Need shop name ideas? Visit PickyDomains.com
Trademarkia is an online search engine that helps small-business owners sift through the more than six million names, slogans and logos that have been trademarked in America since 1870. The Web site, which went live in September 2009, grafts a user-friendly interface onto a colossal database, built with free information provided by the United States Patent and Trademark Office. It also serves as a lure, steering visitors who want to apply for their own trademarks to the law firm of Trademarkiaâs co-founder, Raj Abhyanker, and offering other fee-based services such as domain registration, logo design and automated alerts that notify trademark holders when marks similar to their own are filed.
Employees: Eight full-time. In addition, in the last three years, Trademarkia has generated enough business to help Mr. Abhyankerâs law firm grow from a solo practice to an international operation with more than 190 employees, including more than 60 lawyers.
Founders: Mr. Abhyanker, 36, Trademarkiaâs chief executive, is a lawyer and serial entrepreneur who previously founded FatDoor, a social networking site for neighbors. (In 2007, Mr. Abhyanker was ousted as chief executive of FatDoor, which later transformed into The Dealmap and was purchased by Google in 2011.) He founded Trademarkia with Dongxia Liu, 39, a software developer and the former vice president of engineering at Imagekind. Ms. Liu now serves as chief technology officer.
Location: Trademarkia is headquartered in Mountain View, Calif., in the same building as Mr. Abhyankerâs law firm, which also has satellite offices in India, China and France.
Pitch: âWe want to make applying for a trademark as easy as getting a domain name,â Mr. Abhyanker said.
Traction: Based on the strength of Trademarkia, which gets nearly three million page views each month, Mr. Abhyanker expects his legal practice to file for more than 13,000 trademarks this year (about 10,000 American and 3,000 overseas). âWeâre basically the law firm that represents the most small businesses in terms of intellectual property,â he said.
Revenue: In 2011, according to Mr. Abhyanker, Trademarkia brought in $1.3 million in revenue and the law firm brought in $5.5 million, excluding government filing fees that passed through both companies. He said he expected both figures to grow by 50 percent this year.
Financing: No outside money. âI had a bad taste about venture capital,â Mr. Abhyanker explained, after losing control of FatDoor. He bootstrapped Trademarkia with about $25,000 in seed money. As for the law firm, he added, that began in 2005 with $1,000 from his savings, a small office over a Palo Alto rug store, a used desk from Craigslist and a Web site he built himself. While he doesnât plan to pursue venture capital, âIâd like to have investors that are other lawyers,â he said, adding that, heâs considering using crowdfunding from California-licensed attorneys.
Marketing: Trademarkia spends roughly $1 million each year on paid search advertising, mostly Google AdWords. Even so, Mr. Abhyanker said, most of Trademarkiaâs traffic relies on word of mouth and in-bound links from other sites, such as Wikipedia.
Competition: Online rivals include LegalZoom, the legal documents company that offers a smorgasbord of services, and The Trademark Company, which offers registration packages starting at $149, undercutting Trademarkiaâs basic offering by $10. Competitors also include big international law firms, such as Greenberg Traurig and K&L Gates, which have dominated the trademark space.
Challenge: Mr. Abhyanker isnât shy about his ambitions. âOur goal, in the end, is to build the biggest law firm in the world,â he said. He wants to do that in two ways: first, by making other types of public data â including patents, copyrights and incorporations â âmore interesting and accessibleâ to consumers. He also plans to rebrand Trademarkia with a new name, LegalForce, and wants to pivot the company into a hybrid with both a strong online presence and brick-and-mortar storefronts serving mostly business owners, available for franchise by independent attorneys. He envisions the latter as âthe Apple store meets H&R Blockâ and hopes to have between five and 10 of them open within 18 months.
[Via - NYTimes.com]
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Daily advice link - Designer? We Are Hiring!
Need business name ideas? Visit PickyDomains.com
http://www.paulsammut.com/ramos/
There may be a lucky few who never have trouble getting up in the morning, but for everyone else, engineer and designer Paul Sammut has a new solution. Now fully funded on Kickstarter, Sammutâs new Ramos alarm clock canât be turned off by any ordinary means; rather, users must get up and walk to an accompanying defuse panel to punch in the clockâs preset deactivation code.
Thereâs no âsnoozeâ button in easy reach on the Ramos clock, which has been in development for years, Sammut says. âRamos is a clock I made after I got tired of constantly oversleeping,â he explains. âI needed something that would force me out of bed.â No surprise, then, that the Ramos can only be turned off when the user gets up and enters in a code on a separate wireless defuse panel, which Sammut suggests be placed in the kitchen or bathroom. âYouâll have to use your brain a bit more, which will help wake you up,â he notes. âBest of all, after you turn off the alarm youâll find yourself in your bathroom or kitchen, away from the evil alluring bed and ready to start your day.â An optional snooze mode will be included, but users wonât be able to exceed the number of âsnoozesâ they preset in advance.
The Ramos can now be preordered on Kickstarter starting at USD 160, with options including either an LED or nixie tube display and a variety of hardwoods and finishes. Specialty retailers around the globe: one to get in on early?
[Via - Springwise]
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Daily advice link - Designer? We Are Hiring!
Interested in crowdsourcing sites? Here is a list of top 5 crowdsourcing services you might find useful
1. PickyDomains.Com â this crowd sourcing site specializes in naming things. Like names, domains, product lines, slogans, etc. The service is 100% risk free, meaning clients pay only if they decide to use one of the suggestions offered. Contributors get 40 to 60 percent of the amount paid by client.
