The Three Traits of Great Social Entrepreneurs

There's a bad habit in the social entrepreneurship world where we put outstanding social entrepreneurs up on a pedestal -- these incredible demigods who have accomplished something us mere mortals can only dream of. We see it when leading fellowships and incubators raise up the selected few above the passionate -- but unpolished -- masses. And we, as a result, think that these accomplished social entrepreneurs have something inherent in them, some trait, some skill, some knowledge that separates them from everyone else.

And since their achievements often seems so out of reach, we hope that there is some trick or tool we could learn which would be the secret key to unlocking the treasure chest of social entrepreneurial greatness.

 Is it the business model canvas?

 An impact measurement framework? 

 A networking miracle?

I have some good news and some bad news.

Here's the bad news: there is no single tool to learn. No approach to master. No hidden treasure that all great social entrepreneurs have that would make you a star too, if you only had that key.

The good news? It's all about having the right mindset, which enables and empowers one to accomplish great things. And this mindset is accessible to anyone and everyone.

From my time coaching, advising and supporting social entrepreneurs around the world, I've come to believe that there are three things great social entrepreneurs have in common.

Rather than being specific skills to gain, these characteristics are the underlying values and approaches that enable one to learn all the myriad -- and unpredictable -- skills and knowledge one will need to acquire. These are the infrastructure that make everything else possible.

And unlike a tool or framework, these are attitudes that you, uniquely, can choose to adopt right now. There's nothing standing in the way of you beginning to demonstrate these approaches, besides your own desire to do so. So let's get into them!

1. A Learning Mindset

It's the startup version of Carol Dweck's 'growth mindset,' in which one "thrives on challenge and sees failure not as evidence of unintelligence but as a heartening springboard for growth and for stretching existing abilities."

If there's one thing that's for sure in running a social venture, it's that you will fail. Constantly. The best social entrepreneurs are those who view their failures as something to be embraced -- rather than feared -- and use their learnings to 'fail forward.'

I've written in the past about how crucial it is for social entrepreneurs to make time to reflect and to learn -- but these routines don't make much difference if the learning mindset is not there.

If we instead embrace Eric Ries' conception of a startup: learning as much as possible as quickly as possible, we see everything we do as an opportunity to learn. The stigma disappears from a mistake or an error (which are inevitable anyway), replaced by a continual desire to learn and improve each day.

2. Trust in Oneself

Let's begin with the synonyms for 'self trust', which this is not: cockiness, conceitedness, egoism or self-importance. Rather it's a quiet confidence in one's abilities to take on whatever may come.

When one starts a social venture, the only certainty is that it will not go exactly as planned. There will be hurdles to overcome, new challenges that pop-up and an incredible array of things you never realised you didn't know until it's too late. When I co-founded StartSomeGood I had no idea that just to get through the first month I would need to learn bookkeeping, how to form an LLC, how to overlay text over an image in photoshop and how to run a developer brainstorming session. Actually that may have just been the first week.

I struggled a lot in trying to learn all of those things -- all while feeling bad about myself that I, seemingly, wasn't learning it all as quickly as I thought I should. It was only after a couple of years that I realized that my team and I could solve nearly any problem that came our way -- but that it was impossible to do if we didn't have trust in ourselves that we actually could. This mindset made all the difference -- instead of fearing the unknown, we developed trust that we could handle whatever challenge might be next.

3. Humility

One of the most important characteristics I look for when considering investing in an entrepreneur at Reach for Change is their humility: being open to other opinions, admitting mistakes, self-reflection and recognising they cannot do everything themselves.

Humility is one of the key traits that Jim Collins argues in 'Good to Great' that the very best 'level 5' leaders have. It's the ability to accept blame (even when it isn't meant for you), and to share praise (even when it is meant for you).

On an individual level it means self-awareness and a desire to serve others -- two mutually-reinforcing traits of great social entrepreneurs.

On a team level it means empowering others. I used to think that the measure of my leadership was how many decisions I could be part of; now I measure myself on how many decisions my team can take without me. It means electing to trust others instead of micromanaging, and to trust that one can go further together than alone.

Why You Need All Three

It's not enough to only develop two out of the three. These approaches are not independent but rather interdependent: development in one spurs development in the others. Look at what happens if you focus on one or two at the expense of the others:

• A learning mindset without trust in oneself: you'll have a better idea of what to do, but no courage to actually do it.
• A learning mindset without humility: you'll only learn from successes, not from failure or disappointment.
• Trust in oneself without a learning mindset: you'll simply follow your own intuition, and when your gut instinct lets you down, you'll have nowhere to turn.
• Trust in oneself without humility: you'll overvalue your own thoughts, ideas and contributions and will try to do everything yourself.
• Humility without a learning mindset: you'll never step into your zone of impact.
• Humility without trusting oneself: you'll be subject to other's thoughts and opinions, always going wherever others take you.

While it may have initially felt like bad news that there is no single skill to master or trick to learn to become a great social entrepreneur, it's actually a positive that these three traits are accessible to everyone. It means that the right mindset is within anyone's grasp. And through embracing these traits, you will accomplish amazing things.

