How To Keep Employees Excited About Working At Your Startup
Guest author Scott Gerber is the founder of the Young Entrepreneur Council.
In the beginning stages of your business, you can't always offer competitive salaries. So as you're trying to get off the ground, you have to find other ways to structure your business so that early-stage employees have a different reason to be excited about their jobs.
To find out how successful entrepreneurs were incentivizing, I asked a group of founders from YEC what they build into their company's DNA that would attract, and keep, top talent.
1. Build in Learning Opportunities
Many early-stage companies can't pay competitively, and we were one of them. However, you can provide your employees with big projects that offer tremendous learning opportunities. For example, one of our early customer-help employees took on a lot of responsibility for support processes and frameworks, learning a lot along the way, and now leads a team of 20. This change happened in less than two years from his start date. While employees may not be able to optimize for salary in the short-term at your company, they can optimize for learning if you give them the chance, and that will not only make them happy but also improve their long-term salary potential. —Bhavin Parikh, Magoosh
2. Offer Everything but Salary
While you might not be able to financially compensate just yet, that doesn't mean you can't offer good benefits. Try to build in features that make coming to work enjoyable: free lunch, a library of business reading, flexible summer hours, "Feedback Fridays" for one-on-ones, etc. You can also give incentives like $50 gas cards, train passes, "Idea of the Month” awards, or beer-pong competitions. Do not, however, embellish on what's to come. Nothing is worse than a golden carrot; employees wise up to this very quickly and know that you're actually handing out empty promises. To be a great leader, try to recognize everyone and make them feel valued so they remain loyal to you, even when the money isn't there yet. —Nicole Munoz, Start Ranking Now
3. Create an Exceptional Community
The long hours and high stress of startups means that people get to know each other very well—for better or for worse. In the best-case scenario, this leads to a team that cares about one another and will go the extra mile to help the company succeed. However, cultures like that don't happen accidentally. It's crucial to invest in building the type of culture where people feel connected, heard and valued. Taking the time to learn about each employee and discover what motivates and challenges them is imperative, as well as proactively encouraging employees to form healthy, collaborative relationships by creating opportunities for them to share experiences outside of work and stepping in to mediate when conflicts arise. —Martina Welke, Zealyst
4. Foster a Great Atmosphere
You really have to create an atmosphere at your company of a place people would want to work. We try and have a very open working environment where employees can work from couches, desks, or fun locations outside. We order lunch daily for everyone from nice local restaurants and food trucks. We're in Silicon Valley and will never be able to compete on salary with Google, so we have to create an atmosphere where people are still applying left and right to our business and we're keeping everyone around. Next, we make every person an owner and give shares. They feel like part of our business. To date, the only two people who've left our company were because one was having a baby and the other followed his wife who got a job out of the country. Create an environment where people want to work—it's not always about money. —Peter Daisyme, Hosting
5. Create a Vision Program
When we first started, we had a visual map of how each person would play a part in our big mission of being the best presentation company in the world. This shows how important each person is, and how their roles are important for attaining the vision. While we may not be able to compete financially, we can compete purposefully. —Kenny Nguyen, Big Fish Presentations
6. Be Present
Working hard alongside your employees will show that you are dedicated, excited, and believe in the business. It gives some sweetness to the struggle. Schedule some down days for group trips or activities so you can get to know each other as well. We've visited a friend's goat farm, had movie nights, grilled out on our loading dock, etc. and it's really helped to bond our little group together! Also, be as transparent and open with them as you can about where you see the company going and how you are trying to get there. That will give people a common goal to work towards. —Bailey Spaulding, Jackalope Brewing Company
7. Be Open and Honest
I meet monthly with every employee for a 20-minute one-on-one session. Each employee tells me three examples of how they showcased a core value, what they appreciate, what they would improve and the status on their goals (which are tied to bonuses). What I've seen time and time again as an appreciated aspect of our company is “how honest I can be with you." Our culture is focused on constant improvement, and suggestions about how to improve the company, our leadership, our structures and so forth are openly given and well-received by myself and management. Most people just want to be heard. If you give a consistent opportunity to listen and objectively hear their concerns, it can mean a world of difference. —Beck Bamberger, BAM Communications
8. Give Them Interesting Work, and Credit Them for Successes
What you can't give in compensation, you can more than make up for in valuable opportunities that will pay off down the road. If you involve your early-stage employees in big projects with a very visible impact on your company's success, and then let them take credit publicly for that success, you'll be boosting their career development. By helping to make them more marketable, you'll be investing in their future growth as professionals—and savvy employees will know that in the long run, that sort of investment pays off much more than a higher starting salary. —Dave Nevogt, Hubstaff.com
9. Offer Stock Options
The key to getting long-term buy-in from employees that aren't receiving competitive salaries is to offer stock options. Stock options act as deferred compensation, which frees up resources now to help you grow your company. Stock options tend to vest over time (typically several years), which helps to create better alignment between employee commitment and some future company milestone (like a company acquisition). In addition, giving your team stock options makes them feel like stakeholders. Stakeholders tend to work harder because they feel that their performance will directly impact how much money they are likely to get out of the business when it sells. Stock options also have the power to accumulate considerable value, which makes the trade-off of a lower salary more reasonable. —Kristopher Jones, LSEO.com
10. Promote a Remote Workplace
Allowing your employees to work remotely is the key to providing them with the flexibility needed to justify a noncompetitive salary. If your business requires employees to be on site for specific events like team meetings and client visits, make sure to select specific days of the week to have scheduled meetings and provide remote options the rest of the time. One other related strategy is to offer work hours outside of the traditional 9-to-5 timeline. Leveraging both a remote workplace and allowing employees to put hours in on their own time will be more than enough for employees to accept lower compensation during the startup phase of your business. —Obinna Ekezie, Wakanow.com
11. Have Flexible Job Descriptions
Part of the excitement of an early-stage startup is that each team member can have a huge impact and work on projects that they normally couldn’t. If you combine flexible job descriptions with coaching, each employee can play to their strengths and take the lead on projects that interest them. This means your team will take ownership over their work, and as a result, come into the office happy. —Shradha Agarwal, ContextMedia
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Weapons In The Fight Against Spam
Guest author Nathaniel Borenstein is Mimecast’s chief scientist and the inventor of the MIME email protocol.
Spam represents profound things about the limits of productivity, communication and wisdom. As electronic junk mail, it's the electronic static that limits collective thought.
Spam is not a simple problem, and it is not likely to ever go away. Unfortunately, spammers have only begun to explore the range of options and techniques open to them, and this digital detritus is inevitable in any open system of communication.
See also: How To Protect Yourself From Instaspam
Although spam cannot be completely eliminated, an intelligent and deep program of spam control—made up of both technical measures and user education—has been able to limit it to the level of a minor but costly nuisance. At least, so far.
The Moore’s Law Of Our Email Wasteland
Think of spam’s prevalence in the context of Moore’s Law—except in this case, Moore's Law is on the side of the "bad guys."
A team of researchers could work for two years and cut the "false negative" rate (or the rate at which spam gets through to users) in half. But at the end of the same two-year period, the spammers, who need do no research at all, have the ability to send twice as much spam for the same cost.
See also: New Security Flaw Allows Attackers to Hijack WordPress Sites
In that scenario, the net amount reaching users is unchanged. That’s an oversimplification of a complex problem, but it illustrates how the bad guys start out with a significant structural advantage.
Techniques for creating a world with less spam fall under both technical and non-technical categories. While each approach has its benefits, no method is a fool-proof catch-all, which means we must empower and educate users to enlist their own spam defenses.
Filtering
Using content filters on messages is the first and most widely used approach in spam fighting. It protects is used for outbound messages, to make sure a company doesn't become a vector for anti-social messages, and for incoming messages, to protect users from malicious junk. The filtering can take place on one's own mail servers, on servers belonging to a third party such as a cloud provider, on intermediate relays, or even on an email client.
Spammers constantly vary their messages, so successful filtering depends on regular and timely updates to filtering rules. (Most filtering systems get their rules from a relatively small set of well-known providers.) But even so, it’s not as effective as it used to be. Spammers watch and respond to trends in filtering, so they can continually innovate their approaches to get around it, as well as simply send more messages.
Authenticating Identity
If spammers would only identify themselves clearly, it would be easy to block spam. This observation has led to a plethora of whitelists and blacklists, but unfortunately, it's not nearly that straightforward.
For better and for worse, the fundamental design of the Internet enables anonymity. It connects millions of machines, each of which is controlled and authenticated relatively independently. This means that it is generally impossible for a recipient server to confirm any authentication claimed by the sending server, which it has no reason to trust.
