827 Matching Annotations
  1. Dec 2021
    1. Standard algorithms as a reliable engine in SaaS https://en.itpedia.nl/2021/12/06/standaard-algoritmen-als-betrouwbaar-motorblok-in-saas/ The term "Algorithm" has gotten a bad rap in recent years. This is because large tech companies such as Facebook and Google are often accused of threatening our privacy. However, algorithms are an integral part of every application. As is known, SaaS is standard software, which makes use of algorithms just like other software.

      • But what are algorithms anyway?
      • How can we use standard algorithms?
      • How do standard algorithms end up in our software?
      • When is software not an algorithm?
  2. Nov 2021
    1. Dogadać się z firmami z podobnej branży i umieszczać u siebie zdjęcia ich produktów, bez żadnego kodu. Napisać czasem (odpowiednio oznaczony) artykuł sponsorowany. Dodać link do bezpośrednich wpłat na swoje konto. Pomysłów jest multum. Niestety wielu wybrało najłatwiejszą opcję i podpięcie się pod globalne sieci reklamowe. Niekoniecznie zyskują na tym „partnerstwie”. Elementy reklamowe zbierają informacje o użytkownikach nawet jeśli ich nie klikniemy (a zatem i tak nie przyniesiemy zarobków właścicielom stron).

      Why it's worth to use ad blockers & how site owners could replace this business model

    1. also into business models that can better serve the interests of both students and educators.

      We are at a point in time where we need to reflect on our business practices. The question should be who are we serving and how do we show we are serving them.

  3. Oct 2021
    1. A common good (CG) process begins with an initiator proposing the production of a common good. Then, during the predefined lifetime of the process, funders who care about this common good may pledge funds for its production, being reassured that their money will only be used retroactively, had the common good been eventually produced — no risk taken. Executors who wish to produce the common good may do so, being reassured that they will be compensated by the pledged funds had they been successful. And profit-seeking investors may buy a portion of the potential reward from executors (in the form of per-executor tokens that are made redeemable against the future reward had they been successful), and by that provide them with liquid funding for operation. Finally, if and when executors achieve the desired outcome, as decreed by a predefined judge, the pledged funds are released as a reward to the successful executors and the investors who bought their tokens. If no success has been reached after some predefined limit of time, the funds go back to the funders who provided them. Executors and investors only see profit, and funders only spend it, if and only when the common good is produced.

      A trustless conditional reward model for production of common goods.

    2. In the future envisioned here, decentralized networks play the role of governments, municipalities and intentional commons, fostering common goods. It is possible to produce common goods when a big-enough community cooperates to bear the cost of production and its implementation; but this, correspondingly, requires large-scale coordination, and large-scale coordination is generally a very hard problem. In this article we introduce Common Good, a blockchain-based application that solves this problem by enabling the coordination and motivation of different relevant actors for achieving a desired common good, by providing it with a “business model” just as in the profit-seeking sector. Our solution takes inspiration from the Social Impact Bonds (SIB) model.

      A proposal to use decentralized blockchain to make large scale coordination possible.

    1. Lean Canvas is a 1-page business plan template created by Ash Maurya that helps you deconstruct your idea into its key assumptions. It is adapted from Alex Osterwalder's Business Model Canvas and optimized for Lean Startups. It replaces elaborate business plans with a single page business model.
  4. Sep 2021
  5. Aug 2021
  6. Jul 2021
    1. Ben: The business started blossoming when we were in Texas. I had told my wife to give me…Within five years we'll have a house and we'll both have good vehicles, dependable vehicles, but it's going to take a while. Well within a year and a half from when I started, we bought out first house and we both had good, dependable vehicles. However, it was still tight when I took a project on in Akron, Ohio. And when I took that project on, I did not want to go up there for many reasons. One, because I had this immigration issue on me and I'm going near the Canadian border. Another, I didn't really want to be away from my family.Ben: But when these customers get persistent, "What's it going to take? What's it going to take?" And I said, "It's just out of the question. I can't go up there, I got all these jobs going on. Plus, I got bad equipment, my equipment’s old and if my equipment breaks down up there, I'm not going to be able to meet the schedules and we're all going to be in trouble.” "Is that it? Really?" The last price he had upped the price of what the contract was to pay, and the pay was fine. I had other reasons why I didn't want to go. Well when he says, "I'll throw in a brand-new texture machine on top of it, but I'll sign off on the paperwork after you complete the project.” And I go, "You'll do that?" "I'll do that and when have you known me to not keep my word?" And I go, "Done deal.”Ben: One of those texture machines, the price tag at that time was about $30,000. Right now, it's probably closer to $40,000 because we're talking about 1996. And he followed through, I came up to Akron, when I got up to Akron though, they had projects, there were projects everywhere, Kentucky, Michigan. And the pay, the pay was awesome. And that is where it really, within I think about the second month that I was up north, it just completely changed.Ben: But I hadn't seen my wife and children since I had taken off up there. So, I told her to come up there and visit and I started discuss with her. I go, "Look these other jobs,” and I had already said I was going to take them, but I didn't tell her that. I told her, she says, "What if you go to be traveling?" I go, "It's worth it to be traveling back and forth, but I'm not going to be traveling back and forth. We're going to just take the kids; we're going to move up here and we're going to be together".Ben: And so that's when I moved them to Indianapolis. We stationed in Indianapolis although I did travel quite a bit. I was on the road quite a bit because I had later ended up with jobs as far down as Orlando, Florida. And I ended up in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina to repair a bunch of apartments which we had worked on before. But it was a pretty wild ride, but we really were doing really well, and it was really amazing.

