Saturday 30 June 2018

Top Tips to Keep Your Business Fleet and Drivers Safe from Accidents

Keeping your fleet drivers safe from accidents is very important for business owners. Use these tips to keep them away from accidents and your business safe.

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Attend This Free Online Event And Gain Insights from Seasoned Entrepreneurs

Work From Home Ideas: 12 In-Home Business Opportunities You Can Start From Your Laptop
Want to start a new business — or grow an existing one? Where do you go and who do you ask for help?

Both these questions will be answered with an online event coming your way this fall. And attendance is free!

At this year’s Growth & Success Conference, experts will discuss ways to build your brand; reset, reboot and redirect your success; gain confidence and clarity; and how you can learn to systematically carry out successful negotiations.

The event brings together a collection of seasoned entrepreneurs and thought leaders to share their knowledge, experience and insights as business owners, mentors and strategists with you!

You can attend the free conference from September 17 – 18, 2018 online as part of the Virtual Conference Series.

Click on the Growth & Success box below to register and attend:

Register for Free

Featured Events, Contests and Awards

Growth & Success ConGrowth & Success Con
September 17, 2018, Online

This small business virtual conference is dedicated to supporting entrepreneurs at all stages who are stuck in the daily grind of building their businesses and struggle to get solid advice and guidance. An amazing panel of experts in various disciplines and business coaches will share tips & tricks on topics including Growth, Marketing, Management & Business Building for Success. Register today!

More Events

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This weekly listing of small business events, contests and awards is provided as a community service by Small Business Trends.

You can see a full list of events, contest and award listings or post your own events by visiting the Small Business Events Calendar.

Image: Shutterstock

This article, "Attend This Free Online Event And Gain Insights from Seasoned Entrepreneurs" was first published on Small Business Trends



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Here’s a Very Simple Solution to the Mystery of Why You Can’t Find Employees

Screen Shot 2013-10-02 at 9.04.17 AM

(This post originally appeared on Entrepreneur)

A few years ago my wife and I decided to put our house on the market. It was an older house with lots of space and lots of memories. But, like any older house, it also had its share of maintenance and structural problems. We fretted that it wouldn’t sell. That is, until our real estate agent put things into perspective.

“Look,” he said to us as we were putting the paperwork together. “If you list the house for $1, it’ll sell tomorrow. If you list it for $1 million, you might not have a buyer. We just have to find a price in between.”

It’s smart advice, but when you think about it, it’s not exactly genius. It’s just supply and demand. That’s how prices are determined. This guy sells houses for a living. No one knows better about pricing than he does.

So think about that the next time you complain that you can’t find any good workers. Why is that? Is it because your company isn’t a good company? Sure it is. Are you not a good person to work for? Sure you are. Is that big company down the street offering better pay and benefits?  Ah…now we’re getting somewhere.

You are choosing to pay what you think an employee is worth. So how’s that working for you?

If you listed a warehouse job that paid $1 million a year, you would have a line of prospective job applicants snaking down the street. If you only promised to pay $1 a year, then good luck finding anyone. If you want to find people in a strong economy with low unemployment, you’re going to have to figure out what the number is. I’ll bet it’s somewhere between $1 and $1 million a year.

Even with record low unemployment, wages have only been increasing less than 3 percent this year. That’s not very much. Why? It’s because employers like me and you aren’t paying people enough. Because of that we’re missing out on good employees who are gravitating to companies that do.

You can’t pay your people any more than you’re currently paying? Oh, yes, you can. It just depends on two things: whether you can charge more for your products and services, or whether you’re willing to give up some of your short-term profits for longer-term value.

If your customers are willing to pay more for what you do in order to make up for your increased wages, then of course go for it. But when you get pushback — like I sometimes do — you have to be creative. Your customers are telling you that they don’t see the added value you’re providing for the additional price. So what can you do to add to that value? A little more service? An upgrade on a product? A longer-term commitment? Figure it out. Even if you’re in a commoditized business like running a restaurant or selling coffee, you can still provide an extra level of service, ambiance and perks to make it worth it to your customers.

Or you could just give up some profits. No way! Yes, way. Your business may be doing just fine — fine enough that spending a few more dollars on a good employee won’t cause you too much pain. Just remember — you get what you pay for. If you choose correctly, you may find an employee or two who is worth 10 times the added costs because they’re more motivated, loyal, productive and…yes…profitable over the longer term.

So stop complaining that you can’t find people. Yes, you can. The real problem is that you’re making the decision that you don’t want to pay what you must to get those people. It’s nobody else’s choice but yours.



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10 Expert Suggestions for Getting Your Content Found

Content marketing can be a tricky strategy for small businesses to master. Not only do you need to actually create content that’s both relevant and effective, but you also need to find ways to get that content in front of potential customers. SEO, social media and collaboration can all be effective strategies in this area. Read what members of the online small business community have to say on those subjects below.

Check Out These Powerful Examples of Link Worthy Content

If you want to build links to your content, you need to create content that’s actually worthy of being linked to. It can help to gather some inspiration by looking at other link-worthy content. Here are some examples to guide your own content creation from Anne Leuman of TopRank Marketing.

Gain Visibility Using Instagram Hashtags for Business

Once you create content on Instagram, hashtags can help you get it in front of more potential customers. However, it’s important to have a strategy in mind so you actually get found by relevant people. Learn more in a recent Social Media Examiner post by Jenn Herman.

Get the Scoop on LinkedIn Hashtags

If you use LinkedIn to promote your content, you may have noticed a recent update that includes the ability to add hashtags. This new feature is being tested and could potentially help you reach more users. Rachel Strella discusses more in a post on Strella Social Media. And BizSugar members offer additional thoughts here.

Save Time on Content Curation and Collaboration

Involving others in your content strategy can be a great way to get your message in front of new eyes. Curating content and collaborating with others can be time consuming. But there are tools out there to help you save time, like the ones listed in a recent Content Marketing Institute post by Aaron Orendorff.

