2011 Healthcare Preview — It’s Uhhh-gly

If you’re excited about healthcare reform, you might want to slow down a little. Because in the short term, there’s going to be a lot of confusion as to how to implement it — or how to keep your small health plan from being subject to healthcare reform’s rules. For starters, a new study from PriceWaterhouseCoopers found premiums will likely go up 9 percent next year, on top of last year’s 15 percent hike .

George Steinbrenner’s Contribution to the Business of Baseball

Tonight at Angels Stadium in Anaheim, Derek Jeter of the New York Yankees will take the field as the starting shortstop for the American League in the 81st annual Major League Baseball All-Star Game. Jeter’s $22 million annual salary makes him one of the highest-paid players in the game, thanks in large part to his former boss, George Steinbrenner, who bought the entire team in 1973 for less than half that amount, and who died this morning at the age of 80. To say the least, Steinbrenner was a polarizing figure, loved by some for taking an also-ran franchise and restoring it to its former glory, and hated by others for bringing pure, unadulterated capitalism to baseball. But the simple fact remains: The team he bought for $10 million in 1973 (actually 8.8 million after he sold two parking lots thrown in as part of the deal) is now worth an estimated 1.6 billion, nearly $800 million more than the second-place Boston Red Sox, a fact The Boss would no doubt have enjoyed–as long as they weren’t ahead of the Yankees in the standings. You don’t get that level of success without being a tireless innovator, and Steinbrenner was, quite literally, a game-changing force in baseball. But having said that, he also mixed in a healthy dose of bedrock business sense. Love him or hate him, here are just a few things to appreciate. He spent money to make money. These days, you can’t throw a baseball in any direction without it hitting someone ready to complain about how overpaid the game’s players are. But just as Steinbrenner was taking over the Yankees, free agency was taking hold in baseball, and he took full advantage. In 1975, he made Catfish Hunter the highest-paid player in the history of the game with a $640,000 annual salary that was more than six times what he had been paid the previous year. After the 1980 season, he signed Dave Winfield to a 10-year, $23 million contract, which again became the highest salary ever paid to a player at the time. Yankee third baseman Alex Rodriguez now makes $10 million more than that–in one season. But in terms of percentages relative to what the owners are worth, players’ salaries are still well in line with the rest of the business world–and no one goes to the ballpark to watch the owners, a fact Steinbrenner was quick to recognize as part of the cost of winning. He had a distinct management style. Quite possibly the understatement of the century, but it’s something every true entrepreneur needs, and Steinbrenner had it in spades. He was famously hands-on as an owner, changing managers 20 times in his first 23 seasons as owner, including firing manager Billy Martin five different times. He publicly called out players–especially high-priced stars–when he wasn’t happy with their performance on or off the field. Then there’s the Yankees’ famous grooming policy, which to this day doesn’t allow facial hair other than a mustache, or hair below the collar. Since Steinbrenner took ownership of the team in 1973, only three employees have been continuously employed. He made the right deals with the right people at the right times. The ability to form profitable alliances was at the heart of Steinbrenner’s innovation–and of the team’s success and value. He was the first owner to sell cable TV rights, and when that relationship began to go south, he simply formed his own network. He also signed a 10-year, $97 million contract with Adidas in 1997, the first such contract at the time. Technically, Steinbrenner was just another MLB franchisee, so these sorts of deals often ruffled all the wrong feathers. But they also netted million for Steinbrenner, for the Yankees and, eventually, for all of baseball, and were quickly and widely imitated. He never took himself too seriously. Like many entrepreneurs, Steinbrenner was as much a brand as he was a businessman, and he never shied away from that brand. It started as early as the late ’70s, when he fired Martin as part of a Miller Lite beer commercial, to which Martin responded, “Not again.” After he publicly scolded Jeter in the press for partying too much, the two appeared in a Visa ad together club-hopping. He even hosted Saturday Night Live in 1990, dreaming of a Yankees team where he was not only the owner, but also served as the manager and played every position. Steinbrenner was larger than life in the world of baseball, but he was equally transcendent in the world of business. They say that if you’re not pissing someone off, you’re probably not very good at your job. So you can hate the Yankees if you want–plenty of baseball fans do–but The Boss deserves his due.

