Author Archives: Lauren Folino

Yelp Co-founder Ducks Out

Posted on August 16, 2011 by Lauren Folino

Yelp co-founder leaving company. A little less than six years after launching review site Yelp with his former PayPal co-worker Jeremy Stoppelman, CTO Russel Simmons is leaving Yelp , TechCrunch is reporting. “Simmons will be transitioning to an advisor role and take some time off to travel,” Robin Wauters writes. It’s already been a tumultuous year for Yelp, which walked away from a huge takeover deal with Google and later became the target of class-action lawsuit . While the site has reached 31 million monthly unique visitors, there’s still a love-hate relationship between small businesses and Yelp , as we told reported in our February cover story. R.I.P. to the king of the breakfast sausage. A fond farewell this morning goes out to country singer, TV host, and sausage entrepreneur, Jimmy Dean , who died yesterday at the age of 81. An earlier generation may remember Dean best for his 1961 Grammy-winning song “Big Bad John,” but of late he was more acclaimed for his Jimmy Dean brand of breakfast sausages. Born in 1928 and raised in poverty in Plainview, Texas, Dean dropped out of high school in ninth grade before eventually getting into the entertainment business. As the Washington Post reports, Dean got into the sausage business in the late 1960s, using the experience he gained from butchering hogs while growing up. The Jimmy Dean Meat Co. was profitable after six months and was ultimately sold to Sara Lee in 1984. In addition to being remembered as a popular entertainer and successful businessman, Dean’s legacy unfortunately also includes the notoriously stomach-turning creation, blueberry pancake and sausage on a stick . Has the recession actually been good for entrepreneurship? The New York Times ran a piece a couple of weeks ago arguing that “last year was a fabulous one for entrepreneurs,” but Small Business Trends has a different take on the numbers. The Kauffman index, which the Times quotes in the piece, reported a 13.3 percent increase in the number of people who became self-employed from 2007 to 2009, but the post at Small Biz Trends points out that the BLS shows a 5.9 percent drop for the same period. Still, “what’s not measured by either source is the number of people who quit self-employment in a particular month,” the post’s author writes. He points to additional statistics that indicate the self-employment failure rate has become “so large that the number of people working for themselves has dropped, despite a sizeable increase in the number of people becoming self-employed.” I can has Internet empire? The New York Times gets inside the mind of Ben Huh , the man behind quirky blogs like Fail Blog . According to the story, Huh stumbled upon I Can Has Cheezburger, a website full of kitty photos and misspelled captions just three years ago. He posted a link of it to his own blog, which quickly broke down due to the influx of Web traffic. He bought the site with investments and $10,000 of his own savings, and tells the Times that the business, which has grown to include 53 sites, has been profitable since the get go, with most of the money coming from advertising, licensing and merchandise sales. According to Kiki Kane, who works on site development, the Cheezburger Network has grown because of the staff’s commitment to keeping their fingers on the pulse of Internet trends. “We’re constantly monitoring the Web for new memes,” she told the Times. “Those bits of cultural shorthand, inside jokes that you get right away just by seeing a visual image.” How Diapers.com became a $180 million phenomenon . Robots! That’s according to Singularity Hub, which says that the Inc. 500 company was able to quickly fill lots of orders by using robots made by Kiva Systems . We’re not sure if we believe that’s the only reason; fans of the Singularity love robots, after all, but we do think that Kiva’s robots, which allow warehouse workers to stay in one place as the orders come to them, are really darn cool . As the blog says, they are “a great example of how man and machine working together can maximize the efficiency of each.” The company behind Diapers.com, Quidsi, is set to launch a new store, Soap.com, which will try to break into the drugstore business. With the help of robots, naturally. How do you know if your idea will work? Short answer: do your homework and ask for feedback. When Saverio Mancina thought he might be laid off from his job of five years, he started e-mailing more than two dozen executives to find out whether their companies would hire him for projects if he launched his own PR firm. After that, Mancina used LinkedIn to query industry insiders on his business model. When he got the pink slip, he felt confident starting his own company, which now has 10 steady clients. It might be tempting to jump in and hope for the best, but the the Wall Street Journal recommends doing your research first. Solicit feedback from potential buyers to see if they’d be interest in your product and what they’d consider paying for it. For putting together affordable online surveys, try SurveyMonkey or Zoomerang . Seven ways to generate buzz. Small businesses need to get more creative than big corporations when it comes to marketing themselves because they don’t have the seven-figure budgets to blow on pricey ad campaigns. However, SMBs do have the advantage of being able to give their marketing outreach a more personal touch. WebWorkerDaily has seven ideas for entrepreneurs to generate buzz for their small businesses . Some, such as conducting an interview series on your podcast or blog, seem solid, but others, such as organizing a “one-day book club,” might just not be for everyone. In business, how do you measure “inventiveness?” The Daily Beast says that’s simple: just tally how many patents a given company has. To compile a list of the 50 Most Inventive Companies , the site added a twist. It took the number of approved U.S. patents in the past five years and divided it by number of employees, to “measure which companies are inventive in their DNA, versus their bulk size.” Which companies fared best ? Within the top 10, most companies make semiconductors or cellular technology. At #3 is Altera, a semiconductor maker that’s filed 1,064 patents over the past five years. Ranking second is another semiconductor industry player, LSA Corporations, which was lauded in 2006 for improving digital video encoding and decoding for Blu-ray and high-def DVD players. No. 1? that’s InterDigital Communications, a comparatively smaller company that’s been a player in evolving cellphone technology since the 1960s. More from Inc. Magazine: Get this delivered to your inbox. Or get it on the Kindle. Follow us on Twitter or Tumblr . Friend us on Facebook. Apply now for the 2010 Inc. 500|5000 . Business – New York Times – Yelp – Jeremy Stoppelman – Small business Continue reading →

