Randi Zuckerberg's Blog, page 31

Radio Show Recap: Kickstarter Campaigns

On yesterday’s Dot Complicated with Randi Zuckerberg, three Kickstarter Staff Pick project founders sat down to discuss what it takes to make a successful crowdfunding campaign.

Tyler Tate Founder of Crema

“We set a goal of $25k, we need a big push in the last 10 days.”

“We have 200 people who have backed the project. That was the purpose. Find a group of people who want to buy single origin coffee.”

“Small specialty roasters come to Crema and list their products for sale. Then coffee drinkers can find what they’re looking for.”

“The Brew List is a kind of like a Netflix queue for coffee.”

“There’s a group of people who are becoming dissatisfied with the coffee selection at the grocery store.”

“I talked to people at CoffeeCon2015 who said they’re looking to the internet to find a coffee roaster to buy different coffee.”

“Crema, being a coffee marketplace, the main reward incentive we’re giving is coffee.”

“Coffee mugs and quality espresso tampers are some of other reward incentives.”

“We launched our campaign early. We wanted to gain some traction to be in a stronger position to launch our product. But we haven’t identified all of our roasters yet.”

“We’ll be finalizing our partnerships with our roasters and getting the marketplace ready to go.”

Fave app: “Buffer. All of those different profiles you have on the web, Buffer puts them all together.”

Crema.co

Gil Hova Founder Formal Ferret Games  

“Battle Merchants fit more into the hobby market. With Bad Medicine I could get backers involved in the pharmaceutical industry.”

“My girlfriends’ dad works in Big Pharma and said a fun idea for a game would be making up a name for drugs, so I did it.”

“I love the personal connection. I was introverted. The structure of board games helped me connect and become a people person.”

“I had to figure out how much my game costs to make, once I figured out a unit price, I looked at how many backers I could use and how many copies I could sell.”

“There’s a significant manufacturing cost. You have to print a board game by the thousands. You can’t just get a couple games made and stick them in your attic.”

“One level is the $1 level to follow along and get updates and then in the last 48 hours people bump their funding up.”

“I allow people to print a copy of the game and play at home which is common for board game campaigns.”

“At $100 I allow backers to supply a side effect of a drug.”

“I did not put in an Early Bird reward because there’s two problems: You lose goodwill and people who funded early on aren’t going to be incentivized to pledge more later.”

“I use Print & Play Productions to make a prototype of my game for $30.”

“You can succeed to fund but can fail if you don’t deliver your product.”

“We’re printing in China, which means I launched my baby in a canon and it’s going to arrive on the other side hopefully soon.”

“I really enjoy a game called Ascension. A deck building game. It’s a beautifully designed game.”

Formal Ferret Games

Eddie Lee Co-Founder Podo Labs 

“We started as an app company. It wasn’t very sexy. Our investor told us we were great but we need to change what we’re doing.”

“I got a SnapChat from a friend and I was wondering how I could take a photo of myself without taking an awkward selfie of myself.”

” The camera is separate from your body but you’re still in control.”

“Podo sticks with a silicone gel. It can stick and unstick to a surface, it’s not replaceable and entirely washable.”

“Kickstarter’s been invaluable for small companies trying to find a market for their company. You can’t do it through a huge business.”

“I think the press liked that it was the selfie stick killer.”

“There’s a lot of wedding requests because you can use it as a time lapse camera.”

“A mom told us that she wanted a hands-free camera so she could show her daughter the recipes.”

“It’s accessible to everyone, that’s why it’s so successful.”

“We have a physical product so it makes sense to offer our supporters to have the product first.”

“We were hoping to do a crowdfunding platform almost a year ago but we decided to raise money and find mentors to get ourselves ready rather than make people wait.”

“Delivery is obviously a priority. We have a lot of help, thankfully, to make sure we’re on time.”

“People have high expectations for this product and we’re hoping to get in stores by Christmas.”

“I can’t live without my Mail app.”

PodoLabs.com

Join Dot Complicated with Randi Zuckerberg  every Wednesday only on SiriusXM Business 111 at 12ET/9PT.

