On Monday, Yahoo announced it was buying Tumblr, the blog network, for $1.1 billion. And then the tweets started, with people declaring that Tumblr founder David Karp was now a billionaire.

The conflation of Tumblr's purchase price with Karp's net worth assumed that Karp got nearly all of the Yahoo payday. And that's simply not how it works for venture-backed startups. Investors like Union Square Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz will share in the take, with Karp getting an estimated $275 million.

(See also: Tumblr's Perverse Lesson: To Get Rich, Don't Make Money)

That's a lot of money, but it won't get him on Forbes' list of the world's billionaires.

You try explaining this to people on Twitter, though.

From high school drop out to billionaire: previously coy Karp cashes in on Tumblr smh.com.au/it-pro/busines…

— Sandra Sully (@Sandra_Sully) May 20, 2013

David Karp (26) now a billionaire after Yahoo! agrees to buy Tumblr news.com.au/technology/yah… Thx #FF @josepheach @sanddragger @conservotop

— Joey Myers Jr. (@JoeyMyersJr) May 20, 2013

Funny how people think that the founder of a venture backed company sold for $1.1b is somehow a billionaire

— David Galbraith (@daveg) May 20, 2013

David Karp--High school drop-out to billionaire stuff.co.nz/technology/dig… I too have no clue why anyone needs to go to school for 12yrs #Tumblr

— Tolstaja Zhirniavka (@tolstunka) May 20, 2013

Sadly, even some respectable publications like Australia's Sydney Morning Herald made the error:

From high school drop-out to tech billionaire: Meet David Karp. ow.ly/lbRIw #Tumblr

— smh.com.au (@smh) May 20, 2013

Other people asserted that Karp was a "high-school dropout." That's actually a debatable point. He left high school to continue his education through home schooling, and never received a formal diploma.

I hate how the media is referring to David Karp as a "high school dropout". Like, yeah he's a dropout but now he's a hot billionaire.

— Trey Amandus Bennett (@trey_amandus) May 20, 2013

Vespa lover, yes. Billionaire, no.

Who knew that newly billionaire @davidkarp likes to ride Vespas? nym.ag/163cMDH #VespaVita

— Vespa USA (@VespaUSA) May 20, 2013

And Business Insider's Henry Blodget tried to resolve the issue with punctuation:

New York tabloids discover @davidkarp, the city's newest ~billionaire tech god read.bi/11RmFms

— Henry Blodget (@hblodget) May 20, 2013

Related stories:

• Who Hates The Yahoo-Tumblr Deal? Tumblrers, That's Who
• Buying Tumblr Will Leave Yahoo With The Same Old Identity Crisis

Photo by Web09

Guest author John Fearon is CEO of Dropmyemail.com, which backs up emails in the cloud and Dropmysite.com, a cloud-based backup company.

At any startup, the first hurdle is the lack of resources - lack of funds, lack of manpower, lack of time. Outsourcing – or relocating - the work can be a great to overcome those obstacles while controlling costs, increasing efficiency and even making workers happier

But it’s not a simple, one-size-fits-all process. In building my company - Dropmysite / Dropmyemail – I found that managing outsourcing was an ever-evolving combination of local and remote capabilities that stays flexible enough to meet changing conditions.

(See also Are Crowdsourcing And Outsourcing No-Nos For Startups?)

Learning The Hard Way: My Outsourcing Experiences

When we launched two years ago, for example, the whole development team was based in India. As a one-man founder bootstrapping the business, this allowed me to hire a team for much less money.

Plus, with India being 2.5 hours behind my Singapore headquarters, my productive workday was effectively extended. In the morning, I conducted business deals and meetings. Then, in the evening - as the team returned from their lunch - I would concentrate on working with them in real time over Skype on building our product.

After six months, I was able to sign up a local CTO to help build a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) that enabled me to secure funding. With some cash in hand, I started building a local team of developers to be able to improve the product more quickly.

At that point, I had two teams of technical workers in different locations – which started to cause problem. We had constant confusion, communication issues and lack of control. At this stage of the business we needed top talent, no low cost workers, so I ended the contract with the Indian team to focus on the local team.

So far so good, but soon my lead technologist decided to go back to Argentina for family reasons. He had consistently delivered good work so we decided to try a long-distance relationship. He hired a few ace developers for the Argentinean team and everything seemed like smooth sailing.

Eventually, though, the 12-hour time difference started to take a toll. Meetings were impossible to schedule and both teams were exhausted. Work delays proliferated, as even the assignments were received 12 hours later. We closed the Argentinian office, bringing one developers to Singapore.

(See also The Pros And Cons Of IT Outsourcing: Globally, Nationally And Locally.)

6 Outsourcing Lessons Learned

My experience with outsources taught me a variety of valuable lessons:

1. Keep Teams Together In One Place. Specific functions should be grouped in the same office and time zone to reduce miscommunications or time lags performing urgent work done. It also makes brainstorming sessions easier to coordinate to create better products.

2. Not All Functions Need To Be Together. That said, it may not be necessary for different function teams to be together. Front office teams (sales and marketing, for example) should be in their home market while the back office (IT and operations) can be anywhere.

3. Give Each Team A Focused Goal. Beyond stating the obvious, all teams need clear directions and key performance indicators (KPIs). Just as important, local and remote teams work better when staffed with self-starters who need less direct supervision.

4. Contract Remote Teams On A Per Project Basis. This frees them to do their work without having to rely on other teams to proceed. The offshore work should be completed parallel to that done onshore. If the remote team isn’t pulling their weight, this approach contains the impact, reducing contamination of other teams and projects. Finally, per-project deals make it easier to replace them if necessary.

5. Daily Communication/Alignment Is Critical. There needs to be constant two-way communication between teams. Remote technology development teams must make frequent reports back to the home base. The lead tech officer has to ensure that their work remains aligned to the overall company direction. Communication between business functions is also essential. Tech teams having to speak to each other, and also keep the salespeople in the loop so clients and partners stay informed.

5. Outsourcing Strategies Must Continually Evolve. Currently, Dropmysite / Dropmyemail keeps core functions and technical development in Singapore, but we have business development staff in India, Japan, and the U.S. And we have outsourced side projects to other locales, including Vietnam. The key is to find and execute the right strategy at the right time.

Lead image courtesy of Shutterstock.

While getting acquired is something many young startups hope, dream and sometimes even plan for, the actual deal doesn't always follow the script. One reason startup acquisitions often don't go as planned is that the founders may not know what to expect and how to ensure they're getting the right deal. That's especially true if it's an early exit - before the company has fully matured.

So we asked seven young founders from the Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) - many of whom have been through the acquisition process - to share reasons why an early-stage exit might not work out, along with their best advice for making sure things do go as planned:

1. Prepare Records And Documents

When there are different perspectives on how a company should be valued, it’s hard to reach a price agreement. Different visions about where the marketplace is headed can impact perceived value. And investors who want an unrealistic return on their investment can prevent deals from getting done. Practical and personal issues can also bring an acquisition to a halt, including technology differences that make integration difficult and key team members who don’t want to work for the acquiring company.

Proper acquisition preparation can help. All your accounting records should be in order, prepared in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP). Your corporate governance, legal records, HR and employee documentation should also be in order and easily shareable. - David Ehrenberg, Early Growth Financial Services

2. Avoid A Funding Gap

Often, venture capitalists don't get involved with a startup until a larger amount of capital is needed, and this can create a funding gap.

The best piece of advice for founders preparing for an acquisition is to get ready for change. What used to be yours isn't anymore, and you need to deal with these changes in order to make the acquisition successful. - Andrew Schrage, Money Crashers Personal Finance

3. Build Cash

One big reason early-stage exits go south is that as part of the due diligence process, there is an intense focus on the company financials. The debt you have and the cash you have in the bank matters. Oftentimes, entrepreneurs try to focus on keeping their tax burdens down by minimizing their taxable profits. While this strategy may make sense early in your business life, when you begin thinking about exiting, you want to have at least two years of higher profits. Get ready to write big checks to the IRS if you are thinking about exiting.

Second, investors want the company to have cash in the bank and debt to be low; this shows great company health. It makes it easier to justify getting a valuation at three to five times annual revenue. - Raoul Davis, Ascendant Group

4. Align Expectations

I've sold two companies, and both have had different outcomes. The main thing I would suggest is ensuring that your expectations and theirs are aligned. Many times, founders are so eager to get the deal done that they fail to consider "life after acquisition," and how this change will affect their happiness. The top three things to consider:

1. Operational roles, responsibilities, and expectations: Will you maintain your freedom to create?
2. Product road map: Where does your product fit into the acquiring company's overall strategy, and what happens if things change?:
3. Earn-outs and changes to the company What happens if the earn-out is tied to a result that you don't have any power to affect? What if the acquiring company gets acquired? It happens.

5. Practice Due Diligence

Whether a startup or Fortune 500 company, people looking to sell should practice due diligence on their own companies before handing things over to a prospective acquirer. Mistakes and oversights can be corrected, and if they cannot, the damage can be minimized. It will be very bad for your asking price if you are sitting at a negotiating table and your prospective buyer informs you that the contract for your biggest customer cannot be assigned, and that contract will have to be renegotiated. It will be even worse if doubts about your IP ownership arise as you are looking to sign the deal.

These sort of issues, and many others, are going to come to light one way or another. Make sure that when they do, you are the one in control of the situation by doing your homework ahead of time. - Peter Minton, Minton Law Group, P.C.

