Google Cuts Features That Might Impact Business Users

Google has announced plans to terminate several of its products and services, some of which might impact business users, in an effort to improve and create a better user experience for its most popular products and features.

Those on the chopping block this Fall include Google Video for Business, Apps for Teams, Google Listen, and many of Google's blogs.

Google has already made changes to about 50 of its products, services and features within the past year. Google stated that it wants to carefully consider which products deserve focus, and spend more time and effort on making its remaining features better.

Google Video for Business is a video hosting and sharing solution that allows business owners and professionals to use video for internal communication. Those who have videos stored can migrate those videos over to Google Drive, which offers similar storage and sharing capabilities, this Fall. Videos that migrate from Google Video for Business will be stored for free and won't count against users' storage quota on Google Drive.

Google Apps for Teams allows business users to collaborate on non-email applications like Google Docs or Google Calendar using their verified business email account. Google says it is shutting down this feature because it was not as useful for people as Google had originally anticipated. On September 4, 2012, the Team accounts will be converted into personal Google accounts.

Google Listen helped users discover new podcasts, a feature that Google says has been made irrelevant because of Google Play.  As for its blogs, Google has said that it will cut an unspecified number of its more than 150 blogs, but it will not reduce the overall post quantity. Instead, it will consolidate some of its content into its more popular blogs.

Google is constantly changing its offerings due to new technology and ideas, but some of its products and services simply don't take off like others. These consolidation efforts could prove to be beneficial for users of Google's remaining products and services, but others might miss the features that are being cut.

Succeeding in the Internet Age: A Website is No Longer Just an Option

This post is sponsored by BrainHost.com, a web hosting company offering superior shared hosting packages, 99.9% server uptime, and 24/7 US-based customer support.

As the Internet's influence has grown exponentially, it has become virtually a requirement for all small businesses to own and operate a website. The simple fact of the matter is that there is no more universal, accessible, and wide-reaching marketing tools currently available. Especially when the relatively low costs of creating a website are considered, it's usually true that a website represents the lowest investment and the biggest return for most smaller companies.

Websites present a number of great promotional opportunities for small business owners, the biggest of which is likely the ability to reach potential customers via major Internet services like search engines and social media websites. The effects of these two services alone are pretty big: Search engines can be the deciding factor when someone judges whether or not to do business with any given company. If a search engine like Google cannot reveal the company's address, mission, products, and a few reviews of its services, people are more likely to go with a larger, more trusted brand.

And social media has an equally significant influence on purchasing decisions and a company's reputation. Those small business owners who decide to get online and use a website to interact with users on services like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn are almost always more well-received and able to generate more sales. That's because social networks allow companies to highlight their products and engage directly with the people who have, or will, buy them. It's like engaging in good customer service 24 hours per day, and reaping the rewards of that service during every business hour.

Of course, websites present opportunities for e-commerce, spreading a company's customers around the globe as they enjoy the ability to order from home and have products shipped anywhere. Those e-commerce websites can be backed up by informative blogs that communicate a company's mission, talk about the quality of the company's products or services, and engage users in regular interaction with company executives, representatives, and experts.

The combination between interaction and presentation is one that wins sales and increases revenues for a company on a relatively consistent basis. When paired with an affordable and reliable web hosting company, the process will be as easy and painless as it is rewarding and profitable.

Brain Host: The Best Way for Small Businesses to Get Online and Reach New Customers

The Internet is full of web hosts that vary in quality from excellent to sub-par; those hosts also vary in terms of price, supported technologies, and the ability to be easily learned by small business customers. The right combination of all of these things can be found at BrainHost.com, a leading supplier of web hosting services to businesses and consumers alike.

When it comes to catering specifically to small businesses, Brain Host has a major edge on the competition. Using website builder tools and years of industry knowledge, the company offers a small business website build from the ground up using its own services after the company has purchased a plan and committed to Brain Host to power their online presence. That's perfect for small business owners who are simply not knowledgeable in technologies like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

With web hosting packages starting at only 7.95 per month, Brain Host can accommodate any budget. Unlike other web hosts, who limit the hard disk storage space, monthly bandwidth, domain names, and databases that a customer has access to, Brain Host employs a simple unlimited strategy. There is no limit to the bandwidth, disk space, email address accounts, databases, or add-on domains a customer can utilize. That increases the overall value of a plan, and it saves businesses from the hard choice of deciding whether to upgrade to a pricier plan for more features, or deal with a more budget-friendly and feature limited option.

