background preloader

Business

Facebook Twitter

Six Deadly Security Blunders Businesses Make. Small, subtle mistakes can lead to big security breaches Sometimes it's the unknown or overlooked little mistakes that leave an organization wide open to attack: a missing hash mark in a server configuration, a long-forgotten PBX user account, or an embedded Web server in an office printer. With compliance pressures, increasingly cagey malware, and the fear of being the next front-page data breach victim, it's no wonder that enterprises might not notice potential problems with their lower-profile devices, or make subtle configuration mistakes. Even so, ignorance is no excuse when the bad guys hone in on an inconspicuous weakness, like a few older, rarely used desktops that haven't been updated with the latest patches. It takes only one weak link for an attacker to gain a foothold into an organization and steal valuable data, or set up shop for long-term cyberespionage.

Spooked yet? 1 of 7 More Insights. The 6-Step Method To Making A Hugely Successful Product : Innovation ::... Is Starting A Business Safer Than Your Job? [Infographic] | Lendio - StumbleUpon. What's Better - Getting a Job or Starting a Business? With a slow economy, many people have turned to entrepreneurship as a means to pay the bills. Which begs the question, what’s better today — getting a job or starting a business? We dug deep to find out the numbers and have compared the risk of starting a business to keeping a job.

If you’ve ever thought about starting your own company, take a look at our graphic below to help decide if entrepreneurship is right for you. What do you think? Small Business Loans Made Simple Create a Free Lendio Account Overview “Laid off? “True entrepreneurs reduce risk to the point that action becomes quite logical.” Unemployment Rate: 9.1% 26% of North American workers are self-employedIn 2008 on average 2,356 people went into business for themselves every day.Their ventures accounted for 78% of U.S. businesses SELF-EMPLOYMENT There are only four paths toward business ownership: Among the fastest-growing industries are: Reemployment figures: To reduce risk:

Rules - StumbleUpon. The Power Of The Mind: How To Train Yourself To Be More Successful :... How can you use the latest discoveries in brain science to improve your life? Here are some techniques. November 02, 2011 Leadership tycoon Warren Bennis once said, “We seem to collect information because we have the ability to do so, but we are so busy collecting it that we haven’t devised a means of using it.

The true measure of any society is not what it knows but what it does with what it knows.” There is a wealth of information at our disposal today on the latest discoveries in brain science. While we enjoy reading about these findings and expanding our intellect, how many of us actually apply these concepts? We can either drown in this information or turn it into a lifesaver by extracting its practical knowledge. Use visualization to learn a new skill Neuroplasticity is the ability of the brain to continuously create new neural pathways. In a Harvard University study, two groups of volunteers were presented with a piece of unfamiliar piano music. Smile to improve your mood Parker J. Bootstrapping a Startup - Business Exchange - StumbleUpon. BGN Entrepreneur & Turbulent Markets Derail EMI Sale.

21 Books Every Entrepreneur Should Read. Simon Sinek: How great leaders inspire action. How to Make a Demo Video for Your Startup (Video) Raising money is a black swan &045; Venture Hacks. Nivi · December 9th, 2008 Raising money is like finding a black swan. It seems like you will forever keep hearing “no”, “let’s keep talking”, or “find a lead.” Or worse, you sign a term sheet and it blows up before you can close it. It seems like you’ll never raise money, until one day—boom—you meet the right investor, he says yes, you negotiate a deal, and suddenly there’s money in your bank account. What’s a black swan? A black swan is a highly improbable, high impact, and unpredictable event. 9/11 was a black swan. Once you see enough white swans, you start assuming all swans are white—until you see a black one.

The nos don’t matter. The chances of raising money are low. (The exception to this rule are the chosen ones: “obviously” fundable companies that are founded by successful entrepreneurs, companies that are making money by the truck load, or have cured cancer, or whatever.) There will be no precedent for a yes. If you’re looking for a black swan, ignore the nos. 1. 2. 3. “Thanks. 12 Brawny Business Intelligence Products For SMBs -- InformationWeek. Business intelligence isn't just for the big boys anymore.

Check out our short list of star SMB options, from easy-to-deploy SaaS choices to affordable versions of the biggest BI suites. 1 of 14 12 Brawny Business Intelligence Options For SMBsBusiness intelligence started out as a technology geared to large organizations with big budgets and plenty of IT support. The good news for small and midsize businesses is that BI has gone mainstream and that trend has led to plenty of low-cost, easy-to-deploy, and easy-to-manage BI options. There are desktop-analysis tools that enable power users to distribute reports, dashboards, and data visualizations across your organization. There are quick-to-deploy software-as-a-service-based systems that can growth with your organization.

