I was on CNBC earlier today to answer the question, “Is Mark Zuckerberg In Over His Hoodie?”, facing off against Silverback Social CEO Chris Dessi.
My argument was simple: Facebook stock has been on the rise in the last six months, and replacing a founder with a manager at the CEO level is usually a disaster (just ask Apple).
Check it out and let me know what you think.
I’m thrilled to announce the launch of “Startup Attention & PR 101: From Launch to Damage Control and Beyond“, my 19-lecture online Udemy course. I’m also thrilled to announce that half of the course’s proceeds will be donated to THRIVE-GULU, a not-for-profit dedicated to building rehabilitation and community centers across Africa, starting with Gulu, Uganda.
“Startup Attention & PR 101″ is a deeper look at how to better work with the press. This is not a course about traditional PR. Instead, it’s a deeper dive into what makes a journalist tick and how you can can take advantage of that for your company or cause.
The course covers four broad themes:
This course won’t make you a journalist’s best friend, but I hope it will give you more clarity to how journalists make decisions and how that affects you and your company.
As I noted above, I am donating half the proceeds from this course to THRIVE-GULU. Thrive was founded in 2010 by Professor Judy Dushku to assist the communities of Northern Uganda to heal from the traumatic events of war, sexual enslavement, extreme poverty and lost opportunities. It’s a charity I’m honored to have supported in the past, and one I’m thrilled I can support now with this course.
So take the course, tell your friends and send me some feedback, because I will be adding more material based on your feedback.
~ Ben
Posted in Announcements, Business, Entrepreneurship, Media, Productivity
Dear friends, colleagues and supporters,
I’m thrilled to announce that I’m joining CNET and CBS Interactive as a contributing columnist and commentator!
Ever since my departure from Mashable, I’ve posted my personal take on the big technology news of the day on BenParr.com. The response to my work has been overwhelming, and traffic to this blog has skyrocketed. Thank you all for reading, commenting and sharing.
But now I have a chance to make a much bigger impact with my writing. Starting this week, my commentary on technology, social media and startups will appear on CNET several times per week. I will not be doing any straight reporting — CNET has a talented team that already does an amazing job at that. Instead, I will be doing what I’ve been doing here on BenParr.com: breaking down the big issues and players in tech and explaining what it actually means for both the tech industry and society as a whole.
To do that, I will be writing a combination of thought pieces, analysis stories, response pieces and the occasional long-form column. My CNET column is called The Social Analyst, just like my column on Mashable. It’s going to have more bite than my old column, though. I intend to keep tech’s biggest names honest.
I decided to join forces with CNET/CBSi because CBS Interactive CEO Jim Lanzone and CNET General Manager Mark Larkin have an ambitious vision for the future.
CNET is huge: it is one of the 100 most visited websites in the world, but Mark and Jim are not content with resting on their laurels. I believe in their vision and their leadership, and I am thrilled to be working with them.
CNET isn’t my only gig, though. For the last few months, I’ve also been working behind-the-scenes on a startup, which we can’t wait to talk more about! My co-founder and I have a clear vision, as well as a duty to our investors, and we will move heaven and earth (and forgo sleep) to make sure our company succeeds.
My new role at CNET and CBSi is the best of both worlds. I get to reach millions of people with my thoughts on technology, but still retain the flexibility to be an entrepreneur, build amazing products and change the world.
Don’t take your eyes off of CNET. Big things are happening over there, and you won’t want to miss all the action. 2012 is going to be an amazing year.
Cheers,
~ Ben
Posted in Announcements, Business, Entrepreneurship, Media, My musings, Projects, Social Media, Tech
Almost everybody wants to have an assistant, even if people won’t freely admit it. Who doesn’t want an extra set of hands to help out with chores, scheduling, reminders, meetings, reservations, and the myriad of other tasks that we need to complete every single day?
Just a few years ago, the only way you could get yourself an assistant was to pay one a full-time salary. Very few people can afford the luxury having somebody help them with all of the tasks and information in their lives. But that has rapidly changed with new technology that makes it easier to outsource our lives.
This is what I call “Smart Assistant” technology, and I group it into three distinct buckets:
While each bucket is vastly different, they help accomplish the same things — they help people save time, and they help put people’s minds at ease.
We’re only at the beginning of this phenomenon though. I believe it’s especially true for technological assistants, which are in the best position to deal with (but have yet to solve) one of the biggest problems of the Internet age: cognitive and information overload.