Overcome Common Link Building Blockers

When it comes to building links to your content, there are some common challenges and mistakes keeping content creators from making as much of an impact. Read about some of the most common blockers and how to overcome them in a Search Engine Land post by Paddy Moogan.

Rethink Authenticity in Your Content Strategy

It can be difficult for a lot of marketers to strike a balance between creating authentic content and creating a performance that gets results. In a recent Copyblogger post, Stefanie Flaxman talks about how you can rethink that idea and create authentic content. And you can also see commentary from the BizSugar community too.

Drive Sales with Your Instagram Marketing Strategy

Of course, the overall goal of your content marketing strategy should be to increase sales for your business, whether that’s directly or indirectly. If you’re looking to drive real sales to your small business from Instagram, check out the tips in a rcent Quick Sprout post by Neil Patel.

Learn What’s New with Facebook in 2018

Part of taking advantage of social platforms like Facebook to gain visibility for your content is keeping up with new features. Facebook is constantly evolving.  You can learn more about what’s new on the platform in this SMB CEO post by Ivan Widjaya.

Use Mentoring to Increase Your Odds of Small Business Survival

A recent report found mentoring can help small businesses survive for longer. Jonathan Dyer of Dyer News discusses the findings in this post. And BizSugar members also share their thoughts on the post in their community.

Avoid These Blogging Mistakes on Other Sites

Sharing your expertise on new sites can be a great way to increase your content’s reach. However, there are a lot of common mistakes that go along with this approach. In a recent CorpNet post, Matej Markovic goes into some of the most prevalent ones and offers solutions.

If you’d like to suggest your favorite small business content to be considered for an upcoming community roundup, please send your news tips to: sbtips@gmail.com.

Photo via Shutterstock

This article, "10 Expert Suggestions for Getting Your Content Found" was first published on Small Business Trends



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Rebooted Microsoft Classic IntelliMouse Brings New Features to Your Business Computer

Microsoft Classic IntelliMouse Reboots an Old Favorite

The original Microsoft IntelliMouse was launched in 1996, with the last model being released in 2003. It has taken 15 years, but Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) has decided to revive this iconic mouse with the new Microsoft Classic IntelliMouse.

Microsoft Classic IntelliMouse

As to why Microsoft decided this was the right time to bring back the IntelliMouse, Simon Dearsley, Devices Design Director at Microsoft, explained the reasoning on the company’s official Windows Blogs. Dearsly said tracking and switch technology, as well as price, has matured, which presented an opportunity for the company.

Dearsly added Microsoft saw the opportunity to “Improve on an icon by updating it with modern technology. We know how important the IntelliMouse range has been and wanted to take a moment to reflect on the history of it and do something special for our fans.”

Keeping the Classic Design

The first IntelliMouse was originally sculpted by hand by the most experienced mouse designers in the world, this according to Dearsly. For Microsoft, it meant leaving a good thing alone and instead channeling its focus to updating the performance with the latest technology.

Inside the new IntelliMouse, Microsoft has upgraded the device with new mechanical engineering and new structures to make it stronger than the original.

This includes adding three Kailh switches for the middle wheel and side buttons as well as making improvements to the two side buttons. The three classic buttons can be customized to introduce more efficiency to your workflow.

When it comes to tracking, a DPI range of up to 3200 makes the mouse more precise. And at $39.99, the Microsoft Classic Intellimouse is an affordable peripheral with great design and technology.

Microsoft Classic IntelliMouse Reboots an Old Favorite

Workflow Efficiency

The mouse has evolved greatly since it was invented by Douglas Engelbart in the 1960s when it was called the “X-Y Position Indicator for a Display System.” As it continued evolving, it introduced new levels of efficiency in applications and eventually web browsing and more.

It is almost inconceivable to picture a computer without some type of mouse capability these days. Along with the keyboard, the mouse has become an indispensable tool likely to remain with us until something better comes along.

You can get the new Microsoft Classic IntelliMouse here.

Images: Microsoft

This article, "Rebooted Microsoft Classic IntelliMouse Brings New Features to Your Business Computer" was first published on Small Business Trends



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Announcing TechCrunch’s Startup Battlefield Latin America in São Paulo on Nov. 8

TechCrunch is excited to announce that the Startup Battlefield Latin America is coming to São Paulo on November 8 this year. This is the first event TechCrunch has ever held in Latin America, and we are all in to make it a memorable one to support the fast-emerging startup ecosystem in the region.

The Startup Battlefield is TechCrunch’s premier startup competition, which over the past 12 years has placed 750 companies on stage to pitch top VCs and TechCrunch editors. Those founders have gone on to raise more than $8 billion and produce more than 100 exits. Startup Battlefield Latin America aims to add 15 great founders from Latin America to those elite ranks.

Here’s how the competition works. Founders may apply now to participate in Startup Battlefield. Any early stage (pre-A round) company with a working product headquartered in an eligible Latin American country (see list below) may apply. Applications close August 6. TechCrunch editors will review the applications and, based on which applicants have the strongest potential for a big exit of major societal impact, pick 15 to compete on November 8. TechCrunch’s Startup Battlefield team will work intensively with each founding team to hone their six-minute pitch to perfection.

Then it’s game day. The 15 companies will take the stage at São Paulo’s Tomie Ohtake Institute in front of a live audience of 500 people to pitch top-tier VC judges. The judges and TechCrunch editors will pick five for a finals round. Those lucky finalists will face a fresh team of judges, and one will emerge as the winner of the first-ever Startup Battlefield Latin America. The winner takes home $25,000 and a trip for two to the next Disrupt, where they can exhibit free of charge in the Startup Alley and may also qualify to participate in the Startup Battlefield at Disrupt. Sweet deal. All Startup Battlefield sessions will be captured on video and posted on TechCrunch.com.

It’s an experience no founder would want to miss, considering the opportunity to join the ranks of Battlefield greats from years past, including Dropbox, Yammer, Mint, Getaround, CloudFlare, Vurb and many more.

Get that application started now.

