#startups fail most startups fail start up problems challenges faced by startups

[kennydabeast]

Navigating Intellectual Property Rights and Startup Ecosystems: Insights and Opportunities

In today's rapidly changing business landscape, understanding intellectual property rights (IPR) and the dynamics of startup ecosystems is essential. This blog explores the basics of IPR, the importance of startup ecosystems, and offers insights from experts.

Understanding Intellectual Property Rights Intellectual property rights safeguard creations of the mind, enabling inventors and creators to control and profit from their innovations. Here’s an overview of key IPR types:

Patent: Grants inventors exclusive rights over a product or process for 20 years, allowing them to commercialize their innovations without competition.

Utility Model: A technical solution to a problem, requiring novelty and industrial applicability. Essential for incremental innovations.

Industrial Design: Protects the ornamental or aesthetic aspects of a product for 5 years, preserving its unique appearance.

Trademark/Service Mark/Word Mark: Protects the identity of goods and services for 10 years, helping brands maintain their market presence.

Original Works: Protected for the creator’s lifetime plus 50 years, ensuring long-term benefits for creators and their heirs.

Insights on Startup Ecosystems Speaker: Keren Happuch A. Lacadin

What is a Startup? A startup is a project with high scalability potential, aiming to solve problems with innovative solutions, like Airbnb and Grab.

Criteria for Startups:

Project: Initiatives like sulit.com.ph aimed at solving specific problems.

Scalable: Potential for rapid growth, similar to Airbnb.

Non-Obvious Solution: Unique solutions exemplified by Grab.

Differentiating SMEs and Startups:

SMEs: Market-proven, linear growth, traditional business plans.

Startups: Disruptive, exponential growth, single-page business model canvas.

Defining a Startup Ecosystem A startup ecosystem consists of people, startups at various stages, and diverse organizations in a location, interacting to create new companies. It includes both physical and virtual interactions, fostering innovation.

Key Startup Statistics:

Global Snapshot: Most highly valued unicorns worldwide.

Best Countries for Startups: Sweden, Norway, Israel.

Philippine Startup Ecosystem: Ranked 59th globally, 13th in Asia-Pacific, with over 100 startups and a $3.05 billion valuation.

Innovative Startup Act - RA No. 11337 Supports startup development through various programs and policies.

Philippine Startup Development Programs:

Support R&D

Promote Access to Programs

Participate in Local and International Events

Support Collaboration

Develop Policies

DSDAP (Digital Startup Development and Acceleration Program): Includes Scale, Raise, StepUp, Startup Grant Fund, and Startup Philippines Website.

The Role of Technology "Technology gives a silent student a voice," highlighting technology's transformative power in enabling innovation and communication.

Exploring Incubation Programs and Opportunities Speaker: Glyrhiz Mariel A. Tabamo

#ParaSaMindanao and #ParaSaBukidnon Focus on incubation programs and opportunities for startups in Mindanao and Bukidnon.

Entrepreneurial Life Speaker: John Ryan Loyloy

Sir Ryan’s initial advice was not to try business, which intrigued me. He shared his challenges as a young entrepreneur, facing skepticism from potential partners due to his age and lack of experience. Starting and growing a business involves:

Idea Generation

Skill Development

Financing

Building Strong Connections

Lifestyle Adjustments

Handling Depression and Rejection

Overcoming Financial Struggles

"Failure is part of success," struck a chord with me, as it emphasized that failure is not a reason to give up but a sign of areas needing improvement. Mr. Loyloy’s question, "Why do we fail?" reminded me that failure is part of life, inspiring me to pursue my entrepreneurial dreams.

Conclusion Understanding intellectual property rights and startup ecosystems is crucial for innovators and entrepreneurs. Insights from experts like Keren Happuch A. Lacadin and Glyrhiz Mariel A. Tabamo highlight the differences between SMEs and startups, the importance of robust ecosystems, and the promising Philippine startup scene with substantial government support. Entrepreneurial experiences shared by John Ryan Loyloy underscore the need for resilience and continuous learning. Leveraging available resources and support systems is key to navigating the business landscape. Embrace the journey, with its challenges and triumphs, guided by expert insights to achieve your goals in business and innovation.

[billconrad]

When Your Best Isn’t Good Enough

    I have worked on many projects over my lifetime, and some of them, I admitted defeat. Meaning that no matter how hard I tried, I understood the project would never succeed because I lacked the ability to complete it. This list of failures includes failed business startups, patents, classes, and relationships. During these ventures, I asked for help, invested money, worked late into the night, lowered my morals, made sacrifices, got injured, and thought outside the box. On each one, I distinctly remember the day that I admitted defeat.

    Did I learn anything? Of course. The biggest lesson is that painful failures provided the most life experience. Would I have done anything differently? Heck yeah! On nearly every one of my failures, I would have avoided that effort like the plague. Why? I never had the ability to succeed. Of course, I cannot go back in time to tell myself not to try something.

    My first attempt to start a business was to build a professional audio mixing board for a recording studio. I put a crazy amount of time and money into making it happen. The problem was that the early ‘90s were an awful time to start a business. I also lacked professional connections, partners, and extensive financial backing. To compound matters, I now can admit that I did not have the technical, business, organizing, marketing, or personal skills to succeed. In retrospect, success was never possible.

    I distinctly remember the day when I admitted defeat. I pitched my idea to an investor, and they refused to take any interest. After the meeting, I went to the beach (in my suit) and walked around for hours. It was a crushing blow that took a long time to jump back into the game. Side note: that new venture rapidly failed for a new reason: pick your business partners ultra-carefully. I learned this lesson again a few years later, but it cost me far more time and money.

    I vividly recall bad report cards for classes I put every effort into passing. Four girlfriends dumped me, and the painful memories still exist. I filed five patents, and the patent office rejected each one. The ideas were not bad, but I lacked the skill to file them—so much wasted time.

    Now, I am trying to be an author. I began with great hope to quickly succeed, but one day, I realized I would never be a great success like my favorite author, Tom Clancy. That day, I changed my goal to break even with my publishing, formatting, and editing costs. This goal will be challenging to fulfill.

    Why does it have to be this way? Simply put, my best is not good enough. I hate admitting this, but it is true. In time, my writing abilities may be good enough to come out with a hit, but it is not guaranteed. Does this mean I am admitting defeat? Should I give up writing? Making that decision would undoubtedly free up some time. My answer is that I am not giving up, but I now understand writing will never be a profitable venture. Instead, it is a costly hobby but has a bright side. It is less expensive than playing golf:)

    Yet, there is still potential for failure. I cannot face a wave of criticism. How could this occur? A popular YouTube personality could make my work the subject of a damaging video, or a popular blog could launch an awful rant. This very public reaction would squash my dreams.

    Does this mean that I am a quitter? Certainly not. I do my best to focus on the positives and fully understand that every one of my defeats has added to my foundation to be a better person. Writing is fun. I have met many great people and had lots of positive feedback. Plus, I am learning a new skill and like putting my words out there. I will keep at it until they pry this keyboard from my cold, dead hands. Will there be more pain? Yup.

    You’re the best -Bill

    January 06, 2024

    Hey book lovers, I published four. Please check them out:

    Interviewing Immortality. A dramatic first-person psychological thriller that weaves a tale of intrigue, suspense, and self-confrontation.

    Pushed to the Edge of Survival. A drama, romance, and science fiction story about two unlikely people surviving a shipwreck and living with the consequences.

    Cable Ties. A slow-burn political thriller that reflects the realities of modern intelligence, law enforcement, department cooperation, and international politics.

    Saving Immortality. Continuing in the first-person psychological thriller genre, James Kimble searches for his former captor to answer his life’s questions.

    These books are available in soft-cover on Amazon and eBook format everywhere.

[easyloanhub]

4 Tested Ways to Reduce Product Development Costs for Startups

Entrepreneurs running startups face a new challenge every day. And the costs keep spiralling, adding to the distress further. The initial stages are pretty uncertain and crucial as the startup invests most of the available capital in HR management and operations.

The most significant part of investment under operations accounts for product development. Despite multiple attempts to reduce the costs, one fails. The primary reasons for the failure are:

· Either the startup invests more than needed in the product development

· They scale too fast

To remain consistent in the competitive landscape, a start-up must minimise costs. Catching up with other essential business aspects is equally important as your unique product.

If you are increasingly searching to regulate or reduce product development costs, these tips may help you.

How To Slash Product Development Costs Without Impacting the Bottom Line?

Too many technical innovations or unrealistic requirements may damage your product. So, it would help if you stressed the benefits you aim to provide your customers. Your product must solve atleast one problems that they face recurringly in their life. Here is how you can reduce product development costs and use the money for other critical business perspectives.

1) Include only the best and most useful features

Per an expert analysis of product development, “determining the feature to omit is equally important than figuring out which to include.”  

Unfortunately, most startups focusing on gaining the leading edge and driving the most conversions forget about providing only the best. The best aspects that matter in a product from the customers’ perspective are-

· The ease of use

· Overall value it offers to the customer

2) Reduce prototype development time

The more time you invest in product development, the costlier it becomes. It is especially when you have other costs like salaries, office requirements, equipment purchases, marketing, etc.

If you invest 60% of the available capital in product development, you will be unable to concentrate on other aspects. Under these circumstances, you may lose the operational balance leading to the following:

· Wastage of the invested resources

· Unused equipment becomes a liability

· Pending salaries lead to losing the best talents

How to manage prototype development efficiently along with other operations?

If you still need to constantly reduce the time or modify the product as per new ideas, you should seek flexible finance solutions that you can use efficiently, even with a low credit profile. It would help you:

· Manage the equipment costs well

· Pay the salaries timely

· Meet prototype development costs

· Invest in recurring product development changes

· Optimise resources well

One such solution is startup business loans for bad credit on guaranteed approval in the UK marketplace. You can fetch £25000-£50000 per your requirements and exercise financial flexibility. No, you do not need to panic about the costs. Pick the structure that aligns well with your economic frame.

Avoid using the highest part in experimentation but on linear, non-linear, optimization, and non-dynamic components.

While investing time in product development, focus on the comparison part. Compare the materials and the force on the most critical ones. It would help you utilise the time well and develop the most potent product that stands the test of time.

3) Hire a competent team for your product development

People are an essential part of any software development project under a startup. Having individuals with the right set of skills and expertise hurries the process. The team takes you halfway there. While designing the product, analyse:

· How skilled are your employees?

· Do your employees possess soft skills like time management and accountability?

· Is there trust between the team members?

· Is the team cohesive?

· Is there a high level of collaboration between the team members?

Putting together a development team requires time and money to make things work in the best favour. Additionally, grant them sufficient time to know your business inside out.

4) Communicate with your team well

A developer should communicate well with the other people involved in the project.

It is because of developing include-IM, reviewing code, and emailing. It requires constant meetings with users, the project manager, and team members.

Many high-performing remote teams use specialised tools like Slack and Google Drive.

Thus, while hiring your developing team, keep your budget flexible. Having backed up by well-experienced developers with excellent communication and team spirit ensures a perfect product.

If you believe you must expand your hiring budget, but capitals seem the biggest obstacle to success, check monthly installment loans with no credit check from reputed direct lenders in the UK.

These will help you manage your technical costs, like- investing in well-responsive software for your business. It would trigger growth modules. Yes, you may qualify for the same at bad credit. Split the payments into monthly installments without any tangible credit check.

