Found a clean minimalistic inspirational quotes widget

I have found a cool free inspirational quotes widget . Thought would share with you. I have put it on my other websites since it is so easy to integrate with any design. 

Found the most comprehensive and clean collection of powerful calculator online

Online Calculators : Lately, I have been using a lot of calculators, for mortgage calculations, and in general for keeping healthy. I found a very clean and modern looking set of  calculators online at Deep Calculators. Particularly, I have been using the:

• Mortgage Calculator
• BMI Calculator
• Target Heart Rate Calculator

The analyses presented on these calculators are much more comprehensive than the ones I have seen on other web calculators. Hope you enjoy them too! 

Top websites for Entrepreneurs: Iteration 1

After analyzing the 10 entrepreneurial traits last week, let's look at some cool websites for entrepreneurs (Note: this is iteration 1, will be adding more in future):

1. Entrepreneur.com: Needless to say, if you are an entrepreneur, then you need to scour Entrepreneur.com for information. The success stories are always a motivation. I especially like the business startup kits, categorized by domains and thoroughly researched so that you can focus on your ideas instead of mundane startup worries. The featured blogs are always a great read, my favorites being up and running, and weekend entrepreneur, always thorough and novel.
   
2. Steve Pavlina's blog: A great self-development website by an entrepreneur himself! Probably one of the most popular blogs on the web. Need some motivation? Check out Why you should never get a job. Wasting your time sleeping? Check out How to become an early riser. Atleast read through his most popular blogs to get inspired in life.
   
3. Liferemix: A comprehensive collection of the best read and insightful blogs that will change the way you think, act and get you started on the road to high performance.
   
4. Basecamp: Manage your projects effectively using this tool and never ever miss an action item. Other great tools from this stable include a online todo-list and a very smart way of maintaining checklists and research (entrepreneur's do a lot of research) logbook called BackPack.
   
5. Zen Habits: Wanna be more productive and creative? Look no further. Simple and effective techniques to take care of that unwanted slack in your performance. Great postings on coming up with great ideas and innovation. (Although I am still a newbie, I can see a difference in my thinking process already).

That's it for iteration 1. You might have noticed that most sites are productivity sites and only one an entrepreneur-specific site. Well, entrepreneurs are highly self-developed individuals, and getting there means being the best self-manager. Everything else is just legality and processes, for which I feel Entrepreneur.com is good enough.

Asia's top 25 young entrepreneurs: Common traits

After analysing the most common startup mistakes last week, let's look at the common entrepreneur traits, this time based on the analysis of the 25 Asia's youngest entrepreneurs.

• Start young: Ofcourse this list describes young entrepreneurs, but it is noteworthy that they started at a very young age (17 for some). As we grow up, have families, kids and all, it becomes difficult to manage night-outs, and giving 100% each day to your enterprise. Also when we are young, we are a bit reckless, and will take up any risks (What's the worst that can happen?). Taking risks is the foremost mantra of entrepreneurship. With family, we have dependents and maturity brings in caution and decisions are biased towards the safer side. But believe me, its always better to be late than never, and inspite of your age, go ahead and do something if you have plans to do so.
  
• Discover a niche: None of these 25 people have tried to conquer the world. Discovering your niche is very important. Firstly, because you want to need to understand the market dynamics of this niche population. Secondly, because you want to stay abreast with the latest happenings in the domain to be a step ahead of your competition.
  
• Constant innovation: In the cut-throat competition of the internet, you need to be constantly innovating, adding new features to your services. It doesn't matter if your competitor came up with a newer offering, what matters is can you do better in a short span of time?
  
• Dedication & Hard work: Needless to say, dedication and hard-work are the cornerstones of any successful activity.
  
• Self-taught: Most of the people are not even graduates. While most people worry that they do not have the complete education, these people are self-learned, probably worthy of PhD's in entrepreneurship. In any case, who says PhD's are completely educated? PhD's are meant to groom a person to study/research himself. So, dont worry if you are not a graduate. Got a dream idea? Grab those books and join those online communities, and understand how to turn that dream project into a reality.
  
• Don't just dream: Many of us have these flashes of brilliance once in a while when we think up cool new ideas. And then we also dream how if that idea is implemented, we will become millionaires. But it is important to do something about those dreams. Do you keep having newer "bigger idea" dreams which make you lose focus/interest in your current older "smaller" dream? Well, bigger dream should probably wait in a logbook, cause if it doesn't, then you will never have a project completed! Bigger dreams will always keep coming.
  
• Discover opportunities: Be observant and spot opportunities. Many a times, we try to do something and get frustrated. Well, don't get frustrated, decide to do something about it. Probably many people are facing the same problem, building a whole new niche segment for you.
  
• Take on multiple roles: In startups, the founder is everything: CEO, CTO, CIO, software programmer, PR officer, analyst, ... . If you have a home based business, you will probably also be the office-cleaner. Even with multiple founders, each one has to take on additional roles, cause the CTO cannot alone be responsible for getting the company behind bleeding-edge of innovation. Later, when you have ample funding/money, some tasks may be delegated, but never on the onset.
  
• Learn from your mistakes: Try to understand what went wrong, instead of just blaming your stars. Always acknowledge a mistake when you see one, instead of ignoring it (and then repeating it again). But, never repeat the same mistake again, ever!
• Don't do it for money: Do it because you will enjoy doing it.

Please leave your valuable comments for my learning experience. Feel free to rectify any oversight on my part.

20 worst VC investments: What went wrong?

After analyzing the list of the worst VC investments, it seemed important to summarize the common mistakes:

• Grow slowly: Webvan, the online grocery shopping site seems to have grown way too fast. Although I blamed Gmail earlier for allowing registrations only via invitation, it seems clear that their model allows for slow, educated growth. Why let lot of people join, only to find that you cannot handle the load and need to close shop? Joost followed up with similar strategies.
  
• Research your market (a.k.a. Understand human mentality): Amp'd Mobile targetted risky customers (who didn't do a good job of paying their phone bills), and allowed them 90 days (instead of 30) to pay their bills. Well, people who couldn't pay in 30 days, didn't pay in 90 days either. Making offers lucrative to customers is one thing, but is that your only selling point? Whatever happened to better service? On similar lines, I do not understand why Comcast is getting so gung-ho about its All-in-one-bill offerings. What would stop Verizon and gang from following suit? Is that a good enough reason for people to switch to another provider?
  
• Understand technical limitations: Pointcast, a pioneer web company with a lot of technical excellence in terms of first use of load balancing using IP virtualization techniques and massive data-centers, failed because of the dial-up internet era of the 90's. What's the point is pushing a lot of advertisements over slow connections? This is another example of Google's win over Altavista by creating a simple page devoid of ads (and ofcourse cool search results ;)). Is it's business model still great for the broadband era?
• Be a startup, don't act rich (already): No need to spend 1.2 million on a single Super-bowl ad (Pets.com), or lavish celebrity Las Vegas Parties, or super-expensive office furniture, or super-cool offices. Wouldn't you want to boast in the end that you started off in a garage? with used computers and dusty offices? (Well, this one only for .com startups, who will work with a management consulting firm in a garage ;) )
  

Seems like a good start to a startup-checklist. Will be adding more soon.