3 Key Tips For Attracting A Technical Co-Founder

via readwrite.com

In today's uber-connected digital world, software has become the backbone of innovation, and it plays a major role in virtually every business. From high tech to clean tech to healthcare to physical products, almost every business needs someone with at least some technical chops.

High-tech startups need technical co-founders more than just about anyone else. But with demand for technical talent at an all time high, your startup doesn't stand much of a chance of finding a first-class technical co-founder. Instead, you need to focus on attracting one.

The first step is getting into the right mindset: Stop right now with thinking you have the best idea and that this is all it takes. You may very well have the next game-changing idea, but that's missing the point. A technical co-founder wants to build your company with you, not for you...

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10 Lessons on Leadership - with Shareable Poster

via blog.kissmetrics.com

Leadership is a lifelong learning process. Every great leader always looks for ways to improve. No one ever wakes up and says, “I know everything there is to know about leadership. I’m a perfect leader.”

Leadership can be especially challenging for entrepreneurs. Balancing the need to run a business (i.e., products, investors, customers, etc.) and the need to lead company personnel is quite a task.

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35 Wordpress Plugins Management Techniques and Tutorials

via tutoriallounge.com

If we talk about the accessibility of any outstanding and royalty free tool which is available for the best content management system that provides us terrific open source blogging then the one and only name that is fully functional with the powers of PHP and MySQL is WordPress. You become capable to set off any type of online projects in a simple and useful manner while you are using the wonderful services of WordPress. It is an interesting fact that very large quantities of web pages in the vast universe of internet are established only because of the out of this world services and modish tools of WordPress and this makes many creative designers to come into this particular field.

The functionality of WordPress can be enhanced through the utilization of the excellent plug-ins (Plug-ins are the set of software modules which are used to improve and boost the services of any greater software) that are able to help you amazingly and gives you a number of operational tools that can fulfill all the requirements of your projects which are based upon WordPress. Before the utilization of creative WordPress plug-ins, you must be in a need of some remarkable approaches to help you out of the difficulties of managing them.

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How has Mark Zuckerberg been so private while running Facebook?

via techi.com

For a man who built an online empire that is dedicated to make as much of our lives as public as possible, Facebook co-Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been able to keep his personal life in the dark and his media attention under control for the most part. We know very little about the man other than what he has been willing to share. Is he really that boring or is he simply a master of privacy in the public world he’s building?

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9 Basic Functions of Content Management Systems

via lava360.com

Almost every website uses a content management system due to the reason that it makes their work simpler and easier. With so many content management systems out there, the ratio of websites and blogs is also increasing. Content management systems allow almost every person to start his website without any expertise or high investment. Apart from this, there are several other functions that content management systems make easy. These functions are listed below...

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The 5 Tools You Need to Analyze Your Twitter Account

via web.appstorm.net

Opinions, experiences, current geographic location and ability to find hilarious links are what set one tweeter apart from the next. The platform itself evolved from a simple ‘status update’ tool to a flourishing ecosystem of people interacting, sharing and discovering.

As with any ecosystem there are those on top and those at the bottom. The higher you are the more active followers and influence you’ll have. This is a fairly useless observation for those who use Twitter to find news and check up on friends. But for people who use Twitter to interact with a community, market their product or service or research a segment of people, analyzing a Twitter account is a top priority.

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Tools for Money Management

via inspirationfeed.com

Small business owners often have tight operating budgets, especially in the startup years. Some can see this as a disadvantage, but careful money management and awareness where the money is being spent can help profits steadily grow over time. Many small business owners already have overwhelming to do lists and brush aside a through financial overview as yet another task that there is no time for.

This is one area that cannot be out off for later. By using tools that are easily available and staying on top of the business budget, entrepreneurs will find that the financial frustrations and confusion can be easily maintained.

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How Innovative Companies Stay On Top

via businessinsider.com

Innovation isn't this abstract thing that some companies have and some don't.

Innovation is actually a business skill that executives and employees can develop and master.

So says Booz & Company management consultants Barry Jaruzelski, John Loehr, and Richard Holman. The authors of Booz's annual "Global Innovation 1,000 report" named the most innovative companies in the world for 2012 and studied what makes them so.

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How to Structure a Creative Agency

via freelanceswitch.com

One of the key decisions in establishing a creative agency is how to structure it. When you’re working on your own, structure doesn’t matter very much. Dividing your workload, even just between administrative work and client work, doesn’t seem to matter overly much when you’re the person who will need to do all of it, no matter what divisions you come up with. But when you may wind up with several people working on client projects and perhaps even an assistant on the administrative side of things, you need to be very clear on who is responsible for what.

The danger of not clearly establishing structure is that you can easily wind up in situations where you need to pay someone for time in which they did no work or did the same work that another person had already completed. Putting a solid structure and clear workflow in place that shows how different tasks pass through your business processes are necessary for an agency to grow.

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Pros and Cons of Hiring Subcontractors

via speckyboy.com

When work volumes surge, or when you simply have a project you don’t have the skillset for, hiring subcontractors is one path you may consider. However, before you do so, it is best if you know not only the advantages of hiring subcontractors but also some potential issues to watch for. To help you with this decision, here are some pros and cons to consider...

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5 Characteristics of A Positive Work Environment

via hongkiat.com

Aside from the job scope itself, one factor that significantly influences how employees feel about work is the environment. By work environment, I mean everything that forms part of employees’ involvement with the work itself, such as the relationship with co-workers and supervisors, organizational culture, room for personal development, etc.