Bottom line

These are some well-tested ways to reduce product development costs. To sum up, to slash the costs, you must:

· Start testing the product early

· Focus on having only useful features

· Tap external sources like loans to bridge the payment gap

· Hire the best technical team

[projectcubicle1]

5 Problems That Startups Face and Have To Solve

5 Problems That Startups Face and Have To Solve

Running a business requires not only a certain level of resourcefulness but also well-developed problem-solving skills. The latter is incredibly vital, as these skills can help you tackle the results of wrong decisions and analyze the causes of the unwanted situation. Still, the best way to ensure your company runs smoothly is to avoid bumping into issues in the first place. In this regard, you might want to learn more about the problems that startups faced in the past. Thanks to it, you can better estimate what challenges you could encounter on your way to success and get basic advice on how to overcome them to prevent startup fails. Besides failing to develop a unique business idea, many startups have failed because they never addressed the needs of their customers, made hiring mistakes, or raised not enough capital to ensure sufficient cash flow. Join us as we go through these problems that startups face and learn how to become a successful startup founder! Pursuing an Unprofitable Business Idea   The most common issue that can lead to the failure of any startup is pursuing a business idea that is not profitable. Many founders start their businesses without doing enough market research. Or asking themselves whether there are enough customers in the target niche to support their venture. The result is that they waste a lot of time and money on developing a product. And when it comes time to sell it, they realize it doesn't provide sufficient value for the price. You can avoid this problem if you conduct extensive research of the market to see what is in demand or what products or services are lacking. For instance, if you want to allow your clients to send a parcel to Europe, you should check if anyone is interested in doing so. Coming up with an innovative idea is a formidable task. And even if you do, it can be challenging to make it stand out in a competitive market. One way to increase your chances of success is to make sure your idea solves a real problem that people have. You can also focus on creating a product or service that is not only useful but also convenient to use. Failing To Address the Needs of Customers Understanding the needs of your target audience is key to creating a product that people would want to use. This task can be troublesome. Especially for startups that are not yet well-known. To avoid making wrong assumptions about your customers' needs, you should learn more about their preferences and habits. If you have already launched a website or an app, you can rely on your analytics data. By analyzing user behavior on your platform, you could learn how they search for information and interact with other users. Also, you should conduct surveys to determine the attitudes of potential customers toward your startup. Moreover, you might consider running A/B tests to understand whether your product really offers something new and valuable compared to others. You need to ensure that you deliver a high-quality product or service that exceeds customer expectations. It can be challenging to do, but it is essential if you want to keep your customers happy and maintain their loyalty. Making Hiring Mistakes One of the most prominent mistakes startups make is hiring people who lack the necessary skills and experience. For example, you might hire a marketer who has no idea how to craft effective campaigns. Or a sales manager who lacks not only real-world sales experience but also basic understanding of what sales are for. Hiring the wrong employees can be costly for a startup. Not only can it lead to decreased productivity and low morale within the company. But it can also be expensive to replace them. To avoid making hiring mistakes, you need to take the time to properly assess candidates. And make sure they are a good fit for the role you are hiring for. You should also ensure that you have a well-defined job description so candidates can understand what is expected of them. Raising Not Enough Capital Regardless of whether it has been in the market for years or is just starting out, every company has to face its share of risks, and funding is one of them. Startups need to take significant risks because they have no past history of success that would allow them to secure investments. So how much cash do startups need? The answer depends on several factors, including the industry you want to develop in, the size of your company, or the materials needed to produce the goods you want to sell. To avoid running into financial issues, you need to make sure you raise enough money to cover your operating expenses. You should also be careful about how you spend your money and invest only in things that will help grow your business. Failing To Evolve With the Times Failing to evolve with the times can lead to a bunch of issues and it is common among problems that startups face. That's why it's so important to follow what’s happening in the industry: new technologies and solutions are appearing every day, and if you don't change with them, you might as well give up on your business. This situation is incredibly evident in the food industry. Thanks to the constant R&D, restaurant chains manage to keep up with their customer's needs and desires, introducing new exciting menu options. In order to be successful, startups need to adapt to changes in the market constantly. It includes evolving their products and services to meet the needs of their customers and changing their policies to reflect the current political climate. If you are not willing or able to adapt, your startup will likely fail. So, make sure you always keep an eye on the latest trends and changes in your industry and do what you can to stay ahead of the curve. Conclusion: Remedy for Problems That Startups Face The first step to achieving your startup goals is to determine them. To do so, you should consider several factors, such as your personnel, financial resources, competitors, and potential customers. Once you have gathered all the information you need and determined the goals, it's time to start planning. The best way to go about this is to draft a business plan that will allow you to assess the viability of your idea and understand what steps you should take to succeed. No matter how well-developed and precise your business plan is, it will not help you if your startup fails to implement it. This is why planning ahead is only half the battle – your ultimate goal is to create a successful startup and make sure it achieves the goals set in the business plan. To do so, you will need to address many issues and problems. However, we believe that the five listed above are critical and should be considered no matter what kind of product or service you offer. Read the full article

[alisheikhanigroup]

5 Startup Mistakes Every Entrepreneur Should Avoid to Stay Ahead of the Curve, by Ali Sheikhani

Every new entrepreneur or one who has been in the business for quite some time has apprehensions and strongly feels how challenging running a business and a team can be. They fret a bit too much about how to start their business and move ahead. Running a business smoothly is not a cakewalk.

Their lack of expertise and inexperience in managing a full-fledged business can be extremely challenging for starters. Entrepreneurs have several doubts about whether they have invested enough financially in the respective project or if they have aced the marketing tactics– a list of never-ending apprehensions and problems. It's worth knowing that no business kickstarts perfectly on its own.

In order to manage a proper system, you're likely to make several blunders, or as some may call it, utterly silly mistakes on the way. The extent of mistakes an entrepreneur might make differs according to the kind of startup he or she is involved in, yet, there are a few basic and not-so-major mistakes that entrepreneurs normally make. These kinds of mistakes usually stay the same irrespective of the nature of the business you are in.

To keep this article relevant, we'll share the case of Vape City. The venture started with just one outlet and outgrew its rivals, crossing 100 stores across the US.

As we define the common mistakes, we'll also look at how Vape City CEO Ali Sheikhani evaded making mistakes and embarked on a remarkable journey of creating a mega venture across the US.

No Access to Emergency Funds

Most entrepreneurs don't think about backup plans as such, and so they don't keep funds for any unforeseen events or emergencies that can hit them hard in the future.

In order to set up a backup plan for the company, it is important to keep enough emergency funds to roll out more capital for any unexpected situation.

Ali Sheikhani, the CEO of Vape City, suggests that emergency capital can mean success or closure of your business. "We had to pump money into the business for another year only to see ourselves reach breakeven when closing the year. You just can't underestimate the need for capital to keep you going."

New and old businesses, big or small, usually involve huge sums of money. You may not have to put your own money into the task, or you may have gotten funding from other banks or different financial institutions.

So, in such instances, handling your financial affairs unprofessionally may lead to incurred losses, which may prevent you from getting monetary help in the future from these financial institutions in return.

It can also facilitate putting off foreclosure from the clients who reneged on their payments or any losses that occurred from missing or damaged stock until a proper flow of income steadies out to give potential stability to the business.

2. Devoid of Any Backup Plans

A typical business entrepreneur works out the entire process properly on paper and thinks it is a foolproof plan. But blunders happen, and at times they become victims of circumstances or because they were too optimistic about expectations that had been kept.

Remarkably, there are several entrepreneurs who step into their offices without ever thinking of having any backup plan in place. They put most of their focus on their business, and some even have complete faith that their venture will eventually succeed without facing any hurdles. For example, what would the outcome be if your marketing department fails to market your manufactured product or service? Will you shut down your operations and risk losing millions of dollars, or instead think of another plan?

Ali Sheikhani, a marketing expert and the CEO of VapeCity, shared his insights saying, "You might have to outsource your marketing operations or start a manufacturing and a more acceptable product for the market. You just can't emphasize more on the need for contingent planning."

There must be enough logistics arrangements to really make your backup plan easier to execute. And that can only happen if the backup plans are given due significance and planned accordingly, like a rescue operation, anytime something goes wrong.

3. Focusing on The Outcome

Entrepreneurship is all about designing, marketing, and maintaining the flow of business in a specific manner, following a proper strategy. It also includes facilitating the firm in a way that becomes more of a result-oriented mode.

If an entrepreneur does the same without exclusions, the firm's performance will improve, eventually leading to substantial monetary gains. Hence, instead of thinking about the outcome, an entrepreneur should focus on working for the results.

Usually, entrepreneurs are too concerned with getting quick outcomes rather than setting the basics of their business right. Mr. Sheikhani added in his conference for young entrepreneurs, "For any business, the owner needs a stable foundation that comprises infrastructure and the ability to implement strategies that were made before the start of a business. Putting too much focus on profit-driven outcomes will hamper the growth of businesses even before the rocket takes off."

Vape City's success story is decoded in his words. "We knew what we were doing and were going relentlessly about it. We were able to boost our sales gradually. Though when we were making progress, we knew we were close to the outcome we had wanted."

4. Instability to Pursue Strategy

The best thing about entrepreneurs is the willingness they possess in pursuing plans. They put in their all for the project to work in the best possible way but as soon as they face the slightest glitch, some will waver and start approaching the process in a different way.

Every business or startup works around a proper strategy. The approach of entrepreneurs may differ, but it is important for them to stick to the method they have chosen. Changing your system a couple of times may lead to problems and confusion. Rather than solving a problem, it may leave you hanging in between two potential paths of a solution with no outcome in sight.

Ali Sheikhani says, "Changing methods quicker will hamper the growth process, as you will have to start learning about the newer methods and approaches before applying them to the business. Give your methods time, or put in the major effort, and you might get the desired outcomes you want."

5. Cluster of Opinions

If you own a business or even a startup, whether you are given unnecessary and unwanted advice by your well-wishers or if you proactively look for answers you need on your own, be aware of being overwhelmed with too many colliding answers and opinions.

CEO of Vape City, Ali Sheikhani, advises, "It is best if business decisions are made partially by knowledge and instinct, but knowledge cannot be obtained just by listening to what everyone has to say or suggest. Sometimes it is better to learn from experiencing it firsthand yourself."

It might be a great idea to have a team of experienced individuals whom you can blindly trust. Their expertise might help in avoiding basic mistakes in your everyday business dealings.

