News

More websites spruiking too-good-to-be-true deals on barbecues, outboard motors and outdoor furniture have been shuttered, months after two Latvians were accused of running a sophisticated scam network. Detectives from the Financial and Cyber Crime Group are investigating possible links between more than two dozen websites the pair, 27-year-old Nastasija Sveinika and 25-year-old Aleksandrs Gorikijis, was allegedly behind and three new sites shut down after catching more Australians out in recent weeks.

All entrepreneurs are Millennial coding wizards who spend their days inventing disruptive fintech platforms between ping pong tournaments and lounging about in bean bags in their uber-cool, open plan offices. Right? Not so fast. The new wave of entrepreneurs is driven, experienced and may even have a few grey hairs. Seniorpreneurs, business owners aged 55 to 64, lead about 34% of Australian firms, according to new research from the Swinburne University of Technology and Queensland University of Technology.

When building a company from scratch, two questions will pop up pretty soon into the process: how hard you should work on the idea, and when you should do that work. There’s a dawning realisation in the startup sphere that burnout is a real threat for entrepreneurs, and employees are incredibly eager to join businesses with a nimble approach to working hours, especially if this means dodging a five-day work week in favour of other arrangements. When Australia’s ’50 best places to work’ were revealed last week, a majority of the businesses featured on this list cited a focus on flexibility and time management, with half of the companies that made the cut employing a “compressed work week”. But despite the enthusiasm, entrepreneurs know progress will be hard to come by if you only work for a fraction of available business hours. So how can you trim your company’s schedule to fit the work you actually have to complete, without compromising on your health?

B2B marketers are being held to new levels of accountability in this data-driven and buyer-empowered era. Businesses have accepted the fact that their buyers are largely in control along the path to purchase — and that these buyers are holding sales reps at arm’s length until late in the process. Hand in hand with this reality, B2B businesses recognize that the marketing team now interacts with and influences prospects far more than in the past. As they increasingly rely on marketing to attract and drive prospective buyers through the funnel, companies expect marketers to prove the value of their spend from brand awareness to impact on revenues. With metrics and analytics, they can do just that. By substantiating that their marketing efforts pay off — ultimately by contributing to revenues — B2B marketers can confidently report the ROI of their programs and request larger budgets. Doing so requires a clear understanding of metrics and analytics.

The startup world is a funny place without trying to be. Like other industries, we’ve created our own subculture and language to communicate with like-minded people. What sets us apart from other industries is the breadth of this made-up language and the pure absurdity of its usage. I imagine it can be difficult for Normals (that’s what we call non-startup/techie people) to understand what we are talking about. That’s right, we’ve even come up with a word to describe people that aren’t like us. They are the Normals and we are the non-Normals…wait a second. I wanted to help all the Normals out there understand us better, so I put together a list of things you might hear a startup person say. For each one-liner, I provide how a Normal might interpret the sentence. Imagine if your Mom overheard you at a family get together talking about your startup. Mother’s can be sneaky like that. I encourage all the non-Normals to read each sentence without any startup baggage— as if you were hearing the collection of words for the first time. Harken back to the days when you were….Normal. Don’t we sound ridiculous?

The next time you’re sitting on the tarmac, about to jet off on that next business trip or well-deserved break, make the most of those rare few minutes without emails, phone calls or colleagues interrupting you. Take a step back from the day-to-day running of your business and do a pre-flight check on the overall shape of your organisation. You might consider: What are your greatest challenges? Are these in fact opportunities? What other opportunities do you have? Do you have the right people in place to capitalise on these? Do you have the operational cashflow for the next month, three months, or six months that it may take to address these challenges?