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	<title>Ideas and reviews for websites, film, business, products, and design &#187; companies</title>
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		<title>What Kind of Entrepreneur Are You? Part 3</title>
		<link>http://socialthumbs.com/what-kind-of-entrepreneur-are-you-part-3/</link>
		<comments>http://socialthumbs.com/what-kind-of-entrepreneur-are-you-part-3/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 10 Jun 2010 06:26:00 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>RichardTrussler</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Business]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[TV]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[startups]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[america]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[companies]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[employee]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[financial]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[kolbe]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[quick-start]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[start]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://socialthumbs.com/what-kind-of-entrepreneur-are-you-part-3/</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[ Most growth-oriented entrepreneurs are wired for starting, not running, a business. I call these folks &#8220;on-base hitters&#8221; because, unlike baseball&#8217;s &#8220;sluggers,&#8221; they focus on earning lots of little wins in the form of starting many small businesses instead of seeking out rare but fantastic successes. (Read more about "on-base hitters" and "sluggers" in Part 1 of this series.) Yesterday, in Part 2 , I described the Kolbe personality test, which allows you to measure yourself on four personality attributes that are predictive of your success and happiness in running a business. People with a high Quick Start score on the Kolbe test thrive in the chaos of a start-up. One of the reasons Quick Starts rarely grow large businesses is because all of that creativity makes them bad managers. If you&#8217;ve ever watched a 230-pound slugger try to lumber his way to first base, you know it&#8217;s not a pretty sight. Neither is watching a Quick Start entrepreneur try to manage a large team of employees. When the boss is a Quick Start, employees get frustrated trying to keep up with all of the new ideas. Employees have trouble determining which brainchild was just a passing thought and which needs their most urgent attention. People with high Fact Finder scores often see their Quick Start boss as an impetuous, superficial risk taker. That&#8217;s why most growth-oriented entrepreneurs are happiest&#8212;and most successful&#8212;in the start-up phase. In a start-up, new ideas are valued at a premium, and there are only a few employees to manage. To follow our baseball analogy, these types are happiest with the quick, regular success of getting on base a lot rather than hitting a rare home run. Here&#8217;s an informal quiz to identify whether you&#8217;re best suited to be an on-base hitter or a home run slugger. Answer each question with a simple &#8220;agree&#8221; or &#8220;disagree.&#8221; I get bored easily.I feel overwhelmed by complexity.I have higher employee turnover than is normal for my industry.I like proposing new ideas that some people think are &#8220;off the wall.&#8221;I started lots of little businesses before getting into the one I&#8217;m running today.I&#8217;m a big-picture person.I started a little business when I was in high school or university.I burn out when my business gets too complex. If you answered &#8220;agree&#8221; to more than four of the questions above, you&#8217;re probably a person who thrives on the variety of the start-up and would flounder running a larger business. Focus on just getting on base by launching the business and creating revenue and a positive cash flow; then either sell it or install a manager. Clearly, you won&#8217;t earn as much from the sale of one small business than you would if you hung on and built it up further, but by getting out quickly, you&#8217;ll retain the energy and creativity to devote to a new business. Collectively, a portfolio of successful start-up businesses in a career could easily surpass the financial success of one home run, and you&#8217;ll be infinitely happier along the way. John Warrillow is the author of Built to Sell: Turn Your Business into One You Can Sell. He has started and exited four companies. Most recently John transformed Warrillow &#038; Co. from a boutique consultancy into a recurring revenue model subscription business, which was acquired by The Corporate Executive Board. In 2008 he was recognized by BtoB Magazine&#8217;s &#8220;Who&#8217;s Who&#8221; list as one of America&#8217;s most influential business-to-business marketers. Business - Small business - Quick Start - United States - High school ]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
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		<item>
		<title>What Kind of Entrepreneur Are You? Part 2</title>
		<link>http://socialthumbs.com/what-kind-of-entrepreneur-are-you-part-2/</link>
