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TechCrunch has been profiling information about startup websites, companies and products since 2005. It is a great resource to get the latest news about web startups and established tech companies. What companies have been started, acquired and funded as well as information about larger tech companies – all of this in one blog.

I have subscribed to the RSS feed and follow the blog religiously; it’s my favorite Technology blog. With a Technorati rank of 3 and a huge following, TechCrunch is a must read for anyone looking for information around startups. What I like about TechCrunch is the fact that it takes an ‘opinion’ on the news (which is generally an informed one).

Although I like all their posts and writers but my personal favorite writers are Erick Schonfeld (Co-editor of TechCrunch), Michael Arrington (Founder and co-editor), Robin Wauters, Leena Rao and Vivek Wadhwa (guest writer for TechCrunch). Posts like Startups 101 – The Complete Mint Presentation, Everything you Wanted to Know About Startup Building but were afraid to ask, PR Secrets for Startups are a few examples of some valuable information TechCrunch shares.

Another interesting point is the comments section of the any post on TechCrunch – the discussions, opinions and views of various tech geeks around the world is highly informative. Do go through them to get a better insight to the post.

With the blog authority and readership TechCrunch it has, it has become the dream of any startup to get featured on their website. I wouldn’t be surprised if a startups first PR strategy would be “how to feature on TechCrunch”. TechCrunch has also been surrounded by various criticisms but that is all in the game.

According to me, TechCrunch is a must-read blog for any web geek to gather information on startups, high tech giants, industry news, motivational tips and personal experiences.

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A bill* was introduced in the Senate (USA) on the 24th February 2010 proposing a new type of visa for immigrants who create startups and jobs in the U.S.

*The Startup Visa Act of 2010 will crate a two year visa for immigrant entrepreneurs who are able to raise a minimum of $250,000 (with $100,000 coming from a qualified venture investor or U.S. angel). After the two years, if the immigrant entrepreneur is able to create five or more jobs (not including spouse or children), attract $1 million more in investment, or produce $1 million in revenue, he or she will become a legal resident of the United States of America.

The introduction of this bill is the result of a blog post written by Paul Graham in April 2009 (one of the partners at Y Combinator). In the post, titled “The Founder Visa,” Paul explained that foreign-born students who graduate from a U.S. university can’t stay back in the U.S. to start a company. This post was passed around by bloggers, entrepreneurs and venture industry veterans until it was turned into a savvy social media campaign (including twitter, Facebook, YouTube etc). And the result is in front of us today, the campaign was a success and the bill was introduced a few days ago.

The message associated with the bill is quite straightforward – create jobs and get a green card. Even if the bill passed it isn’t going to attract a herd of entrepreneurs’ right way. It will eventually gain momentum. U.S. is welcoming entrepreneurs from outside the United States, and is promoting ideas and startups.

An interesting discussion is going on in this forum regarding the pros and cons of the bill.

Personally, I believe it’s a strategically well thought decision that would ease out rules and allow entrepreneurs all over the world to harvest their ideas in the technological hub of the world, and besides beneficial for the U.S. as well in terms of employment, innovation and growth.

For more information on this, we suggest you visit TechCrunch

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LinkedIn is a social networking website for professionals – and definitely one of its kinds. It has over 60 million members stemming from 200 countries and 150 industries and is still on the path of growing rapidly. The professional networking website connects you to your trusted contacts and also helps you exchange ideas, knowledge and opportunities with a broader network of professionals around the world.

It has a three dimensional revenue model:

1.Upgraded Accounts: Business, Business Plus and Pro accounts provide extra features including lists of who has searched for you and your company.

2.Hiring Services

3.Advertising on LinkedIn – (the largest source of revenue)

LinkedIn was founded in late 2002 by Reid Hoffman, headquartered in Mountain View, California. Last year it recorded the most successful quarter as well. In just six years, the company has become one of the most successful one’s in Silicon Valley and a brand recognized throughout the corporate world. It started recording profits since 2006, and the company’s present value is more than $1 billion.

Impressive, isn’t it? And what is more impressive is the successful startup story behind it;

Reid Hoffman, a Stanford graduate, realized the importance of forming networks and leveraging them when it comes business or work. The entrepreneur is an active investor, funding over 60 startups in Silicon Valley, including Facebook. Hoffman took the decision of leaving his academic life at Oxford behind and returning to Silicon Valley in the 1990’s to pursue his dream of starting a software company, a decision he wouldn’t ever regret.