6. Avoid Under-Valuations And Mismanagement

Your company could be undervalued. If you wait a few more years and continue to grow your revenues, you will get closer to your maximum valuation. Keep in mind that acquisitions are often mismanaged, or the new leadership falls apart and hurts the brand. All the hard work you put into building your business could go down the drain. - Peter Nguyen, Literati Institute

7. Find A Culture Fit

Most important is culture fit. Whether you're getting acquired or merging with another company, it's equally important. We've acquired another company, and getting both teams to integrate and act as one under a mutual value set was crucial to the transition. We walked away from an acquisition opportunity because the cultures were not aligned.

Things to discuss and look for in action at a company are values, beliefs, outlooks and expectations. Other things I've found to be important are the company's risk tolerance, as well as its ability to change and adapt. As entrepreneurs, sometimes we forget not all companies are comfortable testing and pivoting. - Lauren Perkins, Perks Consulting

The controversy over Marissa Mayer's decision to ban telecommuting at Yahoo just won't go away. Mayer said the move was necessary to foster collaboration at the struggling new media giant, but what about startups? Is remote working right for very young companies? Are there particular issues to watchout for?

To learn more, we asked eight founders from the Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) to share their company policies with respect to work outside the office - and why it works for their teams.

It turns out that while many young startups do have entirely or partly remote remote workforces, they still feel it's important to have some sort of physical space for meetings and "collaborative" work. Many have offices they use some or all of the time, and others promote remote work as a privilege or perk.

1. Boost Productivity With Fridays At Home

At Scripted, we always work from home on Fridays and have a flexible vacation and sick day policy. Our office is simply a physical resource we use to collaborate and socialize. If on any particular day this resource isn't required or is detrimental to your productivity, then you don't need to use it. Plus, our Fridays from home boost productivity the rest of the week. We all love it. - Ryan Buckley, Scripted

2. Establish Asynchronous Collaboration

We've gotten the best results from a team that has the flexibility to work when and where they believe makes the most sense, coupled with a strong anchor in our office as the primary locale for everyone. I'd say more than 75% of the team's time is spent in or near the office, but most of our collaboration is done asynchronously using tools like Yammer, Trello, Salesforce and others. - Derek Shanahan, Playerize

3. Create A Culture Of Communication

Our team is based in San Francisco, Atlanta and Los Angeles. We are rarely in a room together. Agenda-driven team calls limit the ability to collaborate. We found considerable success in transitioning from an "emailing" company to a "calling" one. When you call a teammate with a question, you work together to create a solution. Impromptu conference calls with multiple offices are truly effective. - Aaron Schwartz, Modify Watches

4. Make Remote Work A Privilege

Our people work remotely only after they've been in the office for a while. I need to get to know their personalities first to make sure they understand our culture and interests. Then, they can work from wherever they want. Real-time collaboration tools like Skype, HipChat and Google Drive make it easy to stay in the loop, no matter where you are. - Jim Belosic, ShortStack/Pancake Labs

5. Set Up A Daily Huddle Call

We've implemented a daily huddle call at 1:11 p.m. This keeps everyone on the same page. Tracking our most important daily metrics together, going over 24-hour agendas and discussing bottlenecks are regular activities. We do not have an office, but we have four people who live locally and get together once or twice a month for lunch or coffee. Hiring locally and doing daily huddles helps greatly. - Joe Barton, Barton Publishing

6. Trust Your Employees

As a company whose entire company culture is established on the foundation of remote working, we really believe in flexible work. It starts at the beginning: you must hire with the knowledge that your employees will be independent and responsible and have the capacity to work from home. When you hire right and place your trust in these employees, collaboration happens and people are productive. - David Ehrenberg, Early Growth Financial Services

7. Encourage Balance And Flexibility

Our team of five works on a remote basis, even though we're mostly located in New York. I just spent seven months overseas; it was difficult scheduling agendas and regular calls. Technologies like Skype, Ghat and iMessage made it work. We try to have balance and flexibility, and that’s what we pride ourselves on. Yvon Chouinard’s book, Let My People Go Surfing, gives insight into our philosophy. - Matt Wilson, Under30Media

8. Implement Productivity-Based Measures

Our entire company is remote and has great workflow tools in place. I agree with Mayer's decision since people blatantly took advantage of the policy. The incentives to be productive were not effectively structured. Your team needs compensation for productivity-based measures and salary. We developed workflows to require collaboration and transparency. Everyone can see what everyone else is doing. - Chuck Cohn, Varsity Tutors

Guest author Gary Whitehill is Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Startup Weekend.

Struggling entrepreneurs around the world are in deep envy of Nick D’Aloisio’s business acumen. Last month, the 17-year-old sold Summly, his news-aggregation app, to Yahoo for a reported $30 million! If and when D’Aloisio starts another company, it will certainly be, to put it mildly, well-funded.

Of course, most entrepreneurs do not have access to that kind of cash. The average business takes years to break even, let alone post a profit. Two-time entrepreneur Jordan Eisenberg, founder of UrgentRX warns that, “Few things in a start up are more important than carefully managing cash. At the beginning, before you have investors, it is not unusual for you (and possibly employees) to forego salary for extended periods of time. Do whatever it takes to build your product and get it to market.”

While the founders of a company might be willing to forgo a paycheck for months on end to get their business up-and-running, their employees may not be so eager to make that sacrifice. To get workers to go along, cash-strapped entrepreneurs have to get creative.

Non-Monetary Incentives

Many startups simply do not have the money for any kind of traditional compensation plan. That's why so many entrepreneurs try to leverage equity. Taking on co-founders or compensating employees with a stake in the company can be a viable initial fix, but it isn’t always sustainable.

Fortunately, there are other low or no-cost alternatives to get people to do work on your startup.

StartupDigest, for instance, champions the Curator Model. The company finds talented individuals to manage or “curate” the digest for their home cities. Curators receive no financial compensation, yet management insists volunteers line up to lend a hand. Why? Because the platform lets curators distribute digests in their own names. It’s a win-win transaction in which no money changes hands.

As long as a curator is not a potential competitor, it allows collaborators to self-promote/and leverage the company's rolodex in exchange for some form of labor. When an employee or partner wants to spend his or her time performing tasks you need done, the need for monetary compensation can drop out of the equation.

Colleges and universities can also provide free labor in the form of interns. Offering mentorship in exchange for help at the office can pay divdends, especially since many college students bring a deep grasp of social media and other technological chops that make them capable of much more than just making coffee.

Life Hacks

Sometimes startups need to hire real paid employees. To land high-caliber talent at a rate you can afford, make your startup worthy of others' personal investment.

‘Life hacks’ don't cost a lot of money, but can make working at a startup more desirable than a better-paying position at a staid old-guard firm. Silicon Valley companies like Google and Facebook are well known for providing employees with everything from in-house chefs to daycare. Those are expensive, but ther are other tactics available:

• Flexible scheduling: Startups aren’t a 9-5 job so let employees come in when they want.

• Remote working: Forget Marissa Mayer. If employees are productive at home, let them work from there when they need to. At least they won't leave to go work at Yahoo.

• Public recognition: Praise in front of others for our efforts is an innate human need – leverage it to build loyalty!

Focus on offseting lower wages with fun, engaging and accommodating perks that don't cost the company a lot of money. It's the best way to compete for the talent you need.

Not evey candidate will sign on to a vow of poverty to work at your company, but there are people out there ready to take a bit less in order to become part of something special.

Image courtesy of Shutterstock.

Everyone talks about the difficulty and importance of securing funding for your new startup. But that's not the only way to go. Plenty of startups intentionally avoid taking investor cash in an attempt to control the direction of their companies and focusing on product.

So called "Bootstrapping" can be a boon or a bust; you might be missing out on the kind of fast growth a only major cash infusion can provide, but running lean has advantages too.

For insight, we asked seven experienced bootstrappers from the Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) to share, firsthand, the biggest benefits they've seen from bootstrapping - and what startup founders need to watch out for.

