Business Cards: Still the Preferred Networking Tool

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First adopted in China over half a century ago, business cards are still commonly used today to exchange contact information. It may seem primitive in this day and age where technology has taken over most of our social interactions, but simply no app has truly been able to replace the business card. How can that be?

First off, apps can be cumbersome as both parties need to have the app in order to exchange the information. Their lack of popularity can be attributed to the following catch 22: nobody downloads the app because it is useless, and it is useless because nobody downloads it! Second, a trading off a business card leaves either party free to connect if they’d like to – but there is no obligation. However, adding one another on Facebook can be awkward as you may not precisely remember another’s name off the top of your head, or you may find it awkward to unfriend them after you completely lose touch.

This is not to say that people have given up on trying to develop apps in order to replace the business card, but none have succeeded. With other updates to the business card such as QR Codes, Social Media handles and high quality photos – we won’t be switching over any time soon. After all, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!

Read the whole article in the Washington Post here.

4 Things to Know Before Working for a Startup

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Between the struggle to find work right out of college and the glamorized lifestyle, startups are becoming an attractive option to millennials who are heading out of college. The culture is often seen as a work-hard play-hard environment where power lunches are followed by extravagant outings at night clubs in big city centers. But the truth is most startups take hundred hour weeks to get going, and are often difficult to get paid from. Here are some of the key things to know when you’re thinking about working for one:

Success Won’t Happen Overnight: “The best-kept secret in the startup world is that there is no such thing as an overnight success,” wrote George Bradt, founder of executive onboarding group PrimeGenesis in an article for Forbes. “Success typically takes six to seven years — if you survive the first three.”

Entrepreneurship Comes From Within: Being your own boss may sound great, but you’ll have to wear many hats on your road to success. From learning to code to becoming a proper salesman – you’ll be on top of many things at once.

You Don’t Have to Do it All Yourself: Don’t be afraid to outsource some things that other companies will be doing better and cheaper in order to make your company’s product better.

Funding is Hard Work: Securing funding from any source is a true challenge, and entrepreneurs today are further into debt than any other generation.

Ultimately, starting your own business can be one of the most rewarding things you can do in life. But be prepared to face the risks, uncertainty, and high probability of failure when you jump in, especially at a young age. Make no mistake – there is no such things as overnight success: it takes years of extreme persistence and refining your business in order to achieve success; be prepared for the challenges ahead.

 

Read the full article in The Huffington Post here.

Google vs Apple: Tech Giants Duke it Out to Serve You Better

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With Google and Apple in a perpetual war to provide you with their tech goods, what is even worth paying attention to anymore? Will any of their new products or features really save you time? Here are a few new features the tech giants have announced, and how they may prove useful to your business and personal life:

Apple:

  • Siri Spotlight: “Suggests people to contact based on future meetings or nearby businesses. It will also find gas stations once you’re near the rental-car office,” as it gathers data on your patterns and behaviors to better serve you.
  • Traffic: Apple will phone tap traffic signals to let you know the most optimal time to be leaving your meeting in order to make it to your next endeavor before getting caught in the traffic or rain.
  • Privacy: Apple’s devices will know a lot about you, but Apple won’t as personal data will never leave your device.

Google:

  • Google Now: Have content from emails and messages instantly become entries on your calendar. Receive an email to meet a certain deadline? Set a reminder with just a single tap.
  • User Data: While Google doesn’t sell your info, it does use it to target to your for paying advertisers. If this makes you uncomfortable, you many want to opt out.
  • Invasive, but Helpful: Google is counting on using your data to best serve you and save you time. But how much it peeks into your data may be off-putting to certain users.

Overall, both giants are looking to save you time and money, but ultimately it may come down to how much of your privacy you are willing to give up in order to receive the best service. Is the convenience worth giving all your information over to Big Brother? That is for you to decide.

