fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
Set Up a Vue Project with Nuxt JS
By: Robert K.
Tags: Newbie, Front End Development, Vuejs, Programming, Coding

Photo by Drew Saurus on Unsplash

Some recent contract work has led me to need to expand my skill set and use Vue JS for a user onboarding process so I wanted to share how I got the project up and running quickly using the NuxtJS framework.

I was nervous that learning a new front end framework would be tough since I’ve been thinking in React since Bootcamp.

I was pleasantly surprised at how natural it came. A lot of the compartmentalization and division of code that happens in React also happens with Vue. Writing components is different syntax but is something that is easy to pick up and well documented.

So let’s set up a project with Nuxt and talk about what it gives you straight out of the box that’s super helpful.

Organized file structure

Nuxt is going to look for certain things in certain places so it creates a clear file-structure and relies on some naming conventions to behave properly.

For example, pages help connect the routes and the router based on file names.

Performant

Nuxt JS applications are optimized out of the box by using Vue best practices and gives you the chance to do some fine-tuning if you so desire.

Great Documentation

I mentioned it already once above, but the docs are so good it’s worth mentioning a second time. There are numerous videos and examples online to practice individual concepts. My favorite thing was the code sandbox example of a Nuxt JS app you could spin up and work on with no installation or local environment setup.

Here’s how easy it is to get started:

What you’ll need:

node

A text editor

a terminal

Spin up the app and get the Demo Page:

To get the application up and running in the browser run:

npx create-nuxt-app <project-name>

// replace <project-name> with whatever were going to call the application

cd into <project-name> then use the command npm run dev .

Congratulations you can now check out your newly created application in the browser at http://localhost:3000

Happy Hacking!

Resources:

Connect with Me:
Day 26 — Building Toward HIPAA Compliance (Part 3 — Risk Analysis)
By: Bob Weishar
Tags: Risk Management, Startup Lessons, Founder Stories

Day 26 — Building Toward HIPAA Compliance (Part 3 — Risk Analysis)

One of the core pieces to achieving HIPAA Compliance is developing a robust security management process, or a defined process for managing risks to the protected health information we store, process, and transfer.

The Security Risk Analysis is one of the most important and time consuming efforts we’ll need to achieve HIPAA compliance, and today I (very briefly) continue work I started a few months back.

Security Risk Analysis 101

Finding the Right Tool

When I first started thinking about a security risk analysis, my goal was to find a tool to start from. No sense in trying to invent the wheel. Luckily, the NIH had me covered.

Security Risk Assessment Toolkit (courtesy of NIH)

The tool guides you through a very detailed risk process which pre-identifies core threats and vulnerabilities and asks you to rank each on its likelihood and impact. You can access it here.

Customizing the Tool

The challenge I found with the tool is that you’re quite restricted to working within the SRA app and making changes is quite clunky (not to mention it can only be run on Windows).

To fix this problem, I exported the information into a Google Sheet and customized it to my needs. This way, I get the benefit of the flexibility and collaboration but could still keep the logic, step-by-step process, and vulnerabilities / threats.

Customizing the Risk Assessment TOol

The one bit of customization I did was to the threat rating. For this, I utilized the same simple low, medium, high process and mapped it to a likelihood:impact table. I wrote a couple simple formulas in the sheet so that as I complete the likelihood and impact ratings, I automatically have a threat rating that’s generated.

Generating our risk assessment ratings

Beginning the Process

With the tool in place, it’s time to get to work completing the actual risk assessment.

The NIH tool guides you through 7 sections:

SRA Basics Security Policies — complete Security & Workforce Security & Data Security and the Practice — complete Security and Business Associates — complete Contingency Planning — complete

What’s Next

Watch the next Christmas movie :).
Entrepreneurship as a career choice — Guide To Become A Successful Entrepreneur !!
By: Apurva Somvanshi
Tags: Startup, Startup Lessons, Entrepreneurship, Entrepreneur, Business

Dear reader this article is something you will surely related your life with. If you are at the turning point of your career choice or going to plan for it soon you r brain is going to flood with lot of question and options.

Has it ever happed that you woke up watching a creative dream later like a day dreamer thought of magical inventions in your childhood?? Can be anything a flying car or a broom!

Well as we grew up these dreams now sound unrealistic. But do you really think they are??

After watching revolutionary inventions we cannot deny that with the help of technology amazing, impossible dreams can’t be brought into real world.

INNOVATION — KEY TO YOUR CREATIVE AND MAGICAL DREAMS TO COME TRUE!

We won’t talk about technology much deeper. But will have a clear picture on what choose one can make to make his creative dreams come true.

85% of youth choose job as a career, 10% choose freelancing and only 5% choose to become entrepreneur.

No choice among job, freelancing or business is top or below the other. But when it comes to choose one based on parameters like work freedom. Time flexibility or s having experience of doing new and creative task entrepreneurship is always on the top.

