Your customers are talking about you — and the whole world is listening. Local review sites are reshaping the world of small business by becoming the new Yellow Pages, one-stop platforms where customers can find a business — and also see independent critiques of its performance. Continue reading

SAN FRANCISCO — Three weeks after Curtis Kimball opened his crème brûlée cart in San Francisco, he noticed a stranger among the friends in line for his desserts. How had the man discovered the cart? He had read about it on Twitter. Continue reading

Switch CEO, Deb Noller, will be presenting to the Beyond Zero Emissions discussion group at Melbourne University on Monday 3rd June 2013. Deb will be discussing the rapidly evolving Energy Management sector, and how owners of Intelligent and Connected buildings require greater visibility of their building’s performance than ever before. Deb will also discuss the challenges and opportunities of operating in a global environment, working across multiple time zones, in alternating climates and with many statutory bodies. Continue reading

It is with great enthusiasm that XCALLY has completed the 15th year of the UCLA Anderson Management Global Access Program (GAP) in California - Los Angeles. In 2012 XCALLY has been among a select group of company products, working with UCLA to conduct the new market entry assessment. Continue reading

“We can’t raise money from local VCs. Can you introduce us to some investors in Silicon Valley?” I often receive this question from Founders outside the US, and cringe almost every time. If you are a Founder of a startup and you are not among the ranks of Rovio, SuperCell, Spotify or Skype (in otherwords: 99.99% of startups out there), take a moment and see yourself from the perspective of the VC. Continue reading

SUMMARY:The Lean Startup has become somewhat of a bible for Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, but famed investor Marc Andreessen notes that sometimes founders misappropriate the ideas or don’t apply them correctly, resulting in some common problems he outlined Monday in San Francisco. Continue reading

New York City and Tokyo are known for their hustle and bustle. So to show the just how quick the pulses of these metropolises are, Foursquare created a visualization mapping a year's worth of check-in activity in each city. The result is a visual masterpiece. Continue reading

Running a small business without a plan is a lot like driving without directions. It’s difficult to see the road ahead and even harder to know where to turn next. This is why a core foundation of the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses program is to support participants through the creation of a growth plan – the place where a small business owner’s finances, products or services, and passion all intersect to help drive their business forward. Continue reading

The buzz about entrepreneurship is everywhere nowadays -- from magazine covers to conferences, hotel lobbies to the White House, and of course, kitchen tables. The French word entrepreneur first appeared in the French dictionary in 1723 to describe a person who organizes and operates a business by taking a financial risk. Since then the word entrepreneur -- and the world -- has completely changed. Today, entrepreneurship is celebrated like never before and it is defined in so many ways -- social entrepreneurship, intra-entrepreneurship, knowledge entrepreneurship, micro-entrepreneurship -- you name it. Continue reading

We tend to hear about people when they are successful but not when they are struggling. This creates a distorted perception that people succeed overnight. Behind every "overnight success" is a story of a person or a team toiling away for years, with very few people except themselves and perhaps a few friends and partners supporting them. Consider the following two stories: Continue reading