I settled on The Rutland Advocate after a long and fruitless Facebook discussion where I asked my friends for advice. My original choice was The Rutland Tribune, but that already existed, although it's now Green Mountain Outlook. Then I thought about The Rutland Post, but decided it was too staid. I also thought about The Rutland Vindicator (Youngstown, Ohio's paper), but decided it was too confrontational and my old editor at The Massachusetts Daily Collegian, Alyssa Creamer, suggested The Rutland Recorder, but I felt that was too neutral.
Other names suggested: Stuck-in-a-Rut Gazette, The Rutvegas Sun, The Daily Rutter, Robare's Rutting Rutland and The Rutland Universe.
One of the things that made me hesitant about starting a startup was the cost. Following startup news you see a lot of large figures in funding get thrown around, but so far (domain name registration and webhosting) the costs have been less than many popular consumer electronics. I haven't yet gotten to the filing process for dealing with the state of Vermont, which brings me on to an important topic: networking.
Starting a business in your hometown is a lot easier than starting one elsewhere. My Dad is a lawyer and has been practicing in Vermont since he passed the Bar Exam in the 80s. He has been to court in every part of the state and argued in front of the state Supreme Court (I took AP US History with the current Chief Justice's daughter in high school), so my name recognition isn't as bad as it would be in, say, Boston. On top of that, Vermont's small population and geographic proximity have meant that members of the state legislature are more accesible than in other states (Texas, the state with the second largest population has a legislature the same size as Vermont's and California, the state with the largest population, has a smaller one). On a more local note, I've known the current city treasurer since I was seven or eight. Most notably, former Vermont governor Madeleine Kunin is a UMass graduate and even edited the Ed/Op section of The Collegian!
I've been at this for two days and already all my assumptions have been shattered into dust and blown away.
Most "startup news" is about Silicon Valley-style tech startups. I can tell you from first-hand knowledge in the field: most of those are scams. VCs throw huge quantities of "start-up capital" at young "entrepreneurs" on the basis that only 1/10 or even 1/20 need to actually generate a return on investment to make the VC a profit. For the "entrepreneur" what it means is months or even years of 80-hour work-weeks only to see any returns that DO appear swallowed up by the VC and the company eventually taken over from the "entrepreneur" at the behest of investors or buyers.
ReplyDeleteYou've chosen a much better route. You:
1) Are "bootstrapping" your business by fueling it yourself.
2) Have an actual value proposition: journalism.
Now the trick is to produce some quality journalism (should be easy enough for you) and then figure out how to actually monetize your created value in the marketplace.