miércoles, 26 de noviembre de 2014

The three traits of a successful startup CEO (TechRepublic)

By  November 24, 2014

Being the CEO of a startup requires a distinct skill set. Here are three traits that differentiate startup CEOs from their corporate counterparts or other startup roles.
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Successful startup founders are a rare breed with a knack for finding ways to disrupt a market.
The team dynamic, especially among executive roles, plays a huge role in capturing the lightning in a bottle for startup success. For a startup team to triumph, it needs members with complementary skills that support one another as the business is built. With a small team, the lines are often blurred between certain roles and their responsibilities, but it is important to understand what separates these roles and how they should operate.
In startups, few roles are as misunderstood as that of the CEO. Often, a founder ends up assuming the CEO role, but that isn't the best course of action in every company. Startup CEOs need the same business acumen of their corporate contemporaries, in addition to a specific set of traits that are more startup-centric.
Here are three attributes that set apart startup CEOs from the rest of the pack.

1. Boldness

The first defining trait of a strong startup CEO is the the ability to act boldly. For a startup to be successful, it requires at leader at the helm who understands how quickly a startup must move to survive and eventually thrive.
"Start-up CEOs must be bold, both to make sure they have a better chance of any big success, but also to keep up with expectations," said Todd Krizelman, CEO of MediaRadar.
One example of these expectations, according to Krizelman, is that VC-backed companies are expected to be able to grow sales by at least 50% per year. Successful startup leaders, he argues, embrace this expectation and make the big moves necessary to meet it.
"As a startup CEO you need always to create new opportunities and situation. Constantly move on the field," said Adi Pinhas, CEO of Superfish.
This echoes the entrepreneurial spirit of carving your own path and making your own way. It's up to you to make it happen.
As Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson once tweeted: "When you walk up to opportunity's door - don't knock on it. Kick [it] in, smile and introduce yourself."

2. Adaptability

Leading a startup is a job that is equal parts proactive movement and reactive agility.
According to DoubleDutch CEO Lawrence Coburn, being adaptable allows the ability to make important iterations to your product or service.
"While a more established company may have set protocol for making changes and shifting course, we have the ability to be extremely nimble," Coburn said. "If we see that our customers are interacting with a certain feature in a particular way, we are able to make changes to improve upon that experience with incredibly fast turnaround."
Adaptability can lead to some of the important breakthroughs with your product and your customers, but it is also needed for when you play defense against the plethora of factors that could lead to the failure of your startup.
In a startup, nothing is certain. In a year, you can grow to a billion dollar valuation or you can flop. Startups typically have only one product or a small group of products and don't have anything else to fall back on. According to Pinhas, a good startup CEO can "manage and prepare for extreme situations."
Be the kind of person who crafts a contingency plan, and know how to shift your company's direction if that becomes a necessity.

3. Willingness to learn

Startups are built on disruption -- on changing the status quo and introducing a new way of doing things. As the chief disruptor in your company, there's no manual to reference as you come up against obstacles.
It would behoove you to learn as much as you can, as quickly as you can. Books and blogs are a good first resource, but they won't provide the full picture. Look for learning opportunities in every situation you find yourself in, even failure.
"A key trait of startup CEOs is the ability to bounce back from, and learn from, failure," Krizelman said. "Entrepreneurs are told that 'failure is great,' but in practice no one wants to fail."
For most startup CEOs, learning from failure isn't a novel concept. Everyone knows that you can learn from failure, but successful CEOs also look for other ways to create opportunities to learn in their daily workflow.
For Coburn, this comes with who he hires. Startups founders are no strangers to hiring outside the traditional knowledge worker, but Coburn said that he specifically goes after the rule-breakers and folks that don't always take his word and run with it.
"While in most more established companies, what a CEO says goes, I will often get a fair amount of pushback from my team -- I really need to sell my agenda," Coburn said. "And, while that can present a challenge at times, it also forces me to check myself every step of the way and act with total transparency and accountability."
You don't want to surround yourself with people that question everything you do, but a healthy dose of friction can force you to make sure you are certain about the vision you're casting and the decisions you're making.
Conner Forrest is a Staff Writer for TechRepublic. He covers Google and startups and is passionate about the convergence of technology and culture.

martes, 25 de noviembre de 2014

3,000 Entrepreneurs Say Luck Has Little to Do With Their Success (BusinessWeek)


