Your Questions About Internet Business Models

Jere answers:

Internet cafes are a booming business. Unless you are extremely wealthy you will need to take bank loan. Any bank will require you to have a business plan to start one.

1. Consider acquiring an existing internet cafe.

2. Consider joining a franchise.

3. Consider alternative business models to bring in various streams of revenue.

Jere answers:

Don’t bother to be honest, people tend to shop loyally with certain shops and don’t bother with new shops especially small ones like yours would be. Clothes shopping these days is all about brand and reputation, Topshop/river island/next/H&M etc will always rule the high street market because there well known, branded but at affordable prices to the average joe, they cater for most needs from work to play all in one shop. New shops don’t last against the high street big shops. If your insistant then stick to the internet, start off by getting a good customer base on something like ebay then gradually build to your own website with better marketing. If after that your still in business making a profit then you can think about opening one or two shops, you have to start off from the bottom your trying to start from the top.

Jere answers:

An attorney or business associate can be a good place to get a VC referral. You also can network among business executives in the field of your business. One thing not to do is presenting to just any VC. You want one that is interested in your particular type of business. Networking with executives that have received funding or pitched to a particular VC is the best way to gather insight. VC’s websites can be helpful at indicating their investment focus (and can show you if they already invested in a competitive venture) but they are often very broad when in reality they favor certain sectors that change over time with the business climate. The National Venture Capital Association (nvca.org) has a lot of information including a listing of members. Also, Entrepreneur magazine published a top 100 VC list: http://www.entrepreneur.com/vc100

The most important thing to getting funding is to be able to “hook” them with your opportunity and you as the entrepreneur to capitalize on it. They are looking for BIG business opportunities that create new markets and/or use new business models/products/technologies to substantially expand existing large markets.

It’s also important to understand that VCs primarily invest in great management teams, exceptional technologists or marketing experts. So, if you don’t have the background, I strongly recommend you get it before pitching your idea. Generally, you need to have either several years of senior corporate experience in the right area for your venture or be a technical expert in the field of your products/business model.

If you’ve got the goods, research the vc firms to find those that invest in your product/business area. Then, network to get a referral if possible. It is much better to get a referral than mailing a plan in. VCs get hundreds of busines plans & pitches and it is very hard to standout if you mail it in.

Jere answers:

They’d have to adapt. The internet is everywhere and it’s pretty much impossible to stop it all. Sure, there were attempts like what Metallica did but still it failed because I can go now and download every Metallica song ever for free and get away with it.

As a musician I would be more concerned with people ripping off my music, i.e. Stealing my riffs or lyrics or something like that.

Jere answers:

Alright, just to start with layouts and such, you’re going to need to know HTML pretty well. Don’t worry though, you can pick up the essentials in an afternoon.

However, if you *just* use HTML, you’re likely to end up with a website that looks as though it were made circa 1996, so look into CSS (cascading style sheets). If you’re serious about designing good looking sites have a look at the book “CSS Zen Garden”, and the corresponding website.

Those two are pretty much just design and layout languages, and both are easy enough to learn. If you want to create a high level of user interactivity in your websites, things get a lot harder. In that case, you’re going to be looking at one of the following:
Javascript
AJAX
PHP
Ruby on Rails

none of which are exactly simple to learn. If you’re serious about creating websites and have a good business model, it would be worth teaming up with a professional developer to get the back-end programming done. If you just want to learn to create your own sites, stick with HTML and CSS.