New York City

This post originally appeared on Forbes.com.

Our society celebrates the buzzy and bubbly – acquisitions, funding events, mergers, new hires. As entrepreneurs, most of the buzzy stories we read are rather useless. They serve no practical application to help grow our respective businesses. This is why great entrepreneurs get out in the field and engage in as many conversations as they can with those they respect. They want to hear firsthand how people have succeeded and how people have failed. They search for tried and true lessons so that they can apply the takeaways to their own ventures. And in this process entrepreneurs uncover key insights that may lead to a critical pivot in a business model or perhaps may lead to a simple validation of an already held mindset. From my vantage point, all of these little stories serve as an important backdrop for anyone looking to build a great business.

So here are three short stories from three up and coming New York City startups. Maybe you’ll uncover a gem of insight that will help transform your business or project.

“No Silver Bullets” by Aaron, CEO & Co-Founder of Tutorspree

The hardest lesson I’ve learned since co-founding Tutorspree is that there are no silver bullets – even when charting something as amazing as the future of one-on-one learning. It may seem a bit strange that I need that as a lesson when everything else I’ve ever done has required huge amounts of hard work. Intellectually, I had no expectation that a startup would be any different. But emotionally, entrepreneurs are continually confronted with stories in the popular press full of the one huge a-ha innovation/decision/partnership that “made” a company. While I know that those may be possible in extreme edge cases, that they’re nowhere near the norm, and they create an irrational expectation that one is just around the corner.

The truth is that start ups are hard, they’re a slog, they’re a huge amount of all consuming work – but that’s also why they’re amazing. You don’t find a single silver bullet – that’s the just the story people tell afterwards, you find a whole bunch of little steps and you figure out how to string them together until you have your success. And looking back, that’s a bigger achievement than a single fell swoop, which might be as much luck as anything else. That’s a lesson I take into work with me every day, and it is a critical piece of what makes this the life I want.

“Motivation by Inspiration” by Mike Dirolf, CEO of Fiesta

For me, motivation has been the principle benefit of working from a co-working space in New York City; collaboration is a distant second. It’s great to have smart people around to ask for help and feedback, but it’s far more important to see how hard those people are working and to be inspired to keep up. At almost all hours of the day the space is filled with people working as hard as they can to turn their fledgling companies into successful businesses. It’s impossible to walk into the place and not feel energized.

A little over a year ago I set out on my own and was ostensibly working from my apartment. The reality was that I had a lot of trouble staying focused. About a month later I moved into a co-working space; since then staying motivated hasn’t been a problem. Now that Fiesta is growing and I’ve brought on a co-founder that external motivation might be less essential, but I’m convinced we never would’ve gotten this far without it.

“Colloboration” by David Reich, CEO & Founder of Assured Labor (Disclosure: David Reich has no relation to Dan Reich

Our company, Assured Labor, is an unusual start-up. Started at the MIT MediaLab, Assured Labor connects employers in emerging markets with local sales, operations and administration candidates using cell phones and web technology.

We have a staff of 15 (including our outsourced engineering team) distributed between Mexico, Brazil, Pakistan, Nicaragua and of course, our headquarters in New York City at Dogpatch Labs. We’ve often been asked why we keep our headquarters in  New York while all of our operations are based in the emerging markets. The answer is collaboration. Our New York base allows us to collaborate with the world’s best engineers and business innovators, ensuring we can outcompete our local competitors. I’ll give an example of each.

Engineering. While we have been happily working with an outsourced technology team based in Lahore, Pakistan, we keep our senior technologist and product manager in the US. This is for two reasons: first, this is where the worlds top talent is, and second, to provide our talent with the opportunity to collaborate with likeminded entrepreneurs. In our incubator there is no shame in asking questions or fear that collaborators (from other companies) will steal our idea. This ecosystem allows our engineers to learn from peers other and build better services faster.

Business Innovators. Over the past year dozens of startups have come through Dogpatch Labs, each with it unique ideas on how they’ll monetize their business. I’ve seen Groupon models, Ad based models, Subscription models, Freemium models, Co-marketing models, and a dozen more. Each month notable experts come through Dogpatch to meet us, ranging from the Scott Heiferman of Meetup.com to Eric Reis the author of “The Lean Startup”. But best of all I’ve had the opportunity to learn from my fellow founders while sharing my opinions on what I’ve seen working both internationally and in the US. As technology is only part of building a successful startup these opportunities to collaborate with business innovators is a tremendous advantage.