Click here for the full article in The Wall Street Journal

The Technicalities of a ‘Tech’ Startup

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With “tech startups” being everyone’s favorite buzzword – are we simply diluting the term? “Tech” startups like Uber and Airbnb (yes, they are still labeled as startups) are taking over the world,  but what about them makes them a “Tech” company? Of course, technology is a key part of how they do business, but that is true of any company. The truth lies at the core of the word “tech” and what people associate with it: research, innovation, and long term thinking, not necessarily just producing hardware or software. The chief economist at Moody Analytics, Mark Zandi, suggests that the label of “tech” sends the message “you want to work for me. You want to buy things from me at a higher price. You want to give me capital at a lower cost.”

Ultimately, is the classification of “tech” just marketing? Likely so. Alex Payne, an early Twitter engineer and tech investor, wrote in 2012: “Calling practically all growing contemporary businesses ‘technology companies’ is about as useful as calling the enterprises of the industrial era ‘factory companies.’ ” Would calling Uber a transportation startup or Airbnb a hospitality startup be as exciting? Likely not. What is sure is that “tech startups” are looking to revolutionize your way of life no matter what industry they’re doing it through.

Read the full article in the New York Times here.

 

3 Tips to Keep Your Start-Up Afloat

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Here at Voice of Reason, we are no strangers to start ups and start up culture. We see many of them rise and fall, and we know it takes much more than just hard work to really see success. Proper strategy and business will drive results within your company. Here are a few tips to ensure your business is headed in the right direction:

  • Know Your Target Market: Understand your customer and know what matters to them. Knowing what they want from your product is key to delivering what they need.
  • Have a Sound Business Model: Proper strategy for value creation and capture will ensure sustainability in your business. Dumping money into unnecessary products and services will hurt your bottom line.
  • Make Sound, Rational Decisions: It is important to be passionate and dedicated to your business, but ensure your decision making is based on hard data, and not your emotions. Too often charismatic leaders will bring their company to ruins because of ideas that should have been altered or even terminated completely.

Running your own business is one of the most challenging endeavors anyone could possibly take on, but with proper guidance, rationale, and hard work, your business will prosper. Know your customer, understand the value your business creates, and success will follow.

Click here to read the full article in Stanford Business

3 Misconceptions About the Internet That Are Costing You Money

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There is no way your business can avoid using the internet, and understanding its users is key to gearing your product towards your audience. Many business owners tend to keep with tradition and will disregard all the business they’re missing online as they don’t see their customers as online shoppers. But the truth is that there is much to be gained from being online, and there are plenty of shoppers who can’t wait to have your product conveniently delivered to them.  Here are a few misconceptions that many companies have while they’re on the internet:

  • I Can Only Reach Young People: Though it’s often tech savvy millennials who are credited for owning the internet, people of all ages are using the internet now more than ever. While young people were quicker to adopt the internet, this simply isn’t the case anymore. Over 58% of seniors are online today!
  • It’s a Boys Club: Internet usage has reached gender parity, with 85% of men and 84% of women using the internet.
  • My Product is Too High End to be Sold Online: People who are online are much more likely to have attended college. Also, though the gap may have narrowed, there are still far more people on the internet who earn over $75,000 than people who earn below $30,000. This means any product will have plenty of potential customers online!

If you ignore the vast amount of customers waiting for you online, they will simply go to your competitors instead. Don’t let preconceived notions of what you think about the Internet hinder your business. Take advantage of what’s offered online by having a Search Engine Optimized (SEO) website, engaging your customers on social media, and generating sales via an e commerce suite on your website.

See the full article with graphs here.

Google’s Race to Stay on Top

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A key component of any business is a company’s website, and Search Engine Optimization, or SEO for short, is key to getting that website seen by customers. Google is the world’s premier search engine, and Amit Singhal is the man responsible for the 200+ factors that determine your website’s ranking in the search engine. Amit also keeps track of incoming trends, and how to adapt Google’s software to reflect changes in the way people look up their information. What someone may have asked a search engine 5 years ago is vastly different from what will be asked today, and it’s Amit’s job to ensure Google is optimally responding to a user’s search query.

How can you ensure that your own business remains up to date? Having your website optimized for mobile is key to being relevant and ranking high in the search engine’s results. With a surge in mobile users on both phone and tablet, a website that doesn’t read well on a phone will not fare well with Google’s algorithms. Quick load times and relevant information are always important, as people want responsive sites with the information they need so they can put their phone down and get on with whatever they were doing.