There are ways to fix this problem, but they face strong opposition, which makes them unlikely to be deployed. The Internet community has been working for more than 20 years to develop person-to-person authentication in email, resulting in email encryption systems known as S/MIME and PGP.
These systems have seen stunningly low adoption rates, in part because of their perceived complexity, and because people don't seem to want strong authentication most of the time.
In recent years, domain-based authentication has emerged, using standards like DKIM and DMARC, whereby cooperating sites can authenticate messages based on where they originate. This allows sites to make informed judgements about the mail that comes from another given site and how likely it is to be spam.
Domain-based authentication has tremendous potential, and it's becoming an important new technology in the fight against spam. And, because DKIM allows only the sender's domain to be authenticated, users can combat spam while preserving the privacy of the human sender.
The down side: This method substantially complicates the work of running an email service. But although it could help distinguish genuine messages from spam, as long as a sizable portion of the Internet isn't cooperating in this scheme, the Internet's infrastructure will continue to permit that junk mail.
Payment Models for Email
With traditional postal mail, the quantity of junk mail is limited by the cost of postage. Such incentives clearly don't exist for email. Imposing a payment model would be a way to change that.
This tactic has been widely discussed, but rarely implemented. First, there is widespread resistance to the idea of paying for “good' email. The fact that email is essentially free to send is widely seen as a major benefit, so many would be unwilling to give it up—even to eliminate the junk.
A variation on this theme poses an interesting scenario: linking money and authentication practices. The only charge the sender gets is when that authentication fails.
Companies like Yahoo tried "charity stamps,” in which senders link their email to charitable donations. For each message sent, the sender had to demonstrate that money was donated to a charity. For many companies, that would be less than what they give to charity anyway, so the mail would be incrementally free.
To date, none of these systems has found widespread adoption, but such concepts could find renewed interest in an age when email-based attacks and annoyances continue to escalate.
Education
Ultimately, the best hope for beating spam and other malware is to train users not to be fooled.
Most malware depends on tricking users into clicking on a link, opening an attachment or otherwise following some set of instructions. The better-educated users are, the less vulnerable they are to falling for the con. Both organizations and email providers should provide clear information and examples of what not to do. Short, clear and varied messages—that aren’t too frequent—work best, so users don't tune them out.
Ideally, safe email habits will eventually seem like common sense to most users—like locking their front door before leaving the house. While none of the above methods can stand up against spam on its own, when coupled with user education, there’s a fighting chance.
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The Top 5 Technologies That Have Changed Sports
This post is sponsored by The Wearable Tech In Sport Summit, an event taking place in San Francisco on September 9–10. It reflects the views of the sponsor, not ReadWrite's editors.
Athletes today use increasingly complex technologies to enhance performance.
We have seen considerable leaps forward in sporting performance as a direct result of technology either used during competition or in training. The big question is which technology has had the biggest impact on its respective sport?
Below, we have listed the top five technologies that, in our view, have had the profoundest effects.
Video Technology
Several sports have adopted in-game video analysis and video refereeing.
This includes rugby, football, tennis, and even soccer. It has meant that decisions can be made quickly and accurately, allowing correct decisions to be made in more instances as these games become increasingly fair.
Many believe that this has taken some of the fun out of sports, but the truth is that it simply makes it fairer and creates a situation where players know that should they break a rule, they are far more likely to be caught.
Having several cameras around a pitch has also had a major effect on the way that players are analyzed after competition across almost every sport. The ability to look at a performance on a screen and make judgements on it has allowed coaches and analysts to look at individual elements of a performance and make decisions based on what they can see. This is then filtered into the training regimes of the athlete, allowing for better performances and better chances of success.
Portable Sensors
Cycling used to be very much a sport of feel and arbitrary judgement, riding a certain distance or climbing up a particular hill so many times was enough to prepare people for a race. Along came heart-rate monitors and people could train within particular heart-rate zones, but this was still only analyzing what the effort was doing to the body, rather than what the effort was doing for the actual performance.
When power meters came along, it allowed cyclists to train in accordance with how much power they were pushing through the pedals. Having the ability to train at a consistent level with the readings appearing on a screen in the handlebars meant that consistent power could be achieved, something that is vital in the modern day peloton.
Team Sky may not have been the first team to use power meters, but the way they utilized them changed the way that every professional team trains and has totally changed the landscape of cycling from a sport based on feelings to arguably the most number intensive sport in the world.
See ReadWrite CEO Redg Snodgrass speak at The Wearable Tech In Sport Summit—register now!
Similarly, we can see the use of GPS sensors that have allowed rugby, football, and soccer coaches to see exactly where a player is at any point during a match, then look at their movements and see how these can be changed to improve the athlete.
These kinds of sensors are also constantly evolving and getting smaller, making even more impact on performance whilst being able to pick up the most minute information. It has been predicted that soon they will be embeddable within everyday clothing, allowing for complex measurements to be taken constantly and improving analysis even further.
Since inventing the VS racket string, Babolat has changed the game of tennis. Its most renowned invention to date allows players to track and share data to improve performance through an app. Speaking at the Wearable Tech in Sport Summit on September 9 and 10 in San Francisco, hosted by Innovation Enterprise, Daniel Becker, the company's senior marketing manager, will discuss new technology and what else they’re doing to help improve performance in sport.
Drug Testing
Tests to detect illegal drugs aren't an individual technology as much as a collection of technologies that has changed almost every sport in the world.
Until 1999, there were small-scale, uncoordinated drug tests across individual sports, but these were fairly easily bypassed. In many sports, drug abuse to improve performance was endemic.
Since then, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) has helped to push forward the use of drug-testing technologies to help fight the use of performance-enhancing drugs in sport. This has levelled the playing field in many sports and helped to weed out some of the biggest drugs cheats in world sport, from Lance Armstrong to Dwayne Chambers.
It has given faith in performances back to the athletes too. Before, when an outstanding individual performance occurred, many treated it with a degree of suspicion. Today, thanks to this technology, people may have doubts, but athletes can point to reliable drugs testing to show that it is a clean result.
Aerodynamics And Hydrodynamics
When elite athletes in sports that require speed and stamina perform in competition, they need to be able to do so with minimum resistance. This has been recognized across several sports today. From the materials used in swim outfits to the curves on a Formula 1 car, the understanding of aero- and hydrodynamics has allowed the performance of athletes to minimize air resistance and increase speed.
The use of aerodynamics as a decider between winning and losing was shown emphatically in the 1989 Tour de France final time trial where Greg LeMond sat in second place 50 seconds behind Laurent Fignon. He adopted aerodynamic handlebars and helmet, while Fignon did not. LeMond eventually beat Fignon by 58 seconds, winning the three-week event by only 8 seconds. Later analysis through wind-tunnel data showed that the use of the bars alone gained LeMond 1 minute and the helmet 16 seconds. Essentially if Fignon had adopted this new technology, he would have won the event.
Data Analytics
The ability to analyze millions of data points has meant that sports teams and athletes can look at the tiniest successes or failures within any performance and either recreate or remove particular conditions.
It has meant that everything that an athlete does can be interconnected and assessed to divide a performance into its individual elements, rather than as a simple whole. It has been the basis of the current obsession with marginal gains that coaches are interested in. If they can find a 0.1% improvement in any part of a performance, then this will give them a slight advantage, but if they can find this number in several areas then they can add up to a significant improvement. It was this philosophy that led the British Olympic team to much success during the past three Olympics.
This philosophy is only made possible through the use of data analytics, as it allows for the tiniest details of an athletic performance to be studied, seeing where small improvements can be made and how athletes can improve their chances of success.
Photo courtesy of Shutterstock
This post is sponsored by The Wearable Tech In Sport Summit, an event taking place in San Francisco on September 9–10. It reflects the views of the sponsor, not ReadWrite's editors.
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Taxicab Industry Has A New App To Compete With Uber
This post appears courtesy of the Ferenstein Wire, a syndicated news service. Publishing partners may edit posts. For inquiries, please email author and publisher Gregory Ferenstein.
The tech sector has shaken up innumerable industries, and whenever that happens, some enterprising types wonder if there's some opportunity in helping established players stave off the inevitable. But beating back the forces that threaten to destabilize their businesses is even harder than it looks, and few succeed.
The taxi industry is no different. Would-be tech partners and investors sometimes ask me if they should design for, or invest, in this industry. My response: It’s not as simple as just jumping in, whipping up an app for ye olde cabs, and then sitting back to watch it vanquish the new strain of competitors, like Uber.
