#i understand that it takes revenue away from the contributors but that means youre looking at it as a product rather than a piece of media

[smilerri]

I refuse to feel bad for pirating one piece or our flag means death or any pirate media because .is that not the whole point

[scurvgirl]

A Life Worth Living

More Dad!Marassal, when Marassal arrives that morning after Dirthamen and Selene meet.

Dirthamen belongs to @feynites

Selene belongs to @selenelavellan

The plan had always been to find Selene after Dirthamen came of age to have a relationship like that. So Marassal took him traveling when he turned 21 and every little lead that Marassal scrounged up came up empty.

He couldn’t find her or her son. They had vanished. Which, all things considered, was understandable, They were still reeling from the Templar involvement all those years ago. But it made surprising Selene with this very good man he’s raised difficult.

When they return home, he has an episode. His skin crawls and shivers, expanding and retracting in painful contortions. Desire has been denied and she regrettably does not deal with that and it’s been getting worse over the years. Dirthamen tries to help, comforting touches, making food - but there is only so much he can do while Marassal keeps his desire, the thing he wants, secret. His back shivers and his wings spring from his back from the magical pressure. They’re not pretty bird wings, he is not pretty when he is...like this.

He had never wanted to be pretty like this, the goal wasn’t to be seductive but to be terrifying. To be left alone. The desire for freedom beating so hot inside of him.

But it doesn’t phase Dirthamen, if anything it...helps cue him. Marassal has gotten those whole self-care for his abomination self down to an art. He keeps himself happy, he’s learned how to take care of himself by not fighting his desires, by accepting them and acting. It’s...resulted in a few issues, but he is alive and not dying. Self-care is important. But there are times where this self-care only goes so far.

Marassal’s lingers on the couch, heaving as his body tries to find an equilibrium in form. Dirthamen makes dinner - chicken and dumplings soup, and he helps Marassal slowly sip on it.

By the morning, Marassal is back to normal. Desire is riding a bit higher than normal, tinting his normally brown eyes purple, but he’s contained in his body. Dirthamen has questions, so many questions, and Marassal does his best to answer them.

“How did you become an abomination?”

Marassal blinks and when he smiles, his teeth are ragged and sharp, “That is not a story for my son to hear.” Dirthamen’s eyes widen slightly but he nods and moves onto more mundane questions.

Years pass but Marassal doesn’t give up. Dammit, he’ll find Selene. He’ll find her. It’s more than setting her and Dirthmen up, now he’s genuinely concerned for her. Desire aboms do not hide like this, it’s unnatural for them. The more they hide, the more they isolate themselves from society...it’s like a sickness, not being able to feed and sustain the Desire, slowly and surely corrupting the spirit to desperate levels.

It’s how aboms become the abominations of old.

He goes through all of his contacts and begins to infiltrate police databases. Looking for any clues.

Nothing.

Dirthamen is twenty-seven when one of the leads dings. Sort of. There has been a recent submission of a set of equations to a publication of Mathematics Today. The contributor of these equations is listed under a blatant pseudonym. He gets in contact with the publisher who have nothing to contact the contributor with other than an email.

Hm. Sending a “Hey! Your true love isn’t dead and he can be found at these marvelous coordinates!” won’t work. If anything, it’ll send her deeper underground.

Instead, Marassal contacts Dirthamen and poses the idea that perhaps emailing coupons to the bookstore will generate more revenue. It’s not a hard sell, and Marassal offers to take up the emailing.

He puts in the email he got from Mathematics Today and attaches the coupon.

Buy One $10 Book and Get one Free!

It lists the store’s name, the online store, the telephone number, and most importantly the store owner’s name. It’s...a bit of a longshot.

But then...then he gets that wonderful text. A strange woman by the name of Selene asking Dirthamen to come home with her.

Finally.

He drives all night to make it into the city where Dirthamen and Selene are set up. He picks up muffins and doughnuts before heading to the apartment. He quickly assesses the environment and finds it lacking - there are few places for indulgences, mostly laundromats, pawn shops, and small family owned restaurants. Not that there is anything wrong with these fine establishments, but they’re not particularly nourishing for Selene and that is concerning.

The apartment complex is even worse. Drab and depressing, colorless, filled with people who are unable to fulfill their desires. And what desire is filled is not the sort to keep Desire healthy. There is despair and longing but no actual desire beyond hopes and dreams. Nothing concrete, nothing sustaining.

The tendrils of her passenger eek out past the door to her apartment, flaring irregularly as he tries to gain a hold of what is going on. Marassal can only catch a few stray thoughts.

Is this real?

How is he not dead?

What’s going on?

Dirthamen.

Oh dear, ooooh dear. Perhaps...he should have reached out to Selene after rescuing Dirthamen. Assured her that her love wasn’t dead like the reports….

One of them would have taken him from us, his own Desire laments.

No matter, what’s done is done.

He knocks on the door and Des flares in severe annoyance.

Now, now, Des, is that any way to treat an old friend? Desire coos. A moment passes before the deadbolt and locks click open and Selene cracks the door open, eyes bright purple.

“What are you doing here?!”

He holds up the boxes of muffins and doughnuts and smiles, “Dirthamen! Dirthamen, darling, I’m here,” he turns to Selene with a smile, “my son asked me to come, he believes you need help.”

Des wriggles possessively in front of the door, clearly not wanting to share the only source of desire fulfilled in an...undetermined amount of time. Desire unfurls inside of Marassal and reaches out to Des, letting some of her power roll out and onto him. An olive branch,of a sort. Selene’s eyes flash and she shivers.

“Selene, I am not here to take him away - but he does need to keep his blood sugar up, otherwise he gets a little moody. In fact, here,” he takes out a doughnut and hands it to Selene as he walks by, “get your blood sugar up, it helps.”

He walks into the apartment and Dirthamen emerges from the small bathroom, smiling.

“Papae! Oh good you brought food, I forgot to ask. I was looking in the fridge and I didn’t really see anything, so thank you. Sorry Selene, I should have told you. This is my father, Marassal and he’s like you? I think, I mean you have some of the signs that Papae has when he’s not feeling good so I just thought that he could maybe help?” Dirthamen fidgets and Marassal sets the boxes down before walking over to Selene. Desire inside of him unfurls and presses into Des, asking for communication.

What is going on?!

We rescued Dirthamen as a baby - we made Mythal and Elgar’nan believe he was dead and we rescued him. Raised him, loved him, supported him.

A barrage of emotion swirls in Selene’s aura, half Des half her as the tenuous equilibrium they had suddenly comes into flux. Des is awake and starving. Desire pushes them to eat the doughnut, and she begins to nibble on it, slowly gaining more momentum as she goes. Desire gives Des a bit more sustenance, he drove by a plastic surgeon’s office earlier and his tank fill to burst thanks to that. Des practically latches onto Desire, demanding more.

Desire gives as much as she can before it gets a little tenuous for them. By then, Marassal has guided Selene to the couch and she’s digging into her second doughnut. Dirthamen eats his blueberry muffin and doesn’t interfere in the clearly magical and very demonic activities going on.

“I’ve been thinking about becoming a house flipper slash restorer. There are all these houses in the area I live in that are roughly one hundred years old but they’re practically decaying away, it’s just not right. I lived through that era, I know what houses looked like, how they should feel. I just need to get my contractor’s license...that should take what? A year or two? Making people’s dreams come true with homes...that sounds like a good profession, you know, I could use a business partner with it. You could handle all the financials of it, help good deserving families get good homes? Just until you’re on your feet again, if you want, just an idea. Still, I’ve been in the mood for a career change. Sex line operator is just not doing it anymore.”

“Papae!” Dirthamen sputters and Marassal rolls his eyes.

“Don’t worry, I’ve only done it for the past five years.” Marassal rubs Selene’s back as she finishes eating her doughnut, rambling on about his future prospects. Her breathing deepens, her eyes become clearer, sharper. Des settles a bit more inside of her, not completely and not without agitation, but it’s better. Much better.

Her eyes dart over to Dirthamen and Marassal waves Dirthamen over.

“I need to use the restroom, how about you hold onto Selene for a bit?” Marassal stands and Dirthamen takes his place. Selene presses herself against him almost immediately, needing that contact.

This is real, Des. Desire reassures. This is real, he is alive, he’s here, he’s healthy and good.

[douglassmiith]

A Brief Guide to Letting Black Entrepreneurs Be Entrepreneurs

July 1, 2020 8 min read

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

In today’s global economy, racism is not only ignorant, it’s costly. Just ask Facebook, which has lost billions in advertising revenue amid calls to eliminate hateful rhetoric from its platform.

Hopefully, this will ring the alarm bell for others who are snoozing under the blanket of “business as usual.” People are not just going to go away quietly this time. If they’ve been willing to risk their lives during a pandemic to protest for equal rights, the uprising will continue. It’s time for a real shift, and that includes a genuine effort to nurture and elevate Black founders to a position where they can access the capital needed to introduce new and profitable ideas to the marketplace.

The sticking point is that too many companies and investors view supporting Black entrepreneurs as a matter of social impact or charity, rather than good business sense. What needs to happen now is for those who control the purse strings and equitably spreading the wealth cease viewing business in black and white and simply let an entrepreneur be an entrepreneur. 

In the interest of hastening change, I’ve laid out answers to several questions even the most well-intentioned would-be allies might be asking themselves. The moment to let Black entrepreneurs be entrepreneurs begins now.

Related: It Doesn’t Take a Rocket Scientist to Solve the Racism Problem in Business

What do you mean when you say, “Let a Black entrepreneur be an entrepreneur”?

The message is: Let the Black entrepreneur be an entrepreneur, not somebody you think you’re giving charity to. It’s business. A lot of times, when you’re Black, that precedes everything, but when you think of a great painter, you don’t say it’s a great white painter. You just say it’s a great painter. 

Is donating to organizations for Black causes the same as investing in Black entrepreneurs?

A lot of businesses, when looking to close the diversity gap, say, “Oh, well we’re going to do a charitable donation or give to a nonprofit.” But we’re bringing in opportunity. See the person as an entrepreneur, not a charity case. Give the funds to the black founders so that they can build their companies. An example of this thinking is a well-known VC, Jason Calacanis, who invested in the likes of Uber and Calm and recently posted on Twitter that he is going to hire engineers to build a Facebook clone and donate the proceeds to black founders. This thinking assumes that black founders: A) are not engineers and B) are charity. 

These funds that will take all this money that Google, Pay Pal and SoftBank want to use to solve the issue need to invest directly in the black founders. Otherwise, what they’re saying is, “We don’t want to give the money to you.” The people putting these funds up for VCs to distribute need to understand that what they’re coming back to them with is a bunch of baloney.

How can I better ensure funds meant to nurture Black businesses are being best put to use?

My solution is for the Googles and PayPals and SoftBanks to make sure that when they’re dealing with the VCs who are going to be in charge of the money they decided to set aside for Black businesses, to treat the businesses as an opportunity that’s coming to them.

If SpaceX is an opportunity, you’re going to put massive amounts of money there. If it’s an act of charity, you’re going to put $5,000. If I’m Google, I say to Andreessen Horowitz and all these other companies that I want them to find companies unlocking opportunities within these communities. Then, they cannot come back with excuses to take these funds and put them somewhere else. When you invest in underrepresented founders, automatically, they’re going to open doors for you to places you are not even aware are there.

What’s an example of lucrative black opportunities that narrow-minded business leaders and investors missed out on?

