Walmart beat Amazon on Black Friday by one important metric | Fast Company

December 2, 2020December 1, 2020 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Volumes of future marketing analysis will surely be written about this year’s unprecedented holiday shopping season, but for now we’ll have to make do with industry reports that reveal people’s pandemic-era spending habits in dribs and drabs.

The latest drib (or drab?) comes from analytics firm Sensor Tower, whose new dispatch shows a record surge in new downloads of shopping-related mobile apps. Black Friday alone saw more than 2.8 million first-time installs of shopping apps, the largest ever in a single day, according to Sensor Tower’s preliminary estimates. Year-over-year growth, the report says, was about the same as last year at 8%, but it was more substantial when you look at the entire month of November—with 59.2 million shopping app installs compared to 51.7 million for the same period last year.

It’s Official: Salesforce Buying Slack For $28 Billion, Taking On Microsoft With Benioff’s Biggest Deal Yet | Forbes

December 2, 2020December 1, 2020 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

After nearly a week of speculation, Salesforce confirmed its intent to acquire popular workforce chat platform Slack in a deal valued at $27.7 billion on Tuesday, marking the enterprise cloud giant’s largest-ever acquisition and positioning it to compete more forcefully with the nation’s second-largest tech firm by market capitalization, Microsoft.

6 Things Startups Need to Know About Cybersecurity | AllBusiness.com

December 1, 2020November 30, 2020 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Companies will lose $400 billion to hackers this year.

On top of the financial costs, companies can lose intellectual property, personal data, hours of productivity, and consumer trust. What’s worse, companies often don’t even think about cybersecurity until it’s too late.

Not taking a proactive and thorough approach to securing your data and systems early in your startup journey could cause you to lose contracts and stall your growth. If you want to scale a B2B SaaS company quickly, you can’t afford to trip over data security issues. Otherwise, you’re preventing growth and leaving money on the table when big prospects dismiss you as “too risky.”

Data Surveillance During Remote Work Leaves Businesses Vulnerable | Small Business Trends

December 1, 2020November 30, 2020 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Remote work has enabled businesses to weather the storm of the pandemic and adapt to new work environments while keeping business going. Yet, with employees now working remotely, the line between personal and professional data has been blurred and that comes with significant risk.

While companies focus on matching productivity and collaboration to that of office times, they can lose focus on the growing concern of data surveillance and misuse. Thanks to GDPR and CCPA regulations, businesses are now held to more stringent standards when it comes to collecting and handling data. However with the pandemic to distract focus, the number of data breaches continues to grow and businesses continue to ignore potential vulnerabilities.

Brain-reading Headset Galea May Make Keyboards Obsolete | Digital Trends

November 30, 2020November 29, 2020 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Conor Russomanno is working on some pretty lofty stuff: He’s building a headset that will be able to noninvasively read people’s thoughts and use them to control the computer interfaces of tomorrow. But right now, his big worry is whether or not he chose the right name for his startup.

“You know,” said Russomanno, the co-founder and CEO of a brain-computer interface startup called OpenBCI, “sometimes I wish that we had named our company OpenMCI — like, mind computer interface or something like that.”

5 Franchise Problems To Avoid | The Startup Magazine

November 25, 2020November 23, 2020 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

The US Small Business Administration notes that fast-food franchises make up the most popular business type for new entrepreneurs. Franchises are an easy way to trade on the popularity of an established name. From medspa franchise opportunities to retail businesses, there’s no shortage of supply. However, getting into a franchise relies on understanding what the company expects back from you. There are significant hurdles for new entrepreneurs when negotiating contracts and establishing rules between them and the franchisor. Here, we examine a handful of franchise problems that entrepreneurs should try their best to avoid.

A Terrible Sales Process

Many new franchisees are eager to get people in the door, regardless of how successful those people are likely to be. When you’re selling a franchise, whether it’s fast food or retail, the operator needs to understand how to make it work. While established franchises have massive training programs, these smaller, newer franchises don’t. They’re a lot cheaper to buy into as a result, and the low cost attracts a short of new entrepreneurs. The downside is that these new business owners end up biting off more than they can chew. Restaurant Business Online underlines this problem in their case study of Quiznos’ collapse.

Smart doorbells ‘easy target for hackers’ study finds | BBC News

November 25, 2020November 23, 2020 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Major security flaws in popular smart doorbells are putting consumers at risk of being targeted by hackers inside their homes, according to Which.

The consumer group says devices being sold on marketplaces such as Amazon and eBay, could easily be hacked or switched off by criminals.

It is asking the government for new legislation to safeguard consumers.

Amazon has removed at least seven product listings in response to the findings.

‘He used our smart doorbell camera to track me’

Ring logs every doorbell press and app action

The watchdog tested 11 devices which were purchased from popular online marketplaces in the UK. Brands included Qihoo, Ctronics and Victure.

It found that among the most common flaws were weak password policies, and a lack of data encryption.

It’s the Strangest Thanksgiving Ever for Businesses Trying to Put Turkey on Your Table | Inc.com

November 24, 2020November 23, 2020 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

This year is different. The Chatham Berry Farm sold out of turkeys on November 13, almost two weeks before Thanksgiving, and the phone continues to ring off the hook with orders the farm can’t fulfill. “The staff here now, we’re kind of calloused over from the steady, revolving door of customers coming through,” says Alexia Baker, a greenhouse manager and longtime jack-of-all-trades staffer.”

The Berry Farm isn’t alone in its newfound turkey fame. As Covid-19 infection rates spike across the country, more Americans are eschewing traditional family gatherings and staying home on Thanksgiving. But they’re still cooking, and their need for provisions–albeit on a smaller scale–has escalated, sending the businesses that cater to the holiday scrambling to adjust to rapidly changing levels of food supply and consumer demand. How they’ve adjusted is instructive for any entrepreneur, especially those eyeing upcoming e-commerce bonanzas like Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and the rest of the holiday shopping season.

Netflix commits $1 billion to make New Mexico home to one of the world’s largest studios | TechCrunch

November 24, 2020November 23, 2020 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Netflix is committing $1 billion in production spend at its ABQ Studios in Albuquerque, New Mexico, along with plans to expand those studios, the company said.

In an announcement alongside New Mexico’s Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham and Albuquerque Mayor Tim Keller, Netflix’s chief executive Ted Sarandos said the company would add 300 acres to its existing space in ABQ Studios, creating one of the largest film production facilities in North America.

That means roughly 1,000 new production jobs in New Mexico over the next 10 years, the company predicted, and an additional 1,467 construction jobs to complete the expansion.