See also: I Tested The Cutting Edge Of Taxi Innovation, And Things Went Awry
Not that the industry doesn't keep trying. Another high-profile attempt just emerged to conquer the taxi business' arch nemesis. The upcoming Arro, like many of its predecessors, is an app for hailing and paying for taxicabs, similar to other ride-hailing companies out of Silicon Valley.
Partnering with cab companies can be tempting, since many have the resources to pay for a pretty app that apes those of Uber, Lyft and Sidecar. But there are issues fundamental to the taxi industry that make it hard to compete with Silicon Valley startups. In fact, every like-minded taxi app thus far has utterly failed to slow the rise of Uber, often completely shutting down shortly after launch. Here’s why.
Cars Are Capped, And Riders Are Impatient.
Thanks to apps like Uber, Lyft and Sidecar, user expectations are changing, as riders get more impatient. "In some cities, if users see the nearest Uber is more than even 2 to 3 minutes away, they are far less likely to request a car, while in other cities wait times as long as 10 minutes are perfectly acceptable," Uber's data team wrote in a blog post.
The longer Uber and Lyft serves a city, the less likely its residents will be willing to wait for a ride.
The taxi industry, by design, limits the number of cars on the road to maintain a stable income for drivers. (Too many drivers would reduce income on an individual basis.) The logical result is that riders have longer wait times. Meanwhile, one 2014 study found that 92% of ride-hailing cars arrived in under 10 minutes. Only 16% of taxis did.
Uber And Lyft Can Innovate Quickly
It's one thing to design a fancy smartphone app; it's quite another to be on the cutting edge of features and have all of your workers immediately adopt the changes.
Lyft is just $6 per ride nearly anywhere in San Francisco, thanks to its carpooling feature. New prices and features change pretty frequently in the Bay Area, as Lyft (and Uber) rapidly test out new pricing models to see what customers like best.
Taxis have a metered pricing system that's overseen by various bureaucratic agencies. They just aren't equipped to rapidly innovate.
Moreover, cab drivers seem to have difficulty getting their innovations to work, even when it finally rolls out. Last spring, I was asked to demo a new feature for San Francisco taxis from Flywheel, another smartphone app. It claimed to automatically recognize when a rider stepped into a cab, but the feature failed (multiple times). That was largely because the driver had insufficient technical training, and the app had difficulty integrating with the existing way that taxis operated.
Innovation means being flexible and connected, and as a developer or entrepreneur, you may have plenty to spare. But that doesn’t mean a would-be partner in the taxi business does. Government-controlled, unionized industries aren’t used to making innovation core to their business models, which is why Arro will have a tough time competing against—or working with—Silicon Valley.
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4 Tools To Strengthen The Bond Between You And Your Customers
Guest author Yoav Vilner is a cofounder of Ranky.
Launching a startup is no easy task. While there's certainly tremendous hype about the tech sector, the truth is that the overwhelming majority of startups fail—mostly because of a lack of market and resources.
Solidifying your market can be particularly difficult in an overcrowded landscape. Simply getting the word out and attaining loyal users can be a challenge, but they're critical for your business success.
See also: The Biggest Digital Marketing Mistakes Entrepreneurs Make
To earn loyal users, you must actively seek connection with your potential client base. Projecting expertise in your field and actively promoting communication and user involvement are great ways to do build an online community that lives and breaths your brand. Fortunately, there are a variety of ways to accomplish that.
If increasing user engagement is on your radar (as it should be), here are some of my favorite tools to help you achieve a high success rate.
Spot.im
There’s a lot of talk about social media’s role in marketing. Social media is a great place for your brand’s conversations, but there’s one problem with it: It holds conversations somewhere else, rather than on your site. You want visitors coming to your site and, more importantly, sticking around.
Spot.im is an onsite social outlet that is convenient, fun, and accessible. It resides on your own website, but still offers your users get the ultimate social experience. With comments, newsfeed, chats, and private messaging, users can stay up to date, engage, and develop a sense of community right on your site.
The connections you develop with such tools can be extremely dynamic. Because your users can engage online conversations about your brand, they discover useful information about your offerings while cultivating relationships with like-minded people. This gives them a positive impression of your business, and projects a company image that's open, human and conversational, rather than simply working in its own interest.
Nimble
The key to effective user engagement is cultivating relationships with your users, often through email, social media, newsletters, blogging, and more. Finding the time for it can be a challenge, especially for startup leaders. Thankfully, Nimble makes this pursuit much easier.
The service merges your social media accounts, emails, contact information, and other communication channels, making for an easy way to track and manage conversations, and develop a more meaningful connection with clients.
Bounce Exchange
Some marketers are obsessed with bounce rates. But they're not a particularly good reflection of your user engagement. The reasons are obvious: If people are choosing to leave, they are not satisfied with what they see on your site.
So what if you could stop users in their tracks right before they left, or figure out why they leave? That’s the purpose of Bounce Exchange. This simple tool not only lets you derive contact information, but it helps you capture potential customers at the last optimal point to drive them back to your site.
Consider it a last-minute, second chance at connecting to users—one that also helps you figure out what features you can add or remove in order to turn casual browsers into fans.
Hubspot
Hubspot successfully branded itself as the ultimate inbound marketing tool--and for good reason. The software helps bring users in and keep them loyal across various steps in the sales funnel and through multiple methods, such as content, landing, pages, social media, and analytics.
Boosting your engagement can make a profound impact on your startup’s success. Obviously, if you can elevate your brand’s connection to its customers, you can keep your fans coming back for more.
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The Biggest Digital Marketing Mistakes Entrepreneurs Make
Guest author Stephen Moyers is the Web marketing manager at SPINX Digital Agency, a designer and a blogger who writes about Web design, and online and social marketing.
The success of digital marketing depends on a number of factors: understanding your marketing history, knowing what's being said about your brand, and meeting the needs of your consumers in a valuable way.
Unfortunately, with all those factors, nascent entrepreneurs often make mistakes that hinder early growth. These can range from failing to plan effectively or measure results, to overlooking the entire mobile category. But that's not all.
See also: 10 Areas Where Startups Will Be Spending More In 2015
Here’s a look at a few of the biggest blunders to avoid.
Failing To Understand Your Audience
The gap that a product or service fills is just the beginning. Marketing requires an in-depth understanding of your consumers’ traits and tastes.
Beyond the existing needs of potential customers or end users, businesses need to profile their prospects. Focus on how they spend their time, what other products or services they're more likely to want, and where individuals who fit the profile tend to live. Such detailed information informs your marketing efforts, making them more pinpointed and accurate.
Not Planning Adequately
Many marketers never achieve great success because they don’t have clearly outlined goals and a distinct plan of action.
Planning does not mean brainstorming in a room of decision makers. It means writing out an analysis of your current needs, strengths, weaknesses, and goals. It involves taking your budget and going through it, line by line, to determine where your marketing dollars should go.
Once you have a written plan of action, make sure to reference all these documents regularly throughout the campaign process.
Consider using a template for optimal planning.
Lacking Focus
You can’t do it all in the beginning, so start with small, concerted efforts. They can be just as effective as large campaigns that aim to reach a wide audience.
Focus on the types of prospects your product or service will fit with naturally. Then pick measurable goals that align with industry benchmarks you can track over a period of several months. Long-term goals are vital, too, but seeing meaningful results—even if they aren’t ultimately driving the bottom line—can improve momentum for reaching those future goals.
Holding Unrealistic Expectations
Few marketing campaigns will achieve instantaneous results. Unless your first post goes viral, you'll likely have to tweak and improve your pay-per-click strategy, social media, and other digital marketing campaigns as you go.
Social media campaigns tend to have a shorter turnaround time, while pay-per-click campaigns often take about a month and a half to deliver results. Search-engine optimization (SEO) strategies tend to take the longest of all. SEO campaigns typically need 4 to 6 weeks to get off the ground, but can take as many as six months to a year to meet meaningful goals.
Think of digital marketing like a long race, not a sprint.
Not Budgeting Properly
Many startups fail to allocate a fair amount of money for digital marketing. While some elements can work on a shoestring budget, many campaigns require a strategic investment.
That may require taking a hard look at where your money is going right now and making some judgment calls. For instance, avoid spending money on tools that you aren’t sure will work for your business. Instead, focus on hiring talent inside and outside the company that can help you reach your goals.
Using Too Many Social Media Platforms
Social media platforms are a fun and fast way to market your company, but focusing on too many at once can weaken the overall campaign. Try to keep your social media strategy targeted at the few social media platforms your audience frequently uses, and deliver relevant information through them on a regular basis.