Forever and ever, we’ve been saying that when you go to the makeup aisle, you get a powder that’s too light for your face or too dark for your face, so people have to improvise at home by mixing. You have a whole market, but no one was listening. Rihanna said, “You know what? I see my mom doing that, and I have to do that myself,” so she launched Fenty Beauty, which has completely transformed the industry, and now everyone’s running to catch up.

It’s the same thing with Black Panther. It’s again about serving an underserved market, not going into it as a charity or checking a box. Rihanna happens to be a celebrity, but it’s about the fact that she got the money to open that door, because we don’t get the money to open those doors. There are a ton of us out there who know where a lot more doors are. 

How have VCs continued to raise the ceiling for Black founders and lower the floor for privileged entrepreneurs?

A lot of times, you have one person who has $336 million and another person who is struggling to put everything together. In a field where you’re judged by daily active users, one person might have 10,000 people, and the other person with $336 million might have 10 million people, but you’re being judged by the same metrics.

So investors will say, “Well, we’re gonna go find a Black Jason Goldberg with 10 million users,” and then come back and say, “Well, we didn’t find anyone with 10 million users. We found nice people who are trying really hard with maybe 10,000 users, so we’re now going to take this money that you’ve allocated specifically for them and go put it somewhere else.”

You’ll be hard-pressed to find an entrepreneur with 10 million users or generating that much revenue because the seed hasn’t been planted to allow them to get to this high ceiling. You can’t compare oranges and apples in that way, and that’s another system that’s in place to make sure no new entrants get in there and justify continuing the status quo.

What about the argument that there is a pipeline issue when it comes to Black and brown talent and skillset? 

People are graduating. People are coding. People have ideas. Knowledge is not genetically encoded into people, it is acquired. It’s just about the right opportunity. People are going to go where they’re valued. When you look at a company like Facebook, and you don’t see one single Black face on their board or their leadership retreat they’re posting pictures of, you’re not going to want to go there. It’s not a pipeline problem. It’s just a blockage at the entrance keeping minorities from coming in.

Is most of this unconscious bias, or something worse?

It’s baffling to many people why the diversity gap in business is not closing, because you have companies that are saying, “Hey, help us close the gap.” But somehow the bridge is not being built. We have made a lot of progress, but not far enough. There’s still a lot of redlining of black entrepreneurs, even at the growth stage. A lot of black founders will build the company, people are excited about it, and when it’s time to go from seed to growth, you’ll see the headline, “Bubl raises X, then Sean Ramsay out” or, “Kairos secures Y then Brian Brackeen out or “Hopstop raises Z, Chinedu Echeruo out.” It’s a redlining. When you like the food but you don’t like the farmer, you want to come and take the farm and put the farmer out, and it happens over and over again. 

Related: The First-Ever Live, Virtual Reality Comedy Special Could Only Happen Now

What is the very next step I should take if I want to make more money with a wider variety of founders?

There are two ways to look at investing in underrepresented communities: It’s a great opportunity to open up new markets or a way to sustain and take care of your current customers. Imagine if the top Black athletes, influencers and musicians with more than one billion followers combined left the platforms that don’t have any Black people in their leadership or have racist algorithms and went to platforms where they’re valued and appreciated? People are sick and tired of dealing with “isms.” They simply want a fair chance, but if they are kept from accessing heaven here on earth, they’ll raise hell.

Website Design & SEO Delray Beach by DBL07.co

Delray Beach SEO

Via http://www.scpie.org/a-brief-guide-to-letting-black-entrepreneurs-be-entrepreneurs/

source https://scpie.weebly.com/blog/a-brief-guide-to-letting-black-entrepreneurs-be-entrepreneurs

[riichardwilson]

A Brief Guide to Letting Black Entrepreneurs Be Entrepreneurs

July 1, 2020 8 min read

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

In today’s global economy, racism is not only ignorant, it’s costly. Just ask Facebook, which has lost billions in advertising revenue amid calls to eliminate hateful rhetoric from its platform.

Hopefully, this will ring the alarm bell for others who are snoozing under the blanket of “business as usual.” People are not just going to go away quietly this time. If they’ve been willing to risk their lives during a pandemic to protest for equal rights, the uprising will continue. It’s time for a real shift, and that includes a genuine effort to nurture and elevate Black founders to a position where they can access the capital needed to introduce new and profitable ideas to the marketplace.

The sticking point is that too many companies and investors view supporting Black entrepreneurs as a matter of social impact or charity, rather than good business sense. What needs to happen now is for those who control the purse strings and equitably spreading the wealth cease viewing business in black and white and simply let an entrepreneur be an entrepreneur. 

In the interest of hastening change, I’ve laid out answers to several questions even the most well-intentioned would-be allies might be asking themselves. The moment to let Black entrepreneurs be entrepreneurs begins now.

Related: It Doesn’t Take a Rocket Scientist to Solve the Racism Problem in Business

What do you mean when you say, “Let a Black entrepreneur be an entrepreneur”?

The message is: Let the Black entrepreneur be an entrepreneur, not somebody you think you’re giving charity to. It’s business. A lot of times, when you’re Black, that precedes everything, but when you think of a great painter, you don’t say it’s a great white painter. You just say it’s a great painter. 

Is donating to organizations for Black causes the same as investing in Black entrepreneurs?

A lot of businesses, when looking to close the diversity gap, say, “Oh, well we’re going to do a charitable donation or give to a nonprofit.” But we’re bringing in opportunity. See the person as an entrepreneur, not a charity case. Give the funds to the black founders so that they can build their companies. An example of this thinking is a well-known VC, Jason Calacanis, who invested in the likes of Uber and Calm and recently posted on Twitter that he is going to hire engineers to build a Facebook clone and donate the proceeds to black founders. This thinking assumes that black founders: A) are not engineers and B) are charity. 

These funds that will take all this money that Google, Pay Pal and SoftBank want to use to solve the issue need to invest directly in the black founders. Otherwise, what they’re saying is, “We don’t want to give the money to you.” The people putting these funds up for VCs to distribute need to understand that what they’re coming back to them with is a bunch of baloney.

How can I better ensure funds meant to nurture Black businesses are being best put to use?

My solution is for the Googles and PayPals and SoftBanks to make sure that when they’re dealing with the VCs who are going to be in charge of the money they decided to set aside for Black businesses, to treat the businesses as an opportunity that’s coming to them.

If SpaceX is an opportunity, you’re going to put massive amounts of money there. If it’s an act of charity, you’re going to put $5,000. If I’m Google, I say to Andreessen Horowitz and all these other companies that I want them to find companies unlocking opportunities within these communities. Then, they cannot come back with excuses to take these funds and put them somewhere else. When you invest in underrepresented founders, automatically, they’re going to open doors for you to places you are not even aware are there.

What’s an example of lucrative black opportunities that narrow-minded business leaders and investors missed out on?

Forever and ever, we’ve been saying that when you go to the makeup aisle, you get a powder that’s too light for your face or too dark for your face, so people have to improvise at home by mixing. You have a whole market, but no one was listening. Rihanna said, “You know what? I see my mom doing that, and I have to do that myself,” so she launched Fenty Beauty, which has completely transformed the industry, and now everyone’s running to catch up.

It’s the same thing with Black Panther. It’s again about serving an underserved market, not going into it as a charity or checking a box. Rihanna happens to be a celebrity, but it’s about the fact that she got the money to open that door, because we don’t get the money to open those doors. There are a ton of us out there who know where a lot more doors are. 

How have VCs continued to raise the ceiling for Black founders and lower the floor for privileged entrepreneurs?

A lot of times, you have one person who has $336 million and another person who is struggling to put everything together. In a field where you’re judged by daily active users, one person might have 10,000 people, and the other person with $336 million might have 10 million people, but you’re being judged by the same metrics.

So investors will say, “Well, we’re gonna go find a Black Jason Goldberg with 10 million users,” and then come back and say, “Well, we didn’t find anyone with 10 million users. We found nice people who are trying really hard with maybe 10,000 users, so we’re now going to take this money that you’ve allocated specifically for them and go put it somewhere else.”

You’ll be hard-pressed to find an entrepreneur with 10 million users or generating that much revenue because the seed hasn’t been planted to allow them to get to this high ceiling. You can’t compare oranges and apples in that way, and that’s another system that’s in place to make sure no new entrants get in there and justify continuing the status quo.

What about the argument that there is a pipeline issue when it comes to Black and brown talent and skillset? 

People are graduating. People are coding. People have ideas. Knowledge is not genetically encoded into people, it is acquired. It’s just about the right opportunity. People are going to go where they’re valued. When you look at a company like Facebook, and you don’t see one single Black face on their board or their leadership retreat they’re posting pictures of, you’re not going to want to go there. It’s not a pipeline problem. It’s just a blockage at the entrance keeping minorities from coming in.

Is most of this unconscious bias, or something worse?

It’s baffling to many people why the diversity gap in business is not closing, because you have companies that are saying, “Hey, help us close the gap.” But somehow the bridge is not being built. We have made a lot of progress, but not far enough. There’s still a lot of redlining of black entrepreneurs, even at the growth stage. A lot of black founders will build the company, people are excited about it, and when it’s time to go from seed to growth, you’ll see the headline, “Bubl raises X, then Sean Ramsay out” or, “Kairos secures Y then Brian Brackeen out or “Hopstop raises Z, Chinedu Echeruo out.” It’s a redlining. When you like the food but you don’t like the farmer, you want to come and take the farm and put the farmer out, and it happens over and over again. 

Related: The First-Ever Live, Virtual Reality Comedy Special Could Only Happen Now

What is the very next step I should take if I want to make more money with a wider variety of founders?

There are two ways to look at investing in underrepresented communities: It’s a great opportunity to open up new markets or a way to sustain and take care of your current customers. Imagine if the top Black athletes, influencers and musicians with more than one billion followers combined left the platforms that don’t have any Black people in their leadership or have racist algorithms and went to platforms where they’re valued and appreciated? People are sick and tired of dealing with “isms.” They simply want a fair chance, but if they are kept from accessing heaven here on earth, they’ll raise hell.

Website Design & SEO Delray Beach by DBL07.co

Delray Beach SEO

source http://www.scpie.org/a-brief-guide-to-letting-black-entrepreneurs-be-entrepreneurs/ source https://scpie.tumblr.com/post/623041039743205376

[scpie]

A Brief Guide to Letting Black Entrepreneurs Be Entrepreneurs

July 1, 2020 8 min read

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

In today’s global economy, racism is not only ignorant, it’s costly. Just ask Facebook, which has lost billions in advertising revenue amid calls to eliminate hateful rhetoric from its platform.

Hopefully, this will ring the alarm bell for others who are snoozing under the blanket of “business as usual.” People are not just going to go away quietly this time. If they’ve been willing to risk their lives during a pandemic to protest for equal rights, the uprising will continue. It’s time for a real shift, and that includes a genuine effort to nurture and elevate Black founders to a position where they can access the capital needed to introduce new and profitable ideas to the marketplace.

The sticking point is that too many companies and investors view supporting Black entrepreneurs as a matter of social impact or charity, rather than good business sense. What needs to happen now is for those who control the purse strings and equitably spreading the wealth cease viewing business in black and white and simply let an entrepreneur be an entrepreneur. 

In the interest of hastening change, I’ve laid out answers to several questions even the most well-intentioned would-be allies might be asking themselves. The moment to let Black entrepreneurs be entrepreneurs begins now.

Related: It Doesn’t Take a Rocket Scientist to Solve the Racism Problem in Business

What do you mean when you say, “Let a Black entrepreneur be an entrepreneur”?