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George Steinbrenner’s Contribution to the Business of Baseball

The 6 Traits of Successful Small Businesses

Do you have what it takes to make it as a small business owner? This has always been a nervous-making question. But now, a recent study has boiled down the key attributes of successful business owners. Take a look, and see if this sounds like you. The study, from the Guardian Life Small Business Research Institute, is The Guardian Life Index: What Matters Most to America’s Small Business Owners . The survey of more than 1,000 entrepreneurs with between two and 99 workers first identified 60 critical factors for business success. These were then boiled down to six important skills that were common to successful business owners. These owners are: Collaborative. Delegating effectively and building good relationships with employees, vendors, and other partners is key. The study found successful owners had a win-win attitude and were dedicated to “creating opportunities for others.” Self-fulfilled. Great entrepreneurs love being in control of their destiny, deciding how hard to work and when, and deriving personal fulfillment and gratification from operating their businesses. Future-focused. Good business owners aren’t just slogging through the day, focused on keeping the doors open another 24 hours. They’re the woman or man with a plan. Curious. Constant learning is a hallmark of winning business leaders. They’re always looking for opportunities to improve how they manage their business. Tech-savvy. The study found winners “intensively value their company’s Web site and are significantly more likely to rely a great deal on technology to help make our business more effective and more efficient.” Action oriented. Successful entrepreneurs are taking proactive steps to build their businesses. They indicated high levels of agreement with phrases such as “commitment to taking the business to the next level,” “differentiating ourselves from competitors,” and “having something to sell when I’m ready to retire.” These glass-half-full types saw hard times as “a kick in the rear to help move you forward.” So how’d you do? Personally, I could stand to improve on the tech-savvy front especially!

It’s Time For Microsoft’s Second Inception

If you’ve watched television at all over the past two months, you’ve likely seen the trailer for Inception , the new film by Christopher Nolan. The trailer is great, and the film looks like it could be even better. In it, Leonardo DiCaprio plays Cobb, a special agent whose job it is to construct dreams in order to lure people inside and take their ideas — a tactic they call “inception”. “ An idea can transform the world and re-write all the rules. Which is why I have to steal it ,” Cobb teases at one point in the trailer. For whatever reason, the film and that premise got me thinking about Microsoft. More specifically, about some of the recent stories about yet more internal struggles at the company and the complete and utter failure of the Kin . It seems to me that Microsoft created one of these inceptions once in the 1980s. And it led to the company’s greatest success: Microsoft Windows. Now I think it’s time for a second inception. Before I get into that, a bit of history. For nearly 25 years now, the story has lingered that Microsoft stole the idea of Windows from Apple while working to develop software for the Lisa and Macintosh operating systems. The stories you hear generally seem to be a mixture of truth, urban legend, and fanboy fabrications at this point — but the fact is that Apple did sue Microsoft in 1988 for copyright infringement on the matter. After four years worth of arguments, Apple lost. They also lost the subsequent appeal (and they even tried to take it to the U.S. Supreme Court, but that was denied). But they didn’t lose because Windows wasn’t thought to be similar to Apple’s operating systems. They lost because the judge ruled that you couldn’t protect the concept of a graphical user interface or the desktop metaphor idea. And more specifically, Apple ran into problems because of a decision that then-CEO John Sculley made in 1985 to sign an agreement licensing certain parts of Apple’s GUI to Bill Gates for use in what would become Windows 1.0 (presumably without realizing exactly what he was doing). Yes, you could make a similar charge against Apple — that they stole several GUI components from Xerox’s PARC labs. (There was a subsequent lawsuit of Apple by Xerox on these grounds, but that was largely seen as a tactical

The $700 Million Travel Search Deal And Google’s Shift In Strategy

Last Thursday, Google placed a major $700 million bet on a new strategy. It announced an agreement to purchase ITA Software , a leading provider of flight information (fares, schedules, availability) to most of the key online travel sites, travel search engines, and airlines. ITA’s existing customers include Bing, Orbitz, Kayak, Expedia’s Hotwire, Continental, US Airways, American Airlines, and Southwest. Google was careful to note that it would “honor all existing agreements.” Indeed, if Google wants the deal to pass regulatory antitrust scrutiny, one requirement will very likely be a prohibition, or at least a promise on Google’s part, not to cut off ITA’s flight data to the competition. This deal is not primarily about denying other travel search sites access to this data. Rather, it signals a much more subtle and profound strategy shift for Google—towards more customized search experiences in different categories, starting with travel. In other words, it is moving in the same direction as Bing, which has built out vertical search across not only travel, but also health, shopping, local, and, most recently, entertainment . To put this deal in perspective, it is roughly the same size as the $750 million AdMob deal , which represents Google’s entry into mobile search. Drilling down into different categories of search could be just as important to Google as mobile search. For the most part, up until now Google search philosophy has been to show the best results from the Web and get people off of Google as fast as possible to other Websites. But for certain types of searches, Google could do a lot more to filter and organize results. Travel is one obvious area where Google could do more to show available flights and prices. Google wants to create a deeper vertical search experience around travel so that people can find what they are looking for more quickly. Does this mean that Google is becoming more of a destination portal? Not exactly. For a hint at what Google Travel might look like, take a peak at Bing Travel . Bing licenses ITA’s data, making it easy to search for flights by entering the cities you want to fly between. It gives you most of the data you need to make a decision (price, airline, departure and arrival times, number of stops), but then sends you to Orbitz or directly to an airline Website to make the purchase. (See screenshot below). This kind of purchase-oriented, data-driven search opens up new ways to make money for Google. In addition to running cost-per-click (CPC) search ads in the margins, it could also possibly start charging airlines or travel sites on a cost-per-action basis, where it gets a higher fee for every reservation made. Barclays Capital analyst Douglas Anmuth thinks this is exactly what will happen. In a research note on Friday, he wrote: We believe the ITA acquisition and the shift toward vertical search pushes Google more in the direction of CPA-based search advertising. Such CPA ads are generally higher margin than classic CPC ads. But Anmuth notes that Google has so far stayed away from vertical search because it didn’t want to alienate certain advertisers who use Google to drive traffic to their sites. But Google is feeling pressure as “core search growth slows” and may now be more open to picking off specific vertical search categories such as mortgages , credit cards, insurance, and healthcare. If Google does start to go after vertical search in the same way that Bing does already, search results will look a lot less uniform than they do today. Those much-maligned “ten blue links” just don’t cut it anymore. Photo credit: Flickr/ Luis Argerich CrunchBase Information Google Bing ITA Software Information provided by CrunchBase

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The $700 Million Travel Search Deal And Google’s Shift In Strategy

Many Entrepreneurs Would Swap Ownership for a Job

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but it’s been a bad week for business, no doubt about that. New jobless claims are on the rise –again. The stock market has dropped below 10,000–again. The national debt has climbed to its highest level since World War II, and pending home sales plunged a record 30 percent . And it’s only Thursday. On top of all this, a new survey shows that fully one-third of small-business owners say that–given the opportunity–they’d swap their business for a job working for someone else. As long as they were paid what they’re now making or more, these entrepreneurs said they’d drop everything, close up shop and take a job. Another 13 percent said they’d certainly consider selling for employment with someone else. This second-guessing of business ownership was revealed this week in The Discover Small Business Watch , a survey compiled each month by Rasmussen Reports LLC , an independent research firm. Conclusions are based on interviews conducted a with about 750 small-business owners, and it has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.8 percentage points. The small-business owners were also asked what it would take for them to sell their business. Forty-one percent said they’d never sell. Of the remaining 59 percent: 27 percent said they aren’t sure. 18 percent said they’d need to make money on what they’ve already invested. 11 percent said they’d be happy just to recover what they’ve put into their business. 3 percent would be willing to take a loss to get out of the business. The survey also reports that 40 percent of those responding to the survey said they’ve given some thought to modifying their business model or entering a new line of business. And half of those claim the recession has “severely” hurt their business, prompting those thoughts of change. In addition, the economic climate has seen more small-business owners experiencing temporary cash-flow issues in June–51 percent compared to 45 percent in May. These are the highest figures since January. The percentage of owners who say the economy is getting worse remained steady at about 51 percent. Forty-three percent of June’s respondents said business conditions are getting worse, down only one point from the 44 percent reported in May. On the other hand, 30 percent of those answering the June survey said economic conditions for their businesses are improving, a 2 percent increase over May’s figures. What about you? If you were offered a job working for someone who offered more money than what you currently make, would you take the job or continue to own your own business?