Below are some articles that will give you a border view of –

ENTREPRENEURSHIP

What is entrepreneurship?

What are the qualities one needs to become an entrepreneur?

What is the need for entrepreneurship?

REQUIREMENTS FOR STARTING BUSINESS

What is required for starting your own business?

Importance of planning

Brief about business plan

What is BMC?

Article > > BUSINESS PLANNING

TIPS FOR BEGINNER WHO PLAN FOR START-UP

Market analysis and need creation

Backup plan

IPR and license and documentation

Open arms for criticism and team building

Investment (Personal or stakeholders)

Seek consulting from experts

Addressing organization

Article > > BEGINNER GUIDE

SUCCESS STORY

Journey From a Student To An Medical Entrepreneur

Article > > INSPIRATIONAL CASE STUDY

Hope you find this article helpful . If you wish to know more about any topic mentioned or anything else to start your entrepreneurship journey comment and let me know.

Thank you for reading !
Is growth more important than profits for Startups?
By: Alexander Lim
Tags: Startup, Startup Lessons, Founders, Entrepreneurship, Entrepreneur

Is growth more important than profits for Startups?

Photo by mentatdgt from Pexels

The short answer is yes, but it’s not a simple question.

Startups don’t have profits, they have sales. Startups are in the business of growing, and to do that they need to build a large customer base.

They make money by selling products or services to customers, and once those customers are on board they can generate revenue by providing support services or up-selling their product or service.

Growth is how Startups make money, and it can be measured by a variety of metrics such as users, sessions per user and revenue per user.

Measuring growth helps the Startup understand which marketing channels work best for them.

In addition, measuring growth allows the Startup to get answers to questions such as “How much should I spend on marketing?” “If I spent $X on marketing will I bring in $Y in revenue?”

Knowing what works will help the Startup focus their efforts towards the most effective channels that will drive revenue for them.

The key to growth is understanding your customer’s needs and why they are likely to buy from you.

Startups should approach growth from the perspective of solving a customer’s problem or need. The solution doesn’t have to be unique, but it must be easy and affordable.

Startups with a great product that solves a need will have no trouble growing their business. Startups with a great idea but that don’t solve any one particular problem will struggle to grow their business.

Conclusion

So, to answer the question, “Is growth more important than profits for Startups?” Yes, but it’s not a simple answer.

Startups have to be profitable in order to grow their business. Startups have to grow in order to make money.

It’s a delicate balance between building a product that customers love and providing them with a great experience on the site.

Growth is important because it is one of the few things that are completely under control of the Startup.

The Startup can direct their own growth by optimizing their site, marketing channels and customer acquisition strategy so that they can increase revenue per user.

This is why it is so important for them to understand what makes customers buy from them and how they can make it easier than ever before for the customer to do so.

About the Author

I am the Founder of Cudy Technologies (www.cudy.co), a full-stack EdTech startup helping teachers and students teach and learn better. I am also a mentor and angel investor in other Startups of my other interests (Proptech, Fintech, HRtech, Ride-hailing, C2C marketplaces and SaaS). You can also find me on Cudy for early-stage Startup Founder mentorship and advice.

You can connect with me on Linkedin (https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexanderlhk) and let me know that you are a reader of my Medium posts in your invitation message.
Venture Fundable Businesses
By: Marvin Liao
Tags: Silicon Valley, Startup, Angel Investors, Startup Lessons, Venture Capital

In Venture Capital, it’s about the big winners. And almost always usually winners take all markets where the two leaders have most of the market share in the category. I’ve met thousands of founders over the 7–8 years, evaluated countless businesses and reality is most of these startups are probably not VC fundable business models. I learned this the hard way in my first 1.5 years as a VC. I found out that it’s not just a market size issue but a business model one too. Ie. Venture scale.

There are 4 business models at a broad level that could be Venture fundable. I fully attribute this framework to my friend and investor James Currier over at NFX, a top tier VC firm.

Embed Model: This business model is almost always in the enterprise software space. You build a sales team or figure out an effective Product Led Growth motion, sell into the Fortune 500 and lock them in. Once you are locked in, it’s very hard to rip your technology out. Some examples are SAP, Salesforce, Adobe or really any major Enterprise software company NetWork Effects: Usually platform driven. At a basic level, the more buyers you have, the more sellers you get. The more sellers you have, the more buyers you get. A virtually hard to break virtuous cycle once you get going. Some examples are Craigslist, EBay, Facebook, Google. Economies of Scale: Growing to a stage when you can use your mass size and volume for discounts and scale to outgrow. Amazon is to me the most obvious example here. Brand: Building a brand to distinguish yourself and be the main choice of your buyer. DTC brands like Warby Parker are recent examples. Older examples could be IBM.

I actually think it’s really only the Embed Model and Network Effects that truly are Venture fundable where first mover advantage supercharged by VC $$ gets you lock in of customers. Yes, Brand and Economies of Scale are very powerful but can be replicated or decay faster than Embed and Network Effects.