He landed a Job at Apple (which was his first job) and moved on to working with Fujitsu. After this he jumped into the online and social networking market by opening his first company – Socialnet. The company wasn’t successful and Hoffman accepts that many mistakes were committed and the most devastating one was not having a proper product distribution strategy – how will you get users to come to your website.

Hoffman decided to leave Socialnet and started working with Pay Pal. It was during his work at Pay Pal he learned that the work culture was changing – you can’t do everything on your own, it’s practically impossible and that is when you need specialists and that is how you learn. After leaving his job at Pay Pal, he decided to start LinkedIn and he was really interested in the professional space and how professionals connect with one another. The initial financing was from savings of his previous job at Pay Pal.

He followed a simple policy of first getting users engaged into your product/service and then forming a business model. The company now has three successful revenue models (mentioned above) and is also a Fortunes 500 company.

To get more insight to the story we suggest you visit cnnmoney.com

Willing to take risks, learning from every experience, dedication and never quitting is what made LinkedIn what it is now. Every startup starts business on a small scale but a good entrepreneur will always have a vision to make it grow through successful business models.

Even though we had cash in the bank, we decided to have more cash in the bank. One of the things we need to do is find really cool products. We're building some but we'd also like to broaden out our offering and buy a cool product with a good development team and add it into the service. That's why we went through the process of raising money last year.

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Lucid Imagination – the startup launched in 2009 which distributes Apache Lucene and Apache Solr search technology announced that it has raised $10 million in venture capital funding (completes its Series B round) with existing investors Granite Ventures and Walden International and new participation from Shasta Ventures.

The startup is the commercial entity for Lucene/Solr and it offers a broad portfolio of software and service solutions. It offers differentiated search for organizations across a wide range of sectors including Web 2.0, media, telecommunications, government etc. Its customers include Nike, Ford, Zappos, eBay, Ford, Cisco and many others.

Funding will be used to accelerate readiness and adoption of Lucene/Solr search technology. It had a total funding of $6 million before this and after this deal the company’s total funding comes up to $16 million.

A startup which is in its second year is seeing revenue in millions and counts Google’s enterprise search as its direct competitor.

This is definitely great news! Congratulations to Lucid Imagination. A good source of motivation and inspiration for startups

You can visit TechCrunch for a detailed description:

http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/10/lucid-imagination-raises-10-million-for-apache-search-technology/

the startup that commercially distributes the open source Apache Lucene and Apache Solr search technology, has raised $10 million in Series B funding from

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Data of all kind is being increasingly accumulated on the web by millions of people who are embracing ‘technology’ and new style of working.

Unlimited data is virtually stored on the internet and with the rise of Web 2.0 services such as social networking, blogging, cloud computing etc companies have started to struggle in coping up with costly and complex networks of server computers.

Many tech startup founders believe that they have ‘almost’ reached breaking point. Companies don’t really have the money to keep buying servers, hire people to manage them or build huge facilities to keep, power and cool them.

Startup companies have found out ways to deal with this issue. Server efficiency has definitely and massively increased with virtualization of data but tech companies are still finding ways to make this better. Various methods are adopted by tech companies to reduce the number of servers and increase their efficiency. For example; using flash memory instead of traditional spinning (the way songs are stored in iPods) is one of the methods used by Fusion-io Inc

While some companies focus on server efficiency, others concentrate on networking gears that moves data from one machine to another. Datacenters need better quality and faster networks which can handle over-burdened servers.

Companies are also looking out for ways on how to structure the vast amount of data and figuring out ways in which they can used more effectively by businesses and consumers. Restructuring data, providing information and changing the database architecture is the next target market for tech startups.

For more information on how startups are coping up and taking advantage of the data flood we suggest you read this post on Wall Street Journal

Azul Systems Inc., No. 6, and Schooner Information Technology Inc., No. 34, build specialized servers for specific datacenter software programs, which they say perform significantly better than general-purpose servers.

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Intel Corp (the world’s largest chip maker) with a group for other 24 venture capital firms has declared that it will invest $3.5 billion in U.S tech startups over the coming two years to accelerate and promote domestic job growth. The investments will mainly focus on information technology and bio-technology (or clean technology).

Intel believes (and the US also) that it faces stiff competition in the areas of education and innovation from India and China. The CEO of Intel argued that the United States should lead the global race for innovation.

Intel has also taken initiatives in the past when it comes to investing or hiring graduates. Google, HP, GE and Dell Inc. also encourage graduate hiring.