Here’s the need-to-know about qualifying to apply:

  • Have an early-stage company in “launch” stage
  • Headquartered in one of these countries: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, French Guiana, Guyana, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Uruguay, Venezuela (Central America) Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Mexico, Panama (Caribbean – including dependencies and constituent entities), Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico.
  • Have a fully working product/beta reasonably close to, or in, production
  • Have received limited press or publicity to date
  • Have no known intellectual property conflicts
  • Apply by Aug. 6, 2018, at 5 p.m. PST

Tickets to attend Startup Battlefield Latin America will go on sale soon. Interested in sponsoring the event, contact us here



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Burn the Business Plan! is a Book about Turning Entrepreneurial Vision Into Practical Solution

Burn the business plan! Burn the business plan! Wait? Is that all I need to do to get started in this

Does author Carl Schramm truly believe entrepreneurs should “Burn The Business Plan” as the provocative title of his book suggests? If you were to ask the  former president of the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, the answer would likely be no.

Schramm’s colorfully titled, Burn The Business Plan: What Great Entrepreneurs Really Do does offer plenty of other suggestions though.  Schramm, a university professor at Syracuse whom The Economist calls the “evangelist of entrepreneurship,” wrote this book to dispel the myths people hear about entrepreneurship and share the truths for building sustainable success.

What Is Burn the Business Plan About?

Burn The Business Plan covers key scenarios entrepreneurs face in terms of setting entrepreneurial expectations. The first chapter makes its case for burning the business plan, of course, but the rest  of the book gets to the motivation behind business building. The book also looks at resources, both professional and personal. It also looks at how to learn from other entrepreneurs and how to create an entrepreneurial culture.

The rest of the book focuses on the motivations driving entrepreneurs to build a business. Good points and counterpoints exist in the chapters, with supporting materials where possible. In Chapter 5, for example, Schramm cautions about toxic mentors and gives four examples.  When seeking an example of how entrepreneurs can improve their  learning speed, Schramm mentions OODA (Observe, Orient, Decide, Act), an approach to decision making used by pilots when making quick judgments. Devised by John Boyd, an Air Force pilot who served in the Korean War, this approach helps entrepreneurs broaden their view, one of Schramm’s main purposes in writing the book.

What I Liked about Burn the Business Plan

Schramm does a very good job of providing useful explanations that show the reader why certain business ideas are accepted without question even though they can’t stand up to scrutiny.  I liked the book’s emphasis on creating a platform and selecting mentors.  When Schramm explains how an idea is executed, he notes how this happens through product trials.

“No one knows at the outset …exactly how her idea will be valued by customers. Thus, every startup becomes a platform on which to develop and test the utility of an evolving product.”

As software becomes part of a business model, businesses have to rethink how they deliver products and services. That means deploying multiple dynamic plans rather than a single static business plan and rethinking your road map regularly as information changes.

Schramm’s ideas flow smoothly from chapter to chapter without being repetitive.  In fact Chapter 6, Big Companies Can Be Schools For Start Ups, was a standout chapter to me.  Schramm explains how large enterprises benefit startups in a somewhat unusual way. While these behemoths certainly can scale, they can also become bureaucratic. This sometimes leaves open untapped opportunities and innovations. And these can entice employees who had never showed any interest in entrepreneurship before to launch businesses in order to take advantage of these opportunities. Schramm calls these people Spinout Entrepreneurs and explains how and why they can contribute to a small business’s success.

“Very few spinout entrepreneurs start companies outside of the industries in which they work. The obvious reason is that they have acquired specific knowledge….Executives within an industry often move from one company to another. They are not hired because they are bringing company secrets, but because they know the common culture of the industry.”

Schramm shares a few specific stories, like entrepreneur Gary Burrell, head designer for King Radio, who went on to design communication and navigation systems used by King’s customers.

Schramm says Ewing Kaufman, founder of Marion Labs and the Ewing Marion Kaufmann Institute (Schramm’s former employer), had especially inspired him. In fact, Schramm ended up dedicating the book to Kaufman. According to Schramm, Kaufman had always encouraged this kind of entrepreneurship, even if it meant a few employees would leave:

“Ewing Kaufman delighted in knowing that many new companies, at least fifteen, were created by former employees of Marion Labs. He viewed his company as a nursery for other entrepreneurs.”

Schramm also explains however the need for something extra on the part of entrepreneurs who find themselves in such a place:

“But being in an innovative environment is not enough. An aspiring entrepreneur needs to pay close attention to the process by which companies develop new products.”

I know many lost entrepreneurs who have identified a product or service, but not a clear idea on how they will deliver that product.  The Amazons of the world know about delivery, and Schramm appreciates it too.   He provides stories of successful entrepreneurs and gets past the typical “passion-is-important” pronouncements to look at the practical side of what works and what doesn’t.

What Could Have Been Done Differently?

What may have been missing in the book was a chapter on team dynamics.  While the book relied on many well-chosen stories to make its points, more detail might have been helpful to see exactly how people behind the scenes made things happen.

But much of this lack of detail is down to the book’s brevity. And the slimness of the volume is also its virtue, delivering important, easy to digest insights to busy entrepreneurs who may not have the tome for a lengthy read.

One significant concept Schramm hits home is how innovation can come with knowledge acquired along the way. One example of this from the book is how two University of South Carolina coaches applied their observations about the materials used in many sports uniforms to launch Sheex, a performance bedding manufacturer.

Why Read Burn The Business Plan?

Entrepreneurs should learn how to plan without letting their plans become restrictive.  Reading Burn The Business Plan will help you see how to focus not just on your vision but on how to make a vision into practical reality delivering real value for customers.

Image: Amazon

This article, "Burn the Business Plan! is a Book about Turning Entrepreneurial Vision Into Practical Solution" was first published on Small Business Trends



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Friday 29 June 2018

Replacing pills with a Band-Aid? Avro Life Science thinks there’s a patch for that

Shak Lakhani, the  21-year-old chief executive and co-founder of Avro Life Science, started researching biomaterials when he was 15 years old.

Every summer and after school the teenager would travel nearly two hours by bus and train from the Richmond Hill neighborhood of Toronto where he lived to the tissue engineering lab at the University of Toronto and develop three-dimensional, in-vitro models of tumors using biomaterials.

