Education in the Age of Student Entrepreneurs

Education in the Age of Student Entrepreneurs
GoDaddy’s Get Found Updates Small Business Information Online
Go Full Color with HP LaserJet Pro MFP-M177
“123456″ Replaces “Password” on Annual “Worst Passwords” List
What Do Small Business Administration (SBA) Loans Look Like?

Posted: 27 Jan 2014 04:00 PM PST

student entrepreneurs

Entrepreneurship has become “cool” over the last 20 years since the Internet came into being. Youth entrepreneurship, especially college students trying their hands at digital start-ups, is now quite a phenomenon.

Today, we’re going to look at a team of student entrepreneurs who have launched a product and got it to a revenue generating stage while still at school.

Meet Yatit, Drew and Jak

Yatit Thakker, the CEO of Omninox, had always loved science. As an engineering student at the University of Florida, he was however, disappointed with the boring textbooks and tools used to teach science.

Though there were several online education programs, Yatit felt they were not utilizing the technology to its full potential. Even with powerful platforms like iBooks, the online education programs being created were mere digital reproductions of the textbooks, without much interactivity.

The iBooks platform, though, was capable of much more.

So, in the summer of 2012, Yatit with Drew Vincent and Jak Yap, his fellow environmental engineering students at the University of Florida, took it upon themselves to make science challenging and fun to learn.

The Founding of Omninox

The three founded Omninox and created interactive, mobile study guides called Omniguides for high school students using the iBooks platform. They funded the company from their savings accounts, with part-time jobs, and some pre-seed investments from their families.

Omninox aims to consolidate the material that students learn for Advanced Placement (AP) STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) classes by offering built-in software tools such as a calculator, quizzes and sketchpad with social sharing.

Their first interactive guide for Calculus 1 was one of the top listed Calculus 1 guides on the iBookstore. Over the next year, the market became more competitive. Companies like OpenStax, SchoolYourself and Houghton Mifflin had also started using the iBooks platform to create more interactive products.

However, Omninox had a first mover advantage and it upped its game as well. It became part of the iBookstore's textbook section. This was a huge challenge for Omninox but had its rewards. A private school in California made the Calculus Omniguide a requirement for all its students.

Each AP Omniguide is sold as an integrated software package for $15. In 2013, Omninox released its first commercial product and it is already in the revenue stage. It has had more than 200 paid downloads across the world, with 120 of these in the past six months.

Close to 600,000 students are projected to take physics, calculus or statistics in the 2014 AP course. Assuming one-third of this target market has access to an iPad, it translates to a potential market of $3 million per year.

The Future of Omninox

Yatit says they plan to expand Omniguides to a web-based platform once they have a stronger base of content and customers. The platform will include more general preparatory courses for a subscription fee of $10 a month. This will help provide not only better content but also provide a more continuous revenue stream. They could also consider providing online tutoring for AP STEM courses.

One of the challenges that the online education sector faces is that many professors and academicians are not as savvy with Web technologies as their students. They have typically collaborated with eLearning companies and have released products and courses that have stuck to the sage-on-the-stage model. Online education's true potential lies in exploring the guide-on-the-side model.

Is it then time to collaborate with student-led ventures like Omninox to bring out the true potential of digital technology in education?

More broadly, today's generation of students are digital natives. They have been exposed to the Internet, smartphones, tablets, social media and many other technologies from a very young age. It is not surprising that we're seeing a tremendous surge of entrepreneurship among students these days.

Image: Omninox Publishing Team, Omninox

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GoDaddy’s Get Found Updates Small Business Information Online

Posted: 27 Jan 2014 01:30 PM PST

godaddy

The popular Web hosting company and platform GoDaddy, is today launching a new service called Get Found. It will allow businesses to update their information simultaneously across multiple online platforms. With a few clicks of the mouse these changes can be made on diverse sites such as Google, Yahoo, Facebook and Yelp.

Get Found was created by a firm called Locu, which GoDaddy acquired last year. It aims to fix the problem of outdated business information, when businesses move location, but their old details remain online. If the new details are not known, that business can lose customers to a competitor.

GoDaddy VP/General Manager of Discovery Marketing Products and Locu Co-Founder Rene Reinsberg told Small Business Trends this outdated information is a big problem. An estimated 10 billion dollars is lost in the United States alone each year as a result.