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The Ellen Pao Gender Discrimination Lawsuit

The Silicon Valley sexism lawsuit brought by Ellen Pao against venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins has rocked the tech world for the last two weeks. Currently the interim CEO of Reddit, Pao says a male partner made her life at the firm difficult by retaliating against her after she ended a sexual relationship with him. She is now suing Kleiner Perkins for $16 million, claiming she was passed over for promotions while she worked there because she is a woman.

For its part, Kleiner Perkins says Pao did not have the skills necessary to advance at the firm, and failed to meet expectations, which was reflected in her performance reviews. Pao was dismissed from the firm in 2012.

There is no shortage of women who report frat-house environments in SiliconValley organizations. The Pao case has forced one of the more venerable firms in that arena to air some uncomfortable information, such as its interoffice emails and salaries.

Ellen Pao’s victory is nowhere near assured, but the questions it has raised should have far-reaching implications, and will hopefully echo in the tech industry for a long time. 

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Monica Lewinsky’s Powerful TED Talk

Monica Lewinsky is one of very few people over the age of 40 who has no interest in being 22 again.

“At the age of 22, I fell in love with my boss,” she says bluntly as she began her talk on the TED2015 stage on Thursday. “At the age of 24, I learned the devastating consequences.“

Lewinsky asks for a show of hands: “Who didn’t make a mistake at 22?”

“Not a day goes by that I am not reminded of my mistake, and I regret that mistake deeply,” she continues. “In 1998, after having been swept up in an improbable romance, I was then swept up into the eye of a political, legal and media maelstrom like we had never seen before.”

The media landscape of the mid 1990s was, of course, very different from what it is today. Lewinsky points out that news at the time was consumed from three sources: reading a newspaper or magazine, listening to the radio, or watching television. But her affair with a sitting president?

“This scandal was brought to you by the digital revolution,” she says. “It was the first time traditional news was usurped by the Internet, a click that reverberated around the whole world.”

Lewinsky said that she had very little understanding of what was happening at the time. “Overnight, I went from being a completely private figure to a publicly humiliated one worldwide,” she says.

“I was Patient Zero of losing a personal reputation on a global scale almost instantaneously.”

If you close your eyes and go back to that moment, you can probably remember the tiny number of images that fueled this scandal: a headshot of Lewinsky with her swooping hair; a slow-motion video of Lewinsky in black beret, reaching out of the crowd to hug President Clinton; a freeze frame of her with her right hand raised being sworn in for her deposition in Clinton’s impeachment trial.

What was different about this scandal was the focus on her.

“Now I admit I made mistakes — especially wearing that beret — but the attention and judgment that I received — not the story, but that I personally received — was unprecedented,” she says. “I was branded as a tramp, tart, slut, whore, bimbo and, of course, ‘that woman.’ I was known by many, but actually known by few. I get it. It was easy to forget ‘that woman’ was dimensional and had a soul.”

While Lewinsky doesn’t say it, it should also be noted that ‘that woman’ has a voice — one that is calm and clear. Lewinsky was hardly heard from at the time of the scandal, aside from a Barbara Walters 20/20 interview in 1999 that launched the sale of a thousand Club Monaco lipsticks. Few in the audience would have been able to identify her voice before she stepped on the stage today. And while she wrote an essay for Vanity Fair last year, this is only the second time she’s spoken in public since disappearing from the public eye in 2005 and moving to London to study social psychology at the London School of Economics. She also spoke at Forbes’ 30 Under 30 Summit in October.

“In 1998, I lost my reputation and my dignity. … I lost my sense of self,” Lewinsky continues. “When this happened to me, 17 years ago, there was no name for it. Now we call it cyber-bullying.”

Lewinsky describes in detail one of the hardest parts of the scandal from her perspective: when, after the Starr Report was released to Congress, transcripts of her private conversations, secretly recorded by Linda Tripp, went public. Soon afterward, clips aired on television and were posted online. Lewinsky calls the content of those tapes “the worst version of myself” and says that they made her feel “deeply, deeply ashamed.” She says that she could not believe the things she’d said, or that others were forming an impression of her based on it.