For three years, Lakhani worked in the lab, before going on to study nanotechnology engineering at the University of Waterloo a short 73 miles away. It was there, in his first year, that Lakhani met another Richmond Hill resident, Keean Sarani, and launched Avro Life Science.

Sarani, also 21, had his own history in life sciences. A former epidemiologist who worked as a research assistant at the aptly named Hospital for Sick Children, Sarani spent his high school years working in community pharmacies before going on to graduate from the University of Waterloo with both an Honours Science degree and a doctorate in pharmacy directly from high school.

Sarani and Lakhani, who’re related by marriage, first met in the Village 1 dormitory complex at the university. Within months of their first meeting the two decided to start working on the company that would become Avro.

They formally launched the business in January 2016, a time when Lakhani said the two college students would hold “startup Sundays” where they would pitch ideas to each other in one dorm room or another on Sunday evenings, until they found an idea that seemed viable.

Given their experience — Sarani in pharmacies and treating patients and Lakhani in chemistry and material science, the two hit on the idea of drug delivery and patches.

Avro Life Science co-founders Keean Sarani and Shak Lakhani

The two initially toyed with a multivitamin patch for daily health, but through the sniffles, watery eyes and sneezes of perennial allergy sufferers the two hit on the idea of an antihistamine patch to cure their own ailments.

The two won their first pitch competition three months after hitting on the initial idea in March 2016, and formally incorporated their business in November 2016.

Fast-forward two years and the two co-founders are just about ready to make the final preparations for the first product with help from an initial seed round from investors led by Fifty Years, with participation from Susa Ventures, Garage Capital, Heuristic Capital, Embark Ventures, Uphonest Capital and Buckley Endeavours. Individual angel investors also participated in the round. In all, Avro has about $2.2 million in the bank.

According to Lakhani, the company has already developed a polymer that allows Avro to make patches that can deliver hundreds of different drugs. Now it’s just a matter of gearing up for clinical trials that the company will run before the end of the year.

The first product, Lakhani says, is “a medicated sticker for seasonal allergies.” The company’s plan to get to market involves revitalizing drugs that pharma companies haven’t been able to bring to market because oral delivery is difficult, Lakhani says.

“Really the breakthrough is the [proprietary] combination of materials that can hold all of these different drugs,” he said. “The method of drug delivery is the same as in nicotine patches. In our case as a result of the polymer and manufacturing method…. [the drugs] don’t bond with the polymer. They are micro-adhesives in the patch. Heat from the skin dissolves the polymer and allows the drugs to enter the blood stream.”

Basically, there are tiny bubbles on the patch and contact with (and heat from) the skin causes the bubbles to break and deliver any drugs in an unadulterated form to the bloodstream, Lakhani explained.

Because the company is using generic drugs for its first tests, it’s hoping to have an easier path to market to prove the viability of its delivery system.

Down the road, the company also has some pretty impressive pharmaceutical partners that it could tap. Avro is already working with Bayer as part of their accelerator program in Toronto, and that may lead to a deeper relationship down the road, according to Lakhani.

The first drug that the company is testing is Loratadine (a common antihistamine).

“In the coming years, we envision bringing a number of other patches to market for drugs addressing neurodegenerative diseases, cardiac health, analgesics and many more to improve drug delivery and compliance while revitalizing pharma pipelines,” Lakhani wrote in an email. “One day we hope to allow large pharmaceutical companies to ‘rescue’ drugs that they spent billions of dollars developing, but failed trials due to low bioavailability, high liver toxicity from an entire pill being metabolized at once.”

For Fifty Years co-founder Seth Bannon, Avro’s technology is a “Holy Grail” for drug delivery that can save pharmaceutical companies billions of dollars.

“The market for this is absolutely massive. Initially, Avro can manufacture and sell patches carrying generics direct to consumer to address issues like compliance with children and the elderly,” wrote Bannon, in an email. “Because Avro can deliver many drugs transdermally… When you deliver drugs transdermally, you significantly reduce liver toxicity and boost bioavailability. This means pharma can rescue drugs that just barely failed in Phase III. Pharma will pay a lot for this.”



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This Week in Small Business, How Will the Supreme Court’s Sales Tax Ruling Affect You?

It’s time for another edition of This Week in Small Business. In this series, I take a look at three of my favorite articles to appear on Small Business Trends in the past week.

I’m usually joined by a guest to go over these stories and this week I’m rejoined by my friend and small business ecommerce expert John “Colderice” Lawson.

This week, we started our discussion talking about independent retailers. As Rieva Lesonsky reminded us this week, July is Independent Retailers Month.

John and I spoke on the importance and value that independent retailers provide to local economies. Check out the video to see what difference just $10 spent at an independent retailer can make.

Importance of Online Sales Tax Supreme Court Ruling

We then switched focus to a subject I brought up in last week’s video, on the Supreme Court’s ruling that states can require collection of sales tax for online sales. John does not see this decision as a positive for business.

“The effect is going to be laborious for a lot of business owners,” he says.

Check out our whole discussion on the Supreme Court ruling and lasting impact it will have on businesses like yours.

Finally, we talk about the recent submission from the Young Entrepreneur Council and their picks for the top podcasts for small business owners and entrepreneurs. You’ll find out why I was happy to talk about this particular subject this week.

For the rest of the week in small business news, check out the roundup below.

Remember, you’ll get notified the moment new This Week in Small Business videos are released — every Friday afternoon — when you subscribe to the Small Business Trends YouTube channel today.

Management

6 Must-Haves to Include on Your Small Business Mid-Year Legal Checklist

Summer has officially started. This means beaches and barbecues, summer vacation for the kids, and maybe a little extra juggling for parents. It also means we’re halfway through the year, making it the perfect time to assess the legal and tax health of your business.

Interview Questions You May and May Not Ask Under New Massachusetts Pay Equity Law

On July 1, a new equal pay law will go into effect in Massachusetts — and it will impact small businesses in ways of which you may want to be aware. The Massachusetts Equal Pay Act (MEPA) is intended to ensure greater fairness and provide clarity on what constitutes unlawful wage discrimination.

