Q: Is Stiqr your first businesses? What have you done before?

A: Stiqr is actually our third business together as partners. Myself and Jae started working together straight out of high school and started our first startup called YRLESS, a Wifi-Hotspot provider. Something we see everywhere now but was just gaining traction at the time. Our second startup was a web hosting company called Simplehelix, where we provided high-end premium web hosting space targeted toward users wanting Magento as their e-commerce platform.

Q: Did you always see yourself as an entrepreneur. What do you think where the most important experiences that lead you to become a successful entrepreneur?

A: I didn’t know of the word entrepreneur until I took some business classes at college but I always knew I wanted to work for myself. I can’t think of one specific experience that has lead our success but I strongly believe it is the mindset one keeps. It’s about wanting to solve the problems that you see in your life and knocking them out one by one. Small or big, you are solving problems and some of the problems apply to a larger radius than yourself.

Q: Were you a good student? What where your favorite subjects in school?

A: School was never my favorite place to be. I’ve always wanted to get out and work on real life problems. I felt that school, especially up to k12 moved to slowly and did not teach me any real skills and got bored extremely fast. I loved my programming and science classes as I was able to apply them to make real things in life.

Q: How did you get the idea for Stiqr?

A: Although I love coding, coding can be tedious. Especially when it comes to coding up HTML & CSS for a design that you have already mocked up in Photoshop. So many times have I just wanted to move an image or an html element a few pixels but caused me hours of pain. I knew I wasn’t the only one that shared this pain and me and my partner decided to move forward with it.

Q: What have been the most challenging aspects so far of Stiqr?

A: Identifying our target users and which feature sets to further develop. We have a technology capable of blending in to improve and solve many other problems on the web. We are currently in the process of collecting feedback and weighing our choices.

Q: What has been the most successful way for you to promote Stiqr and acquire new users?

A: The largest source of our traffic came from a coverage done by us at go2web20.net. There coverage then extended to many other blogs and news writers writing about us. Another great source was from asking our fremium users for feedback and giving them the option to tweet and spread the word for a our premium account.

Q: How do you plan on monetizing Stiqr?

A: Our current model may change in the future but we stand at selling domain licenses. We are working to further develop our product for a subscription model to make sense and even a new marketplace to open up rev-share model.

Q: What would be your most important advice you would give to a young entrepreneur?

A: Build connections. To elaborate a little and not stating the obvious, it is crucial to start when you are young. It is the perfect playground for it and the opportunities for connections are far easier to come by. Time factors into a large portions of what a connection is and having that strong foundation to start out with, will be your greatest asset as an entrepreneur.

Q: Is Wibiya your first business? What have you done before?

A: Wibiya is the first Internet venture we took to the full extent. Prior to Wibiya we launched a search engine called Joongel. We didn’t pursue this venture, because we came up with the idea of Wibiya and stuck to it. Working on Joongel taught us a lot about working as a team and most importantly staying focused. So I can honestly say that the experience we gained with Joongel, although we practically just launched it, was yet significant.

Q: Have you always considered yourself an entrepreneur? What do you think were the most important experiences that led you to become a successful entrepreneur?

A: No, I haven’t always considered myself an entrepreneur. But I was always creative,  interested in business and goal driven. I never framed all these as entrepreneurship. It was only in university when I finally understood that entrepreneurship as a profession is what I’m aiming to do with my life.

The most important experiences that helped me frame myself as an entrepreneur were my military duty and university and academic career. (Serving in the Israeli army for 5 years as a captain, second-in-command on board a missile frigate was a truly enriching experience.)

Q: Were you a good student? What where your favorite subjects in school?

A: I was a pretty good student. In high school I enjoyed mixing creative professions with scientific ones, and therefore focused on both music and physics. I think not limiting myself to a specific subject during those years was a great advantage; it allowed me to take the thinking methodologies applied in each and every profession and use them afterwards in anything I do in life. Later, in university, I studied business and economics, and during my last year, I entered the special entrepreneurship program which covered the different aspects entrepreneur should deal with: legal, creating new products, building a business plan, financed in your venture etc.

Q: How did you get the idea for Wibiya?

A: My partner Dror and I were presenting our previous venture Joongel at the Tech Crunch 50 conference in San Francisco. While there we met with publishers, bloggers and website owners, and we noticed the pain they had in adding new tools and features to their sites. We also noticed a gap between the social web, which existed on Facebook and Twitter, but not on destination sites and blogs.

We decided to create a tool that would allow people like us (non-technical) to add different functionalities to their sites without writing any code.

Q: What have been the most challenging aspects of Wibiya so far?

A: Every aspect has been challenging. Building a desirable product, marketing it, gaining a significant traction, recruiting talented team and getting funded. But we had a lot of fun doing it. These challenges are what’s keeps us going.

Q: What have been the most successful ways for you to promote Wibiya and acquire new users?

A: We never spend a dollar on marketing. We invest every single resource we have in creating the best product we possibly can. This methodology has worked for us in the past two years. When you create a desirable product to an audience with viral nature, you can basically expect the product to market itself, and your users to be your catalysts.

Q: How do you plan on monetizing Wibiya?

A: We will be launching a premium version of our product soon, where users will be able to enjoy professional functionalities and advanced applications while paying a monthly subscription fee. Wibiya will always have a free product to offer our users.

Q: What would be the most important advice you would give to a young entrepreneur?