Build a social media strategy that makes sense for your brand and market, not necessarily the platforms that are trending right now. Twitter, Facebook, and Snapchat are great social media platforms to start with, but depending on your business audience, you many want to consider LinkedIn, Instagram or Pinterest.
Forgetting the Importance of Content
Content is the foundation of any successful digital marketing campaign. But the information or media must be relevant, engaging, and insightful. Otherwise, you can post articles, images or videos all day long, and still not see measurable results.
Look for elements that will convert site visitors into long-term customers. Video content, in particular, is becoming a staple of digital marketing, and companies can no longer afford to ignore it. Entrepreneurs can start using video content with homegrown campaigns on Snapchat, Vine, and YouTube that are both cost-effective and successful in striking a chord with your audience.
Overlooking Mobile
The number of global mobile users exceeded desktop users in 2014, earning a steady place in the pockets and hands of most consumers.
Plenty of businesses pay lip service to this area of tech, but haven’t really thought through their mobile strategy. Those companies will likely be forgotten and become obsolete. Responsive web design and layered interfaces are sleek, user friendly, and fairly easy to develop with the right professional help. Mobile marketing should be synonymous with digital marketing at this point; it’s that integral to the success of a campaign.
As the above chart indicates, millennials and others are being successfully influenced to act by mobile campaigns.
Not Measuring Results
The work doesn’t end once you’ve come up with ideas and put them into practice.
After the initial launch of your digital marketing campaign, you need to use relevant metrics that confirm its Return On Investment (ROI). Essentially, your goal is to find out whether the money you spent was worth it.
The good news is a digital campaign is not static once it has launched. You can continue to use analytics throughout the campaign period to tweak posts, keywords, and other information to better target your audience. Over time, your content will be optimized so that it reaches your goals.
Using Old School SEO
Beware any SEO or digital marketing agencies that push keyword stuffing, outbound link building, and other methods. As Google’s algorithms evolve, old SEO practices are getting companies penalized.
If you're providing valuable insights, images or videos (see content section, above), then that content will naturally lead to better search results, since they create natural inbound and outbound links. This type of organic marketing is the new strategy that SEO companies are adopting.
Not Using a Combination Of Offline And Online Marketing Strategies
Digital marketing should always be supported by more traditional marketing strategies. People still drive by billboards and act on the information they see.
The difference now is that print advertising includes digital marketing information. Social cues are ever-present in the bottom corner of magazine ads and on subway signs.
Some print campaigns are even entirely digital in focus, featuring a hashtagged word or a Twitter handle. Mixing traditional and modern marketing strategies makes for a multi-level campaign that has the potential to not only reach consumers, but connect with them on a deeper level.
The Startup Advantage
New entrepreneurs have the opportunity to begin from a fresh slate. They can craft their company personality and marketing campaigns without battling established expectations.
Over time, they can also transform as the brand or consumer interest evolves.
By understanding where to focus initial efforts, entrepreneurs and small business owners can develop digital marketing practices that will fuel their bottom lines for years to come.
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For Medical Tech Startups, FDA Approval Is Crucial
Guest author Vizma Carver is the founder of ClearRoadmap and an industry veteran with more than 25 years of experience dealing with healthcare, life science, and environmental issues.
Hardware and software innovation has touched innumerable areas of modern life, but none perhaps as personal as medical technology. For the companies and rising startups hoping to redefine how we care for ourselves, innovation is about more than creativity or convenience—it can be a matter of life and death.
The pursuit of medical technology is not an easy road. Even if you manage to create a cutting-edge wearable or medical app that could change the industry, not everyone can benefit right away. Medical tech companies in the United States face a fierce domestic regulatory environment.
As we transition from devices that provide fitness and health data to medical-grade products, startups are struggling with a tough question: Wing it without approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, or tough it out and gain its stamp of approval?
Both choices are rife with challenges, which is one reason the European market has become rather attractive for medical tech startups. But the task of seeking FDA approval, while difficult, is crucial to making in-roads in the U.S. market.
Contending With Regulatory and Legal Issues
Patients and providers in the U.S. are among the last in the world to have the latest medical technology, despite the U.S. having the most innovative medical device companies.
It’s a sad irony that many US companies seek to bring their products overseas first.
Part of the issue stems from the regulatory difficulties of bringing wellness and medical products to market: Local rules and regulations vary, and gaining FDA approval can seem impossible.
A 2012 study by Boston Consulting Group found that most innovative (and potentially risky) medical technologies sanctioned by the Premarket Approval (PMA) process have been approved and made available to patients in Europe three or more years before they get approval in the U.S.
Defining Your Product
Successfully categorizing your product with the FDA can also be a challenge.
Does your product fit in the classification of wellness platform, or do you seek to treat a certain illness or give out patient-specific advice? Navigating the legal definitions can be delicate. The FDA offers a brief set of guidelines to determine if your product is regulated, but those standards are open to interpretation. It's not always clear how to classify a device or platform, but costly lawsuits are the inevitable result of skirting FDA regulations.
Consulting medical or legal experts can help useful, but is often extremely costly, especially if innovators are not exactly sure how to proceed.
Clearance for an FDA-approved, low-risk device (510k) typically involves engaging consultants on an hourly basis, with some costs starting in the low thousands and edging up to around $30,000 for well-defined submissions.
Businesses ready to begin the consultation process need to perform due diligence in identifying companies with a solid track record of bringing a product into the FDA process.
Differentiating in a Saturated Market
Entrepreneurs in the medical tech space to think expansively. Direct-to-consumer market will be saturated quickly by large corporations that already have strong brand recognition, she noted. Startups can still compete, but they may need to leap-frog over consumer-facing businesses and target institutions.
Getting FDA approval can go far in differentiating a device to consumers. It is largely a trust issue, since the FDA process is well known to healthcare facilities, such as clinics, hospitals, and long-term care facilities. FDA certification allows startups to move forward to develop relationships with a broad range of enterprises in the clinical environment.
Imagine two similar medical devices, one with FDA approval and one without. Which would you choose?
Consumers, generally, will select one with clearance. The FDA seal of approval conveys an aura of legitimacy around a device or product—consumers understand that a rigorous series of tests needs to be completed before a product can come to market, even if they do not understand the specifics of the trials.
Another strategy: Partnering with larger research institutions and companies, which can bring a new dimension to the use of a medical or wellness product. Your device now would have the opportunity to assist with gathering data for more serious medical conditions. Plus, positioning a wearable or IoT medical product in the role of a diagnostic tool opens new avenues for revenue.
Avoiding Pitfalls
Even if you think you don't really need (or want) FDA approval, you might seek it out for legal purposes.
Avoiding the FDA doesn’t mean you can avoid any kind of regulations. The FTC still regulates truth in advertisement, civil courts and an ever-growing number of cases dealing with the lack of clinical studies to back up medical product claims.
For example, the Federal Trade Commission shut down MelApp for the claim that the product could “detect symptoms of melanoma, even in its early stages” without scientific support.
In a FTC press release, Jessica Rich, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, highlighted the importance of following the rules: “Truth in advertising laws apply in the mobile marketplace,” she said. "App developers and marketers must have scientific evidence to support any health or disease claims that they make for their apps.”
Startups can face other issues, such as overstepping platform/device claims or actually moving from the wellness area into the diagnostic arena.
Overstepping claims can be a particularly murky area to navigate—after all, what is the consumer going to do with the information from your product?—and slipping into the role of medical provider has already caused some enterprises to pull back.
Even entrenched brands can struggle with understanding the regulatory framework. Some apps, like uChek, have even run afoul of the FDA.
The Bottom Line
There’s a compelling need for technologies that enhance the quality of life for difficult-to-treat diseases, and innovators shouldn't give up.
While navigating the FDA process can be tricky, it is essential for differentiating your platform or device in a tight market. It is also the only real choice for U.S.-based innovators genuinely interested in improving the health and well-being of those around them.
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6 Reasons That Apache Spark Isn't Flickering Out
Guest author Peter Schlampp is the vice president of products at Platfora, a "Big Data" analytics platform provider.
Apache Spark is quickly becoming a core technology for big data analytics in a surprisingly short period of time. This may lead cautious types to wonder if it will fade out just as quickly, which happens all-too-often in technology. On the contrary, I believe Spark is just getting started.
See also: The Big-Data Tool Spark May Be Hotter Than Hadoop, But It Still Has Issues
Over the past couple of years, as Hadoop exploded and "big data" became dominant, several things have become clear: First, the Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS) is the right storage platform for all that data. Second, YARN (for resource allocation and management) is the framework of choice for those big data environments.
