February 25, 2018

2 min read

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

When it comes to business, the tides are always changing. And to be successful as an entrepreneur, it’s important to keep up to date with what’s trending in the startup world. To identify and understand what’s hot and what’s not right now, Kempler Industries analyzed data from 200 of the world’s top startups, as ranked by the website Startup Ranking.

Related: 18 Marketing Trends to Watch in 2018

Wondering what the most popular categories are amongst startups today? Based on what businesses are helping customers accomplish, the study found that 21 percent help customers “find,” meaning discover content and recommend places to go and people to help. Following the “find” category, another 11 percent of businesses are helping consumers “buy” goods and services online and 9 percent are helping people and businesses “organize.” The study uncovered a total of 16 other top categories including “reading,” “creating” and “collaborating,” to name a few.

Related: 10 Social-Media Trends to Prepare for in 2018

Overall, the United States was found to be the country with the most startups. Following the U.S. is India, Canada and Japan and Spain. So, which startup is on top? Airbnb, which has millions of hosts and guests using the platform worldwide. Following close behind is Uber, Medium, 500px and Hootsuite.

Check out Kempler’s infographic below to learn more on what’s trending in the startup space today.

February 24, 2018

3 min read

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

It’s pretty standard for people in tech to take home some big salaries. But just how much money are these people making? A recent study by Hired.com analyzed data from more than 69,000 job seekers and 10,000 companies, as well as surveying more than 700 tech workers, to uncover salary trends among tech workers in major cities around the world.

Related: 4 Winning Salary Negotiation Strategies

It’s no surprise that some of today’s highest-paid tech workers reside in the Bay Area — home to companies including Facebook, Google and Apple. On average, a tech employee makes an annual salary of $142,000 in the Bay. However, workers in cities including Seattle, Los Angeles and New York aren’t far behind. Seattle comes in second for highest-paid tech workers, with an average of $132,000 annually. Tech employees in the Big Apple and La La Land each take home an average $129,000 a year.

Thinking about moving to one of these cities? Before doing that, it’s important to take into account the typical standard of living costs in each of these places. While a $129,000 salary might sound like a dream-come-true, people in New York City are actually worse off than any others because of the high cost of living. In fact, after adjusting the salary with the average total cost of living in New York, researchers found that NYC techies are the worst off compared to people in other cities and that their average salary is still $6,000 lower than that of residents in the Bay Area. So, if you want to save money, take a look at Austin, Texas.

Related: Fixing the Pay Gap Starts With Your Salary Negotiation Skills

Austin is making its way onto the map in the tech world, with average salaries there increasing between 2016 and 2017 by 7 percent, with an average $118,000 in 2017. However, after taking into account living costs, the adjusted salary winds up being more like $202,000. “This means the average Austin tech worker would need an $84,000 raise to maintain their same standard of living in San Francisco,” the study explains.

Overall, the global average salary for tech workers in major cities is $135,000. And the tech industry that’s paying workers the most is transportation, which has an average $145,000 annual salary. Unfortunately, these numbers tend to plateau for people 45 and older. According to the research, the salaries of tech workers usually peak around $151,000 in their mid-forties, and decline to $150,000 or less for people 45 years old until retirement.

Related: Level-Up Your Salary With These 5 Simple Tips

For a closer look at the tech salary trends of major cities, check out the infographic below.

Image credit: Hired.com

 

February 23, 2018

7 min read

You can’t please everybody, and the people who design tech interfaces know this truth all too well.

These folks have to consider conflicting suggestions from users to improve the experience on their favorite platforms, but their customers aren’t the only ones whose preferences they have to take into account.

They’ve got advertisers who want their images and videos prominently displayed. They’ve got academics, activists and governments scrutinizing how tech features manipulate the masses. They’ve got various other egos, from investors to executives, chiming in with their two cents. And they’ve got competitors that they’re trying to either copy or out-innovate.

Related: Why These People and Brands Are Fed Up With Facebook

The users who express their grievances with updates don’t consider this. It seems that every time a major tech platform introduces a new feature or redesign, people get mad. Think this is an exaggeration? Check out these tweets from 2007 through 2012 containing the words “hate Facebook update.” Or these tweets containing “Instagram changes suck” from 2015 through 2017. Or the most recent tweets about “the new Google calendar.”

Or take Snapchat, which recently rolled out a redesign of its interface that separates brands from friends and fills a tab that used to house stories with branded content. Putting partner content front-and-center, in a section of the app users habitually visit, was meant to boost engagement with that paid content. In fact, the number of daily users watching stories from publishers grew 40 percent in tests of the redesigned version of the app vs. in the old version.

