Interns can make a HUGE difference to any startup. Here at SQBlueSky, we have a group of interns spending their summer with us. They have helped us establish our social media presence, develop content, do financial modeling and valuation, and create new marketing campaigns – nothing scares them.

Additionally, they contribute with their youth and excitement as only university students can. Honestly, it has been a blast.

We quietly launched our first product in May of this year and within the first month, we hit gold landing our first client, a local hedge fund in Dallas. We knew it was just the start of our long journey, and our first client knew – knows – we are a startup and sees its role as not just using our tool but also giving us feedback on the product to help us evolve it. So while we had a great start, we are still running a marathon.

This is where having a few smart, intelligent, quick learners on board to help out is worth every iota of time you spend with them.

What they bring to the table:

1. The ability to work with no budget. Who knows more about how to be resourceful with little or no funding than students? David Li, an undergraduate at NYU, got us a great deal on a rechargeable battery just by knowing where to look for cheap goods. (Don’t underestimate the power of buying cheap as a startup!)
2. An affinity for social media. Students live and socialize online. They all know how to “Like”, “Follow”, become “LinkedIn” and are serial “Tweeters”. It is an easy extension for them to create and manage a social media presence for a company.
3. The curiosity bug. Interns are great at internet research. We are in the process of putting together an instructional video and between David, Yingxia Xie, an MS Finance student at UT Dallas, and Satvika Ananthanarayan, an undergraduate at UT Austin, they have been able to come up with a list of open source editing software, recommendations for music, and licensing costs in less than one hour.
4. Inspiration. Satvika came up with the idea of having campus ambassadors, which makes a lot of sense for us because we plan to offer our tool to students for free and need advocates on the ground.
5. Hip. Just admit it: students ALWAYS know more about what is going on than you do, including the best restaurants, music and movies – Yingxia, who is of Chinese origin, loves Hindi movies and recommended “Three Idiots”, which I enjoyed a lot!

What they get:

1. Meaningful work experience. This will help with getting a “real” job when they graduate.
2. Startup work experience. This is where you work in a small team and your work will be directly and immediately impactful to the company.

Finding the right person for the internship is key, though. The right person wants to work for a startup, has done some research about what startups are all about, likes ambiguity, can think for themselves, and finally, is really, really intelligent.

Good luck with your interns and reaping the immediate benefits. Remember a small startup can deal with a learning curve, but a startup will die without passion, sweat equity and a balance of book and street smarts!

Written by Florence Lowe
Adapted from Interns To The Rescue At Startups!, published in Women 2.0

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So, how do you create a deeper connection?

CARING

When you genuinely care about a person, a group, an organization, a cause, or an idea, you tend to modify your behaviour.

How to care more:

• Passion: Be passionate about what you care about. Make others passionate about it, too.
• Awareness: Be aware of our involvement in the world and how we affect others.
• Relating: We can all relate to one another if you care enough to try.

COMMUNICATION

If you genuinely care enough about a person, a group, an organization, a cause, or an idea, and you communicate deeply and passionately to that person, group, organization, or about that cause or idea, then you can achieve a powerful connection.

How to communicate better:

• Talking: Say more than you want to say: tell people the what, and then tell them the so what.
• Listening: follow up; consider both the content of what they are saying and the context in which they are saying it; expand on what they’re saying.
• Physicality: Go beyond verbal communication. Communicate through looks, through firm handshakes, and through hugs.
• Openness and honesty: Break down the walls. Be who you are and say what you want to say. Be refreshingly honest. Be brutally honest.
• Ask questions, don’t assume.
• Risk-taking: Do it first. Ask the first question; pick up the phone first; walk up and greet someone first.

CARING + COMMUNCATION = CONNECTION

Once you’ve made connections, develop a diverse and open community. Connection motivates change; through your community, make a change.

Written by Bobby Umar
Adapted from The 5 C’s of Connection

Click here to watch Bobby’s motivational TEDx Talk!

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• When Arizona passed the SB 1070 law several years ago that opened the door for racial profiling of Hispanics, it created turmoil.
• When Lowe’s and other companies started pulling their ads off of a Muslim-American reality TV show, it created turmoil.
• The “SlutWalk” controversy caused a fair amount of turmoil.
• When the economic climate caused high levels of structural unemployment and sparked protests, it created worldwide turmoil.
• When George Zimmerman shot Trayvon Martin, it created turmoil.

Now, debates and controversies are always going to be an inevitable part of a society that (ideally) aims to strive for freedom. It is natural for people to have different opinions about what they believe is right and wrong. There’s nothing groundbreaking about that.

