phil_Hill | Archive | April, 2012

Archive - April, 2012

The Most Useful Website You’ll Ever Find: Einstein In Your Pocket

April 24, 2012 in Just Cool with 0 Comments

One of my most favorite websites out there is called WolfraAlpha. Probably, it’s the most useful website you’ll ever find because you can ask it just about any question and it’s answers it for you. Asking the math ones is what i use it for most.

Give it a go…

WolframAlpha.com

Your must-have companion article:

The Massive List of Genius – People With the Highest IQ

by JOHN P.

The other day I sat down to watch The Princess Bride for about the 10,000th time. Man that is a great movie! Anyway, when I was watching the part where Vizzini, the Sicilian, was answering the question as to how smart he is, he said:

“Let me put it this way. Have you ever heard of Plato, Aristotle, Socrates? Morons.”

So, I decided to mosey on over to the Interwebs and find a list of people with the highest IQ ever measured, and lo and behold I couldn’t find one! So for the sake of future searchers, I compiled the following information. Enjoy.

Read on…

How Curating Content Gives You Better SEO & More Web Traffic

April 15, 2012 in Curation with 0 Comments

Some interesting facts on content curation from our experiences at flashissue.com – phil

We’re great believers in content curation at FlashIssue.

Whether you are curating content for a newsletter or curating it for your blog, it’s a powerful marketing tool that gets results that should translate to more engagement with your audience and more ultimately more business.

In short, curating content gives you better SEO and more web traffic.

Try searching Google with the term “curated newsletters”. Here’s what i got. You can see the original article i was reading on ClickZ and a few places below you can see the curated version i created on our blog site.

via FlashIssue: How Curating Content Gives You Better SEO & More Web Traffic

Never, Ever Compromise: Hiring For Culture Fit | Elad Blog

April 13, 2012 in Leadership & Management with 0 Comments

This is one of the best posts i’ve seen on hiring and cultural fit. I subscribe to the “inexperienced” hire angle at flashissue.com but it does come at somewhat of a price. at times it can be very energy sapping having to mentor newbies through a business when there is so much to be done and it becomes so tempting to opt for more-experience-and-less-mentoring. hiring people you’ve had from previous start-ups can be answer because you know you get the culture bit right.- phil

Your company culture is the foundation on which everything you do rests. Your culture acts as an unwritten set of rules that drives behavior and cohesion across the company.

Cohesive, insular cultures are more resilient and can withstand shocks to it (e.g. pivoting multiple times) as well as can be extremely motivational / draw out the best in people (e.g. engineers at Palintir sleeping under their desks in their belief they are helping national security, the emergence of Google’s “don’t be evil” doctrine).

Bad Culture Fits Lead To Pain

Most companies do a poor job of enforcing a common culture or are willing to sacrifice the cultural aspects of who they hire in order to “get someone effective” or “to fill a need”. This typically backfires in a big way over the short to medium term. Every single founder I know who has compromised on culture fit has regretted it due to the disruptions it has caused their company (having to fire the bad fits, creating a crappy work environment, good people quitting, trust eroding between co-workers, product moving in the wrong direction, bad actors building power bases, misaligned incentives emerging in the organization, etc.)

via Elad Blog: Never, Ever Compromise: Hiring For Culture Fit.

Understanding Viral Growth of products like Pintrest

April 12, 2012 in Marketing with 0 Comments

viral, curation, content

Here’s an old but goody i just found while digging through my Evernote clippings. It quantifies & explains how some products like Pintrest get that explosive hockey stick growth (find themselves with 30m users and then get snapped up for $1bn). It’s also a good metric to measure and strive toward if you have an web application of your own you are building. – Phil

In this post, you will learn is that there are two key parameters that drive how viral growth happens, the Viral Coefficient, and the Viral Cycle Time. To fully illustrate the arguments, I have included two spreadsheet models (embedded) that you can play with interactively to see how viral growth works. There is a risk with this level of depth, that some readers will find this too technical, and if you find yourself reacting that way, may I recommend that you jump straight to the conclusion, which is under the heading Lessons Learned towards the bottom of the article.

via Understanding the key variables in Viral Marketing | For Entrepreneurs.