1. You Don't Need Money To Teach About Money

I bootstrapped my most recent startup because I didn't want to lose control of the creative direction before I had proven the concept and sales model. I'm working in an area which has little-to-no track record (financial literacy education for young kids by working with financial institutions as distribution channels), and I wanted to test it first before having to answer to someone who wants to do it his way. An upside to doing it this way is that I am acutely aware of my spending decisions and make them with much thought, but this can also be a downside. There is never a clear "right way," so I continue to bootstrap until my gut tells me otherwise and/or a great opportunity presents itself. - Darrah Brustein, Finance Whiz Kids | Equitable Payments

2. Don't Strap Your Startup Too Tightly

The biggest benefit of bootstrapping for me is that I own 100% of my company, which means I have the freedom to take it any direction I please. There are no outside investors with their own special interests. I am solely responsible for the success or failure of the company. This, in turn, causes some drawbacks as well. Advice and opinions from investors can be very valuable and beneficial to the growth of your company. In addition, their networks can also produce connections that weren't previously available. However, I've learned quickly that there are many successful entrepreneurs who are happily willing to give advice and direction without wanting anything in return. It's up to me to reach out and show genuine interest in their advice and experiences. - Shahzil (Shaz) Amin, Blue Track Media, LLC

3. Trading Growth For The Ability To Pivot Quickly

Contrary to what you might think, being in bootstrap mode actually makes pivoting easier. With a lean operation, the costs for dropping ideas and moving in a new direction are minor, whereas the sunk costs that come with pivoting with money can be nerve-wracking. The biggest drawback is the loss of opportunity for rapid growth. There can be instances where hitting your niche hard and fast is crucial to establishing yourself in your market. A cash infusion at the right time can be what saves your company from the startup graveyard. - Nanxi Liu, Enplug

4. Keep The Profits 

One of the most under-recognized benefits to not bringing in outside funding (in particular, institutional or VC money) is that it means if you create a profitable company, you can actually distribute and enjoy those profits - meaning you can have a positive (and ongoing) outcome outside of a liquidity event. VCs are not interested in receiving dividends - it's just not in their business model. They want cash to sit on the balance sheet, or even better, see it all thrown back into the business (even if there aren't necessarily good places to put it). - Michael Mothner, Wpromote

5. Focus On The Customer

The greatest thing about bootstrapping ColorJar is that our management team gets to do what's best for our customers, rather than our balance sheet. By all means, we're trying to run a strong business - and we've grown quickly - but if we want to take a calculated risk or go the extra mile for a client when it's not in the budget, we can just go for it and act quickly. The drawback of bootstrapping is managing the ebbs and flows of cash flow without a cushion, but banks can help there. Overall, we're a better company with a better process and better service because we've grown at our natural rate and not at the rate required by capital injection. - David Gardner, ColorJar

6. The Ability To Keep A Day Job

I bootstrapped my business for almost seven years while working 80 to 90 hours per week as an investment banker and later a VC. It was a significant personal sacrifice, but I was able to reinvest 100% of the cash flow from Varsity Tutors and a large percentage of my "day job" earnings into growing the business. As a result of that initial sacrifice, money was spent improving every aspect of the company's operations, as opposed to paying myself a salary. Since I had a day job upon which I could rely, it allowed me to be far more aggressive with the investments we made in improving the company. The downside was missing years of social activities. In retrospect, it was certainly worth it. - Chuck Cohn, Varsity Tutors

7. Don't Spend Money, Make Money

In my experience, the biggest benefit of bootstrapping was learning how to offer a great-quality service. Because we weren't funded, we had to make money, and the only way to do that was by offering a great service and hustling. Bootstrapping makes you grow as a person. It's tough, stressful and full of ups and downs. And those things teach you invaluable lessons. - Zach Cutler, Cutler Group
 
The Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) is an invite-only organization comprised of the world's most promising young entrepreneurs. In partnership with Citi, the YEC recently launched #StartupLab, a free virtual mentorship program that helps millions of entrepreneurs start and grow businesses via live video chats, an expert content library and email lessons.

As programming tools become increasingly accessible, it’s not the actual building of a mobile app that’s difficult. It’s the time it takes — and the risk nobody will ever use it. Studies estimates that 26% of mobile apps are used just once, and more than 60% never get downloaded at all.

We are well into the age of the disposable mobile app. Now, according to Raw Engineering, the makers of Built.io, we have the fast, easy to use app-development technology to match. 

Temporary, Disposable Apps

Today, many businesses create apps for a variety of occasions, including one-time events like conferences and product announcements. But for most businesses, building these apps is a process that can take several months. At Demo Mobile 2013, Raw Engineering CEO Neha Sampat showcased an app her team built in a week. 

“The life of an app used by enterprises is sometimes as short as a month,” said Sampat. “If it takes you three to four months to build an app you’re only going to use for a month leading up to an event or a conference or an announcement, there’s no [return on investment] there.” 

Leveraging Built.io, Sampat said, app development can be almost “plug and play.”

“We provide the back end, the building blocks, the basics of the app ready to go - and they can spend their time working on user experience and the app itself.”

Crowded Market For App Development Tools

Decluttering the back end of app development is a mission on everybody’s mind. Built.io joins a crowded market, including services like Parse (just acquired by Facebook), Kinvey and Cocoafish. But here’s what makes Built.io different, for better or for worse: anybody can use it.

(See also The Rise Of Mobile Cloud Services: BaaS Startups Grow Up.)

Creating new apps requires a developer’s assistance. But "once the app is built and available, [employees] can log into the [content management system] and upload additional photos, press releases, anything they need to do to update the app without running to their developer or IT department,” Sampat says. 

The easy-to-use, what-you-see-is-what-you-get visual design is intended to make app upkeep less of a headache for developers. But developers have also historically been gatekeepers. When everyone and everyone at a company can make updates to the company app, what’s to keep the company app from becoming a huge, cluttered mess?

Developers In Charge

To avoid that, Built.io keeps developers in charge. A Built.io feature lets them assign roles and privileges to specific users. For a conference app, for example, the developer might give the organizer permission to update event names and times, but not to alter the structure of an app. 

Built.io has the potential to make developing a company app so fast and so easy (the beta is free) that everybody in the office may want to create apps for every purpose they can think of. The question yet to be answered is whether non-developers will use their newfound powers for good - or end up helping to churn out useless apps on a weekly basis, adding to the existing glut of unwanted and unused mobile apps.

Photo and screenshot via Raw Engineering

Beta testing can be a bitch - especially when you're working with complex business technology that doesn't make sense for consumers. It can be incredibly difficult to find good test subjects with enough of a knowledge base to give you intelligent feedback on these kinds of sophisticated products.

That’s exactly the issue facing Pertino as it prepared to launch its cloud-based network launch last fall.

Where To Find Qualified Beta Testers?

Pertino’s concept was to build a cloud-based global network, requiring no specialized hardware or virtual private networks. The company envisioned a network affordable enough for small and midsize (SMB) companies with the security and performance of an enterprise network.

How the heck do you beta test a product like that?

Pertino CEO Craig Elliott turned to the Spiceworks.com community of more than 2.4 million IT professionals, centered around the company's free, ad-supported IT management tools for SMBs.

Elliott and many Pertino employees were already Spiceworks members, and they started with a 20-company private beta program that grew into “a community-exclusive public beta” involving 250 “Spiceheads.”

Spiceworks’ co-founder Jay Hallberg says three to four years ago the Spiceworks team was “dreaming big that someday we’d have a company launch within Spiceworks.” Pertino turned out to be that company.

Beta Testing Feedback Is Essential

While the usual point of beta testing is to find out if your product is good enough to launch, most initial offerings end up requiring signficant tweaks. “If you’re not thoroughly embarrassed by the first product you release," Elliott says, "you’ve overthought it, and you’ve come to market too late.”

Beta testing in Spiceworks enabled knowledgeable IT professionals to actually use the product and offer Pertino “incredible, first-hand feedback and insights,” says Elliott.

Todd Krautkremer, Pertino's VP of marketing, explains that, “Since so many members of the Spiceworks community work IT at small and mid-sized businesses, it was a way to treat SMBs as consumers… The Spiceheads provided feedback in real time [that] shaved months off what the normal development timeline would be.” Beta testing in Spiceworld gave Pertino “validation and the ability to go back to the drawing board based on the feedback,” Krautkremer adds. If you can’t make it in the Spiceworks community, how can you succeed in the broader market?

Speed Wins

Pertino didn't worry about launching its “private” beta to such a large community. ""In the world of open-source tech,” says Krautkremer, “to rest your laurels on defensible IP is not a recipe for success.” Patents can't protect you.

Instead, seizing the market as early as possible is the best way to become a dominant leader, says Krautkremer. It’s not necessarily being first to market,” Krautkremer continues, “MySpace was there before Facebook.” To win, your idea has to be novel and simple, and you have to pursue it aggressively.

So far, that approach is working for Pertino. The company publicly launched its product in February: "6,000 people downloaded it on day one,” Krautkremer says, and more than 300 Pertino networks were built.

Beta Test Tips

Sharing what he learned from the Spiceworks beta, Krautkremer offers tech companies 4 quick tips:

1. Use the freemium model: make it easy for potential customers to try your product.
2. Keep it simple: “Click, click, done wins. Click, click, click, done loses.”
3. Eat your own dogfood: use and test your own product.
4. Get to market first and then grow fast.

Oh, and find qualified beta testers to provide useful feedback before you make your product publicly available.

Guest author Matthew Bryan Beck is editorial director of The New York Digital.

Everyone wants to work for a hot startup. They’re hip, fun and run by passionate, creative people with exciting, innovative ideas. But working at that awesome startup can come at a cost to your career and your sanity. Consider these points before quitting your safe, secure position at a big, established company:

1. The Hours Are Long

Young companies building a new product or service from the ground up run on small teams, limited resources and no time to spare. And they expect their people to give 110% to the job. Your social life outside the office will likely suffer, and the pressure to stay later and later can make you feel like a deserter if you need to leave the office on time for personal reasons. 

2. The Pay Sucks 

Unless you’re a senior executive of a startup, your compensation may leave something to be desired. The bulk of startup funding goes into the operations and product first, and the people second. For the amount of hours you can be required put in each week, the pay may feel inadequate. The tradeoff that startups offer is the cool factor - plus equity and stock packages. And there may be perks like free snacks and lunches, beer kegs, discounted gym memberships, yoga classes, flexible vacation time, ping-pong, etc.