So far, Get Found is available only in the United States. It will focus on basic information such as the business’s address, phone number, service that is offered and hours of operation. Get Found will make sure this information is accurate and updated on search engines and social media, as well as any local sites relevant to the business.

Sites which will initially become available to Get Found customers will include Google, Yahoo, Bing, Yelp, Foursquare, Yellow Pages, Citysearch, Tripadvisor, Local.com, Judy’s Book, MerchantCircle and MojoPages.

godaddy2

Reinsberg explained:

“When customers see missing or inaccurate information about your business, they go to a competitor. Businesses miss potential revenue when information is missing or inaccurate. With Get Found, businesses will never miss out on a new customer because they didn’t change their address, phone number or hours of operation.”

Although the information is sent to all of the platforms simultaneously, each site will have its own waiting period before the information updates. Search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing can take up to one month. By comparison, sites such as Yelp, Foursquare and Yellow Pages will update within a few minutes. Still, having the ability to update everywhere from one dedicated platform will reduce the number of clicks needed and the number of different site visits required.

CRM industry analyst Brent Leary, a partner at CRM Essentials, told Small Business Trends:

“Most small businesses are still trying to figure out how to leverage mobile and social technologies to reach potential customers. Get Found helps them get started in a way that covers the fundamentals, but at a low cost of entry. It gives you feedback on how your business compares to other local businesses, so you can improve. It’s not for advanced marketers but there are millions of small businesses that fall into the beginner category.”

Images: GoDaddy

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Go Full Color with HP LaserJet Pro MFP-M177

Posted: 27 Jan 2014 11:00 AM PST

laserjet pro mfp-m177

Today, if a technology item does not fit in your hand or come with apps you can play, it does not catch much attention. Printers are not often handheld, although I had a tiny portable printer years ago that was amazing until I fried it on a trip to London with the wrong power converter. Ouch. The new HP Color LaserJet Pro MFP-M177 does not fit in one hand. You'll need both hands to move it, but it is worth considering for the small business that wants to make a big impression.

I've always been a bit of a printer fan because I got my start in business doing desktop publishing work. I have purchased many HP printers as they first hit the market, including some expensive workhorse laser printers. This new color laser from HP is awesome. I try not to "gush" in my reviews, but if you want crisp print – lasers are the way to go – and the LaserJet Pro MFP-M177 does not disappoint.

Let me cut to the chase– street price on this printer is $299. That's in range for almost any small business that needs a high quality printer that will fit on a desk and runs quietly. It is easy to use; many companies promise "plug and play" but HP really does it. I plugged it into one of my desktops and it quickly set itself up, no driver install/setup needed on Windows. I don't own an Apple computer, but the specs show you can print with Apple AirPrint, too.

What I Really Like:

It's fast. Seventeen pages per minute in black and white; 4 pages in color.
It has crisp 600 x 600 B&W resolution. For color, you get the ImageREt 2400 resolution (which, as I understand it – means you get the four primary colors in 600 dpi each. 600 times 4).
MFP stands for multi-function printer. So, print, scan, fax, copy. Big copier functions so you can even copy both sides of an ID card onto one side of a page.
Wireless capabilities so you can print from just about any mobile device.
Easy to print envelopes or on smaller photo paper or postcards, one at a time. Yes, lots of printers also can do this.
You can scan directly to email.

What I'd Like to See:

The cool touchscreen display didn't offer a button/icon to scan documents. I did the full CD install later and could scan from the desktop software itself. Load the doc, click scan and it worked. But I never had the scan icon show up on the touchscreen.

One of the big concerns on color lasers, not unlike inkjets, is the cost to replace cartridges. The evaluation unit HP loaned me for this review came with a "starter" cartridge set, but the full cartridges run about $57 each and you need three (cyan, yellow, and magenta), plus black.

In the specs it shows you get approximately 1,000 pages per color cartridge and 1,300 for the black one. That might be pricey for you or it might be cheap – to produce short run, custom documents for your marketing and sales efforts. You may be able to get a combo pack from Costco, Sam's Club or Amazon.

For the HP Color LaserJet MFP- 177fw printer technical specs, head to the official HP page. But you may decide to buy it from one of their many retailers, such as, Staples, Office Depot or Amazon. I have purchased and tested a number of printers and truly found this new LaserJet to be a winner at $299.

