Startup Culture Archives - Serious Startups

Is BYOD Leaving Your Company Wide Open to Security Breaches?

For most companies, the days of giving every employee a company BlackBerry are over. Nowadays, most people would rather work on a device of their choosing, usually an Android smartphone or an iPhone.

This new BYOD culture has its advantages. Namely, it saves the company money on tech (about $1,300 per mobile user), it saves time negotiating and managing bulk contracts, and in many cases, it means the company only pays for a portion of the user’s phone plan. Employees who bring their own devices to work also tend to be happier and more productive, saving about 81 minutes of time per week.

But with these advantages also come new security headaches. BYOD means you’re entrusting your company’s data to your employees and their devices. And with all the recent data breaches that have compromised millions of customers’ personal data, your company can’t afford to take any chances with its devices.

Say Goodbye to One-Size-Fits-All Data Security

BYOD doesn’t just apply to your employees’ phones. Many companies are also allowing their employees to use their own tablets and laptops for work. This means there’s a much broader range of devices and brands that IT has to worry about.

While Active Directory security will cover the majority of Windows laptops and BlackBerry Enterprise Servers will still be useful for a few tactile keyboard–loving phone users, these leave out other brands your employees might be using, most notably Apple.

The Big Apple Security Myth

There is a myth about Apple products that has persisted for over a decade: that Apple products are inherently more secure than Windows products. The typical argument is that, while Windows is fighting new viruses every day, Apple computers have seen almost no viruses since their inception.

While this is true, it’s not because Apple computers are more secure, but rather because Apple holds a smaller share of the PC market. Macs comprise only about 5 percent of the global market share of personal computers. Hackers usually go after the bigger target, which for years has been Windows.

What this means for companies is that employees who own Apple devices are just as vulnerable as everyone else and should be subject to similar security measures. It’s not just viruses that you need to worry about, though.

In 2011, Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield potentially compromised the information of nearly 840,000 customers when two MacBook Pros were stolen. Phishing expeditions, device theft, and user error are just as likely to leave you vulnerable as a virus.

The Cost of Securing Employees’ Personal Devices

While the cost of purchasing devices may go down with a BYOD policy, it can be intimidating to consider the cost of securing all these new devices. For instance, Apple provides excellent encryption for individual computers with its FileVault 2, but managing it on a company-wide level is not as easy.

However, along with the increase in BYOD comes an uptick in cloud-based security management solutions. You no longer have to spend upwards of $30,000 deploying an in-house security solution. There are options that make it possible to manage data encryption for less than $100 per user per year.

Allowing employees to bring their own devices can still be a money saver, but your company needs to rethink how it’s handling data security. Big data breaches are constantly in the news these days, which means security is top of mind for your customers. Implementing an airtight business-wide security solution instills confidence in your customers when entrusting your company with their personal information. And when handled correctly, good security might actually make you money in the long run.

Tim Maliyil is the CEO and Data Security Architect for AlertBoot. AlertBoot protects customers from data breaches that damage their credibility, reputation, and business. The company’s managed full disk encryption, email encryption services, and mobile security services deploy within minutes to customers’ PCs, smartphones, and tablets, providing tremendous insight, visibility, and control.

From Twitter To Kleiner Perkins, Michael Abbott Knows About Culture

*Editor’s Note: This is the final installment of a mini-series featuring talks with Michael Abbott. See the previous posts here and here.

Company culture matters because companies are made up of people, and people are social creatures. The nature of the workspace environment is going to have an indelible impact on how an organization functions. By fostering the right culture you will be able to promote actions and interactions that will be beneficial to your end goals. At the same time you have to be wary of some subtle pitfalls that can cause unexpected problems down the line.

A small number of up and coming industry directors were recently able to sit down and have a chat with Michael Abbott about some of these issues. Abbott is an expert resource on enterprise infrastructure, who is well known for taking Twitter from about 45 engineers up to 200 in two years. The group chatted about company culture, how it evolves, why it is important, and how it should be directed to the benefit of the organization. He noted that company culture is generally set by the time the tenth employee is hired.

That means that it is very important to implement the routines and procedures that you want in place from the very beginning. These will naturally permeate the business as it expands over time. However, he also stressed that company culture can be difficult to maintain through periods of rapid growth and hiring.