Third, and perhaps most importantly, there is no single processing framework that will solve every problem. Although MapReduce is an amazing technology, it doesn’t address every situation.
Spark, however, addresses many of the key issues in big data environments, which has helped fuel its phenomenal rise. It’s one reason my company, Platfora, has bet big on it. Our "Big Data Discovery" platform uses Apache Spark as an underlying technology to process and analyze big data, despite its young age. Here’s why.
We May Be Nearing The Age Of Spark
Organizations that rely on Hadoop need a variety of analytical infrastructures and processes to find the answers to their critical questions. They need data preparation, descriptive analysis, search, and more advanced capabilities like machine learning and even graph processing.
Companies need a toolset that meets them where they are, allowing them to leverage the skill sets and other resources they already have. Until now, a single processing framework that fits all those criteria has not been available.
This, however, is the fundamental advantage of Spark, whose benefits cut across six critical areas for companies that deal in the business of big data.
Advanced Analytics
Many large and innovative companies are looking to expand their advanced analytics capability. And yet, at a recent big data analytics event in New York, only 20% of the participants reported that they're currently deploying advanced analytics across their organizations.
The other 80% said that their hands are full just preparing data and providing basic analytics. The few data scientists they have spend most of their time implementing and managing descriptive analytics.
Spark offers a framework for advanced analytics out of the box. It includes a tool for accelerated queries, a machine learning library, a graph processing engine, and a streaming analytics engine. Instead of trying to implement these analytics via MapReduce—which can be nearly impossible, even with hard-to-find data scientists—Spark provides pre-built libraries, which are easier and faster to use.
This frees the data scientists to take on tasks beyond just data preparation and quality control. With Spark, they can even ensure correct interpretation of the analysis results.
Simplification
One of the earliest criticisms of Hadoop wasn’t just that it was hard to use, but that it was even harder to find people who could do it. Although it has gotten simpler and more powerful with every subsequent iteration, this complaint has persisted to this day.
Instead of requiring users to understand a variety of complexities, such as Java and MapReduce programming patterns, Spark was built to be accessible to anyone with knowledge of databases and some scripting skills (in Python or Scala).
For businesses, it is much easier to find people who can understand your data as well as the tools to process it. For vendors, we can develop on top of Spark and bring new innovation to businesses faster.
Multiple Languages
SQL doesn’t address all the challenges of big data analytics, at least not on its own. We need more flexibility in getting at the answers, more options for organizing and retrieving data and moving it quickly into an analytics framework.
Spark leaves the SQL-only mindset behind, opening the data up to the quickest and most elegant way of moving into analysis, whatever it might be.
Faster Results
As the pace of business continues to accelerate, so does the need for real-time results.
Spark provides parallel in-memory processing that returns results many times faster than any other approach requiring disk access. Instant results eliminate delays that can significantly slow business processes and incremental analytics.
As vendors begin to build applications on Spark, dramatic improvements to the analyst workflow will follow. Accelerating the turnaround time for answers means that analysts can work iteratively, honing in on more precise, and more complete, answers. Spark lets analysts do what they are supposed to do—find better answers faster.
No Discrimination Or Preference For Hadoop Vendors
All of the major Hadoop distributions now support Spark, and with good reason: It's vendor-neutral, which means it doesn’t tie the user to any specific provider.
Due to Spark’s open-source nature, businesses are free to create a Spark-based analytics infrastructure without worrying about what happens if they change Hadoop vendors later. If they make a switch, they can bring their analytics with them.
High-Growth Adoption
Apache Spark achieved momentum in a very short time. Late in 2014, it tied at first place for a world record in sorting at the Daytona Gray Sort 100TB Benchmark.
Whenever a service, product or technology quickly grabs attention, there’s usually a rush to tear it down—whether to deflate the hype, reveal the bugs or otherwise debunk its promise.
But according to a recent survey by Typesafe, awareness of Spark is only growing. Covering a sample of more than 2,100 developers, the report showed that 71 percent of respondents have had some experience with the framework. Today, it has reached more than 500 organizations of all sizes, which are committing thousands of developers and extensive resources to the project.
Spark hasn’t yet solidified its position as one of the fundamental technologies for big data analytics environments, but it’s well on its way. In other words, this is just the beginning.
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The No-Bullies Guide To Creating A Healthy Startup Culture
Guest author Tom Hogan is the cofounder and principal of Crowded Ocean, a Silicon Valley marketing agency for startups. He wrote this post with cofounder Carol Broadbent.
Reading Sunday's New York Times article on Amazon’s demanding and nerve-wracking culture, as well as Jeff Bezos’ impassioned objection to the article, I was reminded of the scene in Casablanca where the police chief is shocked—shocked—to discover that there’s gambling on the premises … right before he is handed his winnings.
I cut my teeth at Oracle, joining the company as its initial Creative Director, when the annual revenues were less than $100 million. I watched in admiration as we doubled in revenue year after year, despite analysts’ assurances that we were heading for a crash. Fueling this incredible growth was the "Oracle Culture"—a combination of exceptional talent and hubris-fueled expectations.
See also: Amazon's Not Much Different From Other Tech Employers, Public Data Says
It was not uncommon in those days for a staffer to screw up a presentation in the morning and get tossed out of the company the same day. Instead of objecting or threatening legal action, the cashiered employee would apologize for letting the company down. The whole thing felt like a high-tech frat house.
Why this stroll down memory lane? Because having launched launched 38 startups, we’re often asked by our CEO clients how to build the right startup culture for these times. They want to know about Oracle (and Sun, where my partner Carol Broadbent worked at about the same time, with the same experiences), and how they can set their company up to achieve the same success.
The Age Of The Bullies
We caution our clients that—while Amazon, Oracle and Sun hold great lessons for startups—as models, they are dated and out of touch with today’s market and employees. The reason: Simply put, they are bullies.
Bully cultures have a few things in common:
- A top-down management style, led by an aggressive founder
- Confrontation is not only tolerated, but often even rewarded
- A philosophy of "hire the uninitiated," then indoctrinate them into "the one best way" to get things done
- A review process based on the "rank and yank" philosophy, where a certain percentage of the company is pruned every year, regardless of the company’s actual earnings or success
- A fierce "bury the competition" ethic
Just as schools and online communities are identifying and shaming bullies, it’s time for corporate cultures to do the same.
To be clear, some startup CEOs can still succeed by bullying. A number of our young CEOs see themselves as the next Steve Jobs, complete with the shouting at employees and “cashiering” (read: firing) them at a moment’s notice. And, like Amazon, they will attract a certain type of worker and succeed off their backs.
But our counsel to our clients is two-fold: First, they are not Steve Jobs or Larry Ellison. Second, even if they were, employees won’t put up with that crap. Bully cultures are passé. The market—and the modern employee—has changed.
Employees have more options on where to work and often have multiple offers. Thanks to social media and sites like Glassdoor and Quora, they’re also better informed. (For an idea of what an Oracle recruiter has to combat, take a look at this “What’s So Bad About Oracle” Quora thread.)
With the notion of job security and longevity long gone, what employees care about now is, well, "the now”: They want an invigorating and rewarding job right from the start, and they’ll take care of their own career path—which will likely involve a number of companies.
In other words, it’s a "buyer’s market" these days, and companies old and new need to adapt.
How To Create A "Post-Bully” Startup
Since companies can’t (and shouldn’t) rely on the old intimidation models of management, many must create their own culture from scratch. For our startup clients, we recommend the following:
- Be diverse from day one. That’s diversity in experience, gender, cultures and ways of thinking. Because studies show that diversity builds better teams and teams, not individual accomplishment, are at the core of startup success.
- Hold your tongue. Bullies can get quick results, but not long-term success. Larry Ellison is the exception, not the rule: even Steve Jobs was fired by his own company.
- Think global, not just with your hiring, but with your benefits. No one is expecting your company to move to a 32-hour work week, as is common in some parts of the world. But look to other cultures for broad work/life value. With the 24-hour workday a virtual reality, recognize and reward this new work ethic with European-style benefits—including extended vacations.
- Forget "open door” policy. (The new CEO rarely has an office anyway.) Adopt an "open-book" management style instead. Startup employees are invested in your company; they’ve voted with their wallets (via pay cuts and their kids’ 529 accounts). They deserve to know—on a regular basis—how the company is doing: Is the sales department making its numbers? Is the product development or production on schedule? And how can they help?