“This was not something that happened with regularity back then in 1998,” she says. “And by ‘this,’ I mean the stealing of people’s private words, actions conversations or photos and then making them public. Public without consent, public without context and public without compassion.”

Of course, it happens with extreme regularity now. Take for example, in the past year: the leak of nude photos of Jennifer Lawrence and other celebrities; the Sony hack, in which the most embarrassing personal emails traveled far and wide; the release of 100,000 Snapchat images and videos on the website SnapChatLeaked.com.

But in 2010, a case of stolen actions hit Lewinsky in the gut. Tyler Clementi was a freshman at Rutgers University whose roommate set up a webcam and captured video of him being romantic with another man. Online harassment kicked in. Days later, Clementi jumped from the George Washington Bridge.

“Tyler’s tragic, senseless death was a turning point for me,” says Lewinsky. “It served to recontextualize my experiences. I began to look at the world of humiliation and bullying around me and see something different … Every day online, people — especially young people who are not developmentally equipped to handle this — are so abused and humiliated that they can’t imagine living to the next day.”

Humiliation has a personal price, notes Lewinsky, but it has a cultural one as well, she says.

“For nearly two decades now, we have slowly been sowing the seeds of shame and public humiliation in our cultural soil,” she says. “Gossip websites, paparazzi, reality programming, politics, news outlets and sometimes hackers traffic in shame.”

She brings up Nicolaus Mills’ concept of a “culture of humiliation.”

“A marketplace has emerged where public humiliation is a commodity and shame is an industry,” she asks. “How is the money made? Clicks. The more shame, the more clicks; the more clicks, the more advertising dollars … We are in a dangerous cycle: the more we click on this kind of gossip, the more numb we get to the human lives behind it. And the more numb we get, the more we click.”

So how do we move forward?

“With every click we make a choice,” says Lewinsky. She wants to see a “cultural revolution.”

“Public humiliation as a blood sport has to stop,” she says. “We need to return to a long-held value of compassion and empathy.”

Lewinsky quickly quotes another TED speaker, Brené Brown, who researches shame. As Brown said in a Twitter conversation in 2014, “Shame can’t survive empathy.”

Lewinsky asks that every person become an “upstander” instead of a bystander when it comes to public humiliation. “I’ve seen some very dark days in my life. It was empathy and compassion from friends, family, coworkers, even strangers that saved me. Empathy from one person can make a difference,” she says. “Compassionate comments help abate the negativity.”

“The Internet is the superhighway for the id,” she says, “but online showing empathy to others benefits us all … Just imagine walking a mile in someone else’s headline.”

Lewinsky says that there is one question she has gotten constantly about her re-emergence over the past year: why now? She stresses that her decision to step back out into the spotlight on her own terms is not politically motivated.

“The top-note answer was and is: Because it’s time. Time to stop tiptoeing around my past … Time to take back my narrative,” she says. “Anyone who is suffering from shame and public humiliation needs to know one thing: you can survive it. I know it’s hard. It may not be painless, quick or easy, but you can insist on a different ending to your story.”

This post originally appeared on the TED Talks Blog.

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Radio Show Recap: Peer-to-Peer Businesses

The collaborative consumption model—known as peer-to-peer, or P2P—is based on the sharing, swapping, trading or renting of products or services allowing customers to have goods without having to claim ownership. This business model enables peers to buy and sell products from each other and gives businesses the opportunity to bring consumers and providers together under their own umbrella brand, facilitating both a transaction and a transaction fee for use of their services. Discussing this Wednesday on Dot Complicated with Randi Zuckerberg on SiriusXM was Robin Chase, CEO/co-founder of Buzzcar and founder of Zipcar, and Vanessa Londono, Community Director of Krrb.

Here are their best soundbites:

ROBIN CHASE of Buzzcar:

“I think everyone around the world does a lot of P2P sharing, and now we can share through apps, with technology. It’s happening everywhere.”