As a search engine, it is Google’s purpose to deliver exactly what the user needs as soon as possible, and Amit’s job to make sure Google keeps doing that as well as it possibly can. With so many startups being acquired by both Google and now Apple, Google cannot take its position as the #1 search engine for granted. Startups with algorithms for apps and music are appearing, and Google’s ability to adapt to that change will determine its relevance in the decades to come.

 

Read the full article in The New York Times here.

Unicorn – Magical, Mythical, and a Billion Dollars? Is There a Better Word?

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“Unicorn” is a term in Silicon Valley to describe a company whose net worth has exceeded one billion dollars. Meant to encompass the mystery and excitement of such an explosive venture, Aileen Lee of Cowboy Ventures developed the term to describe firms like Uber and Airbnb which at one time looked like long shots but are now valued in excess of a billion dollars. But with 117 so-called “Unicorns” in the past decade, those firms may actually not be as rare as perceived.

In a social sphere already filled with so much nonsensical jargon, is Silicon Valley simply making buzz words for fun? Probably. But for those who work with startups, interacting with a unicorn is rare enough to merit the title, as fewer than 1% of venture-backed firms end up with the label. So what do you think – is a company valued at billion dollars worth calling a unicorn or is Silicon Valley just clinging onto yet another buzzword?

Read the full article in the New York Times here.

The Price on Your Privacy

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What lengths would you go to in order to avoid having your information sold to a company? You consent to having your information used by Facebook, Hulu, and other web sites in order for them to optimize your experience. But what if a web site gets sold? Well your information now belongs to that new company and guess what: they can use it however they’d like! Many sites state that they will not sell your information to anyone. For example, Nest, an internet-connected thermostat company purchased by Google for $3.2 Billion currently states that your information is not for sale and does not sell its customer list to third person parties. However, how much can you trust the service once it gets bought?

The information being sold can be extremely valuable in targeting you as it is extremely personal. For example, a Texas-based dating company by the name of Truth.com had information on 42 million of its customers’ names, birth dates, sexual orientation, race, religion, criminal convictions, photos, videos, contact information and more. When the company was sold, the state of Texas had to intervene and stop it from using the data gathered from all of its customers as it had promised to protect customer privacy in the user agreement. Because of cases like this, companies are rushing to weaken the language protecting your privacy, and making it easier to be sold. Does a company selling your information bother you? If so, you should consider reading the Terms and agreements before you decide to give your information away.

Read the full story in The New York Times here.

The Key to Entrepreneurship: Patience and Discipline

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The New York Times’ Adam Bryant sat down with Jim Dolce, CEO of mobile security firm Lookout, to ask him about his experience in leadership, and what has led him to his success. As a seasoned entrepreneur, Dolce attributes his patience and company’s structure to his success. Here are a few key points from the interview:

  • On being patient in a fast paced environment: “It takes discipline … When you’re impatient, you attempt to get something done so that you can then, in serial fashion, go to the next thing. Instead, you have to go wide and work multiple issues at the same time and be patient on each of them.”
  • Accountability in Corporate Culture: “If we’re pushing down responsibility into the organization and empowering people to make decisions, then there has to be accountability. Otherwise, you’re just delivering the empowerment into a black hole.”
  • What He’s Learned From Being a Serial Entrepreneur: “When you’re working in a venture-funded start-up, time is of the essence. Investors get impatient. So the lesson there is that real breakthrough innovation is best achieved a step at a time. Technology is something that can be consumed in small bites. You don’t have to take a big bite all at once. “
  • What Advice Would You Give to Would-Be Entrepreneurs? “Make sure you know what you’re getting yourself into and know that this is going to be hard and there’s going to be a lot of heavy lifting and there’s going to be a lot of disappointment.”

Becoming an entrepreneur involves a lot of hard work, stress, and uncertainty. However, there are fewer things more rewarding in life than having your own business succeed. Through patience and realistic expectations, discipline and accountability, you too can find success with your firm.

For the full article on The New York Times click here.