Twitter Is Going Public, Files S-1 With SEC ALEX WILHELM

2013-09-12_14h21_11 Today Twitter confirmed that it has filed an S-1 with the SEC and is therefore on the road to going public. This is an important moment for Twitter, and for tech, as it shows that the IPO window is open. Here’s Twitter on its filing: Count to 10 and let’s hope the damn thing leaks right away. We don’t know much, but expect Twitter to go public at a valuation of roughly between $15 billion and $20 billion, roughly. Its last private money came in at around a $10 billion valuation, and those investors will want a return on their funds. Goldman Sachs is said to be the lead underwriter of the offering. Facebook’s IPO, for comparison, valued the social giant at around $100 billion on the day of its flotation. The irony here is that Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg yesterday at Disrupt told the world that it should not be afraid of going public. Twitter did not decide to go public on the back of Zuck’s axiom, but it is nicely pat that it announced this news the day after his comments. Facebook’s public offering was marred with trading errors and a slipping stock price, and the company lost tens of billions of value before it recovered. Facebook is currently trading at fresh highs, helping to set the stage for Twitter: Whatever the Facebook IPO hangover was, it is no more. Twitter’s public offering has been a very long time in coming, and contains inside of it oodles of institutional pressure: With hundreds of millions of invested capital under its belt, Twitter has a number of investors that want their money back. It has been well-managed, sure, but cash has a certain feel to it. The IPO will be a zoo. But it will be a fun zoo, and that is all that matters. The NASDAQ and the NYSE are at war a bit on who gets to host more tech offerings, but I think that we’ll be seeing the NASDAQ scoop up this deal. Now, what are Twitter’s revenue and profit figures? We’ll actually get to know soon, though the fact they are filing in this fashion does imply that Twitter had less than $1 billion in revenue in 2012. So, there’s that. Top Image Credit: Emmanuel Huybrechts

9 Amazing (Very) Young Entrepreneurs

Credit: Young entrepreneur image via Shutterstock View full size image

Entrepreneurs are getting younger and younger these days. Stories of people launching startups right out of college and becoming CEOs in their 20s seem to pop up everywhere. But it turns out some of us don't even need to reach college age to start a successful company: These business owners aren't even out of their teen years yet! Check out our list of incredible young entrepreneurs that made a name for themselves before they could drive a car.

Leanna Archer

Leanna's Hair
Leanna Archer was just 9 years old when she began bottling and selling her own hair pomade to friends and family. Based on her great-grandmother's secret recipe, Archer's line of all-natural hair products has expanded to include a variety of hair cleansers, conditioners and treatments. The now-17-year-old serves as the CEO of her company and has been recognized by prominent business publications like Forbes and Success Magazine. She even started the Leanna Archer Education Foundation to help build schools and safe learning environments for underprivileged children in Haiti.

Robert Nay

Nay Games
In December 2010, a new mobile game app called "Bubble Ball" was launched on the Apple app store. In its first two weeks it received more than 1 million downloads, surpassing "Angry Birds" as the most downloaded free game from Apple. This game was built entirely by Robert Nay, a 14-year-old with no previous coding experience. According to CNN, Nay learned everything he needed to know through research at the public library, and produced 4,000 lines of code for his physics-based puzzle game in just one month. The teen entrepreneur's company, Nay Games, released 24 new levels for "Bubble Ball" in August 2013.

Lizzie Marie Likness

Lizzie Marie Cuisine
Like many little girls, 6-year-old Lizzie Marie Likness wanted to ride horses. To pay for horseback riding lessons, she began selling homemade baked goods at her local farmers market. Eventually Marie realized that cooking was her true passion, and with the help of her parents, she built a healthy-cooking website with instructional videos to help kids eat better. Now 13, Likness has taught cooking classes, appeared on the "Rachael Ray Show," and starred in her own WebMD video series, "Healthy Cooking with Chef Lizzie," through her culinary business venture.
[Do Confident Kids Have More Future Career Success?]

Moziah Bridges

Mo's Bows
Most young boys are revolted by the idea of getting dressed up, but Moziah Bridges is a rare exception. After being disappointed in the bow ties available to him on the market, Bridges learned how to sew his own with the help of his grandmother. The fashion-forward 11-year-old began selling his creations on Etsy, and his products were soon picked up by boutiques in several southeastern states. So far, Bridges has earned over $30,000 from his bow ties, and told Forbes that he eventually plans to start a children's clothing company.