A: This is a hard one. I would answer that the two most significant principles an entrepreneur should follow are knowing your audience and keeping focused.

Because the Internet is so big and full of options and opportunities, the question is not “what can I do?” but rather “what can I offer that is significantly needed by someone?” In other words, “what pain am I my solving?” Only few know your audience, and know their pain can answer this question and match a solution to it.

Focusing is the key issue as well, while in the process of creating solutions to the problem you are solving, you will confront many opportunities that will distract you from the main goal. Avoiding the temptation of building new features because you can, or shifting to a new direction just because it is offered to you, is key to succeed.

My first interview is with Noah Alper, founder of Noah’s Bagels in Northern California as well as of five other prior businesses. Six and a half years after launching his bagel business, Noah sold it for 100 million dollars. On my recent visit to the San Francisco Bay Area, I was fortunate enough to have a face-to-face interview with him in his hometown of Berkeley.

Q: Can you introduce yourself in a few sentences?
A: I’m Noah Alper. I was born in Brookline, MA, went to NYU and University of Wisconsin where I graduated in 1969. I am a “serial entrepreneur,” having started some 6 businesses and am currently a business consultant.

Q: What was your most successful business?
A: Noah’s Bagels for sure. I sold it after six and half years of operation for 100 million dollars.

Q: What was your biggest failure?
A: Holy Land Gifts Company was my least successful venture. The idea was to import giftware from Israel to Christians in America. However, it failed after two years of planning and one year of operating.

Q: What did you learn from your failure?
A: I learned two things:

• You must know your customers really well, “know what they eat for breakfast everyday.”
• Make sure to not confuse your social mission with your business. When I opened the company, I was so passionate about helping Israeli businesses sell their products that I didn’t think enough about my customers’ needs.
  

  Noah's Bagels

Q: You brought a lot of your religious belief into Noah’s Bagels. Why did you mix business with religion? Did it help?

A: I launched Noah’s Bagels after I shut down Holy Land Gifts. I wanted to find a way to bring my passion for Israel and Jewish culture into the bagel business. I would say though, that the product itself was what contributed to the major success of the chain. The authentic, delicious bagels brought customers. Also, I believe in what’s called “Tikun Olam,” (repairing the world) which essentially is community service and projects. When a new store was opened, we would organize some kind of project for the community, which would ensure the loyalty of our future customers.

Q: What advice would you give to a young entrepreneur?
A: It’s a three-pronged answer:

• Follow your passion but don’t let it take over basic business rules.
• Do research, find the negatives of a business before the benefits. Ask yourself why aren’t many other people in this business. Then consider the upside of the business and its potentials. And always remember to run the idea by other people.
• Doing good is always good for business. In other words, doing the right thing will always benefit you. Take care of your customers, community and staff correctly treating them as you would treat yourself.

Q: So I heard you wrote a book called Business Mensch. Why did you decide to write a book? What its main message?
A: I’ve been in business for 38 years and have many lessons to share. In some ways it’s a personal memoir for others to learn from and for my descendants to know me. The title of the book means business man; “mensch” means man in German, or God’s man in Yiddish. The message of this book is essentially doing good is good for business.

Q: What are your current plans?
A: For now I’m a business consultant.  I help entrepreneurs start out, give them guidance, planning and marketing advice. For example, I’ve helped one person launch a kosher hot dog business, another start an upscale kosher English food line, and yet another bring a 100-year-old pruned candy recipe to market.

Q: What are your interests outside of business?
A: I enjoy skiing, and I take a 300-mile bike ride every year in Israel to benefit the Alyn Rehab Hospital in Jerusalem.

To learn more about Noah visit: Noah Alper Consulting. To get your own copy of Business Mensch check out Amazon.

It’s on TV! So doubting it, is no longer an option unless you want to risk looking like a fool.

I will make this post very brief.

Get a glass of water, sit tight and play this two minutes video I found for you. When you are done playing this video, go straight to his site and get ready to be blown away. I have to confess, at 15 years old, you’d count on your fingers how kids in your hood will match the entrepreneurial skills of this wonder kid. At his age, I was nowhere touching a typewriter let alone a computer. Though, computers were not commercially available when I was his age. But all the same, he blew me out of the waters.

This is the deal. If you are too lazy to make money on eBay, Ben is just an email or a phone call away. First, put away your shyness about calling a kid who is young enough to be your son. You are here to make money and not complain about his age. Age concern should not be a barrier to making money on eBay unless you are really too lazy beyond redemption. In that case I cannot help you. Hurry, take advantage of this opportunity before he stops taking new clients. No need to spoil your curiosity or spoil your “aha!” moment,  – the thrill that feels your heart when you discover something new and relevant to your success.

Most of you who live outside the United States and may feel that this sort of deal is too far out of reach, don’t feel left out of the direct listing services he offers to those of us in the United States.  He can still help you with web design and other eBay projects that may even bring greater wealth to you.

Tell you what! I’m a sucker for this kind of stories, the one of a kind you only read in a magazine. So since this kid is less than two hours drive from me, I will use his services  to him to sell few of  my stuff on eBay, then I’ll report back to you guys, here in this blog how it all went. I sell books, DVDs and CDs on eBay but I have lots of other stuff in my house that I can trade for leveraging the services of Ben, the professional.

Visit his site, eBayBen.com and don’t fool around any more. Do something to help yourself escape the crushing financial difficulties the whole world is currently passing through. A few bucks in your pocket could end up being the spark that you need to start your own financial empire.