Paul Walsh, the Irish Opportunist

The Startup Marketplace is a business idea I had about a year ago. I still think it has potential today, as I’ve yet to come across a site that provides good practical advice, products and connections to budding and seasoned entrepreneurs. I no longer have the time, resource or motivation to launch and run it. So if you, or someone you know, would like to take it on, please get in touch.

Here was the original (basic) idea

Startup Marketplace is a web-based portal built on a social enterprise model which aims to assist startups and established companies. It provides access to recommended suppliers, advisors, mentors, recruitment services and early-stage capital. All stakeholders in the ecosystem are able to benefit from the network within
the portal.

A trusted source based on personal experiences

• When it comes to referrals and recommended resources, who should you trust?
• What is the best hosting provider?
• Who is a good Startup lawyer?
• Know any great Web designers?
• I think I have some IP, whoʼs best to help me protect it?
• How can I get my first round of funding?
• How do I find and hire an Advisor to help me scale the business?

The Startup Marketplace only recommends those companies that have been personally verified by the online community. It does not take any payment for listings or commission for business referrals in order to maintain the highest degree of objectivity.

The Portal is broken into 6 business units:

1. Advisors / Non-executive Directors - Trusted and respected advisors and non-executive directors will be listed
   on the site. Users can conduct a keyword search to ensure they fin people who are relevant to their business. Advisors are contacted directly by interested parties, who may charge for their services. SUM is not responsible or liable for anything that happens between these parties.
2. Mentors - The Startup Marketplace has access to more than 7,000 business and digital mentors following a tie-up with the Princes Trust. These are respected entrepreneurs who now want to ʻgive something backʼ. Members of the marketplace will be able to conduct a keyword search in order to find a mentor that is suitable to their requirements.
3. Suppliers - The portal will allow start-ups and established companies, to connect directly with companies that represent each of the stakeholders within the supplier ecosystem and which are recommended by us. One company per stakeholder will be recommended on the portal. That is, one lawyer, accountant, brand agency, Web design/build agency, SEO expert, PR company and marketing consultant etc.
4. Investment for start up members: - The marketplace will enable startups to connect directly with thousands of hard-to-reach early-stage investors in possession of digital funds that range from £6,000 to £600,000. Entrepreneurs will be able to complete an online business plan application form that is then automatically sent directly to investors.
5. Recruitment - The marketplace has a partnership with a recruitment technology company: x. Incorporating the x platform will allow The Startup Marketplace to offer improved recruitment speed & quality through the use of market leading tools to intelligently match candidates to jobs (personality profiling) and provide increased candidate insight (record / upload a CV or video pitch) Corporations will pay to access the database of candidates.
6. Events - Off-line activity will include regular meet-ups, mentor breakfasts, dinners and other opportunities for members to enhance their business potential. All events will be funded by sponsorship and delegates will pay to attend. Net.works, a reputable networking events company will be responsible for hosting each event.

Content

A wealth of professional business advice on subjects such as, obtaining Government grants or how to get start-up businesses up and running, will be freely available – ranging from legal to accounting.

Sales & Marketing - The Startup Marketplace has a dedicated sponsorship and events sales team paid on a commission basis to maximise the portalʼs potential as an online advertising space.

Strategic partnerships

Scale can be achieved through strategic partnerships. The marketplace is plugging straight in to Maverick TV (a social network of sub-16-year-old entrepreneurs – yet to launch), the Oxford Entrepreneurs network (4,000 members) and the London Business School Media Club (500 members). We will also achieve scale by partnering with Angels Networks, VCs and networking membership forums.

Get in touch if you want the domain and wish to take on the project. As I said, there are a number of alternatives out there, but none of them are doing it particular well.

I remember my three years at the helm of the British Interactive Media Association (BIMA) as Chair and the hours and days we poured into creating categories and entry criterion for the Awards like it was yesterday. By then, the Awards were running for more than 25 years and were already established as amongst the most prestigious of all Digital Awards in the UK.

In 2007 when I actually chaired the Awards themselves, TechCrunch was kind enough to write about the winners… calling for “a cool tech awards” - perhaps that’s when Mike Butcher was inspired to create the Europas?! Either way, he has done a fantastic job as until then, there really wasn’t anything to reward the tech startup world.

Rather than complain about what they’re not getting right, as it’s totally impossible to get it right - you can’t please everyone all of the time, I’d like to make a few minor suggestions.