Neha Gupta

Empower Orphans
From an early age, Neha Gupta has participated in her family's tradition of celebrating birthdays by traveling to India and bringing food and gifts to orphans in their hometown. In 2005, when Gupta was 9 years old, she decided she wanted to do more to make a real difference in these children's lives. She began selling handmade wine charms door-to-door and at community events to raise money for school books and other educational expenses for orphans. These efforts led her to create her own registered nonprofit organization, Empower Orphans. Gupta, now 17, has raised more than $1 million and has received awards from numerous charitable foundations.

Jaden Wheeler and Amaya Selmon

Kool Kidz Sno Konez
Jaden Wheeler and Amaya Selmon started making snow cones with a blender and an extension cord in front of their Memphis, Tenn.,home two years ago. Since then, the brother and sister team have upgraded quite a bit: at ages 12 and 11, respectively, they are now the youngest food truck owners in Memphis. In a Huffington Post feature on Kool Kidz Sno Konez, Jaden and Amaya explained that their mother purchased the truck for them after seeing how successful their (very) small business had become. The truck, which is usually stationed in local parks or at private events, now offers hot dogs, nachos, and more than 20 snow cone flavors.

Nick D'Aloisio

Summly
How many teens can say that a multinational corporation purchased their company and made them millionaires? There's probably not a lot, but Nick D'Aloisio is one of them. The 17-year-old entrepreneur is the tech prodigy behind Summly, a summarization app that algorithmically creates summaries of news articles optimized for the iPhone. At 15, he received backing from Horizon Ventures and other angel investors to develop his technology, and in March 2013, Yahoo acquired D'Aloisio's company for $30 million.

Anshul Samar

Elementeo (Alchemist Empire Inc.)
As a fourth grader, Anshul Samar loved playing card games. Two years later, he began developing his own, which he called Elementeo. Samar aimed to make chemistry fun with his board-based game, which involves pitting personified versions of each element on the periodic table against each other to "capture" electrons. Since the first iteration of Elementeo, Samar, now a 19-year-old Stanford University student, has continued to update the game and created a grant fund for other young entrepreneurs, says in a Taking on the Giant article. He has even given a TEDx Talk (an independently organized TED Talk) on his game.
This story was provided by BusinessNewsDaily, a sister site to LiveScience. Originally published on BusinessNewsDaily.

Nido Qubein: Why Immigrants Become Millionaires

Eluding the Illusion of Time: Douglas Karr on Priorities, Resources, and the Value of Quality

When your goal is to meet a deadline for a project, time can sometimes become your biggest enemy.

It’s not that I don’t understand the work involved to complete a particular task at hand; it’s all of the other unanswered questions that come along with working with clients and teams. I don’t know if my client will provide the resources in time. I don’t know that our team’s resources will be consistently applied. I don’t know if we’ll run into problems with the technology. I just don’t know.

What I do know is that I’ll be held accountable. The problem is that I won’t be held accountable for the result – I’ll be held accountable for the deadline.

When Will it All Get Done?

Recognizing this, I pad project schedules for safety. That said, I am putting my contract and relationship with my client at risk by taking my time estimate, doubling it, and doubling it again… eventually ending up at 4 times the original estimate.

It’s not that I’m lying or trying to delay the project — it’s that I want to ensure it’s done correctly and exceeds the expectations of the client. And, of course, I want to ensure that the client will get the hand-off when they expect it. There are often downstream repercussions when a project isn’t completed on time. This is the critical moment in our relationship. If the client asks their internal staff, the staff will say it takes a fraction of the time. If the client asks a competitor, they’ll undercut me for sure. It’s a critical moment because the only reason why the client would accept my estimate at this point is because they trust me. If they trust me, we’ll move forward. If they don’t trust me, we’ll end the relationship.

It has nothing to do with time and very little to do with the results. Time is an illusion.

What’s Your Hourly Rate?

When I started my business, I responded to one ornery prospect with a rate of $250.00 per hour. He grimaced and literally berated me for the next five minutes or so. He said he could hire someone for one-tenth that rate and there’s no way he would pay it. I asked how much he would pay. He responded $75.00 per hour. So, I told him that I could do it for $75.00 per hour, but that it would take me three times as long as my original quote. I smiled. He didn’t. So I walked.