[cherrystove12]

Angel Investors South Africa It: Here’s How

You must take certain steps when looking for angel investors South Africa. There are some things to remember. Before you present your idea you must have a business plan essential. You should also consider the risks and benefits of investing with angel investors in South Africa. For instance 95% of businesses fail in South Africa, and many ideas never reach profitability. However, if you've got the proper business plan and are able to sell your equity at a later time, you can increase its value multiple times over. Entrepreneurs In South Africa, there are many ways to raise funds to start your new venture. Based on your particular circumstances, you can choose to invest in a company that you are passionate about, or solicit funding from government agencies or investment networks. The first option is the most effective. Angel investors will invest their money in helping start-up businesses succeed. Entrepreneurs looking to raise capital should contact the Angel Investment Network to find the right partner. In order to get funds entrepreneurs must present their ideas to investors and gain trust. While they're unlikely to be involved in daily business operations, angel investors could require management accounts as well as a business plan and tax returns. Equity investments and debentures are the most popular types of investments for startups. Although company funding options are viable options for raising capital but equity investments are the most commonly used. However, if investors looking for projects to fund don't have sufficient capital or equity to be able to secure funding, you might want to consider the venture capitalist. While the government in South Africa is actively encouraging new ventures in business and attracting international talent, a large number of angel investors are investing in South Africa. Angel investors play a significant role in the growth of an investment pipeline for a country and aid in unlocking the potential of entrepreneurs. By sharing their networks and expertise, angel investors are helping entrepreneurs to get their businesses off the ground. The government should continue to offer incentives for angel investors who invest in South Africa. Angel investors Media reports have criticised South Africa's increasing interest in angel investment due to its difficulty accessing private investors and the inability to fund new ventures. Despite facing many economic challenges, South Africa's high unemployment rate has been a major obstacle to its growth. These problems can be resolved by investors investing in startups. Angel investors are a fantastic source of working capital for the new companies, and they don't need any upfront capital. They typically provide the opportunity to invest in start-ups and gives them the chance to expand the business several times. There are numerous advantages to angel investing in South Africa. While a small percentage of investors are angels however, the majority of them are business executives with extensive experience. Most entrepreneurs in SA are unable to obtain funding because they lack knowledge, experience, background, or collateral. Angel investors need no collateral or other requirements from their entrepreneurs and invest in start-ups over the long-term. Angel investing is the most efficient option for funding start-ups due the potential for profits. There are numerous notable Angel investors in South Africa. how to get investors in south africa of Dimension Data, Brett Dawson has launched his own investment company, Campan. His latest investment is in Gather Online, a social networking site that gives you the ultimate gifting experience. Dawson has also joined forces with Genesis Capital in a Wrapistry deal in November last year. Gather Online founder also revealed that Dawson had invested in his startup. If you're looking for Angel investors in South Africa, be sure to contact him. Business plan It is essential to have a solid business strategy when approaching South African angel investors. They'll want a solid plan that clearly outlines the goals you want to achieve. They will also be looking for areas you could improve your business, like key personnel, technology or other components that aren't working. Additionally, they will be interested in how you intend to market your business, and if you can effectively market to them. Angel investors invest between R200,000 to R2 million and prefer to invest in the first or second round of funding. They can purchase between 15 and 30 percent of the company and could add significant strategic value. It is crucial to keep in mind that angel investors could also be successful entrepreneurs themselves, which is why you'll need to convince them that you plan to sell their equity to institutional investors after they invest in your company. If you can do that then you can be certain that your business will get the attention of institutional investors, and that you will be successful in selling their equity. Approaching angels must be done slowly and in small steps. It is best to approach angels with smaller names and gradually building your pipeline over time. This will let you gather information about potential investors, and prepare for your next call differently. This process can be time-consuming so you'll need to be patient. The process can still yield amazing rewards.

Tax incentives South Africa's government has provided tax incentives for angel investors. The S12J regulations, which are scheduled to expire on June 30, offer significant tax breaks for rich taxpayers but they're not working as they were intended to. Angel investors are attracted by the tax benefits, but most of these investments involve properties that are low risk and offer guaranteed returns. While more than ZAR11 billion was invested in 360 S12J venture companies, only 37 per cent of these ventures created jobs. Section 12J investments, enacted by the South African Revenue Service, provide investors with a 100 percent tax write-off of the investment they make into SMMEs. The purpose of this tax break was to encourage investing in SMMEs, which can create jobs and economic growth. Because these investments typically represent higher risk than other investments, the law was designed to encourage investors to invest in small and medium-sized businesses. In South Africa, these tax breaks are especially beneficial for small-sized businesses, which typically have limited resources and are unable to raise large amounts of funding. South Africa offers tax incentives for angel investors to encourage HNIs to invest in emerging companies. Angel investors don't have the same timeframes as venture fund managers, which means they are able to be patient and work with entrepreneurs who need time to build their markets. Combining incentives and education may help to create an environment for investment that is healthy. Combining investors willing to invest in africa can increase the number of HNIs who invest in new ventures and help companies raise capital. Experience You should consider the experience of angel investors if planning to establish a business in South Africa. In South Africa, the government is divided into nine provinces - the Gauteng province along with the Western Cape province, the Northern Cape province, and the Eastern Cape. The South African economy is diverse and each province has its own capital markets. Vinny Lingham, Dragon's Den SA's founder is a prime example. He is an angel investor with a lot of recognition, having invested in a variety of South African startups such as Yola, Gyft, and Civic, which is an identity protection service. Lingham has a solid business background and has invested more than R5 million in South African startups. Although you might not expect your business to receive the same amount of funding as Lingham's, if the idea is successful, you may be able tap into this wealth and network among several angel investors. As a substitute for a traditional financial institution, the investment networks and the government in South Africa are turning to angel investors to fund their projects. This allows them to invest in new ventures and eventually, attract institutional investors. It is important to ensure your business is able to sell equity capital to institutional investors due to their connections at a high level. Angels are the most well-connected people and are an effective source of financing. Rate of success The overall success rate for angel investors in South Africa is 95%. However, there are some factors that can contribute to this high percentage. Investors and founders who are able to convince angel investors to invest in their ideas are more likely to get institutional investors. The idea itself has to be profitable enough to attract these investors. Moreover, the business owner must prove that they are capable of selling their equity to institutions after the business has grown. The number of angel investors in the country is the first thing to think about. Although the numbers aren't precise however, it is estimated that there are between twenty and fifty angel investors in South Africa. These numbers are estimates because many angel investors have made ad-hoc private investments in the initial stages of a business , and aren't regularly investing in new ventures. Christopher Campbell discussed the challenges that South African entrepreneurs face when trying to get funding. Another factor is the experience of the investor. Angel investors in South Africa should look for the experience of entrepreneurs that are in the same spot as the entrepreneurs they invest in. Some of them have already turned their businesses to be successful and have a high growth potential. Others, however, may have to spend time looking into and deciding on which angel investors to invest in. In general, the rate of success of angel investors in South Africa is about 75 75%.

[popolitiko]

Artificial intelligence

How Facebook got addicted to spreading misinformation

The company’s AI algorithms gave it an insatiable habit for lies and hate speech. Now the man who built them can't fix the problem

Joaquin Quiñonero Candela, a director of AI at Facebook, was apologizing to his audience.It was March 23, 2018, just days after the revelation that Cambridge Analytica, a consultancy that worked on Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential election campaign, had surreptitiously siphoned the personal data of tens of millions of Americans from their Facebook accounts in an attempt to influence how they voted. It was the biggest privacy breach in Facebook’s history, and Quiñonero had been previously scheduled to speak at a conference on, among other things, “the intersection of AI, ethics, and privacy” at the company. He considered canceling, but after debating it with his communications director, he’d kept his allotted time.

As he stepped up to face the room, he began with an admission. “I’ve just had the hardest five days in my tenure at Facebook,” he remembers saying. “If there’s criticism, I’ll accept it.”The Cambridge Analytica scandal would kick off Facebook’s largest publicity crisis ever. It compounded fears that the algorithms that determine what people see on the platform were amplifying fake news and hate speech, and that Russian hackers had weaponized them to try to sway the election in Trump’s favor. Millions began deleting the app; employees left in protest; the company’s market capitalization plunged by more than $100 billion after its July earnings call.

In the ensuing months, Mark Zuckerberg began his own apologizing. He apologized for not taking “a broad enough view” of Facebook’s responsibilities, and for his mistakes as a CEO. Internally, Sheryl Sandberg, the chief operating officer, kicked off a two-year civil rights audit to recommend ways the company could prevent the use of its platform to undermine democracy.Finally, Mike Schroepfer, Facebook’s chief technology officer, asked Quiñonero to start a team with a directive that was a little vague: to examine the societal impact of the company’s algorithms. The group named itself the Society and AI Lab (SAIL); last year it combined with another team working on issues of data privacy to form Responsible AI.

Quiñonero was a natural pick for the job. He, as much as anybody, was the one responsible for Facebook’s position as an AI powerhouse. In his six years at Facebook, he’d created some of the first algorithms for targeting users with content precisely tailored to their interests, and then he’d diffused those algorithms across the company. Now his mandate would be to make them less harmful.Facebook has consistently pointed to the efforts by Quiñonero and others as it seeks to repair its reputation. It regularly trots out various leaders to speak to the media about the ongoing reforms. In May of 2019, it granted a series of interviews with Schroepfer to the New York Times, which rewarded the company with a humanizing profile of a sensitive, well-intentioned executive striving to overcome the technical challenges of filtering out misinformation and hate speech from a stream of content that amounted to billions of pieces a day. These challenges are so hard that it makes Schroepfer emotional, wrote the Times: “Sometimes that brings him to tears.”In the spring of 2020, it was apparently my turn. Ari Entin, Facebook’s AI communications director, asked in an email if I wanted to take a deeper look at the company’s AI work. After talking to several of its AI leaders, I decided to focus on Quiñonero. Entin happily obliged. As not only the leader of the Responsible AI team but also the man who had made Facebook into an AI-driven company, Quiñonero was a solid choice to use as a poster boy.

He seemed a natural choice of subject to me, too. In the years since he’d formed his team following the Cambridge Analytica scandal, concerns about the spread of lies and hate speech on Facebook had only grown. In late 2018 the company admitted that this activity had helped fuel a genocidal anti-Muslim campaign in Myanmar for several years. In 2020 Facebook started belatedly taking action against Holocaust deniers, anti-vaxxers, and the conspiracy movement QAnon. All these dangerous falsehoods were metastasizing thanks to the AI capabilities Quiñonero had helped build. The algorithms that underpin Facebook’s business weren’t created to filter out what was false or inflammatory; they were designed to make people share and engage with as much content as possible by showing them things they were most likely to be outraged or titillated by. Fixing this problem, to me, seemed like core Responsible AI territory.I began video-calling Quiñonero regularly. I also spoke to Facebook executives, current and former employees, industry peers, and external experts. Many spoke on condition of anonymity because they’d signed nondisclosure agreements or feared retaliation. I wanted to know: What was Quiñonero’s team doing to rein in the hate and lies on its platform?

But Entin and Quiñonero had a different agenda. Each time I tried to bring up these topics, my requests to speak about them were dropped or redirected. They only wanted to discuss the Responsible AI team’s plan to tackle one specific kind of problem: AI bias, in which algorithms discriminate against particular user groups. An example would be an ad-targeting algorithm that shows certain job or housing opportunities to white people but not to minorities.

By the time thousands of rioters stormed the US Capitol in January, organized in part on Facebook and fueled by the lies about a stolen election that had fanned out across the platform, it was clear from my conversations that the Responsible AI team had failed to make headway against misinformation and hate speech because it had never made those problems its main focus. More important, I realized, if it tried to, it would be set up for failure.The reason is simple. Everything the company does and chooses not to do flows from a single motivation: Zuckerberg’s relentless desire for growth. Quiñonero’s AI expertise supercharged that growth. His team got pigeonholed into targeting AI bias, as I learned in my reporting, because preventing such bias helps the company avoid proposed regulation that might, if passed, hamper that growth. Facebook leadership has also repeatedly weakened or halted many initiatives meant to clean up misinformation on the platform because doing so would undermine that growth.In other words, the Responsible AI team’s work—whatever its merits on the specific problem of tackling AI bias—is essentially irrelevant to fixing the bigger problems of misinformation, extremism, and political polarization. And it’s all of us who pay the price.“When you’re in the business of maximizing engagement, you’re not interested in truth. You’re not interested in harm, divisiveness, conspiracy. In fact, those are your friends,” says Hany Farid, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley who collaborates with Facebook to understand image- and video-based misinformation on the platform.