1. I know it’s difficult to put a time-frame on say, a clean-tech startup. But it’s not that difficult to put some boundaries in place for tech startups. I recommend no more than two or possibly three years. Definitely no more than three. Otherwise the same companies could end up winning every year, meaning it could take more than three years for a company to win - which makes no sense if we’re talking about a ’startup’. Here’s a previous post I wrote entitled ‘What is a startup?’.
2. Following on from my previous point, what is a ‘Best New Startup in 2010‘? Is it a startup that has launched within the past 12 months?
3. Following on from my previous point… again… provide entry criterion for every category and provide examples where possible. This is very time consuming but in my experience, it’s probably the most vital piece of the puzzle.
4. If you have a category ‘Best Startup Founder / Co-Founders 2010‘ and another entitled ‘Best New startup’, I’d expect to see a huge overlap in entries. How can someone be a great founder if their company isn’t listed? A real startup is the founder.
5. “Best Angel Investor of the Year 2010” should only shortlist people who have invested (money and not their time/resource) in at least three startups in that year. I know people on the shortlist who haven’t invested in anything that wasn’t their own startup for at least a year - this would make Jason Calacanis cringe. (Un)fortunately I didn’t have the time to launch and run Jason’s Open Angel Forum so I couldn’t take him up on his kind offer - my point? I’m familar with what the definition of a real angel investor should be
6. If you have a category specific to a medium such as Best Mobile Startup 2010 you should probably have categories such as ‘Best Internet-based startup’, ‘Best Web Application’ or ‘Best Technology Startup’. This is where it gets tricky and you could end up with a list as long as your arm. Hence why I picked out something specific.

This isn’t a rant, just a few observations and recommendations for anyone thinking of setting up their own tech awards. Let it be known that aside from my table tennis and break dancing trophies from the mid 80’s, my only other prize was a bicycle lock and two cinema tickets which I won when I was twelve from the local Wexford radio station

The world’s most heavily trafficked web domain, .COM, is now the riskiest, according to McAfee’s fourth annual Mapping the Mal Web report released today. Fifty-six percent of all risky sites end in .COM.

McAfee analyzed more than 27 million websites to uncover which domains are the most dangerous. While .COM is the riskiest top-level domain, the riskiest country domain is Vietnam (.VN). Japan’s .JP ranks as the safest country domain for the second year in a row. The report also found that 6.2 percent of the 27 million websites analyzed pose a security risk — up from 5.8 percent last year.

This report underscores how quickly cybercriminals change tactics to lure in victims and avoid being caught,” said Paula Greve, director of web security research for McAfee Labs(TM). “Last year Vietnam’s .VN was a relatively safe domain, and this year it jumped to the third most dangerous domain. Cybercriminals target regions where registering sites is cheap and convenient and pose the least risk of being caught. A domain that’s safe one year can be dangerous the next.

A top-level domain, also known as a “TLD,” is the letter code at the end of a website that indicates where the site is registered. Most people do not pay attention to the TLD suffix when they search, and many click on the first result that looks interesting. This leaves the surfer vulnerable to criminals who optimize sites for search engines and take advantages of typos such as .CM (Cameroon) instead of .COM.

Country Domain Comparisons

The report reveals drastic changes in country domain rankings with .VN (Vietnam) skyrocketing to third place, up from 39th in 2009. In fact, 58 percent of the country’s registered sites are ranked as risky. By contrast, .SG (Singapore) became safer this year, dropping to the 81st most risky domain from 10th in last year’s report. Singapore’s registration process now requires appropriate documentation when seeking to register any .SG site, which helped to improve its safety levels, according to the Singapore Network Information Center. Click here to see an interactive map of the most dangerous domains.

Top Five Riskiest Country Web Domains   Overall Risk   Overall Risk
(ranked in most                             2010           2009
risky order)

Vietnam (.VN)                            29.4%           .9%
Cameroon (.CM)                        22.2%          36.7%
Armenia (.AM)                           12.1%          2.0%
Cocos (.CC)                                 10.5%          3.3%
Russia (.RU)                               10.1%          4.6%

Top Five Safest Country Web Domains     Overall Risk   Overall Risk
(ranked in least                            2010           2009
risky order)

Japan (.JP)                                  .1%            .1%
Catalan (.CAT)                            .1%            .1%
Guernsey (.GG)                           .1%            .6%
Croatia (.HR)                               .1%            .1%
Ireland (.IE)                                 .1%            .1%

Key Findings from the 2010 Mapping the Mal Web Report

Cybercriminals are opportunistic: Domain registrars set the guidelines for anyone who wants to register a site. As rules evolve each year, cybercriminals sniff out loopholes and create new ways to set up dangerous sites quickly. A clean domain deters cybercriminals: Cybercriminals move away from domains that have tougher restrictions. This year, Singapore (.SG) showed significant improvement. Safest domains: .TRAVEL and .EDU are the safest top-level domains with less than .05 percent of sites infected, which is one in 2,000 sites.

Tips for Consumers, Businesses and Domain Operators

What online surfers may not know is that simply viewing a page can return much more than they bargained for,” said Greve.

Cybercriminals lay invisible traps all over the Internet that are intended to steal consumers’ passwords, bank information or even identities.

Web surfers can stay protected from quickly evolving threats on the Web by using reputable, actively updated security software with advanced malware detection and prevention. Security suites like McAfee Total Protection(TM) keep users’ personal information and computers safe with several tools and technologies to protect against every facet of online risks.

Businesses can help users navigate Web risks by adding Web reputation functionality to their other defenses. Operators of risky TLDs can learn from the report as well. It is possible to turn around a risky reputation or maintain a good one.