Finding Free Government Money For My Business

April 11, 2012 in Finance with 0 Comments

I’m trying to work out what’s up with Government Loans. I’ve never applied for an SBA Loan although I have had some experience with SBIR (technology grants & loans). If you’re interested you can use the government search tool. – phil

Loans and Grants Search Tool

To help you identify what government financing programs may be available to help you start or expand your business, use our “Loans and Grants Search Tool” below.

Use the Government search tool here…

via Loans and Grants Search Tool | SBA.gov.

Instagram versus the telegram

April 9, 2012 in Uncategorized with 0 Comments

Western Union made the concept of the telegram widespread in the US. It was the first communications empire. Lets compare that to Instgram rise to fame.

Western Union current valuation = $11bn =======> time taken = 100 year (give or take)

Instagram curent valuation = $1bn ============> time taken = 2 years

If Instagram was to follow Western Union trajectory it would be worth $50 bn in 100 years.

First, ten: the secret of new marketing

April 6, 2012 in Product Management with 0 Comments

A nice simple way to validate your product…may be, may be not. If your “friends” or happy early adopters do rant & rave about your product that should set you up nicely but i’ve had successful products that didn’t follow this pattern – phil

This, in two words, is the secret of the new marketing.

Find ten people. Ten people who trust you/respect you/need you/listen to you…

Those ten people need what you have to sell, or want it. And if they love it, you win. If they love it, they’ll each find you ten more people (or a hundred or a thousand or, perhaps, just three). Repeat.

If they don’t love it, you need a new product. Start over.

Your idea spreads. Your business grows. Not as fast as you want, but faster than you could ever imagine.

This approach changes the posture and timing of everything you do.

via Seth’s Blog: First, ten.

Atlanta Is The 116 Biggest Country In The World. How Big Is Your City?

April 5, 2012 in Leadership & Management, Marketing with 2 Comments

So, I’m starting a new business and I’m wondering where to begin marketing my products. I’m looking no further than where I live.

My home town is Atlanta, GA and it has a metro population of 5.3 million people (2010 US Census). Putting this is context that is larger than 126 other countries in the world. Here’s some of the countries that we’re larger than (by population):

Singapore
Norway
Ireland
New Zealand
Croatia

atlanta world population entrepreneurs

(Here’s the complete list if you’re interested)

Why is this relevant? What does it mean? Well, if you consider that Croatia (population 4.3m) came 3rd position in the 1998 World Cup (soccer); Atlanta should therefore be able to field a team and come pretty close to winning the largest sporting event on the planet.

Maybe, not, but here’s my point.

I was trying to explain to a co-worker the other day that we can validate our new product (FlashIssue) by looking no further than our own door step.

If Atlanta existed on it’s own, as an island, we have enough people to sell to right here in front of us. Go talk to them first.

If we cant sell our product to an entire “nation” of 5.3 million people then may be we dont have a product to sell at all.

So, if you live in a larger City than Atlanta things get better and better:

New York City (19m) = 59th largest country
Los Angeles (13m) = 69th largest country
Chicago (9m) = 89th largest country
Dallas (6m) = 109th largest country
Philadelphia (6m) = 109th largest country

(Source: US Census)

And viewing it in terms of soccer. NYC, LA and Chicago should be beating the following countries at soccer:

Chile
Sweden (1958 Finalists World Cup)
Portugal
Bulgaria (3rd 1994 World Cup)
Greece
Czech Republic
Croatia (4th 1998 World Cup)

If you dont live in one of these large metro US cities, then find someone who does and have them market your product.

If you find someone to work for you in New York and they just sell for you there and nowhere else, then you you’re tapping a market equivalent to 183 countries (that’s 76% of all countries on our planet). That’s a big enough market for you.

How Conan O’Brien Turned a Legal Branding Issue into an International Marketing Win | Branding and Marketing

April 2, 2012 in Branding with 0 Comments

Late night talk show host Conan O’Brien called out the Chinese online talk show Da Peng for ripping off his opening show sequence, plagerizing his opening graphics and using his branding.The next night the Da Peng show opened with a slide and what Conan calls “The saddest thing I’ve ever seen.” And Da Peng also issued an apology that ended with a “sorry” dance.

via How Conan O’Brien Turned a Legal Branding Issue into an International Marketing Win | Branding and Marketing.