Crazy Valuations: Instagram Deal Worth More Than New York Times

Link to Small Business News, Tips, Advice - Small Business Trends

Crazy Valuations: Instagram Deal Worth More Than New York Times
Shedding Light on Pinterest: Join The Facebook Chat
Overwhelming Majority of Small Business Owners Optimistic, Says SurePayroll Survey
6 Intangibles Make You A Premium
Job Creation by Angel Backed Companies Collapsed in 2011
Running a Business Takes Action, Planning

Posted: 09 Apr 2012 08:34 PM PDT

The news sounds like something out of a novel: a high tech company with 13 employees and less than 2 years old, gets acquired for a breath-taking $1 billion by Facebook. That was the news announced earlier today all over the tech Web.

The company is Instagram. In case you’re not familiar with it, Instagram is an elegant photo sharing application you use with an iPhone or Android. Photos, like mobile, are a hot trend today. Put the two together and, well, you have a billion dollar deal (at least in Silicon Valley).

Facebook, the social networking giant, plans on an IPO soon. As to the why of the acquisition, it makes sense when you think of how important photos are on Facebook. AllThingsD noted earlied today:

Facebook is currently the largest photo-storage site in the world, with an average of 250 million photos uploaded per day, as Kara Swisher notes here. A 2011 Pew Internet study showed that 20 percent of Facebook users cop to commenting on a Facebook photo at least once a day. Many felt that Instagram, with its user base of around 33 million — and with about a million of those users having signed up immediately after the Android version of the mobile app launched last week — was increasingly becoming a real threat in the social networking space.

And there's another small-but-noteworthy value-add here for Facebook as well: Your location.

Instagram, which was created by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger back in March of 2010, has an easy-to-use geotag feature in its photo-sharing process that lets users tell everyone exactly where they were when they took their photos.

Om Malik agrees, in a more colorful fashion.

But what if you’re an employee in an “old media” company? Wonder how it feels to know that the venerable, blue chip company you work for — The New York Times — has a public stock value less than the $1 billion the younger-than-two-year-old-startup fetched? Of course, the two valuations are not exactly apples to apples – but similar enough to marvel over.

Seems like a crazy valuation, but as I pointed out yesterday, investment interest in tech startups is hot again. The Facebook-Instagram acquisition is just one more sign.

From Small Business Trends

Crazy Valuations: Instagram Deal Worth More Than New York Times

Shedding Light on Pinterest: Join The Facebook Chat

Posted: 09 Apr 2012 02:30 PM PDT

Curious about using Pinterest for your business, but not sure where to start? BizSugar (sister site owned by Small Business Trends) will be hosting a Facebook Q & A chat titled, “Shining a Light on Pinterest B2B with Stephanie Ward of Firefly Coaching” to answer questions about using Pinterest.

The Facebook chat will be held Friday, April 13, 2012 from 11AM EST to 12:00PM EST (New York Time). Marketing coach Stephanie Ward (@FireflyCoaching) will be answering your questions about using Pinterest for business during this chat session.

We’ve all heard how fun Pinterest is for personal use, but nailing down marketing strategies using the visual board website requires a bit more finesse. This hour long session is designed to answer your questions about pinning images, sharing links, and getting more traffic from Pinterest to your website. You’ll have the chance to get Stephanie’s insight on the subject, as well as interact with other small business owners interested in Pinterest.

About Our Speaker

Stephanie Ward of Firefly Coaching Stephanie Ward founded Firefly Coaching, a marketing coaching firm that assists entrepreneurs from all around the world with their marketing strategies, in 2002. She left the corporate world to pursue her passion of helping business owners grow profitable businesses. She is a professionally trained coach who received her training at Coach Inc. and is a member of the International Coach Federation. Susan now assists businesses with online marketing, social media marketing, networking, promotion and brainstorming ideas.

Before she began her coaching business, she worked in the corporate arena in business development, sales, marketing, management and consulting, She has an undergraduate degree in Business Management and a Master’s degree in Communication both from the University of Oklahoma. Stephanie is an expert in the Netherlands, where she has lived since 1999.

How to Participate in the Facebook Q and A

Ready to dive into Pinterest? Participation is simple. Get your questions ready and then visit the BizSugar Facebook page between 11AM and 12:00PM EST on Friday, April 13, 2012. Simply post your questions about Pinterest on the BizSugar Facebook page wall and Stephanie will answer them. You can also see her answers to questions posted there by others as well as meet new entrepreneurs and small business owners from BizSugar’s Facebook community.

When: April 13, 2012, 11AM to 12:00PM EST (8:00 to 9:00AM PST)

Where: BizSugar's Facebook Page

We hope to see you at BizSugar’s Facebook Q & A. There’s sure to be lots of great information about using Pinterest for your business! I, for one, am looking forward to it.

From Small Business Trends

Shedding Light on Pinterest: Join The Facebook Chat

Overwhelming Majority of Small Business Owners Optimistic, Says SurePayroll Survey

Posted: 09 Apr 2012 11:30 AM PDT

After years of living under the rain cloud of recession, things may finally be looking up, at least judging by the results of a recent survey conducted by SurePayroll.