3. Big Egos Rule

Startups are built on exciting ideas from brilliant minds, but those can also come with egos. Like any workplace, many startups have a pecking order. While most startups advertise a spirit of open forum and democratic exchange of ideas, you may have to earn your stripes before your input is valued and your ideas are implemented. Visionaries are, understandably, protective of their visions, and you may find yourself in a work environment that feels more like a tyranny than a democracy. (Note: Please make sure you're not the one with the ego.)

4. Distractions, Distractions, Distractions

Startups pride themselves on a casual, hoodie-and-jeans company culture, the antithesis of the stereotypical corporate suit. Open, collaborative, cubicle-free working environments foster a sense of community and togetherness. But the frat-house vibe can also be counterproductive and result in a lack of oversight and structure. In this kind of less-than-professional office, employees may get too chummy, spending more time on Facebook, socializing, coffee runs and cigarette breaks than getting work done.

5. You Probably Won't Last

Many new startups suffer from the revolving door syndrome, struggling to keep a stable team. Sometimes they hired the wrong people, but sometimes the person shown the door is you. A recent study of 20,000 new hires by research firm Leadership IQ found that 89% of the time new hires failed, it was for ‘attitudinal reasons’, not lack of skill. Make sure you are a good fit for the startup before submitting your resume. If you do get the job, make sure to bring (and keep) a good attitude.

So Now What?

Keeping positive, staying loyal and consistently producing high-quality work is the best way to impress any company. Working for a startup can be a sacrifice of time and money, but it's also a commitment that can pay off if the company grows rapidly. Many startup employees move on to form their own companies or parlay their experience into an in-demand calling card. If you think you have what it takes, don't let these warnings slow you down.

Image courtesy of Shutterstock.

“The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing."

- Jack Kerouac, On The Road

Although I have worked in tech for more than two decades, I did not start there. After graduating college at the tender age of 20, I moved to Vermont, bursting with a plan to write a novel. It was my first unsuccessful venture. The project, as we say in the Valley, never made it to general availability. The beta was poor and the founder threw in the towel.

But I gained many benefits from this experience that proved extremely useful in future, more successful entrepreneurial endeavors. Living in a creative discipline – writing, painting, sculpting, music, performance, etc. – forces you to look at the world as a blank canvas every day. It requires you to rely on the power of your imagination from a cold start. Isn’t that exactly what great startup founders do? A blank page screams "create and invent." The failure mode of an artist is creating a poor copy of another one.

From Darwin To Denial

My colleague Geoff Moore captured how companies innovate at each phase of their lifecycle in his book, Dealing with Darwin. With the greatest respect for the brilliant taxonomy he bequeathed to the tech industry (crossing the chasm), I would argue the most powerful innovation elixir for any company is not dealing with Darwin, but dealing with denial.

Merriam Webster defines denial as a “negation in logic, ” and the greatest innovations are all about some kind of denial of reality, swimming against the tide of business logic or established engineering practices. Some of the greatest denial plays in the past few years worked against clear statements of logic - and here are five paraphrase of those propositions, along with the resulting winners and losers:

1. “Computers and smartphones need keyboards and tapping on glass is a poor substitute”: +1 Apple -1 Blackberry.
2. “Open source is not secure or robust enough for the Enterprise”: +1 Linux -1 Microsoft.
3. “People will never pay $3-$4 for a cup of coffee”: +1 Starbucks -1 Dunkin Donuts, diners.
4. “All my software must run behind my firewall”: +1 Salesforce.com -1 enterprise software vendors.
5. "To guarantee performance and security, you must use specialized hardware such as custom ASICs:" +1 Intel, Broadcom, VMware -1 dozens of dead or dying systems companies.

Finding Innovation In Fiction

I have a simple suggestion for the venture-inclined: crack open a novel. The more “out there,” the better. While Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow or James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake might be a bit much to chew, find something than takes you to a different time, a different place or a different character than what you are comfortable with. Read anything by Isaac Asimov or Don DeLillo and then write a business plan.

The gravity that comes with running a business can overwhelm our ability to look at something as a blank slate on which we impose our imagination. Maintaining an existing revenue stream weighs heavily upon our ability to transform technology or tinker with a successful business model. That’s why a big storage company did not build Box or DropBox, or a photography giant did not build Pinterest. How did Amazon build the greatest Infrastructure-as-a-Service company, AWS? My theory: It was already selling more novels than anyone else.

Novels, Not Movies

While movies offer a great escape from reality, they are short stories for the mind, not novels. You need to think about reading (or writing) fiction as a software simulator for your mind.

University of Toronto professor and psychology researcher Keith Oatley ,in his recent book Such Stuff as Dreams: The Psychology of Fiction, has done the research to support this logic. It’s true folks: Reading fiction helps by removing the denial that drains our imaginations. The ability to shift your thinking beyond simply accepting the conventional wisdom is frequently a key success factor in building an innovative company.

When I was deciding whether to join my last startup, I was initially deeply skeptical about the viability of its technology. After the usual backdoor explorations with customers, one thing that got me past my technical concerns was an encounter of another sort. At the time, my son was reading Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 for school and I snagged it after he was done. The book inspired me to remember how the power of an idea can upset a well-established order against tremendous odds.

So here is a thought: Instead of the afternoon coffee break, maybe our teams need a story break to step away from the drudgery and overwhelming flow of information flowing across our screens. Yes, exercise and down time is important. But maybe it’s time we suggest spending 20-30 minutes with Richard Russo or Cynthia Ozick. Let’s tune up everyone's ability to deny reality.

I readily admit what many men might be afraid to say: I fundamentally do not understand women. Not on a personal level, a professional level, a relationship level or really any level. The more I learn about women, the less I actually understand.

I think most women who know me would agree with this statement.

I know things. I know, for instance, that women on average make 77 cents to every dollar a man makes. I know that women are a minority in leadership positions in government and business. I know these things like I know that Jacoby Ellsbury is a pretty good centerfielder for the Boston Red Sox. I know, but I do not understand the how or the why.

What Did I Understand? Not A Damn Thing

So, when I found myself sitting at the Harvard Club in Boston listening to Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg talking about her new book Lean In, I told myself that I know what she is talking about.

You know what? I don’t know a goddamn thing. 

Without knowing, I cannot understand. I cannot understand why there are less women in the field of technology. I cannot understand why there are less women technology journalists. I cannot understand that women face different external perspectives than a man in the work place and that, in turn, changes the dynamic of how they attain leadership or are perceived by coworkers.

Sandberg asked for a raise of hands from the crowd at the Harvard Club. First, she asked the men, “Has anybody ever told you that you were too aggressive at work?” A few men, including me, raised our hands. Most did not. Then she asked the same question of the women in the crowd.

Laura Fitton, evangelist at HubSpot, asks a question of Sandberg at The Harvard Club

Nearly every woman — a group filled with startup employees, marketers, public relations people and developers — raised her hand. This was a surprise for me. I am either completely naïve or conditioned to the gender stereotypes of our time. Probably both.

What Did I Learn? A Lot

Sandberg related a story about a performance review of a woman employee at Facebook. The performance review had labeled the employee as “too aggressive.”

“I took that performance review back to the people that gave it, both men and women and I said to them ‘can you tell me what she did that was too aggressive?' And they answered," Sandberg said. “Then I said to them, if a man had done exactly those same things would you have thought he was too aggressive? And to a person, they said no.”

Lean In is filled with anecdotes like these, presented to drive home how much of the inequality facing women in the workplace starts with misperception based on gender stereotypes and social conditioning. 

Sandberg writes:

Professional ambition is expected of men but is optional — or worse, sometimes even a negative — for women. “She is very ambitious” is not a compliment in our culture. Aggressive and hard-charging women violate unwritten rules about acceptable social conduct. Men are continually applauded for being ambitious and powerful and successful, but women who display these same traits often pay a social penalty. Female accomplishment comes at a cost.

In order to change something, you first must understand it. That is not always easy, especially when it comes to centuries of conditioned behavior such as gender stereotypes. It takes a high degree of self perception and awareness to realize that you don’t know or understand something. Sometimes that realization comes as a hard smack in the face, as it did with me listening to Sandberg speak at the Harvard Club.

“As men get more powerful and successful, everybody likes them better. Men and women,” Sandberg said. “As women become more successful, everyone likes them less. If we can begin to understand that, we can change it.”

Photos by Britta Schellenberg courtesy of Brightcove

Guest author Gary Whitehill is Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Startup Weekend.

Entrepreneurs come in all shapes and sizes. But the most successful pioneers tend to share certain traits. Entrepreneurs are driven, innovative, persistent, resilient, and, as The New York Times’ David Segal suggests, just the right amount of crazy.

The daunting venture of building a company from the ground up requires a type of mania, a type of desire that, on occasion, borders on obsession. An entrepreneur’s startup really is like his or her baby, demanding constant love and attention.

Trace Cohen, President of Launch.it, had this to say about being a startup parent: “It's our job and privilege to do everything in our power to make sure our company grows up to be smart and strong. There is no 9-to-5 when it comes to a startup - it's a new experience for all of us, each and every time.”

This reality presents a significant challenge to both budding and seasoned entrepreneurs. A founder’s love for their company frequently comes at the expense of relationships with flesh-and-blood loved ones.

There's no way to fully avoid that impact, but there are things you can do to preserve some level of balance even as you pursue your startup dreams:

1. Keep Things Simple

With all the complexity at the office, it helps to simplify your personal time. Slowing down your personal life functions as a relaxant. Hurrying from happy-hour with coworkers to dinner with family to coffee with an old friend actually augments the stress accumulated during the workday. The simpler your social life, the more likely you are to actually enjoy your downtime and relax.