An interesting takeaway from the conversation was the idea of heroics. Great feats of dedication, investments of time, and moments of genius may be able to keep a site alive despite underlying issues. The problem is that heroics don’t scale, and you can’t count on them in future situations. It will be easier to scale when a product is built with a solid stable infrastructure that can support dramatic spikes in a company’s popularity.

Company culture is what defines the way a business works. It consists of the social norms of the team you are creating, and thus is a very subtle, but powerful tool for directing the way a startup grows. It is generally defined within the first 10 employees but should be designed to scale as the company grows, with value placed on quality coding and products.

Written by Alaina Percival, Head of Developer Outreach for Riviera Partners, a leading technical recruiting firm in Silicon Valley.

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“Nice Shirt, Bro!” Best Practices For Startup T-Shirts

GiveForward’s Ethan Austin & the “Giveasaurus” at EE Cincinnati

Maybe, at a recent event, you found yourself gawking at startup teams who came dressed for the event wearing their company’s swag and thought, “That’s awesome! How do I get shirts for my startup?”

We boot-strappers know that every penny needs to be carefully spent and maxing out our credit card ordering t-shirts just doesn’t make sense. We also understand that our shirts need to be just right to convey our brand message while looking cool. And believe it or not, there is a certain unspoken standard you should abide by.

From experience with my startup, I have devised these four easy tips to make a great startup t-shirt.

1. STAND OUT – Pick a style and color that will get you noticed. Hopefully you already chose a bright color for your brand that will easily translate into shirt form. If not, pick a close color or iterate your logo/image to work with the shirt color. Thankfully, with BTSocial, we used organge as our main color which really stands out at events. Not to step on any toes, but blue is way overdone. The biggest tech companies all have blue in the brand sceme. Be bold and different. I think yellow looks really nice this time of year.

2. KEEP IT SIMPLE – We’re not talking about printing a whimsical graphic T or some amazing rendering from Threadless. You just need a simple and clear representation of your brand that people can understand. Ideally, it would be good to translate your logo to solid white and print it on your bright colored shirt. Not only is this easy on the eyes, but also saves you on multi-color printing costs. The folks at SpotHero are all about this. Your design should also be easy to read and not too wordy. Your logo and call to action are good, but don’t overdo it with a long tagline in a small font that’s too hard to read, requiring us to practically bury our face in your chest. Awkward.

3. USE THE BACK – Your shirt has a lot of real estate and while it shouldn’t be overused, it also shouldn’t be wasted. Many companies also do back printing, so add something to the back across the shoulder blades so that even when your back is turned you’re showing off your brand. With our BTSocial shirts, we put our website address on the back. It’s also fun to turn around and show people the back in conversation.

4. COORDINATE YOUR TEAM – When you’re heading to an event with your startup, whether you’re pitching or not, have everyone wear their shirt – its obviously a great way to get noticed. Now, not all events are suitable for your shirts. Some are formal and require a tie, so throwing a sport coat over your t-shirt to make a Silicon Valley Tuxedo is not always acceptable. Look at your industry for best practices. Also, if you are going to a lot of events and wearing your shirts frequently, make sure they are clean. This should really go unsaid, but don’t wear the same exact shirt in the sweaty summer heat to TechWeek. People will notice those pit stains!

Tim Hines is an entrepreneur, consultant, and speaker based in the Chicago area. Follow him @tnhines.

A version of this post first appeared on Tim’s blog.

How To Craft Your Startup’s Culture

Embarking on a startup is such an exciting experience simply because of the vast possibilities. Your ideas and goals will take on a variety of shapes and forms, and watching everything unfold is half the fun.

Still, while the excitement lies in the experience, it is still up to you to set the stage. When it comes to crafting your startup’s culture, being thoughtful, introspective and assertive will serve you, your customers, and your team well. Here’s how to take those first few steps.

Understand Your Vision

You cannot get what you want without first knowing what you want. While it may be hard to put your thoughts and feelings into words, you still have to try. For example, define what attitudes you want in employees i.e. thoughtful, informative, enthusiastic.

Define the experiences you want customers to have i.e. educating, fulfilling, comforting. Once you plot out your feelings in black and white you can start to build pathways to reaching those desired results.

Do Not Compromise Your Values

As the leader of a startup, there is no question that you will be living, eating, and breathing your work. Because of the inevitable black hole that people tend to fall into in order to get things off of the ground, be sure to keep your values as your guiding light.