Beyond the opportunity to collaborate in engineering and business innovation the collaborative environment of our co-working space has provided us with introductions to investors, employees, interns and partners. We also lean on each other for energy and motivation, sharing in each other success. While few things can match the business learning that comes from sitting with your customers, few things can match the business building to be gained from collaboration with other entrepreneurs, in the trenches, working to change the world.

Do you have a great startup story to tell?

Connect with Dan Reich on Twitter – @danreich.

3 Short Stories from 3 NYC Startups is a post from... Dan Reich - A Student - Learning, Living at the Intersection of Business + Technolog + Innovation + Culture.
Follow me on Twitter: @DanReich Facebook: Facebook.com/danreich

Man, what a year it has been.

In January I took my first trip to Pasadena California for the Rose Bowl. Although Wisconsin lost to TCU, it was arguably one of the best weekends of my life. Being able to spend a new year with all of your friends and family while watching your team play for some Roses is a great way to spend a new year.

From January to May we cranked up the activity over at Spinback. Late nights, lots of meetings with clients and investors, hours of brainstorming, all led up to the eventual sale of our company to Buddy Media.

In June we got rolling with the integration between Spinback and Buddy Media.

In July I took a trip to Italy and got engaged to a great girl. We visited Rome, Venice, Florence, Pisa, Tuscany, and drank entirely too much wine. I quite honestly thought this decision would have come later in life but most of the time things work out differently than anticipated and in this case it couldn’t of worked out any better.

In August I got my first glimpse of what Law School is really like when I visited my brother at school and got the full download. He’ll make a great lawyer one day but for now he’s grinding it out as an L2.

In September I started writing for Forbes.com and I think I underestimated how much time I would have to write about businesses while trying to build one.

In October I completed my 9th recertification as an Outdoor Emergency Care Technician, otherwise known as Ski Patrol. This marks my 10th year as a member of Mount Snow Ski Patrol and there is nothing better than great skiing, with great people, all while saving lives. I also celebrated my 26th birthday in October and on the same day received news that changed my entire perspective on life (more on that much later).

I don’t recall anything special happening in November, but..

In December my sister celebrated her 21st birthday marking the end of the “children” era in my household. She’s fully immersed in a nursing program and will make a great nurse or doctor one day.

And now we’re back at January. Wisconsin is playing in the Rose Bowl again and I’m so grateful for a year that I was able to share with friends and family, both new and old.

I hope you have a very happy and healthy 2012.

Go Badgers!!!

From 2011 to 2012 – Go Badgers! is a post from... Dan Reich - A Student - Learning, Living at the Intersection of Business + Technolog + Innovation + Culture.
Follow me on Twitter: @DanReich Facebook: Facebook.com/danreich

This post originally appeared on Forbes.com.

Technology has democratized information and in turn has fueled hyper consumption. On a daily basis, we are assaulted with new content that we must consciously choose to engage with or disregard. Whether it is a text message from a friend, a real time twitter feed, the latest youtube sensation, or even this very blog post, we are constantly plugged in to a hyper connected media network – one that actually causes a paralyzing and counterproductive affect for us as individuals.  One engineering professor explains: “I feel that the iPad is yet another electronic toy to distract people from the hard work, focus, and dedication that a productive life requires.”

But here in lies a paradox.  If you managed to navigate to this article to read this post, chances are good that you, like me, have a desire to consume information in order to improve various aspects of your life or business. It’s natural to think that more content consumption will increase our chances of success, because after all it is a learning experience, but as a fellow entrepreneur puts it “there are days where I’m always working but by day’s end, I feel like I’ve accomplished nothing.”

So how do we disconnect from all of this hyper consumption in order to really pursue a productive life or career?

1. Focus on one thing and one thing only. When you eat, eat. When you read, read. When you work, work. How many times have you been in a meeting or out to a meal and a member of the party breaks out their phone and starts checking email? In order to thoroughly disconnect from this always-on network of information, we must be willing to compartmentalize certain activities so that we are really only doing one thing at a time. This is an extremely difficult task especially when you have web browsers and technology that can simultaneously let you read email, read articles, listen to music, chat with friends, and watch videos all at the same time – tab by tab, app by app.

