How Facebook will take over the rest of the world in 2012. It’s hard to believe that in 2009, Facebook was insignificant compared to the rest of social media. Even harder to fathom is that one year later, Facebook asserted its dominance and became the undeniable leader of the social landscape, representing more than 50 percent of all time spent on social websites. It wasn’t certain whether Facebook’s fame would be fleeting, especially in the wake of privacy concerns, but in 2011, this doubt was put to bed when Facebook became the only social platform that mattered. Facebook now represents 95 percent of the time spent on social services and boasts nearly one in seven of the world’s population as users. Facebook’s dominance in social makes Google’s dominance in search look like child’s play. The question for 2012 is whether or not any other company with skin in the social game can matter again. Both Twitter and Google+ have released new versions to compete with Facebook, even on the brand-focused Pages side.
Facebook marketing is more than fluff. Should Startups Focus on Profitability or Not? There are certain topics that even some of the best journalists can’t fully grok. One of them is profitability. I find it amusing when a journalist writes an article about a prominent startup (either privately held or preparing for an IPO) and decries that, “They’re not even profitable!” I mention journalists here because they perpetuate the myth that focusing on profits is ALWAYS the right answer and then I hear many entrepreneurs (and certainly many “normals”) repeating the same mantra.
There is a healthy tension between profits & growth. To grow faster businesses need resources in today’s financial period to fund growth that may not come for 6 months to a year. The most obvious way to explain this is with sales people. If you hire 6 sales reps in January at $120,000 / year salary then you’ve taken on an extra $60,000 per month in costs yet these sales people might not close new business for 4-6 months.
Hiring more people isn’t always the right answer. Exec Summary: As I like to say, Huh? How Many Hours Should a Startup Employee Work? Every so often I get drawn into the debate about startup employees and how much they should work. Should you hire workaholics? Is it expected that startup employees work 100+ hours per week? Should they be online all the time, constantly available and ready to go? It depends. And it’s up to you. But it got me thinking… One of the big problems I’m seeing with a startup’s expectations for “hours worked” is that they use it as a metric of employee quality and success. We need to think about other measurable indicators of an employee’s quality and value.
I’m not arguing against a startup’s need to move insanely fast. Image courtesy of shutterstock. The big businesses learning how to think small. 14 October 2011Last updated at 00:08 By Dave Lee Technology Reporter, BBC News In times gone by, marketing was all about massive names and expensive campaigns "We're the biggest start-up on the planet. " Of the many quotes recited in the days following the untimely death of Steve Jobs, it is perhaps that one, told to a conference in 2008, that resonates most with the many businesses admirable of Apple's success. His insistence on "no committees" and talking to everyone at least once a week was, he said, enough to keep Apple focused, efficient and successful.
For big corporations, with their vast resources and bewildering bureaucracy, operating with the attitude of a technology start-up is at once terrifying and yet also a distant dream. "Start-ups try, they fail, they adapt, they move on. They try, they fail, they adapt, they move on," muses Ian Ellington, general manager of Walker's Crisps, part of global giant PepsiCo. Nimble Continue reading the main story “Start Quote It's infectious. Ten things top entrepreneurs do differently. Often, entrepreneurs are characterized as the “rock stars” of the business world. This romantic vision is appealing but, like most stereotypes, a far cry from reality. So, what makes a good entrepreneur great? There’s no entrepreneurship gene. But a new Ernst & Young survey shows leading entrepreneurs do share common traits, beliefs and approaches that empower them to drive innovation – and economies – around the world. 1. They’re made, not born Fifty-eight per cent of entrepreneurs we surveyed have “transitioned” to entrepreneurship, and one-third say their experience as an employee enabled them to build a successful enterprise of their own. 2.
More than three-quarters of Canadian respondents are mentoring other entrepreneurs in some form. 3. Accessing funding is the top challenge facing entrepreneurs today, and a real stumbling block to startup success. 4. 5. All founders of growing companies face a central decision: do they desire wealth or hands-on involvement? 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 10 reasons to start a company (and 10 not to) (Editor’s note: Megan Lisa Jones is an investment banker who works primarily with companies in the digital media, technology, gaming and other emerging industries. She submitted this story to VentureBeat.) Eye-popping valuations and media hype make the idea of starting a company more tempting than ever. LinkedIn recently went public and now has a valuation north of $7 billion; Facebook is currently at over $70 billion and was even the star of a movie.
Startup conferences and competitions abound, and it seems like venture capitalists are just throwing money at early stage companies.It’s a far cry from 2009. (And, as I’ve argued before, even further from 1999.) But that doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s a good time to start a company. I have my biases. Now, with start-ups hot again, I’m hearing about bidding wars—for engineers and tenuous or incomplete business plans. Ignore it all. Great companies will always be great companies. But some absolutes do exist.
Ten reasons to start: 1. 2. 3. Is There A Peak Age for Entrepreneurship? Editor’s note: Adeo Ressi, is the founder of The Founder Institute and TheFunded.com In this guest post he argues against ageism when it comes to to entrepreneurs. Ressi is 39. The recent articles proclaiming that 25 is the peak age for entrepreneurship deserve a considered and factual response. The demographic and racial profiling that has plagued venture capital and tech entrepreneurship has a new friend—ageism. This has to stop. Anecdotal Evidence: It does not take but one minute to look around the world and prove any thesis of a peak tech founder age incorrect. A commonly held belief is that younger founders appear to inspire waves of innovation, like in the mid-1990s and even today with Facebook, while older entrepreneurs launch sustainable businesses.
Anecdotal data is at best inconclusive. In some cases, older entrepreneurs paired up with the younger founders, like Google (Larry Page and Sergey Brin were both age 25 in 1998, and Eric Schmidt was age 46 in 2001). Factual Data: Derek Sivers: How to start a movement.