2. 99Designs.Com â 99Designs is probably the best known logo crowdsourcing service out there (though it offers all kinds of web design services as well). Itâs been growing by leaps and bounds and paid out over $25 million to designers since 2008.
3. oDesk.Com â dubbed ELance killer, oDesk may not kill its main competitor but having a chance to work with both, I can tell you that I like oDesk a whole lot better. Itâs probably one of the best sources for crowdsourcing jobs for writers, programmers, designers, artists, marketers, virtual assistance and other freelancers.
4. IdeaBounty.Com â yes, you can even crowdsource ideas. (I wonder if anyone has used existing crowdsourcing service to generate ideas for a new crowdourcing service). As the name implies, IdeaBounty pays for ideas (most clients are corporations). And even though they say âideas are a dime a dozenâ, IdeaBounty pays thousands and the top reward so far stands at a cool $20,000.
5. AgentAnything.Com â Any Errand Any Time Any Where â thatâs the slogan AgentAnything goes by and thatâs pretty much a close description of the service. Unlike the four you just read about, this one leans toward offline tasks and is a lot like Craigslist.
Canadian couple Jon Peters and Brittany Gardner has hired PickyDomains.com to name their baby boy. Order 2090 reads as follows:
âWe are expecting a son and need a first and last name for him. Neither of us are particularly traditional, but would like the name to have a strong/enlightened/intelligent/futuristic meaning, and have good sound harmony when spoken. Some of our favorite first names so far are Raven, Colour and Sword. A last name is requested as well. Some general concepts we like (for inspiration) are: Futurism, Liberty, Knowledge, Transhumanism, Creativity, Exploration, and Innovation. We are open to cool names from any fiction/culture/religion (though we are not religious).â
Dmitry Davydov, the co-founder of PickyDomains.com at first was surprised. âWeâve had some wacky naming orders. Weâve been asked to name a rap star dog once and weâve named stip clubs and escort services. But crowdsourcing baby name, thatâs the first for us,â said Davydov.
PickyDomains.com is wordâs first risk free crowdsourcing naming service, meaning clients pay (typically $50 per name or domain) only if they decide to use one of the name suggested by the service. It has named over 1500 domains since being launched in 2007. Some examples include DePrice.com, GetMapped.com, MadConomist.com, Architexa.com, SoftwareJudge.com, NadaPay.com and StandupKings.com. The service also provides slogans, taglines and product name suggestions.
Jon and Brittany live in Vancouver, Canada and both have Facebook pages
http://www.facebook.com/brittanyngardner
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=890355610
[Via - Yahoo! News]
Tip Of The Day - How To Find Any Person In US, Do Reverse Phone Lookup And Check For Criminal Records
http://www.birdsbarbershop.com/
Michael Portman has heard his salon customers share information with their hairdressers that they wouldn’t confide in anyone else. As he says, it’s a business built on trust. After all, how many deals compel the service provider to wield a sharp pair of scissors to your scalp or neck?
Today, six years after he and childhood pal Jayson Rapaport opened the first of five Birds Barbershops in Austin, Texas, Portman is especially pleased when a customer comes in for a haircut in advance of a job interview. “That’s a pretty trusting moment there,” Portman says.
Like many entrepreneurs, Portman has found that savvy branding efforts go a long way toward cultivating that trust. And while there’s no single formula for branding your way into a client’s warm embrace, it’s generally agreed that it takes more than a clever slogan or a catchy jingle. At the very least, it takes strong job performance, effective marketing (often online) and favorable public opinion. Yet experts say building trust through branding also requires an ineffable something that leaves customers feeling good about the whole exchange.
“Branding now is trying to measure not just the affinity, but the trust a consumer has in you,” says Todd Copilevitz, a branding consultant in Atlanta.
To build trust through branding, says Karen Post, a Tampa, Fla.âbased consultant and the author of Brand Turnaround, an entrepreneur must establish a distinct identity. Portman and Rapaport did this by offering standard haircuts at below-market prices–$19 for men, $39 for women–and keeping salons open seven days a week. (”Every salon in the world is closed on Mondays,” Portman says. “What’s with that?”) Tapping into Austin’s rich musical heritage, they installed old-fashioned jukeboxes, then turned up the volume. Because Austin is such a bicycle-crazy town, they offered men who rode to Birds a free hair wash. (Women get a shampoo with the standard cut.) And abiding by the company ethos of keeping things local, they formed myriad partnerships in support of hometown causes and events.
Their mission was simple, really: They wanted to make the haircut experience more fun. And that’s where the beer comes in. After noon each day, anyone who gets a haircut at Birds receives a free can of Shiner beer. Birds pays nothing for the beer but gives Shiner plenty of promotional punch, including a neon sign in every salon window. Shiner comes from the Lone Star State’s oldest independent brewery, so it holds a special place in the hearts and minds of Texans. For Portman, the arrangement has been invaluable in helping Birds establish its identity.
And that has led to success. Last year, Portman says, Birds took in nearly $3 million in revenue. Birds has relied heavily on social media to build its brand. Copilevitz says the online world, which gives consumers a robust and timely forum for expressing opinions, has forced businesses to revert to old-school customer service. “That is, dealing with people as people,” he says. “They’re using social media to talk to their customers in an open, honest way, and they do that on a stage where millions of eyeballs can focus on that discussion.” Using social media effectively, adds Portman, also means knowing when to lay low. “We’re part of the conversation, just like when you’re sitting around the table with friends,” he says. “You don’t say anything unless you have something to say.”
For more unusual ways to make money, visit this site.
[HT - Entrepreneur]
Catering To Startups - ZeroCater Story
Catering To Startups - ZeroCater Story