Online Startup Best Practices

Here is the summary of my presentation for Entrepreneurship class in bulleted format (hopefully my plan to record this will work and can put up)

Public Facing Website
- Online Business Card
- Portfolio, About Us, and Objective
- If in doubt use white background
- Be Simple
- Come up with content then categorize
- Time is money. So don’t waste it!
- Content, Content, Content.
- Lehigh has a guide for using 3rd party applications and setting up AFS space

Internal Entrepreneurship/PM Tools
WikiWakka – Add with double click
- Newsfeed Support
phpBB – used before, great way to record if attaching documents
- Supports popular database servers
- Unlimited forums and posts
- Multiple language interface
- Private or public forums
- Powerful search utility
- PrivaSte messaging system
BaseCampHQ – Great for Project Management Outside Group
Other Free Project Management Tools
- PHPProjkt
- dotProject
- Many More

Viral Public Facing Websites
- Informal method of talking to your customer
- Adding Content is easy for all group members.
- WordPress is personal favorite

That’s great, but What do I do?

Based on your skill set and needs here are a few of my suggestions.
No Technology Needed:
Setup HTML site with AFS Space and tutorial.
Buy a domain name at GoDaddy if serious

You know how to upload to FTP
Cheap and Unreliable PHP Hosting = $60 a year = $12 a member for the semester
www.yourgroupname.com
Website & Project Management Software

Technology Startup
Public Hi-end hosting Sevice
Wiki
Public Group Blog
Setup a BaseCampHQ account for external projects

At the End of the Day
It’s about getting it done. Too much management at an early stage can be a bad thing. These are my best practices and have changed at least once a semester. The important thing is to be efficient and to use them as a team.

Other Good Resources:
Entrepreneurs Guide to Software.
LifeHacker.com’s Web Publishing Tips
Paul Graham – How to start a startup – for technical companies
Website Best Practices

Godaddy Website – inexpensive hosting