Category: Uncategorized Page 5 of 16

If you’re lucky enough to get approached by a big company that wants to buy yours, remember it is usually not choosing between buying you or buying your competitor.

It’s often choosing between buying you or setting up shop to compete with you. As soon as buying you becomes more expensive than competing with you, it’ll compete.

via www.theglobeandmail.com

Very important advice. Don't forget that folks that want into your business have three choices… Buy you. Partner with you. Compete with you.

If you an acquisition is too expensive, you might just find that you have a new competitor. As the author suggests… Don't overplay your hand.

“Early to bed and early to rise/makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.” [Attributed to Ben Franklin, but really unknown.]

It turns out, not only is this old bromide not accurate, it may be just the opposite. In two recent studies (one of which is abstracted on the net, the other one is not) by the University of Liege and by a Japanese researcher Kanazawa (here is the link to the Liege abstract) night owls are actually better able to handle a day than the “larks,” who are up at the crack of dawn each morning. And according to Kanazawa’s study, they are, generally speaking, people of higher intelligence than the “morning people.” Both studies also showed that night owls tend to get more work done, and resist the pressure to sleep better than the larks.

via www.careerealism.com

Fascinating!

Two years ago hackers stole $5.2 million from the online account of Experi-Metal, a 135-employee metal products manufacturer in Sterling Heights, Mich. The bank, Comerica (CMA), got nearly 90 percent of the money back, but said the unrecoverable $561,000 was Experi-Metal’s problem because the company had allowed a computer to be infected. “The fraud department at Comerica said, ‘What’s wrong with you? How could you let this happen?’ ” says Valiena A. Allison, Experi-Metal’s chief executive officer. The company sued to recover the money, and in June a U.S. District Court judge in Detroit found that Comerica’s response didn’t meet standards of good faith and fair dealing. Comerica agreed to pay almost the entire amount. (The bank declined to comment, beyond saying that the matter was resolved.)

Cybercrooks are stealing as much as $1 billion a year from the accounts of small and midsize companies in the U.S. and Europe, according to estimates from Dell SecureWorks (DELL), a security arm of the PC maker. Overseas gangs target small commercial accounts protected by rudimentary security measures at community or regional banks. The accounts typically aren’t covered by fraud insurance, as individual accounts are, and businesses often find themselves on the hook for losses.

via www.businessweek.com

This is scary. Please be careful out there. Wow!

What do customers really want? Answer: Customers want simple solutions to complex problems.

Unfortunately, complex, thorny problems usually don't have simple, easy answers — and when they do, they're of the simple-but-hard-and-painful variety.

A lot of good companies lose sales to less-conscientious competitors — competitors who are more comfortable over-simplifying and (often) over-promising.

Good business owners frequently find themselves in a quandary: do they also engage in their competitors' pernicious brand of deceit, or continue telling the truth and losing their shirts in the marketplace?

via www.wilsonweb.com

Complexity is a difficult challenge for marketers, but is also an opportunity. If you can find a way to communicate simplicity, you will acquire more customers and advocates, and others will more easily spread your message via word of mouth.

This article provides three thoughts on how you might tackle complexity. Good read.

More than 100 studies have now found that the most engaged employees — those who report they're fully invested in their jobs and committed to their employers — are significantly more productive, drive higher customer satisfaction and outperform those who are less engaged.

But only 20 per cent of employees around the world report that they're fully engaged at work.

It's a disconnect that serves no one well. So what's the solution? Where is the win-win for employers and employees?

The answer is that great employers must shift the focus from trying to get more out of people, to investing more in them by addressing their four core needs — physical, emotional, mental and spiritual — so they're freed, fueled and inspired to bring the best of themselves to work every day.

via blogs.hbr.org

Certainly, these are terrific attributes worthy of aspiration. I am not sure how practical all of these things are for many companies, but clearly, employees would value these things.

Interesting article.

“UKnow.com’s uKnowKids service is a parenting tool, really a parental intelligence system — kind of like business intelligence for the CEO of the household. We help parents keep their kids safe from online bullies and bad guys. We focus on social media and mobile technology and give parents the information they need about their kids’ online activities to take action if necessary.

“Kids receive an average of 100 text messages a day, and 80 percent say they sleep with their phone so they don’t miss a text.

