In 1909 about 50% of the work force was involved in agriculture, today its about 5%, yet we don't have 45% unemployment, because capitalism is great a retooling underutilized resources. In the 1900s Many of those farm jobs went to the Steel Mills. Ironically, 100 years later, in Japan, the steel jobs are retooling to farming. This BBC video explains.
It's like the Beatles, but in reverse...and with slightly less hype. Mimeo.com has launched a site for the United Kingdom - www.mimeo.co.uk
It’s good to see Larry Cheng has posted a list of current Blogs by Venture Capitalists. It’s interesting to compare the 2009 list to the VC bloggers list from 2006 and the VC Blogger List from 2007.
Next NY’s “Jumpstarting Sales in Your Startup” panel last night featured Mark LaRosa of QuotaCrush and Jeff Stewart of Urgent Career. Though the group was lively to begin with, the question that generated the most buzz - "What are the best ways to get past a gatekeeper?" - was such a classic that I had to post the best responses.
Here’s the best of the best that came out of the crowd last night:
Give the gatekeeper the benefit of the doubt. Most salespeople assume that an assistant doesn’t have the time, judgment, or influence to help them, and therefore ask immediately for the decision-maker. Huge mistake! Treat every assistant with the courtesy and respect of a CEO. Doors will magically open for you.
Got any more of your own? We’d love to hear them in the comments.
About the Guest Blogger: Lauren Gilchrist is Urgent Career's "Jill of All Trades," managing operations ranging from finance to marketing to strategy and beyond. A young entrepreneur interested in the intersection of sales and technology, Lauren plans to contribute regularly to Urgent Career's growing web presence as an authority on all things sales. Look for more of Lauren in the coming weeks.
Eric Janszen does a masterful job articulating the conditions needed for a massive innovation bubble. His article is required reading for any entrepreneur looking change the world. The move away form oil will be as big as the transformation from animal power to steam, or transformation from steam to oil.
The Tulips Bubble of 1637 is the classic example of an asset bubble. More recently the assets of real-estate, oil, and gold have all had their bubbles. I believe asset bubbles are a natural occurrence given our collective human nature. (I wonder if algometric trading amplifies or dampens our human propensity for froth and panic.)
But innovation bubbles are a different organism. Innovation bubbles are the markets (our collective intelligence) realization that technological change is afoot. Canals and Railroads are the classic example form the 1800. More recent examples include Radio, Automobiles, TV, and the Internet. Fortunes will be made and lost, but in the wake of the bubble a new technology will have taken root.
I can’t wait to see what technologies replace oil and coal, and even more so; I can’t wait to see what entrepreneurs make it happen. Will it be microbiologist hackers modifying algae to produce cheep fuel? Maybe nanotechnologists will invent cheep solar cells that are super efficient. Perhaps some grad student is about to drop out of college to commercialize his ultra-capacitor thus ending the need for batteries.
Moving away from oil will take dozens of new inventions and business models; I am just glad Eric Janszen gives us a roadmap.
In Mike Nichols’ 1967 classic “The Graduate”, Dustin Hoffman’s character gets “just one word” of advice: “plastics.” It was a sign of the times; the groundbreaking technology was changing everything from consumer goods to space equipment.
Today, a new generation of materials is looking to graduate to the status of plastic. The problem with plastic is its lifecycle. Plastic production is dependent on oil; therefore, the supply chain is susceptible to the vulgarities of economics and geopolitics. Plastic disposal often involves landfills, which come at an astounding expense. The race is on for a greener, cheaper, and more profitable alternative. Scientific drama will unfold, fortunes will be made and lost, and in the end, plastic will take its place among lead, iron and slate as just another material. Algae-based, fungal-based, mineral-based and cellulosic alternative are all in the race.
Paper byproduct Arboform looks like plastic and even employs injection-molding - just like plastic.
The final product can resemble highly polished wood or have a more matted finish and look like the plastic used in most household items.
The transition from Plastic is a saga worth watching, I look forward to the next “New New”.
Note: Greensulate also looks promising.
There is nothing more important for a tech start-up than attracting great employees. As the economy slows, it becomes slightly easier to attract exceptional talent which is great news for start-ups.
The first dozen hires are usually the most critical because this core group will set the culture for the next 100 hires. A hiring mistake early on can set your start-up back months (or worst). When possible this core group should be recruited from existing relationships. Ideally people you have worked with, or have worked directly with people you respect and trust. The problem with this approach is it limits your choices to a much smaller pool of talent, and does not scale as your company grows. That’s where job boards can be handy, especially in a shrinking economy.