Working smarter--not harder--is what business intelligence is all about. Midmarket CIOs Rate Analytics As Top To-Do Item 5 Factors In Agile BI Cost, IT Support Top BI Obstacles For SMBs What's Next In Analytics More Insights. How Fewer Working Hours Can Save Our Health, Economy, and the Planet |... September 9, 2011 | Like this article? Join our email list: Stay up to date with the latest headlines via email. Millions of Americans have lost control over the basic rhythm of their daily lives. They work too much, eat too quickly, socialize too little, drive and sit in traffic for too many hours, don’t get enough sleep, and feel harried too much of the time. Imagining a world in which jobs take up much less of our time may seem utopian, especially now, when a scarcity mentality dominates the economic conversation. But fewer work hours for people with jobs is a key step toward solving the unemployment crisis—while giving Americans healthier lives.

Today, driven both by necessity and the deliberate choice to live simply, more Americans are shifting toward fewer work hours. Finding Time Economists today focus solely on growth as a mechanism for job creation. The grueling schedules of the 19th century undermined health and prevented people from achieving what we now call quality of life. Grasshopper - The Entrepreneurs Phone System. The Benefits of Top-Down Thinking & Why it is Critical to Entrepreneurs... For the first 5 years of my career I was a “bottom up” thinker and worker. I assembled tons of data, grouped things, found results and drew conclusions. It was difficult to make the transition to a “top down” thinker but as a senior executive – and as an entrepreneur – you’re far less effective without this skill in your arsenal.

You need to be able to structure problems / solutions at the appropriate level to communicate effective and drive decision-making. The difference is in formulating hypothesis then testing conclusions / data vs. assembling data and finding patterns. I know it might sound a bit esoteric so let me explain: I started my career as a programmer. We did big, boring but necessary implementations for large companies. In billing we literally started thinking about all of the types of bills that would be generated for customers: full payment, partial payment, split payment, senior discount, student discount, level pay plan, etc. Heresy. I know it sounds exceedingly easy. Cameron Herold: Let's raise kids to be entrepreneurs.

Five Skills You Need for Startup Success, According to Ethernet Inventor Bo... Ethernet inventor and generally accomplished tech super-guy Bob Metcalfe gave a great opening keynote talk at this morning's Capital Factory Demo Day in Austin, Texas. The event has been good so far and is live streaming online for free. Metcalfe offered a wide ranging talk to open the day but included some tasty tidbits in the form of two lists: five personal skills that entrepreneurs need to develop in order to succeed in building tech companies that scale and six types of people a startup ecosystem needs to include in order to foster success. Five Skills Entrepreneurs Need Be healthy. Are startups all about pulling all nighters and eating ramen noodles?

Metcalfe said that the phrase people use for bringing in older, more experienced CEOs as "adult supervision" might be patronizing, but it's really about bringing in an infusion of human capital in the form of skills like the above. Who's hiring, and in a big way - Money Markets And More. 13 Business Books That Will Blow Your Mind. Having never taken a business class in college I find that I read and listen to a lot of business books to round out my education.

The books usually aren't "How to Manage Your Cash Flow" but rather get me to rethink the way I run my business, which--despite no business classes or diploma--continues to be in business 13 plus years after I started it. In that time, here are 13 of the books that had the biggest impact on how I run my business (in no particular order): Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel Pink: If you supervise anyone in your business, this book is a must read. It shows that what science knows about motivation, business isn't putting into practice. In fact, many of the incentives we create can actually de-motivate our employees. If you create an incentive program that provides financial rewards for work that your employees already enjoy, expect the results to be negative.

Quick Practical, Tactical Tips for Presentations. In the past I’ve given some tips for handling meetings effectively, covering topics like: - How not to let your meeting go down a rat hole; - Dealing with the elephant in the room; - Dealing with skeletons in your closet; - How to make meetings discussions, not “pitches” - A tale of two pitches (I eventually invested in the first company that pitched) Today’s post is a subtle one about positioning yourself in a presentation. This might be a VC meeting but also might just be a sales or biz dev meeting. It’s any meeting where you are in a small room and are being called on to present on some form of overhead slides 1. Sit closest to the projection screen – Many times a week I have entrepreneurs who do presentations for me and often I’m with some or all of my colleagues.

