In the meantime, please check out http://FatBurningMan.com, which features my recent book.

Let me know what you think!

Because Facebook is a monumental time-sucker, and to what end? Aside from “reconnecting” with long-lost friends and family, have you ever really done anything productive on Facebook? Do you really have 200, 500, 1500 friends? Of course you don’t. Facebook has morphed into a veritable circus of shameless self-promotion. It may help you market your business, but it won’t help you start it.

What about LinkedIn? You may be an exception, but most people simply use LinkedIn as their updated online resume, and occasionally as a way to find business associates. But you don’t really get down to business using LinkedIn, do you?

Don’t get me wrong – I use Facebook and it’s entertaining, if a little creepy. I also update my LinkedIn profile from time to time. But these networks are too crowded and don’t allow their users to achieve anything. StartupJumper is meant to be a tool to SAVE you time by facilitating real relationship-building and idea generation/development.

I read recently in an Oxford University study that it’s nearly impossible to have more than 150 on or offline friends. That might even be stretching it. StartupJumper shouldn’t be a place for you to shotgun-blast every member with a friend request – that’s useless and annoying. Only friend someone you’ve worked with or met in person and your friendships will actually mean something.

Use Facebook to trumpet your achievements, share photos with friends and family, and tell everyone what you ate for lunch. Use LinkedIn to keep your online resume up-to-date. Use StartupJumper to find business partners and freelancers and get things done.

• It’s free and it takes less than five minutes
• You can make new connections with talented folks
• Cool people are doing it, and they want to meet you
• You can’t do everything yourself, but you can meet people who want to help you
• Your mom will be proud of you
• You could make a million dollars

Or, you could keep yourself cooped up in your cubicle, meddling with memos, slaloming through hundreds of mind-numbing e-mails, yawning through pointless meetings, and missing the mid-day sunshine until you retire, likely later and poorer than you ever expected.

What do you have to lose? Take some initiative and get something started. We’re all rooting for you.

I read an article in the Times several days ago, “The Default Major: Skating Through B-School,” which describes how little is actually taught at business schools. According to the most recent National Survey of Student Engagement: nearly half of seniors majoring in business say they spend fewer than 11 hours a week studying outside class. 11 hours! So if students aren’t spending the majority of their time learning content at business schools, what are they paying for? Rakesh Khurana, a professor at Harvard Business School, concedes, “Business education has come to be defined in the minds of students as a place for developing elite social networks…”

So if my thinking is correct, you could go back to business school and slap a few more letters after your name, get an opportunity to network, and a big fat pile of debt. That’s it? Take away paying $200,000 for three letters after your name, and all you’re left with is an opportunity to network with business-minded, entrepreneurial folks.

But wait a minute, we don’t need business school for that. I created StartupJumper to be just that network. Imagine it as the networking arm of a business school, except you can do this for free. There’s something to be said for learning from experience instead of books. How about you take a small portion of the $200 grand you would have spent on business school and start up a business yourself instead?

Everybody knows somebody. Imagine what you could do if you knew everybody.