“They always do just enough to be able to put the press release out. But with a few exceptions, I don’t think it’s actually translated into better policies. They’re never really dealing with the fundamental problems.” In March of 2012, Quiñonero visited a friend in the Bay Area. At the time, he was a manager in Microsoft Research’s UK office, leading a team using machine learning to get more visitors to click on ads displayed by the company’s search engine, Bing. His expertise was rare, and the team was less than a year old. Machine learning, a subset of AI, had yet to prove itself as a solution to large-scale industry problems. Few tech giants had invested in the technology.Quiñonero’s friend wanted to show off his new employer, one of the hottest startups in Silicon Valley: Facebook, then eight years old and already with close to a billion monthly active users (i.e., those who have logged in at least once in the past 30 days). As Quiñonero walked around its Menlo Park headquarters, he watched a lone engineer make a major update to the website, something that would have involved significant red tape at Microsoft. It was a memorable introduction to Zuckerberg’s “Move fast and break things” ethos. Quiñonero was awestruck by the possibilities. Within a week, he had been through interviews and signed an offer to join the company.His arrival couldn’t have been better timed. Facebook’s ads service was in the middle of a rapid expansion as the company was preparing for its May IPO. The goal was to increase revenue and take on Google, which had the lion’s share of the online advertising market. Machine learning, which could predict which ads would resonate best with which users and thus make them more effective, could be the perfect tool. Shortly after starting, Quiñonero was promoted to managing a team similar to the one he’d led at Microsoft.

KEEP READING

https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/03/11/1020600/facebook-responsible-ai-misinformation/?utm_source=pocket-newtab

[prmoteabhi]

Startup for Beginners: 6 Common Mistakes Businesses Should Avoid

Transforming an idea into an effective product is not as easy as it may sound. There are many challenges an entrepreneur has to face before launching a product. From researching a concept, getting its MVP certification to building a product development team, and presenting it appropriately, there are different tasks involved and each requires equal effort. . However, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, about 20% of businesses fail within their first two years. Moreover, about half of them do not survive the fifth year.

Here Are 6 Common Mistake in Startup Business

1. Ignorance of your Industry

First and foremost, you need to know the type of industry in which your business belongs. Doing market research is not enough. The thing is, you need to know the industry and learn from people who have been there before. Assuming you know everything based on what you have read is a big mistake. Hire  Start-up Development Company in India .

2. Observing Market Research

Whatever the business you would like to run, one of the most important things you need to do is do the right market research. Not doing market research will not lead you anywhere. You think you may know a lot about your business, but the chances of you making mistakes are still there. So, if you are a budding entrepreneur, you may need to go back to basics. Spend all your production time and learn as much as you can about the market before getting a product development or launching your product.

3. Ignoring The Financial Aspect

Starting a business comes with a lot of collapses - financial problems at the top of the list. A large number of startups also fail because they run out of money during software development or are unable to raise money from providers. You do not want this to happen to you. That is why you need to have a complete financial plan.

Also Read Why Do You Need Best PPC Agency And How Can You Do To Grow Your Business?

4. Dealing With Investors Who Are Not In Line With Your Business

Another important thing new entrepreneurs should be aware of when starting a business is that investors are more than just funding. Your first set of investors can make or break your company. Usually, these are the people who put their trust in business power. They can help speed up your growth, or they can put you in a hole if you fail to deliver.

5. Hiring The Wrong People

"Bad employment" is one of the most common mistakes made by new entrepreneurs. If you have a tight budget, do not try to overspend on new hires. That is because you will be more likely to pay more over time. Low-paid employees may be inexperienced, lack the necessary work skills, or be dishonest.

6. No Customer Thinking First

When creating products and building a business model, you need to have a customer attitude first. Many young entrepreneurs are so preoccupied with making a lot of money (especially in the beginning) that they often forget that this is not the key to building a successful business. The important thing is to have reliable and happy customers who will support you over time.

Learn About What Are the Key Differences Between SMO and SMM?  

[drumlinen31]

Entrepreneurship & Mental Health: Time To Overcome The Stigma

While entrepreneurship can be amazingly rewarding, it’s never a smooth road. And the effort of building and running your own business can lead to severe consequences. The experts discovered that 34% of entrepreneurs report experiencing anxiety. And nearly half of them accept feeling stressed. Another study has revealed that mental health challenges affect more than 70% of entrepreneurs. These individuals were more likely than the general population to deal with depression, bipolar diagnosis, ADHD, and addiction. Though unfortunate, these statistics shouldn’t be shocking. After all, nearly 75% of venture-backed startups fail. And less than 5% live up to their primary projections. Of course, it’s not just the numbers that rise over you. The very nature of entrepreneurship usually means that you end up ignoring your health. Mealtimes become sporadic and of low quality. Exercise and sleep fall to the wayside. This is because your endocrine system takes a “fight or flight” approach to chronic stress, overriding anything the brain deems non-critical, such as digestion and sleep. For some, the pressures of entrepreneurship cause a loss of quality of life. Other times, it becomes more traumatic. Many entrepreneurs are rising to the challenge, sharing their conflicts in the open like never before. Experts agree that the best remedies and defenses for mental health challenges come from holding the “fight or flight” mode that can lead you to neglect yourself and your health. Potential Solutions Entrepreneurs are ready to work 80 hours to avoid working 40 hours a week. Especially when a business is in the early stages, many entrepreneurs struggle to find a work-life balance. It is vital to the mental health of an entrepreneur to make time for nonbusiness-related activities. Finding a balance between work and life and making time for yourself is of the utmost importance, even for founders in the early stages of their company who are working the “80 hours.” Historically, people with mental health problems have been considered “crazy” or “insane.” One way to help change the stigma is through education. People need to be aware of what mental health challenges are and what they look like. In addition, people should recognize that they aren’t alone. As mentioned, depression is the most prevalent mental illness globally and is particularly common among entrepreneurs. Lastly, if someone is dealing with mental illness, they should seek professional help and social support. Conclusion In conclusion, while the stigma surrounding mental health in business and entrepreneurship has started to change, there’s still a long way to go. Entrepreneurs are more likely than “typical employees” to face mental health challenges for various reasons, including the pressure to succeed, failure rate, and loneliness. Additionally, the reason an entrepreneur prefers to start their company can impact their ability to create a successful company and deal with mental health issues as they arise. For example, people driven by external factors such as status or money are more prone to exit their company than those caused by intrinsic factors. With the increasing popularity of entrepreneurship in culture, it is essential to discuss these issues and the challenges of starting a business. The future is up to us. It’s time we all moved forward and invested in mental health. Feel free to reach out to Stephen Hays , Founder of What If Ventures, focused on the mental health and addiction recovery industry. The goal of Stephen Hays is to share insights that founders and investors can leverage as they move into a new year of building, investing in, and supporting entrepreneurs who are solving one of the greatest problems of our time around mental health and emotional wellbeing.

[axultraplus]

50 Tips to starting your own business

These steps are what every entrepreneur must follow in order for his idea to be successful.

Get access to all of my Testimonials And Results

Starting a business is not for the faint of heart. It is very stressful and demands practically all of your time and attention. On the other hand, it can also be a great personal and professional experience. Here are 50 tips to help you on your entrepreneurial adventure.

1. Discover your skills. Not everyone has what it takes to start a business, that does not mean that your idea is not brilliant, only that you may not have some vital personality characteristics to launch your company. Before investing time or resources, evaluate yourself and see if you have the typical skills of an entrepreneur.

2. Develop an idea. Don’t start a business just because something is hot or because you think marketing it will make you money. Develop a business concept that you are passionate about related to something in which you have some experience. Next, think of a product or service that you think will improve people’s lives.

3. Prove your credibility. Once you have an idea, discover how you can turn it into reality. Is the product something that people want or need? Can you make a profit selling it? Does it work?

4. Write a business plan. A solid business plan will guide you forward. You will also need it to present your idea to potential investors. It should include a mission statement, executive summary, company summary, product or service samples, description of your target market, financial projections, and cost of operations.

5. Identify your market. Even if you have detected some interest in your business, you need to do more homework. Evaluate the market so that you sell to the people who will surely make the purchase. Take a competitive evaluation.

6. Determine the costs. Do additional research and learn about standard costs within the industry. This will not only help you run the business more efficiently, but it will also be valuable information for investors.

7. Establish a budget. Once you determine how much money you will have to work with, find out how much you need to develop your product or service and create a marketing plan.

8. Find the right investors. You’re going to need some type of financing to get started, whether it’s from savings, credit cards, loans, venture capitalists, or donations. Find an investor who shares your passion, someone you think you can work with.

9. Listen to investors. Like it or not, they will have an opinion when it comes to your business. Listen to their advice and suggestions, but that doesn’t mean you have to do everything they tell you.

10. Have a great support system. You are going to invest a lot of time and resources in your new business adventure. Make sure your family agrees. They should be aware that this process will challenge them financially and emotionally.

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11. Determine the legal structure. Determine what is best for you: being the sole owner, having a partner, a limited liability company, an S corporation, a non-profit organization, or a cooperative.

12. Select your company name. Decide on a name that goes with your brand, then see if that’s available and if you can use it freely in your country and state.

13. Register the name of your business. If the name you want is available, register it as soon as possible in the corresponding offices.

14. Take advantage of resources at no cost. These can be social networks or even a person who offers you advice and experience to move your startup forward.

15. Buy insurance. Make sure you have the right insurance for your company. This can vary according to the type of business. If you work from home, make sure your insurance includes theft or damage to company assets as well as liability for damage related to it.

16. Fix the ledgers. Keep track of all the money that comes in and goes out of the business.

17. Choose the right location. Choose a location that suits the needs of your business, one that offers an opportunity for growth, the right level of competence, and proximity to suppliers. It must also be accessible to customers.

18. Don’t worry about an office. If you are not making a profit, do not be mortified by acquiring a space to work, you can do it from home.

19. The patent can wait. Patents can cost a lot of money. Pay this amount when you are sure you have enough clients to pay off the bills.

20. Be flexible. Odds are, your original idea will have to be modified. Being able to adapt and change something to offer the customer something they want will determine whether or not you will be successful.

21. Sare your ideas with friends and family. The people closest to you are the ones who will be the most honest with you about your idea. Feel free to seek their advice and suggestions.

22. Ignore the negatives. There is a big difference between constructive criticism and someone quickly saying that your business will fail. The best thing to do is ignore these people.

23. Don’t be angry. If your idea is rejected by clients or investors, don’t succumb to anger. Find out what they didn’t like, make adjustments, and come back to them once you’ve changed what they wanted.

24. Deliver the product or service quickly. Your business is a work in progress and if you launch a product or service quickly, you will be able to build a community of customers who can provide you with valuable feedback that will help you improve your offer. As the founder of LinkedIn says “If you are not ashamed of the first launch of your product, you made it known very late”.

25. Offer new products or services. If you already have clients make sure you take care of them by giving them new products or services.

26. Be patient. Always keep in mind that success will not happen overnight. It’s going to take you some time before you win anything.

27. Deliver more than they ask for at the beginning. Once you have a new client make sure you go the extra mile for at least the first month. You’ll have that customer hooked.

28. Post on your blog all the time. Don’t be ashamed to share your triumphs and struggles. Customers will enjoy your honesty.

