David Jacobson's External Insights

What makes YouTube a great communication channel?

What makes a business video a YouTube success?

Looking at the blendtec videos gives you a good guide: they are funny, authentic, original and relevant to the product.

Groundswell reviews the blendtec story starting with one $50 video and the question: will it blend?

Business articles

I've been away so here's a collection of interesting articles that caught my eye while catching up:

• Is the project really 90 Percent Done? Eliminate the 90 Percent Done Game
• Message in a Bottle: the story behind bottled water. Did you know that Fiji Water has now taken over sugar as Fiji's number one export?
• Pew Research Report on China's online population explosion (via beSpacific): The Pew Internet & American Life Project has released a new report on China's internet user population. There are now an estimated 137 million internet users in China, second in number only to the United States.
• Letter to a new manager
• Ten Questions with Jeffrey Pfeffer (author of What were they thinking?)

Low-cost startups: No Plan, No Capital, No Model

There is a recent meme that new technologies are allowing start-ups to commence at a much lower cost than previously, allowing them to stay private and independent and without the need for venture capital until much later in the growth cycle (eg Guy Kawasaki, Marc Andreessen).

In Cash cow or a growing business? Designing a business model I referred to James Hong's post on his business model. Markus Frind commented on Hong's post in an interesting response.

Now, Guy Kawasaki has posted a video of a panel discussion he recently hosted featuring Hong, Frind and 3 others on the topic of No Plan, No Capital, No Model...No Problem. Watch it to find what the next generation of entrepreneurs are doing.