Innholdsfortegnelse for December 2019 i Entrepreneur Magazine

A MAN recently connected with me on LinkedIn, and sent me this note: “Let me know if you ever need a writer.” I guess he’s a writer? I don’t know! But I do know this: The phrase “Let me know if you ever need a…” shows up a lot, in my inbox and surely yours, too. I’ve come to think of it as the eight most deadly words in entrepreneurship—because that phrase is the death of opportunity. We should all step back and think: Have we used these words? Have we used similar words? And if so, have we failed to seize the moment? “Let me know if you ever need a…” Let’s break it down to understand. First, consider the aspiration. This is written by someone hoping to provide…

As an interior designer, Nicole Gibbons was used to friends asking for decorating advice. And in 2016, one needed help selecting paint, so Gibbons consulted a well regarded brand’s website—and found it impossible to navigate. The lightbulb went off: She could create a direct-to-consumer paint brand that offered a curated range of colors, an algorithm to point shoppers toward their ideal shade, and a simplified way to sample hues. But her interior design business was already a fulltime job, so Gibbons didn’t move forward until, she says, “I woke up on New Year’s Day 2017 and was like, It’s now or never.” Here’s how she went on to build Clare, raising money before she ever had a product to sell. 1/ Go all in. After deciding to build a startup,…

In 2010, I realized a dream: I launched my own namesake eyewear and sunglasses brand, Garrett Leight. The business is in my blood. My father, Larry Leight, is the founder of Oliver Peoples, a decades-old eyewear business where I’d spent years working and learning. I created Garrett Leight to capitalize on that expertise but better serve a consumer I identified with, one who was a little younger, with an easygoing West Coast sensibility. The brand took off fast. Within a few years, we had stores in Los Angeles, New York, and San Francisco. Retail was our strength. We literally never had a zero day at our stores. We understood how to create a great customer experience via an educated staff of opticians—who just happened to have really great style. But…

The NBC drama This Is Us is beloved for many things: its ability to bring viewers to blubbering tears with every episode; cross-generational family drama portrayed by a gorgeous collection of Hollywood actors; and, most significantly, the fact that each week, on network TV, it broadcasts relatable, authentic story lines about its black characters. But success like that doesn’t just happen. It is, says This Is Us star Sterling K. Brown, the result of a diverse staff that’s comfortable confronting their differences—which is a recipe for success that reaches far beyond television. On the show, Brown plays Randall Pearson, the adopted black son of a white family. It’s a loving and complicated relationship. It’s also one of the strongest story lines on This Is Us, which has three black writers in the…

In 2020, California’s new bill AB 5 threatens to kneecap the booming ride-sharing industry. Come January, it will be harder for companies like Uber and Lyft to classify their drivers as contractors versus more expensive employees. Although Uber, Lyft, and DoorDash have pledged $90 million to fight back, “It’s very hard to see how they will avert this,” says Bradley Tusk, whose company, Tusk Ventures, invests in startups with growth potential if they can clear those regulatory hurdles; then a separate division of the company works with them to do that. “They need to redefine the narrative from ‘big, evil Silicon Valley companies versus hardworking people who are getting screwed over’ to telling consumers, ‘Your DoorDash delivery time is going to take longer, and Uber will cost more per trip.’”…

CARBON FOOTPRINT, renewable energy, and zero waste are familiar buzzwords. But if Nike is any indication, the new movement in sustainability is circularity: using high-quality materials made from fewer resources and with their life cycle in mind. “We’re highly focused on designing waste out of our manufacturing processes, which is a trend that’s growing across sectors,” says Jaycee Pribulsky, VP of sustainable manufacturing and sourcing at Nike. Just within apparel, she points to efforts by companies like Eileen Fisher and Levi’s that used old clothes to create artworks or insulation. In Nike’s case, dedication to sustainability has reliably led to profitable innovations like Nike Air, which contain recycled manufacturing waste. “If Nike Air were a stand-alone athletic company,” says Pribulsky, “based on revenue, it would be the third-largest in the world.”…

Dean Kamen is known for introducing the Segway back in 2001. But to think of him as a weird gizmo guy would be to miss the genius of a man out to save the world. As the founder of DEKA Research & Development, which now has some 800 engineers, Kamen has innovated everything from a water purifier for developing countries to a kidney dialysis machine for the home to the iBOT, a wheelchair that goes up and down steps and—surprise!—is about to pop a wheelie in automating corporate America. What will be your biggest challenge in 2020? I’d be happy to tell you, but we’d have to kill you. Let’s say you don’t. How should entrepreneurs of all ages look to the future? Don’t waste your time making a quick…

The old way of recruiting doesn’t work anymore,” says Pieter Schalkwijk, head of talent acquisition at Kraft Heinz, who’s responsible for hiring around 500 people a year in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. He no longer even looks at résumés at the start of the process. “I saw we were hiring a lot of mini-me’s, from similar universities. I also wanted more data-driven decisions, not just ‘I like this person.’” So in August of 2018 he started using an AI-powered platform called Pymetrics to help select 45 high-potential hires from 12,000 applicants for a special trainee program. Pymetrics uses neuroscience games to test candidates for traits like risk-taking and resilience, and matches them to a customized job specific algorithm based on his division’s top performers; then they check for…