Marketing

Google Ditches AdWords for Ads, Aims at Smarter, Mobile Search

Google (NASDAQ: GOOGL) is ditching AdWords and DoubleClick. Google Rebrands Ad Offerings In an attempt to simplify how you create and manage ad campaigns with Google, the search engine company is rebranding these services as Google Ads, Google Marketing Platform, and Google Ad Manager.

Introbrand Aims to Help Small Businesses Create DIY Effects for Your Online Video

Video has become the calling card of today’s digital business ecosystem. And for many small businesses, the DIY route is the way to go because of the cost. Introbrand has created a service which fills a particular niche in this segment. It allows you to make intros, outros and logo animations for your videos.

Retail Trends

Selling to Walmart Doesn’t Have to Be Hard, 3 Tips From the Retailer’s Annual Open Call Event

Over 450 small businesses met buyers head-on at Walmart’s fifth annual Open Call event recently. More than 100 entrepreneurs pitching their American-made products for sale with the retail giant were rewarded by getting to move onto the next step in the process.  A few exceptional pitches landed businesses a deal on the spot.

Small Business Operations

Amazon  WorkDocs Introduces Multi-User Collaboration with Benefits for Small Business Teams

Amazon Web Services (AWS) just announced a new collaborative editing feature for Amazon WorkDocs with big implications for small business teams. The new capability is made possible as a result of a partnership with Hancom, a company which provides office productivity software.

Your  Employees Could Save 33 Minutes and 36 Seconds Per Week with Visual Communication

New research has revealed employees can save 33 minutes and 36 seconds over a 40 hour week by simply using visual communications.

Social Media

Facebook Tools for Video Creators Generate New Small Business Opportunities

Facebook (NASDAQ: FB) announced it is updating the tools it launched for the creator community earlier this year. They will now have new ways in which they can engage with their communities and build a business on Facebook while at the same time managing their presence. Creators and influencers have become a driving force for brands.

Technology Trends

Ricoh Rolls Out Cloud Solutions for Small Businesses

The new RICOH Cloud Workflow Solutions portfolio is going to give small businesses access to an affordable subscription service for reducing manual processes. RICOH (TYO: 7752) looks to eliminate manual steps while reducing manual data entry and managing the interoperability of different systems.

Freshworks 360 Unites Sales, Marketing and Support Channels for Small Businesses

With the launch of Freshworks 360, small businesses can now access a fully integrated cloud-based omnichannel customer engagement solution. Freshworks 360 will bring together and manage all support, sales and marketing communications across different channels on a single platform.

Shopify Ping Allows you to Manage Your Ecommerce Site from Anywhere

The launch of Shopify Ping will allow merchants on the eCommerce platform to manage their business no matter where they are. Ping is going to bring together customer conversations and marketing workflows on websites, Facebook Messenger or SMS along with an intelligent assistant called Kit on Apples’s iOS mobile platform.

This article, "This Week in Small Business, How Will the Supreme Court’s Sales Tax Ruling Affect You?" was first published on Small Business Trends



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India’s Cashify raises $12M for its second-hand smartphone business

Cashify, a company that buys and sells used smartphones, is the latest India startup to raise capital from Chinese investors after it announced a $12 million Series C round.

Chinese funds CDH Investments and Morningside led the round, which included participation from Aihuishou, a China-based startup that sells used electronics in a similar way to Cashify and has raised more than $120 million. Existing investors, including Bessemer Ventures and Shunwei, also took part in the round.

This new capital takes Cashify to $19 million raised to date.

The business was started in 2013 by co-founders Mandeep Manocha (CEO), Nakul Kumar (COO) and Amit Sethi (CTO) initially as ReGlobe. The business gives consumers a fast way to sell their existing electronics; it deals mainly in smartphones but also takes laptops, consoles, TVs and tablets.

“When we began we saw a lot of transaction for phone sales moving from offline to online,” Manocha told TechCrunch in an interview. “But consumer-to-consumer [for used devices] is highly opaque on price discovery and you never know if you’re making the right decision on price and whether the transaction will take place in the timeframe.”

These days, the company estimates that the average upgrade cycle has shifted from 20 months to 12 months, and now it is doubling down.

With Cashify, sellers simply fill out some details online about their device, then Cashify dispatches a representative who comes to their house to perform diagnostic checks and gives them cash for the device that day. The startup also offers an app which automatically carries out the checks — for example ensuring the camera, Bluetooth module, etc. all work — and offers a higher cash payment for the user since Cashify uses fewer resources.

A sample of the Cashify Q&A for selling a device

Beyond its website and app, Cashify gets devices from trade-in programs for Samsung, Xiaomi and Apple in India, as well as e-commerce companies like Flipkart, Amazon and Paytm Mall.

Used device acquired, what happens next is interesting.

The startup has built out a network of offline merchants who specialize in selling used phones. Each phone it acquires is then sold (perhaps after minor refurbishments) to that network, so it might pop up for sale anywhere in India.

With this new money, Cashify CEO Manocha said the company will develop an online resale site that will allow anyone to buy a used phone from the company’s network. Devices sold by Cashify online will be refurbished with new parts where needed, and they’ll include a box and six-month warranty to give a better consumer experience, Manocha added.

Today, Cashify claims to handle 100,000 smartphones a month, but it is planning to grow that to 200,000 by the end of this year. Cashify said its devices are typically low-end, those that retail for sub-$300 when new. A large part of that push comes from the online site, but the startup is also enlarging its offline merchant network and working to reach more consumers who are actually selling their device. That’s where Manocha said he sees particular value in working with Aihuishou.

Cashify is also developing other services. It recently started offering at-home repairs for customers and Manocha said that adding Chinese investors — and Aihuishou in particular — will help it with its sourcing of components for the repairs service and general refurbishments.

Cashify estimates that the used smartphone market in India will see 90 million phones sold this year, with as many as 120 million trading by 2020. That’s close to the 124 million shipments that analysts estimate India saw in 2017, but with surprisingly higher margins.

