10 lessons to become a successful entrepreneur: Wise words from a Silicon Valley CEO
To become a successful entrepreneur, you need inspiration, motivation, determination, passion, and just as importantly an open mind to consider the pearls of wisdom from industry leaders.
As more and more industry leaders are reaching out to share insights with people starting their entrepreneurial journeys, it’s a great time to listen, learn, and adapt lessons that can guide you on the right path.
Cooliris CEO Soujanya Bhumkar is passionate about building great teams and products, which have reached over 100 million users to date. In the slideshow below, Soujanya shares the lessons he’s learned from his own journey in the tech startup world. Take a look now and take a step toward your own success!
Cooliris CEO Soujanya Bhumkar to speak at BeLaunch 2013, South Korea
South Korea’s largest technology and start-up conference is due to take place from May 1st to 3rd this year. Aptly titled BeLaunch 2013, this conference aims to revolutionize the start-up and technology scene in South Korea. We were honored to receive an invitation to be part of this platform that aims to change the technology ecosystem in South Korea.
Drawing on a breadth of experience, our CEO, Soujanya Bhumkar will happily share his wealth of knowledge about start-ups with South Korean enthusiasts. He is delighted at the thought of sharing his vision to help other entrepreneurs fulfill their dreams. He will be speaking on May 2, 2013, day 2 of the conference, on “Disruptive Asian Entrepreneurs – Cracking the Silicon Valley Code.” Some questions that will be covered in the panel discussion are:
-
Why does Silicon Valley attract entrepreneurial talent from all over the world, including Asia?
-
Why should entrepreneurs from Asia consider moving to Silicon Valley?
-
What challenges do Asian entrepreneurs face in the Silicon Valley?
-
How can entrepreneurs get started in the Silicon Valley? (Best practice examples)
The conference aims at grooming South Korean tech talent to go global, and also provides a platform for foreign start-ups to enter South Korea. His words are sure to help you if you are looking to gain insight into the start-up scene in the Silicon Valley or are looking to begin your own start-up anywhere in the world.
If you happen to be in Seoul on May 2, 2013, be sure to attend BeLaunch 2013 and hear our CEO speak. It takes place at COEX, Gangnam, Seoul.
Behind the scenes: Office prank on Lucy
Silly String went on sale last week and the timing could not have been better. Our teammate Lucy had just returned from Germany and it happened to be her birthday to boot. So we just had to surprise her.
After a slew of secret meetings, we hatched our plan. All that was required were 12 volunteers and a whopping 24 cans of Silly String.
The idea was simple: Cover her in layers and layers and layers of Silly String as soon as she walked in through the office doors. And that is exactly what we did.
Once we started spraying, we just couldn’t stop! Take a look yourself:
Welcome back and happy birthday, Lucy!
Randy Komisar on selective sharing and the future of personal media
With the power to connect with people anywhere and anytime at your fingertips, you face the question of what, how and with whom you want to share. This is especially true when sharing private content like photos. You want to be in control. And that’s exactly where selective sharing plays a pivotal role.
“Pictures are an important way to capture your passions, and share with them other people,” says Randy Komisar, general partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. “Those people are people who mean something to you, which means they are not everybody….That’s why selectivity is important in sharing.”
In a recent interview, Komisar talks about the growth of personal media and how it is integrated into our daily lives, and why selective sharing is needed more today then ever.
According to Komisar, the future of personal media lies in the coming together of media and communications and how we share them.
Here is an excerpt from the interview:
Earth Day 2013: Photos raise awareness about our planet
As the world celebrates Earth Day 2013 today, Cooliris is excited to spread awareness of its cause with the help of our users.
Last week we asked our users to submit their #coolearth photos to us via Instagram and Twitter. We received a number of photos that highlight the beauty of our planet and how we personally interact with nature around us.
While we marvel at the beauty of our planet, we also need to be mindful of activities that harm the earth. We received a haunting picture from @tosinamida from Ibadan, Nigeria, who caught an image of a drain filled with plastic bottles, akin to a disastrous landfill. The message the user sent with the picture states: “practices like this cannot continue if we are to remain sustainable”.
Remember to celebrate the spirit of Earth Day today and every day, and vow to do all as we can to protect the precious planet we live on.
Media meets communication: Cooliris CTO speaks at ChinaBang 2013
Cooliris CTO Austin Shoemaker was in Beijing last week to speak at ChinaBang 2013, an annual conference on the start-up ecosystem in China.
To an international audience composed of engineers, business managers, and journalists, Austin spoke about the need to further bridge the gap between media centric apps and broadcast apps, where you take photos, stylize them and broadcast them to a vast audience.
Today, the need is answered only in part by chat applications, where media can be shared in a private sphere. But the limitation with chat apps is that they are linear, allowing you to only share one thing at a time.
Austin described how the new Cooliris app provides a solution to fill this divide, where you can share media in smaller groups and in a private context. He explained how Coolris combines media and communication into a unified experience across both private groups and public social networks.
In his words, “We add a personal layer to social media networks”. Cooliris aggregates all your media into one library, organizes it by context, and helps you share it with your specific audience.
ChinaBang is organized by Technode, one of the biggest names in tech media in China.
Submit your Earth Day photos to #Coolearth to raise awareness
April 22, 2013, a billion people around the world will come together to take part in Earth Day, creating awareness about climate change and its impact on our lives and those around us.
To express our solidarity with the organisations, communities and individuals across the globe calling to protect our planet, Cooliris will create a mesmerizing collection of photographs that highlights problems we face as result of climate change.
We invite you to take part. Tell your stories by submitting photographs to us between now and next Monday. We’ll pick the best ones and display them through our social media channels and our blog post on April 22.
To submit your Earth Day photos, just post them through Instagram, Twitter or Pinterest with the hashtag #Coolearth.
To learn more about other ways you can contribute on Earth Day, click here.
Robert Scoble and the growing trend in selective sharing.
“I want people to present something that has value to me. And that means selection,” says Robert Scoble. The renowned tech blogger shared his thoughts with us on the growing importance of selective sharing and keeping one’s public and private profiles in control. Often you end up asking yourself lots of questions before you post to Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
What image of yourself are you building when you post personal media to the public? What will people think about it? What will their thoughts be? Will it probably come back to you at some point in the future?
We posed these questions to Scoble and this is what he had to say. “For most people, it’s about control. For me, I just want to signal the system who should see that picture. If you want to see my baby photos, you can see them, but I don’t waste your time if you’re not interested… . So, selective sharing matters a lot.”
With the new Cooliris, the power to choose is with you. You decide who to share your photos and conversations with. The tide is changing and selective sharing is soon becoming the new norm.
New features in Google Drive make organizing photos a breeze
Organizing and viewing your photos in Google Drive is now easier than ever. We added several features with our update yesterday – if you are a Google Drive user, you should check them out!
When you think of organizing your photos, you think of being slouched over your computer and tediously dragging and dropping photos into their proper places. Or perhaps, you’re simply too busy to bother. Now, there’s a better way to organize your photos. With the new Cooliris update, you can sit back and relax on your couch with a good cup of coffee and your iPad, and get the job done with ease and flair.
In the new version, you can not only bulk save multiple photos from any source to Google Drive, but also easily save them into existing Google Drive folders or create new ones on the fly. Then, when you are viewing Google Drive in the Cooliris app, you can easily find your photos in your folders within seconds.
With the new Cooliris update, you can finish saving, organizing and sharing all your photos before your coffee gets cold. Get it now in the iTunes App Store!
Endless Discovery: Cooliris Features Photos From Friends, Followers and Dropbox
Team Cooliris has been working tirelessly for the last few months to bring you yet another super cool update. For those of you who have been following our journey, this update brings a sublime photo discovery experience with it. Your beautiful 3D wall now not only showcases your own photographs but those of your friends and followers as well. Version 2.6 delivers a host of new features that promise endless discovery.
So WHAT’S NEW:
Endless Discovery of friends’ photos - Deeper integration with friends for enriched and meaningful social discovery.
Facebook friends’ photos, Instagram followers and following photos, Flickr contacts’ photos, and Renren friends’ photos are all now surfaced in the app for a beautiful experience. Now you can truly see all of your photos in one place - whether it is your own photos or photos from your friends, followers, and so on.
And that is not all we have in store for you in this release. We have added yet another useful source to store and share your beautiful treasures: Dropbox.
Furthermore, we have added folder navigation into the menu, so you can select any folder in Google Drive and Dropbox and explore them with delight. You can also save photos from any other source, whether it’s your mobile library, Facebook, Instagram, Renren, Picasa, Flickr, directly into a specific Google Drive or Dropbox Folder. This gives you an easy way to organize and save photo collections from your mobile device.
In short, there’s no other app that does it like we do. It’s a fast and fluid experience with selective sharing. With the launch of this new version, Cooliris is the “one-stop app” for all of your photos. We’re creating a better experience for you to connect, discover and selectively share your photos the way you want, from any source of your choice.
So what are you waiting for? Download version 2.6 from the iTunes App Store for free. Time to begin your endless discovery.