A good step taken by Intel for promoting innovation and startups

For more details we suggest you read the Business Week Post here
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-02-23/intel-venture-firms-to-invest-3-5-billion-in-u-s-startups.html

Intel takes stakes in companies that have technology that can be used to increase future processor sales.

photo credit: Johny hanging head down from the tree

You know you need to write a ‘killer’ press release when launching your startup. As a startup entrepreneur you already know that a press release is a major PR strategy (and probably the first one) and should be written immaculately.

Here are a few tips on how to write an effective press release for a business launch:

1.Visit press release sites such as prlog.org, openpr.com, prnewswire.com and pr.com etc and see the way other press releases are written. It will help in grammar, punctuation and formatting.

2.Write a headline which conveys your message directly (avoiding ambiguity). Don’t over-think

3.The important information should fit into the first paragraph and your website name should also be mentioned here

4.Make the press release interesting, use quotes and avoid jargons

5.Make someone else check your press release before publishing

Remember to follow the general SEO tips such as anchor text, keywords & NOFOLLOW tag etc. And of course leverage social media platforms to make your release viral.

For more information on this, please read this post on StartupNation

As you’re writing, think about the key elements that your audience will find interesting. Focus on the benefits,

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Entrepreneurs (most of them) see insurance as a ‘cost’ that you can get away with. Let me remind them – insurance is an investment, not a cost for a startup.

Future is uncertain, and so are the associated risks. Businesses can’t predict a ‘disaster’. May be these risks are small or even affordable, but there is a good chance you are underestimating them. The chances of your business catching fire or getting hit by a flood are low, but can you imagine the disruption that it may cause?

A criminal act, calamity or anything minor can cause major disruption. Entrepreneurs leave the insurance phase for later, but I would suggest getting your startup insured as soon as your business is launched.

Many clients also ask for insurance details before they are prepared to do business with you. Public liability is important for many clients. It also helps you build credibility.

For more information on this, please visit:
http://www.startups.co.uk/6678842907520208545/why-you-need-insurance.html

Despite not being able to trade, you will still have to pay your staff, rent and other costs. You could lose a very significant amount of business or incur heavy costs while attempting to maintain it.

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The task of naming a startup may sound easy, but believe me; it requires a lot of thought and brainstorming.

What’s in a startups name? Everything – the branding and marketing stems from the name. It is not only important but crucial for a startup’s success.

Compare Lycos and Vidoop with Brightmail and Paypal - the latter clearly standout and are easy to pronounce and remember. You can notice the difference yourself. Looking at many successful brands today, there are two things we can find in common;

1.The name relates to what the company actually does. It establishes (a direct or indirect) an association between the brand and product/services of the company

2.The name is not ‘literally’ related to the product/service but it creates a differentiating characteristic or feeling

Other points to be kept in mind when naming a startup:

•A name that can be remembered easily

•Refrain from being too creative with the names

•Think about acronyms (like AT & T for American Telephone and Telegraph, Inc.)

•Do not trade on existing business names (using parts of other well-known brands)

•It should be scalable (think long term growth)

There is a great post on ReadWriteWeb where it talks about naming of mint.com.

Patzer and Mint went through this very process themselves, first purchasing mymint.com at roughly $3,000 before inking a deal with the owner of mint.com

photo credit: Neil Boothman

Today I came across one of the most creative and informative presentations on SEOmoz regarding Search Engine Optimization for startups. The presentation was made for the YCombinator SEO for Startups event.

Here are a few tips from the post/event:

1. Employ SEO in the concept phase (not after the site is built) – It is quite hard to do but take advantage of being a startup. You’re building your website from scratch, so be sure to apply SEO from the beginning.

2. Build accessibility first – Make something search engines can find. Unique content that users and search engines find valuable

3. SEO is a strategy, not a tactic – Don’t do the usual SEO stuff by following certain guidelines and tactics. Explore, experiment and form a proper SEO strategy for your startup

4. Remember: SEO is not a one-time event – It is constantly evolving, not only because Google keeps changing its algorithms but more because hundreds of competitors keep adding content and updating their site.

5. Analytics = Religion – Researching, tracking and reporting, all is possible through analytics. It’s the soul of any SEO initiative

6. Have other sources of traffic to your website (not only Google) – Pass links in e-mails, Twitter, Facebook, blogs, press releases etc. If 90 % of your traffic is coming from Google then that is certainly very dangerous.

For more tips, visit SEOmoz

I promise that no hairbrained scheme to manipulate the search rankings by registering thousands of sites or scraping the web for open places to link or contacting 6,000 “friends” for a link exchange are either A) new or B) going to work.