The SurePayroll Scorecard, which looks at national, state and regional hiring and salary indices as an indicator of the overall U.S. economy, showed that 70% of small business owners are optimistic about the state of their businesses.

March 2012 small business optimism

The Signs of Good Things to Come

What proof do we actually have that things are better? Well, for one, we’re hiring more. In the survey, 31% said they planned to hire during 2012. Only 2% plan to reduce hiring. Nearly 80% said their first quarter of business met or exceeded expectations, largely due to an increase in customer demand, as well as some cost cutting.

We hire more people when there’s a greater demand for our products and services. When the economy improves, more people spend money. SurePayroll CEO and President Michael Alter says:

"Small businesses are seeing some demand rebounding in their businesses and very few are talking about a pullback in hiring. These are good signs for the future."

Still Room for Improvement

One area that stayed flat or decreased slightly on the SurePayroll Scorecard is salary. While businesses are hiring (at least some of them), they’re not paying more. Some people who work for large corporations took a paycut during the recession – but still haven’t seen that money back.

Here’s hoping that businesses begin to relax and get some confidence that growth is coming and that they will increase pay for employees.

From Small Business Trends

Overwhelming Majority of Small Business Owners Optimistic, Says SurePayroll Survey

6 Intangibles Make You A Premium

Posted: 09 Apr 2012 08:30 AM PDT

Companies and small businesses are not just hiring bodies anymore, that seem to fit and might move the needle. The right people, the best personalities for the culture, who not only have the skills but bring the intangibles that can impact that culture are getting hired.

corporate ladder

Hiring managers tasked with combing through resumes are seeing a disproportional amount of resumes from people who are not qualified for jobs and in many cases the job postings are not specific and focused either. Hence, it's attracting non qualified people.

I hosted an expert career panel with Emily Bennington, Monsters Charles Purdy and Corey Harlock and we discussed current career and work trends. A few key takeaways were:

Be focused on what you are looking for
Make your resume about you, what you want them to know about you
Take responsibility for your own professional development
Manage your online reputation
Do more networking in person
Know what kind of boss, team and culture you fit with

Google knows who it needs. Larry Page, Google Co-founder says:

"Google is organized around the ability to attract and leverage the talent of exceptional technologists and business people. We have been lucky to recruit many creative, principled, and hard-working stars."

Here are 10 Reasons to work at Google posted on their career page. They are very clear about the skills they are looking for and the intangibles that make a really fun culture. Everyone fits the skills and the fun profile.

Putting Employees first at The Container Store has made them a top place to work for the past 13 years according to Fortune's Top 100 companies to work for! They hire people who fit and really want to work in their team environment.

Navigating the career and job landscape takes a very entrepreneurial mindset. It requires creativity, instinct, process, risk and focus. Imperative to your success will be doing the research and preparing yourself for that process. Know yourself really well: your core skills, unique qualities. your accomplishments, what you want to do and who you want to work for.

Bring your skills and these 6 intangibles to stand out and be a premium:

Adaptability: Workers and employees need to be able to flow with change, adapt to change and navigate change with a can do it attitude. Those that can adapt to personal, policy and leadership change will be valuable assets to their work teams and workplace.

Works Well With Others: Working together with people of differing generations, cultures and demographics is a coveted intangible that will become more and more important as our workplace becomes more culturally diverse. Your 'human relations' skills be it developing rapport, listening, motivating others or delegating with respect will be what makes you an important part of any team.

Leadership and Initiative: Owning your job instead of just showing up daily will make you stand out. You don't have to be the 'owner', president, manager or CEO to show leadership. Just look at all the employees honored for their work in the awesome new program "Undercover Boss." Most of these workers just have a strong sense of personal pride and work ethic, regardless of their personal lives.

Multi-Tasker: This is pretty simple. Be willing to do more tasks, jobs and take on more responsibility than ever before. Expect it and get prepared for it. Certainly this should have realistic boundaries.

Open-Mindedness: Being open and flexible to learning new skills, approaches and things, interacting with new people, trying new ways of doing things shows a resilience to do whatever it takes, to do the job.

Positivity: "Whistle while you work". Nothing is more attractive and powerful than someone who is a bright spot in anyone's day and shows up with a positive attitude of gratitude. Leave the personal, heavy stuff at home and come to work ready to greet colleagues and customers and make their day brighter.

As the work place, job search, careers and hiring continue to evolve, it will be the "intangibles" that will ultimately make you stand out and be viewed as and valued as a premium.

Corporate Ladder Photo via Shutterstock

From Small Business Trends

6 Intangibles Make You A Premium

Job Creation by Angel Backed Companies Collapsed in 2011

Posted: 09 Apr 2012 06:00 AM PDT

That should have been the headline of the recent report on the angel capital market put out by the Center for Venture Research (CVR) at the University of New Hampshire. The CVR tells us that angel investments created 165,600 new jobs in 2011; but last year it said that angel investments produced 370,000 new jobs in 2010. Taken together, the CVR’s figures show that job creation by angel-backed companies dropped a whopping 55 percent between 2010 and 2011.

