Nowadays everyone seems to be talking about Viral Marketing. But what is it exactly? The problem with viral marketing is it is such a broad term. It really only became vastly popular with the proliferation of online video sharing services like YouTube because that’s when people were finally able to witness the sheer power of virility on the net. Well it is here now and we all need to embrace it!

White-label is a term used to refer to a product that is re-branded multiple times and licensed out. The old-industry motto was “I want to own everything”. Nowadays, people have learned to share and for the better. When it comes down to coding a social network you hit quite a few obstacles:

1)    Finding developers that are experienced and have worked on large-scale sites before.
2)    Writing the 1M lines of code before your competitor beats you to market.
3)    Coming up with a budget to meet the six-figure price tag associated with development.

I should be able to understand your entire business by reading one page: Your executive summary. If I, as an investor, am compelled to read further, then I might read the rest of your plan. Make sure you include a solid monetization plan. Have several methods lined up and get quotes from all the ad networks. For instance, how many users before they will place ads on your site. CPM rates, etc. Explain how you plan to optimize your site and show that in your projections. Make sure you also account for all your possible expenses. Explain how you differentiate and how you plan to gain traction.

It’s important for any business, but with start-ups it’s more likely to be a pressing issue. The problem with start-ups is that they always have entrepreneurs involved. This is actually a detriment because entrepreneurs have trouble focusing. In an entrepreneur’s world, new ideas are developed every day.

The whole idea of incubators is to offer start-ups the recourses they lack. By providing key pieces to the puzzle, a start-up develops from a concept into a full-fledged wealth generating machine. Or at least you hope.

ycombinator.com and launchboxdigital.com are two great examples of successful ones. The whole idea is to identify promising startups, give them seed money, mentor them, and set them up to pitch VCs. If you bring in several start-ups every year and one of them hits, you make bank. The advantage to putting them through a program is that you have control of their direction and you can make sure they don't screw up.  Not to be harsh on start-up founders, but they are just more prone to making mistakes.

Going to college and getting a business degree is great, but for the average start-up founder; it’s inevitable that you will still be completely lost in the real world. Understanding general business practices, statements of cash-flow, how to crank out sexy looking projection charts in excel, etc. Is all good; However, you don’t learn to sit in a board room across from a high powered exec and deal with the stress, nerve, and fast paced interrogation. Nobody coming out of college is ready for that!