A reseller can make 10 percent profit on a device, Manocha explained, and Cashify’s own price elasticity — the difference between what it buys from consumers at and what it sells to resellers for — is typically 30-35 percent, he added. That’s more than most OEMs, but that doesn’t take into account costs on the Cashify side, which bring that number down.

“When I sell to a reseller, the margins aren’t that exciting, which is why we want to sell direct to consumers,” the Cashify CEO said.

The startup has plenty going on at home in India, but already it is considering overseas possibilities.

“We will focus on India for at least the next 12 months, but we have had discussions on markets that would make sense to enter,” Manocha said, explaining that the Middle East and Southeast Asia are early frontrunners.

“We are working very closely with one of the Chinese players and figuring out if we can do some business in Hong Kong because that’s the hub for second-hand phones in this part of the world,” he added.

Note: The original version of this article was updated to correct that Amit Sethi is CTO not CFO.



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Fred Studer of FinancialForce: To Grow in the Services Economy, You Can’t Just Package Up and Sell Products

Earlier this week, I attended Community Live 2018, the annual user conference put on by FinancialForce, an ERP and Professional Service Automation (PSA) cloud solution native to the Salesforce Platform.  One of the main takeaways for me came during FinancialForce’s CEO Tod Nielsen keynote, when he expanded  upon Marc Andreessen’s famous saying, “software is eating the world” by saying in today’s business climate services will devour the galaxy.

In a with the company’s chief marketing officer Fred Studer, the importance of services came up again.  Struder explained why the company feels a services-based business model is needed to be successful today, and why FinancialForce calls itself a customer-centric ERP company.

Below is an edited transcript of our conversation.  To hear the whole interview, check out the video below, or click on the embedded SoundCloud player.

* * * * *

Fred Studer of FinancialForce: A Services-Based Business Model Is What Needed to Be Successful TodaySmall Business Trends: Give us a little bit of your personal background.

Fred Studer: I’ve been at FinancialForce for almost a year and a half now Brent, and obviously I come with a lot of experience around ERP. In fact, I started off in financial systems, both as a trained accountant, studied Accounting and Finance. Started building financial systems, billing systems back in the early 90’s. And then I got sucked into the awesome software house that is now known as Oracle. I spent about 12 years there, and really learned how these products are really meant to drive value for customers.

I went to the Microsoft Office business for about five years, and then for the last four years, before I left Microsoft, I ran the Dynamics business. Have spent time now working with Tod, and our executive team at FinancialForce, but really my whole being and persona is about spending time with the customers, and how they get value out of these products.

Small Business Trends: One of the things that kind of stuck out to me is you guys are calling yourselves a customer-centric ERP company. Talk about what that actually means.

Fred Studer: You know, there’s two words that we use that you very rarely hear in the same sentence with ERP. One is flexible. Nobody ever says flexible in ERP. It’s kind of an antithetical conversation which we’ll get into. But the other one is customer, because ERP has classically as we know been really focused on cost management, back office, kind of the farthest away types of processes from a customer. But just from our very foundation, as you know, we really started as an ISV for Salesforce, really trying to help their customers see a better way to build processes and to help them have visibility across the entire customer transaction, and to reverse those complex processes.

And in just building forward we just had a really different slant, and it started off with being built natively in Salesforce. But it’s a movement that I think we’ve created, and I hate to compare, but if you look at some of the greatest companies — I think Workday has done fantastic on the follow on from PeopleSoft. But they build from an employee perspective, and that’s great. And you can compensate and pay people to do a lot of great things, and I think they’ve done a great job as have companies in places that I’ve worked, like Oracle and Microsoft Dynamics.

They focused on products, manufacturing companies, retail companies that our product is really the core. And I think those are great things to really focus on. But FinancialForce is different. We really come from a perspective of focusing on the customer, and really blurring the lines between front office and back office.

One of the things that Tod Nielsen will talk about this week is about freeing the back office and trying to take a different pivot. Even as a CFO, rather than focusing on cost, and those types of things. Focus on top line and growth. And we think we have a very good message there, and a lot of customers that actually are getting value from that position.

Small Business Trends: Back in New York a couple of months ago, at the big opening of your office, totally cool office …

Fred Studer: That was a fun event. Yeah, thank you for coming.

Small Business Trends: During Tod’s presentation he said something. I remember tweeting about it. I think it was Mark Andreessen that said software is gonna eat the world, or is eating the world. But then Tod upped the ante and said services are going to devour the galaxy. Maybe you could talk about what he meant with that.

Fred Studer: Well one, congratulations, because you totally nailed it. That’s exactly what Tod is talking about. And as you’ve got to know Tod, he is a bit of a technology prophet, and what he was really trying to encapsulate, was the fact that these trends just continue to hit us. And clearly software was that thing. And now everybody’s positioned to driving revenue, and what they’re doing in order to capture that is they have to think about the consumption model of their companies. And in fact what we’re talking about, and this is something that Tod and Dan [Brown – Chief Product Officer] and I really think a lot about is that in order to really drive growth in this current economy, and really everything going forward, you have to become consumption agnostic.

So when we talk about services devouring the galaxy, it’s really portraying this new setup that companies have to think about their buyer in every case. It’s no longer selling. You can’t just package your product and just sell it for a price. You have to be agnostic about both, how you help them buy, and consume, and then specifically how you bill and then collect for that.

And now with things like revenue recognition everything from the offer to going to market, to selling a service or product in whatever utility or value based model. And then billing successfully for that is critical than to just be regulatory compliant around recognize revenue.

So we love this notion of a new services economy. And although there’s a lot of work to be done there, we think it’s just a really good pivot for companies to think about how they might consider growing in this new world.

Small Business Trends: Where are companies in terms of let’s say it’s a baseball game. What inning are we in with that transition right now?

Fred Studer: It’s a really good question, and obviously you and some of our very close colleagues love the baseball world. I’d say, if I was to call it, I think we’re in the bottom of the third right now. The reason I say that is that we still have some time to get to the stretch. But we know who’s pitching, we know what the game dynamics are. But now the whole game is about thinking strategically about the innings that we have left.

