business applications, rather than games.

Indeed there’s an argument for saying that the iPhone’s lurch into the mobile gaming and enterprise space simultaneously is a strategic error.

Do you really want to issue your employees with what amounts to a mobile gaming console?  Surfing social networks on the web is one thing, getting them hooked on Super Monkey Ball is something else all together.  At least the ‘Crackberry’ instils an addiction to work-related email.

Surely two separate versions of the iPhone, one for business and one for consumers will become a reality in the not too distant future.

As Dr Windsor Holden, principle analyst at Juniper Research, said to me earlier today:

“The iPhone is still overwhelmingly a device aimed at consumers.  It may pick up business customers around the edges, but it’s not a direct competitor to Blackberry.”

Dr Holden’s argument is Blackberry should stick to its knitting and it will stay ahead.

I’m not so sure and I’m not sure RIM is either, if the plethora of consumer focused add-ons and leaks of a new phone called ‘Thunder’ is anything go to by.

Sarah Probert, EMEA marketing director for large enterprise and SME segments at RIM dismissed stories re Thunder as rumour and speculation when I spoke to her recently.

But she did outline her company’s small business strategy. One vital element is a desire to work more closely with third party channels so small business owners can get support and advice from trusted suppliers other than traditional mobile providers. Another important element is the launch of Blackberry’s new easy to install version of their push email software to allow small businesses to set up the service on their own servers or computers.

Which brings me back to Apple’s MobileMe.  It also offers push email, calendar and contacts synchronisation on mobile, laptop and desktop over the web for $99 a year.  Yes, it’s consumer oriented, but it’s also the most significant of Apple’s announcements from a small business perspective.

The ability for business data to flow seamlessly between mobile, office and ‘cloud’ (i.e. servers accessed over the web) will be the real battleground for small business customers over the next few years.  Not having to worry about backing up documents, instant access to information and seamless synchronisation at minimal to zero cost will become the de facto standard expected by SMEs.

Apple is now positioned to compete for this market.  Google, with its Android mobile operating system is also perfectly placed to integrate Gmail, Docs and its other online services onto mobiles at zero cost to the user.  Microsoft may also be on to something with Office Live and Mesh.

All of a sudden having push email as a unique selling point becomes less important as do the traditional  carriers and handset manufacturers.  It’ll be interesting to see how RIM positions Blackberry as it squares up to new competitors who are very much not the usual mobile suspects.

We had an enjoyable time filming for BizPod TV at the Business Startup show in London a little while ago.

Ally did a great job interviewing two very different, but equally fascinating entrepreneurs: Caprice Bourret and Rachel Elnaugh.

I’ve copied in the YouTube version of the Caprice interview below.

For all her celebrity and model good looks, Caprice is clearly working her proverbial backside off to make her lingerie business a success. What’s more you can see her determination and passion for what she’s doing quite clearly throughout the interview.

I also interviewed Rachel Elnaugh for this week’s podcast and she faces the other side of the celebrity entrepreneur coin. Caprice was famous, then went into business, Rachel became a successful entrepreneur and then achieved celebrity through Dragon’s Den.

Celebrity and business do mix well together. As Caprice admits it’s a real boon for marketing your business. But the media is really just an amplifier, making success seem better and failure seem worse. Just ask Rachel Elnaugh.

As Morrissey once said: "Fame, fame fatal fame, it can play hideous tricks on the brain".

Remind me never to become a celebrity entrepreneur

‘Going solo’ - two little words which inspire excitement and fear in equal measure among most people who’ve ever thought seriously about quitting employment and becoming self-employed.

Whether you’re a freelancer, consultant or nascent small business owner your early days can very often feel like you’ve jumped out of the frying pan into a very hot fire.  Goodbye wage-slavery, hello where the hell’s my next meal coming from!

Or, more likely, an initial influx of work followed by a realisation that your negotiation skills, rates, marketing and much else needs to change and change fast if your new found freedom is to become a sustainable way of life.

That’s exactly what Swiss blogger Stephanie Booth discovered when she quit her job as a school teacher and went solo as a social media consultant. 

And it’s her own journey that’s inspired her to set up a one day conference specifically aimed at freelancers from all over Europe and particularly those working in an internet or web-related sector.

Going Solo, takes place on 16 May 2008 in lovely Lausanne, Switzerland.  Sessions look very practical and the speakers include some of the web’s best known freelancers: Suw Charman, Dennis Howlett and Stowe Boyd to name but a few.

And … I’m really pleased that SmallBizPod is a media partner for this event.  I’m sure many listeners of the podcast and readers of this blog could benefit from attending and if they’re anything like me from some fresh Swiss air in a beautiful location too!

Keep an eye out for a special episode of SmallBizPod on freelancing too.