3,000 Entrepreneurs Say Luck Has Little to Do With Their Success

Ask entrepreneurs how they built their businesses and they’ll likely credit talent and hard work. Luck is at the bottom of the list. In a scholarly survey that had 3,000 Swiss entrepreneurs rank the relative importance of six components of success, 78 percent put luck last.
Not shocking: Successful people believe their achievements are the product of their own industry rather than randomness. A sample of failed entrepreneurs would likely have found more people blaming bad fortune.
But the authors did find that luck—in Switzerland, at least—turns out to be a cultural construct. Respondents from Italian-speaking regions of Switzerland were more likely to say that startups need luck to succeed than people from French regions were, and the French-speaking entrepreneurs placed more faith in fortune than steely Germanic entrepreneurs did.
Age also influenced attitudes toward luck. Younger entrepreneurs put more stock in it than older ones, according to authors Diego Liechti and Claudio Loderer, who teach at the University of Bern, and Urs Peyer, who teaches at Insead, near Paris. That may be because more experienced hands had come to discount the role of luck, or it may be a question of selective memory.
The Swiss study doesn’t argue that luck is an outdated idea, as author David McRaney told my colleague Karen Klein recently. (In that view, what we call good luck is really the ability to seize opportunity when it presents itself; bad luck is being too narrowly focused to take advantage of good chances.) Survey respondents said luck was “very important” to some parts of their business, including crucial areas such as choosing a business idea, winning customers, and establishing business connections.
Rather, respondents tended to view bad luck (and good) as something that can be overcome. The message for entrepreneurs, the authors write, is “get an education, work hard, rely on your experience, and don’t let randomness discourage you, it is not the decisive factor.”
Clark is a reporter for Bloomberg Businessweek covering small business and entrepreneurship.

jueves, 20 de noviembre de 2014

The highlights from ZDNet's Doing Small Business Better video series.



ZDNet showcases the highlights from the recent Doing Small Business Better video series.
Host Andrew Griffiths, along with a panel of small business owners, discuss topics ranging from doing small business better to the notion that the customer is king, the impact of technology, and building a resilient business.

miércoles, 19 de noviembre de 2014

Accelerators vs. incubators: What startups need to know (TechRepublic)

By  November 17, 2014

For early stage startups, accelerators and incubators offer great ways to grow their businesses. Here are some of the key differences between a startup accelerator and a startup incubator. 
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Startup founders looking to start off on the right foot often turn to a startup accelerator or startup incubator for help.
The terms "accelerator" and "incubator" are often assumed to represent the same concept. However, there are a few key distinctions that first-time founders should be aware of if they are planning on signing up.
Accelerators and incubators both offer entrepreneurs good opportunities early on. Founders get help to quickly grow their business and they often better their chances of attracting a top VC firm to invest in their startup at a later point. Still, the programs are different frameworks for startup success.
Let's start by breaking down the goals of each of these types of programs. Accelerators "accelerate" growth of an existing company, while incubators "incubate" disruptive ideas with the hope of building out a business model and company. So, accelerators focus on scaling a business while incubators are often more focused on innovation.

Accelerators

One of the big difference is in how the individual programs are structured. Accelerators programs usually have a set timeframe in which individual companies spend anywhere from a few weeks to a few months working with a group of mentors to build out their business and avoid problems along the way. Y Combinator,Techstars, and the Brandery are some of the most well-known accelerators.
Accelerators start with an application process, but the top programs are typically very selective. Y Combinator accepts about 2% of the applications it receives and Techstars has to fill its 10 spots from around 1,000 applications.
Companies are given a small seed investment, and access to a large mentor network, in exchange for a small amount of equity. The mentor network, typically composed of startup executives and outside investors, is often the biggest value for prospective companies.
The mentor networks aren't small, either. According to Troy Henikoff, managing director of Techstars Chicago, last year's program had 153 mentors.
Aaron Harris, a partner at Y Combinator, said he's not sure that accelerators necessarily work as a whole, but Y Combinator's success is due to the way it approached incentives.
"A lot of that success comes back to the alignment of incentives," Harris said. "Good programs completely align all parties -- at YC all the partners who advise the companies have a stake in their success. We also do as much as we can to limit distractions. We don't schedule unnecessary meetings, don't force them to work in a big loud coworking space, etc."
At the end of an accelerator program, you're likely to see all the startups from a particular cohort pitch at some sort of demonstration day attended by investors and media. At this point, the business has hopefully been further developed and vetted.
"The goal of the accelerator is to help a startup do roughly two years of business building in just a few months," said Mike Bott, general manager of the Brandery. "If you go through a good one, you'll know at the end where your startup founding team and business stand."