2. Connect with nature. Leave your phone at home and take a walk outside. Better yet, take a weekend trip to a beach, a park, a resort, or any place where you enjoy the peacefulness of nature. Looking back on my experiences, I’ve found that mostly all major decisions I’ve made were made while taking a walk or sitting alone outside. In fact, in Walter Isaacson’s new book on [entity display="Steve Jobs" type="person" active="true" deactivated="false" key="steve-jobs"]Steve Jobs[/entity], there are many instances where Steve goes for a walk in order to address some critical aspect of his life or business.

3. Pick up a hobby. Part of the reason I write articles like this one is because for the hour or so it takes me to compose this piece, I am not doing anything else. A colleague of mine described his favorite hobby, surfing and said “when I’m sitting on my board in the ocean, I’m only thinking about one thing – when the next wave is going to come.” In this resolve and dedication to a hobby or sport, we can find solace and peace from our pressures of every day life.

Once you are able to truly disconnect, you can begin to focus, with a clear state of mind, on things that matter. You can begin to work on things like overcoming career anxiety or maybe even getting started with your very own business venture.

Do you have special tips or tricks for disconnecting?

Related articles

• 3 Ways to Disconnect (forbes.com)

3 Ways to Disconnect is a post from... Dan Reich - A Student - Learning, Living at the Intersection of Business + Technolog + Innovation + Culture.
Follow me on Twitter: @DanReich Facebook: Facebook.com/danreich

This post originally appeared on Forbes.com.

If we want our country and economy to get back on track we need to fix the education system for math and science related degrees. It’s simple really and everyone knows it. Growth happens when people build and sell things. In an age of high tech innovation those “growth” building blocks rely squarely on the skills acquired in a science, technology, math or engineering curriculum. It’s why the president and other industry groups are advocating for more students to graduate with these degrees.

In a recent article in the New York Times, Christopher Drew talks about “Why Science Majors Change Their Minds.” He really highlights some of the systemic issues that are engrained in our institutions but having experienced firsthand what it’s like to study engineering, I can tell you what’s really going on.

Cramsorption Learning. How fun is this? 2 hours a day, 3 days a week, a professor stands up in front of a classroom and paraphrases sections from a chemistry text book. After a few weeks of lectures and labs, the class is ready for its first test. A few days before the exam the libraries are pact. Students cram all of the formulas and anecdotes into their brains because in a few hours they will be responsible for regurgitating those same formulas onto a test. And once that test is finished, all of that information evaporates. Why? Because now the students need to focus on the next chapters and shortly thereafter they’ll have their next exam. By the next semester most of the learned information will go to waste because there was never any real practical experience applied to the information in the first place. Cram, regurgitate, next.

Learning from experience. One of the best Electrical Engineering classes I ever took was in high school during my freshman year. It wasn’t an EE class per se’ but it just as easily could have been. My teacher David Peins, basically said to the class, “here are some parts, here is how to make a Printed Circuit Board (PCB), and here are some circuits. Go build a firefighting robot that can autonomously navigate a maze and put out a fire.” What ensued was what all engineering programs should be like. We had to figure things out on our own and when we had questions, which we did almost all the time, we would ask Mr. Peins. By the end of the class we had learned about resistors, transistors, tute-bot circuits, and an entire foray of engineering concepts. I didn’t even learn about transistors until my junior year in my real ECE major. In high school, I learned these concepts by doing and not by sitting in some lecture hall taking notes.

Grades, grades, grades. I got a 2.5 GPA the first semester of my freshman year. I thought I could do what I did in high school – almost nothing and get by with good grades. My other college buddies thought the same thing. It turned out they did much better than I did freshman year, but it was also true that they were not pursuing a degree in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math). So here I was taking extremely hard courses, working 3x as many hours as my peers for crappier grades. And as school progressed it was time for me to start thinking about my future. At one point I thought about attending the London School of Economics. I gave them a call and they said I needed a 3.5 GPA regardless of my major. So here I was thinking about my future and I was already at a disadvantage because my major produced historically lower grades than other majors. Had I really wanted to go to the school I might have switched. I know I debated it almost every day for two years.