“The competition is driving your own car in the U.S., in Europe it’s taking rail or bus.”

“Ride selling, or The People’s Taxi, that’s what Lyft and Uber are. Ride-sharing is completely different.”

“I think with all P2P companies people are making a personal relationship, whether or not they are aware of it.”

“With Zipcar we wanted to emphasize that this is the car you see in your neighborhood. With Buzzcar this is the car you know the owner of.”

“I think eBay was the first with peer production.”

“I think it’s important that the customer is rated as well because there are a lot of jerks out there.”

“I think that you use whatever you can to get into the door and raise capital. Once you get in the door, you have to demonstrate your knowledge.”

“I feel like there’s a lot of discrimination going on in the venture capital world. The numbers tell us so. But it’s not a negative discrimination.”

“If we 3 women were in a room with 97 men, we would have a special bond. It’s that special bond that people have to embrace.”

“VCs and Angels might not think they are discriminating against me, but they are actually looking for someone who’s just like they are.”

“I’ve had a huge amount of press is because I built great companies, but part of it is a need for gender balance.”

“Be really on top of what it is you’re building. See each meeting as a personal consultant.”

“When you’re explaining your idea to someone, instead of thinking that the person asking what you think is a dumb question to ask, you should really see it as how you explained your idea in such a way that someone couldn’t grasp what you were saying.”

“There’s a lot more openness and a lot more business models based on a collaborative economy.”

“Cisco has a lending library of high-priced equipment within the company. It’s shared resources.”

“There’s a company called Rover where you walk other people’s dogs.”

“I think P2P started with our most expensive assets—houses, cars.”

“SeeClickFix is where you can register potholes, or a branch down. The local government is crowd-sourcing things that need to get down around the neighborhood.”

“Quirky is a P2P asking for consumer product inventions. They crowd-source invention parts.”

“One of the reasons I launched in France was to ensure I protect the car owners. One country, one set of rules.”

“No individual is going to be able to persuade a large company to change the way they handle insurance.”

“Insurance companies are incredibly risk adverse. It’s annoying trying to do anything innovative with insurance.”

“The biggest challenge was going from insurance by the year going to by the hour or by the mile.”

“Different individuals have different driving skills. The French don’t have that background information for drivers. “

“What’s compelling about Veniam is sharing your wireless devices—turning it into a receiver and transmitter.”

“If you think about connecting to wifi, there’s a 15-30 second hand-off. Veniam makes that handoff zero. All those shared networks should be irrelevant to the user.”

“Moves is a great app to see how far I’m walking,”

VANESSA LONDONO of Krrb:

“Europe, France especially, is known for their flea markets. That’s the feel of Krrb.

Being able to connect with the neighborhood.”

“We have such a variety of buyers and sellers. We recently had a camel trekking business that found a saddle in Brooklyn.”

“The human element of our buyers and sellers supports the connection and has grown Krrb to over 100,000 members on a global scale.”

“We do a lot of outreach with local events to market Krrb.”

“Great photos make a big difference in getting your stuff noticed.”

“Members that have their own photos is a major difference between us and Craigslist. It’s a personal tie.”

“We see more and more businesses coming to Krrb. It’s another revenue stream for them.”

“We push the human element. There’s no anonymity like there is on Craigslist.”

“I bought a record player from a graphic artist I became friends with and helped get a job.”

“I bought a set of Christmas glasses from a seller in Baltimore that I keep going to her corner to see what else I can pick up from her.”

Make sure to join Dot Complicated with Randi Zuckerberg every Wednesday on SiriusXM Business Channel 111, 9am PST/12EST.

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Having More Isn’t Always Better

By Joree Rosenblatt

We all want more of the good things in life. Who wouldn’t?

As soon as we have a taste of something delicious we are reaching for the next bite. When visiting a beautiful vacation destination, we say, “I can’t wait to come back,” often forgetting that you are actually still there.

