This week marks National Entrepreneurship Week (in the United States, at least). Along those lines I wanted to present an interesting video of Guy Kawasaki (an entrepreneur himself of arguable success) moderating a panel of several moderately successful social web sites (HotOrNot.com, Fark.com, Hi5 Networks, etc.).

I do encourage viewing of the hour long video - if for nothing else - the entertainment value (this is perhaps one of the most BS and self-aggrandizing free entrepreneur panels that I've seen - a little self-deprecation for laughs goes a long way to humanize a person). However, if leaving the video play in the background as you go about your day is too much there are two central points that struck me:

1. You must have passion for what you're doing. Often, the code behind these sites is easy to establish - perhaps even a commodity. There are a lot of people who see the re-emergence of online advertising and jump on any bandwagon that will lead to big money. Social sites, however, are about community and communities are extremely adept as detecting spurious intent. You must have a passion to bring to your offering because if you aren't thrilled with what you're doing who will be?
2. Marketing is an extremely tricky thing. Several founders talked about 'stunts' that they thought would be pure windfalls that didn't work out at all. Other times the littlest, most insignificant thing was what drove sign-ups for months. All, however, agreed that raising millions for a traditional TV, radio, and magazine campaign was not in their best interest. Creating features that would get people talking about the site to their friends was.

Obviously, talking about web businesses is much different than conventional business: compare the difficulty and capital in starting an entertainment news site verses launching a new type of steel-belted tire. The differences in mediums (digital verses physical) create a profoundly lowered hurdle for those looking to do web business to jump. Those same differences, if those in the video are to be believed, are also what takes conventional business training and skew it significantly.
Enough pontificating. The video: