Family, by Ava Zeldman
Friday, May 20, 2011
The British will see the Thursday, May 19, 2011
New Boom in Silicon Valley
The office space market soars. Plus, a plan to make more female angel investors, and the rest of the day's news for entrepreneurs.
Each day, Inc.'s reporters scour the Web for the most important and interesting news to entrepreneurs. Here's what we found today.
Office-space shortage in the South Bay. If you're planning on setting up shop in Palo Alto with all of the other tech companies, you better get a move on. Office spaces are filling up, fast. The Wall Street Journal reports that what just months ago looked like a lukewarm housing and office-rental market in the Valley is once again hot. According to Jones Lang LaSalle, there's been a 25 percent jump in office-space rent in the area from last year, the biggest one-year jump since 1999. Giants such as Google, Facebook, and others are responsible for taking most of the space that was once available. By the end of the year Google plans to increase its staff by 25 percent and we're all familiar with Facebook's big expansion plans in the Valley. Office space that was once available for the overflow, in Mountain View, is almost completely taken, leaving companies such as Polycom, LinkedIn, and the Nook e-reader division for Barnes & Noble (to name a few) still searching for places to call home.
Push to balance start-up gender ratios. In a continued effort to increase the number of female entrepreneurs, Pipeline Fund Fellowship is launching a program to to train women how to be angel investors, Mashable reports. A new organization itself, Pipeline Fund Fellowship has selected 10 participants for it first session in New York City and has plans to expand to San Francisco and Los Angeles next year. All 10 participants have agreed to invest $5,000 into the company the group selects at the conclusion of five workshops based in New York. Now, the organization is accepting applications for "women-led, for-profit social venture" companies to attend the program's pitch summit in June.
Sound practices. Just days after we at Inc.com explored the topic of sonic branding—all those bells and chimes and familiar tunes you hear in ads, for example—Aflac's gone and gotten a new voice for its signature duck. Why do you care? Because that hapless little duck mascot helps bring in more than $13 billion a year in premiums. And since firing comedian Gilbert Gottfried from the role and hiring 37-year-old radio ad salesman Daniel McKeague, investors have applauded, sending Aflac shares up 1.3 percent—or $324 million in shareholder value, the New York Post reports.
Friendster's facelift. Before Facebook and Twitter, there was Friendster. At its peak, the site had over 100 million users, but in recent years the site has seen a steady decline in new registrants, especially as a flurry of younger and more nimble social start-ups entered the market. But the "ghost town," over at Friendster's offices, as the New York Times puts it, is poised for change. The Times reports that Friendster's management plans to strip older material from the site's archives, including photos, early messages and posts, in an effort to freshen up the interface. Deleting a user's history, especially when that content contains personal—and emotional—material, can be a sore subject for some. "The mass deletion of so much evidence of embarrassing wardrobe choices and unrequited crushes might come as a relief to some, especially in an era when it seems that everything uploaded to Facebook can haunt people forever," the article notes. "But some say Friendster has unexpectedly turned into a time capsule with snapshots of who they once were." Aww.
Hello, my name is... What's in a name? Apparently a lot when it comes to executive status. TechCrunch reports that LinkedIn recently analyzed its vast network of professionals and identified names over-represented by CEOs. Surprisingly, Tom, Dick, and Harry did not make the cut, but other common monikers like Bob and Sally ranked at the top. LinkedIn also broke down the most popular names by country with unsurprising results. Charles was king for the U.K., Wolfgang was Germany's wunderkind, and Guido was big cheese in Italy. Succeeding in business without really trying just got easier in the United States as well. Just change your name to Howard.
Party like it's 1999. Back before it was a multibillion-dollar company with thousands of employees, Google was a start-up website with just enough people to fill a San Francisco cable car. If you need a mental health break, hop in the way-back machine and check out TechCrunch's video of a meeting from the end of 1999 that ends in silly string and cake.
Charlie Sheen's guide to better entrepreneurship. Despite losing his job and exposing his insanity to the world over countless interviews, performances, and stunts, Charlie Sheen somehow manages to continue winning. Many will dismiss Sheen's antics, but if you listen closely, there are little golden nuggets of wisdom buried within his drug-induced raves. VentureBeat compiled Charlie's six most memorable quotes and examined them under an entrepreneurial lens. The result? Advice that's as hilarious as it is helpful. Now that's bi-winning.
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Do you know how to attract attention with your designs? (About)
Getting and keeping a reader's attention can be a challenge, there is so much
fun, shiny stuff to look at out there. But knowing how to grab attention,
especially for important events, is a critical skill. What do you do to get
attention on your web pages? I am glad that most sites have put away the
flashing, migraine inducing animated images. But there are lots of other,
better ways. **Read the whole article:** Getting Attention with Web Design
Do you know how to attract attention with your designs? originally appeared on
About.com Web Design / HTML on Monday, May 16th, 2011 at 04:01:59.
Permalink | Comment | Email this
fun, shiny stuff to look at out there. But knowing how to grab attention,
especially for important events, is a critical skill. What do you do to get
attention on your web pages? I am glad that most sites have put away the
flashing, migraine inducing animated images. But there are lots of other,
better ways. **Read the whole article:** Getting Attention with Web Design
Do you know how to attract attention with your designs? originally appeared on
About.com Web Design / HTML on Monday, May 16th, 2011 at 04:01:59.
Permalink | Comment | Email this
Blogging Pitfalls: 7 Ways Your Blog May Impose On Your Visitors (Blogging Pro)
Imagine, for a moment, that you were invited over to a friends house to watch
a movie or catch up on their news. However, instead of giving you what you
went for, they bombarded you with advertisements you didn't want, practically
shoving them in your voice and begging you to read them. Then, when you [...]
a movie or catch up on their news. However, instead of giving you what you
went for, they bombarded you with advertisements you didn't want, practically
shoving them in your voice and begging you to read them. Then, when you [...]
The Simplest Dating Site Ever
How about this: Propose a date; go on a date. No nonsense. Investors pounced, to the tune of $3.2 million. We caught up with the founders of HowAboutWe.com.
Imagine Twitter had a dating service, where the only options were to propose dates, respond to dates, or directly message the person. A user could see the person's picture and basic information, and if interested, click a button to indicate that. Next: get a response, make simple arrangements, and—bam—go on a date.
That's not so far off from the service provided by HowAboutWe, an online dating start-up founded in November 2009 by childhood friends Brian Schechter and Aaron Schildkrout. The company, which is based in Brooklyn, New York, uses the tagline "get online to get offline."
"People love the idea," Schechter says. "Right now, overwhelmingly the response is, 'I get it! Finally a dating site that I'm cool to use.'"
With the industry's leading online dating sites, such as Match.com and eHarmony, users are required to fill out extensive profiles to be matched according to compatibility; then, after a bit of back-and-forth messaging, two users might just plan a date. HowAboutWe's proposal? Get straight to the dates to test for chemistry. The site works by presenting visitors a list of date proposals from singles from one or both genders in your immediate area. From there, users can click "I'm Intrigued," or send a message directly to the user. If the user responds back, all you have to do is pick a day, time, and not forget to brush your teeth.
The idea made a big splash at last year's New York Tech Meetup, where the founders pitched the idea, and drew a grand hush from the crowd when they noted that the user base was 60 percent female (to compare: 53 percent of all online dating service users are male). In less than a year since its launch, HowAboutWe has already had 100,000 proposed dates through its site. Acclaim, too, has been rolling in. The New York Times quizzed the founders this summer on the dating zeitgeist in New York City.
Most recently, some HowAboutWe members have proposed dates to meet at the TKTS booth to see a show; help out on a rooftop farm in Greenpoint, Brooklyn; try one of New York's 12 "most insane" new bacon dishes (as recommended by Eater NY); or enjoy a vegan dinner at Candle 79.
"You're connecting, you have this commonality already, but there's this element of exploration where you're not only meeting new people and finding people to go out with, but you're also doing things," says Erin Scottberg, HowAboutWe's media strategy director. "It's not stagnant, and it's not like sitting across from each other and talking about where we went to college and what our families are like, but you're doing something together, which actually makes the actual "going offline" part more natural than other dating sites."
Schechter hopes that HowAboutWe will help eliminate some of the the negative stigma surrounding online dating sites—which is not so much that they're inaccurate; just that they're, well, not cool.
"I think the online dating industry needs to be turned upside down on its head, because it's not providing people with the kinds of experiences that they want," Schechter says. "People are not excited or in any way prone to share about their online dating life with their friends right now—no one's like, 'Yes! I'm on this website! It's really cool!' in the way that they'd be excited to share that they're using Tumblr, or checking in somewhere on Foursquare, or finding a place through Yelp."