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Many Entrepreneurs Would Swap Ownership for a Job

NeighborGoods Extends The Sharing Of Actual Things To The National Level

Back in October, we covered a new sharing service called NeighborGoods . When you see the term “sharing” associated with a startup, your eyes may glaze over at this point — but NeighborGoods is a bit different because it’s all about actually sharing stuff. Like, in the real world. Sadly, the site was previously only open to users in Southern California. But today brings its nationwide roll-out. As a refresher on the idea behind it, say you have something sort of expensive you bought but don’t use all that often. For example, a

Book Review: The Winner’s Brain

The Winner’s Brain: 8 Strategies Great Minds Use to Achieve Success by Jeff Brown and Mark Fenske (with Liz Neporent) intrigued me because it brings up the nature vs. nurture argument.

U.S. Mail Delivery on Saturday — Important, or Irrelevant?

Would your business be affected if the U.S. Postal Service ceased delivering mail on Saturdays? Congress heard testimony about this proposal last week, and business owners were split on whether the end of weekend delivery would pose a problem. Amazon.com executives

Clash of the Titans: The Battle To Become The Mobile Search Leader

Editor’s note : The following guest post is by Krishna Subramanian, co-founder of mobile ad exchange Mobclix . Mobile search is still one of the big unclaimed prizes on the mobile web. Everyone from Google and Yahoo to Apple is going after it, but Microsoft’s Bing may stealthily become the king of the castle by aggressively promoting Bing through mobile apps. Let’s look at each player’s mobile search strategy. Apple: In The Driver’s Seat During the Apple keynote in April, Steve Jobs announced the new iPhone 4.0, iAd and a few other features even he didn’t seem too excited about. Out of the many mediocre features, Mr. Jobs happened to squeeze in a declaration that, “ On mobile, search hasn’t happened. People aren’t searching on their phones.” During the keynote at WWDC this month, Mr. Jobs declared that iPhone 4 users would have the opportunity to select their search engine from among Google, Yahoo, and Bing. Out of the three, Bing got a special endorsement from Mr. Jobs. Is Mr. Jobs trying to blindside the other players in this space by making them think he is not concerned about search? I’m sure all of the search traffic he is sending to Google is driving him nuts. Meanwhile, Google has happily—and quite beautifully—optimized their search results page on the iPhone to make it extremely convenient for local searches by incorporating phone numbers, maps and more within the Safari window. Remember the days you would dial 411 or, even more recently, send an SMS to GOOG for information about local businesses or venues while you are on-the-go? Does anyone do that anymore? I’m sure people love paying $1.75 to find out the name of the local pizza shop. By the time you dial 411 and struggle through the automated voice menu, you could have pulled up addresses, phone numbers and reviews to the five nearest pizza places and be one click away from an interactive map. Apple brought the traffic to mobile search, but why not make money off it? Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft all see the value of controlling search across mobile devices—not just the iPhone. Similar to the web, these three goliaths want to be the starting point for every consumer query. All three have launched iPhone specific apps with slightly different flavors as they try to first win the hearts of the iPhone user. Yahoo! Doesn’t Know What It Wants To Be Yahoo! is all over the place in the App Store. It has two iPhone apps in the iTunes App Store. Within the reference category, the Yahoo! Search app is ranked at #30 with 658 comments. For the most part it includes many of the same core features that the other search apps offer. To get more mindshare from users, Yahoo! has sprinkled many other apps in various categories with the Yahoo! Finance and Yahoo! Shopping and Yahoo! Entertainment apps and a pretty successful Yahoo! News app (#47 with close to 50,000 comments). This attempt to build interest just dilutes Yahoo!’s audience across multiple apps—which, if combined together, could have a significant impact. It’s Google’s Game To Lose As the default search engine plugged into mobile Safari on the iPhone, Google has always had an advantage driving mindshare to its mobile apps. It was the first one to use voice activated search and has steadily built out its host of features since making it easier to access core Google