Academics and Requirements Schools were asked whether they offer a major, a minor, a concentration, or a degree program in entrepreneurship; how many courses in entrepreneurship they offer in topics such as feasibility analysis, new venture management, technology commercialization, and venture capital; and whether they provide cross-discipline opportunities to interact with students in other majors (e.g., working with computer engineering students to develop a product). Outside the Classroom Schools were asked for the number and size of scholarships available and the number of outside mentors who worked with students. Annual business-plan or new-venture competitions, hackathons, and pitch-deck or startup weekends (along with prize money amounts), among other activities, were also considered. Schools were also asked to report the total dollar amount of prize money won from outside competitions by students…

Pure Barre is all about being strong—and about the hard work that building strength requires. The fitness franchise is beloved for its make-your-muscles-tremble workouts, which are offered across North America by more than 500 franchisees, most of whom are women. When Sarah Luna stepped in as company president in November 2018, she was determined to make the brand itself even stronger, no matter how much hard work it would require. She’s since focused on operational improvements, updating studios, and boosting membership sales. (They’re up 75 percent year over year.) At just 33 years old, Luna falls into the same millennial demographic as plenty of Pure Barre’s franchisees, which has allowed her to build strong relationships fast, cutting to the core of the company’s challenges—and opportunities. You joined Pure Barre in…

My mom, Gail, died after a brief illness in 2005. I was a month away from finishing a Ph.D. in biomedical engineering from Tufts University. My dad created a personal gift for my sisters and me: necklaces engraved with our mom’s thumbprint on the front, and her birth date and the date she passed on the back. They would serve as a reminder that our mother is always with us. Over the years, I’ve come to rely upon that necklace—both personally and professionally. Less than three years after my mom’s death, in 2008, I was diagnosed with ovarian cancer at just 27 years old. I underwent genetic tests to find out why this might happen to someone so young, but there were no links or answers. I wore my mom’s…

Jesse Wolfe had a crazy idea: He wanted to build the Ben & Jerry’s of hummus. He created a brand called O’Dang Hummus in 2014, whipped up some wacky flavors, and started selling at farmers’ markets. Customers loved it. New employees eagerly joined to help O’Dang grow. Friends and family invested, sharing Wolfe’s vision. Then, three years later, he gathered all his employees and partners to make an announcement: They were no longer selling hummus. “We had the whole room up in arms, especially investors,” Wolfe says. “They were like, ‘We invested in a hummus company! We bought the hummus dream! I don’t understand!’” He had a good reason. He’d just gone through one of the hardest transitions an entrepreneur can make—when you test the market, discover flaws in your…

TRUE STORY: A CEO gets a call from his boss asking him to wire transfer $243,000, which he does. Only it’s not his boss; it’s an astonishingly convincing deepfake, slight German accent and all. Made with AI-based technology that allows you to alter—or entirely fabricate—audio and video, deepfakes can “document” someone saying or doing something they never said or did. If managing digital reputation has become an entire industry, these synthesized clips promise to send even the pros scrambling, says 2019 MacArthur Fellow Danielle Citron, a law professor at Boston University Law School and leading cyber privacy expert. She predicts all kinds of economic sabotage: a deepfake video showing the CEO drunk the day before his company’s IPO; an outspoken businesswoman naked in a sex tape; an R&D guy admitting…

Futurist Amy Webb doesn’t make predictions. She calculates probabilities of upcoming scenarios for clients like Microsoft and Chevron, using data and other insights as her crystal ball. She’s the founder of the Future Today Institute and a professor of strategic foresight at NYU Stern School of Business, and her latest book, The Big Nine, examines how tech giants are shaping the future of AI. No matter what your business, she stresses, you can’t ignore these new technologies. What’s one of the most interesting developments in AI right now? I would say scoring. Our behavior online and offline is being tracked—and companies big and small are collecting all this data and using algorithms to parse that data and calculate a score. The score can determine everything from how likely we are…

WHEN KYLIE JENNER does one sponsored post on Instagram, she makes more than $1 million, according to the social media tool Hopper. South of that insane influencer stratosphere, what personalities will matter in 2020—and how will the dance between creators and brands play out? According to Justin Osofsky, COO of Instagram and a former VP for Facebook, it’s all about the very niche and the über-authentic. “Quil Lemons is an emerging creator who uses photography to challenge notions of gender and race,” Osofsky points to as an example. And in fact, Lemons’ exposure on Instagram has helped him land gigs and partnerships with everyone from Vogue and Gucci to Target. In-app partnerships between brands and influencers are evolving, too. “We’ve been testing the ability to shop directly from creators,” Osofsky…