The cool factor has helped draw investment, too. Last summer, HowAboutWe raised a $3.2 million series A round led by RRE Ventures and joined by a broad syndicate of about a dozen investors, including Founder Collective, LaunchTime, and other angels. Yet, HowAboutWe still has a long climb ahead if it wants to catch up to its premier competition: Match.com produces over $340 million annually, and eHarmony reportedly makes over $250 million per year. While today's online dating industry generates over $4 billion per year, the average U.S. user of these dating sites is 48 years old. HowAboutWe hopes to broaden the appeal of online dating to reach the younger, more social media-savvy demographic.
"People have been saying for five years that online dating is in trouble with the rise of social networking, when in fact the more people become comfortable expressing their identity online—through Facebook, Twitter, and Foursquare—the more that there's usage of online dating sites as well," Schechter says. "I think online dating will continue to grow significantly."
For years, Schechter and Schildkrout—best friends since attending the same elementary school in Newton, Massachusetts—looked to launch a successful business together in hopes that one day, they would raise enough money to start a school. When Schechter lived as a teacher in Washington, D.C., he tried eHarmony on a prompting from Schildkrout's mother. While Schechter successfully found dates through the service, he found it to be a pretty embarrassing experience.
"It was always kind of awkward," Schechter says. "The context of the dates were pretty boring—a traditional dating site sets you up for cafe interview dates rather than something that's sexy and enticing. I did [eHarmony] for maybe a couple of weeks, and I was like, 'There's no way I'm going to meet the person I want to be with like this.'"
Schechter's impressions served as a basis for the partners' brainstorming: How could you provide a service for people to meet while avoid making it feel like a drag?
"We really pounded through all of our ideas and ended up with this eureka moment of, 'What if you have a dating site that's just a date that someone wants to go on?'" Schechter says. "How about we go see Shakespeare in the Park? Or how about we go to a cafe and play Scrabble, or play pool, or check out a lecture, or go to a museum I wanted to go to?' A specific activity, shown along with a picture of a person, so you can look at it, send an "I'm in" message, make a couple plans, then go."
Schechter and Schildkrout worked together to discover what's successful about today's popular social media and incorporate those features into a simple, streamlined dating site.
"There's some way in which Twitter, Facebook, and other applications that provide people with some utility in their lives, have begun arriving at a certain consensus about the structural dynamic of the user experience, in terms of posting, stream, navigation, and a very simple streamlined user experience," Schechter says. "Those are some of the things we apply when thinking about our design."
While HowAboutWe makes its daily money through its subscription service, the company also plans to develop sponsored listings from restaurants or venues on where to have a date, which would invite small businesses to capitalize through their dating service in a similar way to Foursquare. While HowAboutWe is primarily focused in five cities—New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boston, and Washington, D.C.—the company also plans to launch a mobile application this spring. The mobile app will allow singles from even more networks, both nationally and internationally, to get involved.
Launching a Company That Will Last
I recently attended a speech by Gary Hoover, founder of BOOKSTOP and Hoovers, Inc. The speech was titled, “Why Mexico Will Change Your Life”. According to Hoover, most Americans are not aware of the impact that the future of Mexico will have on the future of the United States.
Among other ideas, Hoover laid out eight key steps to creating and building lasting enterprises. These were:
1) Be curious
2) Study history
3) Study geography
4) Be clear
5) Be consistent
6) Serve others
7) Be unique
8) Be passionate.
Smart guy, Mr. Hoover. I highly recommend you listen to him speak if you ever have the opportunity.
Gary’s speech got me to thinking about what steps entrepreneurs should take to create and build a lasting enterprise. I don’t think it’s a “one size fits all” blueprint that everyone can follow. Rather, to borrow another cliché – there are many roads that lead to Rome. I agree with what Mr. Hoover has to say: his words remind me of how I went about building my own company.
When I decided to launch my company, I was a software engineer fixing bugs for IBM and had very little experience managing people, much less running a company. I understand what it means to be passionate. I had no money, no partners and none of the venture capital firms were interested in giving me any money. But I got creative and we made it work. That was in 1996 and now many of the companies that the VCs did believe are dead and gone. Sweet redemption.
One of the most critical lessons that was hard for us to nail down in the beginning was understanding cash flow and predicting it. We almost went out of business several times in the early years because we couldn't predict how much cash we'd have in the bank more than a couple of weeks into the future. Suddenly we would find we couldn’t make payroll which is extremely damaging to morale and continuity. Now, we can predict cash flow several months into the future which is very helpful during volatile economic times. The tools that we use to predict cash flow is a methodology based on QuickBooks and Excel created by our amazing accountant.
What are some of your best tips for building a lasting enterprise?
Curt Finch is the CEO of Journyx. Learn more about how Curt started his company here.
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