products like Gmail. The Google Mobile app is currently ranked first in the reference category for iPhone apps with more than 2,000 comments. Hello, Bing! Far behind when the gates opened, the Bing team is pushing out new features as fast as possible, trying to draw from Google what works best. Interestingly enough, the results (even on a local level) are quite different from the very accurate Google search results. The Bing search app received a nice endorsement from Mr. Jobs at the WWDC keynote, so lofty expectations are already set. It is currently ranked No. 2 in Reference. Microsoft released an updated Bing app last week with a few new notable features: Visual Scanning (very similar to the Red Laser iPhone app eBay acquired earlier this month) and tapping into social graphs through Facebook and Twitter status updates. The entertainment angle is allowing Bing to create a unique niche that ties back to search. It also redesigned its mobile browser search to make it more of an app-like experience. Advertising as a Distribution Channel The biggest hurdle is getting these app installed on as many devices as possible, but thanks to all the apps in the App Store there is an abundance of ad inventory available for marketers. App developers, if you don’t already love these big boys, you should. They have been spending significant amounts of money (think six figures-plus) desperately trying to get in front of as many of your users as possible, which translates into more money in your pocket. All of the search giants use in-app marketing to push their own apps. Yahoo! and Google have done a great job avoiding creative saturation by building out a wide array of messages, colors, languages and landing pages, as well as making use of geo-targeting. Boom! Bing Changes the Game As the Bing team continues to spend more money on advertising, they recently changed the game, significantly crushing Google in the app rankings. How? Easy… Attaching yourself to successful apps with consumer brand power is a sure fire way to rise to the top.“We absolutely market our applications on the iPhone, I don’t think of it as unique to anything else. It is like promoting on the toolbar,” Yusuf Mehdi, Senior Vice President, Bing recently told TechCrunch co-editor Erick Schonfeld. “Yes, it has been effective.” For example, Bing took the Top 100s by Year app that allows users to stream songs by decade for $1.99, rebranded it to Top 100s by Year by Bing , made it free and inserted advertising to drive users to download the Bing Search App. The Top 100s by Bing app instantly surged to the top of the App Store and remained in the top five for weeks. It remains at the top of the music category hovering near favorites like Pandora and Shazam. And, as I mentioned, the Bing search app is currently No. 2 in Reference, and in the top 100 free iPhone apps overall. Ads within the Top 100s app that drive users to download the Bing app: Fresh off the success of leveraging sponsored apps to drive downloads to the Bing app, Microsoft has recently reached out to a new audience segment by sponsoring the ESPN World Cup Trivia app , which is ranked No. 6 in the sports category. Rather than taking the viral nature of the Top 100’s music app, Bing and ESPN are also running display inventory to drive additional traffic to the World Cup Trivia app. So where does this leave the Bing search app? How about in the top 100 of all free apps and, more importantly, at one point it even squeezed Google’s app out of the top 50 free apps. Bing has taken a simple concept, executed and proved the value of the model by consistently keeping their brand top of mind across top apps in different categories. Mobile search is here, whether you want to believe it or not. Take Apple’s recent acquisition of Siri for a small sum of around $200 million to $250 million. It will be pretty easy to use that as the nucleus for an Apple-owned local search product for mobile. Not to mention the valuation is around the same price tag as what it paid for Quattro Wireless. As the market grows, Yahoo!, Google, Bing and Apple will become more cut throat. Don’t expect to see Bing ads on Google Mobile Ads or Apple featuring Yahoo!. Likewise, we may not see as many new Google and Bing apps in the App Store in the near future. But they will keep pushing forward as much as they can. After all, they probably don’t have much time before Mr. Jobs begins to think differently about mobile search. CrunchBase Information Bing Google iPhone 4 Mobclix Information provided by CrunchBase

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Clash of the Titans: The Battle To Become The Mobile Search Leader