There is nothing wrong with wanting or striving for more, as long as there is appreciation and gratitude for what is arising in the moment. We tend to get stuck in the mindset of thinking that more is better, often failing to notice the good right in front of us.

I recently went to my happy place – a wellness retreat center on the cliffs of the California coast. The energy and healing spirit of the grounds is the perfect place to disconnect from distractions of everyday life and reconnect with yourself and other like-minded people. There is also natural hot springs built into the cliffside, just feet above the crashing waves of the Pacific. It truly is a magical place to be.

Despite the weather report predicting rain, upon my arrival I couldn’t detect a single cloud; all I saw was the vibrant changing colors of sky at sunset. Though California is in a severe drought, selfishly I was grateful for the nice weather and took a moment to pause and soak in the beauty around me. This is an easy place to remember to pay attention and be present.

As I walked out of my workshop at 10pm that night, I was amazed that the sky looked like a planetarium, and I got fixated on wanting to see a shooting star. I think shooting stars are magical; I mean, who doesn’t, right?!

Shooting stars are gifts from the universe as reminders that there is something bigger than us; some mystical, celestial, astronomical force that has its own energy, trajectory and life force. And when we are lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time, coupled with the awareness to see what is around us, we get to see one.

I was really hoping – no, rather, I was determined – to see at least one shooting star. So I walked towards the hot tubs with my neck arched all the way back with my eyes fixated on the heavens, and was very disappointed that I did not see any at all. On a night like this, I would’ve thought shooting stars would have been abundant.

I reluctantly let go of my attachment of needing to see a star, and upon settling into the hot tub, I looked up, and there it was: a huge shooting star that went all the way across the sky. I smiled with such gratitude and appreciation that I was in the right place at the right time to see it, and I made a wish.

I remained in that tub alone for probably an hour, having an intense sensory experience – the warm water, the cool air, the loud sound of the waves crashing below, the stars glistening in the sky above. I felt peaceful, content, happy, grateful and a strong desire to see more shooting stars.

I lost count at probably around 10 or so. Though they were coming with fairly consistent regularity, I still felt a surge of joy with every one that I saw. However, I began to experience something that also resonated in my everyday life: as soon as I have a beautiful experience, just being in the moment and being grateful for it doesn’t seem like enough.

I hold onto it. I strive for more. I get caught up in the “what’s next” rather than truly honoring and appreciating “what is.” I somehow think that holding out for some perceived better unknown in the future will satisfy me in a way that the present moment can’t.

With this awareness, I sat with myself and noticed my habitual tendencies to strive, cling, attach and live for a future moment. Just moments prior to this little epiphany, I had told myself that “I’ll go to bed when I see just one more.” And then I’d see it; it wouldn’t satisfy my desires, and I’d sit there waiting for another. And then another one would come, and still it somehow wasn’t enough.

I then began to laugh at myself for the patterns that I apparently so easily fall into, even after I bring awareness to them. Habits are hard to break, as they happen so unconsciously! So, I intentionally chose to turn to gratitude for the opportunity to experience such a beautiful evening and even more so, gratitude for the awareness of my patterns of striving, clinging and attachment. I noticed how deeply difficult it can be to remain present with what is, without being worried, concerned or scared that this beautiful moment will never manifest again. And then to have the wisdom to say to myself, “This moment can never truly be recreated; it’s fleeting. The best thing I can do is be present enough to truly experience and appreciate it.”

It got late, I was getting cold and I finally decided it was time to get out of the tubs and go to bed. I once again, so quickly and blindly slipped into my unconscious game of “I’ll go to bed after seeing just one more star,” but quickly laughed it off as I acknowledged the power of my patterns. I ascended the big hill towards my room, ritualistically stopping halfway to soak in the view of the dark sky and bright moon shining on the ocean.

As I stood at that little jut-out on the path, I looked up and instantly saw a huge shooting star go all the way across the sky. I smiled and literally out loud said, “Thank you.” And as soon as the words left my lips, another star graced the heavens. I felt a deep joy for the moment; for as soon as I had let go of my need to hold onto something, there it appeared. And I no longer felt the need to wait for just one more. I had all that I needed, and it was more than enough.

