startup | Pixr8 News

22Dec By No Comments

BLOGS

Audio: Are Startups Really Job Engines?

Everybody wants to be an entrepreneur. The myth of footloose 25-year-olds changing the world while incidentally becoming deliriously rich has intoxicated a generation. And governments are eagerly handing out tax breaks to help them get started. After all, those new companies are engines of economic growth and job creation, right? Startup Audio Listen to This Story Well, maybe, says Stanford Graduate School of Business professor George Foster. He suggests that policymakers and would-be tycoons alike could do with a sobering belt of reality. In a new multi-country study, he finds that most startups never take off — and among those that do, setbacks destroy a sizable share of the employment and revenue gains in the sector. “Most of the stories you hear about startups h...

A Fall In Tech Valuations, U.S. and Chinese unicorns running in different directions

21Dec By No Comments

BLOGS

A Fall In Tech Valuations, U.S. and Chinese unicorns running in different directions

A fall in tech valuations may send U.S. and Chinese unicorns running in different directions. Several private Silicon Valley firms worth $1 billion or more have taken valuation hits once they are in the public eye. The same may be happening to one-horned beasts in the People’s Republic, only in private. Take Jack Dorsey’s U.S. online payments outfit, Square. The shares popped enthusiastically on the company’s stock market debut in November, but its market capitalization remains about a third below the $6 billion price tag implied by an earlier private funding round. Some unicorns that have yet to go public are already feeling the chill. Fidelity Investments, a prominent investor in late-stage private financings, recently marked down its holding in Snapchat by 25 percent from a headline ...

This startup will fund your wedding, but if you divorce you have to pay them back

12Dec By AnkitaNo Comments

Story

This startup will fund your wedding, but if you divorce you have to pay them back

Do you think your love is forever? Well this startup is willing to put up the funds for your wedding if you think it is. SwanLuv is currently accepting applications from soon-to-be-wed couples who think they've found everlasting love, Geekwire reports. After you've filled out the form, the company will make its own assessment of your bound and give out a loans of up to $10,000 to fund your dream nuptials. The catch? If you get a divorce, you have to pay the loan back - with interest. The couples that do stay together will never have to pay a cent. But in a depressing twist, it's the couples that part that end up funding the blissful couple's wedding day. (This sounds like it has potential for a reality show spin-off.) The Seattle-based company mines online data and uses algorithm so...

Kejriwal's odd-even rule to benefit startups

9Dec By PriyankaNo Comments

News

Kejriwal's odd-even rule to benefit startups

In a bid to control the alarming levels of Delhi's air pollution, CM Arvind Kejriwal has planned to allow private vehicles with even and odd registration numbers on alternate days from January 1 next year. This step, however odd it may sound, can get really beneficial for bus aggregation startups like Shuttl and ZipGo, who can jump on the opportunity to offer their services to more people now. Shuttl, which is the largest bus aggregation players in the Delhi-NCR has around 500 vehicles on its network. ZipGo too has entered the Delhi market, and has plans to launch women-only buses. 3 million people already use metro every day to commute, while for buses this number is 5 million. With 50% of Delhi's private vehicles taken off road, the public transport needs to be made more efficient....

8Dec By No Comments

BLOGS

Idea vs the leader: Who is the winner?

The Success of a startup depends on a brilliant idea as well as an inspiring leader. In fact, most of the times, it leans towards the leader because the ‘idea’ of the startup is taken for granted. For an angel investor or a venture capitalist, ‘idea’ or the business viability is a necessary condition to allocate even their time to listen but the ‘leader’ and team the leader builds or intends to build turn out to be sufficient conditions to invest. Building a team and sustaining it is essential to demonstrate one’s leadership and is desired the most in the context of a startup. How the Apple visionary Steve Jobs lured John Sculley in 1983 to leave Pepsi and join Apple to change the world and how N. R. Narayana Murthy of Infosys kept faith in the company and did not accept to sell Infosys...

6Dec By Press Trust of IndiaNo Comments

News

Facebook sets up SME Council in India

Social media giant Facebook, which has over two million Indian small and medium businesses (SMBs) on its platform, has set up a SME Council to help small ventures from various industries share feedback and discuss ideas around leveraging technology to grow their enterprise. This is the second SME Council set up by Facebook globally, the first one being in the US. Over 45 million small businesses actively use Facebook Pages to connect to their consumers. "Small businesses are the backbone of India's economy. From kirana stores to restaurants and online clothing sites, these businesses drive economic growth, create new jobs and enrich the lives of people across the country," Facebook India Managing Director Kirthiga Reddy told PTI. Facebook is focussed on helping people connect, i...