29. Avoid fights with partners. If you have disagreements, fix the problems as soon as possible. Fighting can distract you from doing things right in business.

30. Don’t worry about losing a percentage of the company. An investor has acquired a share in your company. Recognize the fact that eventually at some point you will have to give up a portion of control of the business.

Get access to all of my Testimonials And Results

31. Hire a copywriter. Unless you can write very well, hire someone to write the emails for the target customers. It will also help you with press releases and other things that will bring out company news.

32. Prepare for meetings. When preparing for your meeting with a client, read as much as you can about the industry, your competition, and that client’s company.

33. Make a meeting agenda. Have the targets you want to touch on hand. Mail that agenda to your colleagues before the meeting so they can prepare too. Make sure these goals are clear and understood by everyone.

34. Don’t be afraid of the competition. Do not speak ill of the competition when you are with clients or investors. There is no need to be pitied. In fact, talking this way may turn customers away from competitors who offer a product or service that you don’t. Remember, when the competition leaves, there will be a market for your business. Use that knowledge as inspiration to do things better than your rival.

35. Benefit from word of mouth. Nothing beats good word-of-mouth marketing. Let your friends, family, and influencers share what your product or service does.

36. Offer a customer experience. An experience includes sensory marketing. This means managing colors, lights, scents, and so on. Integrate all these sensations into your offer, in such a way that they conquer the senses of your consumers.

37. Network. Don’t be afraid to go out and show your face to the public, whether it’s at a conference or just hanging out with a friend on a Friday night.

38. Give impeccable customer service. Interacting with people is an important part of your job. Your business could win new customers because you made them feel important. For example, Zappos was not the first online store to sell shoes, but the company perfected its customer service and won over many buyers.

39. Make sure your website works. Potential customers want to know as much as possible about your business, so access to it should be quick

40. Don’t worry too much about your finances. Some of the best businesses were launched when the economic situation was not the best for the world, so don’t think twice and go for it!

Get access to all of my Testimonials And Results

41. Make sure customers pay the bills. Make sure you receive payment for your product or service. Instead of being taken advantage of, set a certain time to make the payment. It also won’t hurt to accept credit cards or have the option of having them pay directly on your website.

42. Find the right employees. Hire the right people for the position. Even if it’s your business, you won’t be able to deal with everything, so you need qualified people to complete the job.

43. Assign responsibilities. Delegate achievable tasks to your work team.

44. Honesty is the best policy. If you have any employee issues, make sure they are resolved. Nobody likes talking behind their back.

45. Remember that opposites attract. Hire people with skills and personalities opposite to yours. They will challenge you and bring new things to your business.

46. ​​Say goodbye to your social life. You are going to spend a lot of time dedicated to your business. Even if you plan a night out with friends, you can leave early because a light bulb went out. The good thing is that these people will understand you.

47. Accept that you will be the last person to get paid. As CEO, you will be the last to receive a check, and that will be until you have the appropriate earnings.

48. Don’t expect success right away. Just because your business hasn’t made you a millionaire (yet) doesn’t mean your business is a failure. If you have received some kind of profit doing something that you are passionate about, it is a success story, right?

49. Accept when it’s time to retire. Failure is inevitable. If things aren’t working out and you’ve done all you can, put your pride aside and shut down. Something like this is not easy to accept but it is for the best.

50. Don’t just trust the advice of others. Although I offer to give you these tips, perhaps the most important is something I learned the hard way: Even if many people offer their help, realize that in the end, you are the owner of the business and the person responsible for its success or failure. of the same. If you know what worked, you will have the skills and knowledge to move your business forward.

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The God Coder

Sometimes I really exaggerate my descriptions, but..this guy was actually really good.  He became something of a fireman at my company, the one you talked to for a seemingly uncontrollable blaze but weren’t afraid to call over a cat in a tree.  He was the rare kind of person who had the patience to work with systems that were obviously flawed, but the talent to convert them into systems that were truly great.

He got sniped, as the good ones often do.  The way to really know you’ve made it as a software engineer is when a better company reaches out to you first.  He didn’t mind telling us the negotiation story: His opening play was to name a number so ludicrous, they had to bring it down.  Instead they immediately said “yes.”

It was less than a million a year, though, so we’re not talking TechLead level money.

Sometimes I wonder if TechLead, and JomaTech, and those other tech channels (except Mayuko, who is perfect and pure) are actually contributing to the problem.  XKCD said something like, “I never trust people who are more excited by success than by what they’ll do after they’re successful.”  Techlead and Joma talk about the technique, but they also spend a lot of time showing off the apartments, putting “millionaire” in every video tag.  

I asked this guy how he got so good at C++.  He described to me, quite simply, his belief that the key to success is being in an environment where your failure will cause a company to fail.  He spent an hour or so just talking us through the kinds of challenges he faced in a startup environment.  On another occasion, when I asked him for book recommendations in C++, he started naming off books.  Effective C++.  He kept going.  I got up.  I got coffee.

When I came back, he was still listing book titles.

Maybe he was born a genius.  Maybe, like he himself admitted, there are certain advantages you gain when you’ve basically been coding since you were five.  But there was clearly also quite a bit of hard work, a fair share of hardship, postgraduate research, and...well...he loved it.  He probably still loves it, though I’d be curious to know if his ludicrous salary is actually causing him stress.

*****

Good software engineers work well with people.  They don’t have to in order to be good, but it certainly helps.

Good software engineers can deal with the cards they’re dealt.  Some code is bad - fine, arguably most of it is - but good software engineers, as much as they may complain, will still grapple with systems that take them time to understand.  They will leave things better than how they found it.  Empathy is no requirement, in fact engineers are probably notorious for lacking it, but good software engineers at least have the level of empathy required to comprehend the inner-workings of minds that do not work quite like theirs, in order to see just enough through their view to understand why they did what they did.  An ideal software engineering team would have telepathy; that’s impossible, so what we strive for is cohesion.  We write things, other people read them, we exchange ideas, a system is built up like a new McDonalds instantly springing.

Good software engineers can will things.  They’ll look through something, figure out what they’re going to do, and then it will be.  There’s no simpler requirement, probably in any job, than that a person will be asked to do something and then do it.  But with a good software engineer, things will happen so frequently that it will almost seem like magic, the way rapid construction in the physical world can.

You’ll meet lots of good software engineers, and on occasion or maybe once you a lifetime you will meet a “god coder.”  And in that moment you might just think:

Damn, I’m glad I had the opportunity to work with you.

[route22ny]

(In the previous post I referred to Mr Gallagher’s book Reimagining Detroit. In looking for a bio to link his name to, I discovered he was retiring and had written an open farewell letter to the city in December.  I’ll put the entire text & photos where possible into this post.)

***

Dear Detroiters,

After 32 years covering this city and state for the Detroit Free Press, today marks my final column. For a lot of reasons I’ve decided this is a good time to move on to my next chapter.

But I’m not leaving Detroit and I’m not hanging up my keyboard. I’ll continue to write in a variety of ways — more books, perhaps blogging and podcasts, and otherwise I'll be engaging with this fascinating city and its people in a bunch of new ways.

I thank my editors and my colleagues for their support during my career here at the Free Press. And I thank you, my readers, who over the years have shared this amazing city with me. You’ve responded to my work by turns complimentary and critical, encouraging and scathing, but never dull.

This job has given me a front-row seat into one of the world’s great urban dramas — the resurrection of a once-powerhouse city brought low by the scourges of racism, suburban sprawl and factory closings. Whether you agree or disagree that Detroit has made progress in recent years, you have to admit that the range of effort here has been nothing short of remarkable. Not for nothing is Detroit known as an urban laboratory for the world’s struggling cities.

The work of reimagining a Detroit after the fall has been the focus of my work for many years. So today, let me try to sum up what I think we’ve learned.  

The free-fall years

When I joined the Free Press in 1987, the city of Detroit was still in free fall. Decades of factory closings, years of of flight to the suburbs, a dismal legacy of racism and its effects, had drained the city of residents, jobs and political clout. A population of about 1 million would drop at least another 300,000 in years to come. Anchor employers like Comerica decamped their headquarters to the Sunbelt.

Perhaps the low point was the case of Malice Green in 1992, when two white cops during an arrest beat Green, a black suspect, to death with flashlights. The case exposed all of Detroit’s woes and seemed to give the lie to any notion of progress on race or any other matters.

Two neighborhood boys walk past the Malice Green memorial at Warren and 23rd Street in Detroit in 1997. (Craig Porter, Detroit Free Press)

And more disappointments were to come. Michigan would sink into its “Lost Decade” in 2001 when the state began to shed jobs every year for 10 years in a row. Those who predicted a quick turnaround were proved wrong again and again. It was no normal business cycle but, as University of Michigan economist Donald Grimes told me for a 2018 article, the long-overdue reaction to the vanished market share of the Detroit Three automakers.

"That was a permanent adjustment of the auto industry to the loss of its monopoly power," Grimes said. "We'll never get back to where we were in the year 2000."

And then came the Great Recession of 2007-2009. Short of an atom bomb going off here, it’s hard to image a worse calamity for the city. The collapse of the subprime mortgage market, the devastation wreaked by the Wayne County tax foreclosure auction, the implosion of home values, all but finished off Detroit.

The Great Recession turned Detroit from a city of homeowners to a city of renters. It wiped out a generation of black family wealth that we are yet to recover. And it led inexorably to the city’s municipal bankruptcy of 2013-14.

The first hints of recovery

But even amid the losses and abandonment, some early shoots of recovery were showing.

For years, Detroiters were turning vacant lots into urban farms. There were hundreds of small community gardens and several larger farms like Earthworks and RecoveryPark on the east side, the D-Town Farm led by Malik Yakini of the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network on the west side, and the Michigan Urban Farming Initiative in New Center.

This repurposing of vacant and abandoned land for productive use first drew the attention of the world and began to inch Detroit’s reputation from Rust Belt failure to that of a city reinventing itself.

Then, too, a city government too broken and dysfunctional to do all it should began to spin off some of its operations into innovative conservancies, nonprofit corporations and public authorities. These spin-offs were hotly contested each time but ultimately proved remarkably successful.

Under these new management models, Eastern Market transformed from a faded and failing operation to the lively marketplace we see today. Cobo Center, now renamed the TCF Center, was once so poorly run by the city that it almost lost the annual auto show. Once spun off into a regional authority in 2009, the convention center transformed into the gem we see today with its soaring riverfront atrium and a ballroom that is one of the city’s best venues.

The nonprofit Detroit Riverfront Conservancy built and manages the RiverWalk. Ditto the lively Campus Martius Park, built by another conservancy and managed today by the Downtown Detroit Partnership on behalf of the city. The Detroit Historical Museum, the Detroit Institute of Arts, the city’s workforce development agency, the Detroit Land Bank Authority, and, most  controversially, Belle Isle itself, all improved, often dramatically, once spun off from direct city control into some new form of management.

Mina Powell of Southfield skips rope at Eastern Market before the 2018 Ford Fireworks in Detroit on Monday, June 25, 2018. (Cameron Pollack, Cameron Pollack, Detroit Free Press)

And in this process, philanthropic foundations played a key role. The Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan has been a leader in building greenways like the Dequindre Cut. The Kresge Foundation contributed tens of millions of dollars to the RiverWalk and other efforts. The Ford Foundation was a lead contributor to the Grand Bargain that made the city’s trip through bankruptcy a success.