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5 Apps to Help You be a Boss

Most of us spend hours (and hours) on our phones and computers, so isn’t it about time our devices start working for us? In an era where there are apps to improve every aspect of your life, from weight to finances, it makes sense that there should be some technology to help better that tiny thing that is your career. These five apps promise to help you earn that corner office.

Dark Sky ($3.99, iOs). We don’t know about you, but in our neck of the woods the weather changes faster than Kim Kardashian’s hair color. This hyper local forecaster gives you down-to-the-minute intel on when it will rain (or snow), so you’ll know if you need to take an umbrella to that business lunch.

Scannable (free, iOS). So many business cards, so little purse space. This free, fully automatic app scans contracts, credit card statements, and even post-it reminders and stores everything in one, easy-to-locate spot. (Then, when you want to send to relevant parties, simply email or text them from your device.) But the real genius lies in the app’s LinkedIn syncing system: The built-in camera captures the clearest possible images of your business cards and automatically generates a photo and LinkedIn profile. You’ll never sheepishly ask your colleague for that freelance videographer’s email again.

Grammarly. Oh, the horror of sending a typo-filled email to your boss. This proofreading software ($29.95) instantly finds and explains grammar, spelling and punctuation mistakes in your documents, suggests synonyms for overly used words—because let’s face it, everything is “unique” these days—and detects plagiarism from a mile away. Check documents by uploading them on the Grammarly website, or use the browser plug-in to spot mistakes anywhere you write on the web, from Twitter to Gmail.

Hidden Jobs ($0.99, iOS). On the hunt for a new gig? The Hidden Jobs app trolls the Internet for articles about company expansions and finds open positions that haven’t been published on job-hunting sites, so you can have your application in before the masses. Handy notification settings push open job alerts to your phone ASAP, too.

Glassdoor (free, iOs and Android) It’s hard to know if a company is going to be a good fit for you from an interview alone. Instead, take it from the people who work there: Glassdoor provides recon on a potential employer with CEO approval ratings from workers, company-specific reports and even intel from previous applicants. Sneaky? Maybe. But oh so genius.

 

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Travel Happy With Google Flights

Google Flights is making it easier to book the perfect flight and keep your gadgets connected and powered on during cross-country getaways. The company has announced a new partnership with flight-rating service Routehappy that will bring those details and others to Google Flights search results. When planning a trip, the site will now clearly indicate whether or not suggested flights have Wi-Fi, in-seat power outlets, and other amenities — making it far easier to compare and chose the right airline. Here are a few more reasons why we love the aviation search engine.

If you’re looking for a great travel deal, type your request into the search bar (i.e., “Flights from New York to San Francisco”), then scroll through a calendar to see the lowest available prices highlighted for each day. You can also determine which flights are the best trade-off between price and convenience.

It’s OK to be vague if you don’t know where you want to go. Enter a region or country (i.e., “Flights to Paris” or “Flights to South America”) and Google will pull up a map that shows you each city with a little price underneath. You can then zoom in to find more information about those destinations, like when people are most likely to travel there.

Want everything organized and at your fingertips? That’s where the Google app comes into play. It searches your inbox to retrieve all your flight itineraries and display them front and center, then alerts you to flight changes and/or cancellations. It can even show you things to do in your area once you arrive.

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Radio Show Recap: New Exciting Apps

It’s estimated that $143 billion dollars will be spent on apps this year. Trends range from mobile e-commerce, utility apps and new and improved social apps. Even if you’re not a coder or have an engineering background, you can still create a successful app. But how do you rise above the noise and the clutter and how has the economy shaped the demand? 

Joining Randi to discuss this were Scott Darling, co-founder of Sniffr, the Tinder for dog owners; Suzanne Felson, founder of Reso, an app to book local activities for your kids; and Melody McCloskey, CEO of StyleSeat, the app where you can book beauty and wellness services online.