The change in the number of jobs created per investment is similar. The CVR's data show that the average number of jobs at angel-backed companies fell 58 percent (from 6 to 2.5) between 2010 and 2011.

But instead of mentioning this huge job in angel job creation, the report simply says “Angel investments continue to be a significant contributor to job growth with the creation of 165,600 new jobs in the United States in 2011, or 2.5 jobs per angel investment.”

To me that's a big omission. We can debate whether the creation of 165,000 plus jobs is really "significant" in an economy that the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reports created just shy of 27 million private-sector jobs in the 12 months ending in June 2011. But, if you think that the creation of 165,000 new jobs is "significant," then you should think that a 204,400 job drop is "significant" too.

If we believe the CVR's numbers, then we need to figure out what happened. A drop of this magnitude in angel job creation shouldn’t be ignored.

Are the numbers correct? The authors of the report — who know the data better than anyone else — expressed no reservations about the 2010 job creation figures. In last year's report, they wrote, "Angel investments continue to be a significant contributor to job growth with the creation of 370,000 new jobs in the United States in 2010, or 6 jobs per angel investment." If last year's figures were erroneous, surely they would have noticed and said something (or at least included a disclaimer in their report.)

Second, both government agencies and academics have (implicitly) expressed confidence in the CVR's figures. For instance, the National Science Foundation reproduced some of the CVR's numbers in its 2010 Science and Engineering Indicators, a widely used government report.

Moreover, in a recent blog post on Forbes.com, Professor Patti Greene of Babson College discussed the 2011 CVR report without out expressing any concern about the accuracy of the figures. (Please note that I am not criticizing Dr. Greene here; I, too, have used the CVR's numbers uncritically.)

On the other hand, something seems wrong with the CVR’s numbers. The 2010 job creation figure was 48 percent higher than the 2009 figure. And the 2010 estimate of the number of jobs created at the average angel-backed company was 37 percent larger than the previous year's figure. Unfortunately, the CVR doesn't provide enough information about its methodology for others to figure out if their analyses contain any errors or biases. All we can do is to rely on the folks at CVR to tell us if there's a problem, and they didn't.

This poses a dilemma. The 2011 report says that the dollar value of angel investment increased 12.1 percent between 2010 and 2011; the number of ventures receiving angel funding went up 7.3 percent; and the number of angels investing increased 20 percent. Therefore, if we believe the CVR's analysis, we need to conclude that the angel market is improving, but job creation at angel backed companies is plummeting. However, if we think something is wrong with the CVR's numbers, then we have to conclude that the report tells us nothing about what's going with the angel capital market.

Which alternative do you think is correct?

From Small Business Trends

Job Creation by Angel Backed Companies Collapsed in 2011

Running a Business Takes Action, Planning

Posted: 09 Apr 2012 02:30 AM PDT

Running a business takes action and planning. There are times when being the boss means decisions must be made quickly with limited information and limited time. However, long-term it is also helpful to have plans for day to day operations and growth. Today’s wrap-up looks at both sides of this critical balance.

Decision Time

How to be in charge. Whether you’re dealing with clients, customers, or employees, it’s important for you to do your best to respond appropriately to problems in your business as a leader. Do you take leadership when necessary in your business? You’re the Boss

The best social media channels. Social media can be a cheap and effective means of marketing your business startup, especially in the early days when prospects are thin. But which channel is most effective for your particular small business, product or service? WSJ

Marketing & Startup

Important guest blogging tips. Guest blogging is another inexpensive and effective way of promoting your business, brand, or expertise. But how can you be sure your guest posts will be accepted every time and anywhere you pitch them? Socialmouths

Calming your startup fears. Are you concerned about making that big leap and starting your first business? Here are some tips to help you calm your fears. It’s time to get started with your small business ambition today! Learn About

Operations & Growth

How will your business beat the odds? It’s important to understand that small business success is based on more than just luck. Certainly, every business faces challenges, however, so success is based on narrowing the odds. Startup Professionals Musings

Work smarter, not harder. Do you have an ambition to increase your business revenue or style, but think it will take more work in order to get your small business to the next level? It may not. Learn to improve what you do without putting in more time. Marie Forleo

Tips For Success

Starting a local business. There are some tips you won’t want to forget when starting a local business. Not surprisingly, planning is among the most important things to remember. What advice would you give about starting a local business? Small Business CEO

Better engagement with a few simple steps. Improving your ability to engage with others isn’t about having innate social gifts. Instead, it’s about incorporating best practices into your efforts when engaging with others and working to improve your skills. IdeaBloke

Moving Forward

Mentoring tomorrow’s small business leaders. Giving a helping hand to tomorrow’s business leaders may be the first step in building a stable future out of today’s uncertain economic environment. Do what you can to help by mentoring the business leaders of tomorrow. BizSugar Blog

Tips for business expansion. When it comes time to expand your existing business, what is the best approach? In most cases there are several options open. Read the above link for one example of expansion possibilities. BizCompare

From Small Business Trends

Running a Business Takes Action, Planning