

Meet 30 Cool Young Entrepreneurs - grellas
http://www.inc.com/ss/30under30/2010/top-young-entrepreneurs#0

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maxklein
This article made me realise - no matter how much money you are making or how
cool your company is - to get featured in such big magazines, your idea has to
be simple and it has to be interesting. There has to be some interesting hook,
either in your idea or in you.

Most reporters are not going to do days of research to find the companies -
they will just go for the low hanging fruit. They will think of the companies
they remember, look through some lists and that's basically it. If you have a
clear hook, then they will remember you and will feature you.

So for example, the Visual Website Optimizer (that A/B testing guy), he lacks
a hook. Where is the user interest - he won't appear in such a list. But if he
creates a hook, writes his own story, and makes sure the relevant reporters
see it somewhere, such that they can remember it when they are writing an
article, then it will be featured sooner or later.

Your business has basically years to get featured. You can build your human-
interest angle somewhere within that time.

~~~
axod
The question is though, is getting featured in such a list a good thing. Does
it lead to good things?

Perhaps I'm just a bitter "old" person (over 30), but I'm not convinced it
matters that much.

IMHO The Visual Website Optimizer guy should concentrate on providing value
and cool stuff for customers rather than pandering to journalists fashion
tastes. If he's providing real value, it's fairly simple to start paying for
advertising and driving new customers to sign up etc.

~~~
paraschopra
I think press does something that advertising can never do: providing social
proof. Advertising gets you eyeballs; press gets you eyeball + proof (that a
startup is worth knowing more about).

But, yes I agree that pandering to a journalist's taste isn't a great idea.
But that's not because I think it is against my philosophies (or such), rather
it takes so much time to figure out what works for him/her. As I commented
above, I still haven't found my hook. And I'm vaguely aware that the hook will
vary from journalist to journalist.

~~~
axod
Surely the proof is "This advertising provided a positive ROI"? :/

Or are we talking companies without business models here?...

~~~
chc
Users don't care — and in fact don't know — if your advertising has good ROI.
But they will take notice if someone they trust says you're doing something
amazing.

This _is_ advertising.

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tansey
This is a horribly edited article. Almost every 3-sentence summary includes
some typographic or grammatical error.

Some interesting companies though. Glad to know I'll still be considered a
"young" entrepreneur for a couple more years. :)

~~~
MHofman12
Tansey: My bad. We were crunched for time on Friday and I decided to launch
the list on schedule while continuing to polish the copy. Think of it as
editorial agile development...

As for the comments here about how we pick the list and finding good hooks and
all of that, I guess I would simply say that we look each year to create a
list with a variety of entrepreneurs who are doing creative things, building
interesting companies, and challenging the status quo in their industries.
Celebrated start-ups such as Foursquare and Posterous were on our radar from
the get-go, but we were equally interested in writing about less showy
companies such as the e-mail marketer iContact and the fabric retailer
CityCraft. I think the result is a fairly unpredictable list; some people are
very familiar with some of the companies, but I doubt that anybody is familiar
with every company (SuperJam is pretty great, don't you think?)

Finally, for those of you who think young people are not particularly
interesting, I'd recommend our regular "How I Did It" feature, or the section
on our site devoted to serial entrepreneurs: <http://www.inc.com/serial-
entrepreneurs>

Best, Mike Hofman Editor, Inc.com mhofman [at] inc.com

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brianbreslin
This made me sad. I'm 27 and still haven't made a multi-million $ business. at
least i've got 2 years to hit the list, i guess.

any press like this is good press for these startups/entrepreneurs. I was
recently featured in the local paper here for 20 under 40, and got a lot of
good feedback, and built up my local rep that way.

~~~
mahmud
Work towards your own standards of excellence, not others'.

I found excellence to be too much work, and now aim for _adequacy_.

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hwang89
LOL at #6 - Maverick Carter

Lebron James' childhood friend, and head of his marketing firm, essentially
ruined his image - “His brand is [bleep] now,” one high-level NBA official
said late Thursday. “He’s destroyed everything.”

Life is great when you're riding coattails.

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dmix
Twitter clone + 15,000 users = Cool Young Entrepreneur?

~~~
abstractbill
I often get the feeling that being under 30 is more important to Inc than
other more obvious measures of success.

~~~
galois
Well is this part of that 30 under 30 thing they do?

There's nothing wrong with focusing on a particular demographic.

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icco
I'm happy this list has a little variety in it.

It may have a few grammatical errors, but at least this isn't another here are
another ten companies run by guys from silicon valley. Sure it has some of
those companies, but I'm glad to see some variety.

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kacy
Hey, I know a few of those people in real life! That's neat.

~~~
grasshoper
Me too. Go Ooshma!

