Steve Woda's Blog

So you have the next great technology business idea, but you don't have a background in programming. You'll need to recruit a programmer who not only can design, write and test online and mobile code, but also share your passion and bring your vision to life. Your initial idea might be to hire a consultant or outsource those duties, but you may want to consider bringing on a software developer as a partner.

Hiring a software developer as an employee isn't always easy. Due to the proliferation of companies seeking web and mobile application developers, the best programmers are in high demand, says Amy Hoover, executive vice president and partner at Atlanta-based Talent Zoo, an advertising, marketing and technology recruitment service. And, if, like most startups, you don't have the resources to pay a great software engineer a salary on par with what a company like Google can pay, then you're probably at a disadvantage. Software engineer salaries in the U.S. can range from $53,000 to more than $140,000 per year, according to EngineerSalary.com. 

via www.entrepreneur.com

If you are a tech entrepreneur, but you don't know how to code, you are going to have to recruit a few folks to your cause to help you get your business up and running. This is not easy to do! I have been a tech entrepreneur for more than a decade and this is easily one of the greatest challenges for non-coders.

This article provides a few ideas for how to tackle the challenge. Good stuff.

Real leadership is about real stories.  This isn’t a study of real “world leaders” but instead a story about some “real world” leaders.

via www.thoughtleadersllc.com

This is a great article including a couple personal stories about leadership philosophies. We all need to have our philosophical approach to leadership. What are your stories?

The Kindle Fire is the tablet you need at the price you'll be willing to pay. The $199 device comes packed with content and features that are arguably better than what's available on the iPad, and at a fraction of the price. Wow.

Crucially, Amazon's powerful content library is already familiar and useful—many people already have dozens of Kindle books, for example. And Amazon has sneakily set its Prime members up with memberships that allow them to instantly stream thousands of movies and TV shows.

The device is light, can be held in one hand, and has a beautiful display. Not only that, Amazon built a special browser for it called Silk. Amazon is backing Silk with its Amazon Web Services cloud infrastructure, meaning the device does almost none of the processing. The idea is so brilliant I can't understand why no one tried it before*. Sites will load on Fire faster than they have on any other mobile device. Again, wow.

via www.technologyreview.com

Obviously, folks are excited about the Kindle Fire. It will be interesting to see if it can actually live up to the hype.

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.

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.