Let me ask you a question. You don’t have to answer it to anyone other than yourself. If you had to rank the five incidents above in order of how important they are to you, which would be of highest and lowest priority?

This is not a scientific study, but from my own personal experience, the answer to this question lies upon which group you relate to. Using my Facebook account as an example, my Hispanic friends posted much more about SB 1070 than anyone else. My Muslim friends posted much more about Lowe’s than anyone else. My friends who are White women posted more about the SlutWalk controversy than anyone else. My poor friends posted more about Occupy Wall Street than anyone else. And my Black friends posted more about the Trayvon Martin situation than anyone else. Sadly, the more affluent and White you are, the lower the probability you posted about any of these issues.

This is very significant. It may seem like five separate issues; but I believe they’re all actually linked together as one core underlying problem. If we want to make real progress, we need to ask ourselves:

Why don’t we care about inequality until it happens to us?

This is what polarizes us. You and I are individuals with our own minds – capable of independent and critical thinking. Martin Luther King Jr. once stated, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” If none of these issues struck a chord at all, ask yourself why. If one of these issues outrages you, then every issue should outrage you. These divisions will stop occurring only when we become a collection of individuals with our own thoughts and beliefs; rather than taking on the identity of a certain group and being too afraid to branch out of it. I want to see my Jewish friends passionately standing up for Muslims. I want to see White people outspoken about their Hispanic friends being treated unfairly. I want to see men sticking up for women’s rights. I want to see rich people trying to help poor people become prosperous. People making friends with people from different places and different backgrounds.

One person’s problem is everyone’s problem. We have to begin to think outside of ourselves to truly be able to see the other side. Having an “Us vs. Them” mentality is the real delusion. Don’t wait until misfortune strikes your loved ones to lend a helping hand. Don’t wait until injustice shows up on your doorstep to ask others to support what is right. People will remember how you reacted when it was them who needed you. In the words of James Mills, “You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him.”

Written by Jordan Phoenix
Adapted from See the Other Side

Image courtesy of Danilo Rizzuti / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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The biggest, costliest, and most avoidable mistake you can make in your life is not managing your own destiny from the start of your career – and continuing throughout.

It’s not just about doing good work and having a ready resume.

Here are some ways to manage your career:

• Learn how people get promoted in your organization and you do the same.
• Solve problems and make issues go away; communicate it so others know what your team has accomplished and the value they add to the organization.
• Be willing to work for a boss you don’t like and still make the boss look good and smart.
• Help your boss get promoted; help your subordinates get promoted.
• Consistently exceed expectations; do better than they think you will.
• Take it upon yourself to learn how profit and loss happens in your organization; if you don’t have direct profit and loss responsibility yourself.
• Coach your people on the next steps they should take after each of their accomplishments.
• Get a replacement ready to take your place.
• Look, work, walk, and talk (without a hint of arrogance) like you are already in the next job before you are so they “see” you in it.

You decide where you want to go – and go for it — rather than just drift. Those who think about it and plan for it do a lot better. Odds are stacked against you unless you do. It’s easy to be passive; that why it’s so popular.

Plan, but don’t plan on your plan working out because there is no way you can anticipate the myriad of changes, surprises, and setbacks you’ll encounter. You’ll end up in jobs, companies, industries, you haven’t even considered. You’ll change; the world will change.

The best professional development tool is a big job. You’ve got to try stuff that on paper you have no right to but that seems like a good idea anyway. Some of the new big jobs won’t work out flawlessly; but if you win all the time, it means you aren’t competing at a high enough level. A CEO friend told me, “If you don’t have butterflies starting your new job, you’re not reaching.”

Written by Debra Benton
Adapted from Manage Your Career And Don’t Let Others Do It For You, published in Women 2.0

Image Courtesy of Stuart Miles / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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Many fledgling entrepreneurs or managers looking to develop new lines of business fail in making one (or more) of these foundational mistakes:

Understand the Problem

Developers and inventors often fail to clearly define and understand the problem their idea solves. This seems like an impossible and preposterous claim, but we have seen it time and time again. Developers or entrepreneurs often create a solution to a perceived problem or to perform some task that affects them personally or plagues the business where they work. In developing this solution, they often jury rig and patch together parts and processes to achieve a kind of working solution to the problem. From here, they begin thinking about how to make the new idea into a bigger, better tool.

While this organic process is a fertile ground for invention, it’s best if, as early as possible in the life-cycle of an idea, the inventor or developer steps back and clearly defines and understands the problem that is being solved and why it is a problem. Often, a solution arises to a very particular sense of a problem that the developer may have, but he or she does not sufficiently generalize the understanding of that problem to see what deep need it fulfills in a wider audience.

Understand the People Who Have the Problem

Many beginning entrepreneurs fail to know and thoroughly understand the people who have the problem solved by their idea. In much the same way that they often fail to understand the core, generalizable problem solved by their idea, many inventors and developers do not understand the people who have this problem. Many times, they imagine the problem in the context of their own internal sense of a need and this sense is usually confused and unclear.

Needs and solutions have dimensions that are both physical and psychological. Perhaps one of the most brilliant examples of this fact is the development of the modern Alka-Seltzer marketing strategy during the 1960’s. The product was well known and had a very large (and passionate) market base among older Americans. However, it did not sell well with younger demographics as it was perceived as a symbol of excess used by people who drank and ate too much.

Ad firm Tinker & Partners did considerable research and reimagined the product as one that had a more medical application – and in so doing, likened it to aspirin rather than as a “hangover remedy”. In addition, they began displaying ads showing product users taking two tablets rather than the single tablet that had been the standard since the introduction of the product.

This innovation arose from a deep understanding of the real needs of the younger demographic they wished to target: everyone has heartburn and upset stomach from time to time. But the causes of this discomfort are themselves subject to moral and value judgments that tap into the emotions of potential users. By positioning the product as one that admitted of degrees of effectiveness and was similar to the role played by OTC medications, Alka-Seltzer neatly sidestepped an association with excess by choice (the moral failing of gluttony) and became associated with the healing of a “condition”. Packaging it in doses of two pills sealed the deal in strengthening the association with aspirin.

Would-be entrepreneurs must understand the deep psychology of their potential customers and what drives them to seek a solution to a particular need. Products that meet the physical need (relieving heartburn, etc.) and also meet a psychological need (making that treatment beyond reproach by associating it with medicine) will win in the marketplace.

Commit to Innovation

Finally, at their foundation, a bewildering number of new business ventures have no formal commitment or process for continuous innovation. This is perhaps the most understandable of the three foundational mistakes because at this stage in an idea’s growth, all development is focused on the creation of a thing that can solve this problem “Now!”

It is vitally important that at the earliest stages of an idea’s growth the development team put in a place a formal mechanism that encourages innovation. We encourage entrepreneurs in these early stages to do the following:

• Create physical world feedback loops. In software application development, this is done by competent testing and error handling; in manufacturing, by basic quality control. The goal here is not only to produce a product that is usable and safe, but also to gather consistent data on areas of the production process where problems often arise (thus providing opportunities for greater production efficiency) and places where improvements and changes could extend the product’s usefulness.
• Develop feedback loops that are internal to the company. These are importantly different from quality control structures. Here, it is important to create an environment and mechanism where the production team members are encouraged to think and engage passionately with the product. Identifying and thinking about problems within employee workflows, consistent complaints that slow down production, and harnessing good ideas that come as employees creatively solve challenges is vital to the development of a strong product.
• Create formal feedback loops within the marketplace. Relying on sales numbers and then asking “What happened???” when a launch fails is all too common. Instead, the business must have a formal mechanism for engaging regularly with its most passionate users. Additionally, it needs to gather qualitative and quantitative data from suppliers and distributors. Markets change radically (and quickly). Without the ability to ‘read’ what is happening, organizations that are bringing an idea to life as a full-fledged product can often find themselves left behind, even before they get out of the starting gate.

The foundation steps also create a cycle that promotes real progress.

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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• Reputation: people love to know how your product or service is helping communities and the environment. Anita Roddick, the founder of the Body Shop, made her company so incredibly successful on this principle before she sold it. The more the authentic value the potential customer gets from the story, the less they focus on the price.
• Leadership: when you take a lead in your industry for being the first, the best, or the most engaged in being green, you most likely will be seen as the expert and/or leader. Soon you’ll have the industry including you and coming to you for advice and input.
• Loyalty: the more involved your business is with your stakeholders and taking on environmental issues that you can relate back to your business goals, the more people will want to support you to a degree. Make sure you keep this in check and are clear on the benefits and costs are for what you are doing.
• Leverage: by engaging your community, vendors, customers, and other stakeholders, you will create a team who will more likely help promote your business. Also, to leverage the fact that you are authentically green will often times attract new sets of eyes.
• Efficiency: in many cases, but not all, your costs will decrease by going green. Reduced expenses often occur in ways difficult to predict: e.g. reduced sick days of employees, less expensive energy costs or smaller invoices for garbage collection, etc.
• Growth: existing products or services can sometimes demand a higher price. Additionally, you might have access to new vertical markets as well as create new applications of your product/service. Perhaps develop a new one or two to complement your existing line.

Cons to Green Marketing

• Skepticism: with so many companies promoting their “green-ness”, when often times they are not that green (also known as greenwashing) it’s no wonder consumers are less trusting of these claims. Managing this can be quite tricky, even when you are authentic about your claims.
• Engagement: getting your stakeholders on board with your green company is usually time consuming and can be expensive. Social media can help, but can take a tremendous amount of time and often has limited results if not well planned.
• Complexity: addressing and taking responsibility for your company’s impact on the planet is by far not an easy task. It takes research. It takes commitment to fully understanding the core issues.
• Perception: your product is more expensive than and/or not as effective as “non-green” alternatives. Usually this is not the case, and getting your customers to understand this can be costly and challenging.
• Resistance: in trying something new. From investors to customers, getting stakeholders to embrace your company going green may not be a smooth ride.

To implement a green marketing campaign is your choice. It comes down to if you have what it will take to navigate these complex waters of promoting your company as green and whether you have a passion for it or not.

Action Steps:

Been thinking about marketing your company as being green? Great!

• First, take a hard look at what you are committed to. Are you authentically committed to integrating your company with your community and taking responsibility to improving the environment? Or are you doing it because you see a way to make more money? Or both?
• How you should proceed depends on your answer. If you’re doing it just for the money, you will most likely fail. Because without the authenticity and passion, you will be discovered in the marketplace and be labelled as a greenwasher, or you’ll quit early on as you try to do it correctly.
• Once you are clear on your commitment, examine how to integrate your involvement with your local community. How do you engage them? How do you get them to want your involvement?
• Do the same for environmental issues you feel fit your company’s brand, mission and vision.
• Once together, start to implement your strategy. Don’t forget to engage your stakeholders along the way.

Finally, tabulate the results of your green marketing campaign.

Written by Stefan Doering

Adapted from Pros and Cons to Marketing Your Company as Green FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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The key is to be on the same side of the table during negotiations (either physically or figuratively) to actively influence the other’s decisions. It’s not necessarily what you do per-say that is important, but the perception of what you’re doing.

If your counterpart perceives you as a competitor who is trying to get something that they do not wish to give you, that’s negotiating. But if they perceive you as being on the same side of the table as they are, working with them to achieve common goals to both get what you want, that’s influencing their decisions and will lead to a more positive outcome.

Five Useful Negotiation Tips:

• Never start where you want to end up. People need to feel that they are in a process and are heard in negotiations, going into a meeting and demanding what you want will make your counterpart feel threatened and bullied.
• Have a goal. Set a scale with the best possible outcome and also know when to walk away. This will keep you from being caught off guard and settling on an agreement you are not happy about.
• Find out what your counterpart needs and cares about and be prepared to accept it in a non-judgmental way. When people don’t see things our way our initial instinct is to convince them out of it. Take time to brainstorm ways you can accommodate their requests to leave them feeling valued.
• Create an aura of authority. Use your title, credentials, appearance, etc to prove you are a legitimate player in negotiations. Speak slowly and confidently.
• Never, under any circumstances, let anyone see you cry.

Written by Melissa Fudor
Adapted from A Woman’s Guide to Negotiating (Tips & Tricks), published in Women 2.0

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1. You have the power to create.

There is a clear difference between pursuing a high-tech start-up career versus having a traditional academic or consulting career. There is an element of risk coupled with an opportunity to create. There is an adjustment to lifestyle with an opportunity to have full ownership. There is no learning curve or internal processes, you must think quickly and execute. If you have the desire to change the world with your own passion, a tech startup may be right for you.

2. You can set the standard that it is meritocratic.

Being a woman in a tech startup becomes an issue only by perception and it is easy to wonder, “Why am I the only female in this room?” Set the perception of your gender as a non-issue and focus on the real issues, such as “How do we make this startup succeed?”

“I’d never want to work anywhere other than a tech start-up because of the amount of influence every employee has on the shape the company takes. I’m excited to come into work every day and juggle press requests, software bugs, and marketing campaigns because I have so much more responsibility than I would elsewhere. Start-ups are almost complete meritocracies. Everyone at work is valued according to how much they contribute to the company, rather than by age, position, college, gender, or salary. Being a nineteen year old, and the only female employee at Spock, I can probably appreciate this more than most.” – Maia Bittner, Engineer, Spock.com

Startups are – and to succeed, must be – meritocratic. Limited funding, time, and even office space restrictions don’t allow for hiring anyone who doesn’t add real value. Larger companies and firms have internal diversity goals whereas startups don’t have such goals in their early stages.