The value of these plans is further enhanced by the company's instant setup and activation times when a new account is ordered. All too often, less-reputable hosts require their clients to wait for hours - or even days - before they fully initialize an account and get all of its services online. That can seriously slow down the deployment process, causing small business owners to miss out on crucial online revenues before they've even gotten the process started.

Beyond its commitment to instant, high-value plans, Brain Host offers 24-hour customer service, seven days per week. They pair this commitment to customer service with a 99.9 percent uptime guarantee on all of their products, ensuring that small business owner won't miss out on sales or marketing opportunities because their web hosting server is inaccessible for hours at a time.

Simply put, small business owners need look no further than Brain Host when getting their company online. They'll enjoy reliable service, top-notch support, and unlimited features, all as a part of their low hosting fee. On top of that, their business will enjoy access to millions of Internet and mobile device users. The business will benefit from online commerce, contact, and blogging tools, as well as social media, resulting in a win-win scenario for businesses.

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Third-party Android markets host bulk of mobile malware, says F-Secure

Android malware, which has seen a precipitous increase over the last year, is being hosted mainly on third-party Android markets, according to Finland-based antivirus company F-Secure Corp., which issued an analysis of 19 new mobile malware families.

The new variants retain the same malicious behavior as found in the previous ones, only improving on the method used in defeating anti-virus technology in order to avoid detection.

F-Secure Corp.

The F-Secure Mobile Threat Report (.pdf) reviews the mobile threat landscape for the second quarter of 2012, finding SMS Trojans offer the best return for financially motivated cybercriminals. The report documented a steady increase in what it calls "profit-motivated attacks," far outnumbering attacks that disrupt or attempt to brick a device.

The new malware strains are trending upward, designed to continue SMS-based attacks and other attack techniques used with previous versions of the malware, F-Secure said. The company's researchers found FakeInst and OpFake, two closely related malware families, are tied to the bulk of the mobile malware being detected.

"In general, the new variants retain the same malicious behavior as found in the previous ones, only improving on the method used in defeating antivirus technology in order to avoid detection," F-Secure said.

Security experts have been warning of the steady increase in attacks targeting mobile devices. While the desktop remains the platform of choice for cybercriminals, new banking and payment technologies, including Near Field Communications (NFC), could make mobile devices a bigger target, experts say. Android has seen the most cybercriminal activity, but Apple iOS, Windows Phone and other mobile platforms could be targeted if cybercriminals can justify a business case for their attacks.

F-Secure received 5,033 malicious Android application package files, a 64% increase over the previous quarter. Android malware families ranked the highest, followed by malware families targeting Symbian devices and devices supporting Java 2 Platform, Micro Edition.

F-Secure said 81% of mobile malware can be classified as Trojans, followed by monitoring tools (10.1%) and malicious applications (5.1%). Trojans are designed to install hidden objects on mobile devices. They can alter and steal data or account credentials. Monitoring tools sometimes pose as antitheft or remote control programs. They also often must be manually installed on the targeted device.

The second quarter of 2012 saw the first instance of a drive-by attack targeting Android devices, F-Secure said. Malicious code embedded on a website would automatically download an application onto a user's device. The attack is limited, because the cybercriminal must then convince the device owner to install the malicious app using social engineering tactics.

F-Secure researchers also documented the use of Twitter as a bot mechanism in an SMS message scam targeting Android devices. The social network was used to communicate with the remote server address, where the malware would forward the victim's phone number, Android ID and device International Mobile Equipment Identity number (IMEI) number.

F-Secure said it is also keeping an eye on regional-based attacks targeting mobile banking transactions. In Spain, the security firm said it detected cybercriminals using a malicious SMS message prompting mobile banking users to download a phony security application.

How to Get the Most Out of Your Facebook Advertising

We all know how effective content marketing can be when it comes to moving your products and sharing your services on the web. Part of carefully planning and executing your content strategy is knowing exactly what works on your different content outlets-your blog, website, social media, and so on.

Not all content is the same when it comes to publishing across different mediums. Just because you can publish all your blog posts to Facebook with one click, for example, doesn't mean that forwarding blog posts to Facebook should be your entire Facebook strategy.

When it comes to Facebook, you can push your blog content onto it, but you need a special position to really make that work. You also need more than your own branded content, or it just won't sit well with your audience.

Here's a quick look at these and other tips on how to position your content on Facebook to maximize those Likes, and encourage Facebook fans to click back to your website-instead of “unfriending” your business.