So, I think a lot of customers should be thinking specifically about not so much how they started this game. But really, how did they really think strategically about the audience that they have to compel, and really doing the best that they can, with the resources they have to go to that growth.

Small Business Trends: Okay, so what do you want folks to walk away from this event with? Taking back home and putting into play.

Fred Studer: Sure, one is that this isn’t your grandfather’s FinancialForce. And even though we’re nine years old, in the soccer world that’s a lot of time. But having Tod join we’ve got some new vigor. We’ve got some new tenacity, we’ve got a new step, and I think that what we hope that people see is that we are in this new services economy. Everything that they can do to drive growth and be agile. To drive agility in the revenue models. To deliver their services more dynamically, whether it’s a product repackaged, or people as services.

And the more visibility, through even just business signals they can get, the more success they’re gonna have at driving growth. And really we call that the notion of business unlimited. But I hope that they see FinancialForce is a big player in this market. And that they give us a shot to talk about how we can provide value to them.

Small Business Trends: All right, so I know you gotta get back to work. You got a show to put on, but where can people go to learn more about some of the things that’s gonna take place here, but just in general by FinancialForce.

Fred Studer: Sure, I’d start with FinancialForce.com. We’ve got a lot of great content out there. But also, you can actually search a lot of the things that we have on FinancialForce.com/businessunlimited about this new approach.

This article, "Fred Studer of FinancialForce: To Grow in the Services Economy, You Can’t Just Package Up and Sell Products" was first published on Small Business Trends



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Nigerian logistics startup Kobo360 accepted into YC, raises $1.2 million

Jake Bright Contributor
Jake Bright is a writer and author in New York City. He is co-author of The Next Africa.
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When Nigerian logistics startup Kobo360 interviewed for Y Combinator’s 2018 cohort, a question stood out to founder Obi Ozor. “What’s holding you back from becoming a unicorn?,” they asked. “My answer was simple,” said Ozor. “Working capital.”

Kobo360 was accepted into YC’s 2018 class and gained some working capital in the form of $1.2 million in pre-seed funding led by Western Technology Investment announced recently. Lagos-based Verod Capital Management also joined to support Kobo360.

The startup — with an Uber-like app that connects Nigerian truckers to companies with freight needs — will use the funds to pay drivers online immediately after successful hauls.

Kobo360 is also launching the Kobo Wealth Investment Network, or KoboWIN — a crowd-invest, vehicle financing program. Through it, Kobo drivers can finance new trucks through citizen investors and pay them back directly (with interest) over a 60-month period.

Ozor said Kobo360 created the platform because of limited vehicle finance options for truckers in Nigeria. “We hope KoboWIN…will inject 20,000…[additional] trucks on the Kobo platform,” he told TechCrunch.

On Kobo360’s utility, “We give drivers the demand and technology to power their businesses,” said Ozor. “An average trucker will make $3,500 a month with our app. That’s middle class territory in Nigeria.”

Kobo360 has served 324 businesses, aggregated a fleet of 5480 drivers and moved 37.6 million kilograms of cargo since 2017, per company stats. Top clients include Honeywell, Olam, Unilever and DHL.

Ozor previously headed Uber Nigeria, before teaming up with Ife Oyodeli to co-found Kobo360. They initially targeted 3PL for Nigeria’s e-commerce boom — namely Jumia (now Africa’s first unicorn) and Konga (recently purchased in a distressed acquisition).

“We started doing last-mile delivery…but the volume just wasn’t there for us, so we decided to pivot…to an asset-free model around long-haul trucking,” said Ozor.

Kobo360 was accepted into YC’s Summer ’18 batch — receiving $120,000 for 7 percent equity — and will present at an August Demo Day in front of YC investors. “We were impressed by both Obi and Ife as founders. They were growing quickly and had a strong vision for the company,” YC partner Tim Brady told TechCrunch.

Kobo360’s app currently coordinates 5,000 trips a month, according to Ozor. He thinks the startup’s asset-free, digital platform and business model can outpace traditional long-haul 3PL providers in Nigeria by handling more volume at cheaper prices.

“Owning trucks is just too difficult to manage. The best scalable model is to aggregate trucks,” he said. “We now have more trucks than providers like TSL and they’ve been here….years. By the end of this year we plan to have 20,000 trucks on our app — probably more than anyone on this continent.”

On price, Ozor named the ability of the Kobo360 app to more accurately and consistently coordinate return freight trips once truckers have dropped off first loads.

“Logistics in Nigeria have been priced based on the assumption drivers are going to run empty on the way back…When we now match freight with return trips, prices crash.”

Kobo360 is profitable, according to Ozor. Though he wouldn’t provide exact figures, he said reviewing the company’s financial performance was part of YC’s vetting process.

Logistics has become an active space in Africa’s tech sector with startup entrepreneurs connecting digital to delivery models. In Nigeria, Jumia founder Tunde Kehinde departed and founded Africa Courier Express. Startup Max.ng is wrapping an app around motorcycles as an e-delivery platform. Nairobi-based Lori Systems has moved into digital coordination of trucking in East Africa. And U.S.-based Zipline is working with the government of Rwanda and partner UPS to master commercial drone delivery of medical supplies on the continent.

Kobo360 will expand in Togo, Ghana, Cote D’Ivoire and Senegal. “We’ll be in Ghana this year and next year the other countries,” said Ozor.

In addition to KoboWIN, it will also add more driver training and safety programs.

“We are driver focused. Drivers are the key to our success. Even our app is driver focused,” said Ozor. Kobo360 will launch a new version of its app in Hausa and Pidgin this August, both local languages common to drivers.

“Execution is the key thing in logistics. It has to be reliable, affordable and it has to be execution focused,” said Ozor. “If drivers are treated well, they are going to deliver things on time.”



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Thousands of cryptocurrency projects are already dead

Two sites that are actively cataloging failed crypto projects, Coinopsy and DeadCoins, have found that over a 1,000 projects have failed so far in 2018. The projects range from true abandonware to outright scams and include BRIG, a scam by two “brothers,” Jack and Jay Brig, and Titanium, a project that ended in an SEC investigation.