Incubators

Startup incubators begin with companies that may be earlier in the process and they do not operate on a set schedule. If an accelerator is a greenhouse for young plants to get the optimal conditions to grow, an incubator matches quality seeds with the best soil for sprouting and growth.
While there are some independent incubators, they can also be sponsored or run by VC firms, government entities, and major corporations, among others. Some incubators have an application process, but others only work with companies and ideas that they come in contact with through trusted partners. A good example of an incubator is Idealab.
Depending on the sponsoring party, an incubator can be focused on a specific market or vertical. For example, an incubator sponsored by a hospital may only be looking for health technology startups.
In most cases, startups accepted into incubator programs relocate to a specific geographic area to work with other companies in the incubator. A typical incubator has shared space in a coworking environment, a month-to-month lease program, and some connection to the local community.
Coworking is a big part of the incubator experience and has been split off as its own separate business offering around country, with coworking spaces charging rent for access to utilities. Some accelerators offer a coworking space, but most provide companies with private office space or let them find it on their own.
"If you need private space, most incubators are open seating, and this can be distracting for larger teams," Henikoff said. "The economics are usually on a per-seat basis, which is great for the first few people, but at a certain point it may be less expensive to get your own office."
Both incubators and accelerators offer a great opportunity to help young companies and ideas for startups get headed in the right direction, but it's up to you where you need to start.
Conner Forrest is a Staff Writer for TechRepublic. He covers Google and startups and is passionate about the convergence of technology and culture.


jueves, 13 de noviembre de 2014

From Enterprise Florida: Up to September 2014

September 2014 monthly trade report.

•  Florida's total merchandise trade through September 2014 was down by 4.0% versus the same period last year. 

•  Exports were down by 5.5% ($3.5 billion) while imports were down by 2.4% ($1.3 billion). 

•  Trade is showing improvement overall as the shortfall is shrinking month-by-month, slowly closing the state's trade deficit. 


• Florida-origin exports are down by 6.3% year-to-date. 



martes, 4 de noviembre de 2014

The Bill for Cybersecurity: $57,600 a Year (BusinessWeek)

 

Hackers have made the Internet a scary place to do business, as recent headlines attest. Big companies have been hacked. Small companies have been hacked. As the Pew Research Internet Project reported earlier this week, cyberattacks are likely toget worse.
How much should a small business spend to protect against cyber villains? I asked Eric Montague, president of Executech, an IT firm in South Jordan, Utah, for an estimate. While the answer will vary, depending on the type of business—not to mention the relative optimism of its owner—Montague’s response offers a useful baseline: Some $57,600 a year for a 50-employee company.
Here’s how that estimate breaks down. Montague says his firm would typically recommend secure e-mail hosting at $12.95 per employee per month, an antivirus service costing $3 per employee per month, and online backup at 50¢ per gigabyte. Throw in a secure Internet phone system for $20 per user per month, labor costs for an outsourced IT department at $52.50 per worker per month, and Montague’s monthly estimate for a 50-employee company comes to about $4,800, or $57,600 annually.
Businesses that need less hand-holding from IT staff can cut down those costs, which will help them afford some other services they may need. That may include a new firewall; a good one can run to $1,200 and last five years, Montague says.
They may also need the cyber insurance policies that an increasing number of insurers offer. Those products vary, based on the specifics of businesses that are shopping for insurance and the types of coverage they’re seeking. Deborah Kostroun, a spokeswoman for specialty insurance company Beazley, says that a retailer with $10 million in annual revenue might pay $2,000 a year for a cyber policy that covers up to $1 million in breach response and third-party liability.
All of this adds up to a pretty penny, especially for small business owners who take a cautious view of the overall economy. No amount of security software can guarantee that your business won’t get hacked. If you’re looking for a bright side, there’s this: As demand for cybersecurity increases, increased competition among suppliers may bring prices down.
Clark is a reporter for Bloomberg Businessweek covering small business and entrepreneurship.

lunes, 3 de noviembre de 2014

38th Annual Conference on the Caribbean and Central America : November 19-21, 2014























For questions on registration, discount codes, and media passes, contact Gwendolyn Siegel at gsiegel@c-caa.org. Exhibit space is filling up, so if you are interested in being a part of this, please contact her for booth pricing and availability.

Sponsorship Opportunities are also available. Please contact Nathan Tuebner (ntuebner@c-caa.org) for more information.