It isn’t often that one can find a great list of problems and try to attack them head on. Paul Graham over at the famous Y Combinator has created just such a list. While not comprehensive, it certainly is an extensive one.

Which ones do I love…?

Auctions - There’s no question that Ebay holds a stiff monopoly on the category. However, new sites have been popping up all over the place and there’s definitely room for someone to come in and offer a free or meaningfully cheaper solution. Craigslist anyone?

Startups for Startups - Of course! As startups continue to multiply because of decreasing initial cost structures, infrastructure around these businesses will continue to develop.

Which ones do I hate…?

Search - Let’s face it. Google is the king of search because it has monopolized search’s cool factor. While search is Google’s core driver of revenues through its Adsense product, it has diversified its business into multiple other sites (e.g. Orkut, YouTube) to maintain its users attention span. There will be a great search business that will come along and steal Google’s thunder, but I don’t know that it will be because of Paul Graham’s theory of poor Google design. There will be a dramatic shift because the new company will be THE place to do search. (Powerset anyone?)

The WebOS - Hasn’t this already happened?

If the dollar’s worldwide slide in value hasn’t set off any alarms yet, you should take note of the latest news out of India. The dollar is no longer accepted at the Taj Mahal and other tourist sites throughout India. Granted, this isn’t exactly the arbiter of the dollar’s value, rather it’s an exemplification of the worldwide perception about the United States.

Yet, this has ramifications for every business out there. In an increasingly global and volatile world, there’s no question that it’s becoming exceedingly difficult for US based businesses to expand overseas. While exports have benefited, establishing operations in local foreign currency is becoming dicey.

And it will only become more so throughout this election year.

Everyone is always interested in how one can succeed at business. It seems to me that a top 100 list of ways to fail at business may actually be helpful. Here it goes…

1. Don’t create any goals and just wing it. This is sure to mean that you will consistently push off achieving even the slightest of victories and will, ultimately, fail.

2. Put your head in the stars. For all but a few of us, create something realistic and go build it. You want to save the world? Leave that to Mike Huckabee.

3. Pessimism. Be pessimistic about your business, clients, relationships, and achievements, and you’ll be sure to chalk up one failure after another.

4. Play it tight. Don’t think about loosening up to the world around you. Be conservative, pensive, and uptight about what you want to do.

5. Take a vacation. Some of you will say that this is an absolutely necessary ingredient to succeed in business. Wrong! Generally, when you found a business and you take vacation, NOTHING HAPPENS.

6. Don’t keep track of your finances. This is a surefire way to put yourself in a cash crunch, a place you don’t want to be.

7. Don’t speak to your customer! This is egregrious, but people that fail at business love to follow that advice.

8. Spend lots of money on expensive advertising. In today’s world, you may to have spend some money initially, but you need to make your customer your evenagelist. Word of mouth rules.

9. Stop Learning. Make sure that you live you live your life by the osmosis philosophy and don’t ever try to learn anything new. This is a surefire way to mistime and lag the constant market innovation that is needed today.

10. Forget about insurance and backups. Who needs it?

Did I say 100? I think I added an erroneous Zero. Ok, I’ll add one more to the list.

11. Be accurate!

OK, for a real list of 100 Ways to Be a Better Entrepreneur, feel free to click here…

In today’s world, it would seem like multitasking is integral to success. In reality though, success is based on the ability to prioritize multiple tasks and perform them in single order. It seems that Basex has dubbed 2008 “the year of information overload” (though I don’t know why 2006 or 2007 wouldn’t take the crown as well). Now, I think it’s great to slander the amount of information we deal with today, and I’m the first one to say the blackberry is annoying as hell. Yet, it’s also as important as hell, since I have access to real time business information at a moment’s notice.

If there’s anything to glean from this type of report, it’s that research firms love to throw out labels so that they can be branded, picked up in the press, and make some money! Hey, did I fall into a trap over here?

In any case, there is another lesson. It’s important to control information overload and it’s important to prioritize which tasks and projects get worked on, and in what order. Do it right, and you’ll be a successful entrepreneur. Do it wrong, and you can be a successful entrepreneur. In your own mind.

Matthew Lynn over at Bloomberg has come up with one of the most ridiculous suggestions that I’ve ever seen pondered in a major publication! He opines that we should make the bankers give back their bonuses from prior years due to losses that these guys incurred over 2007. Now, on the face of it, one can make an argument that sounds plausible, and he’s done somewhat of a good job of it.

However, I still think he’s out of his mind. Let’s see…

What makes the investment bank so different than any other business? If the CEO of any small company that was funded with VC money loses a couple of books, he/she should give it back! What happens if they didn’t make money in prior years? Then it’s ok?

