When Ben was 14, he started his first business, a video production and Web design company. Mophie was started when he was a junior in high school. Obviously, creativity and business sense runs through the veins of this manchild. Man, when I was in high school, you could usually find me in the office, where I had been sent by a teacher for some foolishness that I perpetrated on the innocent.
Originally from Long Island, Kaufman moved to Burlington, VT to attend Champlain College. At that time, Mophie was a one-person operation with a single product– retractable lanyard earphones to use with the iPod. Called the “Song Sling,” the product earned $75,000 in sales in its first four weeks, then went on to win “Best in Show” at the Macworld San Francisco trade show. Today, Mophie employs 12 people and sells 72 different products.
Now, here’s where the question comes in. Kaufman believes that if you can think it you can do it.
So he starts the process by asking, “Wouldn’t it be cool if…?” The next step came naturally: Create a community of ideas and improvements. The idea became a reality at Macworld when Mophie used its booth to get new ideas by soliciting attendees’ designs. Called the Mophie Illuminator Project, the company got 150 ideas in about four hours. Then the company conducted online voting to choose three finalists. By the last day of Macworld, Mophie had marketing pitches and working prototypes of all three finalists.
We will have to see where the Illuminator Project takes Mophie and its community. But the mission to get ideas out of people’s heads and onto shelves by engaging the power of a community to create the world’s best products seems to me to be much in line with the purpose of social media and blogging. Except this is blogging for dollars.

Real dollars were at stake for the top two plans, so the decision was not taken lightly. Each plan started with a good idea and a passionate team. From here, it went South.
Not a single player adequately defined the market opportunity. Instead, they opted for broad-stroke assumptions and often came up with an inflated market size estimate. Obviously, this error had a ripple effect for the financial projections and overall project viability.
Instinctively, my fellow judge and I mentally raced back to the MBA market-sizing case study question: “What is the market size for dog food in Italy?” We provided the contenders with a primer on market sizing, making realistic assumptions, and using a proxy. Oh yes, and oft-left-behind common sense.
While it would be easy to rip these undergrads to shreds, the truth of the matter is that the same mistakes are made every day by full-grown, experienced adults that should know better. Which brings us to how marketing can best earn a seat at the table: be well-versed in all the numbers and demonstrate that all financial projections stem from properly estimating the market.

to do what the “big boys” do. Many small business owners are Jacks or Jills of all trades – often fulfilling multiples roles – the business development rep, the service provider, the product shipper, the administrative person, the marketer. Even when there’s staff on board, turnover can be higher than average without the means to offer health care benefits or competitive salaries, leaving the owner or partners with operations difficulties.
There were 18.6 million nonemployer businesses (those without paid employees) in 2003, representing over 70% of all American businesses. Add to that the 5.3 million business establishments with fewer than 10 employees, and you get very busy business owners trying to live the American dream.
It should come as no surprise that marketing will often come last on the “to do” list. I often wonder how many of these small businesses have developed a marketing plan. In my networking circles, I’ve come across many nonemployer business owners who don’t even have a written business plan. If they’re lucky, they’re making money in spite of that fact, depending on word-of-mouth marketing and referrals. But, it probably took them years to build to where they are now. Today’s competitive marketplace is harder than ever to break through, so small start-ups can experience major hurdles from the get-go.
It’s easy to get bogged down in the everyday tasks of running a business. For those small business owners who are unfamiliar with marketing, there are some shoestring tactics that are affordable. But, it’s so necessary – absolutely imperative – that even the smallest of businesses develop a business and marketing strategy first. Without it, there’s no roadmap or direction, and small businesses can chase their tails for a long time, finding out the hard way, what they could have learned early on if only they did their homework.