The illusion of time appears again. Within that discussion, the value of the project at hand wasn’t discussed — only my hourly worth as a human being. If he interviewed 10 people who ranged from $25.oo per hour to $250.oo per hour, I’m confident that the $25.00 per hour contractor would get the contract. I’m also confident that the results were disastrous. Just about every day, we meet with clients who have completely blown their budgets on cheap contractors who couldn’t get the job done.

We don’t manage retainers nor track hours anymore. We set budgets with our clients and have them hold us accountable that the value we generate is greater than the monthly subscription we charge. We like to measure that in increased visibility on search, social, improved conversion rates, and – ultimately – more dollars to the bottom line.

How do you Manage Time?

I don’t. Ten years ago, I started the Marketing Technology Blog and grew a sizable following online. The authority I built, combined with the following, began to drive demand for my services. The demand was enough that I launched my agency 5 years ago. Suddenly, I was a CEO and a blogger. I was recruited to write Corporate Blogging for Dummies. My influence grew, my network grew, and my business grew.

On a daily basis, I have to respond to a dozen or so tweets, a handful of Facebook status updates, dozens of PR pitches, hundreds of emails, a few phone calls an hour… and I need to execute for the clients who are paying my agency. I am surrounded by an amazing team that barely keeps me from drowning and thankfully keeps our clients afloat.

You can’t balance a checkbook when you don’t have enough money to cover the checks. The same goes for time management. When the demand for your time exceeds the number of minutes in the day, there is no time management. At that point, we’re not really managing time — we’re managing priorities.

Prioritization over Preservation

Some folks tell me that what this means is that I’m not charging enough, or I need to grow my business, or I need to say no… but that’s not who I am. I want to stay affordable to most businesses. I want to help more clients improve their marketing results. I want to stay engaged with my following on social media. I want to read every email from a new startup or a public relations professional. I love my disaster of a life!

The result is that I turn away business. Not because of the time it will take or the money it will pay, but because it’s not a fit for my style of work. I’m sure many of you are shaking your heads and some of you probably think I need psychological help, but I don’t. I’m absolutely content with finding and working with businesses that appreciate the value and commitment I bring to their company, instead of holding me accountable for over- or underestimating timelines made for self-preservation.

And I’m not alone. Virtually every client I work with is resource-challenged, and the demands continue to grow. Our service, sales, and marketing staff now balance a plethora of social mediums, a barrage of emails, and the interruption of meetings. They face increased expectations of developing content, nurturing leads, improving customer retention, and acquiring new business — all with less money, fewer people, and just a handful of tools.

Visualization Management

The key to our success isn’t managing time, it’s managing priorities. We balance our publication, our speaking schedules, our sponsors and sponsorships, our audience and our community alongside our clients’ demands. Because of these myriad responsibilities, we use a ton of visualization tools. From cashflow in our accounting platform, to analytics for our audience, to email visualization tools to handle bulk actions (check out Mailstrom), to MindManager and ProjectDirector for identifying obstacles and opportunities to drive business results.

In my opinion, time management is as dead as the corner office, the personal assistant and the flashy gold watch. It’s simply not how we’re working anymore. We have a fixed amount of resources, not a flexible amount of time. The challenge for every successful business is to prioritize their resources effectively — not based on deadlines, but on results.

Twitter Strategy: The Incomplete Guide for Beginners

By Paul | 

One of the hottest topics in our industry right now is how professionals and corporations can use Twitter.

First and foremost, it’s important to note that Twitter is not a blatant sales and self-promotional tool. Social networking on Twitter is a long-term strategy in which you must bring value to the community by publishing and sharing relevant information.

With the proper Website analytics, you certainly can (and should) track traffic, inbound links, leads and sales from Twitter, but like most social media participation, I would not suggest setting out to achieve specific measurable objectives.

Here are the 7 steps I’d recommend for beginners getting started on Twitter:

1) Secure your personal and/or brand name.

If you haven’t already, go to Twitter.com to reserve your personal name and brand name before someone else does.

For entrepreneurs and company executives unsure whether to tweet as yourself (@FullName) or the brand (@CompanyName), although there certainly are exceptions, in most cases it is more effective to go with @FullName.