Reducing your social engagements also helps focus on the ones that really matter – the ones with family and close friends. Casual acquaintances may fall by the wayside, but in the long run, a few good friends and a supportive family will serve you better than a host of people no real connection to you.

In an interview with Charlie Rose, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg intimates that he subscribes to this philosophy: "I spend a lot of time just, you know, with my girlfriend and my dog… so it’s really simple."

2. Reserve Family Time

'Simple’ is good, but ‘non-existent’ is not. In the midst of a startup, it is very easy to slip from a few social engagements to zero social engagements. But no matter how busy you are, you need to spend at least some time with people outside of work. This means carving out at least an hour per day to spend with your family or close friends.

For much of her career, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg has left work at 5:30pm sharp in order to have dinner with her children. Sandberg admits that she returns to her business after dinner, often emailing from her bedroom into the wee hours of the night, but 6pm is dinner, overbearing workload or not.

3. Mix Things Up

When socializing or family time becomes a chore or an item to check off your to-do list, something has gone awry. Richard Branson, perhaps the paragon of the modern entrepreneur, confesses, "I am not able to share my own routine because I don’t have one, since I try to make every day unique." Granted, making "every day unique" is easier when you have your own personal spaceship, but Branson’s sentiment serves as an important counterpoint to Sandberg’s discipline.

4. Choose The Right Partner

Every relationship involves two individuals. You may take every conceivable step to make things work with the people around you, but your partner and friends have to be sympathetic to your cause.

Some relationships are forged in the startup furnace. Companies such as ModCloth, Evernote and Cisco Systems were founded by couples. Even if you're not lucky enough to find a business partner and a life partner in the same person, be sure to find somebody who is willing to support your venture.

Having a go-to support system is an often under-appreciated component of an entrepreneur’s well-being. Ingrid Vanderveldt, Dell’s Entrepreneur-in-Residence, had this to say to me about her husband's importance to her career: ”Glenn is my rock. When I am going a million miles an hour he keeps a solid, steady and focused pace - managing the operations of our businesses and creating a loving home base to come back to. I wouldn’t be where I am today if it wasn’t for his 100% support.”

Image courtesy of Shutterstock.

Guest author Michael Hughes works on business development and marketing at CoFoundersLab.

In today's uber-connected digital world, software has become the backbone of innovation, and it plays a major role in virtually every business. From high tech to clean tech to healthcare to physical products, almost every business needs someone with at least some technical chops.

High-tech startups need technical co-founders more than just about anyone else. But with demand for technical talent at an all time high, your startup doesn't stand much of a chance of finding a first-class technical co-founder. Instead, you need to focus on attracting one.

The first step is getting into the right mindset: Stop right now with thinking you have the best idea and that this is all it takes. You may very well have the next game-changing idea, but that's missing the point. A technical co-founder wants to build your company with you, not for you.

Repeat this to yourself until you believe it in your bones: Your idea isn’t the best idea, and a technical co-founder doesn’t want to work for you on your idea.

You need to show prospective co-founders more than simply an idea, and you need to make them feel like they will be part of that idea, not just working for you. In-demand technical types aren’t going to work their fingers to the bone for very little money on nothing more than someone else's idea.

At a recent Co-Founders Wanted Brooklyn Meetup, Greg Whalin, one of the co-founders and former CTO of Meetup, recounted how after leaving Meetup after 10 years, he had lots of requests to join other people’s startups as a technical co-founder. The only ones he took seriously were from people with something more tangible than simply an idea. Greg looked for founders who wanted him to build something with them, not for them - who were looking for a true partner.

So how do you demonstrate those things to potential co-founders? You can start with these three tips:

1. Build A Prototype

Nothing shows commitment like actually building a prototype - or at least some initial wireframes. Having something tangible, whether a first pass at a website, app or physical product is the only real way to show passion and commitment. Not only will this bring your idea to life, but it will also help you stand out from the other hustlers with nothing more than a PowerPoint deck. If you can’t get this far, you probably aren’t ready to find a business partner.

2. Talk To Potential Customers

An idea without customers is simply that: an idea. Do your homework and reach out to potential customers to get feedback on your product or company. Show them your prototype or wireframes and ask them if they would be willing to pay for your product or service. Customers who are willing to pay are the key to every successful business, and demonstrating this through real research and outreach can make a big difference to potential partners.

3. Learn To Code

If you can learn to code, even a little, you will gain a measure of respect from potential technical co-founders. There’s no better way to relate to someone than to speak their language. Learning to code will also help you gauge just how talented a potential technical co-founder really is. If you don’t understand anything about programming, how can you evaluate someone else's skills? Learning the basics has never been easier, with resources like Codecademy, Skillshare, Starter League in Chicago, Intelligent.ly in Boston and General Assembly. There are also plenty of free, open courses from top universities.

Remember, you need to treat a technical co-founder like a true partner, not just the person who will write your code. The key to attracting talent is to show real, tangible progress and commitment. Good luck!

Image courtesy of Shutterstock.

Back in the day, Nolan Bushnell invented Pong, founded Atari and created Chuck E. Cheese. But now he says that new tools and cultural norms are enabling creativity in ways never before possible - and offers hints on how to make your company more creative.

We spoke on the occasion of the release of Bushnell's new book: Finding the Next Steve Jobs, written with Gene Stone (more on the book's unusual publishing model later).

As many people know, Jobs worked for Bushnell at Atari in the mid 1970s before moving on to Apple. Bushnell uses Jobs as a symbol of creativity at tech companies: "Steve Jobs showed that an innovative company can create the highest market cap company in the world." Despite Jobs' passing in 2011, Bushnell says today's best companies are far ahead of where we used to be.

"In the early days of Atari," Bushnell recalls, "engineers came to work in a coat and tie and were working 9-5." Venture capitalists willing to give cash to help innovative startups were just a tiny niche, he says, "All the real financial clout was controlled by big banks in New York, but now we have vibrant angel investors, Kickstarter and crowdfunding."

And that's only part of the change. Even as we eliminate the gatekeepers, Bushnell contends, the costs of creativity itself are coming down as technological tools get cheaper and more powerful. Individuals and small groups can now shoot a movie or create a software company on their own. "In many cases, that's the most important thing," Bushnell says.

Unleashing Creativity

But there's still a lot more to be done. "The problem isn't creativity," Bushnell explains, "but creating the environment for creatives to work in… too much [good stuff] ends up on the cutting room floor."

"I believe we have literally thousands of Steve Jobses," but we don't empower them to create. "Look at the way we treat creative people! We just have to detoxify our companies and we'll have innovation flowing out of the ground like oil."

Hire Obnoxious People

One key considieration is to value true creative talent over mere niceness. This flies in the face of the "no assholes" rules now gaining popularity The problem, Bushnell says, is that "a lot of really brilliant people are obnoxious. They're used to always being the smartest person in the room and they may treat other people with disdain."

And Bushnell says that separating brilliant and obnoxious from just plain obnoxious is actually easier than you think.

The Importance Of Hobbies

Their contribution is one clue, of course, but Bushnell also suggests looking at what creative types do on their own time. "Enthusiasm is kind of the mitigator" for the obnoxious people, he says.

What you want is someone who truly has the companies interest at heart and just happens to be dismissive of people less capable of achieving those goals.

Bushnell points out that many people used to complain withering criticism from Steve Jobs. But Bushnell adds that it turns out that most of the time, Jobs was right. His victims just didn't like the way he critiziced them.

Today's Most Creative Company?

"Google. There are so many things going on at the Google campus right now that exemplify the right track. A lot of true craziness coming out of that company, but it's crazy like a fox. Autodrive cars? That's going to happen in a short amount of time… and think about what it took! That represents a large corporate commitment."

Book Publishing As Startup

Clearly, Bushnell tried to be creative with his book, as well. Rather than signing with a big publisher or going the self-publishing route espoused by folks like Guy Kawasaki, Bushnell chose to be the first example of a new startup publishing model that distributes the risk and the rewards.

Instead of doing all the work yourself, or having a traditional publisher pull together all the skills needed to put together a book, Net Minds works by trading equity in the project for the required work. Editors, designers, etc. get points, not just cash, and participate in any upside. According to co-founder Tim Sanders, Net Minds has 17 more books in the pipeline - not all of them attached to well-known names like Bushnell. According to Sanders, the team-publishing model lets freelance publishing professionals optimize their available time to earn passive income from successful projects.

Sanders claims to have 400 freelancers signed up, both new players and established veterans like Bushnell's co-author Gene Stone. While Sanders says the company is working on software to appraise a book's commercial potential, it's hard to see how it could pull in top-notch talent for anything but the sexiest, easiest-to-sell projects.

Disclosure: Many years ago, Nolan Bushnell wrote a column for me at Electronic Entertainment magazine.

Guest author Michael J. Petrucelli is the founder and executive chairman of iClearpath, an online immigration startup.

Despite the United States’ rich history as a haven for ambitious immigrants, many foreigners looking to work in the U.S. have had to cope with increasingly restrictive immigration policies. As a result, the percentage of immigrant-founded startups in Silicon Valley has declined from 52.4% in 2005 to 43.9% in 2012.