You can even point to some examples that exemplify most if not all of these attributes. Amazon: they have Amazon Web Services which exemplifies Embed model but they also have network effects through their 3rd party selling platform, Economies of scale from their logistics and buying power, and through all of this, their immense Brand strength.

I’ve probably oversimplified these concepts but i think they are illustrative of what a venture capitalist (should) look for. I think any investor who does not look at startups in this lens is making a big mistake. And I also believe this is a good guide for founders trying to decide whether VC is the right path for them.

Listen to this Newsletter: https://listencat.com/the-hard-fork-by-marvin-liao-podcast/
Money shouldn’t bring the team together
By: Stuart Robinson
Tags: Startup, Startup Lessons, Leadership, Teamwork, Entrepreneurship

Photo by Jp Valery on Unsplash

Money is often the common denominator that brings business partners and teams together.

It works.

But it’s not the strongest thing that can motivate people to work together.

The strongest unifier between people is a shared story.

If everyone involved is not just working for themselves, but instead as part of a bigger narrative, the bumps along the road are much more manageable.

They become a part of the story, not reasons to leave.
The 7 Steps to Failure: A Proven Strategy to Have Several Failures in a Row
By: Karan Dhall
Tags: Startup, Startup Lessons, Bransionmedia, Steps To Failure, Strategy

If you ask me for advice on how to succeed, I have no clue.

I failed at everything I tried in my life.

I started several projects. All failed.

My goal was to become successful & enjoy life around beautiful people, be popular. Karan Dhall, the cool guy with an amazing lifestyle.

None of that happened. But I became Karan Dhall, the fat guy.

I wanted to create something great, like Mark Zuckerberg — Why did I watch that movie?. I was spending all my time trying to create something new… you know.

And you may think that I learned from my experiences. Nop. I did it again. And again. And again. Every time that I had a new idea — is still happening, help! — I think that’s THE IDEA, that’s the one that is going to change everything.

Never happened.

Let me explain to you how I did:

Get a job

Save around Rs 50,000

Spend between six months and a year coding

Test it

Zero results

Cry

Repeat

I can’t even remember how many times I did the same. But I know one thing. It was a disaster.

I was lucky enough to have a well-paid skill in SEO so It was easy for me to find a new job — almost, I had some nightmares there too — but I never ever enjoyed working for others.

In the beginning, I thought It was Marketing, but with time I learned that I didn’t like to work for others. My motivation comes from within. Someone telling me what to do didn’t work for me, I am not that kind of person.

So, if you want to have several failures in a row, here is your recipient to do it too. It doesn’t matter the circumstances, I guarantee if you follow these 7 steps, you can be like me and fail:

Get excited with an idea

Start it! (Much better if you spend 6/12 months working on it without talking to anyone)

Get excited with another idea

Leave your previous idea

Start the new one

Feel bad

Repeat

Now I am a growth manager at BransionMedia. I help startups and organizations of India, USA, Canada, Europe, Australia, and Africa with SEO, content creation, social media management, reputation management, and growth consultation. At BransionMedia, I work with my team to deliver tailored strategies and digital solutions that help our global clients hit sales, traffic, and growth numbers. We are particularly known for our:

Tailored marketing strategies

Local and global SEO

Online reputation recovery and management

Social media management

Thought leadership content

We regularly help businesses and professionals active in real estate, fashion, lighting, consultation, health, wellness, ecommerce, and web services. Check out client case studies for real success stories.

If you follow my advice successfully, let me know. I want to take full credit form it.
The journey into securing a stable career for yourself
By: Tommy Ross
Tags: Startup Lessons, Life Lessons, Product Design, UX, Careers

Yes that’s a human for scale to illustrate how tiny we are in the scheme of things

Have you been looking for a new role, to no avail, constantly trawling career webpages, looking for a job listing that would somehow pique an interest for you to apply with them? Or you’d apply to newfound roles after your coffee every single day without fail, hoping one of them would respond to your plea to be employed again? You’re not alone.

Well, the future might seem pretty bleak from where you’re standing. But don’t forget that your (career) life in general, is meant to be a marathon, not a sprint.

Working in a well-established firm might bring you the perks of recognition with added benefits of boosting your ego, but don’t loose sight of the long term vision that you have for yourself.

Having worked across many different industries, with multiple sorts of personalities; it is safe to say that communication is the one key factor that is deciding, whether we excel or falter in a role.

I’ve had the misfortune to experience working for product leads, whose self worth was more important than the company direction, or even management who was too caught up in their own business to give two hoots about your well-being.

Everyone’s opinion on career fulfilment is different, and I respect that. Personally, what my experience has taught me was that no amount of work or money should outweigh your own personal (emotional and mental) health.

It might be well and good that you’re slowly finding your way through this maze that is life, but don’t forget to catch your breath and reflect on how far you’ve come along, and that you’re doing a splendid job, and that if you have a clear direction leading you, you’ll get where you want to be soon enough.

