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How To Save Your Startup From The “Spotlight Effect”

Nir’s Note: This guest post is by Max Ogles, a writer and entrepreneur based in Utah. Connect with him on Twitter at @maxogles.

Spotlight EffectIn the beginning of 2010, when daily deals site Groupon was really hitting its stride and copycat businesses were popping up left and right, a small startup called Yipit was just getting off the ground. Yipit was involved in daily deals, too, but rather than creating the deals itself, Yipit simply aggregated the deals offered by the other companies to offer a nice tidy list in a daily email.

Like any startup, the Yipit team planned PR and marketing around their launch and hoped that the buzz would yield a nice base of users, (more…)

Time for Digital Hat Racks

Hat rack for devices: don't use devices in meetings

The first thing Don Draper does when he gets to his office is give his busty secretary a suggestive wink. The second thing he does is take off his fedora. Finally, depending on the severity of the previous night, he completes his morning routine with a stiff drink.

What can we learn from Don’s habits? First, that scotch and submissive secretaries always equal drama. But what of that fedora? There’s a lesson there too.

As any Mad Men fan knows, it was once popular for men to wear hats everywhere they went — except, that is, when they stepped indoors. When a gentleman went inside, he (more…)

Why Everyone Hates I.T. People

We hate the I.T. department because of the lack to create innovationQuick: what’s the biggest bottleneck in your company? Yup, we both know it’s the Information Technology department. Let’s face it, nobody likes IT people. For all of their technical wizardry, IT is where good ideas go to die. We follow their onerous documentation requirements and patiently wait in line through endless backlogs, yet somehow IT still can’t seem to get their work done.

Hating the IT department is a common sentiment in almost every company big enough to have such a group. But the truth is, (more…)