Let’s face it, employee compensation is a tough nut to crack and granted, there are certain businesses such as hedge funds, that do have high water marks. However, those are situations where they are pure traders (unlike the typical investment bank) and they are not required to give back profit. They must hit the high water mark, to receive additional compensation.

When it comes to the investment bank, the majority of these guys are tied to restricted stock units and/or options based on their performance. I guess you can always create a negative incentive structure to push them out the door, but where exactly will that get you…?

A. To the headhunter where you will find someone looking for the positive incentive structure that actually works.

MSNBC had a great article, sharing some of the newly minted words in the current business year. I particularly like the Meatball Sundae, as that hits close to home with some of the business ideas that I need to deal with on a daily basis. You can use it whenever your boss tells you to mash up two business ideas that are so incongruous, you feel like you’re eating meatballs with ice cream (though i’ve never actually digested such a combination).

I’d like to propose one new word. While the already coined Shanghai Sneeze has a pretty obvious connotation and we’ll most probably see more of that after the 2008 Olympics, let’s consider the Shanghai Snort? That would be the current sucking sound of China inhaling. The exhale is going to be a lot more than a sneeze. More like a tsunami!

I hope it comes as no surprise that I’m an avid watcher of “technology” (whatever that means) and the trends that I see in the marketplace. Sometimes those trends means technological advancement and sometimes it just means the ability to take technological advancement and find the right niche.

Yid is the Jewish word for Jew and Yideoz is an obvious phonetic take on Videos. In any case, it’s pretty obvious that the killer format in video has been short form content. Specifically, humorous clips continually win the hearts and souls of the viral audience. Springwise is always kind enough to point out new businesses and it has a short writeup of Yideoz.

Yideoz is surfing the right trend by providing a niche venue for Jewish video content. It’ll be interesting to see if the video sites that have been popping up (e.g. funnyordie) will see success. I expect to see many more niche category video content sites appear all over the place. While most of them will die, the best strategy for these players is a combination of local and national promotion. Create the local venue, but seed some content in the likes of YouTube and the other video sharing giants. Oh, and don’t forget to do it on Zedge. If you want your video content to go mobile, that is…

Here are some videos from yideoz. I couldn’t help myself

Painful…

…and some good Jewish music!

Enjoy!

Over the last several weeks, the market turmoil has been acutely painful. I don’t say that because I merely lost 10% of my retirement portfolio (invested in index funds by the way), but because we’ve seen another example of an asset bubble popping… and the hissing sound can be heard around the world.

While I was thinking of opining in detail about the Bernanke Fed’s move to cut the discount rate, I’ll give it a cursory mention and then discuss asset bubbles in broader terms and what it means for us today (I’ve discussed asset bubbles before). The cut in the discount rate was merely a signal for the market. One, the discount window is rarely used. Two, if some bank were to use it, that would signal the beginning of the end. Why, you ask? Because the bank that shows his sorry face to the teller, couldn’t raise money from any additional source and had to rely on “government” funding. If the company were public, the markets would pummel the stock, choking it from additional funding. If the company were private (or even public come to think about it), you could expect a run on the bank, effectively causing the bank to declare insolvency.

So let’s assume that no one will be using the discount window. Contrary to this article by Bloomberg, I still believe that Bernanke executed at the perfect time (the day that the Nikkei dropped by over 5%), and allowed himself and the FOMC time to analyze the coming market events and eventually take the next step by lowering the actual Fed Funds rate (adjustible rate mortgage holders rejoice!). I still believe that the Fed is going to need to take aggressive action to counteract the negative effects the housing bubble is having on the economy. Look for significant rate cuts in the near term. In the long term, Bernanke’s focus will move back to inflationary caution and rates will continue to rise (but only once housing has stabilized).

On to asset bubbles and the havoc that they wreak. As you’re well aware from my previous postings, I believe that bubbles are problems in the short term. In the long term, the infrastructure that was needed for an ever-growing and expanding economy has been created, and the American public is able to take advantage of it. For instance, where do you think all the illegal immigrants that have entered the country will live? Mostly in urban areas. Where does the population expand? Into the homes that Beazer, Pulte, etc… built. The infrastructure will be used in due time. Just not as fast as anyone hoped.

This leads me to… Technology bubble, Housing bubble, Economic Bubble?

It’s no secret that with the excess capital and liquidity sloshing around the world these days, we’re more prone to bubbles as capital moves swiftly from country to country. China is certainly in the midst of one, and the end of it won’t be pretty. The question I’d like to pose may sound strange, but certainly keeps me up at night. Are we in the midst of an economic bubble? An era where new ventures and businesses are funded and kept operational because there is no better place to put excess capital? That would have some broad effects on the economy.

Chilling.

That’s my thought for now. Let’s see where it goes…