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Event listing for upcoming week

Good PR tips for startups

A few weeks ago, I was doing my usual skimming of daily Silicon Valley news.  I came across an article on how to get PR for your startup.  I particularly liked the point about picking up the check.  Check out the article for details!

From the article:

Here are my first ten tips on how to do PR for your startup.
1. Be the brand
2. Be everywhere
3. Always pick up the check–always.
4. Be a human being
5. How to bond with a journalist
6. How a CEO should e-mail a journalist
7. How a CEO should speak to a journalist
8. Invite people to “swing by” your office
9. Attach your brand to a movement
10. Embrace small media outlets

Keeping track of customer orders

Here is today’s gripe. I am doing some home remodeling at my house. I thought that I had some extra grout for the entryway but it turns out, nope.  I called up a major home improvement chain and asked about a custom order that I placed about 2 years ago.  I am thinking surely if I can’t remember the grout name, this store should have my records.  So guess what?  The store only holds customer data for a year.  At that point, I was utterly disappointed.  Of all industries, home improvements take years to complete and there can be multiple home owners for the same house.  All I want is to go to a store and ask, what paint color did this owner use, what kind of tiles does this house have, etc etc?  I know that not all home improvement projects go through one store, but think about what one store could do to manage a home owner’s projects.  The gist of the story is disk space is cheap, save your customer data and do some data mining on it.  If it’s not for the customer, do it so that you can operate your store more efficiently.

Event listing for upcoming week

  • August 20, 2008
  • In Business
  • 2 comments

Ideas for flying as airlines are going a la carte

If you’ve missed the many articles about airlines charging you for drinks, food, and checked in bags, it’s time to re-evaluate the cost of air travel.  These new charges add up, so much so that they should be taken into account when booking your next airline ticket (in addition to the price of the ticket).   So what can do?  Well, I have a few ideas.  The first one is for the cheap-o’s out there.  Bring an empty water bottle through security, then fill it up with fountain water before getting onto your flight.  Also, bring some power bars or cereal bars for a snack.  If you want to be a good flight passenger, it’s probably not a good idea to bring food that has a strong smell.  Your fellow passengers will hate you.  Try to eat those food items before getting onto the plane.

Lastly, the best idea of all.  Start your own “airline food and drinks from your seat” business.  Here’s how it’ll work.  Before going onto your flight, bake some cookies and seal them in tight lock plastic bags.  Also, bring some other snack-like foods to sell.  When you get passed the security gate,  buy some 20 oz bottles of pop and water and be sure to bring your own cups.  When you get on the flight, go to your seat and wait for take off.  Now when you’re allowed to walk around, unzip some of your cookies and go up and down the aisles so that passengers can get hooked.  Wear a sticker on your shirt that says, “I sell food and drinks cheaper during flights, I’m in seat <your airline seat>”.  That’s it, you’re set.

  • August 19, 2008
  • In Business
  • 3 comments

Administrative assistants or delegate to employees?

If you work in a big corporation, you may be noticing the administrative assistants disappearing. It’s a so-called strategy to reduce costs and blah blah blah. I don’t agree with this. Let’s say an admin makes $30K/year and an employee or manager makes $100K/year (assuming this is in the tech industry). Does it make sense to push more work to highly paid employees than to consolidate or rather have someone specialize in doing the administrative work? For some reason it doesn’t make sense to me. On the other hand, I guess some can argue that employees have extra time on their hands to do the administrative work OR that it is more efficient for employees to do the work themselves rather than going through the process of telling someone else how to do the work.

When I worked in Computer Science research, there was a user-focused systems group that would use me as a guinea pig. They would watch me work and see how I would use productivity tools and so forth. Why not observe employees to see how much time is spent doing administrative work over “real” work? Maybe that would convince the executives to not get rid of administrative assistants. In any case, it is what it is. The profits are being made quarter after quarter, but eventually productivity will suffer in the long-term. Those are my thoughts and I’m sticking to it!

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