It pissed people off. A Change.org petition titled “Remove the new Snapchat Update” circulated and received upwards of 1.23 million signatures. On Feb. 21, 2018, celebrity influencer Kylie Jenner tweeted that she no longer uses Snapchat to her 24.5 million Twitter followers. The comment tanked parent company Snap’s market valuation — it fell by $1.3 billion in less than a day. Jenner, mind you, was the most popular person on Snapchat for a period in 2015.

sooo does anyone else not open Snapchat anymore? Or is it just me… ugh this is so sad.

— Kylie Jenner (@KylieJenner) February 21, 2018

still love you tho snap … my first love

— Kylie Jenner (@KylieJenner) February 21, 2018

 

Image Credit: Google

Ironically, content about Kylie Jenner was among the featured posts on Snapchat Discover on Feb. 22 and 23 — “still love you tho!”

In the past, Snapchat has listened to users’ requests and implemented changes, such as when it stopped autoplaying consecutive stories in late 2016. And it listened to the Change.org petitioners, too, posting a response on Feb. 20 (before Jenner dropped her damning tweet). “We hear you,” Snap told the concerned users. “We completely understand the new Snapchat has felt uncomfortable for many.”

Related: 5 Stats That Show Snap May Be Turning Its Struggling Business Around

Snap then explained the goals it had with the redesign: To make interactions among friends more accessible and for both friend and branded content to surface according to what the user is most likely to want to see. It also announced that tabs in both the Friends and Discover sections are on their way, to allow users to customize what they see.

“This new foundation is just the beginning, and we will always listen closely to find new ways to make the service better for everyone,” the statement concluded. “We are grateful for your enthusiasm and creativity. We are very excited for what’s ahead.”

Although user feedback would suggest that Snapchat really messed up with its new redesign, it’s getting at least two things right with this statement. The company has told its users it’s listening to them, and it’s explained why it made the changes it did.

That’s what Basecamp designer Jonas Downey advised in a Medium post, “How to launch software changes without pissing people off,” last March:

“It’s bad enough to be forced into an update you didn’t agree to, but it’s even worse if you have no idea what happened or why things changed. Make sure you have a way to introduce and explain what’s new when you launch, either via in-app announcements, a mailing list, a blog or whatever method you have to communicate with customers.”

Developers and users need to empathize with each other. It’s hard to roll out a redesign that won’t be jarring to users. It’s also difficult (not impossible, but it requires extra work) for companies to maintain two versions — old and new — just so users can choose to opt out of an update.

TechCrunch contributor and FreshBooks Creative Director Jeremy Bailey suggests taking a proactive approach to considering customer feedback. Companies should research customer wants and needs before and during development to prevent backlash upon a rollout.

“Design teams must learn to become a group of ethnographers, learning to spot the unmet needs of customers and adapting to meet their concerns,” Bailey writes, noting that “every product design — or redesign — should start with customer research, generally in the form of interviews to understand customer needs and gather insights that inform a ‘problem statement’ — a series of issues that must be addressed in the design process.”

It’s also important for companies to be receptive when users point out unforeseen issues with product updates, says Sara Wachter-Boettcher, author of Technically Wrong: Sexist Apps, Biased Algorithms, and Other Threats of Toxic Tech.

“Oftentimes, those complaints highlight real failures,” Wachter-Boettcher told Entrepreneur in an email, “failures that could harm people or leave them open to abuse.”

She sites Snapchat’s June 2017 Snap Maps update as an example of a new feature that users flagged as having potential for abuse in the form of stalking, as well as a Google Maps update that associated walking distance with calories burned, depicted with cupcake symbols. She explains how users found the latter update to be harmful to people with eating disorders or who could not or chose not to walk, not to mention that calorie counts aren’t the best indicator of fitness, among other issues.

“Most of all, they complained that this is not something they signed up for,” she says. “The app was meant to map things. They hadn’t opted in to a health tracker. Google turned off the features.”

A final example she provides happened with Twitter in early 2017: The company temporarily stopped notifying users when they were added to Twitter Lists. Women, in particular, wanted to know, “because lists are one way trolls and abusers share targets” by adding women to lists with names such as “stupid bitches.” Twitter reinstated notifications after people raised these concerns.

“If companies care about the safety and wellbeing of their users, then they can’t write off criticism that might seem superficial or change-averse at first blush,” Wachter-Boettcher says. “I think that loud, massive outcry is actually a gift to a tech company. It’s free feedback that may allow them to uncover a problem that they hadn’t anticipated, before it hurts people.”

Entrepreneur will update this story amid outcry about future tech updates.

Related video: Why This Business Leader Says Feedback Is the ‘Breakfast of Champions’

February 22, 2018

11 min read

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

With a net worth of more than $86 billion, Bill Gates is known for being one of the richest people in the world. But there’s a lot more you probably don’t know about the Microsoft co-founder.

Gates was born in Seattle in 1955 and discovered his passion for technology early on. In school, he met long-time friend and future co-founder Paul Allen. Together, they launched another small-business venture before coming up with the idea for Microsoft.