      Time in the US, Jobs/employment/work, Small business owner, Earnings, Careers, Construction; Time in the US, States, Texas, Indiana, Louisiana, Florida, Ohio

  7. Jun 2021
  8. May 2021
    1. In a way, the essential premise of the collab-house business model is not far from that of pornographic entertainment. (Where else do talent and crew and cadres of management congregate in furnished mansions to produce intimate content?) Interestingly, but maybe not surprisingly, many TikTok influencers, including some here at the Clubhouse, have made the crossover from social media to pornography, using apps such as OnlyFans to post nude pics for their legions of subscribers.
    2. Later in my visit, Chase Zwernemann, the twenty-one-year-old VP of talent management, will tell me that “we really see ourselves like influencing professors.” And if this weren’t enough, under the Clubhouse aegis is a trio of TikTok houses, each of which corresponds, apparently, to a different level of academe. There’s Clubhouse BH—the grad school—which is meant for “our more seasoned influencers.” (If this phrase conjures for you images of geriatrics taking selfies in suggestive postures, please know that by “seasoned influencers” they simply mean people who have been in the business a while and have thus reached the ripe old age of twenty-two or twenty-three.) Beneath that is Clubhouse FTB, which apparently serves as the undergraduate program. And finally, there’s Not a Content House, the high school of the Clubhouse venture, one meant to appeal to an even younger demographic.

      He uses academe, but I might liken it to a studio system of sorts.

    1. In viewing academia as a business, you should always give customers what they want, and this applies on two levels. First, always consider the demand for the research product. This is much easier said than done. Anyone can acknowledge that the customers are always right, but truly listening to them and extracting what they need is difficult, especially if you have your own personal desires with respect to the product (in this case, the research). Talk to the funding customer constantly. Second, most students are, in effect, employees, and the adviser is a boss who doubles as a customer. In some respects, your adviser will provide your pay cheque, or at least govern it. Thus, do what the customer requires. In addition, always consider your audience when writing and presenting. In the case of a thesis, the audience is your adviser and committee. Again, talk to the customers constantly.
    1. Derek Thompson. (2021, May 17). Weeks ago, Gov. Abbott made Texas the first state to abolish its mask mandate and lift capacity constraints for all businesses. So, what changed? Nothing. There was ~no effect on COVID cases, employment, mobility, or retail foot traffic, in either liberal or conservative areas. Https://t.co/M8aeKOKJuP [Tweet]. @DKThomp. https://twitter.com/DKThomp/status/1394294260787261447

    1. Substack insists that advances are determined by “business decisions, not editorial ones”. Yet it offers writers mentoring and legal advice, and will soon provide editing services.

      Some evidence of Substack acting along the lines of agent, production company, and studio. Then taking a slice of the overall pie.

      By having the breadth of the space they're able to see who to invest in over time, much the same way that Amazon can put smaller companies out of business by knocking off big sales items.

    2. Record labels are another endangered middleman. They have historically taken care of turning a song into a hit, in return for an ongoing share of revenues. But more and more artists are going it alone. More than 60,000 new songs are uploaded to Spotify every day, most by bedroom-based rockstars who can use new online services to handle the logistics themselves. UnitedMasters, a music-distribution platform which bills itself as “a record label in your pocket”, recently raised $50m in a venture-capital round led by Apple. Tools like Splice make recording easier. Companies like Fanjoy take care of merchandise.And financing is getting simpler. One startup, HIFI, helps artists manage their royalties, paying them regularly and fronting them small sums to make up shortfalls. Another, Karat, extends credit to creators based on their follower count. Helped by such services independent artists took home 5.1% of global recorded music revenues last year, up from 1.7% in 2015, calculates MIDiA Research, a consultancy. In the same period the share of the three largest record labels fell from 71.1% to 65.5%.