This report is very reason I welcome the new .xxx TLD from ICM Registry following six long years of ICANN fence-sitting. Site owners that buy a .xxx domain sign up to a code of conduct that includes the automatic labeling of their website as ‘for adults only’. This will enable browsers and search engines exclude .xxx sites to help protect minors from inappropriate content on the Web in the future. ICANN is expected to sign the ICM contract this Thursday - my fingers are well and truly crossed.

I’m guessing McAfee are producing such reports about .com because its biggest competitor, Symantec, acquired VeriSign’s security business for $1.28bn earlier this year. In case you didn’t know, VeriSign own the .com TLD. McAfee was acquired by Intel for $7.6bn recently. Looks like the trust industry is consolidating. The market conditions are ripe for a newcomer* to take the helm. Watch this space!

Does this image provide you with more trust in how Facebook manages and shares your personal information? Do you trust this ’site validation’ assertion?

I read an interesting article regarding Facebook’s most recent privacy breaches on the Wall Street Journal site yesterday. It’s well known that Facebook has a complete disregard for users’ privacy by sharing personal information with third-party applications and making assumptions about the type of information they want to share with friends and the general public. Most readers of this blog are well versed on this subject, so I won’t bore you with the details or even talk about Facebook itself. Instead, I’d like to comment on the lack of solutions that help encourage companies like Facebook improve their privacy policies.

In particular, I’d like to comment on TRUSTe and how I don’t think the company is doing itself any justice when it comes to providing confidence in its own brand and its seal programme. Instead of launching new products that support mobile, TRUSTe should focus on getting its main product right. Trust is fragile and when lost, it’s almost impossible to win back.

TRUSTe is one of the most widely recognized seals used by organisations that want to demonstrate their conformance and commitment to privacy policy best practices. To demonstrate this commitment, organizations place a TRUSTe privacy seal on their Web site. Users can click on the seal to authenticate the trustmark and find out more information about the best practices. Check out Facebook’s authenticated seal.

According to Fran Maier, TRUSTe Chair

While TRUSTe certifies the privacy practices of Facebook.com, we do not certify the privacy practices of third party applications on the site like those referenced in the WSJ’s article.

Here’s TRUSTe’s biggest shortfall and something they must address if it is to be taken seriously long term. By asserting that Facebook.com lives up to the TRUSTe code of conduct, it is asserting that all applications and content live up to the same standard.  Companies are responsible for content and applications that users access through their site if it is perceived that they control or own that content. That is, according to legislation in countries such as the UK. Even if this didn’t fall under country-specific legislation, it’s quite obvious that TRUSTe’s seal should cover this aspect when almost everyone on the planet is unhappy with Facebook’s approach to privacy.

According to Chris Babel, CEO of TRUSTe in a post by ZDNet

Facebook has complied with TRUSTe’s policies in that it has quickly responded to the data leak and it suspended some of the applications. “That’s exactly what we want to see.”

Chris’ statement tells me that TRUSTe is now allowing big corporations to break the rules as long as they “have a process”. Sounds like ISO9000 to me - it’s a ‘get out of jail free’ card - it’s ok not to documented processes as long as you have a process for documenting them in the future. Shouldn’t TRUSTe revoke the seal until they have fixed the actual problem?

Either Facebook should live up to the code that the TRUSTe seal asserts, or TRUSTe should remove the seal.

If you look again at the TRUSTe page above which validates Facebook’s privacy seal, you can ‘Positively Endorse’ the assertion with one click of a button. Don’t do what I did and click the button to see what happens - or you’ll give the wrong impression by increasing the number of endorsements. To file a complaint however is a different story. You must first contact the site owner and then complete a form on TRUSTe’s Web site. I understand why they have this process, but why not allow the community to counter the endorsement also, so we can see a balance? I’m guessing it’s because the vast majority would vote against Facebook. If you’d like to file a complaint about Facebook’s use of your personal information please do so using this form.

Do you now trust Facebook given that you know it’s trusted by TRUSTe and now that you know it complies with its privacy seal?

As some of you know, I deleted my personal twitter account recently. It was great timing as the market conditions for MetaCert (my real work passion) started to blossom after about five years under the radar, meaning I needed more time to focus on what’s most likely to change the world. We’re in fundraising and partnership building mode at present, so there isn’t much else to say.

I will always update the company twitter account and promise never to hire a PR company or get someone else on the team to update it on behalf of the company. I won’t talk at you about the company, but I’m not likely to provide personal updates either, unless of course they’re related to the company. I’m not sure if that’s the right approach, so we’ll see how it goes - let me know if you have an opinion (even if it’s to tell me to stay away after enjoying the quiet time).

If you’re a marketing agency, registrar, hosting provider, security software or anti-malware reseller, get in touch as you’re a potential partner! If you’re a provider of trust in the form of a seal, we have a platform for you to help increase adoption of your own product.

Now… time to upset VeriSign, TRUSTe and others with low-cost products that are more scalable and based on the Open Web