Design is how you make your first impression with your consumers. Make sure it is a lasting one.
For a startup to overcome obstacles and succeed, it must foster limitless thinking. By hiring students into their first career job, you get to set their framework for how a company functions and instill them with your values for your company's culture.
Historically, more media has been consumed sitting in front of the television than any other device. Controlling this screen has been the goal of major technology, consumer electronic, and telecommunications companies.
State funds, private equity, venture capital, and institutional lending all have their role in the lifecycle of a high tech startup, but angel capital is crucial for first-time entrepreneurs. Angel investors provide more than just cash; they bring years of expertise as both founders of businesses and as seasoned investors.
Betting all your funds on the belief that you know what consumers want and are willing to pay for is like jumping into a river to test its depth - you'll need a lot of luck to stay afloat. To have a truly successful product launch, the conversations with your customers must start long before you write your first line of code.
The strength of brand loyalty begins with how your product makes people feel.
For those that fear being taken advantage of by people working from home or on flexible schedules, I can say my experience is quite the opposite. Employees are so appreciative of these accommodations that they outperform their coworkers and are less likely to be poached by the competition.
Onboarding starts with satisfying the most basic of Maslow's psychological needs: belonging. New hires shouldn't arrive to an empty cube and be forced to forage through corridors searching for a computer and the bare necessities of office life. A new hire isn't a surprise visitor from out of town. Plan for their arrival.
Every company, regardless of size, is competing for the same pool of talent, which is why top recruiters can even command equity for finding key hires. Internships give startups a chance to hire the best and brightest from our universities at a fraction of the cost that these same minds will command when they receive their degrees.
Social media and personalization are providing both brand advertisers and end-users with hyper-targeted choices and opportunities for double-digit growth.
My job is to hire the best and brightest employees and empower them to do their best work. As a manager, I am not a mind reader nor an expert at every job function. Therefore, it is incumbent on all hires to feel empowered to tell me what resources they need to do their job.
To effectively reach consumers in the new social environment, brand managers need to learn how to translate their budgets into the digital realm, which also means understanding the advantages that digital can provide over television advertising.