A positive work environment makes employees feel good about coming to work, and this provides the motivation to sustain them throughout the day.

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Make Every Day More Productive: 6 Tips

via inc.com

My favorite part of any process is the beginning. Or even that moment just before the beginning-;when the whiteboard has yet to be marked, the piece of paper stares back blankly, or the snow is unmarred by footprints I like the first day of school, the start of a new company and, in my business, when a fund has its first closing. It’s a moment of renewal and promise, when anything can happen and everyone is hopeful and positive.

That initial excitement and rush of the new is quickly followed by the need to get things done. As an owner or manager, you understand the importance of maintaining a relentless focus on your company’s productivity. But your personal productivity is just as important. Of course we all want to get things done, but every once in a while, we each need a little help to re-focus. Here are a few pointers...

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28 Top Executives Share What They Look For In Hires

via businessinsider.com

Most CEOs don't have the time to personally interview every person who joins their company. But they absolutely set the priorities and culture that factor into every single hiring decision, and are intensely involved with top level hires.

Those are some of the most important decisions they can make, so company leaders tend to have strong opinions about the kind of people they want at their company.

So whether you're eyeing the C-suite or trying to figure out what gets you in the door at some of America's biggest companies, we've compiled some of the best tips executives have shared over the years on what impresses them, including top tech CEOs like Steve Ballmer, entrepreneurial icons like Elon Musk, and empire builders like Richard Branson.

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Want To Replace Your Bank? Use This

via gizmodo.com

The bank-less service you've never heard of but should know about, Simple, finally has an Android app.

The new Simple app for Android comes nearly a year after the launch of the iOS version and was built from the ground up in collaboration with Two Toasters, the same dev shop behind GateGuru and Airbnb's apps. Like the iOS app that came before it, you can deposit checks by snapping a photo with your smartphone. Another neat feature of the hybrid banking service, includes the "Safe-to-Spend balance" that simply shows you how much dough you have to spend that isn't allocated towards existing goals, future payments or pending transactions. You can even find all the ATMs around you or set up recurring and one time payments through the app.

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How To Manage The Cloud As A Designer

via designzzz.com

The cloud has revolutionized the way creative professionals work; by enabling easy sharing, editing, selling, advertising, and more, it has become an essential aspect of the design process. Cloud computing has spread so far that it’s even given rise to the concept of “cloud commuting;” so many designers have integrated these services into their job that they’re now able to work from home.

In essence, the cloud is able to run applications via the large number of computers that are available online, instead of just relying on yours. Refer to a cloud computing guide to find more in-depth information, but for now, read on to find out just how many essential tools are being hosted on the cloud.

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What Your Daily Routine Can Tell You

via inc.com

The sluggish pull of our usual routine is often the death knell of even the most modest New Year’s resolution. Old habits are just too cozy, familiar, and tempting to shake off.

But what if you could turn the daily office drudge into your greatest ally? Auto analytics, as researcher H. James Wilson recently explained, can help you do just that. It's a growing--somewhat informal--field of behavioral evaluation that helps users gather and process information about how they spend their time. This can include anything from using a heart monitor to gauge stress levels throughout the day to strapping on an accelerometer to see how much you move.

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Managing Multiple Freelance Gigs With Mind Maps

via freelanceswitch.com

If you’ve been freelancing for a while, you probably already know that you often have to juggle several projects at a time. That’s not to say that you necessarily have to multi-task, but simply need to manage overlapping task schedules.

The more successful your freelance career is, the more likely it is that you’ll have to manage multiple tasks simultaneously. They might be part of a single big project or parts of several smaller projects.

While you might consider learning some PM (Project Management) principles, in my experience, those are more suited to managing tasks of large corporate projects. While a PM approach can help freelancers, I’ve recently found a relatively simply way to predict and track my freelance workload, regardless of the number of clients I’m currently working with.

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Why Good Bosses Keep Their Word

via inc.com

Today I was sitting in my office when one of my right-hand people came in and said "I'm going to lunch now." I replied, "Okay," but somewhat indifferently because normally people in my department do not check in with me before heading to lunch.

"I'm going to lunch because you did not get us pizza today," she continued. I was focusing my attention on something else, but this made me look up.

She went on, "You said yesterday that because we were short-staffed and had a deadline that we all pulled together on, that you might order pizzas and have a pizza party for lunch. So I planned on having a pizza party today and did not bring my lunch." Whoops, I did vaguely recalled saying that to her, but I had forgotten until now.

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Worst Hiring Mistake Ever: Misrepresenting the Job

via inc.com

Listen up, hiring managers. A study from research firm Development Dimensions International revealed yesterday that many employers often misrepresent the finer details of their company and the open position during interviews, leaving many recruits eventually disappointed with their new job.

Specifically, the survey found that only 51% of new employees "felt confident in their decision to accept the job." DDI found this figure after surveying 2,300 new hires with an average age of 35.

"…[H]iring is a high-stakes interaction and managers are not necessarily capable of discerning what a candidate can really bring to a company. So they base it on gut instinct and a lot of times that gut instinct is wrong," Scott Erker, DDI’s vice president of select systems and co-author of the study, told The Wall Street Journal.

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How Go Daddy Hired 1,400 People in 3 Years

via inc.com

Go Daddy may be best known for its racy Super Bowl commercials, but after having added more than 1,400 new employees in three years, the domain registration and hosting company has also made a name for itself as one of the nation's top job creators.

Lane Jarvis, Go Daddy's chief human resources officer, describes her main recruiting strategies.

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