From witnessing all of these presentations I can tell you that there is a right place and a wrong place to sit. 2. I’ve lately been attending meetings with our shareholders (called LPs or limited partners). 3. 4. 5. 6. How to pick a co-founder &045; Venture Hacks. Naval · November 12th, 2009 Update: Also see our 40-minute interview on this topic. Picking a co-founder is your most important decision. It’s more important than your product, market, and investors. The ideal founding team is two individuals, with a history of working together, of similar age and financial standing, with mutual respect. One is good at building products and the other is good at selling them. The power of two Two is the right number — avoid the three-body problem.

One founder companies can work, against the odds (hello, Mark Zuckerberg). Two founders works because unanimity is possible, there are no founder politics, interests can easily align, and founder stakes are high post-financing. Someone you have history with You wouldn’t marry someone you’d just met. One builds, one sells The best builders can prototype and perhaps even build the entire product, end-to-end. The seller doesn’t have to be a “salesman” or “business guy”. Aligned motives required Don’t settle FAQs. 50 Inspiring Entrepreneur Startup Quotes.

Eight Questions To Ask Before You Start A Business. Are you thinking of starting a web business? Starting a PPC Management agency? Setting up your own site and selling things, or building a web publishing empire? Before you start, ask yourself the following eight questions.

The advantage of this Q&A is that you can quickly see if the idea you’re going to throw your money and soul into is likely to work. 1 . What Do You Do? Define what service the business provides. Try to focus. McDonalds could, no doubt, provide up-market meals, but they focus on selling quick, cheap food. That is what they do. 2. Who are your customers? Create a mental image of your typical customer. 3. What is your unique selling proposition? If your customers can buy the same services for less elsewhere, or more easily, they will. There is a tendency to model yourself on others.

This is not to say doing something wildly new or different is any guarantee of success. 4. This point is so important, it really should be number one. Businesses may have great ideas. 5. 6. 7. 8. Top 10 Traits Of Highly Successful People. Rating: 8.2/10 (185 votes cast) We have all read about people who are successful briefly. They win a gold medal, make a fortune, or star in one great movie and then disappear. …These examples do not inspire me! My focus and fascination is with people who seem to do well in many areas of life, and do it over and over through a lifetime.

In entertainment, I think of Paul Newman and Bill Cosby. In business, I think of Ben and Jerry (the ice cream moguls)…As a Naval Officer, husband, businessman, politician and now as a mediator and philanthropist on the world stage, Jimmy Carter has had a remarkable life. These are the people who inspire me! 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. These traits work together in combination, giving repeatedly successful people a huge advantage. This article was originally written by Philip Humbert and can be found here. Business Ideas for the Self Employed. Several years ago, I had a lovely long-term consulting assignment which kept me both busy and solvent. One morning I woke up and realized that it was coming to an end and I had nothing lined up. After a few moments of panic, I decided to get serious about creating my next income source. I didn’t have a great deal of time to devote to this, so I gave myself the challenge of finding a way to earn $100—an easily accomplished goal.

What I didn’t realize at the time, was that I had just created a new habit that has kept my business—and cash flow—moving smoothly along. Over time, I’ve learned that there are other benefits to this simple technique. For instance, I teach a seminar called “Making a Living Without a Job” throughout the United States and Canada. There’s an old saying, popularized by Robert Schuller, that goes, “By the inch, it’s a cinch. You can begin implementing the $100 Hour even if you now have a job or other commitments that clamor for your time. . . . . 10 YouTube Videos Every Entrepreneur Should Watch. Unsupported Browser. Today, we are excited to share that Identified has been acquired by Workday. This is an exciting outcome for everyone involved in Identified and we want to thank our team, Board of Directors, investors, customers, advisors, families and the other countless people that have supported us over the years. Waller Capital served as an exclusive advisor to Identified in this transaction.

Since we co-founded Identified out of a shared dorm room at Stanford University in 2010, we have assembled what we believe to be the best group of data scientists and engineers in the industry. This team has built technology that uses big data from the social web to uncover insights and relationships that change the way companies pursue talent, manage their workforces, and improve their competitiveness.

And so on behalf of all of us, we are thankful to Workday for believing in us and in the possibilities of what we can do together. Sincerely, Adeyemi Ajao & Brendan Wallace, co-Founders of Identified. All Revenue is Not Created Equal: The Keys to the 10X Revenue Club &... Mahendra Ramsinghani: What Every Entrepreneur Can Learn From Facebooks Early... How Training Employees Can Boost Sales - VerticalResponse. Fortune 100 Best Companies (Infographic) How to Write a Business Plan | Technology and Entrepreneurship Center at...

How To Make The Worlds Easiest $1 Billion.