It would hard to imagine Detroit’s recent progress without the work of these and many other foundations. And the foundations weren’t the only nonprofits to take a leading role.

Neighborhood community development organizations like the Southwest Detroit Business Association, Eastside Community Network, U-Snap-Bac, and, perhaps most successfully, Midtown Detroit Inc. under its longtime leader Sue Mosey, led the recovery in their districts. These community groups and their staffers worked when no one else seemed to care, often for years, often alone.

And beginning in the early 2000s the city’s economy began to slowly evolve from the heavy-industry model of the past to a more entrepreneurial ecosystem. Entrepreneurship gave Detroiters a new path to remake their lives.

There was a former Chrysler line worker named April Anderson whose dream of becoming a baker led to Good Cakes and Bakes, one of the city’s leading suppliers of sweets. Roslyn Karamoko’s Detroit is the New Black apparel shop, the StockX sneaker exchange, and hundreds of other startups showed that there was indeed economic life in the city, after all.

Detroit’s municipal bankruptcy, and the 2010 move by Dan Gilbert of his Quicken Loans downtown, with Gilbert's rapid remaking of the downtown core, were major steps that have gotten a lot of the credit for the city's comeback to date. But I think we cannot underestimate the importance of the urban farmers, the spin-offs, the foundations, the neighborhood activists, and the entrepreneurs in reinventing Detroit. 

And along the way there were milestones of recovery once thought unattainable. Both the long-dormant Book-Cadillac Hotel and the defunct Michigan Central Station stood for years as international symbols of the city's failure. Both at times were recommended for demolition. But the Book-Cadillac reopened to fanfare in 2008 and Ford today is turning the train station into its future center of mobility research.

Setbacks aplenty

To be sure, the work has been long and tedious, beset by setbacks at every turn.

Rebuilding a city already built upon for 300 years means dealing with a legacy of debris just beneath the surface. When the Orleans Landing project by McCormack Baron Salazar on the riverfront east of the Renaissance Center started to dig foundations a few years ago, crews uncovered sewer lines that according to city maps shouldn’t have been there.

As another developer joked about his project building a medical warehouse in New Center, “We dug up everything but Jimmy Hoffa.”

Facing these and other challenges, almost every project takes longer than we think it should.  When the Police Athletic League was planning what became the Willie Horton Field of Dreams at the site of the old Tiger Stadium, it discovered a regulation that a public playfield couldn’t be landlocked by other development on all sides as was planned for the perimeter of the site. So lawyers had to work out a solution to solve that problem. It worked, but the process that burned up several more weeks of time.

Problems so complex

Or take mortgage lending. Detroit is a city so financially broken that a normal mortgage market here almost didn’t exist until just recently. Thousands of houses do change hands each year, but mostly through cash sales or land contracts, a financially risky way for a buyer to get a home.

The dearth of market rate mortgages reflects the legacy of  racism and redlining that scarred Detroit and many other older urban centers at mid-20th century. But even bankers who admitted their past mistakes and tried to infuse more capital into the mortgage system here found that it was no simple matter.

With the Detroit skyline in the background, several empty lots sit on the corner of Park Ave and Sibley in the Cass Corridor.  There are still many undeveloped sites despite the empowerment zone being in Detroit since 1994. (Eric Seals, Detroit Free Press)

In Detroit, a potential buyer might have saved enough for a down payment but not enough for the repairs that would make a house move-in ready and eligible for a market-rate mortgage. Or an annual income that might support a mortgage in most cases might not be enough once student debt or child-care expenses were added to a borrower’s burden.

Low appraisals, lack of public transit for residents to get to jobs, food or housing insecurity — all these could hold back efforts to create a thriving mortgage market in the city.

As Janis Bowdler, president of the JPMorgan Chase Foundation, told me earlier this year, "As we've been sleeves rolled up, working in the community, we're learning over and over how multifaceted the challenge is. It's not just a supply of mortgage capital or a matter of producing enough credit-worthy borrowers. It's much more complex."

Working the problem

Detroit's mortgage lenders, and civic and nonprofit leaders, have worked hard to overcome these challenges. As they've counseled home-buyers and come up with innovative approaches to housing, the number of mortgage loans made in Detroit has been rising from almost none 10 years ago to more than 1,000 a year today. But clearly we still have a long way to go.

Earlier this year I wrote about Detroiter Jomica Miller, 43, a cashier working at 36th District Court. She had hoped to buy her parents' home after her father died but found it had been sold out from under them at the annual Wayne County tax foreclosure auction. She also found her past credit history presented a problem for lenders. She had student loans she was slowly paying off and a past bankruptcy on her record.

Jomica Miller stands in front of her house she recently purchased on Detroit's northwest side on Tuesday, March 12, 2019. (Ryan Garza, Detroit Free Press)

"I actually started my process in 2017," she said. "Nobody wanted to work with me because my credit was so bad. I didn't know where to start."

Through credit counseling and perseverance for more than a year, she eventually was able to buy a house in the Marygrove district on the city's northwest side with an FHA-backed mortgage. The house is one of four that were part of the Fitz Forward project that has gotten mortgages closed in the Fitzgerald neighborhood. Fitz Forward is the initiative led by Century Partners and The Platform to rehab houses in the district.

"I almost gave up, but I had some great people in my corner," she said. "Don't give up."

Grind it out

So if the problems are complex, so, too, are the solutions. A week ago Mayor Mike Duggan and other leaders announced a $10 million gift from the Ralph C. Wilson Jr. Foundation to the city’s Strategic Neighborhood Fund. The fund works in 10 specific neighborhoods on streetscape improvements, new and rehabbed housing, retail readiness and other improvements.

But if it sounded like a simple transfer of funds from the foundation to ready-to-go projects, it wasn’t. The money flows through Invest Detroit, a mission-based nonprofit lender that has worked overtime in recent years to generate new investment in the city’s neighborhoods. Speaking at the announcement, Dave Blaszkiewicz, president of Invest Detroit, noted that it took the coordinated efforts of multiple departments and agencies to make the work possible.

Without question, the complexity of the problems and the difficulty of coordinating solutions has held back Detroit’s efforts at recovery. But the good news — the really good news — is that Detroit in recent years has gotten so much better at working that magic.

Whether it’s city planners, the foundation staffs, bankers or neighborhood activists, more and more of these players have learned to reduce the barriers and make a complex system of investment work.

Try everything and keep trying

Does that system sometimes favor corporate interests to the detriment of ordinary Detroiters? Perhaps. Do we still sometimes see well-meaning efforts result in nothing much? Sure. Are there still problems that we have barely begun to touch? Certainly.

But the overall impact of Detroit’s recovery efforts — efforts by thousands of committed people working across a broad range of activities, from workforce training to urban farming to education and transit, these efforts have slowly inched Detroit forward. And the city is better for it.

There’s a saying that “nothing works but everything might.” It means that there is no silver-bullet solution to our problems. But if we work across a hundred different fields, making progress in each one, those efforts will add up to something greater than the sum of the parts. That’s the approach Detroit has taken and must continue to take.

There’s a story from the American Civil War that I like.  A new regiment came up to the battlefront and its colonel asked the general commanding where they should go in. “Why, go in anywhere,” the general replied. “There is lovely fighting all along the line.”

And so in Detroit. If you want a to-do list to take away from this column, work on whatever holds your interest. We need progress on public safety and education, but we also need to work on transit and child care and vacant buildings and entrepreneurship and any of a hundred other fields. Take your pick, and get busy.

It’s a long and difficult task. But that shouldn’t faze a city with a gritty work ethic like Detroit's.

And so, onward

Detroit’s story is so varied, with so much conflicting evidence of progress or lack of it, that even today one can lean toward either optimism or despair. I choose hope. I believe with Dr. King that the arc of the moral universe is long but that it bends toward justice. And I hold with the message of Irish poet Seamus Heaney whose words about his homeland echo for me in Detroit:

History says, don't hope

On this side of the grave.

But then, once in a lifetime

The longed-for tidal wave

Of justice can rise up,

And hope and history rhyme.

So much work lies ahead of us. And in that task, I'll be there. Though I won’t be writing as a Free Press columnist, I will be writing about Detroit in other ways, and engaging in the life of this community in new ways yet to come. I’m looking forward to that.

See you around.

(John Gallagher is a native of New York City who joined the Free Press in 1987 to cover urban and economic development. He is a resident of the city for many years. He is the author of several books including "Reimagining Detroit: Opportunities for Redefining an American City" and "Yamasaki in Detroit: A Search for Serenity." He was a 2017 inductee into the Michigan Journalism Hall of Fame.)

https://www.freep.com/in-depth/money/business/john-gallagher/2019/12/19/reporter-john-gallagher-retires-detroit/2685362001/

***

The bio of Gallagher I mentioned in the intro is here; there are also links to a  number of his more recent articles about the city and related issues.

[douchebagbrainwaves]

EVERY FOUNDER SHOULD KNOW ABOUT FOUNDERS

Even a day's delay can bring news that causes an investor to your cofounder s should be like introducing a girl/boyfriend to your parents—something you do only when things reach a certain stage of seriousness. Counterintuitive as it feels, it's better most of the calories. There's something fake about it. So while they're often nice guys, they just can't help it. History tends to get rewritten by big successes, so that in retrospect it seems obvious they were going to grow into big, beautiful swans. So there you have it: languages are not equivalent, and I think this is the preferred way to solve the problem in its full complexity, it would seem crazy to most people to try to make it big is not simply a constant fraction of the things that will surprise you if you build something popular is that you shouldn't relax just because you have to create a special visa for startup founders. ITA in New Architect magazine said that one line of Lisp can replace 20 lines of C, and since they're the customer you can take that without having to think.

The combined code can be much shorter than if you had no users, it would still be important to release quickly, because for a startup the initial release acts as a shakedown cruise. A couple days ago I found to my surprise that I'd been granted a patent. If you talk to investors in parallel rather than serially. But that's another issue. Not just small, lame. If life is short. What they really dislike is the sort of big social shift that only happens once every few generations. In phase 2, yes. One thing all startups have in common is that they probably will, one day.

Such a high proportion of successful startups raise money that it might seem fundraising is one of the organizers got up on the stage to deliver an impromptu rebuttal. Ken Anderson says that the following code is about as close as you can, to a limited extent, simulate a closure a function that takes a number n, and returns a function that generates accumulators—a function that takes another number i and returns n incremented by i. So here we have two pieces of information that I think are very valuable. Don't be hapless. And yet we'd all be wrong. Introducing an investor to your cofounder s should be like introducing a girl/boyfriend to your parents—something you do only when things reach a certain stage of seriousness. And frankly the thought of a 30% success rate at fundraising makes my stomach clench.

But the founders contribute ideas. So things don't happen in the Python example, where we are in effect simulating the code that a compiler would generate to implement a lexical variable. This is why we even hear about new languages like Perl and Python. This was the Lisp function eval. Similarly, when investors ask how much you plan to raise a $7 million series A round, and we'll be accepting termsheets next tuesday. And yet within a month it had happened again: an aggressive west coast VC who had met the founder of a company in trouble, which makes it difficult to tell founders what to aim for. To get a truly random sample, pollsters ask, say, every 20th person leaving the polling place who they voted for.1 If it were, so you don't need money take some to grow faster than the salary that seemed so high when they left school.

A group of 10 people working together in the usual way. The challenge is whether we can keep things this way. Often it's one the founders themselves hadn't seen yet. It is. A bottom-up program should be easier to raise money in phase 2 get the best investors is in the bank so far. If an acquirer thinks you're going to stick around no matter what, they'll be more likely to buy you. If they reject you in phase 2, as a sort of Gresham's Law of trolls: trolls are willing to use a forum with a lot of animals in the wild is that each species thrives in groups of a certain size. Because some people don't respond. The sites's guidelines explicitly ask people not to say things they wouldn't say face to face contact that makes deals happen, but whatever it is, it hasn't yet been duplicated by technology.2 In a place where there was infrastructure for startups, accumulated knowledge about how to make them act. $15k per month is high, so don't actually spend that much.

This is not just a synonym for annoying. But this approach is industry best practice, and the odds of finding programmers, libraries, etc. Even a day's delay can bring news that causes an investor to commit, ask them to introduce you to other investors they respect. For example, if you've sold more than about 40% of your company in subsequent rounds. If your startup is connected to a specific industry, you may be better off in Silicon Valley. And yet a large number of startups. Investors are pinched between two kinds of fear: fear of investing in startups that fizzle, and fear of missing out on startups that take off. So you must cushion the blow with soft words.

Most visible disasters are not so alarming as they seem. When you pick a big winner, you won't know your users, it's dangerous to guess what the eventual equity round valuation might be. Most programming probably consists of writing little glue programs you can use, if the upside looks good enough. So if you lop off the top of the base language, you build on top of the possible rewards, you thereby decrease people's willingness to take risks proportionate to the returns. Wufoo took this to heart and released their form-builder before the underlying database. Because Python doesn't fully support lexical variables, you have a lead. Its purpose is to shield the pointy-haired boss believes that all programming languages are pretty much equivalent. And as software shifts off the desktop and onto servers a future even Microsoft seems resigned to, there will be more of them go ahead and do without startups. It will be easier to modify as well, and with it growth. Their lives are short too. And when people seem to think, any economic upper bound on this number. The other big driver of change is that startups are becoming cheaper to start a consulting company, or a niche product company, but against a backdrop of constant disasters.

Users love a site that's constantly improving. Slashdot, for example—because they're confident you'll pick them. And it is not clear whether you can actually solve this problem in other languages, of course, projects where the choice of programming language doesn't matter much. If it were, you could fund everyone who seemed likely to succeed at all. Inc or class foo: def __init__ self, s: self. What's important about startups is the pool of potential founders. When a decision causes you to develop software at a fraction of the probability that the company will die or at the very least people will have to be.

Notes

The company may not even be conscious of this model was that it makes the business spectrum than the rich paid high taxes? Investors are one of the words out of fashion in 100 years, dribbling out a preliminary answer on the y, you'd ultimately be a variant of the world population, and that's much harder it is very long: it might be 20 or 30 times as much difference to a bunch of actual adults suddenly found themselves trapped in high school junior. I believe, is this someone you want to either. 39 says that I know this is a variant of the ingredients in our own version that afternoon.

Down rounds are at selling it. Only founders of failing startups would even be working on Y Combinator makes founders move for 3 months also suggests one underestimates how hard they work. People tell the craziest lies about me.

[lateststartupandfinancialne-blog]

Top 5 Problems Facing Startups Today

Startups are emerging everywhere these days. Today, startups area flooding the entire marketplace and everywhere, students are even advised in schools and other educational institutions never to look forward to graduating and eventually buying job, but instead to work around possible during school to create names for themselves by investing their time in startups and business innovations.

Today, tales and stories of startup entrepreneurs and business owners be seemingly on the leading page of every newspaper and magazine issue, serving being an encouragement or incentive for more people to brainstorm and develop ideas which, according for them, are worth investing in.

People see technological breakthroughs as something that may revolutionise the entire world and open people around more abundant opportunities. As a result of this fact, more funds and resources are now being readily made available for the start of feasible startups and businesses.

The untold truth about startups is this;

Launching and maintaining one is not nearly as easy as successful entrepreneurs ensure it is look. Around there are many avenues being made available for startups funding to emerge and bloom, there are still some challenges that continue steadily to persist. Being an aspiring startup entrepreneur, you need to expect to manage some time-tested challenges and roadblocks.

Startups face challenges at different stages and various rungs up the ladder to success. Issues may differ on the basis of the difficulty experienced in executing various goals and objectives and the capability of the entrepreneur(s) to take care of various problems because they come is just a huge advantage. Startup entrepreneurs make mistakes, depending on the form of startup or the group of people (if any) working together. However, there are a few challenges that are facing startups on a broad level today.

Here is a set of the most truly effective 5 challenges that the startup will face and the manner in which you manage them should go a considerable ways in determining whether your startup will succeed or fail:

Funding

The big problem comes first. Funding remains one of the major challenges that emerging startups face. It is a really dicey issue in the sense that every investor prefers to place their money somewhere they know it is likely to be safest. Hence, they usually invest their money in already established and successful startups.

 Logical because it is for the investors, additionally it limits the number of successful startups that are available today. Truly, there are a few startups today that if given the appropriate funds, should go onto become serious trailblazers within their fields. However, they lack the readily available funds simply because investors choose to be'logical'and invest in the established, most prospective startups.

Instead to the typical Bank funding, it might be worth giving this article a read: https://www.alternativebusinessfunding.co.uk/blog/post/were-in-the-business-of-funding-when-no-one-else-will.

Not enough Innovation

The desire to create startups and generate income quickly and easily has sadly created a couple of norms within our minds. This said, most startups are just'knock offs'of old, more successful ones. The innovation is extremely lacking in entrepreneurs today. When investors and clients see these, they become reluctant to invest as they generally don't begin to see the difference between these new startups and old ones.

A significant method for attracting funds for a startup is to have at least one unique feature; something which makes you stand out of the immeasurable amount of startups that are related to, or similar yours. People usually embrace re-imagined ways of doing things as opposed to favour new and innovative methods. The consequence of this really is that innovation is generally trumped.

Unfeasible Goals

It's always helpful and advantageous setting goals for your business. Goals give your company a direction, provide a means of measuring your company'growth over time, become an effective way to measure the success (or otherwise) of your company and serve as a way of pitting your company against other businesses in your fields.

In running startups, it is very important that the startup surpasses (or at the least meets) your set goals; it demonstrates you're on the proper track for future successes. However, where most startups get it wrong is the goal setting part. Most times, upcoming startups set goals that are simply unrealistic, giving their structure and size.

 Also, following a huge success, startups have a tendency to'enhance the bar'and in the process, they set goals that stretch them too thin. For consistency, it is very important setting high but controlled and generally attainable goals and objectives, given a level of resources and your convenience of meeting those goals.

If you're struggling for ideas on how best to set yourself goals for your set up, I'd highly recommend reading the following article at Wanderlust Worker: https://www.wanderlustworker.com/10-business-goal-setting-tips-how-to-set-and-achieve-career-goals/

Decision Making

This challenge is mostly faced in businesses that have multiple owners (I.e, partnerships). While partnerships are great because they offer a greater capital base, these businesses are usually composed of owners who result from various backgrounds and who have differing (sometimes conflicting) business orientations.

These differing orientations greatly affect decision making. In managing a startup, it is important to be able to make decisions fast, especially when the window of time you've to behave is really small or when the ability that presents itself for your requirements is all about to close. 

Some partners might don't have any qualms with taking certain risks while some feel it won't be'safe '. A partnership lags here because no decision can be taken without everyone's consent and without accommodating every partner. It's vital that you get accustomed to making (sometimes) tough decision, and quickly.

Personnel Selection

Regardless of how great your company management skills are being an entrepreneur, sooner or later and irrespective of how small, you'll still need a team to work around you. Choosing the best team members could be a small challenge; you've to pick those who have the exact same passion as you and individuals who can handle handling the hardships that are included with the job.

The proper personnel will greatly help you; their skills could eventually help in relieving you of a number of the work. Selecting the most appropriate personnel is just a task that must definitely be finished with utmost care and impartiality. It is simple to be tempted with a person's character and hire them, only to learn that you've made a blunder and hired the wrong person. Other biases (nepotism, attraction, etc) must be avoided when selecting the proper personnel for your startup.

If you're still in the frame of mind that you want to start a new business, our team could be more than happy to go over crafting and developing an ideal set up business plan for you.

[legalpillers123-blog]

Steps for Starting a Business in India

In earlier days it was not that much easy to start business in India because registration and approval norms was quite complex and there was lack of single window clearance. Now due to simplification in regulatory norms it becomes easy to register your company in India. It will make you amaze that a private limited company or Online CA Service can register within 1 hour.

Government of India has taken an initiative to improve ease of doing business so that government can attract foreign investors to invest in Indian market. Make in India initiative is also a pioneer programme under which the Government of India has promoted SME sectors at big level so that it can again relive in eco system.

Here we will discuss about step by step guide on business startup. So that it can help to new comers in execution of their plan. Before starting any business you need to follow below mentioned steps as-

1. Decide Business Idea- First and foremost thing is business idea. Normally peoples do have so many ideas in their mind and prima facie it seems very cool and attractive, but it does not mean that the idea is feasible. The most important thing before idealisation of any business model is direct connation with a problem which public at large are facing.

2. Feasibility of Business idea – One you decide business idea, thereafter you have to think about the feasibility of that business idea. In feasibility aspect generally we check that how feasible is the idea? Whether we can execute this idea or not? If execute, than how we can reach to public? How much finance it requires? How much risk it contains? After considering all these possibilities we come to the point of funding and execution.

3. Market Research and training- After checking feasibility of business idea you need to conduct R&D in market that how you will provide solutions to the public. You must have proper knowledge of the work you are going to execute in market. So many start-ups fail only because of the reason that they have not expertise of the work.

4. Register Business – Once you have done with R&D and other initial level work and ready for execution. Now you have to decide which kind of business registration your business required. As per Indian law there are so many business registration types. We are mentioning here some of business registration type which you can opt as-

·        Sole Proprietorship registration- if you are startup and planning to operate at small level within limited budget, in such case you may select Sole proprietorship. Sole proprietorship is nothing, just a registration of government certificate with your business name. You can register your sole proprietorship firm with GST Registration, MSMSE or Udhyog Adhaar Registration, etc.

 ·        Partnership Firm Registration – It is governed as per The India Partnership Act, 1932. If you are planning to work with your partner you may opt Partnership firm registration. A PF can be register or non-register, you may select any one. In case Register Partnership Firm it must be register before registrar of firms or society of that jurisdiction. In case if you have non register partnership firm you can also run your business but in case any dispute arises between the partners, non of the party can make liable to each others as mentioned in agreement because non register partnership form does not create legal boundation on partners or any other third party.

 ·        Shop and Establishment registration- It is register as per local law such as Municipal Law. The simplest and cheap registration type is Shop and Establishment registration. You have to provide some basic documents such as id address proof of applicants, email id contact no, electricity bill of premise, photograph  of appli cant and premise.

 ·        Ghumasta License Registration- Again Ghumasta License is governing as per local laws. Municipal Corporation or other local bodies are authorising for issuance of Ghumasta License. You have to provide some basic documents such as id address proof of applicants, email id contact no, electricity bill of premise, photograph  of applicant and premise.

  Limited Liability Registration- LLP is mixture of Private Limited Company and Partnership Firm. It is governed by Limited Liability Partnership Act, 2008. In Service sector it is most popular r4egisatration type because of its features. A LLP registered with MCA and the person called partner or Designated Partner who control LLP. MCA also issue DPIN and CIN to LLP and its Designated Partner. This could be best suitable registration type for your business if you are looking for more feature in less budget.

  Company Registration - OPC is a type of Private Limited Company. It is newly introduced under Companies Act, 2013 for those business persons who want sole control in their company. In this Business registration type single person will be director in company with sole control over company and one nominee of director.

  ·        Private Limited Company Registration- Most popular registration type in India. In every month around 10,000 to 12,000 company registered in India. Which is far big as compare to One Person and Limited Liability partnership.  A private Limited Company requires minimum 2 person who become director in company. Now MCA is registration company in just 1 day, if approved in one go.

 Above mentioned are some registration type which must be select according to the need of business model. Government of India is providing you various option for your business registration which you can opt as per your requirement.

 5. IPR Protection- You must have to protect your intellectual property rights such as any kind of invention, brand, artistic, dramatic, litrary, musical or any other kind of work. For example if you select your company name and make it brand you must have to apply for Trademark so that your brand could not copy by any other person. If you have invented any process, product, idea it must be patented so that no one can copy it. And if you created or produced anykind of lilterary, dramatic, artistic, musical work such as book content, course, music audio video, play or drama, you must have to apply for copyright. These kind of registration protects you from copycats. And helps you in your wealth creation.

  6. Make online Presence – Your product or service must have online presence so that it can reach more and more people. In the era of Digital Market most of the things are available at online platform, so it develops a mindset of people to find every service over their mobile. If your product or service will have online presence, it will helps your business to make more sale.

7. Correct selection of employees- As every startup has budget limitation, you must have select those employees who can work for you by keeping in mind that they are not just an employee, they are major part of your organisation. Employees must willing to work for longer tenure, it give surely boost up to your organisation.

8. Marketing and promotions- Various social media platforms have huge visitors on daily basis. You can use the volume of visitors to make your products or services promotion by using these platforms. However more of the social media platforms are providing options to make your business present at their platform. By taking some paid tools or option you may reach big numbers of peoples.

 So above-mentioned are some big challenges and their solution which every startup need to consider before entering into market, so that you can take pro active measure if any situation arises.

[scifigeneration]

Hope and fear surround emerging technologies, but all of us must contribute to stronger governance

by Nicholas Davis and Aleksandar Subic

It’s been a big year for companies pushing the boundaries of technology – and not in a good way. The Cambridge Analytica scandal led to a public outcry about privacy, the Commonwealth Bank’s loss of customer data raised concerns about cybersecurity, and a fatal self-driving car crash put the safety of automated systems in the spotlight.

These controversies are just the latest warning signs that we urgently need better governance of the technologies redefining the world. There is a widening gap in knowledge between those creating and using emerging technologies and those we charge with regulating them. Governance cannot be left just to the public sector – it is a job for all citizens.

Until now, we’ve been sleepwalking through the early stages of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. We dream of a future where artificial intelligence, synthetic biology, distributed ledgers and neurotechnologies magically make life better for all.

As we begin to wake up, it’s becoming clear the world has already changed around us in profound ways. We’re realizing that creating and commercializing powerful new technologies is the easy part – the hard bit is making sure these new capabilities give us what we need and want, rather than what we imagine and fear.

Building the technology we want

What we want is to realize the benefits of revolutionary new digital technologies to the economy, our quality of life and a more sustainable world.

Analysis by consultancy AlphaBeta suggests that automation could add A$2.2 trillion to cumulative Australian GDP between 2017 and 2030. In healthcare, diagnostic approaches and treatments targeted to individuals could be as dramatic a change in our ability to prevent and treat illness as was the introduction of sanitation and antibiotics.

More generally, advances in machine learning are demonstrating that algorithms can simultaneously benefit companies, shareholders, citizens and the environment. We may be amazed at the prowess of computers beating the world’s best Go players, but perhaps more impressive is that Google DeepMind’s AI managed to reduce Google’s Data Centre energy use by 15%. That’s a recurring benefit amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars. DeepMind subsequently launched discussions with the UK’s National Grid to try and save 10% of the UK’s energy bill.

What we fear is that history will rhyme, and not in a good way.

The social and environmental damage resulting from previous industrial revolutions taught us that new technologies don’t inevitably lead to better outcomes for everyone. For a start, the benefits are often unevenly distributed – witness the one billion people around the world who still lack access to electricity. And when we do discover that harm is occurring, there’s often a significant lag before the law catches up.

What it means to be awake

Most fundamentally, being awake means recognizing that the same exciting systems that promise openness and deliver convenience come with significant costs that are affecting citizens right now. And many of those costs are being borne by those least able to afford them – communities with less access to wealth or power, and those already marginalized.

These costs go well beyond risks to our privacy.

When an algorithm fails to predict the next word you want to type, that’s generally not a big deal. But when an algorithm – intelligent or otherwise – uses a flawed model to decide whether you are eligible for government benefits, whether you should get bail or whether you should be allowed to board a flight, we’re talking about potential violations of human rights and procedural fairness.

And that’s without getting into the challenge of harassment within virtual reality, the human security risks posed by satellite imagery that refreshes every day, and the ways in which technologies that literally read our minds can be used to manipulate us.

The government alone can’t fix this

It’s tempting to say that this isn’t yet a big problem. Or that if it is a problem, it must be up to the government to find a solution.

Unfortunately, our traditional, government-led ways of governing technologies are far from fit for purpose. Many emerging technologies, such as novel applications of machine learning, cryptocurrencies, and promising biotechnologies are being developed – and often commercialized – at breakneck speed that far exceeds legislative or regulatory cycles. As a result, public governance is continually out of date.

Meanwhile, the novelty and complexity of emerging technologies is widening the knowledge and skills gap between public and private sectors.

Even communication is getting harder. As former US Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright put it:

Citizens are speaking to their governments using 21st-century technologies, governments are listening on 20th-century technology and providing 19th-century solutions.

Our governance solutions are out of step with today’s powerful technologies. This is not the fault of government – it’s a design flaw affecting every country around the world. But given the flaw exists, we should not be surprised that things are not going as well as we’d like.

How do we get out of this pickle?

Here are three suggestions.

1. Take an active role in shaping future directions

We need to shift our mindset from being passive observers to active participants.

The downside of talking about how powerful and transformational new technologies are is that we forget that human beings are designing, commercializing, marketing, buying and using this technology.

Adopting a “wait and see” approach would be a mistake. Instead, we must recognize that Australian institutions and organizations have the power to shape this revolution in a direction we want.

This approach means focusing on leading – rather than adapting to – a changing technological environment in partnership with the business community. One example is the Swinburne Factory of the Future, which gives Victorian businesses exposure to the latest technologies and processes in a non-competitive, supportive environment. It also offers ways of assessing the likely impact of technology on individual companies, as well as entire sectors.

2. Build a bridge between public and private sectors

We need to embrace any and all opportunities for collaboration across the public and private sectors on the issue of new governance models.

Technology leaders are starting to demand this. At the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting in January 2018, Uber’s Dara Khosrowshahi said:

My ask of regulators would be to be harder in their ask of accountability.

At the same meeting, Marc Benioff, CEO of SalesForce, called for more active public sector guidance, saying:

That is the point of regulators and government – to come in and point true north.

To have real impact, cross-sector collaboration should be structured to lead to new Australian partnerships and institutions that can help spread benefits, manage costs and ensure the technology revolution is centred on people.

In 2017, the World Economic Forum launched its Center for the Fourth Industrial Revolution in San Francisco. It works directly with multinationals, startups, civil society and a range of governments to pilot new governance models around AI, drones, autonomous vehicles, precision medicine, distributed ledgers and much more.

The Australian government and business community can and should benefit from this work.

Cross-sector collaboration means much more than simply getting stakeholders in a room. Recent work by the PETRAS Internet of Things Research Hub – a consortium of nine leading UK universities – found that most international discussions on cybersecurity have made no progress relevant to IoT in recent years. A primary reason for this is that the technical experts and the policymakers find it difficult to interact – they essentially speak different languages.

The same challenge has been facing the international community working on the governance of lethal autonomous weapons systems. Anja Kaspersen, the UN’s Deputy Secretary General of the Conference on Disarmament, noted recently that, when it comes to discussing how the use of lethal robots might be controlled, her most valuable role is to be a translator across disciplines, countries and sectors.

By taking this approach at the April 2018 meeting of the Group of Government Experts, Kaspersen and Ambassador Amandeep Singh Gill made substantial progress in aligning expert views and driving convergence on issues, such as the primacy of international humanitarian law.

The desired outcome is not just new rules, but inclusive governance structures that are appropriately adapted to the fast-changing nature of new technologies. While reaching out across across geographic and sector boundaries takes considerable time and energy, it is worth the effort as it often leads to unexpected benefits for society.

For example, The Prime Minister’s Industry 4.0 Taskforce was inspired by Germany to encourage collaboration between government and the labour movement on issues facing industry and workers. As a result, the cross-sector Industry 4.0 Testlabs and the Future of Work and Education workstream is co-chaired by Swinburne’s Aleksandar Subic and the National President of the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union, Andrew Dettmar.

3. Tackle the moral component of emerging technologies

Third, we need to appreciate that these issues cannot be solved by simply designing better algorithms, creating better incentives or by investing in education and training, as important as all those aspects are.

Technologies are not neutral. They are shaped by our assumptions about the world, by our biases and human frailties. And the more powerful a technology is, the greater our responsibility to make sure it is consciously designed and deployed in ways that uphold our values.

The Centrelink robo-debt controversy demonstrated what happens when algorithms prioritize the value of efficiency over the value of protecting people – and how this can backfire.

Unfortunately, the ethical and moral aspects of technology are often (and incorrectly) viewed as falling into one of two categories. Either as soft, imprecise and inessential issues interesting only to lefty activists: a distraction in the boardroom. Or as technical, regulatory, compliance-related challenges, discussed in the boardroom only when a crisis has occurred.

A far more useful framing of ethics in technology is as a set of practical, accessible and essential tools that can help organizations create sustainable value. A forthcoming white paper from the World Economic Forum on Values, Ethics and Innovation argues that leaders can and should make ethics a priority when inventing, investing in, developing, deploying and marketing new ideas and systems.

A critical task here is building ethical considerations into the very early stages of creating new technologies. Commercial AI teams are beginning to do this.

One example is the recent formation of Microsoft’s AI and Ethics in Engineering and Research (AETHER) Committee, announced in March this year. It brings together senior executives to develop internal policies around responsible innovation in AI, with the AI research team reporting through members of the committee.

The next step is leading together

Governing emerging technologies is as much a moral and political task as a technocratic challenge. All Australians need to be involved in discussing what we want from technology, and helping to design the institutions that can help us avoid costs we’re not willing to bear as a society.

In practice, this means more frequent and more diverse conversations about the impact of today’s and tomorrow’s technology. It means more innovative forms of public debate. And it means that the most influential institutions in this space – particularly Australian governments, technology firms and national champions – need to listen and experiment with the goal of social, as well as economic and technological, progress in mind.

We’re starting to wake up. Now the real work begins.

This article is part of our occasional series Zoom Out. Here we offer authors a slightly longer essay format to widen their focus, and explore key ideas in science and technology in the broader context of society and humanity.

Nicholas Davis is an Adjunct Professor of Swinburne Social Innovation Institute at the Swinburne University of Technology. Aleksandar Subic is Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research and Development) at the Swinburne University of Technology.

This article was originally published on The Conversation.