It's Okay to Push Blog Content to Facebook…Most of the Time

Publishing blog content to Facebook is a great way to invite new and regular readers to your blog content. Just pressing the “send” button and letting automatic formatting do the rest isn't enough, though-you have to pay close attention to how your blog post will show up on your Facebook page and ask yourself why your Facebook fans should click it.

You need to make sure that both the title for your Facebook post and the “slug,” the text box below the title, are engaging and invite your fans to click and read more. Automatic, one-click publishing tools that send your blog posts directly to Facebook won't be careful with the title or slug lines at all, since all they can do is blindly aggregate content straight from your blog post. When you post a link, if the title or the slug line is too long, shorten it for easier consumption.

It's True: Size Really Does Matter When It Comes to Those Posts

Even if you're posting directly to Facebook, you need to keep a close eye on just how much you're saying, and whether all of it is useful or not. The slug line in a Facebook post will let you copy and paste any size content into the box if you click it to edit the text, but that text box will be cut off at 170 characters. Just like a Twitter post, character count is essential. Virtue, a major corporate social media company, considers 240 characters per post the highest limit for “meaningful post size.”

That number comes from their study of over 11,000 Facebook posts from major brands around the world. Text posts allow many more characters as well as links, but Virtue's findings show that the fewer characters, the better. Engagement rates start from their highest point at 0 characters and scale down sharply as more characters are added. These findings suggest that you're more likely to attract likes, comments, and fans to your Facebook posts if you keep it incredibly short and easy to visually digest in a split-second.

Reaching Beyond Your Own Business: Sharing Strategies

Don't mistakenly think that posting somebody else's stuff to your business page online is stealing, or driving business away from you. Interacting with your fans through their interests, rather than your business's, is an excellent way to build loyalty and trust and appreciation with your fans.

One of my favorite examples of this has to be news sites. Some of my favorite online news providers will “celebrate” each Friday by posting something cute, funny, or interesting to their Facebook fan page that has absolutely nothing to do with their business. An animated .GIF image of cute kittens isn't going to help me sell my services, but it opens the floor for candid, personal interaction with your Facebook fans. If they like it, they'll share it to their page, and you'll potentially earn new Facebook fans through those share opportunities.

Most Importantly: Be Personal

Sometimes business owners and marketers are blinded by Facebook's massive numbers and forget what the service really is about. Facebook has 900 million active users, which translates immediately to dollar signs to social media marketers. Those 900 million active users are using the site to post personal information and interact with their friends and acquaintances, though; those users definitely aren't looking for hard sells or endlessly repetitive pitches and offers.

One of the fundamental first steps to using a social media service is learning how the average user uses it, and Facebook is no different. If you don't always keep in mind that Facebook users are there to have fun and share their personal lives, then you're going to inevitably be too sales-y, chase fans away and develop a bad reputation.

Like Photo via Shutterstock

SC Magazine Awards Europe 2013 open for entry

Entries are now being accepted for the 2013 SC Magazine Awards Europe.

A total of 25 awards will be announced next April, with 17 technology awards, four professional and four industry awards. The deadline for submitting entries is Thursday 29th November 2012, after which a panel of judges will evaluate the submissions.

The awards will be announced at the annual ceremony on Tuesday 23rd April 2013 at The London Hilton on Park Lane.

To enter, visit the website at www.scawardseurope.com, choose which categories you want to enter and write your submission following the guidelines.

Among the awards is a new category for ‘Best Mobile Solution', reflecting technological developments within the mobile security industry.

The categories are as follows:

Technology Awards

Best Anti-Malware Solution

Best Content Security 

Best Network Security

Best Integrated Security Solution

Best IAM Solution

Best Remote Access

Best Security Management

Best SME Security Solution

Best Enterprise Security Solution

Best Security Solution, Financial Services

Innovation Award

Best Secure Virtualisation Solution

Best Encryption Solution

Best DLP Solution

Best Secure Transaction Solution

NEW Best Mobile Solution

Best Forensics Tool

Industry Awards

Information Security Product of the Year

Information Security Vendor of the Year

Information Security Consultancy of the Year

Best Global Security Company

Professional Awards

Information Security Person of the Year 

Information Security Project of the Year 

Information Security Team of the Year

The Rising Star Award

For enquiries on the awards, contact Jo Plinston on 020 8267 4043 or email jo.plinston@haymarket.com. For sponsorship enquiries, contact Vanessa Vyapooree on 020 8267 4365 or email vanessa.vyapooree@haymarket.com

Should Small Businesses Care About Promoted Tweets and Accounts?