As a general rule of thumb I find that the best employees are usually already happily employed. In a growing economy, that means a founder must be super persuasive to get them to join his/her start-up. But in a shrinking economy, like the one we are experiencing now, even capable talent is hitting the job boards.
2005
First Choice – Candidates I have worked with, or have worked with close associates
Second Choice – Candidates currently happily employed elsewhere
Third Choice – Candidates from Job Boards
2009
First Choice – Candidates I have worked with, or have worked with close associates
Second Choice – Candidates from Job Boards
Third Choice – Candidates currently happily employed elsewhere
I have compiled a list of the top 50 Job Boards, ranked by traffic. A mix of well written job postings can yield hundreds of resumes and a handful of viable candidates.
1 Craigslist http://www.craigslist.com 40,500,000
2 Monster http://www.monster.com 27,000,000
3 CareerBuilder http://www.careerbuilder.com 12,600,000
4 LinkedIN http://www.linkedin.com 7,800,000
5 Indeed http://www.indeed.com 7,000,000
6 Simply Hired http://www.simplyhired.com 5,100,000
7 Snag a Job http://www.snagajob.com 3,600,000
8 USAJOBS http://www.usajobs.gov 2,800,000
9 EmploymentGuide.com http://www.employmentguide.com 1,200,000
10 The Ladders http://www.theladders.com 1,000,000
11 Beyond http://www.beyond.com 982,000
12 Top USA Jobs http://www.topusajobs.com 867,000
13 Jobs.com http://jobs.com 864,000
14 Dice.com http://www.dice.com 848,000
15 JobFox http://www.jobfox.com/ 670,000
16 jobster.com http://www.jobster.com 630,000
17 thingamajob.com http://www.thingamajob.com 565,000
18 Vault http://www.vault.com 556,000
19 JobIrn http://www.jobirn.com 517,000
20 JobCentral http://www.jobcentral.com 476,000
21 Yahoo! HotJobs http://www.hotjobs.com 418,000
22 Job Bank USA http://www.jobbankusa.com 416,000
23 FlipDog http://www.flipdog.com 370,000
24 HigherEdJob http://www.higheredjobs.com 297,000
25 Net-Temps http://www.net-temps.com 264,000
26 GoJobs.com http://gojobs.com 263,000
27 NationJob Network http://www.nationjob.com 231,000
28 JuJu.com http://www.juju.com 220,000
29 America's Job Bank http://www.jobbankinfo.org 207,000
30 sologig http://www.sologig.com 186,000
31 brightfuse.com http://www.brightfuse.com 163,000
32 Job Target http://www.jobtarget.com 155,000
33 xing.com - Europe http://www.xing.com 136,000
34 jobscore.com http://jobscore.com/corp 130,000
35 Prohire.com http://jobs.prohire.com 112,000
36 College Recruiter http://www.collegerecruiter.com 98,000
37 climber.com http://www.climber.com 93,000
38 Work Tree http://worktree.com 74,000
39 yotify.com - linkedin alerts http://yotify.com 73,000
40 6figurejobs.com http://6figurejobs.com 72,000
41 Employment911.com http://www.employment911.com 71,000
42 Jobthread http://www.jobthread.com 71,000
43 CareerSite.com http://www.careersite.com 65,000
44 Jobs2web.com http://www.jobs2web.com 62,000
45 Trovix http://www.trovix.com 62,000
46 smuz.com http://smuz.com 59,000
47 VisualCV http://www.visualcv.com 56,000
48 CareerShop.com http://www.careershop.com 51,000
49 The Interview Exchange http://www.interviewexchange.com 51,000
50 Real Match http://www.realmatch.com 50,000
Looks like Dogbert also expounds the benefit of portfolio diversification.
Last week I blogged about falling solar panel costs. Several readers theorized offline that the economic downturn might slow production and lead to further panel shortages, thus raising costs and slowing adoption. Good news. This morning my friend in the semiconductor industry forwarded me this iSuppli study indicating that prices are expected to fall a record 20% in 2009.
“In 2009, average prices for panels for new installation contracts will collapse to the US$2.50 to US$2.75 per watt range by the end of 2009, down from the current level of US$4.20 per watt. – iSuppli”
In addition to the advances in solar electric production, we are also seeing advances in power storage, including nano-capacitors.
All this activity further validates my underling theory: we have seen this game before (CPUs, Memory, and Storage). The solar game is just like the computer hardware game, and the winners will be businesses and consumers.