School Rankings. The end justifies the means. I heard a story once that went like this. A university had a top program for entrepreneurship. The best students from the STEM majors wanted to put their skills to work so instead of taking jobs from some of the top, high paying companies like Google or Intel, they choose to work on their own projects. Great, right? More entrepreneurs. Bring it. Well that university ended up cutting back on that program because those high quality students weren’t taking those high paying jobs. And when part of a school’s rankings are predicated on graduate’s starting salaries, you might see why long term opportunities were sacrificed for short term gains. We’ve seen this story before though – see Wall Street.

Money, money, money. In college, my buddies and I came up with this great idea that we thought would change the world and make us a lot of money. We realized that millions of cars each day were driving over speed bumps in the roads. These speed bumps were put in place to force the car to slow but consequentially there was also a lot of energy going to waste during this process. We thought that we could harness this lost kinetic energy and pump it back into an electrical grid. So we went to work. We started developing the equations and formulas needed to make this happen. One of our professors was helping us but after a while he asked, “why are you doing this?” Thinking this was already an obvious answer, we responded “because it’s a great idea and it will make us rich.” He quickly began to tell us about a fellow engineering friend of his who came up with several inventions but ultimately went to Wall Street because he wanted to get paid and he was having a hard time turning inventions into real products and businesses.

Its Hard. One of my exam questions once was, “How much fuel do you need to get to mars?” That was it. We needed to account for the earth’s gravity, various altitude levels, the trajectory of the flight path, the mass and weight of the ship, and so on. This was a straight up NASA question and I was barely doing well on my calculus exams. The reality is that most STEM majors have topics that are extremely difficult and sometimes they are just too hard too complete. How did I deal with this? I just worked harder. Was it worth it? It was for me but most others deferred to the “Grades, Grades, Grades” section.

Changing the Status-Quo. The feeling I get with most STEM course work today is that they were designed for a 9 to 5 industrial age with the goal of producing great workers for great companies in a non-global economy. This reverberated through my mind as I sat in those giant lecture halls. But now we are very much in a competitive, global, all-hours-of-the-day economy. We need a system that rewards risk taking and encourages people to pursue challenging academic careers. This is not happening today because we are too focused on school rankings, easy grades, short term gains, and maintaining the status-quo.

Sooner or later these issues will be addressed and they will most likely come from someone who has the building blocks to address and engineer real problems. I just hope more people stick with Science, Technology, Math and Engineering and don’t change their minds.

Why Engineering Majors Change Their Minds is a post from... Dan Reich - A Student - Learning, Living at the Intersection of Business + Technolog + Innovation + Culture.
Follow me on Twitter: @DanReich Facebook: Facebook.com/danreich

Image via CrunchBase

This post originally appeared on Forbes.com.

Technology and data are changing the ways companies do business but perhaps more interestingly is the way they are influencing how companies are hiring, and could be hiring, new employees. In many organizations the human resource department is considered the most important part of the organization. And rightfully so. A company is nothing more than the people within it so it should be no surprise when you hear about how rigorous some hiring processes are. For example, its been said that Google has had candidates come in to interview “as many as 16 times before ultimately releasing them back to the wild.”

So let’s take a look at three new and innovate concepts that may help drive the future of how companies are staffed.

The Social Graph. It’s not what you know but who you know. We’ve all heard this phrase before but we finally have social graphs that are accessible through technology. These are social graphs and social connections that will at some point be used to help us as individuals in our careers. So imagine how powerful it would be if companies could leverage one’s social network to get personal references at scale. A company called Jibe is doing this and their employers have said that Jibe candidates are 4x more likely to be hired than those from traditional job boards. And it makes complete sense. Personal references are invaluable and its why 92% of hiring managers in 2010 used social networks as a recruiting tool, according to CareerEnlightenment.com.

Statistical Data Models. If data exhaust was actually smoke we would all be suffocating by now. The abundance of raw data is staggering and making sense of it all can be a daunting task. It is the reason new cloud computing based companies are starting to emerge. But capturing and understanding data is very different than taking actionable steps from the findings. There is a new school of thought among firms that look to statistical models as the basis by which candidates are hired. For example, every company has an associated cost with hiring and training a new employee. The cost of hiring this new employee is recouped if that person stays for a certain period of time. If however that candidate leaves before that time, the firm realizes a loss in opportunity costs. So what if you could predict with a high level of probability that a candidate will stay beyond a certain period of time? What if you could essentially predict which candidates are retention risks? Well this is what one, stealth-mode Chicago firm is working on and their results could end up saving firms millions of dollars annually in their hiring process.