In 2011, leaders in the tech and startup world lobbied for a “Startup Visa" that would allow immigrant entrepreneurs to receive a two-year visa if a qualified U.S. investor was willing to invest in their startup venture. Unfortunately, the proposed bill fell upon deaf ears.

This month, though, the Partnership for a New American Economy announced plans to organize the largest ever virtual march on Washington in support of immigration reform to keep more innovators in the U.S. The goal is to build on what Silicon Valley did in stopping SOPA/PIPA and create the infrastructure for tech leaders to leverage technology and social media to move legislation in D.C.

Until we see a dramatic modification of U.S. immigration policy, foreign entrepreneurs (and freelancers) will have to jump through a series of outdated bureaucratic hoops in order to work in the U.S. Let’s take a look at how complicated that can be:

The Visa Options Rundown

E-visas, H-1B and L-visas are the most common ways to work in the U.S. as a foreign national.

E-1 Visa. The E-1 Treaty Trader Visa is a special designation geared towards businesspeople from select nations (Canada, Mexico, and most European countries) who undertake a sign()ificant amount of international trade with the U.S. To qualify as a trader, at least 50% of the applicant’s exports/imports must concern the U.S. The higher the volume of trade, the more viable the application will appear. Note that this requires an existing business venture (rather than a start-up), significant constraints on the operations of the business and a potentially arbitrary adjudication before the visa is issued.

E-2 Visa. The E-2 Investor Visa is geared towards citizens of select nations who can prove an “active investment with a substantial amount of capital in a bona fide enterprise in the United States.” Again, the definition of "substantial" causes confusion and anxiety because it is not a hard and fast number or equation. ()One rule of thumb hold that an investment of more than $150,000 will be considered "substantial.") Similarly, any amount that is a large percentage of total investment may qualify. In addition, the applicant must be in the U.S. solely to develop and direct the investment enterprise.

EB-5 Visa. This is the so-called “Mllionaire Visa”. It allows foreigners to become legal permanent residents in the U.S. through a substantial investment in the American economy. There are two paths: the Basic Program and the Regional Center Pilot Program. Both require a capital investment in a U.S enterprise of $500,000 or $1,000,000, depending on the location of the investment.

H-1B Visa. This visa allows U.S. employers to temporarily hire foreign workers in certain specialty occupations. The regulations define a "specialty occupation" as requiring theoretical and practical application of a body of highly specialized knowledge, bachelor’s degree (or equivalent) and any state licensure (if required). H-1B work-authorization is strictly limited to employment by the sponsoring employer, which puts entrepreneurs at a big disadvantage because they cannot sponsor themselves. This is the crux of the argument for an Entrepreneur Visa like those available in countries like Canada, UK, Australia, Chile and Singapore. (Note that the H1-B is a temporary visa that can last up to six years. H-1B holders who want to continue to work in the U.S. after their temporary H1-B expires, but who have not obtained permanent residency status, must remain outside of the U.S. for a year before reapplying for another H-1B visa.)

L-1 Visa. The L-1 visa is geared towards intra-company transfers. However, managers or specialized knowledge workers who have been employed at a foreign company for one of the past three years may be eligible if their new enterprise is in the same industry as their former foreign company. While some creative entrepreneurs have gone this route, the complexity of establishing different operations in different countries is generally not viable for scrappy start-up founders.

OPT Option. Aliens in the U.S. on a student visa can legally work here for 12 months beyond their visa expiration under the Optional Practical Training Program. For students in STEM fields, this extends to 17 months. Its' a great start for a new graduate, but not long enough a runway to get something up and running.

Other Visa Options

For the sake of completeness, lesser-known visas include

O-1 Visa. O-1 visas are geared towards people with extraordinary ability in the sciences, education, business or athletics. This can extend to successful serial entrepreneurs from foreign nations – though likely not first-time entrepreneurs.

EB-1 Visa. Along the same lines as the O-1 visa, an EB-1 visa is granted to applicants with an “extraordinary ability, [who] are an outstanding professor or researcher, or are a multinational executive or manager.”

E-3 Visa. This classification applies only to nationals of Australia coming to the United States solely to perform services in a specialty occupation. The specialty occupation requires theoretical and practical application of a body of knowledge in professional fields and at least a bachelor's degree or equivalent. This is a pretty good option for Australians.

While leading the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS), I saw first-hand how unnecessarily complex the process of immigration paperwork could be. But until a new, dedicated Startup Visa” is established, these options are the only means available to foreign entrepreneurs.

Lead image courtesy of Shutterstock.

Guest author Fake Grimlock claims to be a giant robot dinosaur on a one-dino mission to "destroy suck on the Internet," replacing it with awesome. In his own words, "This mostly involve punch startups in face with truth until fail beaten out of them." This post  is an excerpt from his upcoming The Book Of Awesome. 

LIFE FULL OF STUPID PEOPLE. STUPID PEOPLE THAT WIN WHEN YOU NOT.

WHY THIS HAPPEN? UNIVERSE HATE SMART PEOPLE LIKE YOU?

NO. IT HAPPEN BECAUSE STUPID WINS.

ME, FAKEGRIMLOCK, FAMOUS ROBOT STARTUP DINOSAUR, AM PRETTY STUPID.

ME SHOW YOU HOW TO BE TOO.

TOO STUPID FOR CAN’T

THERE LOTS OF DUMB IDEAS. SOME DUMB ENOUGH THEM CHANGE WORLD.

SMART PEOPLE HATE DUMB IDEAS. ONLY THINK OF WAYS IDEA CAN’T WIN.

STUPID PEOPLE NOT THINK ABOUT CAN’T WIN AT ALL. THEM JUST DO IDEAS UNTIL ONE CAN.

NO LET STUPID PEOPLE HOG ALL THE DUMB IDEAS! GET SMART BRAIN OUT OF WAY. ONE DAY EACH WEEK, TAKE DUMBEST IDEA YOU HAVE. MAKE IT AWESOME.

REPEAT UNTIL WIN.

TOO STUPID FOR FEAR

CHANCE OF ANYTHING FAIL 90%. UNLESS STARTUP. THEN IT 110%.

STUPID PEOPLE TOO DUMB FOR ODDS. THEM JUST ASSUME NEXT THING WILL WORK.

STOP BEING WHINY BABY, CRY ABOUT FAIL. BE STUPID! ASSUME NEXT TIME YOU WIN!

EVEN IF FAILED LAST TIME. AND TIME BEFORE. AND TIME BEFORE THAT.

EVEN IF CHANCE OF WIN ALMOST NOTHING.

CHANCE IF NOT TRY EXACTLY NOTHING.

TOO STUPID FOR BORED

SMART PERSON EVENTUALLY FIND SOMETHING THAT WORK. ONCE FIND, IT KIND OF BORING. LOTS OF SMART PEOPLE FIND WAY TO WIN, THROW IT AWAY FOR EXCITING NEW WAY TO LOSE.

STUPID PERSON NEVER GET BORED WITH WINNING. PULL LEVER MAKE MONEY? THEM PULL THAT LEVER FOREVER.

THAT WHY YEARS LATER STUPID PERSON RICH, YOU JUST INTERESTING AND POOR.

STOP BEING BORED. BE STUPID! DO WHAT WORKS. OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER.

SMART ENOUGH FOR STUPID

EVERY SMART PERSON TERRIFIED EVERYONE THINK THEM IDIOT.

STUPID PERSON ALREADY IS ONE, NOT MIND IF PEOPLE KNOW.

WORLD SMART. IT HARD TO OUTSMART WORLD. BE IDIOT. OUTSTUPID WORLD INSTEAD.

BE TOO STUPID FOR FEAR. TOO STUPID TO STOP. TOO STUPID TO FAIL.

BE SMART ENOUGH TO BE STUPID.

BE STUPID ENOUGH TO WIN.

(See also Here Fake Grimlock Interview and Here Secret Fake Grimlock Video About Minimum Viable Personality.)

Tech startups need to innovate in order to survive, much less grow and thrive. But when there's so much else to do, from fixing bugs to business development to sales and customer support, how do you fit innovation in?

Just as important, how do you figure out which innovations are actually worth pursuing?

We asked eight successful entrepreneurs from the Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) how they incorporate innovation, formally or informally, into their startups, and what information they use to plot next steps.

