Dashboard

A weekly roundup of small-business developments.

With Gene Marks on vacation, we present a truncated version of his usual roundup of articles that small-business owners should be reading. Gene will return next week.

Start-Ups

According to Wired, it just became a lot easier to finance a start-up: “The long-term impact will be even deeper, bringing the process of funding of start-ups onto the Internet, where it can be demystified, atomized and mechanized in the sort of digital transformation so many start-ups have themselves brought to other industries. ”

Richard Florida writes about the relationship between venture capital and the density of start-up communities: “Venture capital investment reflects America’s red/blue divide. It is positively associated with the share of Obama votes (.40, .28) and negatively correlated with Romney’s share (–.40, –.29). This result likely reflects that fact that more liberal political orientations are also associated with more educated, diverse metros.”

Social Media

A study finds that customers who find you through social media are not as valuable as those who find you through search: “For all the fuss made over social media, customers visiting from these sites can actually represent relatively low lifetime customer value for e-commerce.”

Expenses

You can expect to start paying more for gas: “The national average for a gallon of regular gasoline, which has been hovering around $3.50, is expected to spike by 25¢ to 30¢ over the next few weeks.”

Health Insurance

It turns out that small businesses may be able to offer their employees a choice of health insurance plans in 2014 after all: “As new marketplaces prepare to open for enrollment Oct. 1, it appears that most of the states creating their own online marketplaces are going ahead with ‘employee choice’ for small-business workers.”

Immigration

David Brooks makes the conservative case for the Senate’s immigration bill, asserting that it will increase economic growth, reduce deficits and reduce illegal immigration: “These are all gigantic benefits.”

Women

A study finds that the United States has the most welcoming environment for female entrepreneurs of 17 countries measured: “Social norms are a frequently hidden barrier: lifting the cultural veil that can restrict a woman’s entrepreneurial vision is critical to unleashing female entrepreneurial potential.”

Hiring

Here is why the new trend is for businesses to hire English majors: “A major part of what business owners do to gain clients has to do with writing, whether it’s writing an advertisement or a marketing brochure, a good sales letter or an e-mail sales campaign. Businesses also need people who can create powerful content for the company blog, develop a strong social media presence and craft a compelling description of products and services for the company Web site.”

Management

Does your business need someone who knows more about, well, business? Julian Lange, a professor at Babson College, says that the person who develops a product or service is not necessarily in the best position to move it forward: “While cost may be a barrier for entrepreneurs with limited start-up capital, Mr. Lange says one way to get around this is to seek out people who’ve already achieved great success in starting or leading a business and are more attracted to an exciting career opportunity than pay — at least in the beginning.”

Finance

Laura Zander writes about how she built an $8 million yarn business without taking on debt: “Growing the business organically means that it will grow more slowly than a business that can afford to hire 100 people on Day 1. That can be good, especially if you’re like me and have absolutely no idea what you’ve gotten yourself into.”

Growth

Mike McCue, chief executive of Flipboard, says that if you are going to start a company, you might as well think big instead of going for a niche: “It’s going to take the same amount of life force. You’re going to get up in the morning, work 12 to 15 hours every day. You’ll make huge, hard decisions, hire and fire people and build teams. It literally takes the same amount of energy.”

Competition

The founder of DuckDuckGo talks about why so many other search engines have failed and how he competes with Google: “We focused on doing things the other guys couldn’t do.”

This Week’s Question: Have you hired any English majors? How did it work out?

Article source: http://boss.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/15/this-week-in-small-business-hire-an-english-major/?partner=rss&emc=rss