Posted in Business | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Is It Legal To Use Social Network Data When Hiring?

Posted on August 14, 2011 by Lauren Folino

Many start-ups use their Social Network contacts to find additional workers. Why not? Someone’s friend of a friend is probably that chef, programmer or administrative assistant you need, and they’re looking for work. (In fact, Inc. has a great guide to Using Social Media as a Recruiting Tool .) But beware how you use that Social Network data you find. It could lead to discriminatory hiring practices. Most start-ups don’t have an HR department to tell them that different restrictions take effect when you have 4 employees, 15 employees and as you grow past 20 and 50. The Federal Equal Employment Laws prohibit employment discrimination against qualified individuals with disabilities, and prohibit bias based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin, age, as well as other considerations. State and Local laws may impose even stricter rules depending on where your business operates. This data (a candidates race, national origin, pregnancy status, etc.) is considered “protected information” and you can’t ask it in an interview. If it is revealed to you, it is often best to keep it to yourself and not pass it along to other hiring managers. But what happens when the candidate reveals protected information via their social profiles? A Facebook basic profile almost matches the list of things you can’t ask in an interview – race, religion, sexual orientation, relationship status – are all part of the standard questions many people fill in on their pages. “Social Media is an issue in HR and Employment and Compliance law – the protected information on people’s profiles is free, easy and voluntary. It’s not as if the employer is asking “are you pregnant” in an interview,” said lawyer Nancy Schess, a partner at Klein Zelman Rothermel , a labor and employment boutique firm that represents management. “The questions to ask are is a)it legal and b) is it a best practice to go and look for this information in the context of your hiring practice.” Schess continues “Yes, If you go on a search engine and you can find it, you are allowed to look at it. But once you have the information, legally, what can you do with it?” Take the case of a start-up owner who needs new assistant. He asks his network or his HR person to get candidates. He interviews an outstanding woman candidate and practically offers her the position during the interview. Then he finds out via her Facebook status after the interview that she’s 3 months pregnant. The owner knows that 6 months from now when she’s out giving birth, it will be the busy season, when he can’t afford to be without help. Legally he can’t act on this information. I asked Schess, “How do you “un-know” this in your decision making process?” She replied “You can state you didn’t take it into account, but if you are sued for discrimination you have to prove that it wasn’t part of the decision making process. Now you’re in a risk area with a large liability.” Is this kind of worrying really relevant to hard driving, fast-decision-making startups? “It’s my opinion in working with students and startups that they typically don’t care about this kind of information. They want qualified candidates,” says Dan Cohen, a Lecturer in Human Resource Studies at my alma mater, Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations . Cohen was a 15-year entrepreneur who sold his own business and earned a PhD. in Management. He’s also the Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Cornell’s Student Agency’s eLab Incubator . “When start-ups need specialized talent they want the people that can do the job. The need for that talent is often blind to other personal characteristics.” Schess cautions “If you’re going to use Social Media, and it is an appropriate approach, there’s a way to do it that protects you. Separate the information gathering, so the person who does the online search isn’t part of the hiring chain. Perhaps a screening agency, or a different employee. You have that person look at a candidate’s online profile for legitimate business issues, then ask them to brief you about their educational background and business experience. Make sure they don’t tell you about their protected information.” Do you recruit candidates using Social Media? What’s been your experience? Note: You should consult your own attorney before relying on these procedures – employment law varies by state and locality. Law – Human resources – Social Media – Employment – Labour law Continue reading →