While it is important to remember that when you’re employed by a company for the first 90 days, they are taking a chance on you. But don’t forget, that you are also taking a chance on them, and finding the right culture and colleagues to work with will help tremendously in shaping your professional capacity and mental well-being.

And whoever said that you can’t be friends with ex-colleagues clearly did not get the memo. Having the opportunity to go through experiences together as a unit, will create a strong bond between your colleagues, who will eventually become close friends. And this will help carry you throughout your career.

TLDR; don’t rush into a new role for the sake of it; find fulfilment in the work you do; take your time but don’t waste it
How to Find Co-Founders for Your Part-Time Startup.
By: Jannis Dust
Tags: Startup Life, Startup, Startup Lessons, Founders, Entrepreneur

How to Find Co-Founders for Your Part-Time Startup.

Team equals your turbo mode.

Building one equals pushing down the throttle pedal. Everyone knows that.

But what if I start a company part-time? Is it still one of the most important things to do? And when should I start?

Let’s dive into how I would build my part-time team.

Why you should build a part-time team.

If you notice that you aren’t able to keep up with the work, think about starting to build a team or finding Co-Founders for your idea as soon as possible.

Especially the latter is necessary. Splitting the work with your Co-Founders can make your journey a lot easier.

But how to build a team?

There are a few guidelines I would follow especially for your part-time team.

We look for people who share core values and who know what it’s all about. They have to know the big vision behind your idea. The goal. The desired outcome.

Finding Co-Founders is one of the most important things to do.

Obviously, there is a big difference between finding Co-Founders and hiring teammates.

How to find your Co-Founders?

I’d search in my close network of friends and business contacts. Search for skills, search for people you can imagine working with.

You don’t have to know them yet. We at epap did not know each other in the founding team before starting to work on the project together.

Attend a lot of events like local meetings or community events. Even if it’s hard right now, there are a lot of digitally organized events you can attend to find people who are capable of starting a company.

Twitter or LinkedIn can be useful too.

Or, use platforms like founderio.com. I do not have a lot of experience with it but it seems to be a decent option if nothing was fruitful before.

Do your cofounders need to be part-time, too?

No. In my opinion, it’s not necessary. Everyone has to benefit from the work they do in an equal way. So, honor their work e.g. with more shares of the company.

They have to finance their life, too. So think about ways to do it. Maybe it’s starting in part-time or scholarships.

How to work in a team part-time?

Struggles are common in every startup. Part-time ones are no exceptions.

Mostly, you cannot attend work at the same time, so I would recommend establishing asynchronous work methods like Slack or stuff like that.

Focus on remote work. It’s just cheaper! That’s why.

Create power hours to work together when all members have time

Establish get together meetings every week to keep up with the work

Don’t start by hiring employees as the first step because you have to pay them. Hire Co-Founders.

Conclusion

Struggles are normal in every startup. So don’t worry.

Build a team as soon as possible to increase your chances of success and create more time for yourself and your health. You got this. Just get started.
Day 24 — Building toward HIPAA Compliance (Pt. 1)
By: Bob Weishar
Tags: Founder Stories, Startup Lessons, Founders, Hipaa

Day 24 — Building toward HIPAA Compliance (Pt. 1)

One of the looming questions that’s been on my mind since building out the Invincible App has been data security. Specifically, HIPAA Compliance.

I started this work several months ago, and today I picked it back up today. Over the next few weeks I intend to start chipping away at the work required to get us to HIPAA compliance.

Research

HIPAA lays out a series of administrative, technical and physical controls to ensuring protected health information (PHI) is secure. These guides do a much better job at explaining than I can:

High-Level Approach

For this work, I’ve separated the administrative from the technical/physical controls.

The administrative controls are policies and procedures we need to follow internally, including things like training, risk management, documentation, vendor audits, etc. I can working on these now.

Technical Controls outline the things we’ll accomplish through our technical infrastructure (e.g., encrypted storage at rest/transit). We’ll most likely use a vendor for these.

Physical controls ensure that the computers / servers / etc. where the information is stored are secure. We’ll mainly inherit controls from AWS.

High-Level Work to be Done

1 — Administrative Controls

There are a few tools that offer out-of-the-box controls, policies, and procedures, but I found Aptible to be by far the best. The tool is super useful — and best of all, it’s free.

Out-of-the-box documentation on Aptible

Aptible also provides a ticketing tool to drive the work, but I found it pretty clunky and confusing, so I ended up pulling out key work activities and creating tickets in JIRA.

The Mountain to Climb

2 & 3— Technical & Physical Controls

When I first started considering how we might become HIPAA-compliant, I had assumed we could just set some configurations in AWS and we’d be good to go.

Boy was I wrong…

Without a huge dev team and a boatload of money, the consideration quickly switched to 3rd party providers. I met with some vendors over the past few months to better understand the work effort required.

The good news is that they should save us a ton of time and money.

