Peter Vessenes, Fred Ehrsam, Anthony Gallippi, and Charlie Shrem, along with moderator Mark Edge, discuss being an entrepreneur in the era of bitcoins!
Category: Featured Stories (Page 30 of 43)
QUESTION:
To attract talent, investors, partners and good feedback, I need to share my vision, but there is always a risk that someone will steal my idea. How open should I be prior to launch?
ANSWER:
Here’s a fantastic presentation by Alan Moore. It’s his keynote for Blackberry on future trends in mobile.
Also be sure to check out http://www.no-straight-lines.com
Vator Splash startup event comes to LA, May 30 (3:30 pm to 10 pm)
Vator, one of the largest business networks dedicated to high-tech entrepreneurs and investors, is bringing its popular Splash event to the Hollywood Roosevelt on the evening of May 30! Founders and/or CEOs of Twitter, Zynga, PayPal, Pandora, Zappos, Box etc. have spoken at Splash. Get energized and inspired by them as they share their lessons learned about their success and failures scaling their startups from the ground up.
Hear Josh Berman, founder of Beachmint, which has raised some $75 million in financing and Paul Thelen, founder of Big Fish Games, which has raised $80-plus million. Also on stage are VCs from Scale Venture Partners, Idealab, DFJ, Javelin Venture Partners, Electronic Arts and Rustic Canyon. More to be added. And, you’ll also discover 10 promising startups that will compete onstage in front of an audience of 400. If you’re a high-tech startup and ready for prime time, it’s free to enter and present.
This is a panel discussion from the Angel Investment Forum, which covers angel investing, fund raising and institutional investing. What is the return on investment? How much is being invested in the US and Europe? How do angel investors pick companies?
Every business could use more good publicity, right? If you’re looking to garner more attention to your company and make a positive impression at the same time, consider a public speaking engagement. Now, if this strikes fear deep into your very core, take heart the National Institute of Mental Health reports that 74 percent of people suffer anxiety about giving speeches, and fear of public speaking is so widespread, it often doesn’t even occur to management to encourage employees to do so. We’ll help get you started.
Donald Trump has used this technique brilliantly. Aside from having a tremendously successful real estate business, he’s transformed himself into a celebrity and his name is known in households across the nation. Major conglomerates like Ernst Young have benefited from sharing the expertise of their staffers. Chairman and CEO Elect Mark Weinberger has an impressive resume, having worked both in the corporate world and at high levels of government. It’s great publicity for EY when international tax expert Weinberger appears on a major network to discuss tax policy; it engages potential clients, industry influencers and potential business partners and costs just a few hours of an employee’s time.
Your experience in public speaking will also make you a better presenter when it comes time to report to a board, pitch to investors and all sorts of other occasions.
As the year winds down and there’s a natural break in your work flow to plan for next year, consider where you’d like to see your small business in 2013. Whether you’d like to better connect with your clients, expand to more employees or just revamp your office space, here are a few goals to get you started.
Organize Your Office
Begin 2013 with a fresh start by organizing your office. Clean off your desk, set up a filing system for all of your lose documents and enter those networking business cards into your data base. Purge your inbox and computer hard drive of emails and documents that are no longer needed. Make the process of organization easy and convenient so all of your hard work won’t be pointless in a week. By doing this you’ll feel in control and be better able to handle your work as the new year rolls on.
Improve Customer Service
No matter your business, clients need to be able to contact you. This year, improve your customer relationship management system. Consider your client base and what ways you can better stay in touch. A growing number of customers are preferring online help to telephone customer service. Whether using live chat software from LivePerson or social media, expand your customer service and give your clients more options to reach you.
Is Egypt open for business? Not really would be the answer if quick and easy access to online government information is anything to go by. Access to some government web portals is sometimes frustratingly slow and cumbersome, with information often out of date. The Mubarak era is over, yet you wouldn’t think so judging by some web pages which have yet to be updated to reflect the seismic changes which have taken place. Egypt, it’s time to get the online act together!
Thankfully, there are areas of Egyptian business which have kept well ahead of the online game. A quick check of the web pages offering business banking from HSBC, Barclays, Citibank and many of Egypt’s home-grown financial institutions proves this to be the case. It’s now easier than ever before to obtain the sorts of business banking services to help kick start any promising entrepreneurial venture.
Understandably, many foreign companies are adopting a wait-and-see position in terms of increasing their investment in the country because of the continuing uncertainty. However, it would be fair to say, none doubt the long-term investment potential of Egypt.
Nintendo started out as a small Japanese business, founded by Fusajiro Yamauchi on September 23, 1889, as Nintendo Koppai. Based in Kyoto, Japan, the business produced and marketed Hanafuda cards. In recognition of its card-playing roots, the name “Nintendo” means “leave luck to heaven”. The cards, which were all handmade, soon began to gain popularity, and Yamauchi had to hire assistants to mass produce cards to keep up with demand.
Fusajiro Yamauchi did not have a son to take over the family business. Following common Japanese tradition, he adopted his son-in-law, Sekiryo Kaneda (Sekiryo Yamauchi, after the marriage). In 1929, Yamauchi retired from the company and allowed Sekiryo Yamauchi to take over the company as president. In 1933, Sekiryo Yamauchi established a joint venture with another company and renamed the company Yamauchi Nintendo & Company.
In 1947, Sekiryo established the company Marufuku Company, Ltd., to distribute the Hanafuda cards, as well as several other brands of cards that had been introduced by Nintendo. Sekiryo Yamauchi also had only daughters, so again his son-in-law (Shikanojo Inaba, renamed Shikanojo Yamauchi) was adopted into the family. Shikanojo never became president because he left his family. Subsequently, his son Hiroshi was brought up by his grandparents. Hiroshi later took over the company instead of his father.
Lightt is one of those rare applications that changes how you look at the world and your friends.
Instead of just browsing tweets and Facebook posts, you actually get to see the people around you in motion. It’s a totally new experience… a blending of photography and video, yet beyond both. What you see with Lightt are frenetic bursts of images interwoven into streams, each of which tells a piece of a story about the lives of your friends.