		<comments>http://socialthumbs.com/what-kind-of-entrepreneur-are-you-part-2/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 09 Jun 2010 05:31:00 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>SamThomas</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Business]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[TV]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[startups]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[answers]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[companies]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[physical]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[seven-or-higher]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[start]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[strategic]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[strategic-coach]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://socialthumbs.com/what-kind-of-entrepreneur-are-you-part-2/</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[ As I pointed out in the first part of this series , baseball players typically know by their physical attributes whether they're a leadoff hitter who can get on base frequently or a slugger who swings for the fences and drives in runs. But as an entrepreneur, how do you know if you are best suited to start lots of small companies or to try to grow one large one? The trick is to understand your personality. For the past nine years, I have attended a quarterly workshop offered by the Strategic Coach. &#8220;The Coach,&#8221; as it is known to the initiated, specializes in working with entrepreneurs to help them achieve both business and personal success. Prior to my first Strategic Coach workshop, each attendee was asked to complete a personality test known as the Kolbe test. The Kolbe test measures people on four personality attributes: &#8220; Fact Finders &#8221; are people who seek details before making decisions. Just as picking at a single yarn in an old sweater unravels it, each answer to a fact finder&#8217;s question triggers a new set of questions. The fact finder seeks out the answers to those questions before making decisions. &#8220; Follow Through &#8221; people love systems. They think in a linear fashion, where step 1 leads to step 2 and so on. They love process and create systems when they are confronted with chaos. &#8220; Quick Starts &#8221; enjoy initiating new things. They are creative problem solvers and think laterally. Easily bored, Quick Starts tend to begin lots of projects but need help finishing any of them. &#8220; Implementers &#8221; live in the physical world and enjoy building and fixing things. They thrive in environments that allow them to work with their hands. When you take the Kolbe test, you award yourself a score of 1&#8211;10 on each attribute. A score below four on an attribute means you actively avoid the behavior; middle scores of four to six mean you go along with the crowd on that attribute; and a score of seven-plus on a single trait means that you will actively initiate the behavior. My first Strategic Coach class was made up of 60 growth-oriented entrepreneurs, most of whom had started a number of businesses in their careers (on-base hitters). The facilitator started the day with a poll of our Kolbe scores. When she asked how many people scored seven or higher on the Fact Finder scale, about one-third of the hands went up. Just three or four hands rose when she inquired about people with high Follow Through scores. When she asked if anyone got a score of seven or higher on Quick Start, virtually every hand in the room went up. My Kolbe scores were as follows: Fact Finder: 7 Follow Through: 4 Quick Start: 7 Implementation: 2 I like asking lots of questions before making a decision (Fact Finder: 7); I can follow a set of rules if you insist (Follow Through: 4); I like the start-up phase of running a business (Quick Start: 7); and you don&#8217;t want me anywhere near your IKEA furniture (Implementer: 2). If you score seven-plus on Quick Start, chances are you&#8217;re going to be happiest starting lots of smaller businesses in your career (on-base hitter) rather than one larger one (slugger). As a business grows in complexity, the need for higher Follow Through scores increase and your high Quick Start score goes from an asset in the start-up days to a liability as your business will need more structure to support its size. (Read Part 3 .) John Warrillow is the author of Built to Sell: Turn Your Business into One You Can Sell. He has started and exited four companies. Most recently John transformed Warrillow &#038; Co. from a boutique consultancy into a recurring revenue model subscription business, which was acquired by The Corporate Executive Board. In 2008 he was recognized by BtoB Magazine&#8217;s &#8220;Who&#8217;s Who&#8221; list as one of America&#8217;s most influential business-to-business marketers. Business - Quick Start - United States - Entrepreneur - Kolbe ]]></description>
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		<title>What Kind of Entrepreneur Are You? Part 1</title>
		<link>http://socialthumbs.com/what-kind-of-entrepreneur-are-you-part-1-2/</link>