Niche Data Sets. Hiring a math teacher is very different than hiring a quantum mechanics physicist. As the world continues to slice itself up into niche verticals, it will also be important to have niche data sets especially for the purpose of hiring highly specialized candidates for very specific roles. This is probably the reason why LinkedIn (NASDAQ: $LNKD) has seen its biggest growth in revenue come from its hiring solutions line of business. This is also probably part of the reason why LinkedIn has subtly added new fields like “skills” into profile pages. These fields make it easier for recruiters and hiring managers to look for people with very specific skill sets. And just as the ladders.com tailored to folks looking to make over $100k, I believe there is also an opportunity to specialize on other niche verticals like B2B sales, pharmaceuticals, nuclear engineering, and many, many more.

New solutions will continue to emerge but I think we are beginning to see the future of how new firms will hire employees.

Connect with Dan Reich on Twitter – @danreich.

The Future of Hiring New Employees is a post from... Dan Reich - A Student - Learning, Living at the Intersection of Business + Technolog + Innovation + Culture.
Follow me on Twitter: @DanReich Facebook: Facebook.com/danreich

Wordpress Blog

This post originally appeared on Forbes.com.

I think everyone should blog, especially entrepreneurs, so here are my top 9 reasons why you should be blogging if you aren’t already.

1. It’s your new resume. I had a recruiter call me once out of the blue. She said, “Hi Dan, this is Emily from a recruiting firm. I just finished reading your blog and I don’t really have any questions for you. I just wanted to let you know that you are perfect for a job I’m trying to fill and I wanted to see if you would be interested.” Wait, what? I was stunned. I had never met this woman before in my life and she already knew that I was a great fit for the job she was trying to fill. It was actually a very good position at a great firm. Make your resume dynamic. We are no longer in the world of 1 page resumes.

2. It’s your new hiring tool. As an entrepreneur or hiring manager, think about #1 in reverse. If you are trying to hire for certain positions, people will want to know who you are and what you are about. Show people why they should be a part of your endeavor. Why they should be on your team. Blogging is a great way to do this.

3. Network with new people. I tried making music once with some fancy DJ software. I didn’t know what I was doing so I googled, “how to make house music” (that story for later). I was curious. I stumbled upon a few blogs, left a few comments and questions and before I knew it I had a new friend. This was a person I had never met before but it was a person that took special interest in my questions and helped me understand what I was trying to learn. After some back and forth, I was able to create some solid tracks. Now I listen to his tracks whenever they are released. New friend in the music world.

4. Turn messy ideas into neat ones. Ideas are a dime a dozen. They exist as some lofty, grandiose thing that lives in your head and your head alone. When you talk about those ideas they begin to make more sense. When you write about those ideas they make even more sense. This is often the reason why people write business plans. Having a blog is a great outlet to force your brain into a laser-focused state of mind. Sure, you could do this in some private notebook but what fun would that be? Furthermore, it might help you with point #1 or #2. It might even help you find business partners.

5. Reflect on your past to improve your future. When you blog, your thoughts and ideas are documented over time. Sometimes you may take certain stances on topics that may prove to be right or wrong later. By documenting your ideas in sequence, you can look back and reflect on how your ideas and opinions evolve over time. Looking at the past is critically important in understanding how to improve the future. This is why students at Harvard Business School review hundreds of business case studies. Learn from the past.

6. Get some peace of mind. As I write this post I have 15 different tabs open in my web browser, all of which require a different mindset (e.g. music vs. email, Facebook vs. Google docs spreadsheet). However, as I write this post I’m able to momentarily focus my mind on one stream of conscious thought. Doing this can be particularly hard in today’s world considering how many distractions there are. Just like the blinking Gmail tab telling me to check the 9 new emails I have waiting in my inbox. But for now I’ll ignore those and continue on with the post.

7. Create your own PR machine. If I was working on my own project or business my blog would be the first place I’d talk about it. It’s your own Public Relations soapbox. It also helps surface your views on a specific topic or industry. Views that might help you win new business. In the past, we needed radio and TV to get our messages across. Not today.