So I ask… who are the Robert Noyce, Gordon Moore, Andy Grove, Steve Jobs and Jack Simplot of solar?
also related: Wall Street and Solar
Back in October, I blogged about the dropping price of solar and the inevitability of cheap electricity.
This Report illustrates the massive 40% increase in global solar panel production capacity. The report indicates that “incentive schemes and technical advances are having a positive downward impact on photovoltaic costs.” Market value is estimated to reach €40 billion by 2010 while prices for customers continue to drop.
Though today solar is an immaterial component of global energy production, if production keeps growing at 40%, solar could get very big fast.
There is a nice summary at mokkikunta
Steve Spalding's article “21 Great Advertising Networks For Publishers” is the best round up of services for publishers to monetize traffic I have seen in a long time. I linked to the article because I thought it might also be useful for start-ups that need to advertise as well as Angels investors, looking to better understand the (still growing) on-line advertising market.
I have a group of friends that are passionate about solving global warming. We e-mail around articles, observations and opinions. These friends are mostly tech-entrepreneurs, economists and wall-street-types, so the conversation is usually very action-oriented… as opposed to political or academic policy/theory. But this week something changed. Now that the election is over, even my political-policy-wonk friends started talking about climate change.
My theory is that now that the election is over, global climate change will start to get the attention it deserves. Looks like the new administration agrees, because they seem poised to appoint a “Climate Czar”
Global climate change is as big as a problem as problems get. To solve it, we are going to need innovation from everywhere. Historically, I have trumpeted the innovation form industry, scientist and entrepreneurs. (Full disclosure am a huge fans of Joseph Schumpeter’s theory of creative destruction). However, climate change demands innovation in public policy (translation: governments). Let’s hope that now that the election is over, we can move the conversation about climate change off the listserve and onto the web.
I predict Global Climate change will get solved:
By technology,
Invented by scientists,
Commercialized by entrepreneurs,
Spurred on by investors,
and supported by public policy.
Let’s hope a more public discussion adds fuel the fire, (Wow, that is a bad use of metaphor).
Coordinating meeting times is still cumbersome. Sometimes it takes a dozen emails simply to find a time for a 3-person call. Why hasn't this problem been solved? Microsoft? Google? Can't someone make a universal tool for finding a time to meet?
Adeo at TheFunded is so fed up he has adopted a freestyle approach, but my gut says there has to be a technological solution.
For years i have been following Whenisgood.net, and this morning i was invited to schedule a meeting using the service. Wow has the service has improved! Liberal use of AJAX helps, and I think they are on the right track. Similarly to Timebridge, they still haven't hit the nail on the head yet, but I have high hopes. I wish them and others sucess.
One hint for Whenisgood: if you're serious about solving the scheduling problem...splurge and buy the .com domain...or even better buy pointment.com from our half-baked attempt to solve this problem.
Please, someone solve this multi-party-cross-platform-scheduling problem so my assistant and I can move on to other pressing issues.
I like to have a detailed business plan in place before committing serious resources to a new venture… I figure it is a lot better to catch mistakes on paper, as opposed to discovering them once cash and careers are on the line.
A business plan should not be viewed simply as a funding document. Even if you don’t expect to have outside investors, it is a great way to solicit feedback from people you respect and trust. Writing a plan is hard work, but it makes execution easier. I am surprised how many start-ups don’t invest the time to write down their plan, yet still expect an outside investment.
Why should an investor risk their cash if the entrepreneur is not willing to think through her idea?
Over the last few years, I have witnessed an increase in the number of entrepreneurs who expect to raise funds with nothing more than a prototype and a PowerPoint. The general consensus in Silicon Valley is that funding is about to be a lot harder to come by. I hope that one of the upsides of the nuclear winter is startups that are more thoroughly thought out.
There will always be capital available for good management teams with well thought-out plans… Perhaps the ability to think through an idea is the mark of a good management team?
Of course, planning is no substitute for actual selling. For pitching, Prototypes and PowerPoint reign supreme.
"No battle plan ever survives contact with
the enemy"
"No business plan ever survives
contact with the customer"
Moltke:
This picture looks West on Wall Street towards Trinity Church. It caught my attention because:
1.) The Church is where my Great Grandparents were married
2.) The street is near the offices of my first start-up, and
3.) The picture is from May 14, 1884 when the sudden failure of the Grant and Wood Bank caused a panic.