Posted in Business | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Inc. 5000 Applicant of the Week: IguanaMed

Posted on July 21, 2011 by Lauren Folino

As applications for the 2010 Inc. 500 | 5000 arrive, we thought it would be worthwhile to shine a spotlight on some of the companies that are vying to appear on our ranking of the fastest-growing private companies in the U.S. (For more information and to apply, go to http://www.inc.com/inc5000apply/2010/ .) One that caught our eye was Chicago-based IguanaMed.IguanaMed makes scrubs, shirts and trousers or gowns worn by nurses, surgeons, and other hospital personnel, but not just any scrubs. The company combines different sporty, creative designs with high-performance, comfortable fabrics, that make flexible movement easier. “We’re not the first company to infuse style creatively into scrubs, but I think we’re doing it aggressively,” says president and CEO Gregory Lilien. “We want to continue to expand fabrics, and keep appearing bold, unique and exciting.”Lilien and his team of seven employees used to market IguanaMed’s scrubs as the “Nike or Puma of medical apparel,” but now, he says, his company is focusing on building the IguanaMed brand, rather than comparing their brand to others. IguanaMed offers several collections and styles of their medical scrubs, but their Med Flex fabrics – namely, their revolutionary Med Flex II, which is a tri-blend with spandex for easy movement – are what make their products especially appealing, he says.While the company was founded in 2005 as a subsidiary of Walrus Brands, another manufacturer of medical scrubs and other niche products, IguanaMed now operates independently from its former parent company. After the split, IguanaMed went on to earn a place on the Inc. 5000 from 2007 through 2009. The company was able to grow its distribution across all 50 states, as well as 11 countries worldwide, including Italy, Saudi Arabia and Brazil. “We’ve learned a lot over the past couple years,” Lilien says. “I think we’re also in a product category that’s not shaken up a lot. It’s fun to be in an older industry and breathe some life into it.” Continue reading →

Posted in Business | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Inc. 5000 Applicant of the Week: Turbie Twist

Posted on July 20, 2011 by Lauren Folino

As applications for the 2010 Inc. 500 | 5000 arrive, we thought it would be worthwhile to shine a spotlight on some of the companies that are vying to appear on our ranking of the fastest-growing private companies in the U.S. (For more information and to apply, go to http://www.inc.com/inc5000apply/2010/ .) One that caught our eye was Butler, Pennsylvania-based Turbie Twist.In 2005, new college graduate Angela Carr and her slightly younger sister Christina Cummings found themselves buying the rights for a small, super-absorbent hair towel from Pittsburgh Plastics, a company that the sisters felt was vastly underutilizing the product. The women renamed the hair towel the Turbie Twist and set out to reconceptualize the marketing of the product.  The original model, while functional, seriously lacked a customer base, explains Carr, but once they realized that the target audience were girls about her age, brainstorming improvements became much easier.”We began asking ourselves, ‘What would I like? What would I want to buy? What do I think is cool?’” she says.The duo also upgraded the product material to plush micro-fibers, increased its environmental friendliness, and offered new colors and prints. Carr says her company landed their first big break in 2006 with the television shopping network QVC, which placed the first large order with the new company. Today, the co-owners own and operate the sole manufacturer of the Turbie Twist hair towel, with its signature elastic loop, which allows for its specially-designed shape to fit securely on heads of all sizes. The company, which now has eight full-time employees, continues to add clients, selling their product at huge retailers such as Ross Stores and Sally Beauty Supply, as well as online retailers such as Cosmeticmall.com and Cachebeauty.com.Carr says she expects the company to continue to grow: “Wet hair, dry hair, children or adults – if you have hair, you can use this product,” she says. Continue reading →