Related: 5 Life Lessons From Bill Gates, One of the Most Influential Philanthropists on Earth

Until he realized his desire to pursue computers, Gates had planned to become a lawyer and studied pre-law at Harvard. He eventually dropped out, launched Microsoft and met his employee and future wife, Melinda. Today, Gates is not only a self-made billionaire and tech leader, but he’s also a philanthropist, an author and even a knight.

Check out these 20 surprising facts about Bill Gates.

Additional reporting by Nina Zipkin

Image credit: Joe McNally | Getty Images

1. Gates developed his first computer software program at 13 years old.

After spending a few years in public school, Gates later attended the Lakeside School, a private preparatory school in Seattle. It was there that Gates discovered his passion for computer programming and met Paul Allen, who became his close friend and later Microsoft co-founder. He also developed his first computer software program at age 13. Using BASIC computer language, the program was a tic-tac-toe game in which players could compete against the computer.

2. Gates fixed his high school’s class scheduling software so he was in all-girls classes.

The Lakeside School recruited Gates to help code its class scheduling system. Gates took advantage of his new task and his coding abilities, and he and his long-time pal and later Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen tweaked the school’s scheduling software and placed Gates in all-girls classes.

“Paul did the computer scheduling with me. Unfortunately for him he was two years ahead of me and he was off to college by then. So I was the one who benefited by being able to have the nice girls at least sit near me,” Gates shared with BBC.

Image credit: Bruce Glikas

3. Gates and Allen formed a business partnership before Microsoft.

From the moment they met in middle school, Gates and Allen became friends — likely because of their common interest in computer programming. While in school, the two formed a company called Traf-O-Data. They put together a small computer based on an Intel 8008 chip that measured and analyzed traffic data for the Washington state highway department. Gates and Allen made about $20,000 from the venture, but it slowly dissolved as Allen went on to work for Honeywell in Boston and Gates enrolled at Harvard.

4. He almost had a perfect SAT score.

It’s hardly shocking that the genius got a near-perfect score on his SATs. Gates scored a 1590 out of 1600 on the college entrance exams.

5. Gates originally studied law in college.

In 1973, Gates began studying pre-law at Harvard University, planning to follow in the footsteps of his lawyer father. Although by his sophomore year, Gates’s plans changed and he began taking some of the school’s most rigorous math and science courses. Then, two years into his Harvard career, Gates dropped out to pursue Microsoft.

6. Gates was arrested twice for his driving.

In 1975, in his Porsche 911, 19-year-old Gates was arrested for speeding and driving without a license. But he didn’t learn his lesson — two years later, Gates was arrested again in Albuquerque, N.M., for another traffic violation and for driving without his license.

There’s speculation that the generic user icon in Microsoft Outlook 10 is actually a silhouette of Gates’s mugshot.

7. His wife, Melinda, used to work for him.

After graduating from Duke University in 1986, Melinda Gates landed her first job at a startup — Microsoft.

“I just thought, ‘Oh my gosh. I have to work at this company. They are changing the world. And if I get an offer, there’s no way I’m not going to take it,’ ” Melinda told CBS News.

Melinda scored the job, and shortly into her time working there, she made a great impression on the boss.

Related: Warren Buffett and Bill Gates’s Top Secret to Success

“I met her at a New York City sales meeting,” Bill told CBS. “And then it was only a week or so after that, that I went up to her in the parking lot and asked if she wanted to go out.”

Image credit: Bloomberg | Getty Images

8. He was once the youngest billionaire ever.

Gates made his first billion in 1987 at the age of 31, making him the youngest billionaire ever at that time.  

9. On his wedding day, he rented out every room at the hotel.

To ensure privacy, Gates rented out all 250 rooms at the Manele Bay Hotel in Lanai, Hawaii, where his wedding party was staying. At the time (1994), Gates was the second-richest person in America. Taking an extra precaution to keep the media and paparazzi from flying overhead, Gates reportedly hired all of the helicopters on Maui, too.

10. He used to memorize his employees’s license plate numbers to keep tabs on them.

You’d think a simple punch card or check-in system might suffice — not for Gates. Gates memorized the license plates of his employees so he would know when they arrived at and left work.

“I knew everyone’s license plate, so I could look out in the parking lot and see when did people come in, when were they leaving. Eventually I had to loosen up, as the company got to a reasonable size,” he revealed in an interview with BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs program.

11. Gates bought Leonardo da Vinci’s Codex Leicester manuscript for $30.8 million.

Besides his private plane, Gates’s other big splurge was Leonardo da Vinci’s Codex Leicester manuscript, which dates back to the 16th century. In a 1994 auction, Gates won the manuscript for $30.8 million, making it the most expensive book in the world. Gates sometimes puts the book on loan to museums.

12. In 1995, Gates became the richest man in the world.

In July 1995, at 39 years old, Gates became the richest man in the world with a fortune of $12.9 billion. He has since lost that title a few times, but he held the top spot on the Forbes World’s Billionaires real-time ranking in March 2017.

13. He got pied in the face during a trip to Brussels.

During a 1998 trip to Brussels, Belgium, Gates was on his way into a meeting with more than 400 Belgian educators, business leaders and government officials. Upon entering the building, Gates was struck in the face with a pie. After the incident, Belgian prankster and personality Noel Godin took responsibility for the prank, and Gates didn’t press charges.

“The pie wasn’t even that good,” a Microsoft spokesperson reported Gates as saying.

Image credit: Bloomberg | Getty Images

14. Bill and Melinda Gates run the largest private foundation in the world.

The couple launched the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in 2000. With donations from major investors, public figures and celebrities such as Warren Buffett, Hillary Clinton, Madeleine Albright, Jack Nicklaus and Big Sean, it has become the largest private foundation in the world. In 2015, it reported a $39.6 billion trust endowment.

15. He was knighted by the Queen.

In 2005, Gates received an honorary knighthood from Queen Elizabeth of England for his charitable work and achievements in technology. Gates and his wife, Melinda, met the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh at Buckingham Palace for the ceremony, during which he received his “KBE” title — Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire. Gates is unable to be referred to as “Sir” because he is not a British citizen.

16. The number-one thing on his bucket list is not dying.

In 2013, Gates held an Ask Me Anything (AMA) session on Reddit. During the session, Gates was asked if he had anything left on his bucket list. His response? “Don’t die…”

Related: How Bill Gates Became a Leadership Legend

17. His bedtime routine involves reading … and washing the dishes.

Even the richest man in the world makes time to complete his house chores. In a 2014 Reddit AMA, Gates shared that he washes his family’s dirty dishes every night. He even finds the task enjoyable. “Other people volunteer but I like the way I do it,” he said.

In addition to washing the dishes, another part of Gates’s bedtime routine involves reading for an hour. Even if it’s late into the night, he makes sure to get in a solid 60 minutes before bed, because for him, “It’s part of falling asleep,” he once told The Seattle Times.

18. If he could have a superpower, it would be “more energy.”

In their 2016 annual letter, Bill and Melinda shared the superpowers they wished they could have. The first things to come to mind for the average person might be x-ray vision, invisibility or time travel — but Melinda and Bill said they wanted more time and more energy.

Bill said he wished for more energy, explaining that many people underestimate the importance of energy access — from turning on a light switch to pressing the power button on a laptop. “Without access to energy, the poor are stuck in the dark, denied all of these benefits and opportunities that come with power.”

19. Bill and Melinda Gates’s favorite number is 122 million.

In their 2017 annual letter to Warren Buffett, who donated a chunk of his fortune to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the couple wrote that 122 million is their favorite number. It is the number of children’s lives that have been saved since 1990 as the mortality rate has declined.

Image credit: Matthew Stockman | Getty Images

20. To disguise himself, Gates wears a hat.

To ward off any unwanted attention, Gates resorts to an old-school tactic — wearing a hat. During a 2017 Reddit AMA, Gates was asked if he ever disguises himself in public.

“I sometimes wear a hat,” Gates wrote. “For example when I did college tours with my son I wanted the focus to be totally on him. A lot less people recognize me when I have a hat on or else they realize I am trying to be incognito.”

21. Bill and Melinda Gates are giving $10 million to each of their kids.

As of March 2017, Forbes reports Bill Gates’s net worth to be $86.6 billion. That’s why it comes as a surprise that he and Melinda are planning to give only $10 million to each of their three kids. It’s a massive figure to most of us, but it’s pocket change for this billionaire. Most of the Gates’s fortune will go to charitable foundations, including their own Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

22. He doesn’t do his own grocery shopping

During a visit to the Ellen Show, host Ellen DeGeneres put Gates through his paces to see if the billionaire, who by all rights is very knowledgeable about the state of the world, could guess the prices of everyday grocery items. When was the last time the Microsoft founder set foot in a store to do his own shopping? “Long time ago,” he admitted. Spoiler alert: He very sort of passed the test, with a little help from the audience.

23. He typically doesn’t do big purchases, with one exception.

In an interview with Ellen DeGeneres, Gates shared that even after he became a billionaire, he always erred on the side of caution. “I always wanted to have enough money in the bank so that even if our customers didn’t pay us for a year, we could still keep paying everybody and do the R&D,” he said. While Gates confessed to not having particularly extravagant tastes, he said that he has used his fortune for some transportation-related purchases — a porsche in the early years and a plane for Gates Foundation travel. But there is one whimsical exception to the rule. “We have a trampoline room in our house. The kids like that. Indoor trampolines. I recommend it,” Gates said. “It’s a room with a very high ceiling.”