3. You are a good leader.

Studies have shown that the transformational leadership style comes naturally to women. In an early stage startup, the transformational leadership style that is people-centric and nurturing is the strategy to build a passionate and committed team. In contrast, transactional leadership that involves command and control does not ignite the passion in individuals to create the next Google. A tech startup idea is only as good as the people who execute it.

4. You can’t fail!

The process of converting a passionate idea into an actual product with a business model is not for the faint of heart. A small fraction of startups achieve financial success. However, the entire process increases your marketability and professional network even if the startup doesn’t succeed. You will carry transferable experiences and really know what “not” to do and be aware of your personal strengths and weaknesses earlier in your career.

There is a tremendous opportunity to grow the number of women in tech startups.

Do not be afraid to embark upon your own self-made career path, set your own perception, believe in meritocracy, and leverage your inherent strengths. Women with a passion to change the world belong in tech startups where they can realize these passions and truly impact the world.

Written by Shaherose Charania and Shivani Sopory
Adapted from Tech Startups: A Safe Bet, published in Women 2.0

Image Courtesy of stockimages / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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Why do I do this? How does THAT motivate me?

Because no matter how good my current lot is in life, I remember that it is constantly changing. I become extremely thankful for everything in my life, no matter how small, because I know that it can go away at any time.

And then I think about everyone else in the world who was not blessed with all of the great opportunities that I have in life. There are countless variables that lead to the lives we grow into. And somehow, some way, the entire universe conspired to put me right here, right now, in a place where I am able to be completely at peace.

When you are at peace, all you want to do is to spread it to others. Nothing feels better than watching a fellow human being awaken from their worst nightmare into a more enlightened, peaceful existence. Alternatively, when we are at war with ourselves, we naturally bring hostility into our daily interactions. This shifts our focus, and prevents us from being motivated to create a positive impact in the world.

Scientists state that if you trace your family tree back far enough, you are 50th cousins or closer with everyone in the world. Many people say family is the most important thing in their lives, and that they would go through unbelievable levels of self-sacrifice for their family. Well, guess what? We are all family.

I am motivated because I am part of a team. We all are. It’s the same one. And if someone on the team desperately needs help, and I am capable of delivering it to them, I will answer the call. Will you?

Written by Jordan Phoenix
Adapted from How I Motivate Myself to Create Positivity

Image courtesy of Archipoch / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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He was unwilling to do the homework to do a successful meeting. He had no idea what he wanted. He asked for an unrealistic time frame to create any real value. He was simply trolling for meetings, which maybe gave him the illusion of progress, but I was sure he was not making actual progress.

Likewise, if you want a mentor or an advisor, here’s some simple ways to get one and to have it work for you:

1. Know what you want. Your own discernment starts the learning process so you are only helping yourself. The more specific you are, the better. This will help you get a good match.
2. Before asking, do your homework. You’ve heard me say this before it is so easy to find out about people. Slideshare, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, blogging. Seriously, it takes just a little bit to find out about people. Know what the person cares about. Dig beyond page 2 of the Google search. Find out why they would want to help someone else. Ideally, you can find a connection so that you can be introduced, which will increase your odds of getting a “yes”.
3. It’s their terms. If they hike, offer to go on a hike with them. Even if they live another 100 miles away, plan on going to them. Make it easy for them to say yes by doing all the heavy lifting. Write the blurb draft, do whatever to make it easy for them to help you.
4. Charm. Use it. Don’t have it? Learn it. Charm never hurts. Remember that you’re doing an ask so give them room to say no. That way, you can come back to them later without losing that opportunity.
5. Do your part. When I help people, I’m putting in my X number years of experience into condensed simple-sounding lessons. My mentee’s job is to apply those lessons and get going. Well to be honest, you have 3 choices to: ask a clarifying question, explain why you won’t do it, or do it. But those are your only 3 options. Don’t ignore the advice of your mentor and then expect that relationship to continue. That’s your part of the bargain. Make things happen by using the lessons you learn,then circle back and tell them what you did because it reflects on them too.

Mentors and advisors have made the world of difference to me in my career and in my life. The best are the ones I meet for wine and we can have fun and learn with each other.

I’m grateful and amazed. It’s one reason why I love helping other people. The fact that I put a hurdle in the way? Well, that’s just a way of making sure the person is ready, we’re aligned, and something good can come from the time together.

Written by Nilofer Merchant
Adapted from Want A Mentor? Do Your Homework First, published in Women 2.0

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