The bad news is that they aren’t cheap (basically about $1K/month starting costs).

Here were my favorites:

HIPAA Vendors for Implementing Technical Controls

What’s Next?

I plan to make some small but meaningful progress in the morning and then call it quits for Christmas.

Happy Holidays!
Why Startup Founders work during the Christmas Holidays
By: Alexander Lim
Tags: Startup, Startup Lessons, Founders, Christmas, Founder Stories

Why Startup Founders work during the Christmas Holidays

Photo by Jonathan Borba from Pexels

The Christmas holidays are the perfect time for Founders to get some work done. Here’s why:

It’s a time when people don’t expect anything from you.

There is no pressure from your startup or your teammates (who will be off during the holidays) to meet deadlines, so you won’t stress yourself by trying to be productive during this time of year.

You won’t feel any pressure to step up and take on extra work and responsibilities which can be very stressful if you are not used to it. And, hopefully, your team has everything well in control by now so you don’t have to worry about it. You can focus on other stuff like planning for the future, including setting goals for 2021 and beyond.

This is a really good time for founders to work because they can set the pace themselves instead of being forced to work at breakneck speed just because everyone else is around them doing so. It gives them a chance to re-energize themselves after all the hard work they have been putting in over the last months or even years while building their startup and managing all the different aspects of running it. Let me tell you, when you are at your office (or at home) working on Christmas Day, it feels awesome! But only if no one expects anything from you!

So, if you have a few things you need to get done, this is the perfect time to do it.

In fact, I think founders should spend as much time as possible working during the Christmas holidays. If they have a lot of work to do, they should be in the office working on it. They should not be on vacation with their families unless they feel like relaxing for a week! It’s important for Founders to get their heads out of the sand and come back rejuvenated in 2021!

Have you ever spent time working during Christmas holidays? What do you think about it? If you are a Founder, what would be your top tip for other Founders this holiday season? Please share!

About the Author

I am the Founder of Cudy Technologies (www.cudy.co), a full-stack EdTech startup helping teachers and students teach and learn better. I am also a mentor and angel investor in other Startups of my other interests (Proptech, Fintech, HRtech, Ride-hailing, C2C marketplaces and SaaS). You can also find me on Cudy for early-stage Startup Founder mentorship and advice.

You can connect with me on Linkedin (https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexanderlhk) and let me know that you are a reader of my Medium posts in your invitation message.
Day 25 — Building Toward HIPAA Compliance (Part 2)
By: Bob Weishar
Tags: Hipaa Compliance, Startup Lessons, Founder Stories

Day 25 — Building Toward HIPAA Compliance (Part 2)

Keeping today pretty light, my goal was to just keep this momentum by knocking off 1 activity from our HIPAA compliance efforts.

Starting with the ISMS

Today I revised our ISMS (Information Security Management System) policy document — it’s basically the governing set of policies that we’ll be following. I started with Aptible’s template policy document, which got me 99% of the way there.

From there it was just a matter of minor fixes to make it more relevant for Invincible and a few fixes that came from a gap analysis a few months back. It turned out to be a 77 (!) page document, but it will effectively drive our data security efforts from here on out.

Progress!

Hope you all have a very Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!
Being a ‘creativepreneur’ in a pandemic: The Covid-19 rollercoaster
By: Jamlab Contributor
Tags: Startup, Startup Lessons, Covid 19, Entrepreneurship, Accelerator

Being a ‘creativepreneur’ in a pandemic: The Covid-19 rollercoaster

Founder of Impact Chronicles Jocelyn Nyaguse says the platform has experienced some dramatic shifts and has been reminded of the need to have solid business structures JAMLAB Contributor Follow Dec 24, 2020 · 3 min read

Image: Supplied

By Jocelyn Nyaguse

This year has been quite the rollercoaster ride but of all the things that have remained constant, one has been the most glaring to me — the need for information. As a parent, entrepreneur, and participant of the Jamlab Accelerator Programme, there has been a constant need to stay abreast with the news as well as to disseminate the news.

The Impact Chronicles journey has experienced some dramatic shifts as a result. The platform showcases and promotes the work of enterprises across Africa with a specific focus on the founders themselves, their thought processes, successes and struggles. While we understood the important role that information plays, because of Jamlab, we have now come to understand that empathy is of the essence. In our case, it is important to help social entrepreneurs understand that we are there for them and sharing our stories with them has proven to be a source of comfort because it has been a reminder that they are not alone in their struggles.

Impact Chronicles has also been furnished with constant reminders that we need to have solid business structures, and develop a sustainable business model in order to scale our operations and sustain our impact. The good thing is that these reminders have also come with guidelines and lessons around the ‘how’ of it all. We have since developed multiple business models, tweaked them based on customer feedback and iterated. The journey continues but it brings us great joy to have embarked on this journey with Jamlab.