Anita Campbell, Founder of Small Business Trends, recently shared the news that Twitter had begun to debut Targeted Tweets, after teasing the SMB-focused self-serve ad system since earlier this year. But paid ads can be hit or miss for small business owners, especially when they're self-serve and there's no representative to help guide you through the process.

So how do you know if Twitter's Promoted Tweets and Promoted Accounts are right for your business or if it's just another thing that will distract you from your goals?

First off, if you missed Anita's post or Twitter's official announcement, you may not be aware that there are two new advertising options available for business owners looking to grow their influence on Twitter. The new ad options come in the form of Promoted Accounts and Promoted Tweets:

• Promoted Accounts: Studies your current followers to look for people with similar interests. When Twitter finds a match, they'll add your account to its Who to Follow Section.
• Promoted Products: Twitter will monitor your account for engagement and promote your best tweets to users. You also have the option to eliminate certain tweets from ever appearing to make them even more relevant.

The neat thing about Twitter ads for a small business owner is that it takes the impetus off you to do or create anything new. Unlike traditional ads, Twitter is simply highlighting your best content and putting it (and you) in front of more people. It lets you advertise AND get back to work at the same time. Even better, advertisers will only pay when someone follows their account or engages with their content that's been promoted.

It sounds enticing, but how do you know if you're ready to make the jump to Twitter ads? Below are some things to consider:

1. Do you have an existing Twitter strategy?

Before you spend money to promote your tweets or your Twitter account, you better be certain that there is something there worth following. Otherwise, you're sending out invites for people to come see your empty, dusty house.

Before you start paying for Twitter followers and traffic, create a solid Twitter strategy and let it run for a month or two to build up a history of quality tweets and engagement. This is necessary not only to attract people but to help Twitter match you with the right kind of users. A sample SMB tweeting schedule may look something like this:

• Monday: Post behind-the-scenes photos or information to share what you're working on this week/what the team did over the weekend.
• Tuesday: Share a photo of your Specials Menu to whet people's appetite with a special deal or promotion.
• Wednesday: Introduce a member of your staff or let customers know what they're working on.
• Thursday: Share a post from your company blog or a piece of content you've created. If your own well is dry, share a post from someone else that caught your attention or is worth talking about.
• Friday: Share a Friday Tip to help people hack your product or learn something about your industry.

By putting a real Twitter strategy in place, and sticking to it, it ensures you have something worth promoting, while also giving Twitter something to match you with.

2. Have you been trying to grow your network without ads?

I would never recommend someone start paying for Twitter ads unless they have first tried to grow their network without them. You want to get out all your early mistakes, find your posting style, and get comfortable with the site before you start paying to play. You also want to see if you even need to buy ads. If you find that you're seeing a lot of engagement and gaining followers easily, then buying ads or paying to promote your content may not be an expense you need.

It's not that paid advertising should be a last resort for growing an account, but I think having a solid knowledge of the site and an existing follower base will help make your ads more successful. You also want to make sure Twitter is something you'll stick with before you pay for followers you won't convert.

3. Is your brand recognizable?

If you've had a difficult time getting the word out about your Twitter presence, but you know your customers are out there and are looking for you, advertising is a great way to build that exposure.

For example, I often browse Twitter's Promoted Accounts option to scan for people or businesses that I may be aware of but who I'm not already following. This helps connect me with local businesses I frequent, but also with thought leaders whose blogs I read.

As a consultant or a known business in your area, getting your face or your logo in that box can be a big boon in helping to attract to followers. But for that to work, you need to have the reputation and the brand recognition to pull it off. If you're not there yet (and that's okay), then just seeing your face won't be enough to make someone want to click through and follow you.

4. Do you have a way to track your ads?

Before you spend money toward any kind of advertising you need to understand how you're going to track it and put a system in place. For Twitter ads, this may mean using Google Analytics to see how much traffic is coming from Twitter or sticking with the analytics dashboard Twitter offers to advertisers to track followers and activity. However, it could also mean creating a special landing page where you drive Twitter users. Or creating Twitter-specific codes or coupons to track customers who find you through these funnels.  Determine how you're going to track the ads that you're creating and stay on top of it. Otherwise, you're just spending money.

