wschroter

I schedule a ton of meetings and go through the same headache all the time:

1. Send email "what dates work for you?" 2. Reply email "how about these dates?" 3. Reply email "can do that date, not that time" 4. Reply email "where do you want to meet?" .. etc.

I would love an app that allows me to send ALL the available times on my calendar through a simple email (just shows openings, not my calendar). The recipient can then click on an available time that suits their calendar and send me back a calendar file. Even better, they could sync their openings with mine upon reciept of a special mail type.

I'm well aware that you can expose your calendar and such with google calendar, but this is a simple solution that would essentially work with all calendars.

Any ideas? If that app exists, please let me know because I'd like to use it.

In the last 7 year Web cycle, how many Web "successes" do we know about that had greater than $20M in real revenue and were sold?

I can probably think of about 20, but not 50 or 100. My point here is that it feels like the “big revenue” opportunities for most companies are shrinking quickly.

The big revenue / market cap sites are getting diluted by the new free/lean model:

Ebay/paid classifieds = craigslist/free Match.com/paid dating = plentoffish/free CNN.com/premium news = digg.com/free

If that’s the case, I wonder if Web 3.0 is just about a bunch of niche sites in the $5m - $10m range that are run by a dozen (or less) guys in a room. I’m seeing more a trend toward smaller companies owning bigger categories with far less revenue and overhead. I don’t see the $10m venture funded business model really being all the viable if free/cheap is the future since you're not necessarily producing a revenue monster with free/cheap that is IPO worthy.

What do you guys think? It may seriously change the way we approach capital in the next round, or even our expectations for the entire Web/startup industry.

The last few inquiries I did on HN for Forbes stories had great results. Would love to hear from you guys on this one...

I'm writing a story for Forbes about what really happens when your startup company fails. I need to hear from entrepreneurs who have had failing startup companies with an honest explanation of how they were affected financially and emotionally.

The story looks to explore the difference between what potential entrepreneurs expect to go wrong and what really happens. This isn't a postmortem on why your startup failed - it's a short summary of what was lost in the process and how you dealt with that loss.

Some basic questions -

- How did you expect the first few years of your startup company to go?

- What did you risk to launch your startup?

- What do you felt you lost when your startup company failed?

- How did you recoup from this loss?

- What advice would you give aspiring entrepreneurs launching their own startups?

Please respond to - wschroter <at yahoo

About the Author

Wil Schroter is a serial entrepreneur and startup columnist. His columns appear in Forbes and are syndicated in newspapers nationally through American City Business Journals.