The highlight of this experience so far has been the pitch sessions we have had. It is great to see the work of others and learning from them has been a huge part of the process. Every week, we have been paired with a different colleague to work together, to give each other advice and most importantly, to understand each other’s passions better. Jamlab has been great for us. As the year draws to an end, we get to look back and see how far we have come, and Impact Chronicles has come so far. We are super excited to see and experience 2021.

*Nyaguse is founder of Impact Chronicles

The JamLab Accelerator is a six-month hothouse programme for journalism and media innovators. It is based at Tshimologong Digital Innovation Precinct in the heart of Johannesburg.
What if Reviewing can be Rewarding?
By: Rahul Kandoriya
Tags: Startup Life, Startup, Startup Lessons, Product Reviews

Every time we look for buying something we always rely upon the reviews from the people who have used it and based on that we can make better decisions about buying that thing.

While we like getting a lot of reviews about the product but reviewing requires a lot of efforts and often we ignore reviewing anything at all even if the thing we have bought delivered the value better than we expected.

Only 10% of the total people who have bought, review it. And chances of giving a negative review is higher than giving a positive one because everybody who got frustrated using that product most likely will give review than those who had a great experience.

If we look closer we can observe that till now giving a review is not more than just giving a simple favour. It feels like we are giving something out there so that other people can get benefits out of it.

What if there is a way in which anyone who gives a review gets rewarded for it.

For example, someone bought a car and if the person can give a review consistently for 3 months he/she is eligible for a free car cover.

If there will be a platform where anyone can get the “Verified Updated Reviews” from the genuine buyers. The potential buyers will most likely use that platform to make better purchasing decisions.

Of course, there will be guidelines to follow so that only genuine reviews come. For example mandatory KYC or Video reviews with the product etc.

Even if we talk about the resale market. The potential customer will most likely buy the product from the one who has consistently posted his/her reviews about the product throughout the time used.

In this way, it can also decrease the fake reviews out of the equation and only genuine reviews will be available for the potential customers to make better purchasing decisions.

The idea of getting rewarded for the review seems exciting as well as obvious because the reviewer should be able to get rewarded for his/her effort.

Let me know in the comment what you think about the Rewarded Reviews?

Originally published on Blog.
The right way to ask for advice
By: Stuart Robinson
Tags: Startup, Startup Lessons, Entrepreneurship, Mentorship

Photo by NeONBRAND on Unsplash

There are two ways to ask for advice:

Ask how to start Ask for feedback on what you’ve tried

If you do #2:
001 — The Journey. At the end of 2009, I took my first job…
By: Emmanuel Pozo
Tags: Startup, Startup Lessons, San Francisco, Zynga, Product Management

At the end of 2009, I took my first job at a growing tech company. I was fresh out of graduate school and hungry to start applying my computer science skills. I moved from Florida to San Francisco with a suitcase and a dream. Everything else was put aside. This means I left my girlfriend in Florida and burdened her with dealing with my apartment and various loose ends I didn’t have time to wrap up. On top of that, I had no place to live in San Francisco, so on the flight over I messaged a few people on craigslist and quickly arranged a short term lease pending a meet up and credit check. I landed, met up with the landlord and quickly settled into my apartment in the Mission district of San Francisco. I was lucky. This was still when living arrangements were somewhat affordable in SF.

The job I took was for a Software Engineering role at Zynga. Yeah, the Zynga that was responsible for all those annoying gift requests and invitations you sent and received on Facebook. We heavily relied on Facebook as a distribution channel for organic growth. “Refer 10 friends, and we’ll up-level you so you can snag that rare diamond studded in-game jacket”. I worked on a variety of in game features, back-end infrastructure and really experienced what it was like to be an engineer at a high growth startup. I slowly realized that engineering was challenging and interesting, but while I was building things out I took a lot more interest in the “what” then the “how”. I gravitated to Product Managers that were obsessed with defining features, deploying them, and then quickly seeing how users interacted with them. They were obsessed with numbers. I always say that Zynga was a stats company disguised as a gaming company. The data driven approach was rigorous and it worked. If we wanted to move revenue in a certain direction, we new exactly what features we wanted to test as well as the expected revenue impact those features should have on the number. It was amazing experiencing this in action. I was addicted. I knew that this type of work was what I wanted to immerse myself with moving forward. I found a new drug and became an instant user.

Right before Zynga went public, I left the company and built a startup with a good friend. The rest is history. After a chain of acquisitions, I went from founder, to employee at a large ticketing company, that eventually became a large streaming service (Pandora). I am currently at Postmates, which was recently acquired by Uber so the chain of acquisitions continues …. I cut my teeth in product management at the startup level and have progressed to PM, and leadership roles at mid, to large size companies. I’ve learnt a lot along the way and I will attempt to write about various topics primarily in product management, but I will also touch on business related lessons I’ve learnt along the way. My next post will be about making the transition from Engineering to Product.
From Experience Designer to Co-Founder of NodeFlair
By: Claudia Seow
Tags: Startup Lessons, Cofounders, Entrepreneurship, Product Management, Experience Design

I remember leaving work early, rushing to take the train to get to One-north for my interview at NodeFlair. The office space was surprisingly spacious, and there was a soft chatter in the background. Ethan appears from a meeting room, still on a call, holding his phone on one hand, and getting me a cup of water in another. He mouths the words “5 mins”, and so I waited. We had a really long chat in the echoey meeting room, and left dry erase marker scribbles on the window, just like in the movies. Little did I know, that’s quite commonplace for NodeFlair.