For small- and medium-sized business owners looking to grow their Twitter followers, I think the new ads provide a lot of powerful options. But they're not going to work for everyone. If you're going to give them a try, making sure you're already producing valuable content, that you have a strategy in place, and that you have a way to track the ads you're putting out.

WatchGuard introduces new range of appliances to offer VPN tunnels

WatchGuard has launched its XTM 5 series of security appliances to offer bring your own device (BYOD) protection for personal devices.

The company claimed that the new products have the ability to create secure virtual private network (VPN) tunnels for mobile devices running iOS and Android 4.0 and above. It said that these provide complete (BYOD) protection for popular devices, as well as application control and an integrated firewall and intrusion prevention system. 

WatchGuard also claimed that within the new range of solutions appliance packet filtering is increased by nearly 40 per cent; gateway anti-virus is 190 per cent faster; intrusion prevention (IPS) is up 220 per cent; and overall UTM performance is improved by more than 150 per cent.

Torbay Care Trust fined £175,000 by ICO for leak of employee details

A monetary penalty of £175,000 has been given to a Torquay health trust after sensitive details of more than 1,000 employees were accidentally published on its website.

According to a statement by the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), staff at Torbay Care Trust published the information in a spreadsheet on their website in April 2011 and only spotted the mistake when it was reported by a member of the public 19 weeks later.

The data covered the equality and diversity responses of 1,373 staff and included individuals' names, dates of birth and National Insurance numbers, along with sensitive information about the person's religion and sexuality.

Stephen Eckersley, head of enforcement at the ICO, said: “We regularly speak with organisations across the health service to remind them of the need to look after people's data. The fact that this breach was caused by Torbay Care Trust publishing sensitive information about their staff is extremely troubling and was entirely avoidable. Not only were they giving sensitive information out about their employees but they were also leaving them exposed to the threat of identity fraud.

“While organisations can publish equality and diversity information about staff in an aggregated form, there is no justification for unnecessarily releasing their personal information.”

The ICO's investigation found that the trust had no guidance for staff on what information should not be published online and had inadequate checks in place to identify potential problems. The trust has now introduced a new web management policy to ensure personal data is not mistakenly published on its website in the future.

Survey reveals reality of data encryption in the cloud

Almost two-thirds of businesses that transfer sensitive or confidential data to the cloud believe the provider is responsible for protecting that data.

According to a global study of 4,000 business and IT managers conducted by the Ponemon Institute and commissioned by Thales, 64 per cent believe that their cloud provider has primary responsibility for protecting that data.

It also found that among those companies that encrypt data inside the cloud, nearly 74 per cent believe the cloud provider is most responsible for protecting that data, while only 34 per cent of organisations that encrypt data inside their organisation prior to sending it to the cloud hold the cloud provider primarily responsible for data protection.

Regarding who manages the encryption keys when the data is transferred to the cloud, 36 per cent said that their organisation has primary responsibility for managing the keys, while 22 per cent said the cloud provider has primary responsibility for encryption key management. Another 22 per cent said that a third party is most responsible for managing the keys.

Even in cases where encryption is performed inside the enterprise, more than half of respondents hand over control of the keys to the cloud provider.

Richard Moulds, vice president of strategy at Thales e-Security, told SC Magazine that the main message from the research was that it does matter where the encryption is done and who controls the keys.

He said: “Staying in control of sensitive or confidential data is paramount for most companies today. For any organisation that is still weighing the advantages of using cloud computing with the potential security risks of doing so, it is important to know that encryption is one of the most valuable tools for protecting data.

“However, just as with any type of encryption, it only delivers meaningful value if deployed correctly and with encryption keys that are managed appropriately. Effective key management is emblematic of control and the need for centralised and automated key management, integrated with existing IT business processes, is a necessity. Even if you allow your data to be encrypted in the cloud, it's important to know you can still keep control of your keys. If you control the keys, you control the data.”

In terms of where data encryption is applied, the survey found that 38 per cent of respondents rely on encryption of data as it is transferred over the network (typically the internet) between the organisation and the cloud, while 35 per cent said the organisation applies persistent encryption data before it is transferred to the cloud provider. Only 27 per cent said they rely on encryption that is applied within the cloud environment.

Larry Ponemon, chairman and founder of the Ponemon Institute, said: “What is perhaps most surprising is that nearly two-thirds of those that move sensitive data to the cloud regard their service providers as being primarily responsible for protecting that data, even though a similar number have little or no knowledge about what measures their providers have put in place to protect data. This represents an enormous opportunity for cloud providers to articulate what they are doing to secure data in the cloud and differentiate themselves from the competition.”

