Last night the nextNY group held a "tips for startup hiring" event which was attended by about 75 folks. The conversation was lively throughout and I was able to capture nearly the entire 90 minute session on video. Some of the topics covered include:
general hiring tips
should you use an attorney?
how to find an attorney
how to find the best developer
what to look for in a developer
where to find talent
do referrals work?
assignment of inventions form - apparently this is critical
compensation - equity, bonus, etc.
how to fire team members and partners
how do you find a partner
what type of equity arrangements work best for partners
ways to incorporate - this is actually an excellent discussion in part 1 of the video at about the 8:00 mark - discussion of asset lifetime with Delicious and capital gains treatment
Last night the nextNY group held a "tips for startup hiring" event which was attended by about 75 folks. The conversation was lively throughout and I was able to capture nearly the entire 90 minute session on video. Some of the topics covered include:
general hiring tips
should you use an attorney?
how to find an attorney
how to find the best developer
what to look for in a developer
where to find talent
do referrals work?
assignment of inventions form - apparently this is critical
compensation - equity, bonus, etc.
how to fire team members and partners
how do you find a partner
what type of equity arrangements work best for partners
ways to incorporate - this is actually an excellent discussion in part 1 of the video at about the 8:00 mark - discussion of asset lifetime with Delicious and capital gains treatment
Last night the nextNY group held a "tips for startup hiring" event which was attended by about 75 folks. The conversation was lively throughout and I was able to capture nearly the entire 90 minute session on video. Some of the topics covered include:
general hiring tips
should you use an attorney?
how to find an attorney
how to find the best developer
what to look for in a developer
where to find talent
do referrals work?
assignment of inventions form - apparently this is critical
compensation - equity, bonus, etc.
how to fire team members and partners
how do you find a partner
what type of equity arrangements work best for partners
ways to incorporate - this is actually an excellent discussion in part 1 of the video at about the 8:00 mark - discussion of asset lifetime with Delicious and capital gains treatment
Last night the nextNY group held a "tips for startup hiring" event which was attended by about 75 folks. The conversation was lively throughout and I was able to capture nearly the entire 90 minute session on video. Some of the topics covered include:
general hiring tips
should you use an attorney?
how to find an attorney
how to find the best developer
what to look for in a developer
where to find talent
do referrals work?
assignment of inventions form - apparently this is critical
compensation - equity, bonus, etc.
how to fire team members and partners
how do you find a partner
what type of equity arrangements work best for partners
ways to incorporate - this is actually an excellent discussion in part 1 of the video at about the 8:00 mark - discussion of asset lifetime with Delicious and capital gains treatment
Last night at the NY Video 2.0 meeting, Magnify.net presented their new Magnify Publisher tool. We wrote about the Magnify Publisher when it launched last week. I did notice that embedded videos are now using a customized Magnify.net player with Magnify branding. This wasn't in the initial launch version last week.
Magnify Publisher offers a variety of video hosts to search from and you can filter to specific providers. Image search currently works with Flickr and more image providers are coming soon. There's also the ability to upload a video (it's stored on Magnify's servers) or record a video directly using a webcam.
NY-based KickApps is announcing a new partnership today with Newsweek's Budget Travel Web site. The new part of Budget Travel will enable readers to maintain a travel profile and share tips, photos, video, and Travel Journals with other site visitors. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
This deal provides Budget Travel with tons of new, search-engine friendly content for basically free. They will be able to get their readers to write content which will appear on the site without paying the readers who contribute. I guess the payment is the ability to read other's travel stories. Oh yea, and don't forget that Budget Travel can also monetize the heck out of the new content!
Starting on May 20th, Streaming Media East will be one of the best places to come see, learn, and discuss what is taking place with all forms of online video business models and technology. The New York City Hilton will be the location for the conference, including a panel called, "Creating and Promoting Amateur and Viral Videos" on Tuesday, May 20th at 1:45pm. For Your Imagination friend and YouTube legend and industry blogger, Kevin Nalts, is moderating the viral video panel which will explore what makes a video viral and how marketers and amateurs can promote their video using online video sites and blogs. Come see firsthand examples from some of the best viral videos creators on the web and learn how they have created an online audience. The panel features J. Crowley, Founder, Black20, Ben Relles, Founder and CEO, BarelyPolitical.com, Kip Kedersha, Viral Video Producer and Paul Kontonis, CEO and Co-Founder, For Your Imagination. Who is bringing the booze for this crazy collection?