Posted in Business | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Fashion Entrepreneurs Capitalizing on High-End Rentals

Posted on July 1, 2011 by Lauren Folino

Handbags, dresses and shoes are frequently the reason for the dwindling sum of cash in a woman’s bank account, and keeping up to date with the latest trends is difficult when both jobs and funds are in short supply. Luckily, fashionistas don’t have to commit to spending an arm and a leg on trendy digs that are in one day and out the next when they can rent instead. Membership-only designer rental companies that offer costly, elegant attire for just a fraction of the retail price have been experiencing a boom in the down economy. With a mail-order model similar to Netflix, companies are able to rent out high-end merchandise to customers for a short period of time. The renter gets to look and feel glamorous for a week or a month and then drops the items in the mail once they’ve lost their luster. Manhattan-based start-up Rent the Runway (RTR) launched November 9, with about 35,000 members, and is quickly growing. The company was co-founded by two Harvard Business School graduates, CEO Jenn Hyman, 29, and 26-year old President Jenny Fleiss. Hyman said RTR was formed because the pair saw an opening in the market to facilitate a mutually beneficial relationship between customers and designers. “There are all these woman out there who continue to spend a significant portion of their salary on fashion, regardless of whether they’re making $50,000-a-year or $200,000-a-year,” explains Hyman. “If you can capture customers earlier and build brand loyalty, that’s a win-win for both the customer and the designer.”RTR currently offers more than 33 designer brands ranging from Hervé Léger, Proenza Schouler, and Badgley Mischka for $50 to $200. The duo works to build direct relationships with the designers and continues to add new designers weekly. “We are grooming this next generation of customers,” Hyman says. “We feel that once a girl puts on a Hervé Léger dress, she realizes that the way it feels, the way it looks, is so different than the $200 imitations. If she wears that dress to a special occasion in her life, she creates an emotional connection around that brand, and therefore is more likely to become a full-priced customer of that brand later.”Avelle, the New Bag Borrow or Steal, which gained monumental success after being referenced in the Sex and the City movie, is another Web-based rental company getting a lift from the recession. Although the Seattle, Washington-headquartered business was formed in 2004, CEO Mike Smith said that after Sex and the City was released in May 2008 membership increased threefold, and Avelle now boasts more than 1.5 million members. Smith explains that Avelle is currently in the midst of heavily expanding both the product and service lines of operations, including outside repairs from department stores and individuals. “Handbag refurbishing and repair is a business that we really want to grow,” reveals Smith. “We’ve gotten some great response to that, and we’ve actually had some other companies send us their bags in mass to refurbish, so that’s a business we’re going to be investing further in.”With more than 100 featured designers and 4,000-plus different styles, Avelle recently began leasing watches, sunglasses, and jewelry on the site, in addition to designer purses. Membership is not required to rent, but it will get your prefered pricing – the rental price for merchandise varies from less than $40 to more than $400, depending on the item – and products may be rented by the week or month.”We’re a way to enjoy more fashion without the guilt, without the clutter, and without your husband saying, ‘Why do you need another handbag when you’ve got 25 perfectly good ones in your closet?’” says Smith. Continue reading →

Posted in Business | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Scott Gerber, Founder of Sizzle It! and Inc.com Blogger

Posted on December 21, 2010 by Lauren Folino

Scott Gerber, founder of Sizzle It! and Inc.com blogger, answered reader questions on December 6, 2010. Continue reading →

