A startup is a company designed to grow fast. Being newly founded does not in itself make a company a startup. Nor is it necessary for a startup to work on technology, or take venture funding, or have some sort of "exit." The only essential thing is growth.  Startups are so hard that you can't be pointed off to the side and hope to succeed. You have to know that growth is what you're after. The good news is, that if you get growth, everything else tends to fall into place. This means you can use growth like a compass to make almost every decision you face.

Startup: A Primer

To grow rapidly, you need to make something you can sell to a big market. That's the difference between Google and a barbershop. A barbershop doesn't scale.For a company to grow really big, it must (a) make something lots of people want, and (b) reach and serve all those people. Barbershops are doing fine in the (a) department. Almost everyone needs their hair cut. The problem for a barbershop, as for any retail establishment, is (b). A barbershop serves customers in person, and few will travel far for a haircut. And even if they did, the barbershop couldn't accommodate them.

Scalability

It might seem that it would always be better to start a startup than an ordinary business. If you're going to start a company, why not start the type with the most potential? The catch is that this is a (fairly) efficient market. If you write software to teach Tibetan to Hungarians, you won't have much competition. If you write software to teach English to Chinese speakers, you'll face ferocious competition, precisely because that's such a larger prize.

Ideas

Larry Page and Sergey Brin wanted to search the web. But unlike most people they had the technical expertise both to notice that existing search engines were not as good as they could be, and to know how to improve them. Over the next few years, their problem became everyone's problem, as the web grew to a size where you didn't have to be a picky search expert to notice the old algorithms weren't good enough. But as happened with Apple, by the time everyone else realized how important search was, Google was entrenched.

Solving Our Own Problem

That's one connection between startup ideas and technology. Rapid change in one area uncovers big, soluble problems in other areas. Sometimes the changes are advances, and what they change is solubility. That was the kind of change that yielded Apple; advances in chip technology finally let Steve Wozniak design a computer he could afford. But in Google's case, the most important change was the growth of the web. What changed there was not solubility but bigness.

The Importance Of Technology Advancement

The real question is not what growth rate makes a company a startup, but what growth rate successful startups tend to have.The growth story has three phases:<ul><li>There's an initial period of slow or no growth while the startup tries to figure out what it's doing.</li><li>As the startup figures out how to make something lots of people want and how to reach those people, there's a period of rapid growth.</li><li>Eventually, a successful startup will grow into a big company. Growth will slow, partly due to internal limits and partly because the company is starting to bump up against the limits of the markets it serves.</li></ul>

Being On The Right Path

The phase whose growth defines the startup is the second one, the ascent. Its length and slope determine how big the company will be.The slope is the company's growth rate. If there's one number every founder should always know, it's the company's growth rate. That's the measure of a startup. If you don't know that number, you don't even know if you're doing well or badly.

The S Curve

The best thing to measure the growth rate is revenue. The next best, for startups that aren't charging initially, is active users. That's a reasonable proxy for revenue growth because whenever the startup does start trying to make money, its revenues will probably be a constant multiple of active users

How To Measure Growth: The Best Indicators

We usually advise startups to pick a growth rate they think they can hit, and then just try to hit it every week. The key word here is "just." If they decide to grow at 7% a week and they hit that number, they're successful for that week. There's nothing more they need to do. But if they don't hit it, they've failed in the only thing that mattered and should be correspondingly alarmed.Programmers will recognize what we're doing here. We're turning starting a startup into an optimization problem.

Using Coding Skills To Hack A Startup Growth

Focusing on hitting a growth rate reduces the otherwise bewilderingly multifarious problem of starting a startup to a single problem. You can use that target growth rate to make all your decisions for you; anything that gets you the growth you need is ipso facto right? Should you spend two days at a conference? Should you hire another programmer? Should you focus more on marketing? Should you spend time courting some big customer? Should you add x feature? Whatever gets you your target growth rate.

Don't Focus On Ten Things, Just One

The fascinating thing about optimizing for growth is that it can actually discover startup ideas. You can use the need for growth as a form of evolutionary pressure. If you start out with some initial plan and modify it as necessary to keep hitting, say, 10% weekly growth, you may end up with a quite different company than you meant to start. But anything that grows consistently at 10% a week is almost certainly a better idea than you started with.The constraint of growing at a certain rate can help define a startup.

Growth Works On Your Startup Pivoting

A company that grows at 1% a week will grow 1.7x a year, whereas a company that grows at 5% a week will grow 12.6x. A company making $1000 a month (a typical number early in YC) and growing at 1% a week will 4 years later be making $7900 a month, which is less than a good programmer makes in salary in Silicon Valley. A startup that grows at 5% a week will in 4 years be making $25 million a month.Our intuitions are no guide here. What happens to fast-growing startups tends to surprise even the founders.

Compounding Growth

Considering how valuable a successful startup can become, anyone familiar with the concept of expected value would be surprised if the failure rate weren't high.

The test of any investment is the ratio of return to risk. Startups pass that test because although they're appallingly risky, the returns when they do succeed are so high. But that's not the only reason investors like startups. An ordinary slower-growing business might have just as good a ratio of return to risk if both were lower. So why are VCs interested only in high-growth companies? The reason is that they get paid by getting their capital back, ideally after the startup IPOs, or failing that when it's acquired.

Why VCs Love Unicorns

The reason VCs like to invest in startups is not simply the returns, but also because such investments are so easy to oversee. The founders can't enrich themselves without also enriching the investors. Why do founders want to take the VCs' money? Growth, again. The constraint between good ideas and growth operates in both directions. It's not merely that you need a scalable idea to grow. If you have such an idea and don't grow fast enough, competitors will. Growing too slowly is particularly dangerous in a business with network effects, which the best startups usually have to some degree.

Enriching The VCs

Almost every company needs some amount of funding to get started. But startups often raise money even when they are or could be profitable. It might seem foolish to sell stock in a profitable company for less than you think it will later be worth, but it's no more foolish than buying insurance. Fundamentally that's how the most successful startups view fundraising. They could grow the company on their own revenues, but the extra money and help supplied by VCs will let them grow even faster. Raising money lets you choose your growth rate.

Growth Is The Reason Startups Get Repeat Funding

If you want to understand startups, understand growth. Growth drives everything in this world. Growth is why startups usually work on technology — because ideas for fast-growing companies are so rare that the best way to find new ones is to discover those recently made viable by change, and technology is the best source of rapid change.Growth makes successful companies so valuable that the expected value is high even though the risk is too. Growth is why VCs want to invest in startups.

Understand Growth

Starting a startup is thus very much like deciding to be a research scientist: you're not committing to solve any specific problem; you don't know for sure which problems are soluble, but you're committing to try to discover something no one knew before. A startup founder is in effect an economic research scientist. Most don't discover anything that remarkable, but some discover relativity.

The Bottom Line

How to Start a Business: A Startup Guide for Entrepreneurs

startup

Startups

entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship

business

Business

leadershipandmanagement

Leadership & Management

moneyandinvestments

Money & Investments

personaldevelopment

Personal Development

The Startup Masterclass

An important read for anyone thinking of starting up a company.

Startup = Growth

We all know the failure rate of startups, about 90% over five years. And we know Silicon Valley might still be the dominant location in the United States for starting technology companies. Perhaps that is due to the venture capitalist’s insistence that companies they fund be in or move to Silicon Valley. But as you consider the type of company you wish to start, you really should examine the importance of several factors outside of funding that could hedge your startup’s success. Where you locate your startup, even in the age of remote work, might actually be more critical than you think.

The Premise

There is nothing like success to support success. For an ecosystem to thrive, you want to have a high number of successful and aspiring entrepreneurs. They create support networks, organizations, and meetups and provide advice and mentoring to future entrepreneurs.

Entrepreneurs

If you are creating a biotech startup, then you should be in San Diego, one of the largest thriving biotech regions in the country. Why? Because your ability to recruit top talent is greatly enhanced. So, as you consider your startup and what it needs at the core, does that talent exist in your selected city or region?

Talent

In the age of rapidly accelerating companies based on competition, your potential top talent could be coming out of the local universities. Choose an ecosystem that is graduating a diverse talent base that is critical to your company’s success. Recruit some of this talent as paid interns and recruit them to be your future employees.

Education

Every entrepreneurial ecosystem needs investors. Study a potential region and look at the numbers such as capital invested, diversity of investments and overall growth trendline. Also, look to the type of investor that may be specializing in an area that your startup is heading.

Investors

Not a lot of founders look at this metric but again it could be critical to your startup’s ultimate success. If you are raising capital, you might need a burn rate or runway to attain your overall objectives. While you may want to be in Silicon Valley, all of the right ecosystem resources might be in Salt Lake City where the cost of living is lower and the potential burn rate is much longer.

Costs

While there are many cities and regions in the USA that are growing entrepreneurship rapidly, the list below contains the perennial leader, Silicon Valley and another region that has benefited from companies like Microsoft and Amazon and that is Seattle. <ul><li>Silicon Valley</li><li>Seattle</li><li>Austin</li><li>Salt Lake City/Provo</li><li>San Diego</li></ul>

The List Of Cities

Several startup ecosystems, outside of Silicon Valley, have been quietly rising for more than 20 years.

Discover the world of business and economics.

economics

Economics

Location, Location, Location. Entrepreneurs, Where You Locate Your Startup Might Be As Important As The Timing

"Everyone should have a side hustle. Even if you love your job., having more than one source of income will give you more freedom and more options."

<ul><li>Is it feasible? Can you execute it in an hour or less a day and expect to see results within a week? Or are you trying to climb Mt Everest on your first attempt?</li><li>Will it be profitable? How much can you expect to make from one sale? What expenses do you have to cover? What’s the optimistic and pessimistic version of this?</li><li>Is your idea persuasive? Can you explain what you’re selling to your grandma in two sentences? What’s your “wow factor?” What’s your unique advantage?</li></ul>If an idea fails to pass the scrutiny of these questions, don’t bother with it.

Generating Ideas For Your Side Hustle: The Validation Framework

The first week of side hustle month is about your ideas. The second week of the program encourages you to get clear about your ideal or target customer. Think of them as ‘your people'. Find out more about “your people”:<ul><li>If you know one of them, have a coffee. </li><li>But If you don’t: have an imaginary coffee with them’, or write a letter to them. </li></ul>

Finding "Your People"

Go from idea to offer with price, pitch, and promise.<ul><li>Your promise should be a bold, provocative statement that highlights the persuasive aspect of your idea. When people hear it, they should see how they can immediately benefit from your idea. </li><li>Your pitch tells people how you deliver on that promise in as few words as possible. </li><li>Your price lets people know how much they have to pay and comes with a clear call to action. </li></ul>

Price, Pitch, and Promise

"Like a comic book superhero, your side hustle needs a history [or herstory]. Don’t just give ‘em the facts; tell them a story."

Look for your own origin story – what is your superpower in relation to “your people” and importantly, what is the drama, or the ‘turning point’ that gave youour superpower.

Create Your Origin Story

"The best hack of all is to do something that makes a difference in [your] people’s lives."

This includes learning to:<ul><li>Clearly explain what your product or service is, why “your people” will benefit and how it works. </li><li>Deliver what you promise, so start simple with your promise, but go above and beyond whenever possible.</li><li> Uncover and respond to unspoken needs. </li><li>Find a way to report back to “your people” in some way. People often forget how bad the problem was, once it is solved. </li><li>Make it fun, interesting, or a source of status to write or record a testimonial for you</li></ul>

How You Can Change Your Customer’s Life

<ul><li>A website. Today, if you’re not online, you don’t exist. All you need is a domain and hosting. </li><li>A social media profile. Pick a platform that you like, where you’ll enjoy creating content and that suits your audience and focus on that.</li><li>A scheduling tool. Eliminates all the back and forth.</li><li>A payment system, to let people purchase right on your simple site</li></ul>If you end up with an idea for a side hustle that requires you to take out a $10,000 loan, you’ve done it wrong. It shouldn’t be expensive.

The Quintessential Side Hustle Shopping List

To sell a product or service, you must emphasize its merits. Focus on its benefits. The key is to connect with people emotionally.You should seek out four types of people who can help you along the way once you’ve identified the benefits of your side hustle. <ol><li>Find supporters first. Families and friends are most likely to be involved – they can lend a hand in a variety of ways and support your effort. </li><li>Find a mentor, someone who offers guidance and advice. </li><li>Identify influencers. Trendsetters are those who spread the word about your product. </li><li>Finding ideal customers is the fourth step. </li></ol>

Understand Your Side Hustle’s Benefits And Involve The Right People

A guide to launching a profitable entrepreneural venture in less than a month shares practical exercises and inspiring stores about how to plan, launch, and refine a side business with minimal revenue and without having to quit a full-time job.

books

Books

The author of the New York Times Bestseller THE $100 STARTUP shows how to launch a profitable side hustle in just 27 days. For some people, the thought of quitting their day job to pursue the entrepreneurial life is exhilarating.  For many others, it’s terrifying. After all, a stable job that delivers a regular paycheck is a blessing. And not everyone has the means or the desire to take on the risks and responsibilities of working for themselves. But what if we could quickly and easily create an additional stream of income without giving up the security of a full-time job? Enter the side hustle. Chris Gullibeau is no stranger to this world, having launched more than a dozen side hustles over his career. Here, he offers a step-by-step guide that takes you from idea to income in just 27 days. Designed for the busy and impatient, this detailed roadmap will show you how to select, launch, refine, and make money from your side hustle in under a month. You’ll learn how to: •  Brainstorm, borrow, and steal to build an arsenal of great side hustle ideas (day 3) •  Apply “Tinder for Side Hustle” logic to pick the best idea at any time (day 6) •  Learn, gather, or create everything you need to launch; then set up a real life way to get paid (days 13-14) •  Start raking in the money by channeling your inner Girl Scout (day 18) •  Master the art of deals, discounts, and special offers (day 21) •  Raise your game: improve, expand, or make more money off your hustle (days 24-26) A side hustle is more than just another stream of income, it’s also the new job security. When you receive paychecks from different sources, it allows you to take more chances in your “regular” career. More income means more options. More options equals freedom. You don’t need entrepreneurial experience to launch a profitable side hustle. You don’t have to have an MBA, or know how to code, or be an expert marketer. You don’t need employees or investors. With Chris as a guide, anyone can make more money, pursue a passion, and enjoy greater security – without quitting their day job.

Chris Guillebeau is the New York Times bestselling author of The $100 Startup and other books. During a lifetime of self-employment, he visited every country in the world (193 in total) before his 35th birthday. Every summer in Portland, Oregon he hosts the World Domination Summit, a gathering of creative, remarkable people. Chris also hosts Side Hustle School, a popular podcast that is downloaded more than 2 million times a month.

Chris Guillebeau

Side Hustle

Side Hustle: From Idea to Income in 27 Days

Did you know that many of the world’s most famous entrepreneurs have mentors? They understand that success is not a one-person show and that mentors can help keep their businesses innovative and relevant.
According to Richard Branson, a large reason entrepreneurs don’t get mentors is because they feel it is a sign of weakness, but this is a big misconception. Entrepreneurs with mentors show that they are willing to learn, open to different perspectives and adaptable to change.

The Billionaires And Their Mentors

A small amount of time invested on your part to share your expertise can open up a new world for someone else.

Zuckerberg talked about his inspiring mentor Steve Jobs. “He was amazing,” said Zuckerberg. “I had a lot of questions for him.” He described how Jobs gave him advice about how he could build a team that was as focused as Zuckerberg on building “high quality and good things”. They also both believed that their life paths were meant for more than just building businesses. They wanted to change the lives of people. Zuckerberg wrote in a final farewell Facebook post to Jobs: “Thanks for showing that what you build can change the world.”

Steve Jobs: The Mentor Of Mark Zuckerberg

As we look ahead into the next century, leaders will be those who empower others.

Bill Gates credited Warren Buffet for teaching him how to deal with tough situations and how to think long-term. Gates also greatly admires Buffet’s “desire to teach things that are complex and put them in a simple form, so that people can understand and get the benefit of all his experience.” Buffet is empowered by Gates too. “What I really most admire about Bill is the view he has about what he should do with the wealth he’s accumulated…he knows he’s a beneficiary of a terrific society.”

Warren Buffet: Mentor Of Bill Gates

If you ask any successful businessperson, they will always (say they) have had a great mentor at some point along the road.

Richard Branson understands the importance of mentorship. Branson asked British airline entrepreneur, Sir Freddie Laker, for guidance during his struggle to get Virgin Atlantic off the ground.Branson believes the first step to finding a great mentor is <a href="http://www.virgin.com/richard-branson/the-importance-of-having-a-mentor-in-business">admitting you can benefit from a mentor</a>: “Understandably there’s a lot of ego, nervous energy and parental pride involved, especially with one- or two-person start-ups…Going it alone is an admirable, but foolhardy and highly flawed approach to taking on the world.”

Sir Freddy Laker: Mentor Of Richard Branson

If you have an experienced mentor it can be life changing and extremely valuable to your personal development and your business. 
Whether your relationship is just for one year, or ongoing throughout your business journey, mentorship can empower you and drastically increase the chance of your business succeeding.

Ever thought of getting a mentor? Read about 3 famous billionaire entrepreneurs and mentors who helped them achieve their goals..

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Career

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Motivation & Inspiration

Three Famous Billionaire Entrepreneurs and their Mentors - Small Business BC

“We’ve let the market dictate what our smart kids do, and they’re being systematically funneled into obvious, structured paths that don’t serve them or the economy terribly well.”

Our most talented and educated young people are doing the wrong things. Our smart people are heading to finance or law school or management consulting, instead of building or developing companies. We need to get our smart people to do things again. They’d like to but are often led to seek jobs with status and progress rather than a genuine desire or natural fit.  Meanwhile, there are huge needs in other sectors needing smart people who can manage, operate, improve and innovate.

Top students often end up in the same industries

Companies less than five years old used to make up half of all companies. Now it is less than a third. Since 2008, most US workers are employed at companies with 500+ employees. However, big companies don't create jobs. They don't move the economy forward.  The bigger companies get, the more they try to automate as much as they can and then reduce the number of employees, not increase it.Big banks and consulting firms give advice around cutting costs, firing people and outsourcing work that can be done cheaper elsewhere.

Big firms don't add to job growth

Countries need jobs, especially jobs in healthy, growing companies. Without it, there are no complex transactions to support bankers, lawyers, and consultants already in the graduate school pipeline. Innovation happens in startups. Pairing young, smart, hardworking people with startup teams and mentors can lead to a meaningful contribution, leading to more jobs and new ventures in the future. After two years of working at a startup or growth company, the desire to build things will drive you to bring more jobs to your neighbourhood.

How students can take an entrepreneurial exit

Much has been made of the extraordinary degree of independence and responsibility that you have at a startup, even as a fresh-faced graduate…you can matter at a startup in a way you can’t at a big company—not unless you spend years slaving your way up the PowerPoint hierarchy.

This book explains that the existing education system stunts the economy. Instead of talented students blazing new paths and building new ventures, they are led to follow existing paths that are well paved and require little ingenuity.

Andrew Yang, the founder of Venture for America, offers a unique solution to our country’s economic and social problems—our smart people should be building things. Smart People Should Build Things offers a stark picture of the current culture and a revolutionary model that will redirect a generation of ambitious young people to the critical job of innovating and building new businesses. As the Founder and CEO of Venture for America, Andrew Yang places top college graduates in start-ups for two years in emerging U.S. cities to generate job growth and train the next generation of entrepreneurs. He knows firsthand how our current view of education is broken. Many college graduates aspire to finance, consulting, law school, grad school, or medical school out of a vague desire for additional status and progress rather than from a genuine passion or fit. In Smart People Should Build Things, this self-described “recovering lawyer” and entrepreneur weaves together a compelling narrative of success stories (including his own), offering observations about the flow of talent in the United States and explanations of why current trends are leading to economic distress and cultural decline. He also presents recommendations for both policy makers and job seekers to make entrepreneurship more realistic and achievable.

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Learning & Education

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Creativity

Andrew Yang, the founder of Venture for America, offers a unique solution to our country’s economic and social problems—our smart people should be building things. Smart People Should Build Things offers a stark picture of the current culture and a revolutionary model that will redirect a generation of ambitious young people to the critical job of innovating and building new businesses.As the Founder and CEO of Venture for America, Andrew Yang places top college graduates in start-ups for two years in emerging U.S. cities to generate job growth and train the next generation of entrepreneurs. He knows firsthand how our current view of education is broken. Many college graduates aspire to finance, consulting, law school, grad school, or medical school out of a vague desire for additional status and progress rather than from a genuine passion or fit.In Smart People Should Build Things, this self-described “recovering lawyer” and entrepreneur weaves together a compelling narrative of success stories (including his own), offering observations about the flow of talent in the United States and explanations of why current trends are leading to economic distress and cultural decline. He also presents recommendations for both policy makers and job seekers to make entrepreneurship more realistic and achievable.

Andrew Yang

Smart People Should Build Things

The film industry did not offer a very rosy view of the business world in 2021. Dominated by streaming giants and independent studios, the year in movies had a wealth of poignant stories about financial distress in a range of cultures and locations. There was a mass of gig economy workers struggling professionally and financially. A daughter helping to keep her deaf parents' fishing business from collapsing. An Albanian widow in Kosovo working to start a small business amid civil unrest. Inspirational and tragic alike, each film has a lesson to offer for entrepreneurs.

The 8 Best Movies of the Year for Entrepreneurs

This high-octane thriller tells the true story of how Ross Ulbricht created his infamous dark web-based "Amazon-for-drugs," which amassed more than $1 billion in sales before being taken down by the DEA.
It's an instructive parable about the dangers of unfettered e-commerce.

Silk Road

The epic documentary about how WeWork's frathouse-like office culture, unrealistic expectations, and cartoonish overspending caused the co-working business's IPO and its utopian vision to unravel in just six weeks. 
Along the way, co-founder Adam Neumann demonstrates some excellent examples of how not to lead an organization.

WeWork: Or the Making and Breaking of a $47 Billion Unicorn

Ruby, a Child Of Deaf Adults (CODA), spends every morning before school working on the family's struggling commercial fishing boat in Gloucester, Massachusetts. 
Embroiled in the local fishing industry's fight with authorities, Ruby must choose between her family obligations and her dream of pursuing a music career. A critical darling, CODA is a touching story of learning how to communicate and the challenges of running a family business.

CODA

The Gig Is Up explores the human costs of the $5 trillion gig economy. 
Told through the lives of people working for Uber, Deliveroo, and other companies, the documentary offers an alternative view of the much-hyped transformation of the global workforce.

The Gig Is Up

El Buen Patrón is the thrilling Spanish-language story of the owner of an industrial scales manufacturing business (Javier Bardem) who works tirelessly to pacify his disaffected staff before a visit from an awards committee. 
Satirical and witty, the film is focused on what happens when supervisors cross boundaries into employees' personal lives.

El Buen Patrón (The Good Boss)

This Albanian-language darling of the Sundance film festival tells the story of a widow in Kosovo starting a business selling honey and ajvar (a traditional relish made from red bell peppers) to provide for her two children, in the face of overwhelming grief and a repressive patriarchal society.

Hive

Transforming a niche (and often dangerous) hobby into a globally recognized sport takes an entrepreneurial vision. 
The late Jake Burton Carpenter did just that for snowboarding. By tenaciously pulling together sponsors, ski resorts, and major athletes, Carpenter launched his business--and ultimately a worldwide phenomenon.

Dear Rider

Produced by and starring The Evil Dead's Bruce Campbell, this horror-comedy film pits an unmotivated team of toy store employees against a horde of bloodthirsty, parasite-infected shoppers on Black Friday. 
It's a gory--but apt--satire of what life is like on the front lines of the retail industry during the Covid pandemic. Fittingly, Black Friday will premiere on Black Friday, November 26.

Black Friday

From 'WeWork' to 'El Buen Patrón', this year's film lineup is jam-packed with stories of workplace disasters and financial woe. Here are eight 2021 movies every business owner should see, listed in order of release date.

From 'WeWork' to 'El Buen Patrón', this year's film lineup is jam-packed with stories of workplace disasters and financial woe.

movies

Movies & Shows

Product localization means adapting or modifying a product or service for a given language, culture, or region. Many confuse localization with translation, but the truth is that translation is only one part of the process. For a new target audience to trust and buy your product, it has to look and feel local too. This includes using local address and date formats, displaying the correct currency and units of measure, choosing appropriate colors and graphics, and much more.

What Is Product Localization and Why Is It Important?

Before you start your product localization, there is one essential step to complete: getting the right team together. Your localization workflow will typically involve product managers, developers, translators, and UX designers. When your localization needs grow, you might want to engage a dedicated software localization engineer to oversee and drive the entire process beside having a translation or localization project manager. Once the roles are clear, you can get started with the following steps:

What Does an Ideal Product Localization Workflow Look Like?

Internationalization (i18n) is fundamental for successfully localizing mobile apps and other software. As part of the product development process, it enables localization on a technical level. The key here is to separate source code from localizable elements. When you can rely on a single code base for every version of your product, it is much easier and quicker to adapt the software to a new market.

Internationalizing Your Product

There are different channels that you can leverage to provide context for your translation team:<ul><li>Specific project guidelines or a project brief outlining the scope, scale, timeline, and detailed requirements of the assignment,</li><li>Foreign language documentation and product or industry-specific glossaries will ensure the correct use of established terminology unique to your business,</li><li>Images, diagrams, illustrations, as well as user interface screenshots attached to each translation key individually can provide translators with greater visual information.</li></ul>

Preparing a Localization Toolkit for Translators

Aside from glossaries and style guides, translators take advantage of computer-aided translation (CAT) tools to increase their efficiency and translation quality. One of the most widely used is translation memory. By collecting previous translations in a single database, it suggests matching results from past projects while translating new content, thereby ensuring overall consistency across all of your translations. Additionally, translators should have access to communication channels where they can ask questions and clarify any uncertainties with your developers.

Translation and Review

Businesses often rush or even skip this step to release their localized software more quickly — with dire consequences. Just a small error in the code can make the software look broken. And a wrong translation of a headline can put off users immediately. Now is the time to find and fix any bugs before your customers notice them.

Testing and Quality Assurance

When you have completed all tests successfully, then there is only one thing left to do: releasing your localized product to your new target market. Collecting direct feedback from your users is invaluable in identifying further opportunities for improvement.

Releasing the Localized Product

While you could try to accomplish everything manually yourself, you will be infinitely faster and truly effective if you let a translation management system (TMS) do the heavy lifting. Allowing your team to work together on a shared interface across geographies and time zones, you will not only avoid common mistakes in software localization but also make the whole process fast and painless.

How a Translation Management Tool Will Make Your Life Easier

Businesses that localize their products have an easier time gaining the trust of new target audiences. Consumers around the world simply expect a seamless user experience in their own language. With that in mind, the question is not if you should localize your product, but how you will do it. The localization process is not an insurmountable hurdle, and it should not stand in the way of your expansion goals, no matter how ambitious they may be.

Product Localization Is Not a One-Time Thing

Editor’s note; this post was written by Phrase. If you’re interested in contributing to our blog, please contact gaby@productschool.com Your very first app is finally cut and dried. You have been…

product

Product & Design

From Zero to Hero: Product Localization for Global Markets

Product Operations, or Product Ops, is a role within a product team that facilitates the easy communication and sharing of resources and data between departments. It’s an essential role to help cross-functional product teams work effectively and efficiently.While some companies are still coming to terms with the idea of Product Management, Product Ops already has a blueprint. Marketing ops, sales ops, and DevOps have been an essential part of business for years.

What is Product Ops?

POMs have a passion for problem-solving, and they work out many chinks in your development’s armor.Some of the tasks owned by a POM include:<ul><li>Managing which tools the product team uses (communication, road mapping, prototyping, user-onboarding, etc)</li><li>Developing business processes</li><li>Facilitating market research</li><li>Setting goals for teams and individual contributors</li><li>Owning and developing strategies for the teams’ priorities</li><li>Analyzing data</li><li>Social media sentiment mining</li><li>Analyzing user feedback and NPS scores.</li></ul>

What does a Product Operations Manager do?

<ul><li>Data: PMs need to be data-driven, but they don’t need to be data analysts. POMs have a focus on data-in and handle all aspects from collection to analysis.&nbsp;</li><li>Experimentation: Experiments, such as A/B testing, are part of a standard Product Management toolkit. But POMs will usually be more hands-on during the implementation and tracking stages.</li><li>Vision and Strategy: PMs own the product vision, defining the north star that keeps teams aligned and focused on a common goal. A POM helps the PM to define the vision, and to communicate it internally.</li></ul>

Product Manager vs Product Operations Manager

<ul><li>The benefit of having Product Ops, is that you have someone who understands data like the back of their hand.</li><li>A POM helps to ensure that your teams are using the correct tools, and are using them efficiently.</li><li>By handling a lot of the micro-level tasks, they free up PMs to work on a macro-level.</li></ul>

The Benefits of Product Ops

<ul><li>The average Product Ops Manager salary in the US is $96,845 according to PayScale and can go up to $127,000. Compared to the same figures for a Product Manager ($84,052 and $122,000), it can be a very lucrative career path.&nbsp;</li><li>Product Ops Managers often need more experience. It’s quite rare to find an entry-level Product Ops Manager role, because it requires a lot of attention to detal.</li><li>It’s better to get your first job as a Product Manager, get a feel for how you prefer to work, and then make the transition.</li></ul>

Becoming a Product Ops Manager

For such an integral part of product, it’s amazing that nobody seems to know what Product Ops is! As a skill on LinkedIn, Product Operations has grown 80% in the last year. So why is no one really…

For a company that has never had a Product Manager or practice before, the first thing to think about is educating your colleagues on why you are there.&nbsp;Get their feedback on what they expect from you and shape their vision on what your role is. For a PM one of the key aspects for success is stakeholder management.

First Steps as a Product Manager

One of the things that you have to accept as a PM is that there will always be some unknowns and you cannot plan everything 100%. So the first thing is to have an open mind. Another useful thing is to make sure you involve all the relevant people before moving forward with experiment/development/ testing, etc.Don’t rely on just yourself. There are probably a lot of people in your company who will have knowledge, skills, etc, that will be very useful. Bring people together.

Accounting for Unknown Unknowns When Planning

First thing is — get comfortable with the fact that you may not be as competent as others on some topics and it’s actually great. Respect the skills of other people and let them make the decisions in the areas they are responsible for. Be open to learning, ask questions, ask for their help on understanding things.This makes people think of their own ideas, and solutions so it benefits them too. Create an environment of healthy challenges where everyone can challenge things, but not just for the sake of challenges — the goal is to be getting better and achieve the shared goal you have.

The Hard Skills That a PM Needs To Have

This week Product School hosted Dia Serazutdinova, a Product Lead at N26 for an #AskMeAnything session. Dia shared some tips for to set success metrics in FinTech for aspiring PMs. She also talked…

Success Metrics in FinTech with N26 Product Lead

One of the biggest myths surrounding the product industry is that you need to have deep technical knowledge and coding abilities. However, some people with a technical background want to use it to their advantage to get the more technical roles. Certain companies, like Google and Apple, require tech know-how to land any job in product.

An Aspiring Product Manager’s Guide to Coding Interviews

Companies may ask product management candidates to sit a coding interview for a few reasons:<ul><li>The more tech knowledge an applicant has, the better positioned they are to work at a tech giant.</li><li>Some roles and products, require the candidate to have a lot of technical knowledge.</li><li>It’s a small company.  Everyone has to roll up their sleeves pitch in</li><li>They want to test your analytical abilities. Some companies use coding interviews as a way to test your analytics skills.</li></ul>

Product Managers Go Through Coding Interviews

In a coding interview, the interviewer wants to assess your technical abilities. They’ll be conducted in person or in a video call. If you’ve only got a phone interview, then you’re probably in the earlier stages and shouldn’t need to worry about anything too technical coming up.

What To Expect From a Coding Interview

This style of interview is becoming more and more favoured by Microsoft, Uber, and Google interviewers, and is known as a ‘ system design interview’. They may test a candidates understanding of data structures as it indicates their overall CS understanding.

Coding Interview Subjects

One of the most common questions aspiring Product Managers have before they take the leap is “ do I need to know how to code?” One of the biggest myths surrounding the product industry is that…

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