Smart assistants are huge businesses. Five years from now, you’re going to wonder how you lived without them.
Siri image courtesy of Flickr, Kaptain Kobold
Posted in Business, Entrepreneurship, My musings, Projects, Synergies, Tech
The unemployment rate in the U.S. is 8.6%, but you wouldn’t know that by looking at the tech industry.
There is an all-out war for engineering and design talent here in Silicon Valley, and the battle is driving up salaries and making a lot of us wonder: where are all the engineers?
The Wall Street Journal is just the latest to write about this phenomenon. It had an article last week about the battle for engineering interns, and this week it has a piece on how startups are finding it difficult to raise funding without having a full team of engineers ready to go.
There are simply not enough qualified programmers to fill the rosters of tech’s biggest and smallest companies. Google and Facebook are rapidly expanding, while more and more engineers are deciding to strike it on their own and start their own company rather than work for one. This phenomenon has only grown with the falling costs of starting a company and films like The Social Network, which I believe have sparked a renewed interest in entrepreneurship.
The talent crunch has been a problem in tech for years, but I believe 2012 is going to be the year that it hits the breaking point and the general public starts paying attention to the engineering talent wars.
A couple of factors are going to make the race for talent even tougher:
There will be a lot more stories about the lack of engineering talent in the U.S. in mainstream publications like The Wall Street Journal in 2012, and it will result in a lot more attention on the issue, especially as more people realize that their old jobs are never coming back. A laid-off manufacturer would be smart to retrain and rebrand himself as an IT guy.
There will also be a greater focus on getting U.S. students trained in programming and engineering, especially as China and India continue to swell with bright engineering talent. It will take some time, but I hope and believe that U.S. schools will eventually make programming a required course in high school and/or college. Hopefully it’ll happen sooner rather than later.
The result of this attention will eventually be more foreign engineers (can we please pass the Startup Visa Act already?) and more students who become engineers. But it will be years until these talent flows enter the pipeline.
So for now, there’s going to be a talent crunch. The most innovative companies and savvy entrepreneurs will end up being the winners, while lots of startup ideas will begin to wither and die because they couldn’t recruit the talent needed to support them.
Begun, the Talent War has.
Posted in Business, Entrepreneurship
Earlier today, I received an email from SpeakerGram, announcing that it was shutting down. The service helped speakers manage their inbound speaking requests:
“We have decided to shut down SpeakerGram. While we are thankful for the support that our users have given us, we have changed our focus to a new product, and need to shift the balance of our energies towards that effort.”
This kind of thing happens to startups all the time. It’s just not something the media reports on because most of these startups don’t reach the name recognition that makes them big stories.
But why was SpeakerGram the wrong idea? Why do thousands of ideas end up in the deadpool? And what makes for a great idea that captivates the masses?
I’ve heard, seen, analyzed and written about thousands of startup ideas over the years, and while the reasons most of those ideas die varies, there are a few consistent themes that I’ve noticed typically signal a doomed idea.
Here’s the short list:
Great ideas take years, not months, to emerge. Facebook wasn’t a billion dollar idea when it launched at Harvard. It became a billion dollar business when it launched the single most important feature in the history of social networking: News Feed.
Very few entrepreneurs nail the idea on the first try. That’s why VCs always say that they prefer to invest in “A” teams with “B” ideas instead of “B” teams with “A” ideas. The “A” team will eventually get its act together and throw for the game-winning touchdown, while the “B” team will get a few first downs before settling for a field goal or fumbling the football.
My advice to anybody with a great startup idea: think it through first. Make sure you ask the hard questions, go through all the scenarios and have a bold vision that can carry the team to the finish line, even when the original idea doesn’t catch fire. A little patience before you jump into the building process will save you from building a product that nobody wants.
Image courtesy of Flickr, Twenty Questions
Posted in Entrepreneurship
If you’re in college and your goal in life is to be an entrepreneur, there are a few things you should be doing now that will help you tremendously when you finally walk away with that diploma.
A few weeks ago, I was giving some advice to a college student over the phone. His aspirations are entrepreneurial, and he wanted my advice on what he should do to really be prepared once he had that billion dollar idea.
Here’s what I told him:
“Personal brand” is a bit of a dirty word, but it is important to be doing things that build up your reputation as a smart and entrepreneurial individual. This means starting a blog and commenting on the subjects that interest you the most. This means setting up About.me and LinkedIn accounts. This means using Twitter regularly. This means not posting too many pictures of your drunken frat night on Facebook.
