Latest from the OpenView Team
Stop Ignoring the Elephant in Your Board Room
When young companies gather for quarterly board meetings, it’s natural for board members to want to focus on the positive and avoid sensitive discussions that could lead to uncomfortable truths. But if the biggest problems aren’t discussed, they also won’t be resolved. In this post, George Roberts identifies common elephants found in every board room and explains why they shouldn’t be ignored.
Risky Business: 4 Questions Startups Need to Answer to Quantify Their Risk
For big, successful web companies like Amazon, every strategic decision is based on quantifiable risk. Just as a casino manages the odds on its tables, they use key metrics to evaluate potential win-loss ratios. That risk management makes business far more predictable, Nick Petri writes in this post, and it might be time for your growing company to start thinking the same way.
Twitturn on Investment: 11 Tips to Maximize Your Twitter Influence
You’ve got 10,000 Twitter followers. That means you’re a Tweeting all-star with massive social influence and reach, right? Maybe not. As Brandon Hickie writes, just because you’ve got a massive following, doesn’t mean your followers are actually listening. In this post, Hickie shares a more accurate algorithm for gauging Twitter influence and offers 11 ways you can improve yours now.
Is Your Company Ready for the Next Big War for Talent?
With the economy finally showing signs of life, the competition for top talent is once again heating up. The question, however, is which side of the battle will your company fall on? With the losers doomed to see their top talent poached, or the companies poised to do the poaching? In this post, Lindsey Gurian shares three tips for making sure you fall into the latter category.
Top Ideas from the Industry
Totally Boss: 8 Core Beliefs that Set the World’s Greatest Managers Apart
Everyone remembers the worst boss they’ve ever had (and not in a fond way). But there’s something much more memorable about our best bosses. In this post for Inc., sales expert Geoffrey James identifies the eight core beliefs that make the world’s best bosses extraordinary, and explains why they’re able to make such a big impact on the employees they manage.
The Best Sales Rep You Can Hire Does More Than Just Sell
In today’s competitive business environment, it takes more than just selling to make a sales superstar. No, that doesn’t mean that they need to double as product managers or software engineers. As Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson explain in this article for Inc., what that really means is they need to be challengers, encouraging prospective buyers to look at their markets differently and open themselves up to new solutions.
The Value of Vanity: Why Beautiful Content is the Wave of the Future
Thanks to the “beautification of the web,” consumers have come to expect great content that is as visually appealing as it is useful and unique. As a result, Chuck Longanecker writes in a guest article for Mashable, startup marketers need to make sure their content is at the forefront of the newest design revolution. Because, vain as it might sound, if it isn’t pretty, it’s likely to be ignored.
Is 2012 the Year APIs Graduate from Cool Tech to Bona Fide Product?
With Google and Bing now charging for high-volume API (application program interface) queries, this year may mark an important evolution for API providers. But in order to take advantage of that evolution leading API providers need to start by going back to basics, writes Mashery’s Andy Raskin in this guest post for ProgrammableWeb, applying marketing’s 5 P’s to maximize their products’ value.
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