Students at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP) last week held their annual Spring Show. Shinyoung Park showed Funji, a messaging system that combines a Facebook app with an offline collectable.
Akio Morita’s “Made in Japan” is an excellent book which was recommended to me very highly by a friend of mine. Here’s top 9 advice from the book:
1) Positioning and finding the customers: When Sony came up with their first tape recorder which was the size of a suitcase, they were baffled by why nobody was rushing to buy them. Then, Morita-san, an engineer, forcefully realized: having a unique technology and being able to make unique products are not enough to keep a business going. You have to sell the products and to do that you have to show the potential buyer the real value of what you are selling. So, he knew that to sell their recorder they would have to identify the people and institutions that would be likely to recognize the value in the product.
They realized, at the time there was an acute shortage of stenographers, so they went to the Japan Supreme Court and they sold 20 machines almost instantly!
2) Adding value: It’s ok to license or use someone else’s technology if you add value on top of that. Sony licensed the first transistor technology from Bell Labs. It was ground-breaking at the time, but it was not enough. They came up with the ingenius idea of trying the negative-positive-negative configuration for the transistor, hence making the transistor faster since negative electrons move faster than positive ones. Along with trying and perfecting the “phosphorus doping” method which Bell Labs said was unusable, they came up with the first commercially-feasible transistor in their transistor radio.
3) Perseverance and vision: Texas Instruments was the first company to put out a transistor radio but TI gave up the product without putting much effort into marketing it. As the first in the field, they might have capitalized on their position and created a tremendous market for their product as Sony. But they apparently misjudged that there was no future in the business of small, portable radios and gave up. 4) Value of the perception of the company: Morita-san believed that a trademark is the life of an enterprise and that it must be protected boldly. A trademark and a company name are not just clever gimmicks-they carry responsibility and guarantee the quality of the product.
5) Marketing is almost everything: This advice is for the entrepreneurs coming from a technical background. Marketing is really a form of communication. It’s educating the customers to the uses of your products. Without this, the company will surely fail. 6) Innovation vs Market Research: This advice is a bit controversial. Sony’s plan from the beginning was to lead the public with new products rather than ask them what kind of products they want. Morita-san believes the public does not know what is possible. So instead of doing a lot of market research, Sony refined their thinking on a product and its use and tried to create a market for it by educating and communicating with the public. Examples: Walkman, Betamax, Consumer video cameras, etc. Morita-san asserts that no amount of market research could have come up with Sony Walkman idea or predicted that it would be so successful. 7) Trust your vision: When Sony came up with their first small pocket transistor radio, Morita-san came to New York to sell it to the American market. At the time they were desperate for cash and were barely making their payroll. The people at Bulova loved the product. They said “We definitely want some of these. We will take one hundred thousand units.” Morita-san was stunned, it was an incredible order, worth several times the total capital of Sony at the time. But they said there was one condition: Sony would have to put the Bulova name on the radios.
That stopped Morita-san. When he started Sony, he had vowed that they would not be Original Equipment Manufacturers(OEM) for other companies. So he refused the order despite everyone around him thinking he was crazy. Bulova told him nobody knew Sony’s name but with Bulova’s name on the radios, they would be sold like hotcakes. Morita-san said: “I am now taking the first step for the next fifty years of my company. Fifty years from now I promise you that our name will be just as famous as your company name is today”.
8) Management: Morita-san always looked for people who can be persuasive, can make people want to cooperate with them, for management positions, as management is not dictatorship. Also the performance of a manager is measured by how well that manager can organize a large number of people and how effectively he or she can get the highest performance from each of the individuals and blend them into a coordinated performance. 9) Employees: The business does not start does not start out with the entrepreneur organizing his company around the worker as a tool. He starts a company and then he hires personnel to realize his/her idea, but once he hires employees he must regard them as colleagues or helpers, not as tools for making profits. There has to be mutual respect and a sense that the company is the property of the employees and not of a few top people.
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Last night the nextNY group held a "tips for startup hiring" event which was attended by about 75 folks. The conversation was lively throughout and I was able to capture nearly the entire 90 minute session on video. Some of the topics covered include:
Last night at the 
Akio Morita’s “