“The uKnow.com portal allows parents to log in to a dashboard where they can see their child’s digital activities — everything from texts to Facebook posts. The child knows it’s there because he or she provides the appropriate passwords. The idea is to engage with the child. We datamine for changes in behavior or new information. Parents may not want, or have the time, to read every text, but they may want to know if their child’s interactions with a specific contact spike or decline suddenly or if there are risky activities occurring, such as sending a large amount of photos to a new contact. UKnow.com sends an e-mail alert, which they can use to intervene as necessary.

via www.washingtonpost.com

A nice article about my latest venture in the Washington Post.

Does college get entrepreneurs ready for success? Or, is starting a business straight away a viable alternative for those who don't want to slog through four years of higher education?

This question came to mind after recently perusing a small-business-focused infographic from the credit-card comparison site CreditDonkey. Among the fun facts about entrepreneurship in the graphic: Just over half of business owners have a college degree, according to recently released survey data from the U.S. Census Bureau.

This stat is particularly interesting because it would seem that entrepreneurs, on a whole, tend to have more education than the general public. Of the American labor force, fewer than half of workers don't have a degree — 25 percent have only a high school diploma while another 19 percent attended but didn't graduate from college, according to the Census Bureau.

It may be a chicken-and-egg question, but I'm betting that somewhere along the way the egg cracked and yoke got all over the place.

via www.entrepreneur.com

The correlation between entrepreneurial success and education has always interested me. As a young man, many folks told me that I was crazy to go get a MBA at Wharton if I was simply going to be an entrepreneur after graduation.

Going to Wharton was an amazing experience, for me, and I credit Wharton for much of what I have accomplished as an entrepreneur. I would not change my decisions here.

Having said that, many folks have benefited from just jumping in. I personally believe that having an education is an awesome safety net that allows you take entrepreneurial risks with the peace of mind that you won't be homeless if things don't work out as planned. That is important obviously.

What do you think?

Many professional athletes have incentive-laden contracts based on performance.

Last month, NFL quarterback Michael Vick signed a new $100 million contract with the Philadelphia Eagles, making him one of the highest paid athletes in football. When the contract amount was announced, it was not immediately apparent (unless you dug a little deeper) that only $40 million is actually guaranteed. This "base pay" is only 40% of the compensation package, leaving 60% at risk, based on performance. In even simpler terms: for every $1 of base pay Vick can earn an extra $1.50 based on results.

This ratio provides the proper risk versus reward for both parties. Vick will earn his whopping $100 million only if he stays healthy enough to lead the team for the next six years and only if he achieves certain on-field results. The variable amount in his contract must be "re-earned" each year. This demonstrates that organizations are willing to pay a high premium for great performance.

via www.fastcompany.com

I love it. Pay for performance models benefit from positive selection because only the best performers are willing to put their pay at risk in return for higher returns. This is signaling at its best!

Ever since the U.S. got a credit downgrade in August, the stock markets have been bouncing up and down like a pinball. At this point, the volatility has persisted long enough to raise concerns that this year's healthy crop of planned initial public offerings could go into a holding pattern or even fade away.

This would be bad news for companies seeking venture capital, too. No IPO paydays means less cash in venture capitalists's pockets to reinvest in your business.

Market uncertainty makes companies cancel or postpone IPOs, as investors don't want to end up with poor returns. The timing of the current market craziness is crummy, as 202 companies have filed to go public so far this year and are considered "in the pipeline," IPO analyst firm Renaissance Capital reports. That's the most companies waiting in the IPO wings in a decade.

So companies have finally gotten up the gumption to try the public markets again. And now this.

via www.entrepreneur.com

Crucial stuff. We need to keep an eye on how this IPO pipeline pans out over the next 6 months.

New businesses are getting off the ground with nearly half as many workers as they did a decade ago, as the spread of online tools and other resources enables start-ups to do more with less.

The change, which began before the recession, may be permanent, according to some analysts.

via online.wsj.com

With my first venture in 2000, buySAFE, we raised millions of dollars of financing before writing our first line of code. With my most recent venture, uKnow.com, we built our product, acquired bunches of customers, and earned hundreds of thousands in revenue well before we ever started our Series A fundraise.

Why? Because you can do more with less these days. Good stuff.