Here’s their thoughts:

Scott from Sniffr

“People view dog owners in a kinder light. You’ve proved you’re a little less selfish than the rest of the dating world.”

“A guy met up with his ex-girlfriend on Sniffr.”

“We’re such a visual app. We have an abundance of cute dog photos.”

“A lot of people are vying for this little space in this big world. We were doing our beta from a few Instagram posts. With only 1500 photos we became global instantly.”

Fave Apps: “My Starbucks app because I love to collect those stars.”

“Hype Machine, I’m a big music person but I don’t have a lot of time to discover new music and LaterGram to schedule posts.”

“My favorite dog breed right now would be a Frenchie.”

Suzanne from Reso

“You’re creating experiences to add value to your children’s lives.”

“ Art classes, soccer, sports, academic, and music. Pretty much every activity kids can enjoy. Even small kids’ cooking schools.”

“Perfect for the mom who wants to book at night and only wants to enter credit card info and their kids allergies once.”

“This is a marketing channel and opportunity for businesses. One single platform for them to book and be paid.”

“Moms are the strongest advocate and they love to share really good things with other moms.”

“Chief Connector Moms connects other moms to Reso and shares their experiences.”

“Co-branding moments are thriving right now.”

Fave app: “Common Sense Media is my go-to for understanding what kind of media content I want my kids to watch.”

“Munchery is for us to eat, what else can I say?”

“I move pieces of furniture with Uber.”

Fave dog breed: “My kids are all about the Labradoodle.”

Melody of StyleSeat

“I was interested in the beauty industry because I felt that it was off the radar in Silicon Valley where it’s mostly men.”

“I realized that beauty was a space no one was paying attention to.”

“The average woman books 55 appointments with 13 different people throughout the year.”

“I wanted a place where consumers could use a service to find a hair stylist available in their neighborhood on a Friday night.”

“Stylists don’t really have a way to grow their own business. I wanted to give them a mobile app so they could grow themselves.”

“There are a lot of stylists out there who are entrepreneurs but don’t have the tools to grow their own business.”

“We got a lot of doors slammed in our face. Investors said it wasn’t a burning challenge for them.”

“We knew when we walked in a room if there were two bald guys were weren’t getting the money.”

“They can turn down an idea but they can’t turn down numbers and traction.”

“We ended up raising money from Uber as our first investor.”

“A lot of the investors were like, ‘we don’t get it, but you’re crazy and I know you’ll die with this idea’ so they wrote a check.”

“It’s really hard to raise the first couple hundred thousand dollars. Once you get traction it becomes a lot easier.”

“The core of who were are and what we do has remained the same since the beginning. One thing that changed was mobile. We were web first.”

“After building a mobile app for our stylists we found we were so much more accessible.”

“People want simplicity so that’s what we have to give them.”

“I wish I would have focused on mobile sooner.”

“Men do use StyleSeat, they’re about 25% of our customers. Barbers are some of our highest frequency customers.”

“Nail art is starting to be very popular.”

“San Francisco women spend just as much as New York women.”

“About 25% of stylists that sign up don’t appear in the directory because they don’t reach the quality standards we have.”

“We focus on promotion. How busy a stylist is, how much activity they have on their site, and we have an editorial rating.”

“We have 300,000 stylists today.”

“I ended up getting a job in products. You’re helping and supporting engineers build products and watching the coding they’re doing.”

“I think you should know as much as you can about the engineering process. Read as many books as you can, talk to engineers, ask how things are built. Get walked through the process.”

“Have a tech co-founder or someone who knows about tech to give you the honest answers.”

“Our community has been a huge voice for us. We give them hashtags, graphics, and newsletters to send out to their own community.”

“The most important thing is to find an advisor. Mine was Travis at Uber. We’d sit down three times a week.”

“A lot of women think they can do it on their own. Get support and get advice. You’ll be able to do it so much faster.”

“Women in Silicon Valley need to be able to support one another and ask for advice.”

Make sure to join “Dot Complicated with Randi Zuckerberg on SiriusXM” next week as she sits down with Founder of Buzzcar and Zipcar, Robin Chase. Only on SiriusXM channel 111 at 12pm ET/9am PT.