When a recruiter searches for you, they will find your name on the top of Google Search results. More importanty, they will find smart commentary and a following. Those are invaluable assets in the social era of business.
Building that out now, even before you leave college, makes it easier to network, secure a job and build a company. It makes it easier to recruit for your startup, as well.
Networking is fundamental to business, and it’s even more important in entrepreneurship. Convincing users to try your crazy product or partner with your tiny company is a matter of master salesmanship and relationships.
If a personal friend asks me to try out their product, I’m going to try it. Unfortunately, I cannot say the same for the thousands of entrepreneurs that email me regularly. There simply isn’t enough time.
Network now, and network hard. Network not just with your classmates and professors, but with smart professionals in your area. This is especially helpful if your school is near a major business hub (Northwestern –> Chicago; Stanford –> Silicon Valley).
When you have a large and powerful network, job offers come to you and term sheets are easier to secure.
Mentorship goes a long way towards increasing your knowledge and having someone to rely on when you do finally decide to take the leap. You’d be surprised how many people are willing to mentor you if you only ask; it’s a really positive feeling for the mentor, especially when they see you go off and succeed.
I’m grateful that I found not one, but two amazing mentors while I was at Northwestern. Without my mentors, I wouldn’t be where I ma now.
One more thing: mentors make for great angel investors.
I’ve saved the most important piece of advice for last. No matter your major and no matter your aspirations, learn to code. It will serve you tremendously as an entrepreneur.
I may not have majored in Computer Science (though I wish I had), but I did take programming classes and I did teach myself PHP. The reason is simple: if you can’t code, you can’t build.
Sure, you can find yourself a technical co-founder, but engineers will respect you more if you can speak their language. You don’t need to become a zen master at programming; you just need to know enough to understand what’s going on under the hood of your product.
While things like Codecademy definitely help, there is no substitute to a half-year immersion in programming. That opportunity slips away once you leave the ivory tower.
Northwestern University image courtesy of Flickr, wallyg
Posted in Entrepreneurship
Finding investors for your startup is tough business, but choosing the ones that will enable your company and your product to change the world is a far greater challenge.
There are lots of reasons for choosing investors. Perhaps they have large reach and influence. Perhaps they have a great track record. Perhaps they are brilliant when it comes to product. Perhaps they’re known for their founder mentorship.
There is one rule you should never deviate from when choosing investors, though. It’s one that too many entrepreneurs break in their quest for the next round of funding.
The #1 rule of choosing investors for your startup: Only work with investors you’d grab a beer with. Some people call this the “don’t work with assholes” rule, but I prefer to call it the Beer Rule.
Investors are just as much a part of your team as your co-founders or employees. You’re going to have to work with (and answer to) these people. You better respect the shit out of them if you’re going to take their money. You better be comfortable enough to challenge them and still be friends after a screaming match if you’re going to take their money.
One other piece of advice: the worst reason for taking an investor’s money is for the money. Always work with investors that have skills, connections, knowledge and insight that you don’t have. Always work with investors you respect and can trust. Life is too short to work with people you don’t like.
P.S.: Replace “Beer Rule” with “Tea Rule” if you aren’t much of a beer drinker.
Image courtesy of Flickr, shaggy359
Posted in Entrepreneurship, My musings
On Friday, I gave a presentation on the future of entrepreneurship at the LeWeb conference in Paris, France.
I’ll be posting the full video soon, but I want to share the slides as well.
Hope you enjoy!
~ Ben
Posted in Entrepreneurship
One of the things I’ve found myself carrying around these days is a sketchpad.
The reason is simple: I have a lot of ideas, for both the companies I advise and for my own startup ideas. I’m a visual person when it comes to developing products, so I’ve always found a sketchpad to be immensely useful for drawing out the product and user engagement flows for my ideas.
When ideas get more structured, I bust out OmniGraffle, one of my favorite apps for Mac and iPad. Most product people already know about OmniGrafflie: it’s a great way to build visual product roadmaps and mockups. If you aren’t using it, I highly suggest it.
The point I’m trying to make isn’t that you should carry a sketchpad around with you. My point is that you need to have a way to immediately record and expand the ideas in your head. You can write out a story, record a voice note, start a Wiki, call your co-founder, or mock something up in photoshop. Use the medium that suits how your mind works.
In my case, I use sketchpads and whiteboards. They are my canvas. Make sure you find yours.
Posted in Entrepreneurship, My musings