8. Juice up your writing skills. I suck at writing. I’ve maybe taken 3 writing classes throughout my life. But just like anything else, practice makes perfect and the more I write on my blog the more I find my skills improving slowly but surely. And when you consider that most work and sales today is done over email, you quickly realize that it’s much more critical to have good writing skills than ever before. 

9. Produce more, consume less. It’s very easy to get caught up with media consumption. There are many days where I feel as if I’ve achieved nothing because I spent my entire day consuming other people’s content. This is a very dangerous road. I believe that by asserting yourself as a contributor instead of a consumer, you will realize huge payoffs down the road. Be a builder. Be a producer.

So if you are feeling a little motivated to start you’re own blog, I would suggest taking a look at wordpress.com and tumblr. You could be up and running in no time.

And if you already have a blog, I’d love to read it. We can connect on another micro-blogging service like twitter – @danreich.

9 Reasons You Should Blog is a post from... Dan Reich - A Student - Learning, Living at the Intersection of Business + Technolog + Innovation + Culture.
Follow me on Twitter: @DanReich Facebook: Facebook.com/danreich

This post originally appeared on Forbes.com.

Starting a company is a daunting task and taking the first step sometimes seems impossible. I’ve encountered a number of people with the dilemma of “I know what I want to do but I don’t know how to start.” And rightfully so. Taking an abstract idea from thought to fruition is one of the hardest things to do. It’s why the failure rate of new business endeavors is so high. It’s also why most investors value people and execution of ideas above anything else. Ideas are a dime a dozen, but being able to execute on a vision is an entirely different story.

So how does someone actually start a business? The great thing about starting a business is that it requires creativity. Sure, you need to be creative in formulating the idea, but I think what goes overlooked often is the fact that you need to be even more creative with specifics around how you start the business. It doesn’t really matter what industry you are in. If you can be creative at both developing the idea and launching the business, I think you’ll have greater chances of success.

Here are a 7 examples of how you might consider starting a business.

1. Build a specific solution, for a specific problem, for a specific client. Most doctor’s offices confuse me. Not only do they confuse me, they drive me crazy. When I walk into a doctor’s office today I look over the counter and see endless shelves of manila envelopes. There must be thousands of sloppy, handwritten notes just sitting there unprotected in those color coated manila envelops. Every time I walk in I have the urge to walk up to the doctor and say, “give me $100,000. I’ll build you a digital solution for this mess and you will get lifetime rights to the technology. I’ll get to sell this to other doctors but you will get to use this technology forever.” If you see a specific problem that you think you can address, you might be able to find one client who will fund development. You will give them lifetime rights to the technology and in return, they will pay you and let you resell the solution to others.

2. Sell now, build later. Sometimes the best way to go about starting something is to first understand whether or not it makes sense to start. The best way to do this is to sell or pitch an idea to perspective clients before you even have a working or tangible product. When I was in college, I told the owner of a bar that I wanted to host an event on behalf of my marketing firm. I told him I was going to donate money to the charity I’ve worked with in the past. I told him I was going to bring in my entertainment. I told him I was going to create a marketing campaign. These were all lies. I didn’t have any of these things. I didn’t have a “marketing firm.” Well, he agreed to the event and I built up all the necessary pieces after it was sold through.

3. Go back to school. Do you know how much intellectual capital exists in academic universities? That’s why they are called academic institutions. They are pillars of knowledge and these pillars often facilitate cutting edge research. But sometimes these new technologies are never designed with the goal of commercialization in mind. When I was in school, I had a professor working on technology that could literally change the world. He had no interest in bringing this technology to market. He only cared about being published in some research paper. When I asked if I could take the technology to market, he was ecstatic. I expect there are others out there that have great innovations but have no interest in building a business with them. But maybe you do. Physically going back to school to explore these opportunities could potentially lead to the start of a new endeavor. It could be a school visit. It could be a school enrollment.

4. Combine and conquer. Sometimes two heads are simply better than one. It’s tough work staying motivated or even getting motivated in the first place to create a business. When you team up with someone and bring on a partner, you might find that a little bit of motivation and encouragement are enough to move the needle in terms of execution. Having a partner might also free up some burdens so you can focus on more pressing issues. And just having concerted dialog with someone else, who has the same directional goals, could also be that missing factor needed to start a new business.