- Don’t let your culture get away from you. Think of your culture like an organic creature that grows from the actions of your employees and your company’s interactions in the market—not from some framed and posted corporate mission statement. To ensure its health, articulate your values and goals, and then ask a trusted long-term employee to become your unofficial "Chief Culture Officer.” This person will act as someone the others can confide in, especially when things are starting to slip.
- Mentor, don’t needlessly prune. In business, bullies often purge (or “prune") the lowest 10% of their workforce, even when the company is hitting on all cylinders. The days of pruning being considered a viable strategy are gone. So is the idea of waiting a year to correct hiring mistakes or poor performance with an annual review. The tools and information are there, not just to review, but to coach and mentor.
Startups are like any other organism: They need to evolve or die. In an industry that is known for recreating itself every few years—via hardware, software, infrastructure, Internet, social media—it’s fascinating that its cultural and organizational practices have remained so stagnant.
But all that is changing, driven by a new kind of employee and new business models. Savvy startups will take note and adapt. Those that don’t will become yesterday’s news.
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5 Killer Types Of Wearable Apps For Companies
Guest author Quinton Wall is the director of developer relations at Salesforce.
While wearables may still be in their ramp-up stage, there’s little doubt they are here to stay.
Gartner expects the wearables market will hit $10 billion by next year, while IDC anticipates 120 million devices will be shipped by 2018. We know that fitness trackers are a market success and are a considerable part of those numbers, and we have a pretty good idea that consumers will continue to use them for grabbing notifications and tracking their activities on the go. What many remain unconvinced about is how wearables will impact the enterprise.
They won’t be unconvinced for long. Wearables are set to have a major impact for companies and other organizations.
To be clear, we aren’t talking about wearables as single-purpose devices (such as fitness trackers). We’re looking at wearables as general purpose computers. For businesses, they will provide an unprecedented way to help them improve productivity and safety, and introduce the app economy to industries where apps have been lagging. Think areas like construction or manufacturing. Beyond vertical industry value, these devices will also offer killer applications across all industries.
At Salesforce, we are seeing customers building wearable apps for work. The following are the five killer categories of applications among the most common use cases.
5 Killer Types Of Wearables Enterprise Apps
Security
We’re all familiar with security and building badges. Anyone who visited the large enterprises and government agencies knows that some people have to wear two or three to get around large campuses.
Wearables can be used to provide watch-based security identifiers and replace those traditional photo IDs and badges. In addition to just providing NFC (Near Field Communication) authentication, because of the screen and computer, wearables make it possible to add informational messages to the user.
If there is there a new mandatory meeting employees can be told where and when. If a user is denied access, the security alert can detail why.
Field Service
Manufacturing and construction are billion dollar industries, yet they only spend approximately 2% of their IT budget on mobile. More over, 80% of workers do not have access to technology that allows them to work more efficiently.
Wearable technology—such as Google Glass for hands-free operation, the Fujitsu wearable glove, and even connected clothing that can detect hazardous chemicals—unlocks the potential for re-imagining field service in much the same way industries like transportation have been influenced by mobile apps.
Booking-office resources
Consider the day to day hassle of booking a meeting. What seems to be a simple and easy task—grabbing a conference room—never is simple or easy.
With wearables, anyone can find and book a room with a swift scan of room availability from the wearable. The user can then quickly use the wearable interface to set duration and any necessary equipment. Wearables can also use map features as a way to guide meeting participants to the correct room using augmented reality, or receive by turn directions.
Collaboration
Wearables will also improve how we collaborate. Workers often rely on the advice of colleagues, supervisors, and even public Internet resources, such as YouTube, to provide additional assistance.
Augmented reality in many industries can be used to facilitate collaboration between coworkers—in ways not all that different from how office workers have been using screen-sharing applications. Collaboration will be available everywhere—from the worker at her desk, to the oil rig technical suspended high in the air. They will be able to work together in real-time, hands-free, and immersive ways.
Improvement for task and recording accuracy
Wearables will have a serious role in streamlining back-office functions. A wearable can help track time spent on projects, manage travel expenses, and even help employees take advantage of their benefits with local discounts, annual eyeglasses and vision rebates, credit unions, and more.
Unfortunately, right now, most of these benefits go unused: Employees are either not aware, forget, or do not have access to the information at a time when they can act on it. By creating a wearable app that proactively notifies employees of benefits when they’re near vendors, employees can more easily take advantage of perks.
These are just five examples of how wearable devices can influence the enterprise. The use cases will only grow as the devices become more intelligent, interactive, and less obtrusive. Smart enterprises are at work embracing how wearables can better help them run their businesses.
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Amazon Joins Adobe Flash Hate Parade
Amazon has announced that ads on its network (including the Amazon.com portal) will no longer be able to use Flash from September 1. It's another nail in the coffin for the ailing interactive Web technology, which became the go-to tool for displaying videos, animations, games and other types of content online in the 2000s.
"This change ensures customers continue to have a positive, consistent experience across Amazon and its affiliates, and that ads displayed across the site function properly for optimal performance," reads the Amazon statement, hinting at some of the reasons why Flash has been ditched.
In short, Amazon ditched Flash because it can't offer a "positive," "consistent" or "optimal" experience. These are the same sorts of problems Steve Jobs cited about Flash in 2010, pertaining to security, reliability and performance.
Flash-Forward? Rather Flash-Back
When YouTube opened its doors in 2005, Flash was the obvious choice to handle video playback duties; nowadays, YouTube has transitioned to HTML5, the lightweight and nimble successor to Flash, and large swathes of the Internet are following suit.
The stand Jobs took right from the start with the iPhone and iPad is finally permeating the industry as a whole: Firefox temporarily suspended Flash support in July because of a security issue. The Chief Security Officer at Facebook wants to see it killed off. The Interactive Advertising Bureau would like to see marketing departments switch to HTML5 instead.
Soon Chrome also will stop Flash content from playing automatically. The reason: It takes up too much battery juice and CPU time. The more you dig in, the bleaker Flash's fate looks.
For now, though, Adobe's aging technology continues to hang on, Internet Explorer 6-style. Open-advertising firm Sizmek estimates that some 100 million ads will be affected by Chrome's stance every single day. Fast Company found websites—HBO, Hulu and Spotify among them—reluctant to abandon an established approach.
So it may be a while before Flash finally bows out for good, but the writing is certainly on the wall. Tech giants like Apple, Google and now Amazon have lined up in front of it, wielding their mighty pens to scratch the media plugin right off tech's tableau.
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Homes Can't Truly Be Smart Without Security
Guest author Chris Boross is president of the Thread Group and Nest's technical product marketing manager overseeing technology partnerships and wireless networking technologies.
The connected home is now closer within reach for consumers than ever before, and "smart" products are being deployed to the market in full force. Due to this sheer number of products and scenarios in the connected home, and the inordinate volume of data in constant transfer, the area of the Internet of Things has also caught the attention of hackers.
See also: Amazon's Echo Update Gives Alexa The Keys To Your House
If devices communicate over standard Wi-Fi, for example, there’s suddenly much more at stake than a disingenuous neighbor stealing bandwidth to stream movies. Cyber criminals could gain control of an entire household, from the sabotaging of energy consumption to manipulating smart medical devices.
And who is responsible for protecting our homes? What is our first line of defense for the new connected home? The answer reflects the complexity and the implications of the Internet of Things.
Living the dream
A broad range of companies will offer lights, door locks, thermostats and appliances that can communicate with each other to make people’s lives easier.
See also: 6 Steps Developers Need To Take To Harness The Internet Of Things
Conceptually, the connected home enables a lifestyle of exceptional convenience and efficiency. People can set lights to come on a few minutes before they get home at night or for a few hours every evening to give the illusion of activity if they’re on vacation. They can preheat an oven from the grocery store, turn on the dishwasher while commuting to work, or program the coffee maker while they are lying in bed.
The long-fabled Internet of Things (IoT) employs connected devices such as sensors to capture information in the surrounding environment, devices to act on that sensor data, and wireless technology to communicate the information to other devices and provide a useful user experience. From water leak sensors to smoke detectors, today’s devices can flag when they need attention, so consumers always know that their home is protected.
The convenience is undeniable. Yet it also presents an irresistible landscape for hackers looking for the next mother lode.
Security in the connected home must be addressed at multiple levels: by product manufacturers, service providers, technology providers, such as network protocol alliances, and even the end-consumer. In other words, the job of ensuring consumers can build and enjoy smart homes—without compromising the security of their families and possessions, or sacrificing ease-of-use—belongs to the entire connected ecosystem.
Ultimately each communications layer should own a degree of responsibility. However, the assumptions in this approach open up major security gaps.