The message is: Let the Black entrepreneur be an entrepreneur, not somebody you think you’re giving charity to. It’s business. A lot of times, when you’re Black, that precedes everything, but when you think of a great painter, you don’t say it’s a great white painter. You just say it’s a great painter. 

Is donating to organizations for Black causes the same as investing in Black entrepreneurs?

A lot of businesses, when looking to close the diversity gap, say, “Oh, well we’re going to do a charitable donation or give to a nonprofit.” But we’re bringing in opportunity. See the person as an entrepreneur, not a charity case. Give the funds to the black founders so that they can build their companies. An example of this thinking is a well-known VC, Jason Calacanis, who invested in the likes of Uber and Calm and recently posted on Twitter that he is going to hire engineers to build a Facebook clone and donate the proceeds to black founders. This thinking assumes that black founders: A) are not engineers and B) are charity. 

These funds that will take all this money that Google, Pay Pal and SoftBank want to use to solve the issue need to invest directly in the black founders. Otherwise, what they’re saying is, “We don’t want to give the money to you.” The people putting these funds up for VCs to distribute need to understand that what they’re coming back to them with is a bunch of baloney.

How can I better ensure funds meant to nurture Black businesses are being best put to use?

My solution is for the Googles and PayPals and SoftBanks to make sure that when they’re dealing with the VCs who are going to be in charge of the money they decided to set aside for Black businesses, to treat the businesses as an opportunity that’s coming to them.

If SpaceX is an opportunity, you’re going to put massive amounts of money there. If it’s an act of charity, you’re going to put $5,000. If I’m Google, I say to Andreessen Horowitz and all these other companies that I want them to find companies unlocking opportunities within these communities. Then, they cannot come back with excuses to take these funds and put them somewhere else. When you invest in underrepresented founders, automatically, they’re going to open doors for you to places you are not even aware are there.

What’s an example of lucrative black opportunities that narrow-minded business leaders and investors missed out on?

Forever and ever, we’ve been saying that when you go to the makeup aisle, you get a powder that’s too light for your face or too dark for your face, so people have to improvise at home by mixing. You have a whole market, but no one was listening. Rihanna said, “You know what? I see my mom doing that, and I have to do that myself,” so she launched Fenty Beauty, which has completely transformed the industry, and now everyone’s running to catch up.

It’s the same thing with Black Panther. It’s again about serving an underserved market, not going into it as a charity or checking a box. Rihanna happens to be a celebrity, but it’s about the fact that she got the money to open that door, because we don’t get the money to open those doors. There are a ton of us out there who know where a lot more doors are. 

How have VCs continued to raise the ceiling for Black founders and lower the floor for privileged entrepreneurs?

A lot of times, you have one person who has $336 million and another person who is struggling to put everything together. In a field where you’re judged by daily active users, one person might have 10,000 people, and the other person with $336 million might have 10 million people, but you’re being judged by the same metrics.

So investors will say, “Well, we’re gonna go find a Black Jason Goldberg with 10 million users,” and then come back and say, “Well, we didn’t find anyone with 10 million users. We found nice people who are trying really hard with maybe 10,000 users, so we’re now going to take this money that you’ve allocated specifically for them and go put it somewhere else.”

You’ll be hard-pressed to find an entrepreneur with 10 million users or generating that much revenue because the seed hasn’t been planted to allow them to get to this high ceiling. You can’t compare oranges and apples in that way, and that’s another system that’s in place to make sure no new entrants get in there and justify continuing the status quo.

What about the argument that there is a pipeline issue when it comes to Black and brown talent and skillset? 

People are graduating. People are coding. People have ideas. Knowledge is not genetically encoded into people, it is acquired. It’s just about the right opportunity. People are going to go where they’re valued. When you look at a company like Facebook, and you don’t see one single Black face on their board or their leadership retreat they’re posting pictures of, you’re not going to want to go there. It’s not a pipeline problem. It’s just a blockage at the entrance keeping minorities from coming in.

Is most of this unconscious bias, or something worse?

It’s baffling to many people why the diversity gap in business is not closing, because you have companies that are saying, “Hey, help us close the gap.” But somehow the bridge is not being built. We have made a lot of progress, but not far enough. There’s still a lot of redlining of black entrepreneurs, even at the growth stage. A lot of black founders will build the company, people are excited about it, and when it’s time to go from seed to growth, you’ll see the headline, “Bubl raises X, then Sean Ramsay out” or, “Kairos secures Y then Brian Brackeen out or “Hopstop raises Z, Chinedu Echeruo out.” It’s a redlining. When you like the food but you don’t like the farmer, you want to come and take the farm and put the farmer out, and it happens over and over again. 

Related: The First-Ever Live, Virtual Reality Comedy Special Could Only Happen Now

What is the very next step I should take if I want to make more money with a wider variety of founders?

There are two ways to look at investing in underrepresented communities: It’s a great opportunity to open up new markets or a way to sustain and take care of your current customers. Imagine if the top Black athletes, influencers and musicians with more than one billion followers combined left the platforms that don’t have any Black people in their leadership or have racist algorithms and went to platforms where they’re valued and appreciated? People are sick and tired of dealing with “isms.” They simply want a fair chance, but if they are kept from accessing heaven here on earth, they’ll raise hell.

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[laurelkrugerr]

5 Things You Need to Know About Acquiring a Business

You can’t become a market leader through organic growth alone. Here’s how to think about acquisitions strategically.

April 8, 2020 7 min read

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

When it comes to looking for advice on how to get acquired, there’s a lot out there — 405 million Google entries, to be exact. When it comes to advice on how to acquire, however, the results are fewer and are predominantly process-based, not strategy based.

You can’t become a market leader through organic growth alone. Google has made more than 200 acquisitions in its 21 years, the first being just three years after it was incorporated. Those doing the math can see that that’s about 10 acquisitions a year. To get the speed and breadth needed for scale, even 200 percent year-on-year organic growth won’t cut it. The knowledge and capabilities that come with acquisitions dwarfs anything that can be done on your own.

Related: When Acquiring a Company, Don’t Forget About the People

In my company’s 10-year history, we have undergone seven M&As and are continually looking for new opportunities that fit our business goals. How we’ve made this work isn’t because of the usual tactics of due diligence and negotiating on price (though of course someone here was responsible for that). The decisions on who and when to acquire are based on much more personal and personable reasons. Here are my tips. 

Get M&As into the DNA of your company

Before you start looking at and judging external companies, it’s time for some self-reflection. To get M&As right, it comes down to the DNA of not only the company you’re acquiring but also your own. If your DNA doesn’t support acquisitions, then any deal is likely to fail. My company made our first acquisition with a staff of seven. The company we acquired had 30 employees. To others, that may seem like a risky move and an easy way to lose control, but making your DNA support M&As is like training a muscle — the earlier you start, the stronger it becomes. Early M&As signal to your team that even great companies can’t do everything alone. If you build the muscle too late, your team won’t be as ready to accept others into your company. 

Go after a good business, not a good deal

It might seem like semantics, but the difference between the two words is important. A good deal refers to the acquisition price, but when we talk about a good business, what we mean are the people and the culture. You can get what’s considered a good deal on paper, but in reality the culture of the acquired company does not fit your own and the likelihood of future success is zero to none. A successful acquisition goes beyond the Excel sheets and the revenue charts. Buying a company that’s a good deal isn’t wrong all the time (and is a step that my company has taken), but it’s important to be honest and upfront with yourself. Post-acquisition, you’re going to face challenges integrating the two companies into a single collaborative working unit. 

Related: How to Make a Successful Acquisition to Grow Your Company

Do due diligence with the people

Doing your financial due diligence is an obvious step in the acquisition process, but the most important and often overlooked step is to do due diligence with people. Spend time not only with the CEO but also with the wider team. Understand the company’s culture and learn how decisions are made. What’s the group intelligence of the business you’re acquiring? Find out how they dealt with and recovered from past failures. Did they learn from them or repeat them further down the line? Does it evolve, is it steady or declining? Talk to the people. Being personally interested and inquisitive about the people in the company. Spending time with the team, observing them and noting how they interact with one another will tell you more about the character of the business you’re acquiring than any additional meeting with the CEO will.

Get out of your comfort zone

Making yourself feel vulnerable is a hard step to take, but it’s a critical one. Meet people in their office as opposed to your own. Yes, you won’t have the home court advantage, but when you’re out of your comfort zone, you can better analyze how you feel about your potential new partners. If spending time with the target company doesn’t make you feel good, it’s a telltale sign that this is not a good business for you. I’ve personally walked away from good deals when spending time at the other company didn’t feel right to me. But it’s not just about spending time with the people. Taking the conversation away from the boardroom is critical. Spend leisure time with them, meet their families and see how they interact away from the office.

Be willing to pay up front

If you’ve done your due diligence, spent quality time with the target company and are still happy to move forward with the acquisition, the level of conviction should be so high at this point that you’re ready to give up on normal protection mechanisms like down payments and earn-outs. This is my company’s policy, and I feel strongly about paying everything up front on day one.

Of course this policy doesn’t work for every company, but I believe in true partnerships. You can’t build one while holding a gun to someone’s head and telling them to reach certain goals. Is it nontraditional? Yes. Could I get burned? Maybe. It is risky? No. By paying up front you’ve given your new partners the option to walk away, which means that if they’ve chosen to stay it’s for the right reasons. The first day after an acquisition is now like day one of a startup, working with people who are in it together. 

Related: 10 Factors To Consider When Making An Acquisition

Will this work in 100 percent of acquisitions? Probably not. Statistically you’re likely to make a mistake, just as you could make a mistake if you did enforce protection methods. Given that, I believe that the upside of the successful acquisitions with this approach far outweighs any upsides of going down the traditional route.

When you’re buying another company — unless the acquisition is for a unique technology — what you’re really buying is the brains behind the operation. These are the people who love and believe in what they do and have made the company the success that it is today. It’s personal because it’s about your gut reaction. It’s personal because you all have to get along. If you wouldn’t sit in a coffee shop chatting about a new startup idea with these people, then the deal, no matter how good it sounds, is not for you.

