Category: business
-
The Zone of Essential Risk
‘The zone of essential risk’ is a term coined by Bob Blakely to describe the problem with rare, medium-sized transactions: If you conduct infrequent transactions which are also small, you’ll never lose much money and it’s not worth it to try to protect yourself – you’ll sometimes get scammed, but you’ll have no trouble affording…
-
Creative Capitalism
‘Creative capitalism‘ is a term popularised by Bill Gates at the World Economic Forum in Davos, 2008. Here Gates delivered a speech saying that many of the world’s problems are “too big for philanthropy” and that the free-market capitalist system itself would have to solve them. Creative Capitalism: A Conversation has a transcript of Gates’ speech but it…
-
Good Employees and Successful Entrepreneurs
 In an article profiling Google’s Marissa Meyer (employee number 20), there’s this quote on Meyer’s views with regard to hiring practices: One candidate got a C in macroeconomics. “That’s troubling to me,” Ms. Mayer says. “Good students are good at all things.” Another candidate looked promising with a quarterly rating from a supervisor of…
-
Risk Tolerance as a Competitive Weapon
After Josh Kopelman sold Half.com to eBay in 2000 he stayed on with the company to witness eBay’s defeat by and eventual acquisition of PayPalâat the time a relatively small startup. Kopeland suggests that the main reason for PayPal’s success was their risk tolerance in a number of situations: Legal Risk Paypal’s product was widely…
-
Unsolicited Internships
Expanding on an idea originally posted on the Freakonomics blog, Andrew Lynch suggests soliciting people you admire or respect for an unpaid internship: Find someone you really admire or respect. Email them. Describe your skills, how you can help them, what you have to offer. Link them to your blog full of quality posts. Then…
-
Business Models for Web Apps
Looking at the business models of the top 100 web apps of 2008, Dan Zambonini of Box UK found that 34% use Advertising, 12% a Variable Subscription model, and a further 8% each for Virtual Products, Related Products and Pay-Per-Use. Continuing this analysis he compiles an extensive list of different methods to monetize web apps. via @zambonini
-
Working for Free as Promotion
Could working for free be one of the best promotional tools available to an individual or SME? 37signals believes so, saying that their 37Better Project was “one of the best promotional things [they] ever did”. To illustrate their point they also take a look at R.BIRD’s excellent consumer packaging patterns, stating: If you’re looking to…
-
The World in 2009
The Economist‘s annual issue collecting predictions for the coming year has been released in the form of The World in 2009. From the introduction, by editor Daniel Franklin: Anyone hoping for a period of calm after the turbulence of the past year will be disappointed. For the economy and for business, as well as for…
-
Workforce Cuts vs. Wage Cuts
As part of the excellent Lectures on Macroeconomics series, Arnold Kling discusses why companies tend to cuts jobs rather than wages in times of hardship. The core arguments: Cutting wages is not standard practice, therefore: The best workers will leave and seek better opportunities: it’s better to choose which workers to lose. Wage cuts demoralise, harming…
-
How to Do What You Love
Paul Graham, he of Y Combinator fame, offers up some learned and insightful advice on how to do what you love. What you should not do [âŚ] is worry about the opinion of anyone beyond your friends. You shouldn’t worry about prestige. Prestige is the opinion of the rest of the world. When you can…