I remember coming back to this office a second time, this time for huddle (monthly recap of the previous month), and at some point before it started, Ethan says, “let’s take a walk”. We walk around the other neighbouring units, on level 7 of Block 71, at an incredibly slow speed.

“We do this quite often, you’ll get used to it.”

2 weeks later, I came to the office the third time, but this time as a full time employee — an Experience Designer! That’s a role I didn’t even know existed until a couple of weeks before the offer. This was also the first ever design role at NodeFlair. I honestly didn’t know what my full responsibilities were at that time, but thankfully Ethan and Adrian (Co-Founders of NodeFlair whom I’ll refer to as ‘the guys’ from now on) gave me all the flexibility and room to chart my own path.
Evaluating a startup: Churn Rate vs Dollar Revenue Retention
By: Kaushik N
Tags: Startup, Private Equity, Startup Lessons, Founders, Venture Capital

You are the founder of Startup ABC

End of year 1: You have acquired 1000 customers

End of year 2: You have 800 customers

You have lost 200. Is there something missing?

Just glancing at this number, it doesn’t seem like you are doing well

Churn Rate= (1000–800)/1000 = 20%

You have lost 20% of your customers.

Now, consider Dollar Revenue Retention

Let’s say, in the first year, all the customers opted for basic subscription

Cost of 1 basic subscription/annum = $1

Startup ABC’s net revenue in Y1 = $1 * 1000 = $1000

In year 2, out of 800, 400 opt for premium subscription, rest opt for basic subscription

Cost of 1 basic subscription/annum = $1

Cost of 1 premium subscription/annum = $2

Startup ABC’s net revenue in Y2 = ($1*400) + ($2*400) = $1200

It’s making more money now.

Dollar Revenue Retention = 1200/1000 = 120 DRR

While evaluating a startup, look into average industry churn rate, along with Dollar revenue retention to get the complete picture.
Startup Investors: Is Your GTM Strategy Too Aggressive, Or Not Aggressive Enough, with Matthew Cushen of Worth Capital
By: Mindset Startup Community
Tags: Startup, Startup Lessons, Founders, Worth Capital, Venture Capital

Startup Investors: Is Your GTM Strategy Too Aggressive, Or Not Aggressive Enough, with Matthew Cushen of Worth Capital

Mindset Clip #316

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4p4AzEes1s

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*Gain access to all full length investor interviews by joining our Mindset Founders Slack Community for FREE. Here’s your link to register today: https://mindsetacademyondemand.com/slack-free-access

*Gain FREE access to investor interview clips, organized by interview topic by subscribing to our YouTube channel today: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdr70xJrIQce7H-fYhV7P3A?sub_confirmation=1

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#venturecapital, #startups, #fundraising, #startupinvestors, #capitalraise, #founders
Experts will tell you 100 different things
By: Stuart Robinson
Tags: Startup, Startup Lessons, Business Motivation, Entrepreneurship, New Business

Photo by Riccardo Annandale on Unsplash

Experts in anything will tell you that there are things that you should prioritise.

A different set of experts will tell you a completely different list of priorities.

When you’re trying to filter in the signals from many experts, it can be overwhelming and the result is that you don’t want to do anything because it seems like there’s too much to focus on.

The thing to remember is that as much as there will be someone that says it is mandatory to do X, there will always be someone that didn’t do it and also got what they wanted.

At the end of the day, your own experience will be the only proof that truly shows what worked for you or not.
Day 23 — Addressing mental and social challenges
By: Bob Weishar
Tags: Startup, Startup Lessons, Founder Stories

Day 23 — Addressing mental and social challenges

My goal for today was to build out a module that addresses the psycho-social challenges of living with a chronic health issue, specifically for a young adult audience.

It’s something that’s no doubt impacted me since I was first diagnosed, and it’s just a really big and important problem to solve. One day is nowhere near enough to fully build out content to address this, but it’s plenty of time to get a start.

Brainstorming

The Module Outline

I started with a high-level outline for the content:

High-Level Outline for Today’s Content

Getting in the Shoes of our Users

Previous versions of the app taught teachers and other school staff how to communicate with a child who has type 1 diabetes. For content that speaks directly to someone living with type 1, the content needed to evolve. Specifically…

How might we help prepare an 18-year old to face the mental and social challenges of living with a chronic health issue?

Rough Mock-Ups

Video Content

Especially for these modules, I believe real content from real kids is the best way to truly connect with young adults. Nobody knows what it’s like better than someone who’s lived through these challenges.