      The same sort of dis-aggregation and disintermediation that has hit the publishing business is also taking place to newspapers, magazines, and music.

      The question is how to best put the pieces of the pie together in the best way possible. There's probably room for talented producers to put these together to better leverage the artists' work.

  9. Apr 2021
    1. We know the audience for such games is limited. In order for us to produce games up to our standards, we rely on a direct sales model. Our games are not designed for traditional distribution or retail channels. The vast majority of all copies produced will be sent to Kickstarter backers or to people who purchase games through our store.  This means we can spend many more resources on the game's physical production without having to worry about retail viability.
    1. Only the Starter Kit is available in this reboot. The Starter Kit is FREE, in order to distribute it as widely as possible. This goal of this Kickstarter campaign is to introduce Clash of Deck to the whole word and to bring a community together around the game. If the Kickstarter campaign succeeds, we will then have the necessary dynamic to publish additional paid content on a regular basis, to enrich the game with: stand-alone expansions, additional modules, alternative game modes..
  10. Mar 2021
    1. Paywall success stories are a mix of specialized news, often catering to the ultrawealthy (WSJ), superstar news orgs focused on specific national and international news (NYT) or news with billionaire backstops (WP). The civic function of news is not met by any of these models. But reader-supported, open access news, like Canadaland and The Halifax Examiner are filling in the gaps. The co-op model is a most welcome adjunct to these success stories.

      List of business models for news.

  11. Feb 2021
    1. There are two definitions of ‘Enterprise’ 1 - Enterprise as a business. In fact, in French, ‘enterprise’ literally means ‘business’ 2- Enterprise as a large business. This is the most common use of the term in business, differentiating between small, medium, and large businesses. In this context, there is no official rule, however it is generally accepted for enterprise to mean companies with over 1,000 employees and/or $1B in revenue
    1. A popular strategy for bootstrapping networks is what I like to call “come for the tool, stay for the network.” The idea is to initially attract users with a single-player tool and then, over time, get them to participate in a network. The tool helps get to initial critical mass. The network creates the long term value for users, and defensibility for the company.

      This is an interesting and useful strategy. I've heard the idea several times before.

      I'm curious if this is the oldest version of it? I have to imagine that there are earlier versions of it dating back to 2011 or 2012 if not earlier.

    1. the idea of decentralized business models. These are business models distributed across a blockchain network not centralized in a traditional corporation. They can be fully autonomous too, meaning no humans involved. There's big potential for true peer-to-peer models like ride-sharing without Uber as a middleman taking fees. Owners of driverless cars will someday be able to put their autonomous vehicles to work. So even the big disruptors can be disrupted by this new technology.

      Decentralized Business Models

    1. But the inverse trajectory, from which this essay takes its name, is now equally viable: “come for the network, pay for the tool.” Just as built-in social networks are a moat for information products, customized tooling is a moat for social networks.1 This entrenchment effect provides a realistic business case for bespoke social networks. Running a bespoke social network means you’re basically in the same business as Slack, but for a focused community and with tailored features. This is a great business to be in for the same reasons Slack is: low customer acquisition costs and long lifetime value. The more tools, content, and social space are tied together, the more they take on the qualities of being infrastructure for one’s life.

      An interesting value proposition and way of looking at the space that isn't advertising specific.

    2. Most business writing lacks a meaningful engagement with the question of whether the strategies, tactics, and trends on offer are good, in a larger and longer term sense. It is negligent not to address these questions.

      Very few businesses consider the long term effects of their work...

    3. A new business type here is the paid community: a direct subscription to join in. Today, most paid communities live on the outskirts of existing social platforms. But as they become normalized, paid communities are becoming a viable business model for smaller-scale social networks aiming to be both profitable and socially sustainable.

      paid communities

    1. It turns out that creating and using Free Software is not just good to individuals, but for businesses as well, for example by building upon publicly available components and by collaborating shared software. The term Open Source is a business-friendly rebranding of the Free Software concept. This line of thought was also widely successful, e.g. Firefox/Mozilla was an open sourcing of Netscape software.
    1. So what's the worst part? Well, if you're like most entrepreneurs, marketers, and salespeople... it's finding your potential clients' email addresses to reach them out. (Yawn... I almost fall asleep just writing about it.) You see, it's boring and time-consuming, you wish you could skip this part and go straight to the sales process.
  12. Jan 2021
    1. They oversaw the development of playbooks and operating models and revamped corporate processes around such principles as agile funding and mission-oriented initiatives. At that point, everyone on a mission shared the same targets and worked collaboratively in two-week sprints. The organization began to deliver results much faster.