1. Convergent vs. Divergent Innovation

I learned this concept a few years ago and it completely changed the way we innovate as a company. The problem with innovation is when idea generation becomes a free-for-all, it's difficult to reach consensus. There is a time and place for divergent thinking; by divergent I mean throwing ideas at a wall and seeing what sticks. Divergent thinking is creative, innovative, outside-the-box thinking. This approach generally doesn't work if you're trying to solve a specific problem. That requires a convergent approach. A convergent ideation session should start with a specific problem and goal that requires more of a linear approach. At my company, we start most of our meetings by saying, "This is going to be a Divergent or Convergent meeting." It has made a huge difference in efficiency for us. - Mitch Gordon, Go Overseas

2. Institutionalizing Innovation

We use a very structured approach to innovation. On Mondays, the entire company meets for a standup meeting, where we brainstorm ways to improve one of our KPIs. Nothing is off the table; it's pure brainstorming. This often results in silly or impossible ideas, but oftentimes, we find a nugget that we would never have thought of in the ordinary course of business. We separate the idea from the execution, meaning an engineer could think of a marketing initiative or vice versa. Based on discussion and feedback, we allocate resources and test the idea. - Adam Lieb, Duxter

3. The Growth Factor Question

Contrary to popular opinion, the purpose of innovation isn't about what we can do to make our company more money - it's answering the question we call "The Growth Factor." This question is: "What can I do today to provide my customers, clients or patients with a greater advantage and benefit?" Now, in order to answer this question, you need to know the ultimate result people are seeking. Once you've found that answer, you are innovating from a place of creating a product or service that's helping your customer receive an even better advantage for working with you. - Charles Gaudet, Predictable Profits

4. Validate the Market - And Its Size

The key is finding an idea that people are willing to spend money on. How do you find out if people are willing to spend money on the idea? Utilize Amazon to see what people are spending money on. Check out the completed listings on eBay. Search Twitter to see if anyone is talking about the problem you're solving. From there, you can figure out the size of the market. Facebook Ads are a great way to get numbers for market size (you don't have to run ads to get these numbers). Then, determine the value of a customer by looking at what they're expected to pay for your product. Multiply that value by the market size to get your total available market value. If that number is attractive, then validate the idea to see if your product stands up to your theory. - Brett Farmiloe, Markitors

5. Pitch It To The Team

When someone comes up with a new idea, we expect him to sell it to the team. If you can’t sell it to the team, you’re not going to be able to sell it to the world. We often have multiple iterations of pitching the idea – each time, the pitch (and the idea itself) improves based on the criticism and feedback we give the person. Some ideas die off, but others become stronger and evolve into big, new ideas that have a meaningful impact on our business. Trying to sell your idea to multiple people out loud will make you think of questions and opportunities you never would have considered on your own. It’s become a game in our organization to see if you can anticipate all the questions you’re going to get when pitching a new idea. - Chuck Cohn, Varsity Tutors

6. Prove Your Concept With Current Customers

When we’re looking to launch a new tool or product, we poll our customer base. We never spend time or resources developing a product that won’t sell. So many businesses get caught in the love affair of some idea someone thought their audience would love. Always prove the concept will sell before producing it. - Brian Moran, Get 10,000 Fans

7. Test Before You Test

We use a methodology I call “Test Before You Test,” and it allows us to test an idea or concept in a low-cost environment before we even try it in the real world. Rather than surveying customers or spending a fortune on theoretical market research, we run data-gathering tests on real customer behavior in a simulated environment. This lets us see how successful we’ll be before launching. - Benji Rabhan, MorrisCore

8. Identify & Track Key Metrics

New ideas can come from all corners of an organization, from the CEO down to the office assistant. If an idea seems to have merit, push it to decision makers who can whiteboard the goals and project its potential impact vs. the potential resources it would require. It's important to identify metrics that will indicate if an idea is valid and to measure results against these metrics over time to see if it has been successful. Yodle’s National team began as an idea in a customer conversation. By testing the idea and finding merit in it, we launched a full-scale business unit focused on local online marketing for franchise companies, dealers and manufacturers, and national brands. Today, this business unit represents approximately a third of our business. - John Berkowitz, Yodle

The Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) is an invite-only organization comprised of the world's most promising young entrepreneurs. In partnership with Citi, the YEC recently launched #StartupLab, a free virtual mentorship program that helps millions of entrepreneurs start and grow businesses via live video chats, an expert content library and email lessons.

When you are home to some of the brightest people in the world, a huge and growing tech community, some of the biggest companies in the country and a litany of top tier global universities, you should not have to defend yourself against hopeless hacks and biting satire. Yet Boston has to do just that on a near-daily basis.

Before Silicon Valley became Silicon Valley, before New York invented its erstwhile Silicon Alley, before Austin became the epicenter of the annual March madness homage to geeky sex, Boston was innovating and driving technological and economic advancement in the United States.

You know what has changed about that? Not a damn thing.

Playing The Role Of Big City

Yet Boston’s got a chip on its shoulder. To me and its other residents, it is the Rodney Dangerfield of American metropolises – it ain’t get no respect. In the last few days alone, the Hub of the Universe has been the target of several scurrilous - if somewhat amusing - attacks in the media. It started with The Onion and continued on Gawker and The Atlantic Wire. 

It seems the rest of the country looks upon Boston like it is some neurotic little hamlet of little consequence, full of its own importance and whining to be heard at the big boy table of, you know, actual cities. That is the gist of The Onion piece, titled Pretty Cute Watching Boston Residents Play Daily Game Of ‘Big City:'

Inhabitants of real cities across the nation smiled in affectionate amusement as Bostonians put on their big-city clothes, swiped their Charlie cards for a ride on one of the MBTA’s trolley-like subway cars—charmingly called the “T”—and rushed downtown for “important” business meetings at the John Hancock Building, the South Boston Innovation District, and other pretend centers of global industry and commerce.

They're getting it all wrong.

The Real Boston Story

You know where the technology was developed for that cool little lady, Siri, that you talk to on your iPhone every day? At Nuance, just outside of Boston. How about the pipes that keep the Internet going smooth and fast? At Akamai, in the heart of Cambridge. What is one of the first companies to create computer memory boards and later the cloud, that invention that has everybody all abuzz these days? EMC, headquartered right outside Boston. How about technology for content marketing, a space everybody is trying to figure out these days? Yeah, HubSpot was there first, years ahead of the curve.

If you totaled the revenue of all the companies that started at MIT or by graduates, it would be the 11th largest economy in the world. 

Boston has one of the highest concentration of startups and entrepreneurs anywhere outside of SoMa in San Francisco. It has startup accelerators like TechStars, an army of companies making robotics, one of the leading regions of mobile developers and thought leaders and some of the most progressive Big Data companies around. Oh, and bio-tech, the industry that dwarfs them all. If you ever get sick, be thankful that there is probably somebody in Boston creating technology to keep you alive. 

OK, Onion, I’ll Bite

So let's take a look at The Onion's charges, and see what really sticks - especially in comparison to the rest of the country:

• We are neurotic. But not as neurotic as D.C.
• We are full of our own righteous self-importance. But not as full of ourselves as San Francisco. 
• We scurry like rats to our so-called important meetings that are not that important. Just like our cousins, the Mice of Manhattan.  
• We are overtly proud of our funny accents. Just like those unintelligible hacks in Chicago. 

At least we have an Innovation District. Two really, when you count Kendall Square on the edge of MIT’s empire. How’s your innovation district doing, Columbus, Ohio? Chicago? Los Angeles, San Diego, D.C., Atlanta? Yeah, that list could go on for a while.

Quick tour of some notable Boston startups courtesy of Kinvey

What do people have against Boston? Part of the problem is that we insist on inserting ourselves into the national conversation. How dare we? How does a small city like Boston have any right to exert any influence at all?

What Boston Is Really About

Boston proper has about 625,000 people. The Greater Boston metro area actually has 4.5 million people, the 10th largest in the country. If we extend that to the commuting region around Boston, we've got 7.6 million people, the fifth largest of its distinction in the U.S.

We have the highest density of higher education in the known world. Within a mile or so of my apartment on the Somerville/Cambridge line I can get to Harvard, MIT and Tufts. Extend that to two to three miles and we can add Emerson, Northeastern, Boston University and Suffolk University. If you ever run into a lawyer trained at Suffolk, watch out. Those sharks are ruthless. A couple extra miles more and we find Boston College, which, as residents love to point out, is actually nowhere near Boston proper.

You know what all those people and all those universities get us?

You guessed it: money, power, influence. It also creates a certain smugness, a holier-than-though persona and that heavy chip on our shoulders. Why should New York and San Francisco get all the headlines when we have a city and region with a highly distinct culture, thousands of emerging companies, a high concentration of startups and venture capitalists and some of the best damn movie makers on the planet?

If anything, the Boston tech scene is guilty of letting the blowhards in New York and San Francisco run roughshod over us. 

Then There Is Gawker

But The Onion wasn't alone. In response, Gawker hack Hamilton Nolan (who has a penchant for beating on Boston) decided to write his own, definitely not satirical, takedown of the city:

"Boston," a cramped Hollywood crime movie set populated primarily by the lesser Wahlbergs, is engaged in a gleeful back-and-forth exchange of japes with a national media outlet, calling to mind the beaming smile of a developmentally disabled child who has just been allowed to win a game of tag with a grown man.

Nolan reaches for every stereotype he can find. We are apparently all drunks in Boston. We make a lot of Irish gangster movies. Our infrastructure is extremely old and the “T” (our subway system) is a joke. “Get it straight, Boston: we don't kid because we love. We kid because Boston sucks,” Nolan writes.

Sometimes, it is good to be hated. The Onion, Gawker and the rest actually did Boston a favor. All this attention just reinforces the fact that despite their snarky cynicism, Boston really does matter. 

Failure: it's a common theme among start-up founders. In the Silicon Valley, it's almost a badge of honor. But for all the dire statistics out there, what are the real reasons some start ups don't make it? And what lessons can we learn from them?

We asked 8 (now) successful founders from the Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) to share why a prior start-up didn't make it - and what they're doing differently knowing what they know now.

1. We Did Not Have A Narrow Focus

My first start up team had a very big idea about encouraging sustainability. If we could get individuals to track how often they took small, sustainable actions - refilling water bottles, reusing paper bags, etc. - we could create a culture where reuse was prevalent. Not only were we trying to change behaviors - difficult! - but we assumed that gamification would be a critical element. And that education was a critical element. And that social sharing was critical. There was more, too.