Before you open for business, have a conversation with yourself that reaffirms your moral and ethical ideals. Business strategies, working relationships, and conflict resolutions are all going to require you to think on your feet. Be sure to draft a working plan on how you would like to deal with things (while defining your nonnegotiables) first so that in the heat of any moment, you will know in your heart what you want to do.

Match People and Personalities

Once you draft the ideal environment be sure to fill it with people who will excel in your unique climate. As time goes on, the people that work for you will end up being in closer contact with your customers than you yourself, so you need to ensure that they will carry out the desired plans and actions you’ve set in place.

While you do not have to match each other’s personalities, you certainly can’t clash and above all, every person on your team (including you) needs to carry out the attitude you’re going for in every decision, interaction and move made.

Praise and Celebrate

Crafting your culture will not mean much if you do not continue to instill it in real time. One positive way to do this is to reward people with incentives for carrying out the ideals of the business while making a successful X (sale, connection, discovery).

If you want people to adopt your culture as their working lifestyle, incorporate some feel good emotions by finding your own way to celebrate successes. Celebrations all too often get overlooked in businesses, but those moments of pause and praise can give people a chance to really root in. Define what is worth celebrating in your special world (birthdays, holidays, milestone accomplishments) and make the effort to connect as a team through those festivities.

Keep in mind that your culture is the air in your startup’s lungs. Values and beliefs need to be reiterated day in and day out by means of communication and living by example.

About the author: Kelly Gregorio writes about topics that affect small businesses and entrepreneurs while working at Advantage Capital Funds, a merchant cash advance provider. You can read her daily business blog here.

Startup Culture: Offering Your Courageous, Daring Employees Something Intangible

ProdigiArts, Startup Culture, Startup Tips, Memphis startup

(cultureclub photo: alanpringle.com)

Who would choose to work for some entrepreneur they met at a coffee shop, for little pay, unconventional hours, and without promise of Google-like fortunes? They may have a fantastic idea that will solve some great problem in modern society, but right now their eyes are bleary from too much caffeine and a scalding Macbook. It’s hard to believe in them.

Startups not only face difficulty in convincing prospective investors and clients, but also potential employees whose talents would make a valuable contribution to the ever-growing company. Capital might not be the greatest resource at your disposal, but your people are.

As entrepreneurs, it’s easy to fantasize about the kind of company culture you’d like to foster in the future: throngs of employees working diligently and creatively, in between collective games of Call of Duty. In reality, culture building happens the moment one other person says ‘yes’ to joining your crazy idea for a company.

The famed animation studio Pixar faced the same struggle to build culture. The production house that totes 27 Academy Awards on its mantle started out with sleep-deprived, passionate people who took a chance on an idea they believed in. Since its inception in 1979, Pixar has taken many directions, from producing special effects for Star Trek to working on a commercial for Listerine. Despite the change in vision, structure, or ownership, the individuals who were so passionate about their craft and creating a company notable for what it offered the world made Pixar great. By no means did this happen without investment and capital, but it started with the right people.

In James Collins’ celebrated book Good to Great, he emphasizes recruiting the right people, who are flexible and put in their time and energy day after day, even when the vision or direction of a company might take a detour. He says that while vision is essential when starting a business and gaining employees, “If you begin with ‘who’ rather than ‘what,’ you can more easily adapt to a changing world.”

One of the really important features of our company culture is a strong emphasis on trust and validation. In our industry most young, ambitious animators want to go work for the larger, more legendary studios in New York or Los Angeles, where they will probably be made to work longer hours and receive little credit.

While this is the reality of many recent graduates and young professionals in their career development journey, we try to value and recognize each accomplishment made, whether that’s with bonuses for especially noteworthy projects or getting taken out to lunch because someone forgot to bring theirs for the day. Every person, no matter how old or how young, desires a place in a community and to feel like their work is valued and contributes to something greater than themselves. We may not have the notoriety of a large studio, but what defines our culture is how satisfied and ambitious those brave souls are who have joined our growing studio.

Investing in human capital proves to be just as important as your real capital. Find those select few who invest their time, talents, and future in your company, because those are the ones who will be there at the end of the day, even when financial backers may not be.

Joshua Colfer is with ProdigiArts a Memphis animation, design and development firm. See what they can do for your startup visit them on the web at prodigiarts.com