2) Build your profile to be found.

You have 160 characters to describe yourself and pique the curiosity of potential followers. Mix in your personal and professional interests to connect with a larger base of tweeters.

• Be sure to put your full real name in the account settings section.
• Create a descriptive, keyword-rich bio. Think about the keywords that you would search to find yourself. It’s fine to be cute and creative, but make sure someone reading your profile understands who you are and what you do.
• Be sure to include a link to your Website or blog.
• Do NOT lock your updates, unless you are on Twitter strictly to connect with your existing network.
• Upload a good picture of yourself with a distinguishable face.
• Change the design to anything but the default setting.

[SAMPLE TWITTER PROFILE]

3) Pick your applications.

In order to get the most out of Twitter, without getting overwhelmed, it’s important to download applications that make it easier to monitor and participate. Based on a great blog post from @chrisbrogan (who knows far more about this stuff than I do), I now use Tweetdeck for my Mac and Twittelator Pro for my iPhone.

Note that some tweeters will run into corporate roadblocks accessing twitter and downloading apps, so check with your IT department. Also, quick note to HR departments, if you don’t have a Twitter policy in place, it’s probably time to add one to your employee handbook.

4) Publish some relevant tweets.

I’d suggest posting 10 or so relevant tweets before you move on to step 5. At least for me, before I follow someone back I’ve never met, I glance at their bio to make sure we have something in common, and I scan the first page of their updates to see that they are making an effort to contribute something of value to the community. There are people who choose to auto-follow everyone, but it’s not what we advise our clients to do.

So what makes for good tweets?

• You read dozens (if not hundreds) of blog posts, articles and emails every day . . . start there. Share news alerts, industry trend posts, your own blogs posts, random relevant thoughts on your profession, predictions, etc. Just keep it non-promotional and useful.
• Re-tweet (RT) valuable information from your Friends.
• Direct message (DM) people who post especially strong tweets.

Some “Twitter Elite” can post a play-by-play of their entire day and still keep followers interested, but for most of us tweeting in moderation is recommended. I know that personally I have learned to skim by when I see the familiar face of some uber-tweeters.

It’s recommended to share personal information (i.e. interests, hobbies, travel, etc.) because it makes your participation more authentic and creates deeper connections, but we strongly advise clients not to get carried away with this kind of content.

5) Find friends and build followers.

• Start with people you already know on Twitter. Follow them, then see whom they follow and see if there’s anyone that would make for a good connection. Quick tip, when viewing friends and followers on Twitter.com, hover over someone’s name and their bio will pop up. You can click on their name and visit their Twitter page too.
• Next go to twitter.grader.com and search by keywords for people like you. Twitter Grader (@grader) pulls keywords from the bios of top tweeters, so you can scan their bios and then click over to their page to learn more or follow. Here are some sample keywords I’ve searched to find friends: CEO, entrepreneur, social media, inbound marketing, PR, public relations, golf, Cleveland and SEO.

• Another great place to find like-minded tweeters is search.twitter.com. Just enter keywords that interest you (i.e. “public relations”) and see who’s tweeting on the topic. Click on their name, check out their bio, and follow if it’s a good fit.
• Watch for @ replies from your friends and click on people that seem interesting. Follow them if you’d like.
• Add your Twitter name to your business cards, email signature and social network profiles (Facebook, LinkedIn).
• Include your Twitter name at the end of every blog post.

6) Establish a monitoring and participation system that works for you.

The more people you follow, the harder it is to keep track of everything that’s happening on Twitter. It’s amazing how much you can miss in an hour.

• Use “Groups” on Twittelator and Tweetdeck (or whatever apps you choose) to make sure you at least see the people that are most important to you and your business. Here are some sample groups to consider: your co-workers/employees, media, industry influentials, business partners, top bloggers, Twitter Elite, and local tweeters.
• Start tweeting at a frequency that fits your schedule. Twitter can be addictive, especially as you're getting started, and when you add it to your mobile phone. I usually check Twitter 6-10 times per day on average (first thing in the morning, at lunch, 1-2 times in the afternoon, end of the workday, and 1-2 times in the evening).

7) Connect, build relationships and have fun!

I’ve met some great people through Twitter, and even connected offline at face-to-face networking events. If you follow the steps in this post, you can quickly build up your follower base and make some valuable connections.