If you're going to form partnerships with other companies, please get it right! I see way too many companies forming alliances mainly for the sheer sake of forming alliances and doing "biz dev" work, but it's often a distraction from the core focus of your company. And if you decide to go forward with the partnership, it helps if the connection is seamless and that your customers are able to extract true value from that partnership.

Let's take a look at my favorite companies: airlines! Gotta love the expensive fares, the long delays, the bad food, and of course the incompetent representatives. It may sound like I write way too much about how airlines suck, but I'm just giving my honest advice!

Many of these airlines participate in mile-sharing programs. This basically means that if you accumulate frequent traveler miles with one company, you could use it with any of its partners. The plus side being that you're not scared to accumulate these miles because you have supposed assurance that you can use it anywhere. Of course, when it comes time to actually use your points on partner airlines, you may find yourself running into a brick wall.

True story: I booked my round trip airfare to Amsterdam with KLM because the FAQ's said that I can upgrade using frequent flyer miles after booking the flight in coach. Only problem being that KLM's partner, Delta, won't let me use the Delta miles for the upgrade unless I'm upgrading a Delta seat. How lame is that? Sure, it's partly my fault for not being 100% sure I could upgrade before booking my seats, but this example comes to show that the supposed partnerships these companies have between one another don't allow customers to take full advantage of their frequent flyer miles!

As for the logistics behind entering a partnership, some companies waste way too much time, energy, and money on getting a deal done only for it to fall through. The best deals I know of happen near instantly, where each company can easily help the other without changing too much. For example, I spoke to the marketing guy at Shopzilla.com, and he told me about the many partnerships the company has with media companies to exchange traffic with each other.

In a nutshell, finding partnerships can be a terrible waste of time. But if you decide to enter into a partnership, focus on the cheap and easy ones and do them right.

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore in college. She's currently the founder of a startup, managing editor at Startupism.com, and Jessicamah.com.

Yay, after many long hours of driving, I'm finally at Power Shift - a conference on combating global climate change.

I'm sitting in a panel that discusses fighting global change in local communities, and here are a few things I got out of it:

1) When making an argument for creating a sustainable world, make it relevant to the group of people you're talking to. How does it benefit them?

For example, this girl from Sugarland, Texas had a discussion with her mayor on how to create a sustainable city. Ended up that the mayor had many of the ideas she offered, but didn't want to make them public because it could possibly upset the large and powerful oil industry. To make it work, keep in mind how it may or may not benefit the individuals you're talking to.

2) Connections, connections, connections. Find allies and don't be afraid to ask them questions. Students always seem so freaking hostile towards business executives and government officials. There is some truth behind their thinking, but hostility doesn't solve problems. Once again, look at everything from THEIR perspective. Suck out as much info as you can and use it for your mutual benefit.

When I meet with founders and management at companies, I ask them about their business. I ask them about their ideas and why they do what they do. I ask them why they don't do X, and more often than not, they've thought of the idea and found a reason as to why it wouldn't work. (or they're in the process of implementing that X) At the end of the day, I give them good or bad press via my blog. :)

3) It's important to be able to measure everything. Set goals and measure your improvement by solid numbers. This way, you know what's most effective, what's best to invest more time and money into, etc...

For example, in regards to advertising, it's important to have necessary data: who's visiting your business, where are they coming from, etc… this is why TV advertising doesn't work. You have no way of distinguishing if your customer is coming from a TV ad or from word of mouth. Google AdWords, on the other hand, offers you control over everything. You can cap your spending to any amount of money, you can specify the physical location your visitors are from, you can specify certain keywords, etc…

4) Garnering support is all about targeting communities. Get huge groups of people excited about a common cause. I'll write tomorrow about their conference marketing… but I must say, it is borderline manipulative.

In a nutshell, the conference would recruit "campus coordinators" who would take charge of organizing the conference trip to Power Shift. Basically, the conference organizers made these campus coordinators feel super important and gave them the noble responsibility of bringing as many people as they could to this conference. Brilliant.

The bottom line? Everything about this conference has SO much to do with business, whether it be related to marketing, communications, etc… If you want to combat global climate change, be a doctor, be a fashion designer, or whatever - you're going to be using business related skills. If you want to help stop global climate change, look at the source: big and powerful corporations.

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore in college. She's currently the founder of a startup, managing editor at Startupism.com, SimonsRockers.com, and Jessicamah.com.

Recent news - Stubhub just handed over 13,000 customer names to the New England Patriots. Why? Because the Patriots think that buying and selling tickets online should be banned. Here are my thoughts:

1) The Patriots should learn to embrace marketplaces like Stubhub. So many sport teams are working side by side with sites like Stubhub to make resale of tickets a legitimate business.

2) The Patriots ticked off thousands of fans by doing this. My former roommate was looking for cheap tickets to a Patriots game for her boyfriend's birthday, and now I read that her name could be sent off for doing something "illegal." Lame!

3) Stubhub should probably try to work with as many teams possible. The company should start some form of dialogue with all sport teams to further legitimize the resale business.

Bottom line? Why can't sport teams and record labels embrace new technology and accept the fact that their hostilities toward innovation will later bite them in the ass? Radiohead has basically proven in the past two weeks that it doesn't need a contract with a record label to profit big time. Same basic concept applies to this situation.

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore in college. She's currently the founder of a startup, managing editor at Startupism.com, SimonsRockers.com, and Jessicamah.com.

Most of you have probably seen me link to my new blog, Startupism, in the past few blog posts. I'm proud to say that it's finally up and running to full capacity and has about 1,000 visits in only a week online! Not too shabby for a fresh blog.

I decided that from now on, JessicaMah.com will dedicate itself to providing MY opinions on various topics and Startupism will be much more informative and include a wide collaboration of writers and editors. So you ask, what is Startupism and why does Jessica need to manage more than one blog?

Startupism was first thought of by Christian Perry - he and his roomates don't have active blogs but wanted to share one, so they started talking about it and needed someone to get it off the ground and manage it, so I happily took that role. The purpose has shifted: It's now a blog with tens of startup founders and people on the forefront of the web 2.0 world, sharing their many opinions and perspectives. Most of these active community members and business execs have little time to blog, so Startupism allows them to make a submission as often as they'd like. No self-promoting posts allowed, of course.

Here are some cool blog posts we've made in recent days:

- Startups in Silicon Valley Causing a STIRR

- LuckyOliver Party at Ace Auto

- Through the looking glass

- Facebook users' Collective Buying Power

- Ideas come a dime a dozen!

- Bootstrapping in SF: Housing and Transportation

Of course, there's plenty more to come! If you're interested in writing for startupism, just send me an email at jessica@startupism.com and we'll chat more!

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore in college. She's currently the founder of a startup, managing editor at Startupism.com and Jessicamah.com. Oh, she forgot to mention that she's currently a HAPPY Apple Iphone Owner and UNHAPPY AT&T subscriber!

It's very difficult to bootstrap a startup. It's even more difficult to work or partner with a large company. When I chat with CEOs and marketing guys of any startup, I ask how much of their marketing is attributed to working with other partners. The answers have ranged from 5%-85%. All startups agree that its often difficult and painstakingly slow working with these big companies, but it's a necessary part of their marketing plan. The upcoming event, "Partering with Gorillas" by Dealmaker Media brings together influential people from several startups and large companies. (Google, Microsoft, SAP, etc...)

Most conference and event tickets range from $400-$3,500. This two hour event is pretty fairly priced at $60 for non-members. Hope to see you there!

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore in college. She's currently the founder of a startup, managing editor at Startupism.com and Jessicamah.com.