I pulled from content from previous interviews on the Invincible Kids Network (from our YouTube Channel).

Activity Content

For our interactive content, just like yesterday, I first wrote out everything on a bunch of sticky notes.

The first iteration

Final Design & Implementation

With the content written out, it’s time to build the designs. For today’s design, I pulled from a mix of:

my own content

gigantic.store

freepik.com.

Here’s the first pass at the designs:

Content Design in Sketch

Publishing Content

After migrating the content and design to code, here’s the final result:

End-to-end flow for our “Feelings” Module

What’s Next?

Now it’s time to really put this in front of some users. Getting interviews in before Christmas won’t be possible, but we’ll do some friends and family testing to get feedback to see how we did.

Until tomorrow.
Startup Kit — Build Brand Awareness for Your Startup
By: Terry Tsang
Tags: Startup Life, Startup, Startup Lessons, Marketing, Launch

What if you have a checklist of the startup websites where you can click each of them and submit your new startup so that everyone can discover your product and get press for your newly launched startup.

Here I am compiling a list of startup directory websites which is useful for my startup pre-launch campaigns, and hope it will do the same to you too.

Startup Submit List:

there is more coming soon.
Startup Investors: Sky’s Initial Market Analysis Of Beyond Meat, With Sky Fernandes of VU Venture Partners
By: Mindset Startup Community
Tags: Startup, Startup Lessons, Founders, Vu Venture Partners, Venture Capital

Startup Investors: Sky’s Initial Market Analysis Of Beyond Meat, With Sky Fernandes of VU Venture Partners

Mindset Clip #315

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s78HXwiuW4A

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — -

*Gain access to all full length investor interviews by joining our Mindset Founders Slack Community for FREE. Here’s your link to register today: https://mindsetacademyondemand.com/slack-free-access

*Gain FREE access to investor interview clips, organized by interview topic by subscribing to our YouTube channel today: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdr70xJrIQce7H-fYhV7P3A?sub_confirmation=1

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — -

#venturecapital, #startups, #fundraising, #startupinvestors, #capitalraise, #founders
Day 22 — Sprint #3. Today I carry forward Sprint #2 content…
By: Bob Weishar
Tags: Startup Lessons, Founders, Founder Stories

Day 22 — Sprint #3

For this sprint, I decided to continue my work from last sprint, where I’ve been working on developing content to build independence for a young adult audience.

Problem to solve

Today was time to put ideas from last week to paper and build some content. Specifically, I built a new module focused on insurance.

The Content Development Process

1. Starting with a Concept

I started with this high-level idea that I shared last week:

High-Level Conceptual Model

I decided to start with insurance because it’s arguably the hardest thing to understand (for all of us). It’s a pain point I’ve experienced personally and I would love to be a part of de-mystifying it for young adults getting their own plans for the first time.

2. Goal for the Insurance Module

Here’s the problem to solve for this module:

How might we get the user to enroll in the right insurance plan?

I purposely picked an action that is outside our content. Learning about insurance is no good if users don’t get a plan and use it. It’s ambitious, and I don’t think we’re fully there yet, but we got off to a good start today.

From a content standpoint, I decided to break up the content into 3 “lessons”:

Basics: Content for young adults who need a baseline understanding. Picking a Plan: A guided, step-by-step walkthrough that will lead users to the right options for them. Medi-Cal Overview: This lesson will change based on the results of #2, but for now I assumed the goal to be Medi-Cal signup.

3. Designing on Paper

From there, I designed the content using a bunch of sticky notes. Each module follows a pattern for the lesson, consisting of video and activities.

Origins of a new module

4. Building the Design

From there I put together the design assets I would need.

One of the design assets I planned to use in this module

5. Implementing the Real Thing

Finally, it‘s time to implement the stick notes and design assets. This means code updates. We distribute our app via Expo, and running a live simulator while I’m updating modules makes it easy to do on the fly.

The design in the app.

Here’s the end result:

Making Health Insurance Fun

What’s Next?

I have one last lesson to build out to complete the end-to-end young adult MVP: mental health. I’ll be working on this content tomorrow. Testing with users this week will be tough with the holidays, but I’m doing my best to get feedback along the way.

If you’d like to help test it out, let me know.

See you tomorrow.
Procrastination can have a positive outcome — but, it depends…
By: Stuart Robinson
Tags: Startup Lessons, Work Ethic, Entrepreneurship, Procrastination, Productivity

Photo by Kari Shea on Unsplash

If you’re filling your mind with something that is purely entertainment, it’s not likely that this will result in any constructive thoughts.

However, if when you’re taking time away from doing what you’re “supposed” to be doing, you are discovering what others are up to around the world, this can be the thought-provoking external stimulus you need to generate your next idea.

This obviously won’t happen often, but if you never let your attention wander, then you will always just be stuck with what your own brain can conjure up.