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You Need Just Ahead for Your Next Road Trip

This just in: You no longer need a guidebook to take your next great road trip.

Instead, make your way around the country’s greatest national parks with an audio guide from Just Ahead, a new app that turns your smartphone into a tour guide.

Using GPS, the app pinpoints your location on the road and tell you what you’re seeing as you drive through America’s most compelling destinations. It also offers turn-by-turn directions and suggestions for what to check out around you.

The destination guides are produced and narrated by road-seasoned pros–editor Bob Howells has won Society of American Travel Writers awards for adventure reporting twice–and after you download the free app, you can purchase individual guides for $8 to $10. (Just be sure to do so before you hit the road so you can still access the information even if you’re offline.)

Just Ahead has guides for Yosemite, Zion, Cedar Breaks, Bryce Canyon, Joshua Tree and Death Valley so far, and 12 additional park guides–including the Grand Canyon and Yellowstone–will be rolled out by June 30, just in time for your big summer road trip.

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How to Turn Your Child’s Digital Photos into Lasting Memories

By Holly Rust

As a child who grew up in the 70’s and 80’s, my parents didn’t have too many inexpensive options to capture all of our first milestones, family vacations, and everyday life moments. We were, however, able to take our obligatory Olan Mills holiday family portraits, and our yearly Life Touch school photos. Besides these horrendous photo opportunities, much of our other life moments can only live on in our memories.

In today’s world we have the complete opposite scenario. We are equipped with a digital camera at all times. Thanks to our Smartphones, we don’t have to lug equipment around, take film to a developer, or wait days to see if we captured a perfect picture. The technology is all there right at our fingertips. Now, however, we’re faced with the tasks of keeping all of these photos organized and showcase them in a way that will last the test of time.

Like most moms, I take hundreds of photos of my babies on any given day. My normal plan of action was to either share the plethora of baby photos with my adoring Facebook family (who I’m sure are not annoyed at all), or store them in iPhoto. Recently I’ve realized that in order to keep these photos organized and not get lost in digital purgatory, I needed to find some great sites and apps to help protect my precious memories.

Here’s some I found through my search:

DayOne App: This one is worth the price with its beautiful design and super easy use. It makes journaling through sleep deprivation that much more likely to happen.

You even have the ability to tag different kids, events, and activities for easier searching and export your entries to a PDF.

Groove Book: The Groovebook offers you the most inexpensive way to create a personalized photo book with pictures you take with your iPhone. For a small monthly fee Groovebook creates a photo book with up to 100 photos per month and ships them to you directly.

iMovie: If you have a Mac, iMovie already comes installed on your computer. The program is very easy to use and you can create videos with pictures, video clips, add cool effects and even add music. You do not have to be tech savvy to use it either.

Canvas Champ: I still love a great hanging photo and if you’re looking for something different than the traditional frame I recommend transferring your photos to canvas. Canvas Champ is a great inexpensive site that offers several different ways to save your memories on canvas. They can print off any of your Instagram photos and also easily connects to your Facebook albums.

Custom Wallpaper: You can now order customized wallpaper to showcase all of your family’s favorite photos. I think this would be a great idea for a family room or basement area where your family spends a lot of time. Follow the link to learn more.

ChatBooks: I’m quickly falling in love with these! Chatbooks are a very inexpensive way to create a photo book series. You can customize your books or they can create a series for you straight from your Instagram account. They come in 60-page volumes and are only $6.

Gmail: Some friends I know set up a Gmail account for each of their children and emails them photos, videos and current thoughts they’d like their kids to know in the future. You can easily organize the emails into category folders and it’s a great way to document their life for them.

Shutterfly: This is an old favorite of mine. Shutterfly has great templates to create photo books, and you can customize as well.  Shutterfly is also very user friendly. If you sign up on their mailing list they send you coupons, too!

Overall tip: Be sure you always backup your computer to protect those memories so they last a lifetime. Happy organizing!

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