Archive for February 3rd, 2012
WSJ: Atomic Object, a Grand Rapids, Mich., software-development firm, holds company meetings first thing in the morning. Employees follow strict rules: Attendance is mandatory, nonwork chitchat is kept to a minimum and, above all, everyone has to stand up. Stand-up meetings are part of a fast-moving tech culture in which sitting has become synonymous with [...]
Watch Out For Fake Facebook Stock
If you do construction work on someone’s home and they offer to pay you in Facebook stock — before the IPO — it might not be a good idea to accept it in lieu of cash, as one Wisconsin man learned last week. Marianne Oleson, 46, made her initial appearance in Winnebago County court Wednesday [...]
Video: Augmented Reality Business Card
Maybe there is a future for the lowly business card after all. PSFK: Advertising agency JWT London has used image-recognition app Blippar to create a unique and innovative new business card that lets people view their showreel and receive directions to their office. Video below.
How To Find Your Luggage in a Sea of Black Suitcases: Coverlugg
Next up in our series of interviews with Walmart’s Get on the Shelf contestants is Greg Sanchez, inventor of the Coverlugg. What product did you submit to Walmart’s Get on the Shelf contest? Our product is called Coverlugg. It is a unique neoprene cover that simply slides over the top of your existing luggage that [...]
Japanese Entrepreneurs Dream Of Silicon Valley
Manufacturing.net: Small but growing numbers of Japanese entrepreneurs are jumping into the startup scene in northern California, particularly since the earthquake and tsunami last March. They include Naoki Shibata, who took the plunge by giving up the sort of life many Japanese in past decades spent their lives trying to attain. Only 30, Shibata had [...]
Little Cloud Nine Travel Pillow
Next up in our series of interviews with contestants in Walmart’s Get on the Shelf contest is Steve Diemer, inventor of Little Cloud Nine travel pillow. What product did you submit to Walmart’s Get on the Shelf contest? My product is called Little Cloud Nine. Where’d the idea come from? My wife and I travel [...]
Business Plan Competitions Revamped
I’m glad to see that some business plan competitions are focusing more on the business and less on the plan. WSJ: Less planning, more legwork. That’s the formula some business schools are using to overhaul the competitions they conduct each year to test their students’ mettle as entrepreneurs. The contests, which have been an academic [...]
Today in Entrepreneurial History: February 3
On this date in 1637, Tulip mania collapsed in the United Provinces (now the Netherlands) as sellers could no longer find buyers for their bulb contracts. What was tulip mania, you ask? Tulip mania was a period in the Dutch Golden Age during which contract prices for bulbs of the recently introduced tulip reached extraordinarily [...]
Small Biz Optimism At Three Year High
Fox Business: Three out of four (75 percent) small-business owners in the U.S. are confident about the future of their businesses, a new economic report shows. This is the highest level of small-business optimism in this country in the past three years and a jump from 64 percent of owners giving future prospects a thumbs-up [...]
Spin Mail: The Mailbox That Pivots
Ever wonder about your safety while stepping out on the side of a busy road to remove your mail from the mailbox? Spin Mail has created a simple solution by making it easy for you to turn your mailbox around to face you, without you having to step out near traffic. Reed Holmes of Chester, [...]
