Start Making Money

10 Ways to Market Your Awesome Start-Up

For aspiring entrepreneurs, taking a concept from inception to launch can happen faster an cheaper than ever before. You just launched a shiny new site, and your product has been thoroughly tested and debugged — and now you’re in the hot seat (either from investors, co-workers, or yourself) to ramp up your almost non-existent marketing efforts.

Here are 10 relatively lightweight efforts (in no particular order) that just might get you on the cover of your favorite magazine before you know it:

10. Network / Hustle / Get After It: Sure, social tools have facilitated your digital hustle, but there’s no substitute for making great connections in person. Leverage your network to get bloggers, writers, creatives, and fellow entrepreneurs to write about you, think about your work, or at least like you enough to help you out down the road.

9. Add yourself to CrunchBase, which is an publicly editable Wikipedia of tech companies, people and investors.

8. Add yourself to YouNoodle, which is a place to meet other likeminded individuals.

7. Apply and participate in University or city/org sponsored business plan competitions. Keep in mind what the real value is here, it’s not necessarily the 10 or 20k prize money… but the random collection of angel investors, press, and talented technologists/creatives that hang around these events (even on other teams).

6. Add yourself to StartupWeekend’s Startup Database

5. Get to know your local StartupDigest leaders/editors

4. Get to know any local startup aggregators, like Proudly Made In DC or We Are NY Tech

3. Sponsor and attend events like Tech Cocktail or your local BarCamp

2. Apply for incubator/accelerator programs… see #7 for a similar value proposition.

1. Be excellent and build awesome stuff that people talk about.

Are we missing something? Undoubtedly so… let us know below!

Submitted by Taylor Cottam of Economy Politics

Another Call For The Fed To Raise Rates, So Big Banks Can Start Lending And Hiring Again

As we explained in our previous article Seeking an interest rate solution,
real interest rates are negative and nominal short term interest rates
are near zero. That is not healthy. What is a healthy interest rate? My
view is that short term rates should be above 1% to make them positive
and closer to 2%.  It has caused consumer credit to contract. 



Of course, banks would argue that a healthy spread is the key to a
healthy banking sector.  Raising the rate would likely flatten the yield
curve.  What gives? 



How banks really make money



Banks are not in the business of making loans per se.  They are in the
business of making more off their assets than their liabilities.  In
normal times, underwriting consumer and business loans are the best
avenue for them to pursue that goal. 



Banks, and many hedge funds, really make money off the yield curve. They
have assets with a higher duration than their liabilities. Although
banks fund their assets with a mix of checking, demand deposits and some
longer dated term deposits (CDs), they have the ability to swap out
longer term deposits (CDs) to make their liabilities duration almost
zero. Their assets, which are typically loans to consumers and
businesses, have a longer duration.  Since the yield curve almost always
slopes upward, they make money off the yield curve spread plus the
credit spread. 



In 2008, I did some modeling for a large financial institution that had
duration of liabilities of roughly 3.5 years, based upon mostly term
deposits. They were able to bring the duration on their entire
liabilities portfolio down to a duration of less than 0.25 (3 months) by
transacting a simple fixed for floating amortizing swap based upon
their CD maturity schedule. Every quarter, with the 3 month rate sunk
below 25 bps, we would receive a large cash settlement from our
investment bank counterparty. I didn't stick for the full term of the
swap, but on a 1.5 BB principal, our estimate of earnings from the swap
alone stood at $100MM over three years. Based upon where short term
rates have stayed, they could have made 1.5 times that.



With our cost of capital below 25 bps, we did the thing that any
rational person would do.  We stopped lending to people and
businesses and lent to the US government instead.  We bought Treasuries.
In this case, the 5-year yields were above 2% bringing our expected
risk free spread above 2 points.



In 2008 and 2009, when it became obvious that Bernanke would likely
leave short-term rates low for an extended period of time, yield curve
risk became an afterthought. Those actions have been largely vindicated.
If we held the Treasuries for at least three years, the term of the
swap, we would just sit back and make money off the spread without
having to originate a single loan.



You get to be a bank, without having to do any work to originate loans.
Who needs a large origination group, when you can make a ton of money
and fire half of your employees?



Pushed or Pulled into Treasuries



During the recession there was often talk of a flight to quality.
Investors would flee risky assets and go into something safe. However,
investors are not always being pushed, they are often pulled. During the
recession, we began seeing a very steep yield curve. The spread
investors are as much lured by the allure of easy money with a steep
yield curve as they are by the fear of risky assets.

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