Crenk

Over the last few weeks there has been a lot of talk about conferences, and with all this talk I have been thinking, do these conference actually work for startups?

Right at this very moment there are two major conferences being held, Techcrunch 50 and Demo 08. The style of these conferences are total the opposite, but do they provide any real value for startups who attend and present?

All the startups that present at these conferences tend to get a lot of support straight off the bat from PR companies, blogs and other news sources. However, once the conference is finished I really dont think these startups get any more coverage from PR companies and blogs, and then they have to really start to fight for market share within their niches. Thus, spending thousands and thousands of dollars to attend and present at these conferences, does it actually pay off for the startups to actually become a household name in their niche?

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Here at Crenk we are keen to help as many startups as possible to get their voices heard. Crenk will now be offering a new form of free advertising.

In the sidebar on every Crenk page we now have some free advertising spots to give away to startups every month. I’m not too sure currently how many spots we will be offering, but will probably be around 6.

Who Can Submit To Get A Free Ad Slot: Any startups (doesn’t matter how big or small)

Slots Available: 6

How Often Do They Change: Monthly. 1st of every month we will have some new startups to try

How to Apply: Send us an email (tips@crenk.com). Subject: Crenk Startup Promotion. Add a link to your startup and a review of approx 50-100 words. Additionally, an Ad that is 125×43

The aim of this promotion is to allow startups some free advertising, while promoting useful services to our readers.

We hope you like this new idea, and we look forward to bring you some great startups you have never heard of.

Crenk Team

Crenk has joined forces with TradeVibes which will see all of the Crenk articles directly syndicated into the TradeVibes database.

TradeVibes is an ever growing company database. The companies posts information about vairous companies, and detailing everything from their address to competitors to its management. In each profiles in the right column it allows the user to stay up-to-date with the news about that specific company. The news is currently being gathered from a variety of sources, such as Techcrunch, RWW and now Crenk.

We have previously written about TradeVibes when they came out of beta. They have since made some big improvements and im looking forward to seeing their site improving in the future.

This is a guest post from Ashraf Mansoor who is the founder of Twffaha.com, a job site intended for women in the Middle East.

Not A Luxury

Everyday we run into hundreds of web applications, be it clones for already successful businesses (Mixx to Digg) or original creative ideas. The potential of growth on the web is overwhelming, that’s why a lot of entrepreneurs seek to involve in creating startups, with the hope of being the next Google.

However, most startups fail to develop there ideas into cash generating machines. The reason is because of the lack of a solid, rational, business model. Startups and entrepreneurs get consumed by there ideas and hopes that they overlook the economical feasibility of their projects.

Startups should be profitable in order to guarantee it does not cease to exist. Even a VC backed startup will be under fire if it failed to turn a profit and award the VCs with a feasible rate of return on their original investment ( anyone?)

Plan Early

As an entrepreneur it is your job to plan a solid business model at the early stage of your project. Building an application and hoping to come up with a business model later is not a smart move to make. YouTube has been a great success, and revolutionized the way we think about the web, but in reality YouTube failed to cash on there huge traffic (#3 in the US according to Alexa) because of the absence of a business model initially, leaving Google to experiment with different business models that all but failed to reduce the search giant hefty bill of costs.

Size Does Not Matter

Once you have an idea that you believe can help you to generate money, study the business model. Services like 37Signals have done their homework early, and came up with a subscription based model that helped them to be profitable from day one. The fact that 37Signals is very small when compared to YouTube is insignificant, as long as they turn a profit and a very good one too.

Final Thoughts

1. Do not leave it till the end.

2. Do not depend on being acquired. The chances of you being acquired is slim, plus giants will look to acquire startups they know are profitable.

3. Conduct a market research to ensure that your figures are realistic.

4. Do not hesitate to change your business model, in case you found a more lucrative model - be flexible.