This One Video Convinced Google to Buy YouTube in $1.65 billion

4Dec By No Comments

Story

This One Video Convinced Google to Buy YouTube in $1.65 billion

What is YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki's favorite video? The one that convinced her Google needed to buy YouTube. In 2006, Wojcicki was overseeing Google video and in charge of its acquisitions. The search giant was looking at YouTube, then a tiny unprofitable Silicon Valley startup, when Wojcicki stumbled upon a video of two boys in China lipsynching to the Backstreet Boys "As Long As You Love Me." The video of the two boys outrageously lip-synching while their roommate did homework in the background was hilarious to the Google exec, she said onstage at the Fortune Most Powerful Women Next Gen Summit. "That was the video that made me realize that 'Wow, people all over the world can create content, and they don’t need to be in a studio,'" Wojcicki said. A light bulb went off in ...

4Dec By No Comments

BLOGS

Don’t Forget Your Failures

There is a lot of emphasis on succeeding. And whether we buy the hype or not, we all want to succeed, especially if you consider success as "it works out the way I want it to." You know it feels good in the gut and in the heart because it worked out. So failing by that definition is that it didn’t work out the way you wanted it to. And [failing] is what we don’t usually get a lot of preparation for. She's right. But there's this, too: Failure is far from the only thing that entrepreneurs and business leaders don't get a lot of preparation for. When you're running a venture at breakneck speed, it's hard to pause even for a few hours or a few days, let alone reflect on what's happened in the recent past—for good or ill. And while most of us know that looking blindly toward the future with...

3Dec By AdityaNo Comments

Story

Lenskart Office – A Place of Lens

Lenskart is India's fastest growing eyewear company founded by Peyush Bansal in November 2010. With a unique brick and mortar presence, Lenskart today offers over 10,000 different styles and high quality prescription eyeglasses, sunglasses and contact lens to fit all pocket sizes. Lenskart has grown more than 200% year on year in the last 2 years, to be among the top 3 optical businesses in India today. Lenskart currently has over 100 stores across more than 66 cities in the country with delivery in over 100 cities. (more…)

4 Ways to Keep Your Team Creatively Inspired

3Dec By No Comments

BLOGS

4 Ways to Keep Your Team Creatively Inspired

One of the biggest challenges chief marketing officers face is ensuring that their teams continue to deliver fresh thinking for their brand. Though many brands lean heavily on agency partners to produce great creative output, this skill should never be entirely outsourced. Related: 5 Key Tips For Starting A Small Business Even if the extent of the creative skill you want your brand manager to exhibit consists simply of recognizing great creative when it presents itself, this individual may be ill equipped to do so if he or she doesn't regularly flex those muscles. Depending on the size of your team or company culture, one or more of the strategies described below could help shake things up at your company and set your team on a path to greater creative thinking. (more…)...

7 Signs You’re Meant to Be an Entrepreneur – Dan Scalco

2Dec By No Comments

BLOGS

7 Signs You’re Meant to Be an Entrepreneur – Dan Scalco

Being your own boss is not for everyone. While entrepreneurship comes with freedom and flexibility, there is also a great deal of responsibility and an even greater need for discipline. Curious as to whether or not you would cut it as an entrepreneur? Here are seven telltale signs: 1. You’re a self-starter. Taking initiative is crucial in entrepreneurship. No one is standing over your shoulder telling you to get things done. Vacation days don’t require a written request. There’s nowhere to clock in or out. Without extreme self-control and natural drive, work can fall to second to the many distractions of life. A good indication that you’re a self-starter is your past involvement with groups or causes that didn’t provide you any monetary gain. In college, did you start an ...

With Yessettle.com, avoid “Tareekh Pe Tareekh” in a Court

1Dec By RishabhNo Comments

Story

With Yessettle.com, avoid “Tareekh Pe Tareekh” in a Court

In India people often get disappointed by the repetitive story of “tareekh pe tareekh” concept risen in Indian Courts. Whether be it a matrimonial dispute, a minor misunderstanding between two business partners or any other type of litigation, people have always chosen to go to the District Courts or Family Courts. They generally don’t have any other option to escape and solve this litigation. But now, they have a choice! With Yessettle people now don’t need to go after advocates and bear their high profile fee structure, or wait for the scheduled date in the Law Court. They now have a platform which is complete and ready to solve any kind of litigations rose in any part of world. Adding to the convenience factor, this platform is absolute free to join. Yessettle is one in the world’s ...