Starting a new company is exciting. Building a company is thrilling. Seeing your idea grow and take off is exhilarating. Reality, on the other hand, can hit you as hard as a pro-bowl NFL linebacker. When you’re starting up a new venture, you must start with the premise that nothing will go exactly as planned. Projects will…
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Paul Lee is the founder of Ximplar, a startup that creates spreadsheet software for businesses and hearing enhancement technology. Raised in Hong Kong until he crossed the ocean to attend the University of Michigan, Lee worked on startups in Silicon Valley and New York until 2007. I previously covered Lee’s thoughts on why startups aren’t…
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If leaders could only see ourselves through the eyes of others, we might understand why a recent Conference Board study found that less than 1/2 of US workers are happy with their jobs. It’s easy to see the faults of others and difficult to confront our own. So here’s a list of 10 signs that you…
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Startups are becoming trendy in the United States – so trendy that a controversial piece in the Washington Post chided entrepreneurs for their Hollywood mentality. But in the financial center of Hong Kong, startup founder is not a job title to brag about. “Hong Kong is still very very conservative and very, very risk averse,”…
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If you’re a fan of Instagram, chances are you’ll love YongoPal. In Craig Mod’s words, the newly-released iPhone app is like “Instagram meets awesome, smartly implemented pen pal-like language learning.” Part of 500 Startups, the app is all about exploring different cultures through daily photo missions and text-based interactions. Two people are matched up based…
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Management theorists profess the value of personality assessments, like Myers Briggs, as useful hiring and team-building tools. If you are not familiar with them, these tools are helpful for assessing a person’s ability to perform in specific roles. Personality testing can ensure that companies have a well coordinated team, and it helps managers assess if they have…
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We learn more from our failures than we do from our successes. As a turnaround executive, I had the opportunity to get hyper-experienced in failure at hyper speed. All those good-companies-gone-bad passed on scars, wisdom, and greatly enhanced the level of crankiness. My experience with corporate tragedy has taught me that the number one reason companies…
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Tagged is a San Francisco based social network focused on social discovery. They want to help people to meet and socialize with new people. So it was no surprise when they offered free rides from the airport for people while at South by Southwest. A great marketing idea for connecting with people at a festival…
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Culture is becoming more and more a part of the everyday conversation when it comes to starting and running a business. Culture – we’re not talking about what’s hot in pop culture or which celebrities are getting married to whom, but more the large cultural shifts that are happening within organizations. Mark Drapeau of Microsoft…
Read MoreNo Worries I’m running a small company with headquarters in Denver and Brisbane, Australia. I’m currently in Brisbane with my Australian software engineering team and we’re discussing the importance of our next release. Our company has already burned through $64 million of other people’s money, and our largest, most important strategic partner and investor has stopped…
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We partnered with Delivering Happiness leads Jenn Lim and Tony Hsieh to produce a video series where we talked with thought leaders, creatives and innovators. The Delivering Happiness movement stemmed from the book that Tony wrote and we previously reviewed, which then turned into a tour and now the movement. The Delivering Happiness book moved…
Read MoreSarah Hatter is the founder of CoSupport, a company that helps web and mobile app companies with their customer support. Sarah used to work in customer support at 37signals. CoSupport provides a personal support team, providing customer support for your apps. The product draws its inspirations from her old 37signals teammates David Heinemeier Hansson and…
Read MoreQuick! Name the 5 items on the right and describe how they are used. Bad news for those who got all 5 answers correct. You’re an old dog! Archeologists and sociologists mourn the loss of culture, artwork, forgotten science, and dead languages, so they were excited when the Rosetta Stone was discovered. As an archeological find of significant importance, it…
Read MoreAs CTO of Threadless, Harper Reed helped grow the community-based company that prints designs created and chosen by users from 2 barely functioning servers to over 45 devices. He also helped Threadless produce a revenue of over $20 million. Reed has since moved on from Threadless and is working on his own secret startup. Harper…
Read MoreIn the hip Gaslamp Quarter of San Diego, the streets are filled with restaurants, bars, cafes and coffee shops which bring energy to the community. But above the buzz of the streets, OpenCandy has been doing business since 2008. With it’s hip new office in downtown San Diego which oozes with startup energy, freedom and…
Read MoreI was a big fan of Tim Ferriss’s first book The 4 Hour Work Week as it offered some tips and tricks on how to escape the 9 to 5 for a lifestyle of freedom and pleasure. The 4 Hour Work Week was a New York Times Bestseller and since then Tim has been busy…
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There are a number of startup accelerator and incubator programs in the United States. We are fans of these programs (not to be confused with... Read More
Two months after the iPad 2 debuted in March, around 40% of users surveyed said their iPad was their primary computer, up from around 30%... Read More
With our Startup Mixology Conference coming up next week followed by our classic Tech Cocktail DC Summer mixer which will showcase a handful of early-stage... Read More
Coming off of one of our biggest Tech Cocktail mixer events in Chicago this past week, which showcased 14 early-stage start-ups, we thought it would... Read More