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With the start of the new year I always find myself reflecting on what I’ve done, review goals and achievements and whatnot. Last year I began streaming. I’ve found a lot of people IRL and viewers always ask a lot of questions about growth and finances. “How do I become a streamer” “How much money do you make” “1v1 noob”.​Seriously, I don’t understand it because I wouldn’t call myself successful in streaming by any stretch of the imagination, but I’d like to share my year in view as a case study for starting streamers. This is by no way shape or form a how too, advice, or hard and fast rule or guideline. This is simply one man’s journey and it may deter a lot of you from actually streaming. You don’t just hit that go live button and start making money hand over fist, it’s a lot of work and you MUST love the work and not the result. So far 1 year in I’m still in love with streaming, the highs and the lows.​BACKGROUND28y/o male, married with a son and fulltime job as an aerospace engineer. I was unhappy with twitch's interface when trending growth. Socialblade does a decent job and streamlabs was ok…. But I decided to import all the data to excel and start monitoring it myself.​I started streaming with Overwatch and soon switched to Fortnite. I have mixed feeling about playing oversaturated games. On one hand, I understand it hard to be found on the twitch directory… on the other hand there are tons of people wanting to watch that game so if you can get exposure elsewhere you can generate a decent following.​February 16th the was the first time I clicked that go live button. I had played around with OBS in the past, but this was the first time I decided to take it seriously. 0 marketing, 0 idea of what I was doing… 0 viewers. Couple of weeks in I got my friends to start lurking while we played but they were inconsistent, I was inconsistent but eventually I ended up getting affiliated. The viewers were literally my IRL friends and online buddies. May 2nd, I got the affiliate set up and got my first sub (again online and IRL buddies)​My channel was plain, and frankly quite boring. But when I started networking with other streamers and seeing some seriously top-notch production it motivated me to work had and make my stream stand out. Shout out to a couple medium streamers that inspired if that’s allowed: Carvemup, UR2ezTV, and THEBETTYMEIN.I am not a top tier gameplay type broadcaster, so I needed to find a way to increase the production value. Spent some time learning how to make little animations and whatnot to be more entertaining and have something that makes my channel unique. Came up with a theme that I enjoy and incorporated that into the channel sometime in July. Something as silly as wearing some retro clothes and sunglasses jumped the channel growth up and the following started snowballing. Knew I needed a greenscreen for the type of stream I wanted and set that as a bit goal. Oct 1st set up the greenscreen really giving a lot of a control over the aesthetics of the channel. Growth is slow but steady.​2018 Growth​FINANCESRather than go month by month you can see my graphs and breakdown of the revenue HERE. Obviously as the channel grows the more the gross from subs grows. But what is unexpected is how generous some people are. Sub gifting is one of the best additions to twitch IMO many people love gifting subs when they see those reoccurring faces in chat.​By and large the biggest contributor to income was cheers. See the comparison between subs and donations vs cheering.I have been blown away by the generosity of my community. Many are friends who want to help and farm bits but all those 10 and 20 bit cheers really add up over the year. 72% of all income earned was through cheering. Seriously shoutout to the LataPosse for all the support you guys are incredible!​Rev Without Bits2018 Bits2018 Gross​Now here is the fun part. Many people may look at that and think, “oh cool! See mom I can make money playing video games” and sure… $800 isn’t anything to write home about but I’m more than thrilled with the success I’ve had. But Twitch tracks all the hours you’ve streamed so let’s take a look at that. It took me 132.52 hours from the first time I went live until I got my affiliate status… and afterwards I streamed for another 351.13hrs making a grand total of 483.65 hrs broadcasting last year. I only streamed about 2-3hrs a day YMMV.​Assuming that was the ONLY time spent working on the stream (there are easily another hundred or so hours working behind the scenes on emotes, graphics, green screen, intro videos... the list goes on and on since I do all my own artwork) my hourly rate from Twitch comes to $1.74/hr. Also this is based off of GROSS income… if I took into account the money spent on a mic, camera, green screen, games, and everything else that I’m writing off on my taxes we would 100% be negative……So, do you think I’m going to continue streaming next year?!…YOU BET YOUR ASS I WILL!​Seriously! I do all this because I’m a geek and love graphs and trends but DO NOT get into streaming if it’s solely for the money. Your time could be better spent working literally anywhere else. But I absolutely love streaming. The community building, the friends made, people met, hell even dealing with trolls is fun. It for sure has its ups and downs. There were days when streaming to no one you get frustrated and sad, and there are days when your tired and don’t want to play games, but the reward is so much more than financial. My small community means the world to me and I hope all you aspiring streamers get to experience what I’m talking about.​That being said, I do have major goals for 2019 that revolve around growth and hopefully income (new merch designs that don’t look like a walking billboard… whoops) and I know only going live for 2hrs a day is handicapping my growth but playing the slow game until I can go full time is the ideal dream for me.​To the more seasoned experts on this subreddit... what ways would you see that could help with scale-ability? the biggest problem on twitch is discoverability. Twitch sorts channels based solely off of "concurrent viewership" or how many people are watching you at the moment. It's very much a positive feedback loop... If you are popular you're at the top of the list, thus getting more exposure and getting more popular. the problem is if you're not popular there are very few ways to get your product in from on an audience. Where should i focus marketing for 2019? I currently use Twitter and Reddit but am looking for other suggestions... hell even local networking has helped. Friends and coworkers tell other. I'm thinking about getting stickers to place/give out to viewers to spread the word a bit. All suggestions are welcome.​I hope this annual breakdown shed some light on things no one really talks about on twitch. I hope I’ve either inspired or educated some of you on the fence when it comes to streaming.​

[birminghamyouthorganisation-blog]

Why Charity Still Starts in the house

The reality is current events on the Worlds economic markets have actually left lots of people with less disposable revenue. A combination of boosted costs for gas and food and loss of share as well as residential property worth has resulted in much uncertainty and worry for many individuals despite their history, social class or occupation.

So when loan is limited and individuals have much less to spend, it is just natural that much less cash is invested in non crucial things. One such industry that is suffering because of the credit report problem is the volunteer sector. Some current statistics reveal that the charity sector is one industry that is experiencing almost three quarters of charity leaders questioned in a recent charity survey disclosing that they expected conditions in the industry to get worse in the next 12 months.

For charities, neighborhood teams and other volunteer organisations this is clearly bad news yet some recent high profile campaigns means that charitable causes are still significantly in the general public minds. Examples http://aitais.com/dairic6n72/post-how-can-i-54016.html consist of the 2 Royal Princes, Harry and also William, and their motorcycle trip in South Africa which was looking to increase loan as well as understanding for UNICEF, the Nelson Mandela Childrens Fund and also Sentebale.

The truth is also when times are difficult charities can seemingly depend on the kindness of participants of the public to aid them elevate money for the best of causes. This does not nevertheless imply that charities and volunteer organisations can be complacent when it involves their prices and outgoings. Smaller charities in particular are susceptible with redundancies and with it the closure of essential solutions to local neighborhoods the unfortunate result.

One example exactly how a charity can perhaps cut prices is when they are looking to make acquisitions for their specific charity. Among the most significant costs a charity may have is when they are seeking to buy charity insurance coverage which will certainly secure them, their staff and also their volunteers. Charities can as a result seek to expert charity insurance policy brokers that might effectively conserve them money on their charities insurance costs.

Regardless of worries over the credit rating problem, charity leaders expect volunteer numbers to enhance and also for the charity market to reasonable far better than the wider economic situation. Therefore each time when their contributions could have decreased in regard to current years, cutting costs from service providers is a suitable means for a charities efficiency not to be lessened and also for the expression of charity start at home to proceed.

What You Must Know Before You Provide To Charity

Completion of the year is traditionally the most popular time for making philanthropic donations. But to make sure your hard-earned donations really do one of the most excellent, it is very essential that you do some due diligence prior to you write that check or contribute that supply, car, vintage, or various other thing. To start with you need to approach the donation as a business deal. Ask on your own what triggers matter to you. Maybe you wish to help the setting, or supply scholarships to talented but poor kids.

The 990 form is the tax return that charities submit with the Internal Revenue Service every year, comparable to what services need to file. (Please note that some churches are not called for to submit this form). The 990 form can look complex yet it gives you great deals of useful info to aid you make a decision if a charity is a good one to rely on with your hard-earned loan. The 990 form shows you what percent of its total funds an organization really invests in its programs, in contrast to using these dollars to accumulate an endowment or pay administrative and fundraising fees.

After you've looked at the different analysis products that are offered, it's time to limit your charity search to a few promising organizations and afterwards look into their sites or contact them directly prior to you make your decision. Definitely you intend to see that the company has actually a specified objective declaration as well as a sensible tactical plan to accomplish that goal. A charity ought to make it clear to you why you should give away to their company, as well as how your funds will certainly be made use of.

Ultimately, you require to know that the charity is able to measure the progress they make towards accomplishing their goals. While lots of charities make use of heart-felt stories as well as images to assist induce contributors to give, in the long run what matters is that genuine changes are really mosting likely to take place as the result of the contributions you and also others make. So before you authorize your check or do your digital transfer, spend some time to do your research to make sure that you can be certain that your gift will in fact do the excellent that you plan it to.

[gordonlearllc-blog]

A few points I always like to drive home.

I wanted to share this article I found on Entrepreneur's news feed because the real-life application on several points I always try to drive home with my clients. 1.) Best products come from solving a problem 2.) Don't fall in love with your products. Be willing to accept sometimes they suck. 3.) Measure everything. If its worth doing it is worth measuring. 4.) Surround yourself with greatness.  Don't be the smartest one in the room. 5.) Prioritize what you do best. Delegate everything else 6.) You're not in business to employ. You're in businesses to make money. 7.) Culture is defined by the look on your face. It starts at the top, your teams feed off how you present. Side Note: Quizlet is something I have used and highly recommend.  When my son was 13 he asked if he could load it on his phone.  Like all his apps I have to try them before I let them on his device.  I would like to say its because of my awesome parenting skills but I know deep down it's because I really want to check out the UI/UX.    The app was simple but what I noticed right away was the adoption by students and the ease of sharing.  Within minutes my son had found all his vocab words from a previous years student and was quickly studying through a means he naturally utilized, his phone.  It is no surprise that it went viral and exploded into success as teens take to it like fish to water.  Now well into high school he uses it all the time for many of his subjects and is constantly collaborating with classmates.  It has pretty much become a mission critical study tool.  The biggest take-a-way was this app made me realize his generation is so connected to mobile devices pulling his phone out to study for a few minutes when the moment presents itself is automatic. But letting him study "his way"  I have never had to bug him about preparing for a vocab quiz or test since.  It has become second nature.  So make sure you ask your student what they are doing before you bark "put your phone away". Anyway, give the below article a read I think you will find it interesting.  Feel free to ask me any questions or to clarify any of my points above. - Gordon    October 24, 2018 6 min read Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own. by Andrew Sutherland,  Founder and CTO of Quizlet Many successful entrepreneurs, especially young ones, don't set out trying to start a company -- they stumble into a problem, find a solution and that eventually turns into a company. While 45 is the average age of a successful startup founder, I was only a sophomore in high school when the idea for Quizlet came to me. It was 2005; the iPhone had yet to be released and Facebook had just opened up to high school students for the first time. I needed a way to quickly and efficiently study hundreds of French vocabulary words. What started as a method to ace a test (111 French animals!), caught on like wildfire and became a global tool with more than 30 million monthly users. How I think about business has shifted significantly over the past 13 years. With age comes reflection; here are some of the lessons I learned along the way.

From intuition-driven to data-driven decisions

Like most 15-year-olds, in the beginning I was mostly focused on ... myself. I would use Quizlet to study, identify something that needed to be fixed, and then quickly update the code and release something new. However, as both Quizlet and I grew up, it became clear that I had to shift focus to what was best for the masses -- students and teachers all over the world. When Quizlet raised money for the first time, we got a lot of questions we didn't know how to answer. We had bootstrapped the business for 10 years before raising funding -- which is uncommon in the tech world, though Github and Atlassian took similar paths. We had millions of people using the product, but we knew very little about how they used it. How many people share their learning content with others? How many people who sign up are still learning on the product a month later? We didn't have the data to answer these questions. The development of the product was based a lot on intuition, using it ourselves, and talking to other users. But, with millions of users, different people used the product for different things. For example, even though Quizlet wasn't built for helping nursing students, hundreds of thousands of them now use it to study, and their needs vary from those of a high school student. Our new investors pushed us to better understand our metrics, causing us to see some parts of the product really weren't working or used at all. Today, the product analytics team plays a central role in everything we do. There's still plenty of room for intuition and storytelling, but data informs every decision we make. We are much more thoughtful and focused as a result.

Deciding which things to hold on to, and which to cede control over

It's human nature to want to control every aspect of your "baby," but as a company scales, it becomes too large for one person to bear. To be successful, you need people with different types of experiences and skills and you have to come to terms with the fact that you're not going to be good at everything, or even more jarring, that you're really bad at some things. I quickly realized how vital the recruiting process was. More than just having a specific skillset, I wanted people who were genuinely passionate about our company's mission. It takes on average 71 days to fill C-level jobs, but the time we put into the search led to an amazing partner who helped me grow the business -- our current CEO, Matthew Glotzbach. A lesson learned: It's fine if hiring takes longer than you initially planned for -- it means you're being selective and careful with who you're giving ownership to.

The importance of money

Revenue enables our educational mission. The more money we make, the more cool stuff we can do to help people learn. I've always been a very mission-driven person, and I'm passionate about improving education worldwide. The reality is though, most education startups die because they don't make enough money -- especially as the users you're targeting (teachers and students) often aren't the ones controlling school expenditures for technology or spending much money of their own. When I started, I wasn't terribly interested in how Quizlet was going to make money. Now, it's something we focus on a lot and I'm really happy about that. The way we help a billion people learn is by building a really big business. We ask students and teachers to pay us for additional content and capabilities inside Quizlet. That means the people who like us the most are paying us directly. We also have ads, which allow us to serve tens of millions of people completely for free. This revenue model means we're building a sustainable business that is independent and will be around for a long time.

A changing job description

The challenges and growing pains are changing all the time (we've doubled our team in the past year), so I've had to reinvent my role numerous times. These days, I write a completely new job description for myself every six months. In the beginning all I thought about was what to build next and how to solve user problems -- and then as Quizlet began to mature, how to keep the site up when we were growing quickly. Now we have a solid team of talented people who think about product development and platform infrastructure. It frees me up to focus on the big picture, like prototyping future product directions, hiring, keeping our company culture strong, and future funding and investments. What part of my job doesn't change? Knowing that the most interesting lessons are still ahead of me. This article was originally published here. #END Read the full article

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Three Methods the

The qualities that made you profitable within the first place are actually holding you again

March 28, 2019 eight min learn

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their very own.

In your individual entrepreneurial life, have you ever achieved a sure degree of success, then hit a plateau?  Do you spend most of your time placing out fires or sitting in conferences? Does your head damage? 

Associated: It is Nearly 2019. Is the Glass Ceiling Lastly Starting to Crack?

Should you answered sure to any of those questions, you’ve probably hit what I name the “crystal ceiling.” 

What’s the crystal ceiling?

We’re all accustomed to the “glass ceiling” — the metaphorical barrier that limits promotions, based mostly on gender, race, creed, colour, or sexual identification.  It is known as a glass ceiling as a result of you’ll be able to see the subsequent degree however one thing is stopping you from reaching it. 

The “crystal ceiling,” then again, represents these much less apparent psychological and financial elements that cease profitable individuals from advancing.  

Should you’re considered one of these individuals, you’ll be able to see what life is like past the barrier, on the highest ranges of success, however the image is a bit distorted.  As would happen in the event you appeared by way of an precise crystal lattice, you are unclear about what you are seeing and, figuratively talking, what it’s best to do to achieve the subsequent degree.

Much more puzzling to these struggling to interrupt the crystal ceiling is the idea that they’ve the identical attributes as these on the subsequent rung of success. However the reality is, the very qualities they relied on to achieve their present degree of success are actually holding them again.

Here is how this performs out in an entrepreneur’s expertise.

Ceiling No. 1: a strong work ethic 

The issue with a powerful work ethic is that this: In case you are merely “doing the work,” your success will ultimately be stunted. 

It’s true that arduous work, a strong schooling, dedication to a profession and dedication to executing essential duties may also help take you to the highest 1 percet of earners.  The irony is that it’s a must to abandon many of those expertise to get to the highest 0.1 p.c.  

As Georgetown economics professor Axel Anderson, mentioned to me for my e book, 6 Secrets and techniques to Leveraging Success: “Absent loads of luck, or an expert sports activities contract, you’ll be able to solely get to this point with labor.” 

If you wish to double your earnings and earn your first million, you’ll be able to’t simply do 1,000 extra surgical procedures or purchase six extra franchises. There are limitations in your time. There are are additionally diminishing returns in your efficacy of administration once you improve your variety of places or the dimensions of your employees, to not point out limitations on the financing a financial institution or investor will supply.  

Associated: 9 Causes Why Your Enterprise Progress Has Plateaued — and The right way to Repair That

A shopper, buddy and former enterprise companion of mine, Lawrence Anderson, M.D.,understands leverage.  As a working towards dermatologist, he constructed the biggest dermatology apply in Texas. In 2013, he realized that he could not proceed to develop the apply on his personal. 

So, utilizing the monetary {and professional} assets of a number of personal fairness companies, his U.S. Dermatology Companions grew to 200 board-certified dermatologists working towards in 95 places. One in every of these places, in Tyler, Texas, really shattered the crystal ceiling changing into the biggest physician-owned dermatology apply within the nation.  

How do you overcome the constraints of labor? Supercharge your success by remodeling another person’s downside into your resolution.

A few years in the past, I personally owned a doctor-focused monetary agency.  It was tough to market to working towards physicians as a result of they have been busy seeing sufferers and had gatekeepers who opened their mail, answered their telephones and stored them very effectively insulated. 

What did I do?  I discovered medical publications that wanted content material to help their promoting revenues.  After dozens of medical journals printed my articles, extra 15,000 docs contacted me, asking for monetary recommendation. I used to be in a position to rework these publishers’ content material downside into my lead-generation resolution.   

Right here’s a newer instance. I sit on the board of Demand Lighting, an modern LED lighting firm in Austin. The corporate’s technique is to companion with a producer of water-efficient bogs. A questionable concept? Suppose once more.

The bathroom firm has already saved its clients cash by decreasing the expense of water (a utility). As soon as that downside was solved, the bathroom firm had nothing else to promote — till my firm supplied a referral payment to supply their purchasers a “vibrant” strategy to save on nonetheless one other utility invoice. This win-win situation price me nothing.  

So, do what I did: Whenever you ask who else wants to attach together with your purchasers and what else your purchasers would possibly want, you will see a artistic strategy to get different individuals that will help you remedy your downside — with out pricey employees or promoting

Ceiling No. 2: desirous to “slot in” 

You will have been in a position to promote clients, persuade buyers or encourage staff by being relatable. Nonetheless, this admirable high quality can really restrict your success.  

Why? Innovation is completed on a unicycle — not on a bus!

Essentially the most profitable individuals grew to become that means by being “completely different.” They created a brand new product, exploited a brand new distribution system or reached a brand new phase of the market. Nearly universally, these individuals did one thing that household, pals and colleagues mentioned was loopy.   

You possibly can’t anticipate to be an outlier financially, whereas being “identical to all people else.”  You will have change the way you have a look at your self.  

The primary key to shift your mindset is to “Cease being beige.” This precept comes from movie star designers Roger + Chrism who say, “Whenever you ask a bunch of individuals for a colour [for a wall or a couch], they all the time find yourself with beige. No person loves it. No person hates it. It’s protected. It’s uninteresting.” 

How do you keep away from beige in your enterprise? Cease asking for group consensus and observe your imaginative and prescient. Recommendation is effective, however consensus might be detrimental to innovation. And innovation is the important thing to wild ranges of success.

You’re in cost. What’s your favourite colour?

Ceiling No. 3: Enjoying honest 

Emmanuel Saez gained the John Bates Clark Medal in economics for his portrait of earnings inequality in the US. His analysis confirmed that the typical annual earnings of the underside 90 p.c of American households was $34,000.  Undoubtedly, these households have treasured little disposable earnings to spend. Saez additionally reported that the highest 0.1 p.c earnws greater than $2 million per yr, with a mean annual earnings of roughly $four million. 

The place do these above the crystal ceiling make this cash?  There are a couple of monolithic exceptions, like Wal-Mart, which makes cash by advertising and marketing to the lots. The overwhelming majority, nevertheless, make their cash from the highest 1 p.c –those simply beneath the ceiling. Sure, you.  

How do these within the high 0.1 p.c do it?  They don’t cheat, however they do reap the benefits of each benefit they’ve.  

Proudly owning companies that make use of the 1 percnt. Exhausting-working high-earners are paid effectively whereas they contribute to the success of the their bosses. The 1 p.c hardly ever earn and save sufficient to begin their very own competing ventures.  

Investing in companies owned by the 1 p.c. When the 1 p.c do begin companies, the place do they get the capital?  Absent a couple of crowd-funding ventures, most cash comes from extra profitable individuals. Most small enterprise house owners should pay very excessive mortgage charges, or surrender fairness to be able to fund their progress. 

This view is supported by Saez’s analysis. He discovered that the highest 1 p.c earn 14 p.c of their whole earnings from investments, whereas the highest 0.01 p.c earn 68 p.c from funding earnings.  It could not take cash to generate profits, but it surely does take cash to make a lot of cash.

Change Your perspective. Change your consequence. 

In case your earnings is six figures, and also you earned it your self, you need to be proud.  You have already crushed the percentages and achieved greater than 99 p.c of the nation has. 

However, if you need extra, it’s a must to face the details. The truth that you’ve hit the crystal ceiling is just not a results of negligence, however staying there would be the results of ignorance.  

Cease specializing in “doing” the issues that made you profitable within the first place, and as an alternative search for methods to leverage your time, your data or the efforts of different individuals. 

Associated: Getting ready for the Subsequent Stage of Progress

Solely after you could have modified your imaginative and prescient from working to leveraging are you able to crack the crystal ceiling and attain the highest ranges of success.  

Supply hyperlink

source https://webart-studio.com/three-methods-the/

[wikipress01]

More Mystery Objects Found Near Milky Way’s Black Hole

Astronomers have found a number of weird objects on the galactic Center which might be concealing their true id behind a smoke display screen of mud; they appear like gasoline clouds, however behave like stars.

At at present’s American Astronomical Society Meeting in Denver, a crew of researchers led by UCLA Postdoctoral Scholar Anna Ciurlo introduced their outcomes, which they obtained utilizing 12 years of information taken from W. M. Keck Observatory on Maunakea, Hawaii

“These compact dusty stellar objects move extremely fast and close to our galaxy’s supermassive black hole. It is fascinating to watch them move from year to year,” mentioned Ciurlo.

“How did they get there? And what will they become? They must have an interesting story to tell.”

The researchers made their discovery by acquiring spectroscopic measurements of the galactic Center’s gasoline dynamics utilizing Keck Observatory’s OH-Suppressing Infrared Imaging Spectrograph (OSIRIS).

“We started this project thinking that if we looked carefully at the complicated structure of gas and dust near the supermassive black hole, we might detect some subtle changes to the shape and velocity,” mentioned Randy Campbell, science operations lead at Keck Observatory.

“It was quite surprising to detect several objects that have very distinct movement and characteristics that place them in the G-object class, or dusty stellar objects.”

Astronomers first found G-objects on the Milky Way’s monster black gap greater than a decade in the past; G1 was first seen in 2004, and G2 was found in 2012. Both have been regarded as gasoline clouds till they made their closest method to the supermassive black gap. G1 and G2 someway managed to outlive the black gap’s gravitational pull, which might shred gasoline clouds aside.

“If they were gas clouds, G1 and G2 would not have been able to stay intact,” mentioned UCLA Astronomy Professor Mark Morris, a co-principal investigator and fellow member of UCLA’s Galactic Center Orbits Initiative (GCOI).

“Our view of the G-objects is that they are bloated stars – stars that have become so large that the tidal forces exerted by the central black hole can pull matter off of their stellar atmospheres when the stars get close enough, but have a stellar core with enough mass to remain intact. The question is then, why are they so large?”

It seems that plenty of power was dumped into the G-objects, inflicting them to swell up and develop bigger than typical stars.

GCOI thinks that these G-objects are the results of stellar mergers – the place two stars orbiting one another, often known as binaries, crash into one another because of the gravitational affect of the enormous black gap. Over a protracted time period, the black gap’s gravity alters the binary stars’ orbits till the duo collides. The mixed object that outcomes from this violent merger might clarify the place the surplus power got here from.

“In the aftermath of such a merger, the resulting single object would be “overvalued,” or distended, for a rather long period of time, perhaps a million years, before it settles down and appears like a normal-sized star,” mentioned Morris.

“This is what I find most exciting,” mentioned Andrea Ghez, founder and director of GCOI.

“If these objects are indeed binary star systems that have been driven to merge through their interaction with the central supermassive black hole, this may provide us with insight into a process which may be responsible for the recently discovered stellar mass black hole mergers that have been detected through gravitational waves.”

What makes G-objects uncommon is their “puffiness.” It is uncommon for a star to be cloaked by a layer of mud and gasoline so thick that astronomers don’t see the star instantly. They solely see the glowing envelope of mud. To see the objects by their hazy setting, Campbell developed a device known as OSIRIS-Volume Display (OsrsVol).

“OsrsVol allowed us to isolate these G-objects from the background emission and analyze the spectral data in three dimensions: two spatial dimensions, and the wavelength dimension that provides velocity information,” mentioned Campbell.

“Once we were able to distinguish the objects in a 3-D data cube, we could then track their motion over time relative to the black hole.”

“Keck Observatory has been observing the galactic Center every year for 20 years with some of the best instruments and technologies,” mentioned Ciurlo.

“This alone provides a really top quality and constant information set, which allowed us to go deep into the evaluation of the info.

These newly found infrared sources might doubtlessly be G-objects – G3, G4, and G5 – as a result of they share the bodily traits of G1 and G2.

This 3-D spectro-imaging information dice was produced utilizing software program known as OsrsVol, quick for OSIRIS-Volume Display. W. M. Keck Observatory Science Operations Lead Randy Campbell developed this tradition quantity rendering device to separate G3, G4, and G5 from the background emission. Once the 3-D evaluation was carried out, the crew might clearly distinguish the G-objects, which allowed them to comply with their motion and see how they behave across the supermassive black gap.

The crew will proceed to comply with the scale and form of the G-objects’ orbits, which might present essential clues as to how they fashioned.

The astronomers will particularly be paying shut consideration when these dusty stellar compact objects make their closest method to the supermassive black gap. This will enable them to additional observe their conduct and see whether or not the objects stay intact simply as G1 and G2 did, or turn into a snack for the supermassive black gap. Only then will they provide away their true nature.

“We’ll have to wait a few decades for this to happen; about 20 years for G3, and decades longer for G4 and G5,” mentioned Morris.

“In the meantime, we can learn more about these puffballs by following their dynamical evolution using OSIRIS.”

“Understanding G-objects can teach us a lot about the galactic Center’s fascinating and still mysterious environment. There are so many things going on that every localized process can help explain how this extreme, exotic environment works,” mentioned Ciurlo.

This analysis is carried out by a collaboration between Randy Campbell on the W.M. Keck Observatory, members of the galactic Center Group at UCLA (Anna Ciurlo, Mark Morris, and Andrea Ghez) and Rainer Schoedel of the Instituto de Astrofisica de Andalucia (CSIC) in Granada, Spain.

More at The Galactic Center Orbits Initiative

Related Links

Keck Observatory Stellar Chemistry, The Universe And All Within It

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NASA Selects Mission to Study Solar Wind Boundary of Outer Solar System Washington DC (SPX) Jun 04, 2018 NASA has chosen a science mission deliberate for launch in 2024 that may pattern, analyze, and map particles streaming to Earth from the sides of interstellar house. The Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP) mission will assist researchers higher perceive the boundary of the heliosphere, a kind of magnetic bubble surrounding and defending our photo voltaic system. This area is the place the fixed movement of particles from our Sun, known as the photo voltaic wind, collides with materials from the res … learn extra

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from http://www.wikipress.co.uk/science/more-mystery-objects-found-near-milky-ways-black-hole/

[awesomecolorfulcollectorwombat]

Micron: Up, Up And Away

New Post has been published on http://tradewithoutfear.com/micron-up-up-and-away/

Micron: Up, Up And Away

Micron (MU) posted its latest earnings report last week; the chipmaker managed to beat the street’s revenue and EPS forecasts yet again in Q2 and came out with a rather strong guidance for the third quarter. But those are just the highlights of its Q2 earnings report. Evaluating Micron’s latest results on a granular level reveals a particularly encouraging picture, one that suggests that the chipmaker’s growth momentum could stay intact and that its shares could rally further from the current levels over the next few months at least. Let’s take a closer look to have a better understanding of it all.

The Rockstar Segment

Let me start by saying that Micron’s Q2 earnings report was particularly encouraging for long-side investors. Its basic financial figures have already been reviewed by fellow contributors here on Seeking Alpha so we won’t be covering the same points again in this article. But just to rehash a bit here, for the sake of establishing talking points for our following discussion, the chipmaker’s revenue and EPS figures for the second quarter surged to $7.35 billion (up 58.1% YoY) and $2.67 (up 246% YoY) respectively.

I’d like to point to readers that this growth isn’t attributable to just one or two operating divisions. Fact of the matter is that all of Micron’s operating divisions were up on a year-on-year basis in its second quarter. I’ve attached a chart below for your reference. Its Storage Business Unit was up on a YoY basis, and down sequentially, but we have to remember that Micron operates in a highly cyclical industry so it’s only fair if we compare its financials with comparable quarters from the past.

The robustness of Micron’s sales growth is perhaps best highlighted when we drill deeper into its Compute and Business Unit (CNBU). As the chart attached below would indicate, the segment already accounts for a major share of the company’s overall sales and operating income generation. Apparently, the same segment also grew at the fastest pace amongst all other business divisions during the second quarter.

Its CNBU segment posted an impressive YoY sales growth of 92.5% during Q2 FY18. But here’s the interesting part. The segment had posted an equally stellar year-on-year sales growth of 82% during Q2 FY17. So, instead of its growth slowing down due to cyclicality or law of large numbers working against it, the chipmaker actually accelerated its sales growth in Q2 FY18. Not only that, but the segment’s operating margins surged to its highest levels in two years.

CNBU’s recent growth was driven by a combination of elevated average selling prices and strong demand for memory products. Moving forward, as we’ll see in the next section of the article, DRAM prices are forecasted to further head north over the course of 2018. So, the recent growth in Micron’s CNBU segment isn’t necessarily a one-time thing.

ASP Evolution

Micron makes different kinds of semiconductor solutions but sales of its DRAM and trade NAND memory products accounted for 71% and 25% of its overall sales in the second quarter. Anyone following the memory space closely would know that DRAM module prices have risen quite a bit over the recent months.

Now, analysts appear to have split opinions on where NAND and DRAM spot prices could be headed next. But IC Insights came out with a note last week, forecasting that DRAM and NAND ASPs could rise by as much as 36% and 10% respectively in 2018, after evaluating recent supply-demand trends of the same. As a result, the research firm ended up raising their overall sales growth forecasts for both NAND and DRAM for the year.

“The average selling price (ASP) of DRAM is now expected to be much stronger this year than originally forecast, IC Insights said. The firm expects DRAM ASPs to increase by 36 percent this year after growing by a whopping 81 percent last year…NAND ASPs are now expected to increase by 10 percent this year, following a 45 percent increase last year, IC Insights said.” – Source.

Speaking on their bit growth, management noted the following in their second quarter conference call:

“We now expect Micron’s calendar 2018 DRAM bit output growth to be in line with the industry’s 20% range… For the NAND market, we believe the ongoing transition to 64-layer 3D NAND creates the opportunity for a more balanced industry dynamic in calendar 2018 versus the constrained conditions we saw in 2017. We expect industry bit output growth to be somewhat higher than 45% in calendar 2018…We believe we will be somewhat above industry bit output growth in calendar 2018 for NAND.”

What this basically means is that Micron is positioning itself to increase its bit output over the course of 2018, at even higher ASPs for both NAND and DRAM products. So, unless something unexpected comes up, it’s highly likely that the chipmaker will post stellar sales and profit growth rates in FY18 as well.

The Sell-Off

Shortly after Micron announced its Q2 earnings, its shares dropped on concerns regarding the company getting caught amid trade wars between China and the U.S. The former came out with a list of potential retaliatory tariffs on food items ranging from litchis to walnuts, but nothing for semiconductors.

Here’s a link to the translated list. Chances are that this might not be the final list and China might come out with another list that imposes tariffs on U.S-based semiconductor firms at a later date to promote domestic firms. While I’m not an expert on international tariffs, I think we should consider that:

Micron isn’t merely competing on price. It owns genuine IP and Chinese firms would have to significantly invest in R&D and capital expenditure before they can even think of closing in on the performance gap. The chart attached below should highlight Micron’s capex spending routine;

2. China would be risking its technological advances in the field of computing by imposing tariffs on standard memory products. This isn’t something that China would want to fiddle with, at least not until its domestic memory manufacturers can compete globally in terms of performance;

3. Trump Administration won’t necessarily sit idle while the country’s semiconductor industry withers away;

Also, if there was any material risk to Micron’s growth story due to the evolving tariffs-related situation between U.S and China, at least a few analysts would have sounded the alarm bells. But instead, the broad swath of analysts covering the memory manufacturer have only raised their price targets for the name.

Old Target

New Target

Room for Stock Appreciation

Citi

$55

$65

20%

Stifel

$85

$95

75%

Mizuho Securities

$66

$70

29%

Cowen

$55

$65

20%

Baird

$60

$100

84%

Mizuho

$55

$66

22%

Credit Suisse

$60

$70

29%

Evercore ISI

$60

$80

48%

Keybanc

$53

$65

20%

Nomura Instinet

$55

$100

84%

Investor Takeaway

Micron just posted fantastic quarterly results yet again. The chipmaker is showing signs of its growth momentum continuing well over the course of 2018 as well, so much so that analyst price targets for Micron across the board are substantially higher than its current stock price. Hence, I believe this is a good time to be bullish on Micron, and any potential weakness in its shares should be considered as a buying opportunity.

Author’s Note: I’ll be writing another report on Micron over the next week. Make sure to click that “Follow” button at the top of this page to get a notification as soon as the report goes live. Thanks!

Disclosure: I/we have no positions in any stocks mentioned, and no plans to initiate any positions within the next 72 hours.

I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it (other than from Seeking Alpha). I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.

[douglassmiith]

5 Things You Need to Know About Acquiring a Business

You can’t become a market leader through organic growth alone. Here’s how to think about acquisitions strategically.

April 8, 2020 7 min read

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

When it comes to looking for advice on how to get acquired, there’s a lot out there — 405 million Google entries, to be exact. When it comes to advice on how to acquire, however, the results are fewer and are predominantly process-based, not strategy based.

You can’t become a market leader through organic growth alone. Google has made more than 200 acquisitions in its 21 years, the first being just three years after it was incorporated. Those doing the math can see that that’s about 10 acquisitions a year. To get the speed and breadth needed for scale, even 200 percent year-on-year organic growth won’t cut it. The knowledge and capabilities that come with acquisitions dwarfs anything that can be done on your own.

Related: When Acquiring a Company, Don’t Forget About the People

In my company’s 10-year history, we have undergone seven M&As and are continually looking for new opportunities that fit our business goals. How we’ve made this work isn’t because of the usual tactics of due diligence and negotiating on price (though of course someone here was responsible for that). The decisions on who and when to acquire are based on much more personal and personable reasons. Here are my tips. 

Get M&As into the DNA of your company

Before you start looking at and judging external companies, it’s time for some self-reflection. To get M&As right, it comes down to the DNA of not only the company you’re acquiring but also your own. If your DNA doesn’t support acquisitions, then any deal is likely to fail. My company made our first acquisition with a staff of seven. The company we acquired had 30 employees. To others, that may seem like a risky move and an easy way to lose control, but making your DNA support M&As is like training a muscle — the earlier you start, the stronger it becomes. Early M&As signal to your team that even great companies can’t do everything alone. If you build the muscle too late, your team won’t be as ready to accept others into your company. 

Go after a good business, not a good deal

It might seem like semantics, but the difference between the two words is important. A good deal refers to the acquisition price, but when we talk about a good business, what we mean are the people and the culture. You can get what’s considered a good deal on paper, but in reality the culture of the acquired company does not fit your own and the likelihood of future success is zero to none. A successful acquisition goes beyond the Excel sheets and the revenue charts. Buying a company that’s a good deal isn’t wrong all the time (and is a step that my company has taken), but it’s important to be honest and upfront with yourself. Post-acquisition, you’re going to face challenges integrating the two companies into a single collaborative working unit. 

Related: How to Make a Successful Acquisition to Grow Your Company

Do due diligence with the people

Doing your financial due diligence is an obvious step in the acquisition process, but the most important and often overlooked step is to do due diligence with people. Spend time not only with the CEO but also with the wider team. Understand the company’s culture and learn how decisions are made. What’s the group intelligence of the business you’re acquiring? Find out how they dealt with and recovered from past failures. Did they learn from them or repeat them further down the line? Does it evolve, is it steady or declining? Talk to the people. Being personally interested and inquisitive about the people in the company. Spending time with the team, observing them and noting how they interact with one another will tell you more about the character of the business you’re acquiring than any additional meeting with the CEO will.

Get out of your comfort zone

Making yourself feel vulnerable is a hard step to take, but it’s a critical one. Meet people in their office as opposed to your own. Yes, you won’t have the home court advantage, but when you’re out of your comfort zone, you can better analyze how you feel about your potential new partners. If spending time with the target company doesn’t make you feel good, it’s a telltale sign that this is not a good business for you. I’ve personally walked away from good deals when spending time at the other company didn’t feel right to me. But it’s not just about spending time with the people. Taking the conversation away from the boardroom is critical. Spend leisure time with them, meet their families and see how they interact away from the office.

Be willing to pay up front

If you’ve done your due diligence, spent quality time with the target company and are still happy to move forward with the acquisition, the level of conviction should be so high at this point that you’re ready to give up on normal protection mechanisms like down payments and earn-outs. This is my company’s policy, and I feel strongly about paying everything up front on day one.

Of course this policy doesn’t work for every company, but I believe in true partnerships. You can’t build one while holding a gun to someone’s head and telling them to reach certain goals. Is it nontraditional? Yes. Could I get burned? Maybe. It is risky? No. By paying up front you’ve given your new partners the option to walk away, which means that if they’ve chosen to stay it’s for the right reasons. The first day after an acquisition is now like day one of a startup, working with people who are in it together. 

Related: 10 Factors To Consider When Making An Acquisition

Will this work in 100 percent of acquisitions? Probably not. Statistically you’re likely to make a mistake, just as you could make a mistake if you did enforce protection methods. Given that, I believe that the upside of the successful acquisitions with this approach far outweighs any upsides of going down the traditional route.

When you’re buying another company — unless the acquisition is for a unique technology — what you’re really buying is the brains behind the operation. These are the people who love and believe in what they do and have made the company the success that it is today. It’s personal because it’s about your gut reaction. It’s personal because you all have to get along. If you wouldn’t sit in a coffee shop chatting about a new startup idea with these people, then the deal, no matter how good it sounds, is not for you.

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Via http://www.scpie.org/5-things-you-need-to-know-about-acquiring-a-business/

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[riichardwilson]

5 Things You Need to Know About Acquiring a Business

You can’t become a market leader through organic growth alone. Here’s how to think about acquisitions strategically.

April 8, 2020 7 min read

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

When it comes to looking for advice on how to get acquired, there’s a lot out there — 405 million Google entries, to be exact. When it comes to advice on how to acquire, however, the results are fewer and are predominantly process-based, not strategy based.

You can’t become a market leader through organic growth alone. Google has made more than 200 acquisitions in its 21 years, the first being just three years after it was incorporated. Those doing the math can see that that’s about 10 acquisitions a year. To get the speed and breadth needed for scale, even 200 percent year-on-year organic growth won’t cut it. The knowledge and capabilities that come with acquisitions dwarfs anything that can be done on your own.

Related: When Acquiring a Company, Don’t Forget About the People

In my company’s 10-year history, we have undergone seven M&As and are continually looking for new opportunities that fit our business goals. How we’ve made this work isn’t because of the usual tactics of due diligence and negotiating on price (though of course someone here was responsible for that). The decisions on who and when to acquire are based on much more personal and personable reasons. Here are my tips. 

Get M&As into the DNA of your company

Before you start looking at and judging external companies, it’s time for some self-reflection. To get M&As right, it comes down to the DNA of not only the company you’re acquiring but also your own. If your DNA doesn’t support acquisitions, then any deal is likely to fail. My company made our first acquisition with a staff of seven. The company we acquired had 30 employees. To others, that may seem like a risky move and an easy way to lose control, but making your DNA support M&As is like training a muscle — the earlier you start, the stronger it becomes. Early M&As signal to your team that even great companies can’t do everything alone. If you build the muscle too late, your team won’t be as ready to accept others into your company. 

Go after a good business, not a good deal

It might seem like semantics, but the difference between the two words is important. A good deal refers to the acquisition price, but when we talk about a good business, what we mean are the people and the culture. You can get what’s considered a good deal on paper, but in reality the culture of the acquired company does not fit your own and the likelihood of future success is zero to none. A successful acquisition goes beyond the Excel sheets and the revenue charts. Buying a company that’s a good deal isn’t wrong all the time (and is a step that my company has taken), but it’s important to be honest and upfront with yourself. Post-acquisition, you’re going to face challenges integrating the two companies into a single collaborative working unit. 

Related: How to Make a Successful Acquisition to Grow Your Company

Do due diligence with the people

Doing your financial due diligence is an obvious step in the acquisition process, but the most important and often overlooked step is to do due diligence with people. Spend time not only with the CEO but also with the wider team. Understand the company’s culture and learn how decisions are made. What’s the group intelligence of the business you’re acquiring? Find out how they dealt with and recovered from past failures. Did they learn from them or repeat them further down the line? Does it evolve, is it steady or declining? Talk to the people. Being personally interested and inquisitive about the people in the company. Spending time with the team, observing them and noting how they interact with one another will tell you more about the character of the business you’re acquiring than any additional meeting with the CEO will.

Get out of your comfort zone

Making yourself feel vulnerable is a hard step to take, but it’s a critical one. Meet people in their office as opposed to your own. Yes, you won’t have the home court advantage, but when you’re out of your comfort zone, you can better analyze how you feel about your potential new partners. If spending time with the target company doesn’t make you feel good, it’s a telltale sign that this is not a good business for you. I’ve personally walked away from good deals when spending time at the other company didn’t feel right to me. But it’s not just about spending time with the people. Taking the conversation away from the boardroom is critical. Spend leisure time with them, meet their families and see how they interact away from the office.

Be willing to pay up front

If you’ve done your due diligence, spent quality time with the target company and are still happy to move forward with the acquisition, the level of conviction should be so high at this point that you’re ready to give up on normal protection mechanisms like down payments and earn-outs. This is my company’s policy, and I feel strongly about paying everything up front on day one.

Of course this policy doesn’t work for every company, but I believe in true partnerships. You can’t build one while holding a gun to someone’s head and telling them to reach certain goals. Is it nontraditional? Yes. Could I get burned? Maybe. It is risky? No. By paying up front you’ve given your new partners the option to walk away, which means that if they’ve chosen to stay it’s for the right reasons. The first day after an acquisition is now like day one of a startup, working with people who are in it together. 

Related: 10 Factors To Consider When Making An Acquisition

Will this work in 100 percent of acquisitions? Probably not. Statistically you’re likely to make a mistake, just as you could make a mistake if you did enforce protection methods. Given that, I believe that the upside of the successful acquisitions with this approach far outweighs any upsides of going down the traditional route.

When you’re buying another company — unless the acquisition is for a unique technology — what you’re really buying is the brains behind the operation. These are the people who love and believe in what they do and have made the company the success that it is today. It’s personal because it’s about your gut reaction. It’s personal because you all have to get along. If you wouldn’t sit in a coffee shop chatting about a new startup idea with these people, then the deal, no matter how good it sounds, is not for you.

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Delray Beach SEO

source http://www.scpie.org/5-things-you-need-to-know-about-acquiring-a-business/ source https://scpie.tumblr.com/post/614858304888487936

[scpie]

5 Things You Need to Know About Acquiring a Business

You can’t become a market leader through organic growth alone. Here’s how to think about acquisitions strategically.

April 8, 2020 7 min read

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

When it comes to looking for advice on how to get acquired, there’s a lot out there — 405 million Google entries, to be exact. When it comes to advice on how to acquire, however, the results are fewer and are predominantly process-based, not strategy based.

You can’t become a market leader through organic growth alone. Google has made more than 200 acquisitions in its 21 years, the first being just three years after it was incorporated. Those doing the math can see that that’s about 10 acquisitions a year. To get the speed and breadth needed for scale, even 200 percent year-on-year organic growth won’t cut it. The knowledge and capabilities that come with acquisitions dwarfs anything that can be done on your own.

Related: When Acquiring a Company, Don’t Forget About the People

In my company’s 10-year history, we have undergone seven M&As and are continually looking for new opportunities that fit our business goals. How we’ve made this work isn’t because of the usual tactics of due diligence and negotiating on price (though of course someone here was responsible for that). The decisions on who and when to acquire are based on much more personal and personable reasons. Here are my tips. 

Get M&As into the DNA of your company

Before you start looking at and judging external companies, it’s time for some self-reflection. To get M&As right, it comes down to the DNA of not only the company you’re acquiring but also your own. If your DNA doesn’t support acquisitions, then any deal is likely to fail. My company made our first acquisition with a staff of seven. The company we acquired had 30 employees. To others, that may seem like a risky move and an easy way to lose control, but making your DNA support M&As is like training a muscle — the earlier you start, the stronger it becomes. Early M&As signal to your team that even great companies can’t do everything alone. If you build the muscle too late, your team won’t be as ready to accept others into your company. 

Go after a good business, not a good deal

It might seem like semantics, but the difference between the two words is important. A good deal refers to the acquisition price, but when we talk about a good business, what we mean are the people and the culture. You can get what’s considered a good deal on paper, but in reality the culture of the acquired company does not fit your own and the likelihood of future success is zero to none. A successful acquisition goes beyond the Excel sheets and the revenue charts. Buying a company that’s a good deal isn’t wrong all the time (and is a step that my company has taken), but it’s important to be honest and upfront with yourself. Post-acquisition, you’re going to face challenges integrating the two companies into a single collaborative working unit. 

Related: How to Make a Successful Acquisition to Grow Your Company

Do due diligence with the people

Doing your financial due diligence is an obvious step in the acquisition process, but the most important and often overlooked step is to do due diligence with people. Spend time not only with the CEO but also with the wider team. Understand the company’s culture and learn how decisions are made. What’s the group intelligence of the business you’re acquiring? Find out how they dealt with and recovered from past failures. Did they learn from them or repeat them further down the line? Does it evolve, is it steady or declining? Talk to the people. Being personally interested and inquisitive about the people in the company. Spending time with the team, observing them and noting how they interact with one another will tell you more about the character of the business you’re acquiring than any additional meeting with the CEO will.

Get out of your comfort zone

Making yourself feel vulnerable is a hard step to take, but it’s a critical one. Meet people in their office as opposed to your own. Yes, you won’t have the home court advantage, but when you’re out of your comfort zone, you can better analyze how you feel about your potential new partners. If spending time with the target company doesn’t make you feel good, it’s a telltale sign that this is not a good business for you. I’ve personally walked away from good deals when spending time at the other company didn’t feel right to me. But it’s not just about spending time with the people. Taking the conversation away from the boardroom is critical. Spend leisure time with them, meet their families and see how they interact away from the office.

Be willing to pay up front

If you’ve done your due diligence, spent quality time with the target company and are still happy to move forward with the acquisition, the level of conviction should be so high at this point that you’re ready to give up on normal protection mechanisms like down payments and earn-outs. This is my company’s policy, and I feel strongly about paying everything up front on day one.

Of course this policy doesn’t work for every company, but I believe in true partnerships. You can’t build one while holding a gun to someone’s head and telling them to reach certain goals. Is it nontraditional? Yes. Could I get burned? Maybe. It is risky? No. By paying up front you’ve given your new partners the option to walk away, which means that if they’ve chosen to stay it’s for the right reasons. The first day after an acquisition is now like day one of a startup, working with people who are in it together. 

Related: 10 Factors To Consider When Making An Acquisition

Will this work in 100 percent of acquisitions? Probably not. Statistically you’re likely to make a mistake, just as you could make a mistake if you did enforce protection methods. Given that, I believe that the upside of the successful acquisitions with this approach far outweighs any upsides of going down the traditional route.

When you’re buying another company — unless the acquisition is for a unique technology — what you’re really buying is the brains behind the operation. These are the people who love and believe in what they do and have made the company the success that it is today. It’s personal because it’s about your gut reaction. It’s personal because you all have to get along. If you wouldn’t sit in a coffee shop chatting about a new startup idea with these people, then the deal, no matter how good it sounds, is not for you.

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source http://www.scpie.org/5-things-you-need-to-know-about-acquiring-a-business/

[awesomeblockchain]

Token ​airdrops, which​ ​is​ ​basically​ ​when​ ​a​ ​blockchain project ​decides​ ​to​ ​distribute​ ​free​ ​tokens ​to​ ​the​ ​community, aren't a new phenomenon in the crypto world. Airdrops became increasingly popular throughout 2017, primarily due to ICO fatigue and increased regulatory uncertainty for token issuers.

Lately, there's also been a trend towards blockchain startups raising more of their funds through private sales, leaving less tokens available for purchase from individual investors during the public sale, and with some projects even replacing the ICO with a community airdrop altogether.

I wanted to find out about the reasons behind these strategies, and potential consequences for the crypto market, so I reached out to Jamie Burke, CEO at Outlier Ventures, a venture firm that specializes in cryptoassets and decentralized web technologies. Outlier tracks innovations in the token market including ICOs and airdrops and provided me with some new insights.

According to data provided by Outlier, one of the most prominent projects to replace their ICO with an airdrop was Byteball - a Direct Acyclic Graph based distributed ledger. During their airdrop last year, the project simply required individuals to send a signed message from their Bitcoin wallets and took the number of Bitcoins in their balances as an indicator of how many coins should be disbursed to the individual. Equally, another well known project that deployed massive distribution through an airdrop is Stellar who spread 16 billion XLM (Stellar Lumens) to Bitcoin holders in June 2017.

So why do projects choose the airdrop route? Could they not potentially raise more funds through public sales, and still manage to build community through airdrops in addition, as part of their PR campaign?

Jamie Burke tells me that while there is a current trend towards increasing airdrops, there isn't yet anything to indicate that ICOs will be replaced by them entirely. However, he does think they would supplement them, primarily in the case of utility tokens where an initial batch of early adopters are needed to try the product and validate its legitimacy.

Airdrops can be compared to the freemium model - individuals are given early stage free alpha access to a product (which is eventually monetized) - to generate on-platform network effects which then drive demand for the underlying utility token. It's kind of like a voucher to try a platform.

Although rarely the case, there are even companies doing an airdrop after they finish their ICO. CoinFi and Sharpe Capital are examples of this, having recently done their airdrops. A possible reason for this approach could be that a large amount of individuals are required to hold tokens to creative positive sentiment in market to your product. Post-ICO, however, you realize that a handful of accounts that donated heavily during the token sale (typically whales) now hold the majority of tokens, giving you a token distribution unfit for generating active market insights.

In order to capture the interest of average users and have them engaging with your platform, you may want to design an airdrop to attain a larger distribution. This particularly holds true for market sentiment platforms that require large numbers of users giving sentiments to truly generate -wisdom of the crowd."

Many projects also raise capital from VCs or pre-sale buyers with SAFTs (Simple Agreement for Future Tokens) in place. Once this is done, they build a basic product and deploy it to gauge consumer interest and do A/B testing on the product itself.

So basically, airdrops are relevant in cases where more value is generated through a product's traction than from fundraising alone. When distribution and network effects produce more value than users simply holding on to a token, airdrops provide an effective distribution mechanism.

In Burke's and Outlier's opinion, one of the ways in which an airdrop might help reduce regulatory risk prior to a token sale itself, is through validating a product and its utility before a public sale. By deploying a product and distributing free tokens for real world users to try the product, teams have been positioning a token generation event as a utility token distribution, and in some cases even booking the raised amount as revenue.

The idea being that if a usable platform has been deployed and distributed tokens have an immediate and demonstrable utility, then a regulator is less inclined to see an ICO purely as a speculative asset. It's common for companies to state that a token generation event (TGE) is a sale of access to software and not an investment.

A standard airdrop usually involves some KYC process or simply holding tokens in a chain of the developer's choosing, and it's designed to be as open as possible and requires little to no effort to acquire tokens.

To understand how projects decide which tokens or cryptocurrencies to partner with for their airdrop, it's useful to look into the specifics of executing one. An airdrop is giving away cryptocurrency, but how do you give it away securely and with minimal effort for those receiving the airdrop? Sending around private keys is not an option, because the project would have a copy of the private key, as would anyone capturing the communication.

For that reason, targeting existing holders of a cryptocurrency is an attractive solution. They already have a wallet and hold their own private keys, which allows the airdropper to provide them access to airdropped tokens securely. Also, existing holders have some affinity with cryptocurrencies in the first place and are likely early adopters. Generally, the cryptocurrencies with the most holders, Bitcoin and Ether, form interesting targets to reach a large audience with a single airdrop.

However one of the concerns Burke states is that here you are often just replicating the wealth distribution of existing token economies, which to date is largely in the hands of speculators, not users. This can include many tokens going to exchanges themselves. Furthermore these random airdrops can become a new and unwelcome form of spam.

In the case of Ethereum, there is a close knit ecosystem of projects building on top of it. Airdropping to Ether holders is therefore a logical choice for projects in that ecosystem. Additionally, Ethereum has the benefit of broad adoption of the ERC20 standard, which lets receivers of the airdrop discover the tokens they received through their wallet software or a block explorer, like Etherscan or Ethplorer.

There's no action required by the receiver, the airdrop itself is the communication channel. Such an airdrop is more like door-to-door distribution - every address on a -street" (the blockchain) gets some tokens, and larger -houses" (addresses) get more.

Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies don't currently have such widely supported token standards, so they require a different communication channel to mobilize holders to take part in the airdrop, and require the airdrop receivers to take action. An airdrop like this can be compared to going online to learn about a product, then ordering it, and getting it for free.

Burke believes that, as other cryptoassets gain wider adoption, they could become attractive as airdrop targets, especially for projects building on top of them at the application layer, as we have seen with Ethereum.

The crypto space is only starting to understand the mechanics and economics of airdrops in token economies, and there are probably yet undiscovered consequences of distributing tokens this way. It could potentially lead to more centralized projects, as fewer people are able to participate in the sale and only receive smaller amounts through airdrops.

Crypto exchanges play an important role, and will increasingly do so if airdrops grow as a way to spread tokens. As centralized exchanges hold cryptocurrency on their clients' behalf, they control large wallets, and are eligible to receive significant amounts of airdropped tokens. However, it's entirely up to the exchanges if they want to distribute the tokens to their customers or keep them for themselves, as it does require effort on their end.

Firstly, any steps that an airdrop receiver needs to go through, the exchange needs to take. To begin with, the exchange needs to know about the airdrop. The airdrop then usually requires some kind of proof of control over the cryptocurrency wallet, for example signing a message with the private key and providing this to the airdrop project.

For an exchange this would mean signing a message with various private keys of cold storage wallets, which require a high level of security clearance. Secondly, there is the effort of fairly distributing the airdropped tokens among the clients of the exchange, and communicating to them about this.

In practice, we see that exchanges sometimes take this effort, and sometimes they don't. And to Burke, the decision process seems arbitrary raising questions about backroom deals. For example, the Stellar Lumens airdrop to Bitcoin holders was distributed by Kraken but not by Coinbase.

If airdrops become more prominent as a distribution mechanism, we can expect exchange users to become more vocal about receiving them. On the other hand, it can be argued that airdrops are meant to reach those who actually control their cryptocurrency and intend to use it, rather than store it on the exchange for day trading, so in many cases airdrops not being distributed through exchanges might actually be of benefit.

Furthermore there are privacy concerns. Taking part in an airdrop might mean disclosing information about one's cryptocurrency holdings, as does communicating about having received an airdrop. As an example, the OmiseGO airdrop distributed tokens to Ethereum addresses with over 0.1 Ether in them, proportionately to the Ether value. If someone would post -Wow, I just received 1,000 OmiseGO tokens!" on social media, that would reveal they were a significant holder of Ether.

Finally, as is the case with many parts of cryptocurrencies, airdrops are another opportunity for scams and require good security procedures and great scrutiny of the participants. There have been various cases of scammers announcing an airdrop for projects where there had never been one, or announcing additional airdrop rounds for projects where there had been - thereby speaking to the feeling of FOMO for those who had missed the original airdrop.

There have also been cases of new tokens which were announced as an airdrop or a fork, but in reality were scams with no intent of actually producing a new token. Invariably the scam requires victims to either send cryptocurrency or submit private keys to -participate" in the airdrop, while in reality they will lose all their funds.

Burke says the idea of printing your own money to buy market share is obviously a very appealing one, but given anyone can do it there is the danger it could get out of control and just become an annoyance as a form of 'token pollution.' However, strategically applied to select groups of potential users critical to network adoption it could be a powerful way to effect better wealth distribution in the system to a general token sale. If you want certain people to be your users, seek them out instead, explain why you want them on board and find a way to have them become token holders.

Burke concluded our interview by saying that in a space which has seen a lot of greed and a lack of diversity, he would love to see projects use airdrops to encourage the participation of individuals, organizations and companies that are committed to social benefit and diversity. Let's hope the days of the white paper only, plain money grab ICOs are about to come to an end.

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