At a Dell Women's Entrepreneurship Network dinner, Techonomy's David Kirkpatrick spoke with XO Group co-founder Carley Roney about her company's trajectory since 1996. Roney says barriers to entry are much lower for startups today than when she and her husband David Liu were launching The Knot, XO's signature enterprise. "Now you can iterate more quickly and test things and segment," says Roney. "None of those things were possible at the time." With resources scarce, Roney says her team had to launch with a clear business plan. More
John Chambers on Why Business Can’t Ignore the Internet of Everything
The only constant is change—and companies that do not change get left behind. My perspective is that it’s best to accept change as inevitable—to embrace it, lead it, and use it to shape desired outcomes. As I discussed previously, many of today’s leading trends—what I call market transitions—are combining into the Internet of Everything, which we define as the intelligent connection of people, processes, data, and things. More
New Yorkers Can Now Hail Yellow Cabs with an App
New York City’s yellow taxi riders can now legally hail a cab with a smartphone app. Tuesday evening, San Francisco-based Uber announced that its cab hailing services were approved for use throughout the city, a move that positions Uber as the first and only cab-hailing app currently approved for use in New York. This follows a recent dismissal of a lawsuit filed by the livery car industry in New York, which opened the doors for app makers to offer electronic hailing of taxicabs throughout the city, a service Uber initially began testing last fall. More
Mining Big Data for Programming Talent
Finding and recruiting top programmers remains a huge challenge for fast-growth companies like Square, Google, Facebook, and Amazon. Will Big Data come to their rescue? They’re willing to give it a try. These companies—along with other big names like Twitter and Walmart—are all customers of Gild, a startup that leverages information technology to find hidden talent. Gild was developed to tap self-motivated achievers—a cohort rife with what co-founder Dr. Vivienne Ming calls "wasted talent"—who are largely unknown compared to the smaller pool of much-wooed Ivy League graduates. More
Business E-Commerce Startup Culture
Startup Creativity Flourishes at NY Tech Day
There seems no limit to the business ideas the Internet can spawn. More than 400 tech startups, most of them dot-coms and 75% New York-based, exhibited at NY Tech Day on April 25. Some presented pre-launch concepts; others, more established, were there seeking investors, recruiting employees, and hatching partnerships. Concepts included the countercultural (InkedMatch.com, online matchmaking for tattoo lovers), the controversial (Parlor, enabling phone conversations between like-minded strangers), and the socially purposeful (Audicus.com, high-quality hearing aids sold at steep discounts to a market that includes earbud-damaged 20-somethings). More
From the Model T to P2P: How Automotive Innovation is Changing Detroit (Again)
San Francisco's Uber has turned the limo and cab industry upside down by offering a car service that books rides on demand from smartphones. Users can request vehicles and complete transactions entirely through a mobile app. This method creates efficiencies that don't exist in traditional limo/cab offerings: upon request for a vehicle, the app sends the picture, name, and direct contact number of your driver to your smartphone. GPS enables real-time tracking as the driver approaches your pickup location, and upon reaching your destination, payment is automatically processed (gratuity included) through the app. In short, Uber has radically streamlined the customer experience for both driver and passenger. More
An Online Matchmaker for Designers and Manufacturers
Repatriating U.S. manufacturing jobs isn't just about bolstering the economy. There are practical business problems associated with outsourcing production abroad. It's not uncommon for shipments of products made in countries like China to arrive with defects, which can be hard to rectify from the other side of the world. In a report on WNYC's New Tech City, Matthew Burnett, a small business owner in Brooklyn, says quality control wasn't the only issue he ran into when he used foreign companies to manufacture parts for his designer watch company—language barriers and time-zone differences hampered routine communications. When Burnett started his next company, a clothing line, he decided he only wanted to make his products in the U.S. That way he could order smaller batches and call up the factory directly if there were any problems. More
Is Apple’s Blossom Fading?
Apple is arguably the Brangelina of companies: It’s not young anymore, and there isn’t much new there. But our fascination and fixation endure. Widely regarded as a bellwether for the global economy and a perennial favorite on Fortune’s World’s Most Admired Companies list, Apple’s better-than-anticipated earnings report reveals a company that continues to capitalize on its unwavering customer loyalty numbers, baked-in culture of innovation, and relentless focus on design as a key market differentiator. But with its iconic founder gone and the company maturing under the leadership of CEO Tim Cook, some are seeing signs of stagnation and decline. More
New 4G Contracts Test Beijing’s Fair Trade Commitment
The coming months will be a pivotal time for Beijing to show its commitment to free trade, as China’s three telcoms operators get set to award billions of dollars in new contracts to build 4G mobile networks. The building spree will mark the first batch of big new contracts since both the U.S. and Europe took moves last year that could severely limit or ban the import of Chinese networking equipment for reasons of national security and unfair competition. More
Too Much Like-Mindedness Hurts Companies, and the Country
After the political rhetoric and partisan saber-rattling of the elections, the fiscal cliff debate, and recent presidential appointments, the country seems increasingly divided. In their book, The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America is Tearing Us Apart, Bill Bishop and Robert Cushing focus on one of the long-term trends driving the political rift. As Americans have become increasingly mobile over the last 40 years, they have sorted themselves into increasingly homogeneous neighborhoods, choosing to live near those who share similar beliefs, backgrounds, and socioeconomic status. More