This run reminded me of the recent run on Bear and Lehman. In 1884 business returned to normal within a few days. As for Lehman…you be the judge. It’s easy to forget that bank failures were common before the formation Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation in the 1930’s. I am often reminded of this when I talk with business owners from former Soviet nations, as they see bank failures as a normal occurrence. I wonder if the 2000’s will look more like the 1900’s or the 1800’s? Hopefully neither; the 1900’s were hit by a huge string of failures in the 30s…and the 1800’s were even worse.
This chat does a good/interesting job of comparing the 1929 stock market crash to the drop in 2008.
There is something about a market crash that makes me wants to write. I guess it is a cathartic way to deal with loss.
Given the huge drop in Japan and London, we might expect the US market to drop substantially this morning. Though I weep for the NIKKEI, I fear for the DOW.
I think it is easy to lose track of the BIG picture…the long-term view. This may seem ironic, given my obsession with speed and urgency, but I don’t confuse urgency with short-sightedness. Rather, I think small improvements implemented urgently can have huge impacts on the long-term outcome.
I guess you could say my long-term view increases my urgency. Furthermore, a long-term view needs to be long…maybe 10 years, maybe 100 years, maybe even 1,000 years? 1,000 years really puts things in perspective. Let’s look at these long-term views:
The 10 Year View:
Because growth compounds, decisions today impact the future in non-linear ways. If, for example, you have a start-up that is growing 10% a quarter and you decide to invest $10,000, in 10 years your investment will have become $411,000. If you decided to delay that investment for 180 days, however, you would only accumulate $340,000. That lack of urgency would have cost you $71,000.
The 100 Year View:
Stock Markets fluctuate, but overall they have done fairly well over the last 100 years. Despite my belief that the stock market in 2009 – 2010 will struggle due to massive debt and population demographic shifts (baby boomers are moving out of peak earning and spending), pulling out of the market does not make “cents” (bad puns for bad times). Multiple examples prove that history is on our side… over the long term, including:
Markets could only drop to ZERO, but they have unlimited upside (the cup is not only half full, but it could overflow).
The 1,000 Year View
Given my long-term view of opportunities, you can imagine how pleased I was this morning to find an 800-year economic data set.
Here’s the summary of from the study:
The Study goes on:
In the past few years, there have been massive capital flows as the US borrowed billions from abroad while simultaneously sending billions for oil and imports. These old data sets provide useful insights into the likelihood of inflation.
So in conclusion:
Last night I read about the crash of 1873. Fascinating. If you expect to live for 100 years, statistically you should also expect to experience one major bank run accompanied by a stock market crash. Human nature has not changed since the tulip bubble of 1630. I argue that modern communications do nothing to change the psychology of markets.
A well-run market is a balance between Greed and Fear. Sometimes balance gets out of whack. Overall, I view market crashes as “nature’s way” of clearing out the dead wood, much like a forest fire. Sure some good trees burn, but years later the forests emerge stronger.
Professor Nelson’s article points out:
Sound Familiar?
Correspondingly, if you are a start-up, you need to find a business model that is not dependent on massive cash infusion. When we founded Mimeo in 1998, we were able to raise $20+ million to hire 45 developers and set up an integrated built-to-order manufacturing facility. Today at scale, Mimeo is very cash efficient, but I don’t think I would launch a company that needs to burn through millions of dollars before hitting profitability.
I recommend start-ups that use invention and intellectual capital to create cash flow. Software, web applications, and cleantech come to mind. Truly great start-ups are bigger than any temporary economic downturn.
The article goes on:
I guess markets are like seasons, sooner or later we will see winter. May you be Aesop's Ant…I get the feeling there are more than a few Grasshoppers here in America.
This interesting: Zenbe - its like a meebo for email.
Much like Gordon Moore’s chart that predicted chip performance, this Deutsche Bank chart and reflects Wall Street’s predictions for solar/electricity costs.
There are about 80 known solar manufactures, all scurrying to increase capacity and drive down cost. Plus, who knows how many stealth mode solar manufactures are coming on-line in China? Costs will keep dropping.
It reminds me of the hard-drive, processor and memory chip industry in the mid 1980s.
The big question is this: if there is a global credit crunch, as some predict, how will it impact the dissemination of solar panels? Solar ROI is directly tied to cost of capital.
If credit dries up, grid party will get pushed out and deployment will be slow.
If credit is free flowing, the force of capitalism will deploy solar on every available business roof.
In August of 1858 Edwin Drake proved what I call “oil parity”, the point at which it was cheaper to drill than hunt for whales. Wall Street sprang into action and rammed money down the throat of the opportunity. By August of 1859 there were “oil wells as far as the eye could see in Titusville.”
Moore:
Drake:
Moore's Law:
CPU and DRAM charts:
