A survey of American workers found that 45 percent of employees reported being more distracted over the summer. In addition, studies find that attendance drops by 20 percent. Entrepreneurs can keep their employees motivated by ensuring their jobs include five characteristics.

Motivating employees

<ul><li>Task Autonomy. Give employees the flexibility and independence to do their job. This will increase job satisfaction and well-being.</li><li>Task significance. Help employees understand the importance of the tasks they're performing. As a result, employees are motivated when they do work that matters.</li><li>Task identity. Employees need to understand how their work contributes to a larger whole.</li><li>Task variety will keep employees engaged and avoid monotony.</li><li>Timely feedback will help employees know how they're doing.</li></ul>

Ways to increase productivity in summer months

Summer is here and with the world opening back up, employees may want to be anywhere but the workplace. Here are fi ways to motivate them and boost productivity.

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Productivity

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Human Resources

5 Ways to Boost Employee Productivity in the Summer Months

Heroes of old had encountered Amazons in the martial women’s kingdom, Themiscyra, on the southern shores of the Black Sea. Amazons had invaded Greece, their advance halted in a great battle. Herodotus related how they had been captured, carried away in Greek ships and escaped to the banks of the river Don, where they intermarried with Scythian tribesmen.No one knew where the name ‘Amazon’ came from, so the Greeks claimed it was derived from a-mazdos – without a breast: these fearsome women cut off their right breasts to remove an obstruction to the bowstring, it was claimed.

Amazon Women: History Vs Folklore

In the grasslands of inner Asia, from the Black Sea to western China, Scythian women had the same skills as their men: wielding bows, riding and herding animals, fighting – and dying from their injuries. Their remains have been found in tomb-mounds from the Crimea to western China.For centuries, women warriors en masse have been dubbed ‘Amazons’. Regiments of such women existed in Dahomey (in what’s now Benin) and in the Soviet air force, and the female fighters of Kurdistan have a formidable reputation.

Wonder Women: The Facts

<ul><li>These warrior women, it is reputed, lived on the river Thermedon (today's Terme), on the southern shores of the Black Sea.</li><li>In legend, they captured men and used them as studs, rearing only female children and killing the males.</li><li>The Amazon nation was the ultimate imagined threat to Greek machismo.</li></ul>

Hippolyte, Queen of The Amazons

<ul><li>There is no direct evidence that Greeks actually met any 'Amazons', but a story about Alexander the Great suggests that they did</li><li>In 330 BC, the ambitious Macedonian warrior had conquered Persia and was advancing eastward along the shores of the Caspian Sea (in present-day Iran).</li><li>Alexander was approached by a group of Scythians who included women, one of whom was their leader.</li><li>The group then vanished back into the heart of inner Asia, leaving the way open for the creation of a dramatic tale that provided a Greek name for a sex-hunting Scythian queen.</li></ul>

Scythian Women: An Encounter With Alexander The Great

<ul><li>Around 1500, a Spaniard named Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo wrote or adapted a series of novels about Amadís, a knight-errant from the fairytale country of Gaula (unconnected with Gaul or Wales).</li><li>In the stories, Califia was a formidable warrior, with a menagerie of 500 griffins that were fed on human flesh.</li><li>She lived in a realm called California or Califerne, an island-state near the lands newly discovered by Christopher Columbus.</li></ul>

Queen Califia: Amazonian women in the Middle Ages

<ul><li>Archaeological finds have raised intriguing questions about the status of Scythian women.</li><li>In 1969, a farmer noticed something glinting in newly ploughed earth near a 6-metre-high burial mound: a small piece of patterned gold.</li><li>Renowned Soviet archaeologist Kemal Akishev came to investigate and, excavating the burial mound, discovered a small skeleton surrounded by treasures.</li><li>The skull was too badly damaged for its sex to be determined, but the 'Golden Man' became the symbol of the nation when Kazakhstan emerged after the collapse of the Soviet Union.</li></ul>

The Golden Wo-Man

<ul><li>In 1993, Russian archaeologist Natalia Polosmak unearthed a body embalmed with a mix of herbs, grasses, and wool, along with a tall headdress, revealing that the body was that of a woman.</li><li>The mummy became known as the 'Ice Maiden' or the 'Ukok Princess'.</li><li>She was taken to Novosibirsk for further study, and then on tour internationally.</li></ul>

The Ice Maiden of Siberia

<ul><li>This name has been applied to several all-female fighting groups, among them the regiment of female Soviet bomber pilots who fought in the Second World War, the most famous of whom was their founder, Marina Rasksova.</li><li>In the 1930s, the Soviet Union was recovering from years of war, revolution, and famine, and women were given opportunities in aviation, with the new government seeing this as an opportunity to unite and defend this vast nation</li><li>She became the first female Soviet navigator, and led a volunteer unit of 400 women fliers in three regiments: fighters, heavy bombers and night bombers</li></ul>

The Night Witch

In 2017, Hollywood remade the Amazon myth in a film with the tagline: “Before she was Wonder Woman, she was Diana, Princess of the Amazons.” The link between the two legends makes a convoluted story, its origins stretching back a century to the struggle for women’s rights.Wonder Woman made her debut in All Star Comics in December 1941, introduced with a semi-Greek backstory as the Amazonian princess of Paradise Island (later Themiscyra).

Wonder Woman: Diana, Princess of the Amazons

The Fearsome Ladies Of History: Amazonian Women

For centuries, women warriors en masse have been dubbed ‘Amazons’. But were Amazonian women real? Discover the truth here

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History

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Movies & Shows

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Society, Arts & Culture

Amazonian Women: The Truth About These Real Female Warriors Who Inspired Wonder Woman | History Extra

Most people behind the hype of Web3 are trying to make a quick dollar. However, Web 3.0 is a certainty although it is still a distance off. If you want to participate long-term and strategically, it is important to understand the challenges of the underlying infrastructure upon which the new virtual world is being built.

The challenges facing Web 3.0 

When blockchain was first envisioned, one key attraction was costless transactions. It turns out to be very expensive and energy-intensive.  However, there is a huge shift towards using more eco-friendly methods of natural gas, hydroelectric, wind and solar projects rising to power crypto mining. At a granular level, there is a shift toward decentralised apps that use very little code on the blockchain to restrict transaction costs, and startups work on ways to monetise the network to offset those costs.

Cost

In a decentralised network, transactions become slower because every transaction has to move through the entire peer-to-peer network, or it requires high "gas fees" to speed up transactions. The leading microchip manufacturer in Intel states that we'll be at 5 - 10 times our current computing power over the next five years. For Web3, we need to be at 1000 times. Software innovation is also occurring faster, but the gap is still huge.

Scalability

There is a very steep learning curve involved in Web3. Your existing web browsers don't support direct access to Web3 experiences. Instead, you need several browser extensions or plug-ins for the essential benefits. Web3 needs to become much easier to access and navigate for mass adoption. And then educational content and training about getting started are still needed.

User experience 

Elon Musks' Starlink is still trying to bring internet connectivity, i.e. Web 1.0 and Web 2.0, to the developing world. We also need mass-scale hardware upgrades to servers and end-user devices as the current mobile and IoT devices are not ready for the Web3 revolution.

Accessibility

<ul><li>Educate yourself. Figure out how you want to ultimately position your brand as a Web 3 player so that you don't have to play catch up. Set up Google Alerts and track "Web3" as a keyword.</li><li>Study the pioneers. Brands like Nike, Adidas, Pepsi, Zara, Snoop Dogg have already started making their Web3 and metaverse bets. What can you learn from them?</li><li>Start small. You will need exposure to decentralised finance, or DeFi, to stay relevant and send and receive payments in Web3. Start small by setting up your wallet and purchasing a Web3 domain.</li></ul>

How to position your business for the future

While there are still serious issues to be solved in the building of the blockchain-based future of the internet, you've got to begin dipping your toes in it, and you've got to do it now.

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Cryptocurrency

Discover the world of business and economics.

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Economics

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Business

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Product & Design

Web 3.0 Is Coming, and Here's What That Really Means for You

In 1996, McDonald's believed that the Arch Deluxe hamburger was the solution to their growth that had flatlined. The burger appealed to a new, older demographic. Extensive focus groups showed adults liked the burger, so the company invested a lot of money in rolling the burger out nationwide. But the burger proved to be unsuccessful. It cost more than the Big Mac and Quarter Pounder and failed to lure more adults. Within a year, the company started phasing it out.

The (actual) Museum of Failure

According to economist John List, the focus groups that teed up McDonald's decision to spend a fortune on launching the burger were flawed. The people who participated were McDonald's diehards and not representative of customers at large. Instead, the company should have vetted whether the burger would actually be popular with their adult demographic on a smaller scale. The launch of the Arch Deluxe is a good example of scaling. Scaling is the process of rolling out something on a large scale.

Why the Arch Deluxe failed

There are five vital signs to consider when thinking about whether an idea, policy or product can scale. <ol><li>Watch out for false positives.</li><li>Consider if you're misjudging the representativeness of the demographic.</li><li>Understand the constraints you will have at scale before you scale it.</li><li>Watch for unintended consequences.</li><li>Consider the business side and costs of scaling.</li></ol>

Five signs to look out for when scaling

An idea may look promising at first, but when it is rigorously tested, the results may fail to replicate. If you find a good result in one area, it doesn't mean you should roll it out everywhere. First replicate it in that area to ensure it's a true result, then try it out in other markets. It means you should constantly prod at your idea to ensure it's a valid result.

False positives

McDonald's erroneously used a focus group to convince themselves to roll out the Arch Deluxe. It was indeed popular with a small group of loyal customers, but that was not the future target of the company.

Misjudging the representativeness

It is vital to evaluate if your initial success depends on unscalable ingredients. For example, it would be a mistake to use ample resources to hire the best preschool teachers, then expect that their positive results would be replicated when the curricula they use was scaled nationwide. Understand the constraints you're going to have at scale before you scale it.

Unscalable ingredients

When Uber attempted to raise the incomes of its drivers by increasing its base fares, it worked at first, but within six weeks, earnings fell back down to what they were. The reason is that the opportunity of making more money on the app drew more people to drive for Uber, resulting in each driver getting fewer trips overall. At scale, the well-intended policy didn't work as intended.

Spillovers and unintended consequences

Identify if your product has economies of scale. When you scale your operation, does it get cheaper to produce it? For example, building a factory costs money up front, and the first couple of devices will reflect that. But, over time, it will become cheaper to produce because the cost of the building is spread out more.

The costs of scaling

A new book develops a science of scaling.

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Money & Investments

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Startups

How to roll out big ideas and avoid the Museum of Failure

Phones use one of three different technologies to read your fingerprint: optical, capacitive or ultrasonic. An optical fingerprint reader is the oldest of the three. It uses a specialised miniature camera to take a picture of your finger, often backlit with little LEDs or the phone’s screen.Unfortunately, these sensors are easy to fool – even a good photo can trick them, so it may be combined with a capacitive sensor, the second technology, to check there is really a finger there.

The Fingerprint Sensor Of Your Phone

A capacitive fingerprint sensor uses a grid of tiny capacitors that store electricity, which is discharged only at the points where your fingerprint ridges touch. An array of thousands of capacitors can then be used to map the pattern of your fingerprint. Sometimes these sensors also support swipes or force sensing.

The Capacitive Sensor

The third and most advanced form of fingerprint sensing uses ultrasonics. Much like the ultrasonic scanners used for medical purposes, an ultrasonic sound pulse is transmitted to your finger and the reflected pulse is measured. Bats, whales and dolphins use ultrasonic to understand the shape of their surroundings; the sensors on a smartphone use it to understand the 3D shape of the ridges in your fingerprint. It can even work through the phone screen.

Ultrasonic Sensing

Fingerprint scanners have become an essential feature of smartphones.

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Technology & The Future

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Science & Nature

How does a smartphone ‘read’ my fingerprint?

The theory of gravity says <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton%27s_law_of_universal_gravitation" target="_self">objects attract other objects in the universe using a force that is directly proportional to their masses</a>. The greater an object’s mass, the greater the gravitational force. (Like so many origin stories, including those in Silicon Valley, the one where Isaac Newton came up with his famous theory when he saw an apple fall from a tree is probably a myth.)

The Law Of Gravity

The Law of Narrative Gravity posits that the public and press are drawn to narratives, and the more widely accepted (or massive) a narrative, the more it attracts and shapes the perception of facts.

The Law of Narrative Gravity

The story gets pulled towards the popular narrative like a black hole. The prevalent Elon musk narrative is that he’s a genius. But when your narrative is positive, certain facts are forgiven. If you’re not a genius, you’re not a genius. If you’re not a genius, you’re not a genius. If you’re not a genius, you’re not a genius. If you’re not a genius,.

Negative Narratives — The Black Holes of Media

Narrative gravity is like <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias" target="_self">confirmation bias</a>, “the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms one’s beliefs.” But with narratives, it’s less about personal beliefs and more of a <a href="http://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/bandwagon-effect.asp" target="_self">bandwagon effect</a>, where everyone processes and interprets information through a framework that is both easily digestible and broadly accepted. Narrative gravity is <a href="https://backchannel.com/how-the-tech-press-forces-a-narrative-on-companies-it-covers-5f89fdb7793e#.cg7qpb7yt" target="_self">what makes a startup’s story clock tick</a>.

How To Escape a Negative Narrative

Every business decision your company makes must include a consideration of how it will be interpreted given the prevailing narrative. Any fact even remotely capable of being interpreted consistently with the narrative will be sucked into its orbit.

1. Never do anything to remotely reinforce your negative narrative.

Black holes might open up a bridge to another part of the universe. Finding a completely different, even distant audience for your message is a great strategy. The important thing is to get out of your bubble and talk to people who don’t know (or don’t care) about what’s consuming those who follow you day to day.

2. Find a wormhole to a faraway part of the narrative universe.

Attempting to tell a turnaround story too soon often Backfires. There's no risk for a reporter to tell a story that Validates what readers may already believe. You have to play a long game, measured in Months—And sometimes Years— as opposed to days or weeks. Angelina Jolie went from Homewrecker to humanitarian over a decade. It took square (the company where I work) more than two years to shake perceived financial issues.

3. Be patient and vigilant — narrative gravity is there even if you can’t see it.

When everything you do is being sucked into a narrative black hole, your credibility goes with it. To rebuild trust, you must be clear and comprehensive in your explanation. If your messenger isn’t credible, you have to replace them with someone who is, she says.

4. After the collapse, the only thing that matters is to rebuild.

Things we know to be true: John McCain is a maverick. The New England Patriots are cheaters. Apple can’t innovate without Steve Jobs. The answers reveal something fundamental about how companies and…

The Invisible Force That Warps What You Read in the News

Part of the problem seems to be that nobody these days is content to merely put their dent in the universe. No, they have to fucking own the universe. It’s not enough to be in the market, they have to dominate it. It’s not enough to serve customers, they have to capture them.

RECONSIDER

There are still, after all these years, less than fifty people working at Basecamp. A whole generation of people working with and for startups is obsessed with Unicorns and the properties of their “success”. A whole generation of people working with and for startups is obsessed with Unicorns and the properties of their “success”. A whole generation of people working with and for startups is obsessed with Unicorns and the properties of their “success”. A whole generation of people working with and for.

Worth a shot

About 12 years ago, I co-founded a startup called Basecamp: A simple project collaboration tool that helps people make progress together, sold on a monthly subscription. It took a part of some…

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Books

Paul Graham argues that explosive growth is the only measure of success. “Making it” means one of two things: go public or sell. But a startup has about as much chance of making it as a single sperm has of fertilizing an egg. 90% of startups fail. The majority die within 20 months of their last round of funding. Success equals the amount of money raised, or the profits made upon exit — never mind whether any value is generated in the world beyond capital.

90% of startups fail

“The tyranny of the quantifiable” describes the current ethos of venture financing.In such a system, what can be measured almost always takes precedence over what cannot: private profit over public good; speed and efficiency over enjoyment and quality.

The tyranny of the quantifiable

Outside of bootstrapping, or relying on wealthy friends or family, or having connections to the limited network of mission-driven angel investors, there’s a dearth of options for tech companies seeking financing: It’s venture capital or bust. In an alternative version of the future, we create a new model: We invent another style of investing, one that recognizes founders with long-term, wide-ranging visions. We focus not only on how much money is raised, and on investor returns, but also on how we generate value for users, elevate communities, and build a more equitable and inclusive system.

Alternatives to venture capital

Startups, like the male anatomy, are designed for liquidity events. Consider the metaphors: “seed” funding, “up and to the right” trajectories, “acceleration,” “exit.” Paul Graham’s seminal essay…

Sex & Startups

From a venture capitalist’s point of view, the ideal entrepreneur:<ul><li>delivers sales or technical advances such as FDA approval with reasonable probability,</li><li>tells a compelling story and is presentable to outside investors,</li><li>recognizes the need for speed to an IPO for liquidity,</li><li>has a good reputation and can provide references that show competence and skill,</li><li>understands the need for a team with a variety of skills and therefore sees why equity has to be allocated to other people,</li><li>works diligently toward a goal but maintains flexibility,</li><li>gets along with the investor group.</li></ul>

An Ideal Entrepreneur

Venture capital plays only a minor role in funding basic innovation. In 1997, VCs only invested 6%, or $600 million, went to startups. Around $1 billion of the total venture-capital pool went to R&D.The majority of VC capital went to follow-on funding for projects originally developed through the far greater expenditures of governments ($63 billion) and corporations ($133 billion).A venture capitalist buys a stake in an entrepreneur’s idea, nurtures it for some time, and then exits with the help of an investment banker.

VCs(Venture Capitalists) : A Primer

VC funds have investors in large institutions like pension funds, insurance companies and financial giants. They place only a small fraction of their funds into startups and high-risk investments. More than good people or good ideas, VCs look for good industries to invest in.

Sufficient Returns at Acceptable Risk

The initial period in a company’s life cycle in a profitable industry is a time of accelerated growth, except for the concept stocks that are experimental and require a lot of burning capital.By investing in areas with high growth rates, VCs allocate their risks to the ability of the company’s management to execute. VC investments in high-growth segments are likely to have exit opportunities because investment bankers are continually looking for innovative high-growth issues to bring to the market.

Timing Is Everything

Any basic deal structure has the same logic: Giving the investors in the VC fund both ample downside protection and a favourable position for additional investment if the company proves to be a winner.

Logic In The Deal

The venture capital industry has four main players: entrepreneurs who need funding; investors who want high returns; investment bankers who need companies to sell; and venture capitalists who make money for themselves by making a market for the other three. The VC firms protect themselves from risk by investing with other firms, enabling portfolio diversification.

How The VC Industry Works

Funds are structured to guarantee partners a comfortable income while they work to generate those returns. The venture capital partners agree to return all of the investors’ capital before sharing in the upside. However, the fund typically pays for the investors’ annual operating budget—2% to 3% of the pool’s total capital—which they take as a management fee regardless of the fund’s results. The real upside lies in the appreciation of the portfolio. The investors get 70% to 80% of the gains; the venture capitalists get the remaining 20% to 30%.

Attractive Returns for the VC

Assuming that each partner has a typical portfolio of ten companies and a 2,000-hour work year, the amount of time spent on each company with each activity is relatively small.  If the total time spent with portfolio companies serving as directors and acting as consultants is 40%, then partners spend 800 hours per year with portfolio companies. This allows the VCs only 80 hours per year per company—less than 2 hours per week.

How Venture Capitalists Spend Their Time

Venture-funded companies attract talented people by appealing to a “lottery” mentality. Despite the high risk of failure in new ventures, engineers and businesspeople leave their jobs because they are unable or unwilling to perceive how risky a start-up can be.  Their situation may be compared to that of hopeful high school basketball players, devoting hours to their sport despite the overwhelming odds against turning professional and earning million-dollar incomes.

The Upside for Entrepreneurs

By understanding how venture capital actually works, astute entrepreneurs can mitigate their risks and increase their potential rewards. Many entrepreneurs make the mistake of thinking that venture capitalists are looking for good ideas when, in fact, they are looking for good managers in particular industry segments.

Minimizing Risk

The value of any individual to a VC is a function of the following conditions:<ul><li>the number of people within the high-growth industry that are qualified for the position;</li><li>the position itself (CEO, CFO, VP of R&D, technician);</li><li>the match of the person’s skills, reputation, and incentives to the VC firm;</li><li>the willingness to take risks; and</li><li>the ability to sell oneself.</li></ul>

The Value Of An Entrepreneur To VCs

Before you can understand the industry, you must first separate myth from reality.

entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship

How Venture Capital Works

Deal sourcing refers to the process by which VCs attract entrepreneurs and sort through those opportunities to make an investment decision.

Deal Sourcing

When considering a deal, VCs will look at the attractiveness of the market, strategy, technology, product/service, customer adoption, competition, deal terms, and the quality and experience of the management team.

Investment Selection

Give the uncertainty of most of their investments, it is not surprising that most VCs don’t really use financial techniques such as DCFs or NPV to evaluate their investments. Most commonly metrics used are cash-on-cash return, multiple of invested capital and net IRR. An other interesting finding is that fewer than 30% of companies meet projections.

Valuation Tools

VCs syndicate around 65% of their investments in an attempt to share risks, build reputation, reduce capital constraints and gain complimentary expertise.The intended goals of VCs contracts are to make sure that the entrepreneur does well if he/she performs well while providing VCs with leverage if the entrepreneur does not perform. VCs achieve these objectives through cash flow rights, control rights, liquidation rights and employment terms.

Deal Structure

VCs are active investors and strive to add value to their companies after they invest. VCs are critical in the professionalization of startups: they will improve governance through strategic guidance, by structuring the boards of directors and by helping in hiring outside managers and directors.

Post-Investment Value Add

Although, VCs fill a gap by connecting entrepreneurs with good ideas but no money with investors, they are seen as a black box with little information on how they make decisions.

5 Ways to Boost Employee Productivity in the Summer Months

Amazonian Women: The Truth About These Real Female Warriors Who Inspired Wonder Woman | History Extra

Web 3.0 Is Coming, and Here's What That Really Means for You

How to roll out big ideas and avoid the Museum of Failure

How does a smartphone ‘read’ my fingerprint?

Gary Walker