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“123456″ Replaces “Password” on Annual “Worst Passwords” List

Posted: 27 Jan 2014 08:00 AM PST

worst passwords

The number combination “123456″ replaces the only slightly more obvious “Password” at the top of the “Worst Passwords” list compiled annually by password security company SplashData. The list of 25 is compiled from millions of stolen passwords posted online during the previous year.

In a release introducing this year’s list, the company explains:

“For the first time since SplashData began compiling its annual list, “password” has lost its title as the most common and therefore Worst Password, and two-time runner-up “123456″ took the dubious honor.”

SplashData speculates the change in position may have been influenced by the large number of passwords belonging to Abobe users posted online when the company was hacked in October. Early estimates suggested the information of nearly 3 million customers had been affected.

Still, the list would seem to include numerous fairly easy to guess passwords like “111111,” “admin” and even “123123″ finishing in the top 25.

It’s recommended that when choosing a password you select one with eight characters or more containing mixed characters (numbers and letters if possible.) It’s also important to avoid using the same passwords, no matter how secure, for multiple accounts.

Avoid passwords with common substitutions of numbers for letters to spell familiar words or phrases. One example suggested in the SplashData press release would be “dr4mat1c” which substitutes the numbers 4 and 1 for the letters “a” and “i.”

If totally random word and number combinations are too difficult to remember, try a short phrase of unrelated words separated by spaces or dashes. One example suggested in the SplashData release is “smiles_light_skip?”. The phrase includes words that might be easier to remember without writing down but would be hard to guess since they are not related and are separated by random dash symbols.

Here’s the full list of the top 25 “Worst Passwords” for 2013. Obviously, SplashData is recommending if you are using any of these passwords for your business accounts you change them immediately:

1. 123456

2. password

3. 12345678

4. qwerty

5. abc123

6. 123456789

7. 111111

8. 1234567

9. iloveyou

10. adobe123

11. 123123

12. admin

13. 1234567890

14. letmein

15. photoshop

16. 1234

17. monkey

18. shadow

19. sunshine

20. 12345

21. password1

22. princess

23. azerty

24. trustno1

25. 000000

Image: SplashData

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What Do Small Business Administration (SBA) Loans Look Like?

Posted: 27 Jan 2014 05:00 AM PST

sba loans data

Hidden among the large amount of data released regularly by the Federal Reserve is some valuable information about the terms of Small Business Administration (SBA) guaranteed loans.

I found the numbers intriguing because they show that the average SBA-guaranteed loan is smaller, of shorter duration and carries a lower interest rate than I would have otherwise thought.

The data come from the "Survey of Terms of Business Lending," a quarterly questionnaire administered by Federal Reserve Board of Governors to 398 domestic and foreign banks operating in the United States. It asks lenders about the loans they made during the first complete week in the middle month of each quarter.

The survey, in general, is a key source of information about terms of loans made to businesses. In 2012, the data releases began to break out separately information about loans guaranteed by the Small Business Administration (SBA), which is what provides the new insights into the government-guaranteed loans.

Because the survey asks banks about loans made during a particular week, the responses jump around a bit. To provide a smoother picture of SBA-guaranteed loans, I have averaged the data reported by the Fed for the last four surveys.

Here's what the numbers show:

The average SBA-guaranteed loan amount was $276,000.
The average loan maturity was 172 days.
The average annual interest rate on the loans was 3.91 percent.
42.6 percent of the loans were prime-based.
43.5 percent of the loans were subject to pre-payment penalties.
68.2 percent of the loans were secured by collateral.
The average loan was slightly more than "moderate risk," averaging 3.22 on a scale where "3" means "moderate risk" and "4" means "acceptable risk."

Knowing this information is useful if you are looking for an SBA-guaranteed loan or are seeking to understand what's happening to the guaranteed loan market. However, you would not want to use it to draw inference about the small business credit market in general.

SBA-guaranteed loans don't make up a very big fraction of commercial and industrial loans in the United States. The Fed data shows that the average value of SBA-guaranteed loans made during each of the last four survey periods was $973 million.

This works out to 1.1 percent of $84.8 billion in commercial and industrial loans made in the average survey period. And 6.6 percent of the $14.8 billion in small (less than $1 million) commercial and industrial loans to business.

Loan Photo via Shutterstock

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