ECONOMISTS CHATTER about a looming recession, and entrepreneurs worry it’ll spook investors. But Ben Horowitz, cofounder and general partner at Andreessen Horowitz (and one of Silicon Valley’s most celebrated VCs), isn’t fazed. “Economists predicted 57 of the last 17 recessions,” he jokes. “It’s entirely unpredictable.” And anyway, Andreessen Horowitz and many firms like it invest on a 10-year horizon, meaning it expects today’s investments to pay out a decade from now. (So what is Horowitz excited about investing in next? He says that in the coming decade, his focus will be AI, crypto, computational biology, device proliferation, Internet of Things, and AR/VR.) With this long-term thinking, Horowitz says, recessions don’t factor into his decisions. And he believes venture-backed entrepreneurs should operate the same way. “You want to have plenty of…

THIS PAST AUGUST, 40 influencers from 19 countries left their homes with camera in hand. Their mission: Film themselves from the moment they stepped out the door, onward to the airport, and en route to the remote Western Australia town of Broome. They’d charge into the ocean, do bike flips, and ride camels on the beach. And then they’d race to stitch the footage together into a montage and submit it for a contest by 11:59 p.m. The next morning, the influencers are surprisingly bright-eyed, sitting in a conference room, waiting to learn who made the best video. “I know you guys are curious to know who got the award,” says Devon DiPietro, head of community at the action-camera company GoPro, which organized the event. “But there were so many…

1/ Don’t excuse it. “This is an interesting question—and the way it’s phrased says a lot about how we view productivity. It’s all too often that we make excuses for ‘performers’ who have a temperament that negatively impacts those around them. I’d approach them with a true desire to understand what’s driving the bad behavior, but if it doesn’t improve with the support I’m able to give, I’d remove the employee.”—STEPHANIE NADI OLSON, founder, We Are Rosie 2/ Consider the source. “Identify the reason for the attitude. Perhaps it’s in response to his or her manager’s bad attitude. In many cases, an employee may not feel comfortable or know how to deal with this kind of a situation, and that unhappiness may manifest itself in a negative demeanor. It is…

Q I just launched a company, but I’m struggling to connect with my first customers. Help!—LISA, OKLAHOMA CITY BEFORE I STARTED my businesses, I was a journalist. And rule number one when writing is this: Know your audience. Many factors will determine how good a story is. Some variables are beyond your control, such as how forthcoming your subject will be, or what (maybe dumb) headline your editor will write. But the factor you can control is how much research you conduct, the questions you ask, and the follow-ups that help you find the information that really matters. I used to joke that writing was a two-part job. First, you have to be a miner, doing the grunt work. If you want gold or diamonds, you’d better be willing to…

AS THE FOUNDER and CEO of national staffing, recruiting, and culture firm LaSalle Network, Tom Gimbel knows a thing or two about what employees want—and that they have more options than ever. “Unemployment is just so low,” he says. “It’s an employee’s market.” To stay competitive, Gimbel urges business owners to offer true benefits rather than flashy perks. “Everyone has free food and fun games in the office,” he says. “But what employees really want is a 401(k) and match.” Yes, Gimbel says, plenty of entrepreneurs just can’t afford to offer that benefit—but it’s about meeting in the middle. “Tell a candidate, ‘Based on our business, we start matching your 401(k) at x percent after you’ve been here two years, and after three years, it’s dollar for dollar,’” he says.…

Ted Schilowitz gets paid the big bucks to play video games and fly in VR. He’s Paramount Pictures’ futurist in residence, so when he’s not in an alternate reality, he’s looking into why people adopt certain technology and apps to divine the next chapter in captivating audiences. And that, he says, will be the age of spatial storytelling. As VR headsets go mainstream, augmented reality and virtual reality will be transitioning into a new form called mixed reality, or MR—which means that entertainers can place their audience inside the narrative, giving them the sense of moving through a scene, interacting with objects and characters. In five years, he believes, mixed reality tech will improve so much, “it will really feel like it’s happening to you,” says Schilowitz. “It’s like taking a theme…

SERVICES LIKE Spotify and Netflix may have popularized the “recommended for you” prompt, but it’s now technologically possible for entrepreneurs to add similar services to their smaller businesses—and they should, says Jonathan Neman, cofounder and CEO of salad chain Sweetgreen. “This is a big theme for a lot of us,” he says. His company has built an algorithm that learns every time a customer orders on its app—whether she’s gluten-shy, on keto, into salty, sweet, or creamy—and then suggests one or two bowls from the two-million-plus variations Sweetgreen can make. “So you get a text message at 11:00 a.m. that says, ‘Hey, do you want this for lunch or this?’” says Neman. (The service should roll out next year.) He sees companies across industries trying out versions of this; one…

Baseball is a game of tradition, and Grayson Stadium is as traditional as they come. The Savannah venue was built in 1926, back when game-day radio broadcasts were a new thing. The Boston Red Sox held spring training here, leading Hank Aaron, Babe Ruth, and Jackie Robinson to round its bases. For three decades, a local high school also took Grayson’s field for its annual Thanksgiving Day game against a military academy. And between 1984 and 2015, it was home to a minor league team called the Sand Gnats. This was all baseball in its classic form—orderly and staid, romanticized by purists. Now? Things are a little different. It’s the bottom of the second inning at Grayson Stadium on a muggy midsummer night this past August, and baseball is briefly…