      Results of business agility implementation

    2. Second, the leaders must drive agile behaviors broadly into the organization. This requires authentic belief in the behavioral changes required, as well as playbooks, processes, and support to enable the organization to work in a cross-functional, mission-oriented way.

      Business Agility driving change of behavior within companies, reaching out the overall goal

    1. There is very little academic and statistical study of Wal-Mart’s impact on the health of its suppliers and virtually nothing in the last decade, when Wal-Mart’s size has increased by a factor of five. This while the retail industry has become much more concentrated. In large part, that’s because it’s nearly impossible to get meaningful data that would allow researchers to track the influence of Wal-Mart’s business on companies over time. You’d need cooperation from the vendor companies or Wal-Mart or both–and neither Wal-Mart nor its suppliers are interested in sharing such intimate detail.
      • Difficult to study Wal-Mart because suppliers and partners won't talk.
      • Difficult to track predatory practices because of these tight-lipped partners.
    2. “Everyone from the forklift driver on up to me, the CEO, knew we had to deliver [to Wal-Mart] on time. Not 10 minutes late. And not 45 minutes early, either,” says Robin Prever, who was CEO of Saratoga Beverage Group from 1992 to 2000, and made private-label water sold at Wal-Mart. “The message came through clearly: You have this 30-second delivery window. Either you’re there, or you’re out. With a customer like that, it changes your organization. For the better. It wakes everybody up. And all our customers benefited. We changed our whole approach to doing business.
      • Wal-Mart argues that doing business with their strict standards makes the company better.
      • Delivery has a 30-second window!! Crazy
    3. Vlasic got to take it down to just over half a gallon of pickles, for $2.79. Not long after that, in January 2001, Vlasic filed for bankruptcy–although the gallon jar of pickles, everyone agrees, wasn’t a critical factor.

      Vlasic got into Walmart and was very popular.

      Wal-Mart forced Vlasic to sell their gallon of pickles of $2.97.

      Wal-Mart makes up so much of Vlasic's revenue that they have to comply.

      Vlasic eventually sells at that price but has difficulty keeping up with demand.

      Vlasic asks Wal-Mart if they can sell for $3.49 which can help so much. Wal-Mart declines.

      In 2001 has to file for bankruptcy even after trying to change strategies.

    4. How can it be bad for things to come into the U.S. cheaply? How can it be bad to have a bargain at Wal-Mart?’ Sure, it’s held inflation down, and it’s great to have bargains,” says Dobbins. “But you can’t buy anything if you’re not employed. We are shopping ourselves out of jobs.
      • Wal-Mart can help keep inflation down and give great bargins
      • This comes at the sacrifice of having local and American business go out of business.
      • No employment due to companies going out of business will mean we are "shopping ourselves out of jobs"
  13. Dec 2020
  14. Nov 2020
    1. A better definition I've been using since then, thanks to Jason Hwang, is "fixed output." A company that delivers the same thing to all customers is going to be organized differently than one that does things made-to-order.

      Fixed output companies

      A company that delivers the same thing to all customers. These companies are going to be organized differently than ones that do things bespoke for their customers.

    1. We all know that real business logic does not belong in the presentation layer, but what about simple presentation-oriented things like coloring alternate rows in table or marking the selected option in a <select> dropdown? It seems equally wrong to ask the controller/business logic code to compute these down to simple booleans in order to reduce the logic in the presentation template. This route just lead to polluting the business layer code with presentation-oriented logic.
    1. hub.cards allows you to create and design your next modern business card for free. Our newly developed editor is like no other on the web and makes all your creative dreams come true. If you're not a creative genius, you can choose from thousands of templates to create an appealing card.

      Best free editor for creating business cards. Digital & physical ones.

  15. Oct 2020
    1. Like many other stores, Vroman’s is hosting online events to promote new books, which can attract attendees from all over the country but generally bring in almost no money.

      Maybe they need a book paywall for admission into those events? Buy a book to get the zoom code to get into the event?

      David Dylan Thomas essentially did this for his recent book launch.