		<comments>http://socialthumbs.com/what-kind-of-entrepreneur-are-you-part-1-2/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 08 Jun 2010 18:10:00 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>DavidFisher</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Business]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[TV]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[startups]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[america]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[business-owners]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[companies]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[complexity]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[drops-the-third]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[fences]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[lacerte]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[life]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[professional]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[slugger]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[uncertainty]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://socialthumbs.com/what-kind-of-entrepreneur-are-you-part-1-2/</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[ The leadoff batter is arguably the most important offensive weapon on a baseball team. His job is to get on base&#8212;it doesn&#8217;t have to be pretty. He could make it to first with a bloop single, get walked, bunt his way on or make a mad dash for first after the catcher drops the third strike. His success is measured not by the number of home runs he hits or even his batting average but by his &#8220;on-base percentage.&#8221; If he gets on four times out of every 10, he&#8217;s doing very well. (Ted Williams holds the record for career on-base percentage at .482.) The more powerful hitters follow the leadoff batter in the lineup. The slugger, typically slotted in the fourth spot, has the task of swinging for the fences and driving home the players who got on base in front of him. A slugger&#8217;s chances of hitting a home run are much lower than the on-base hitter&#8217;s of getting to first. If a slugger hits one home run every 11 times at bat, he&#8217;s doing extremely well. Knowing one&#8217;s role is essential to success. Sluggers shouldn&#8217;t try to bunt their way on base, and the greatest sin of a leadoff hitter is to go down swinging for the fences. As with baseball, I&#8217;ve noticed that business owners can be divided into &#8220;on-base hitters&#8221; and &#8220;sluggers.&#8221; Knowing which you are is critical to happiness and success. &#8220;On-base hitters&#8221; are the business owners who have a series of successful business start-ups. Like the on-base hitter, they would prefer small, regular successes over less frequent but larger wins. Rene Lacerte is an on-base hitter. His latest business, bill.com, is a software platform he created after exiting PayCycle, an online payroll business he co-founded. He started PayCycle from scratch with his partner, Martin Gates. Once the business got going, he recruited Jim Heeger to run it. Jim is a proven manager, having held big posts at Adobe and Intuit. One of the things I admire most about Rene is that he knows he&#8217;s an on-base guy and has no illusions of being able to swing for the fences by running a larger business. He&#8217;d rather get on base with a number of start-ups than run one business for his entire career. My bet is bill.com will be followed closely by another start-up. Fred Smith, the founder of FedEx, is a home run hitter. He&#8217;s owned one business in his professional life and has had the patience, stick-to-itiveness and talent to grow it into a Fortune 500 company. Both Lacerte and Smith are successful entrepreneurs who have built valuable companies, but one is an on-base hitter and the other a slugger. Interestingly, I don&#8217;t think Lacerte would be happy running FedEx. He&#8217;d probably be bored and get bogged down in the complexity. Likewise, I&#8217;m not sure Smith could cope with the uncertainty and ambiguity of Lacerte&#8217;s life as a perpetual starter-upper. I think one of the most important determinations a business owner can make is whether he or she is a slugger or an on-base hitter. The on-base hitter can focus on starting and exiting lots of smaller businesses in a career and not harbor second thoughts when heading for the exit. In contrast, the slugger would be best served by making a single business their life&#8217;s work. Tomorrow, I&#8217;ll tell you about a quick personality test that can determine whether you&#8217;re best suited to start lots of smaller businesses or to strive to build one big one. (Read Part 2 and Part 3 .) John Warrillow is the author of Built to Sell: Turn Your Business into One You Can Sell. He has started and exited four companies. Most recently John transformed Warrillow &#038; Co. from a boutique consultancy into a recurring revenue model subscription business, which was acquired by The Corporate Executive Board. In 2008 he was recognized by BtoB Magazine&#8217;s &#8220;Who&#8217;s Who&#8221; list as one of America&#8217;s most influential business-to-business marketers. Business - Batting average - Baseball - Batting - PayCycle ]]></description>
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		<title>Apps on Wheels: Developing Mobile Apps that Work at 70 MPH</title>
		<link>http://socialthumbs.com/apps-on-wheels-developing-mobile-apps-that-work-at-70-mph/</link>
		<comments>http://socialthumbs.com/apps-on-wheels-developing-mobile-apps-that-work-at-70-mph/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 04 May 2010 05:01:29 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>insifeoffedly</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[internet]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[startups]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[video]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[web]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[cell-phones]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[cloud-computing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[companies]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[creativity]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[data]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[facebook]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[intel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[michigan]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[mobile]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[oaa]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[robotics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[windows]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://socialthumbs.com/apps-on-wheels-developing-mobile-apps-that-work-at-70-mph/</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[ When we talk about mobile apps today, chances are that we are mostly talking about apps for cell phones and - maybe - tablets. The latest trend in mobile apps, however, is apps for cars. One of the companies leading this trend in the U.S. is Ford, which just unveiled a number of apps that students at the University of Michigan created on top of Ford's platform. Sponsor Making Mobile Apps Work at 70 mpg Earlier today, we got a chance to talk to K. Venkatesh Prasad, the group and technical leader of Ford's Infotronics Research and Advanced Engineering team. Ford unveiled its SYNC AppLink technology for controlling Android and Blackberry mobile apps through Ford's voice-driven SYNC interface last month, but as Prasad told us, the company is obviously also looking at mobile apps that are developed specifically for the car. Cloud Computing in the Commute As Prasad stressed when we talked to him, developers have gotten very good at developing apps that work well at 0 mph, but interfaces that also work well at 70 mph are still in their infancy. Apps that run in cars obviously have to overcome a number of issues - especially with regards to safety - that aren't normally an issue for developers of mobile apps. In order to tap into the creativity of students who grew up with mobile apps and social networks, Ford, together with Microsoft and Intel, teamed up with the University of Michigan and the university's professors and Ford's engineers taught a 12-week course entitled "Cloud Computing in the Commute." The students developed their apps using a Ford Fiesta with a built-in touch screen running. The software platform for these projects was Windows 7 and Microsoft's Robotics Developer Studio. On the cloud side, the students used Microsoft's Windows Azure platform. Over the course of the semester, these students created six different projects, ranging from a gesture-driven Waze -like app that allows drivers to alert others of traffic jams , accidents and police cars along the road, to a ride-sharing app that taps into Facebook and an app that automatically uploads your fuel economy data to a cloud server. Some of these apps use Ford's SYNC for voice recognition, while others use gestures that drivers can draw on the car's built-in screen. Caravan Track From these six app, Ford, Microsoft and Intel chose Caravan Track as the best app. Caravan Track allows clusters of vehicles traveling together to track each other during the drive - which sounds like a great application for anybody who has ever been on a road trip with more than one car. The app uses vehicle telemetry to track each vehicle, maps routes and sends alerts about stops and road conditions. The winning students will take a car that runs Caravan Track on a two-week road trip from Michigan to the Maker Fair in San Mateo on May 22. Cars: The Next Big Market for Mobile Apps? Even more so than just these apps, it's exciting to see how cars are finally becoming a part of the mobile app ecosystem. While there are still many user interface issues to deal with, systems like Ford's SYNC could potentially give developers the same kind of resources and computing power as a modern desktop machine. Today, most car buyers assume that their experience with the car won't change much over the next few years of ownership. Once we get to the point where a lot of cars can run mobile apps however, we might see regular software updates that could greatly change the user experience at intervals that are currently unheard of in the automobile industry where upgrade cycles are usually measured in years. Discuss ]]></description>
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		<title>Report: Groupon Valued at $1.2 Billion</title>
		<link>http://socialthumbs.com/report-groupon-valued-at-1-2-billion/</link>
		<comments>http://socialthumbs.com/report-groupon-valued-at-1-2-billion/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 14 Apr 2010 16:44:00 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>sicyatrossy</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Business]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[internet]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[startups]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[status]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[web]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[chinese]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[cincy-groupon]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[companies]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[groupon]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[private-equity]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[silicon-alley]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://socialthumbs.com/report-groupon-valued-at-1-2-billion/</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[ The social group-buying site Groupon &#8211; which just in December closed a $30 million round at a $250 million valuation &#8211; is raising more money at an eye-popping valuation of between $1.2 billion and $1.35 billion, TechCrunch's Michael Arrington reports .]]></description>
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