For example, networking standards are built on very specific layers of the software stack and can only address security to that extent. Additionally, product manufacturers may assume that the networks people are connecting their devices to are secure, but we know that this is not always the case. And ideally, service and application-layer protocol providers should build additional security features on top of the connectivity protocol.
Locking the electronic door
Front and center in the provision of IoT security are product manufacturers, service providers and the industry consortia that provide the technologies common to both. These three entities must work together to provide consumers with state-of-the-art network- and application-level encryption and security, all without compromising ease of use. This is a tall order, but one that the industry is committed to tackling.
If we look at security from the top down, it’s the work of IoT alliances and consortia to develop best practices and technology standards with security built-in from the beginning. This offers a structure in which member companies can apply their vast experience in connected products and networking protocols to deliver the utmost in asset protection and ease-of-use.
Banking-class cryptography and security architecting can close security holes that exist in other wireless networking protocols. (This is the strategy employed by my organization, Thread Group.) The approaches may vary, but the good news is that across the board, industry alliances that support the connected home industry have also established frameworks and best practices to ensure security amongst smart home devices.
Home, Safe Home
To ensure compliance, consortia provide product manufacturers with a wide range of tools to test security before the certification process even begins. Then it’s the responsibility of each consortium to provide reliable and rigorous testing in objective third-party laboratories before granting their final stamps of approval.
Much like building a house, the network layer provides the foundation that companies at the application layer can build on. Solid security at the network layer enables the application layer to incorporate their own security features on top of the existing architecture.
The goal of many IoT industry groups and consortia is to align the ecosystem around a shared vision of a secure home. With a reliable set of best practices and testing, this connected ecosystem can operate full steam without exposing consumers and governments to theft and cyber terrorism. The industry also benefits from learning the lessons from our e-forefathers, who were tasked with securing the Web and then mobile devices.
The peace of mind—and the confidence—people feel when their favorite home devices work harmoniously would be shattered by a security breach. Given this, the true promise of the connected home, and ultimately the connected lifestyle, lies in the secure connections among people and their favorite devices.
Personally, I'm really excited about my home environment being exactly what I want. When I walk in the door, the lights in my house turn on, my eco-friendly home warms up to my preferred temperature, and my oven—which knew I was arriving minutes in advance—is pre-heated, just waiting for me to pop in dinner. When I enter my home theater, it’s already set for me to watch my favorite show.
These are conveniences I want. But what I want most of all is to come home knowing that my devices and data are there, safe and secure.
Conceptually, the connected home enables a lifestyle of exceptional convenience and efficiency. People can set lights to come on a few minutes before they get home at night or for a few hours every evening to give the illusion of activity if they’re on vacation. They can preheat an oven from the grocery store, turn on the dishwasher while commuting to work, or program the coffee maker while they are lying in bed.
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Google Gets Going With Update For Go Programming Language
Google's attempt to kill off C just got a new development: Today, the company announced a new update for Go, its own 6-year-old programming language, bringing it to version 1.5. It's the sixth major update since Go's inception in 2009, and it finally removes all traces of the C language it's built on.
Putting out their own coding language has become a hallmark of many tech giants today: Just as Microsoft had C#, others tout their own efforts, like Facebook (Hack), Google (Go) and Apple (Objective-C/Swift). Some go the open-source route like Hack and Go, though it appears the latter has taken its time.
See also: Google Go Finds New Home On GitHub
Now, the language has become "self-hosting" for the first time. The Go runtime, compiler and linker are now completely written in Go itself. The changes cover several improvements, including some crucial updates for mobile app development.
Google's goal was to create a more efficient coding language, and some of Go's new features highlight that. The official documentation touts speed in compiling, reduction in overhead, lightweight construction, and support for concurrent (or simultaneous) execution and communication as some of the key features of the language.
Ready, Steady, Go
Go sprang from a project led by three Google engineers, who wanted to cut down on the complexities and sprawling feature-set of C++.
Designed for modern-day computing—particularly cloud and mobile computing—the language has become a minor but rising star on the open-source development scene. Go 1.5 represents another step forward along that path.
The new version includes a new "Garbage Collector" (which was designed to boost program responsiveness, even under heavy load), better platform support for Darwin/ARM64 for mobile app development, and other new features to encourage developers to experiment with Go on Android and iOS.
In addition, developers can now create shared libraries from Go packages that can be called from C programs.
For more information on the updates, including the technical details, developers should check out the release notes. If you're interested in taking it for a spin, you can download the code right now.
Where It's Going
The primary concern, when it comes to any programming language, is adoption. Go moved from Mercurial to GitHub as its hosting platform of choice, but is it gaining traction with developers out in the real world?
It would appear so: This year's GopherCon conference for Go developers attracted more than 1,250 attendees, double the number that turned up in 2014.
In the RedMonk Programming Language Rankings for June 2015, based on frequency of use on GitHub and Stack Overflow, Go sits in 15th place, sandwiched between Scala and Haskell. (Apple's Swift appears in 18th position.) The language was outside the top 20 last year, but just since January, it has moved up two places.
"While [Go] has its critics, its growth prospects appear secure," writes RedMonk's Stephen O'Grady. "And should the Android support ... mature, Go's path to becoming a top 10 if not top 5 language would be clear." In other words, if it can carve its place in important projects, that would essentially seal the deal.
See also: Supreme Court Refuses To Decide If APIs Are Copyrightable
"An increasingly strategic foundational role within projects that are themselves strategic" would give Go a promising future, Grady says.
Go may not loom large on the coding front now, but that could change before long. With support for Android and (experimental support) for iOS—not to mention the rush to mobile and the cloud across most areas of development—Go's way forward looks a bit brighter now.
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The Changing Face Of Today’s Consumer
Guest author Ori Karev is general manager of enterprise and the U.S. CEO of Gett, an on-demand purveyor of ground transportation.
Back in the 80s and the 90s, companies worked hard on their interactions with consumers. Everything was about communicating correctly. Legions of experts taught employees how to speak with clients. Others worked on corporate communications materials.
Then came the first decade of the new millennium and the brave new world of the smartphone took off. More than 2 billion smartphones are now being used and more people surf the internet on their smartphones than on computers or tablets.
As we’ve become more connected, our behavior as consumers is also changing at the speed of light. Our experiences have shifted from touching linen and food in a store or restaurant, to touching our screens and knowing what we’ll get before we buy. Instead of traveling to the supermarket or standing impatiently on the curb to hail a cab, people use their smartphones to streamline tasks.
In this environment, products or services either succeed or fail in minutes or days, not weeks or months. Consumerism has shifted from a world of physical images and personal communication to a world of imagery and perception. Regardless of industry, product or service, vendors that enable instantaneous access and deliver on their digital promise will survive. Those who rely solely on their brick and mortar presence will not.
Today’s Shopper: More Pragmatic Than Ever
Connectivity is everything, especially when we’re on the move. Major airlines now offer onboard Wi-Fi for a small fee and transportation companies including Amtrak and Peter Pan Bus Lines have figured out that they cannot exist without it. More importantly, it’s a service that we, as consumers, demand.
The instantaneous nature of business today extends to all kinds of products and services. But as the opportunities to hit it big quickly have grown, so have the pitfalls. Consider the movie theater: It used to take time for word to spread about a film, giving theaters a chance to recoup some expenses from early moviegoers. Today, relationship between customers and businesses moves in a matter of moments, and the verdict on a movie spreads across the Web quickly—often before the film even hits theaters.
The new online consumer persona shares many traits of the business-to-business consumer. The emotional aspect of purchase transactions has given way to pragmatic researching and hunting for solutions. Consumers connect to businesses that can solve problems; they don’t want to sit through sales pitches based purely on emotion.
Consumer acceptance of a company’s brand promise is key. WYSIWYG (“what you see is what you get") marketing is as important as ever. If people like what they see, they must also believe that your brand will offer what they need, when and how they need it.
That doesn’t mean the new consumers don't have emotional attachments to what they buy or who they do business with. Amazon realized this early and built it into its brand experience from the beginning. If you don’t like anything you purchase there, you can return it immediately—no questions asked.
In the old brick-and-mortar world, people had fewer choices. Today, we have plenty that are a click away: You can look for a specific mountain bike from coast to coast within seconds, or find the only sushi restaurant in New York that will deliver exactly what you want within seconds.
Never before have retailers and purveyors of goods and services been so much at the mercy of their consumers.
Where Emotional Attachments Still Matter
Urbanites work hard and play harder. They move fast, and they don’t have time for errands or needs fulfillment. They have realized fairly quickly that smartphones can, and do, literally place everything from groceries to beverages to fitness trainers with free weights in the palm of their hands, and they’ve responded with enthusiasm.