Posted in Business | Tagged , | Leave a comment

First Impressions for Start-ups

Posted on December 2, 2010 by Lauren Folino

Each day, Inc.’s reporters scour the Web for the most important and interesting news to entrepreneurs. Here’s what we found today: Think you’ve mastered first impressions? As the saying goes: You only get one chance. Whether you have an introductory meeting with a prospective client or are pitching a new idea to investors, you don’t want to blow it. But maybe it’s wise to act a little less informed than you are. Entrepreneur and VC Anthony Tjan recommends in the Huffington Post that you should do solid background research on whomever you will be meeting with—but be careful not to flaunt that knowledge too blatantly. As he says, “Act stupid, win smart.” Your goal? “Be armed with the data so that you can answer or direct the conversation appropriately; your goal is not to demonstrate what you know of the person or company but what you had in mind when you first set up the meeting.” Let the tablet media wars begin. Virgin Media mogul Richard Branson announced the launch of Project, an iPad-only style and culture monthly magazine, according to the BBC . The launch of Project comes just a few days after Rupert Murdoch’s launch of his iPad newspaper, The Daily, which, as its name implies, is a daily. Project costs about three bucks an issue, and the magazine’s editors are confident the magazine will be a success. “It’s a quality piece of editorial, so you have to pay for it,” the e-magazine’s editor in chief noted. Project also launched a blog, where users can read—for free—articles about “really fancy yachts” and a “bicycle drawing machine.” Will Google liberate e-books from tablets? That’s what The Wall Street Journal is reporting , anyway. Although Google had planned on launching Google Editions, an e-book retailer, this summer, legal negotiations have delayed progress, the story reports. Now, though, sources say Google has its contracts in order and will be able to launch in the U.S. by the end of the year. Google product management director Scott Duggall explained the delay to the Journal saying, “Because of the complexity of this project, we didn’t want to come out with something that wasn’t thorough.” Unlike Kindle’s e-books, which can only be purchased on Amazon.com, Google Editions e-books can be purchased on Google or other online retailers, and The American Booksellers Association predicts that more than 200 independent bookstores in the country could sign up as partners. The hope is to free e-books from the confines of tablets “by offering an open, ‘read anywhere’ model.” Funny, we thought that’s what books were for. Behind Groupon’s expansion strategy. The Web is abuzz today with theories, suspicions, and estimations at what makes up Groupon’s $6 billion buyout by Google. Mashable first took a look at Groupon’s expansion strategy, which includes new features like Groupon Stores (that lets shop owners set up virtual stores with as many deals as they want) and the Deal Feed (a personalized deal stream for customers). But Inc.’s Max Chafkin is a little more dubious. He says the bid stems from Google’s desire to secure local advertising dollars—dollars that Groupon has partially wrested from Google’s grasp. And in a similar vein, a New York Times Dealbook blog wonders whether the price is a little too steep. “A multibillion-dolar valuation for a company that is in a business with virtually no barriers to entry and is younger than my toddler is absurd,” wrote Sucharita Mulpuru, a Forrester Research analyst, in a note to clients. At last the article contends that Groupon’s viral, on-the-ground approach could give Google a lift in social networking, an area where the company has struggled to make any significant headway thus far. Twitter now worth $4 billion. The bidding war to buy a piece of the microblogging startup has driven its valuation up by nearly a billion dollars, writes Michael Arrington in TechCrunch. Leading the charge is John Doerr, a partner at the Silicon Valley venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins, who is “acting something like a dog with bone that won’t let go.” Russian holding firm Digital Sky Technologies and venture fund Andreessen Horowitz are also reportedly sniffing around, but unless another concrete bidder steps up, Kleiner has all but sealed the deal, says Arrington. Doing holiday bonuses right. Around the holidays, who is better to reward, employees or customers? While more small businesses planned to give gifts to their customers than their employees this year, Rosalind Resnick writes in The Wall Street Journal that making sure members of your team are taken care of around the holidays is “not just the right thing to do … it’s good business.” The former entrepreneur and real-estate developer continues: “The next time I ask one of my guys to go the extra mile for my tenants, I can reasonably expect that the answer will be yes.” Need specific gift advice? Check out Inc.com’s guide to employee gifts . Anyone out there have extra tips for making employees happy around the holidays? Leave ‘em in the comments. More from Inc. magazine: Get this delivered to your inbox. Follow us on Twitter. Follow us on Tumblr. Like us on Facebook. Continue reading →

Posted in Business | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment