By Daylin Mantyka
As a regular feature, we provide our readers with a roundup of some of the best articles we have read in the past week. On the podium this week are ReadWriteWeb, MarketingProfs, Velocity and Startup Professional Musings.
Going global at launch: Tips for building a micro-multinational startup
Gary Whitehill, relentless entrepreneur and driven philanthropist, passes on his advice on how to build a multinational company right from the beginning, even prior to the launch.
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By Brent Barnhart
Small businesses love statistics.
And why not? They help us understand where we’re going and where we’ve been. After all, those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
By better understanding the small business landscape by the numbers, we’re more likely to make informed decisions and keep ourselves from heading our businesses in the wrong direction. As business owners, continuing education is crucial in keeping our companies current.
The following six statistics have a lot to teach us about the state of small business, the economy and the future of Internet marketing. Whether or not they come to surprise you, consider how these stats impact your company.
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By Leo Valiquette
During my years as a full-time journo, I crossed paths with many a startup technology venture that claimed to be operating in so-called stealth mode. It was the early 2000s, before the process of getting technology to market was as socially enabled as it is now, and startup CEOs seemed to consider it hip and trendy to apply the S word to their businesses.
Where, I wonder, are many of those startups now?
We wrote many moons ago about the inherent foolishness of trying to build a business by somehow staying under the radar. You can’t define a market need, develop a product to meet that need, secure the funding necessary for operations or build the team that can pull it all off without telling the world who you are and what you are trying to do.
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By Denzil Doyle
In my last article, I discussed the tendency of key stakeholders in a high technology company to call for the CEO’s resignation at the first sign of trouble, particularly if the CEO is a technical person who lacks “business management” experience. The pressure for change is usually strongest from the financial community. My advice to a board of directors that must deal with such pressure is to remain focused on the qualities that any good CEO must possess regardless of his or her background, namely leadership, management, technology knowhow, and marketing knowhow.
I cited the example of Ken Olsen, the founding president of Digital Equipment Corporation, who came under severe criticism from Wall Street for turning in a bad quarter shortly after the company went public, despite the fact that he had built a company with sales of over $100 million in less than a decade. (That was the equivalent of over $1 billion today.)
Ken decided to go to New York and address his critics directly. He started with a lecture that went something like this:
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By Daylin Mantyka
As a regular feature, we provide our readers with a roundup of some of the best articles we have read in the past week. On the podium this week are memeburn, ReadWriteWeb, TopRank Blog and Fast Company.
Meaningful social measurement: A lesson from the underpants gnomes
Sam Beckbessinger looks at why measuring follower counts on social media is a meaningless metric that’s quickly falling out of favour. Instead, she proposes four more meaningful metrics that offer greater insight into the community you’ve created around your brand.
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