5. Take money, make money. There are certain companies and industries that require a large capital investment to get started. For example, it would be nearly impossible to build an alternative energy company without some form of initial capital investment. These funds would most likely go towards research and development or manufacturing. In some cases, you may need to just go out and ask people for money in order to fund the development of the first iteration of your product or technology. But maybe you aren’t building an energy company and maybe a quick infusion of $5,000 to $10,000 from friends and family might be enough to kick start your company.

6. Leverage a distressed asset. People make great livings flipping houses (or used to anyway). They buy cheap and sell high. Many times people will buy cheap, fix up the house and bit, and than sell high. This is no different with businesses. There are plenty of distressed assets and companies out there that would love to be acquired for peanuts even though there is still huge potential and room for growth.

7. Don’t be glamorous. I heard a story once of a guy who sold hot dogs for a living. He made about $800k a year selling hot dogs and did so by setting up two hot dog stands at the entrances and exits of Home Depot stores. Not exactly an exciting job but it definitely pays the bills. There are probably a dozen other ways you can turn a low level job into a meaningful, high income producing business.

I’m sure this list can go on for quite a while, but what methods of launching a business have you seen?

How To Start A Company is a post from... Dan Reich - A Student - Learning, Living at the Intersection of Business + Technolog + Innovation + Culture.
Follow me on Twitter: @DanReich Facebook: Facebook.com/danreich

This post originally appeared on Forbes.com.

The recent changes announced at Facebook’s F8 conference solidifies their place as the first real social infrastructure for the web and this is very important for a number of reasons. At a high level, it’s important to understand that technology innovations alone are meaningless. What matters is how new technology advances or enhances previously existing technology. People refer to this as a “technology stack.” Consider the time when Benjamin Franklin unveiled electricity. Only until wires were installed across the country were we able to first leverage his invention in new ways. Once we had electricity, people were able to build up the stack and create new devices and technologies on top of one another.

Fast forward a bit to the computer age. Computers came out and made math computations a simple task. Then software came along and made the hardware that much easier to use. Again, building up the stack. Then came the internet which connected computers with one another across the world. Another layer called Google made it even easier to navigate information through this complex network and this changed everything. For the first time people were able to go to a little box and tell a machine exactly what they were looking for and the machine, would in turn, give us the results we were seeking.

And now we have Facebook and their recent changes. This is a company that built its core assets by having people tell them exactly who they are. And yesterday, Facebook made these assets open for the world to leverage – a true social infrastructure on top of the web. This could be equally as important, if not more important than Google. This is also why Google is publicly concerned about Facebook’s growth. Consider the widely popular phrase, “it’s not what you know but who you know.” At a physical level, this saying could be transposed to “It’s not Google, but it’s Facebook.” And there are very real implications here that extend to all facets of our society from news and entertainment to e-commerce and travel. We are at place where third party apps and companies can leverage an already existing infrastructure to build businesses and efficiencies in new ways. This is a new part of the technology stack.

Spotify, the new music service, is the quintessential example of this and it’s probably why Facebook included them as a partner during their F8 event. If you think about how you listen to music you’d realize that you are inherently interested in what your friends are listening to. I’d say 90% of all music I listen to today is a direct result of advice or suggestions I’d be given once upon a time by friends.

These social implications extend to commerce as well. Let’s say you are in the market to buy a new bicycle. And let’s say you read all of the consumer reviews and after compiling thousands of reviews you decide that you are going to buy the Cozmo bike. But now let’s say the night before you make a purchase  you have dinner with friends. And at dinner, you tell them you are going to buy a bike the next morning and your best friend interrupts and says, “I just bought a Rocket bike and it’s awesome. Way better than my crappy Cozmo bike.” In about one second your entire data set gets thrown out the window. Your friend just influenced your buying decision. Today however, these friends are online. And so are bicycle stores. So you can see that real-time purchasing decisions no longer happen in a vacuum as they are influenced by your social network.

This is where the world is going. Spotify and the Cozmo bike story are just two examples of how social connectivity can reshape traditional processes and establishments. We are just at the tip of the iceberg. Real businesses with real societal implications can leverage this social infrastructure in new and meaningful ways. If you are an entrepreneur, this is a very exciting time to be thinking about what the world could look like with a truly connected social ecosystem that has building blocks for you to use.

Game on.