    2. Avid Bookshop in Athens, Ga., sends personalized URLs to customers with a list of handpicked recommendations.

      Perhaps if they went the step further to set up domains for their customers, they could ostensibly use them not only as book blogs, but also to replace their social media habits?

      An IndieWeb friendly platform run by your local bookseller might be out of their wheelhouse, but it could potentially help solve their proximal problem while also solving one of society's problems all while helping to build community.

    1. 10 Ways Great Business Leaders Use Technology

      Article discusses the need to be forward thinking in business with regard to technology adoption. Lists characteristics of business leaders that understand the potential of technology to catapult efficiency. These are: (1) not afraid of change (2) capitalize on Cloud technology as time- and cost-saving resources, use mobile strategies, harness social media, integrate tablets, use telecommuting, understand online marketplaces, prioritize security, and automate marketing. Rating 2/10.

    1. That is to say: if the problem has not been the centralized, corporatized control of the individual voice, the individual’s data, but rather a deeper failure of sociality that precedes that control, then merely reclaiming ownership of our voices and our data isn’t enough. If the goal is creating more authentic, more productive forms of online sociality, we need to rethink our platforms, the ways they function, and our relationships to them from the ground up. It’s not just a matter of functionality, or privacy controls, or even of business models. It’s a matter of governance.
    1. Shopify-Ex would offer retailers something they don’t get from Amazon: partnership. Newco would provide merchants a lot of the great taste of Amazon (robust e-commerce tools and fulfillment) without the calories (merchants keep their data, control the customer, branding, no private label launches on backs of merchant data).

      Potentially an IndieWeb-ification for business?

    1. Professional blogging; whether that be funded by advertisers, subscribers, fans – is a big business. What are your thoughts on how Micro.blog helps or ignores people or businesses that may want to use the platform to share their content and earn a living from it?
    1. being able to follow links to “follow a conversation” that is threaded on Twitter.

      This is one of my favorite parts about my website and others supporting Webmention: the conversation is aggregated onto or more closely adjacent to the source. This helps prevent context collapse.

      Has anyone made a browser tool for encouraging lateral reading? I'd love a bookmarklet that I could click to provide some highly relevant lateral reading resources for any particular page I'm on.

    1. Twenty Stories Bookmobile, which left L.A. traffic for Providence, Rhode Island, in 2018

      This makes me think that a mobile bookstore a la the traditional LA roach coach with a well painted/decorated exterior could be a cool thing.

      I'm reminded of a used bookstore pop-up I saw recently at the Santa Anita Mall prior to the holidays. Booksellers were traditionally itinerant mongers anyway. Perhaps this could be a more solid model, especially for the lunchtime business crowds.

    1. A common complaint we heard from publishers at all levels is that it’s difficult to build partnerships with social media platforms. They seem to be holding all the cards. Even large publishers often feel in the dark during meetings with large platform companies.

      I'm more curious why all the large media companies/publishers don't pool their resources to build a competing social platform that they own and control so the end value comes to them instead of VC-backed social silos?

  16. Sep 2020
    1. Having worked with researchy vs more product/business driven teams, I found that the best results came when a researchy person took the time to understand the product domain, but many of them believe they're too good for business (in which case you should head back to academia).

      Problem of PhD profiles in business

    2. Imagine what it must be like for the senior leadership of an established company to actually become data-driven. All of a sudden the leadership is going to consent to having all of their strategic and tactical decision-making be questioned by a bunch of relatively new hires from way down the org chart, whose entire basis for questioning all that expertise and business acumen is that they know how to fiddle around with numbers in some program called R? And all the while, they're constantly whining that this same data is junk and unreliable and we need to upend a whole bunch of IT systems just so they can rock the boat even harder? Pffft.

      Reality of becoming a data-driven company

  17. Aug 2020
    1. It’s not that Slack is too distracting and killing individual productivity. It’s that your company’s processes are so dysfunctional you need Slack to be distracting and killing individual productivity.

      Kwok points out that Slack's reputation for being a productivity killer doesn't get at the root of the issue. He argues that resorting to Slack is a symptom of the underlying cause: dysfunctional business processes.

  18. Jul 2020
  19. Jun 2020
    1. Prismatic gets a percentage of the revenue increase that it generates for publishers, while developers pay a flat monthly fee based on usage, Cross says. It’s still working out pricing for hedge fund API usage. (As a point of comparison, the revenue model for the old Prismatic was the same as the current model for publishers. “We just meant for it to be more like Adsense/Adwords where we ran all this in our own consumer products too,” Cross notes.)

      the plague of monetisation