A shortage of data analysts is the main challenge of Big Data

There is a major shortage of skills in data analysis that is not helping businesses meet the Big Data challenge.

Speaking to SC Magazine, DJ Skillman, director of technical services EMEA at Splunk, said that no one is able to "chew through a terabyte of data in one day". He said: “Data analysis is a skill set that the world is short on, as people spend time buying expertise and experience, but we need smart people to ask smart questions.

“This is a challenge people will run into, managing more data. A lot of developers know how to develop, but people are coming up with an algorithm and asking the questions correctly, but the process is wrong. One of the challenges we come up against with Big Data is knowing how to process.”

James Murray, vice president and general manager EMEA at Splunk, said that businesses are correlating all sorts of data and the new talent is doing correlation for the next security threat and that is where data scientists are key. “Data exists but you need someone to manage it,” he said.

Terry Neal, CEO of InfoSec Skills, who recently bemoaned a lack of take-up of free training courses offered as part of the Cyber Security Challenge, said: “From a security standpoint, Big Data analytics is key to be able to uncover hidden patterns and unknown correlations in huge volumes of unstructured data, i.e. web server logs, across thousands of nodes handling thousands of terabytes of data.

“We need a new breed of security analyst - a data scientist, who can integrate emerging frameworks to data mining and predictive analytics disciplines to maintain the battle front against cyber crime. The problem is that organisations may not have the internal analytics skills and the cost of hiring experienced analytics professionals is high.”

Ionut Ionescu, European advisory board member at (ISC)2, told SC Magazine that people need analysts whether the data is big or small.

He said: “You need to have an analyst's mindset on what to look at and understand the life of the data. We could do with more skills in industry and organisations such as (ISC)2 can help, but you cannot create a professional out of nothing, as you need to know what to discard, as with 2.3TB of data created each day and zillions of words said, it is the skill of the analyst to know what to discard.

“It is about the doing analysis but on a bigger field. This is not a new problem, there are skills and applications to get into information security but you need training, as you cannot analyse data without context.”

Best Buy Founder Offers to Purchase Retailer

Entrepreneurs are an unusual breed, wanting the control necessary to see their vision through to success. Today's roundup looks at entrepreneurs big and small, and some of the commonalities all of them share. Let us know about your own experiences as a business leader in the comment section below.

Righting the Ship

Back in the saddle. A few months after stepping down as the company's chairman, Best Buy founder Richard Schulze is trying to take the struggling retailer private, at between $24 and $26 per share. In a letter to the board, Schulze said bold changes were needed to rejuvenate the company. Bloomberg

Surprise, surprise. Sometimes troubles facing an entrepreneur are very different than the challenges that existed when the business launched. For example, Facebook's disappointing IPO has little to do with building cool social tools and awesome user experiences. Entrepreneurs must tackle all kinds of issues as they arise. Business Insider

Learning from Others

Happy accidents. Anita Campbell, founder of Small Business Trends, claims she got into publishing by accident, but a happier accident cannot be imagined. Her flagship site is now a major resource for business owners and has also won several awards. Sometimes an entrepreneur's best idea comes unexpectedly. The key is to know when to take action. Billion Success

How not to market yourself. Kare Anderson has a perfect example of how not to become your target audience's favorite-spend too much time on your story and avoid obvious opportunities to be compared favorably with your competitors. Here's what Kare learned about marketing from a political campaign some years ago. Forbes

Keeping It Real

Roll up your sleeves. If your one of those entrepreneurs who thinks starting a business involves sitting in an ivory tower somewhere making decisions that others implement, well, think again! Successful entrepreneurs, especially in a startup, are always prepared to roll up their sleeves and get their hands dirty. Startup Professionals Musings

Great expectations. Are we becoming unreasonable with our expectations for startups? In a post called “Ten Million Users Is The New One Million Users”, one angel investor explains the incredible expectations, especially for consumer Web companies since Facebook. But clever entrepreneurs know starting small is also an option. Chris Dixon

Satisfaction guaranteed. If you want to know the real reason why people become entrepreneurs, says Tom Ewer, it may not be the money. In fact, Ewer sites a survey in which it's argued that the most satisfied workers aren't the best paid. The question is whether you can build a business that satisfies you and gives your life purpose. This, Ewer believes, is the real point of entrepreneurship. MyWifeQuitHerJob.com