Related articles

• Facebook F8 Changes Solidifies Social Infrastructure for the Web (forbes.com)

Facebook F8 Changes Solidifies Social Infrastructure for the Web is a post from... Dan Reich - A Student - Learning, Living at the Intersection of Business + Technolog + Innovation + Culture.
Follow me on Twitter: @DanReich Facebook: Facebook.com/danreich

On the night of September 11th 2011, firetrucks lined up in Jersey City awaiting their turn for their photo opp. In the backdrop there lies two hollow lights shooting towards the sky. Alongside lies a red, white and blue tower trying to match the height of the two lights.

It’s a bittersweet image but nights like tonight make me that much more thankful and appreciative of those that risk their lives and respond first in unknown, sometimes terrifying situations.

These pictures, at least the professionally taken ones, will serve as a proud reminder to all of those men and women who go to work everyday not knowing what’s in store. It will remind them why they do what they do each and everyday.

I can’t believe it’s already been 10 years.

(above – firetrucks waiting in line to take their picture in front of the memorial lights)

(above – white, Wayne NJ fire truck posing in front of the memorial lights)

(above – incomplete, red, white and blue freedom tower alongside twin tower memorial lights)

Related articles

• Jersey City residents, first responders gather for 9/11 memorial service (nj.com)
• Empty Sky 9/11 memorial opens in Jersey City with emotional ceremony (nj.com)

Fire Truck Photo Opp – Remembering 9/11 is a post from... Dan Reich - A Student - Learning, Living at the Intersection of Business + Technolog + Innovation + Culture.
Follow me on Twitter: @DanReich Facebook: Facebook.com/danreich

That was the overwhelming response I got from my friends in college. I had a beat up card board box sitting in the corner of my bedroom with 25 “skull crushers” and a square, black banner from SkullCandy.

“What are you going to do with them?” my friend asked as he was pointing to the box of headphones. “Give them away” I said. “I’m going to have the performers throw them into the crowd at the Halloween Party.”

My friend continued with the questions, “Really? Where did they come from?” I said, “The Consumer Electronics Show. This guy Rick started a headphone company. I couldn’t leave his booth. He had the sickest headphones with ridiculous designs and backpacks with built in speakers. Every design was so interesting and unique. I thought it would be awesome to give these away at the Halloween Party so I called them up and asked if they wanted to sponsor the party. They said yes.”

I’m pretty sure this was one of the first events they ever sponsored. The event was great and I sent them pictures as proof.

(above: picture of Collie Buddz in front of the SkullCandy banner at my Halloween event)

(above: picture of the DJ spinning in front of the SkullCandy banner at my Halloween event)

This was all a result of my 2003 trip to the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, the same year SkullCandy was founded. I met Rick Alden, John Lisichich, Brad Williams and a few other folks from SkullCandy while I was walking the exhibition hall. I don’t know the exact figures or size of the show off the top of my head, but suffice it to say, you could spend weeks walking the exhibition hall of that show and still not see every booth. And you would want to. As a tech junkie of gadgets and gizmos you could stay busy for hours looking at all the toys, but for some reason I couldn’t leave the SkullCandy booth once I stumbled upon it.

Apparently I wasn’t the only one either.

Fast forward to today. The company is now a publicly traded company and no matter where you go you’ll find SkullCandy product.

When I think about that box sitting in my room I often wonder about what they did so differently or what they did that made them so successful. After all, they were just selling headphones and in a business sense being in consumer electronics is typically a pretty hard business.

But the more I think about it, the more I realized their success came from great marketing and hustle. Rick and his team enthusiastically spoke to almost everyone that walked through their booth and they had a product they were proud to stand behind. It was a product they were excited about and a product mostly everyone else was excited about. It’s pretty easy to see how they would of had success getting their “skull crushers” into stores and moving them off the shelves. And now they are a global brand with product in almost every store.

It’s really exciting to see a small underdog grow up to be a leader in a space and its equally as gratifying to have have been a small part of the ride. I hope I see more success stories like this and hopefully one day I’ll have the opportunity to build a company like Rick did.

Now they are on to much bigger and better events than my tiny Halloween Party.

 (above: “Identity” concert I went to in Camden NJ on 8/19/2011 – DJ avicii is on stage)

What the hell is SkullCandy? is a post from... Dan Reich - A Student - Learning, Living at the Intersection of Business + Technolog + Innovation + Culture.
Follow me on Twitter: @DanReich Facebook: Facebook.com/danreich