Obviously any new set of institutions must create their own sets of rules and that is exactly what is happening in the blockchain world. But when faced with the potential for massive token fundraising, bigger problems arise. While everyone expects startups to fail, the sheer amount of cash flooding these projects is a big problem. When a startup has too much fuel too quickly the resulting conflagration ends up consuming both the company and the founders and there is little help for the investors.

These conflagrations happen everywhere are a global phenomenon. Scam and dead ICOs raised $1 billion in 2017 with 297 questionable startups in the mix.

There are dubious organizations dedicated to “repairing” broken ICOs including CoinJanitor from Cape Town but the fly-by-night nature of many of these organizations does not bode well for the industry.

ICO-funded startups currently use multi-level marketing tactics to build their business. Instead they should take a page from the Kickstarter and Indiegogo framework. These crowd-funding platforms have made trust an art. By creating collateral that defines the team, the project, the risks, and the future of the idea you can easily build businesses even without much funding. Unfortunately, the lock ups and pricing scams the current ICO market uses to incite greed rather than rational thinking are hurting the industry more than helping.

The bottom line? Invest only what you can afford to lose and expect any token you invest in to fail. Ultimately, the best you can hope for is to be pleasantly surprised when it doesn’t. Otherwise, you’re in for a world of disappointment.



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Leena AI builds HR chat bots to answer policy questions automatically

Say you have a job with a large company and you want to know how much vacation time you have left, or how to add your new baby to your healthcare. This usually involves emailing or calling HR and waiting for an answer, or it could even involve crossing multiple systems to get what you need.

Leena AI, a member of the Y Combinator Summer 2018 class, wants to change that by building HR bots to answer question for employees instantly.

The bots can be integrated into Slack or Workplace by Facebook and they are built and trained using information in policy documents and by pulling data from various back-end systems like Oracle and SAP.

Adit Jain, co-founder at Leena AI says the company has its roots in another startup called Chatteron, that the founders started after they got out of college in India in 2015. That product helped people build their own chatbots. Jain says along the way, they discovered while doing their market research, a particularly strong need in HR. They started Leena AI last year to address that specific requirement.

Jain says when building bots, the team learned through its experience with Chatteron, that it’s better to concentrate on a single subject because the underlying machine learning model gets better the more it’s used. “Once you create a bot, for it to really to add value and be [extremely] accurate, and for it to really go deep, it takes a lot of time and effort and that can only happen through verticalization,” Jain explained.

Photo: Leena AI

What’s more, as the founders have become more knowledgeable about the needs of HR, they have learned that 80 percent of the questions cover similar topics like vacation, sick time and expense reporting. They have also seen companies using similar back-end systems, so they can now build standard integrators for common applications like SAP, Oracle and Netsuite.

Of course, even though people may ask similar questions, the company may have unique terminology or people may ask the question in an unusual way. Jain says that’s where the natural language processing (NLP) comes in. The system can learn these variations over time as they build a larger database of possible queries.

The company just launched in 2017 and already has a dozen paying customers. They hope to double that number in just 60 days. Jain believes being part of Y Combinator should help in that regard. The partners are helping the team refine its pitch and making introductions to companies that could make use of this tool.

Their ultimate goal is nothing less than to be ubiquitous, to help bridge multiple legacy systems to provide answers seamlessly for employees to all their questions. If they can achieve that, they should be a successful company.



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Would you spend $37.99 for “hot dog water”?

inclogo

(This post originally appeared on Inc.)

OK, I admit it. Sometimes those advertisements promising immediate hair growth catch my eye. I don’t think it’s so unreasonable. Take a look at my photo. What middle aged man wouldn’t want a full head of hair like he had when he was twenty? But then reality sets in. Of course, these things don’t work as promised, right? And besides, the abuse I would receive at the hands of my family if this stuff did work and hair began to sprout in odd places on my head would be merciless. Oh well.

But apparently, many men don’t move on from those commercials like I do. The hair growth industry is a $2.8 billion industry and…c’mon…does it really work as promised? Maybe for some. But there are plenty of stories about how these products don’t do all that they say and many customers walk away disappointed, and a little poorer from the experience.

Which brings me to hot dog water.

Hot dog water? According to one entrepreneur, the filtered water – sold in a bottle with an accompanying hot dog inside – leads to increased brain function, weight loss and a youthful appearance. Not only that, but it’s gluten-free and – get this – applying it to your face in the form of a lip balm (sold separately) will eliminate your crow’s feet wrinkles. You can even purchase a Hot Dog Water breath spray and body fragrance too.  Who needs hair when you can improve your appearance with some hot dog water, right?

Well, not really. But, according to this report in CTV News, that didn’t stop Douglas Bevans from selling 60 bottles of the stuff at approximately $38 a pop to customers at a recent festival near Vancouver.

Bevans is a performance artist. And he’s grown tired of false advertising claims, slick marketing campaigns and celebrity pitches on social media that dupe people into buying products – especially health products – that don’t live up to their promises.

So to make a point, he declared himself the CEO of the non-existent Hot Dog Water Company and began talking about the science behind the stuff. “Because Hot Dog Water and perspiration resemble each other, when you drink Hot Dog Water it bypasses the lymphatic system, whereas other waters have to go through your filtering system,” he told potential customers. “So really, Hot Dog Water has three times as much uptake as coconut water.”

It sounds great. Except it’s complete nonsense – and he knows it. He even printed a message on the bottles warning buyers that “‘Hot Dog Water in its absurdity hopes to encourage critical thinking related to product marketing and the significant role it can play in our purchasing choices.”

Bevans’ stunt is aimed at helping people put more thought into their buying decisions and making more informed purchases. To him, it’s all part of his performance art. “Art, I think, has a way of doing this better than if this was a public service announcement. There’s an image attached to it, that it’s ridiculous.”

By the way. I believe he kept the cash. Consider it a lesson. And besides, even artists need to eat – and this is one artist-entrepreneur who will probably never starve.



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