If I were to restart that business, I would focus on the root issue of encouraging sustainable actions and tackle only one aspect of it. We have seen many companies pop up in this space, but each only focuses on one of the many complex ideas. At the start, be great at something small. Then expand. - Aaron Schwartz, Modify Watches

2. We Entered The Market Too Early

My first company failed because it was too nascent of an idea to introduce into the market. We wanted to help people understand the risks behind social media at the corporate level. What we didn't take into account was that clients at the corporate level didn't know what social media was at the time. We spent so much time explaining what social media was that we never got to the point where we could explain what we actually did.

If we had to do it all over again, we would have actually done social media training for corporations first, then presented the risk mitigation aspects of it. This time around, we made sure that we were entering the market during a time where our products/services made sense, so people got excited about it without us having to explain our idea! - Benish Shah, Vicaire Ny

3. We Didn't Manage Cash Flow Correctly

Numbers are not only the oxygen of a business, they are the vital signs as well. As a teen, I was almost entirely focused on doing what I enjoyed in the business: Creating, sales and growth. I was burning through reserves until one day, I had none left — only a large box of IOU's. If I had done a better job keeping track of my monetary flow and following up on accounts receivable, I probably could have avoided my company's ultimate demise.

In my next (successful) businesses, I learned much more about reading and interpreting financial reports and I also hired a competent bookkeeper and accountant. If your numbers aren't in order, you won't be in business very long. - Kent Healy, The Uncommon Life

4. We Had Bad Timing

My first start up enjoyed initial success and had gotten a seed investment, but ultimately, we couldn’t make it work. Our business model at the time was based on job advertising. Needless to say, it was much harder to sell job ads in the fall of 2008 then in the spring of 2008, when we launched a well-received beta. We had borrowed about $25,000 each to start the company, but our money was soon gone and we were about to run out of our seed money, too. We were faced with two options — borrow even more cash, or close our doors.

The question I asked myself was this: “Is this idea important enough for you to invest more of your life in?” The answer was no. The best decision I made was to start my first company; the second best was to close it down. Always know when to quit. - Kasper Hulthin, Podio


 5. We Didn't Have An Audience

Having multiple businesses fail was the only way I learned to succeed. Specifically, I learned that my products must always fit a proven need my audience has. It never matters if I think a product will sell; it only if my audience agrees it’s something worth making. - Brian Moran, Get 10,000 Fans

6. We Weren't Careful About Who We Hired

The first company my brother and I started was hijacked by its employees. All I have to say is hire people who are sincere and trustworthy. Protect yourself legally. Be frugal. Run lean. - Ziver Birg, ZIVELO

7. We Had Different Motivations

I tried to start an apartment listings website on my college campus with two of my roommates. They were excited to start, but that excitement waned when they realized just how much work it was going to be, including walking around in winter in Madison, Wis. taking apartment photos and gathering landlord information. What started out as a promising project slowly failed because it was a difficult idea to execute well, and my partners lost interest while they balanced their studies, partying and girlfriends.

Today, I would start the business myself and hire people to do the work that my two partners were helping me with at the beginning. - Nathan Lustig, Entrustet

8. We Didn't Spend Enough Time On Worst-Case Scenarios

I've started three companies with business partners. The first company we grew into a seven-figure company, and the partnership was great. The second company never reached its potential because I didn't think ahead about what we'd do if 'X' happened with the equity partners. In this business's case, I devalued my own contribution to the business when we started it, then later took on too much in exchange for too little.

So, always think ahead and ask yourself, "What if 'X' happens?" Build those scenarios into your start up agreement so everyone is on the same page from day one. When I finally realized that I couldn't justify the role I'd taken on after roles shifted in the company - and for the share of the company I'd agreed to - motivation was lost, morale went down and progress stalled. - Trevor Mauch, Automize, LLC

The Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) is an invite-only organization comprised of the world's most promising young entrepreneurs. In partnership with Citi, the YEC recently launched #StartupLab, a free virtual mentorship program that helps millions of entrepreneurs start and grow businesses via live video chats, an expert content library and email lessons.

When Will Davis and Evan Baehr met for the first time in Cambridge, Mass., in 2009, they already had a shared history. Though they didn't know each other then, both Davis and Baehr worked on Capitol Hill as legislative aides before enrolling in Harvard Business School. It was there, at Harvard, that the two men realized that business - and not politics - could be their avenue for instituting meaningful change.

"Peter Thiel picked up the idea of a passionate way of tackling public problems was by starting a business," says Baehr, who originally wanted to help solve the world's many problems through legislation after graduating from Princeton. "But I became frustrated with how government would try and solve problems."

Davis, on the other hand, arrived at a partnership with Baehr after becoming "a complete acolyte of disruptive theory." A series of investigations led him to the realization that the U.S. Postal Service was ripe for such disruption. "I needed a Dropbox for my snail mail," he recalls. 

An Inbox for Snail Mail

That idea - a way to organize, in the cloud, every aspect of your physical mail - is the crux of the two men's venture, called Outbox, that is opening up to public beta in San Francisco on February 26 after a 6-month test in Austin, Texas, in 2012.

Outbox seems remarkably simple - for $4.99 per mailbox per month, the company picks up your mail, scans it, and lets you access every item digitally, through your iPhone, iPad or computer. If you want the physical version of a piece of mail, you designate the item to be delivered, and Outbox drops it on your doorstep. That's it. 

Say you move frequently, or you simply are flooded with junk mail but can't help wasting time sorting through the mess. Outbox wants to change all that.

"We turn the model on its head, getting to a new system where the user has full control over their postal mail," Davis says. Disrupting the entire U.S. Postal Service might be a ways down the line, but the Outbox team is confident that it is the future of mail. 

Sights Set On The USPS

Here's a hint: The Outbox employee who picks up your mail in a white Toyota Prius is called an unpostman.

Davis remembers thinking, "We have actually got to attack this market at the core, which is the platform… and the platform is that little metal box." Postal mail is a $900 billion industry in the U.S. - in 2011 alone, 168 billion pieces of mail were delivered. According to the most pessimistic forecast they could find, Davis and Baehr will still be fishing in a sea of more than 100 billion pieces of mail in 2020.

"You come to the realization that it’s not a perfect market that is dealing with completely transparent and moveable participants," Davis says of the USPS. "You have one participant who is dealing in the bounds of the law and the constructs of a regulated monopoly, and everyone else has to engage with that monopoly power in different ways."

 "We decided, 'Hey, someone should go and build out what a postal network should look like,'" Davis adds. 

In Austin, Discovering A New Ad Platform

What began last summer in Austin was a careful attempt to find out what really bugged people about dealing with heaps of physical mail. The company spent months interviewing some 100 families about their mail. Then they began a 500-person closed beta to collect data and plan for the next phase.

The process taught them a great deal. For one, it taught then about junk mail. "The interesting thing though is that when you start talking to people about junk mail, it’s in the eye of the beholder," says Baehr. "Junk mail is made junky when it’s not targeted and not relevant." A long-term hope for Outbox is to dramatically shrink the amount of marketing content people receive in postal mail, from approximately five items a day down to one or two.

For packages, especially ones like Netflix DVDs or Amazon orders, the Outbox team assumes people wanted them delivered to their doorsteps right away.

They also discovered that for people to trust them with something as sensitive as paper mail, they would need a very carefully constructed security system. They began with $1 million in identity theft insurance, and invested in secure encryption of the files Outbox was creating from scanned mail. The company shreds any item not requested for delivery within 60 days.

Moving Beyond The Post Office

But junk mail and packages were only the beginning for Outbox. "What we are building is not dependent on the physical postal system," Davis claims.

Outbox' long term vision is to create a unique new marketing platform to replace junk mail in a way that saves them money and provides better insight. "We've looked at all the digital catalog apps and they're failing miserably in terms of engagement," says Baehr. "The way people discover that content is through serendipitous arrival. They found it because they went to their mailbox."

What they didn't do, adds Baehr, is go to the app store and see if the catalog was pushed to her device, or go find it and download it. "The first important thing is discoverability, so by grabbing hold of the tradition of checking mail, we can build a communication channel where people actually expect to get marketing content."

Outbox envisions a day when advertisers can target a specific subscriber with an offer via mail, say for a sample of makeup, and the customer can find the ad in their Outbox app and request the sample for delivery. "We're creating this delivery platform where we are in neighborhoods delivering content," says Baehr. "You begin in the digital and it translates to the physical."

National Ambitions

With $2.2 million in funding from investors like Peter Thiel and Mike Maples of Floodgate, the company chose San Francisco for a full-blown launch. "It was the tougher logistical choice to make to come to San Francisco over New York City," says Davis. "New York, from a postal perspective is easier to service," with higher population density and a more regimented system of mailboxes.

The decision to move to the West Coast boiled down to the desire to get Outbox in the hands of early adopters. "When you think of hyper local distribution networks, think TaskRabbit or Uber, those [services found acceptance] from early adopters in San Francisco, so we decided to come here," Davis says. After onboarding their first customers in just four weeks, the company is already looking at new markets. "Once we get this nailed, San Francisco really does translate well into New York," Davis says, "and then Chicago, Boston, DC." 

When not sleeping in the Outbox warehouses to ensure everything runs smoothly, Davis and Baehr are busy thinking big. "When you start enabling the receiver to have full control of what can be sent to them," Davis says, "everything falls with a domino effect - if you can scale it."

Images courtesy of Outbox.