It is phenomenal that the on-demand industry has gone through such a rapid change of behavior within a mere five years. The swift change stems from two factors: the availability of smartphones, and people’s desire to maximize the convenience and efficiency of procuring services and products.
But even with these light-speed changes, certain fundamentals will remain. A company must match its online presence with its integrity.
A new treaty is being shaped as we speak between consumers and sellers. Shoppers want to do business with companies that are fair, so this treaty must hinge on veracity, transparency, credibility, honesty and good will. If I have a choice between services from an ethically driven company and one with questionable business practices, I’d vote for the former every time.
Research shows that money and employment are not at the top of our personal Maslow’s hierarchies. Instead, we place the most value on fulfillment and satisfaction. Because prices are a known commodity to all in this new economy, people want to know that not only did they make the right purchase, but that they also made the purchase from a vendor that treats their suppliers and employees decently.
Consider this: If the market price for a person’s time is $10.50 an hour (at minimum), then I might pay an additional 5-7 percent on my purchase so the company can pay its employees $15 an hour. I have the satisfaction of knowing my money helps employees work their way up the Maslow ladder.
This is the most fundamental change of the new economy. Consumers have, in many respects, received an option that not long ago was only available to a few. Online research, decision and purchase behaviors now make consumers de facto stakeholders. Consumers’ ability to vote with their mouse and to reject unacceptable behaviors have given them unprecedented powers.
The Bottom Line
Companies that are succeeding in this space have a particular way of handling things.
They have 24/7 human customer-care centers, which provide real-time support and resolution to consumer challenges. They treat their suppliers and vendors with respect and transparency. And they know how to price their products in a way that respects clients’ needs, while maintaining an ethical corporate culture that will drive shoppers to do business with them.
The more expedient we can make the online consumer experience, and the more we ensure customers’ expectations are met, the higher the likelihood of succeeding in today’s on-demand world.
In a way, technology has now done something even physics cannot do. It is creating time. If the purchasing experience reduces the time we allocate to each task, while also reliably helping us fulfill these tasks, then technology is helping us free up time to do more productive and fulfilling things.
Lead photo courtesy of Shutterstock
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The Genius Of Zero-Billion-Dollar Markets
Guest author Christopher Lochhead is a cofounding partner of Play Bigger Advisors. He wrote this post with his partners Al Ramadan and Dave Peterson.
Forget the story you might have heard about how Netflix CEO Reed Hastings started the company because he got a $40 late fee from Blockbuster. The real story's even better.
According to cofounder Marc Randolph, he and Hastings had the idea to start an e-commerce company in a whole new category. They settled on DVDs. The question was whether they could cheaply and safely mail them. In 1997, DVDs were so new they couldn't even find one in a store, so they bought CDs at Tower Records instead. The CDs arrived safely, and they were off to the races tackling DVD rental by mail, a market that was worth zero billion dollars at the time.
That simple and powerful market insight—that people might want to go online, press a button, and get a movie—was the beginning of a whole new category of subscription-movie service and the start of Netflix.
Hastings refined the model along the way. While Netflix launched with late fees, like Blockbuster, he realized the fee was customer hostile and the growth of the Internet provided the potential to do something different. In 1999, when he introduced a flat monthly subscription for unlimited rentals, the business really took off.
Today Netflix is worth $52 billion, with everyone from HBO to Comcast racing to imitate its model, and it's one of the most important entertainment companies on the planet. Blockbuster is all but a memory.
Don't Tackle Existing Markets—Create New Ones
The path to success in the technology business is almost always an insight that leads to the creation of a whole new approach and a new market category. The history of our industry teaches us that most giant successes come from companies that pioneer what venture capitalist Steve Vassallo calls "zero-billion-dollar categories."
That means a market that does not currently exist. Before Netflix, there was no category for subscription movies. Before VMware, there was no market for virtualization. GoPro invented the wearable camera and LinkedIn designed and dominates the professional social-networking category.
Entrepreneur and investor Peter Thiel encourages building “the kind of company that is so good at what it does that no other firm can offer a close substitute.”
That's harder advice to take than it sounds. Every year in the technology industry, hundreds of companies launch thousands of new products. Most of these new products are pointed at existing categories. The thinking here is the bigger the market, the greater the opportunity. While some of these new products will find traction, many won’t. Because the technology industry is generally a winner-take-all game. And once a Category King is crowned, it is almost impossible to dethrone them.
To better understand these dynamics, last summer we began an ongoing research effort. We assembled a team of computer scientists, data scientists and business executives to comb through a variety of data sources to create a fact-based database on the velocity of market capitalization growth.
We examined approximately 26,000 U.S.-headquartered, venture-backed technology companies formed since 2000. We examined their 30,575 fundraising transactions and 69 IPOs with the goal of understanding how they grew in value and how much value in their market categories they captured.
We found that Category Kings typically earn 76 percent of the total market cap in their space, leaving dozens of competitors gnawing on scraps.
The Cautionary Tale Of Bing
In some cases attacking an existing market, with an established leader, is financial arson. Case in point: Microsoft's Bing search engine.
In 2009, Microsoft’s then-CEO, Steve Balmer, launched the product saying that the search market “deserves a good feature war." As you know, it didn’t work. Microsoft has invested more than $10 billion in Bing. Google still rules with 65 percent market share.
If Microsoft cannot beat Google with a $10 billion attack, why do so many tech companies pursue existing categories versus designing new ones? Said another way, who would you rather be—Netflix or Bing?
In spite of this reality, most technology companies attack existing competition, in existing spaces. There is comfort in addressing a known market versus placing a bet on a zero-billion-dollar one. When new technologies or companies fail, CEOs, entrepreneurs, product managers and investors often blame the product or company execution. Shitty products and poor execution of course lead to catastrophe. But history shows that many failures are actually category casualities.
Photo by Shardayyy
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Bublcam Brings VR Filmmaking To The Masses
Just over a year after a successful funding campaign on Kickstarter, the Bublcam is shipping to backers. It's a 360-degree, virtual-reality-capable camera aimed at amateur enthusiasts very much like the Sphericam 2 we reported on last month.
The concept isn't difficult to understand: The camera captures footage in every direction at once, so it's suitable for use on YouTube's 360-degree video channel or inside a virtual reality headset. The footage is compatible with Google Cardboard, the Gear VR, the Oculus Rift and other headsets. Viewers are able to turn their head in any direction while it plays.
All that's missing is stereoscopic 3D depth perception (as you get from behind your glasses at the movie theater) and the ability to move independently around a scene, both of which you might find in true VR.
With Google making public its own video rig and the Sphericam 2 raising three times its goal on Kickstarter, VR filmmaking tools are slowly filtering down to interested consumers as well as professionals.
The advantage the Bublcam has is it's shipping now, and it's the most affordable option out there. If you didn't get in at the Kickstarter stage, you can now order one for $799 from the Bublcam site. The Sphericam 2, in contrast, is expected to ship in December and costs from $1,299.
What's more, the Bublcam captures both still spherical photos and video whereas the Sphericam 2 is video only. Time-lapse and HDR photography features are available.
The camera features four 5-megapixel cameras and is capable of filming 360-degree footage at 1984 by 992 pixels at 30 frames per second.
An Accessible Workflow
Bublcam is about more than just the hardware, though—its developers have worked hard to create an end-to-end workflow solution that anyone who understands a video editor app or smartphone can use.
To that end there's a full ystem backing up the camera: a cloud service (Bubl.io) for storing clips and stitching them together, and mobile apps for Android and iOS to make filming straightforward. The app is also going to showcase selected content from other Bublcam users.
Users can export a JPEG or MP4 file that's editable by any common video suite, such as Final Cut, Avid, After Effects or Adobe Premiere. Footage can be saved in multiplex format (where each camera's video is shown in a separate quadrant) or as an equirectangular file (where all four inputs are stitched into one flat projection).
"The Kickstarter program was a significant learning experience for our company," Bubl Technology CEO Sean Ramsay told ReadWrite. "We were very lucky to have the support of our backers, enabling us to exceed our initial fundraising goals and bring a truly innovative spherical camera to market.
"While the Bublcam endured delays on its way to completion, the end result of our offering was much larger than initially anticipated. We would not be where we are today without the support of our Kickstarter community and we will continue to work with this community to improve our offering."
It's still early days, but the cost of VR filmmaking is dropping at the same time as these tools become easier to use, giving more of us the opportunity to create immersive content—just in time for the next wave of headgear.
Image courtesy of Bublcam
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