Source : http://huff.to/21BvZGA

Why You Will Never Be Successful If You Cannot Name Your Passion

"Without passion, success doesn’t exist."

Can you win without trying? Can you come out on top with minimal effort and focus? Can you take the trophy without having that need pushing you to become better, stronger, faster, smarter?

Yes, you can. But you cannot — I repeat, cannot — become successful in an area about which you are not passionate. It is impossible. In fact, it’s a logical contradiction that can’t be overcome.

If you are never passionate about anything, then you will never be successful in anything. Think about that for a minute.

To be successful is to achieve a desired aim.

That’s one of the more common definitions of success: achieving a goal or desired aim. I, for one, believe that this is an insufficient definition, or at the very least, a deceiving one. It makes it seem that as long as it is wanted, any goal or aim, can result in success.

This simply isn’t true. Achieving that which you desire is a success, but that does not make you successful. You may be successful in achieving that aim, but you won’t necessarily be successful as a person.

It is important to differentiate between what it means to succeed and what it means to be successful.

I succeeded in waking up this morning and getting out of bed. However, I didn’t go celebrate afterwards – it’s a success unworthy of praise. 

To be a successful individual, you must succeed in something that you and others will deem as something worthy of mention.

In other words, you have to succeed in something that most others cannot accomplish.

It’s winning a competition and beating others to the finish line. Many may argue that this sort of competitive approach can do more harm than good, which in part is true, but you can’t change the true definition of success to make yourself feel better.

The pursuit of success itself isn’t harmful; what is harmful is pursuing the wrong purpose.

Most people fail because they are pursuing the wrong goal. Growing up I was, apparently, a very talented dancer. On a national level, I was one of the top two dancers in America. However, dancing was a hobby and not a passion.

Whatever passion I did have at first faded away over time, and that’s okay. Thankfully, I was brave enough to drop it and move on to something more worthy of my diligence and intellect. Countless people pursue things that they don’t particularly want to pursue.

Parents or friends are the influencers pushing many people. Others push themselves because they believe in an idea that holds little validity. Many of us create a dream that cannot exist in our reality, but pursue it blindly because we either don’t know all the information or refuse to accept that information as truth.

It may take time to find the right cause, the right pursuit, but that’s simply the way these things work.

As human beings, we don’t enjoy experiencing uncertainty. We try to avoid it as much as possible and hide from it whenever we can. Life itself is nothing more than an array of uncertainties arising from and followed by more uncertainty.

We don’t like leaving things open-ended; we prefer to have a direct path of travel mapped out ahead of us. Unfortunately, finding what you ought to pursue, finding that passion, takes time. It takes research, experience and many mistakes and detours.

In fact, one of the most difficult, and most important, parts of life is finding something to devote yourself to; finding that passion that will give your life both meaning and happiness.

One of our saddest moments is the moment we realize we spent too much time doing something we shouldn’t have been doing; we spent our most precious currency on things unworthy.

Mistakes and poor decisions are only that if you don’t learn from them and bounce back. The mistakes we make in our lives are the bricks that pave the road to our success.

It’s what we learn from those mistakes and what they teach us about ourselves and the world that allow us to become the successful and passionate people we are meant to be.

If you don’t screw up, then you can never succeed. If you never make mistakes, then you simply aren’t trying hard enough to do anything worth doing.

Without passion, you will never feel successful, not because you didn’t succeed in achieving an aim, but because that aim wasn’t worthy of your effort.

Success is entirely and completely subjective. What I consider a success you may consider as nothing deserving of praise – the same goes vice versa. What really matters is what you believe.

Are you proud of yourself? 

Did you push yourself to go beyond your limits or did you just coast? Were you hungry to do more, to learn more, to create greater creations?

Did you change yourself in order to be capable of achieving the things you wished to achieve?

Most importantly, what is challenging and did you love it?

The best definition for passion is “a challenge that you look forward to conquering.”

Passions aren’t passions because they are easy to accomplish. That would make your passion short-lived, as well as unsatisfying. People are passionate about things because they see questions that remain unanswered.

People are endlessly curious creatures, as long as they find something they are curious enough about. Finding this curiosity is the goal of our lives because, without it, there is no passion. Without passion, success doesn’t exist.

Source : http://bit.ly/1OSJeOT

9 Ways To Stay Scrappy In Business

Your company is getting bigger, things are moving more slowly, and it’s taking longer to get things done. 

These are the most important lessons 

1. Commit to a result. If you are a superhero, there is no grey area. If you almost save the girl from the burning house, you still failed to save her. Being scrappy means committing to a result at all costs, and doing whatever it takes to get that result. There is no reward for checking off a list of menial tasks that you have accomplished. There is only a reward for getting a big, meaningful result.
2. We can all do more with more. Some of us can even do less with more. The real trick is, can you move mountains without the resources, tools andbudget that other people have?
3. Disregard data. A lot of times we get into paralysis by analysis. We spend so much time trying to figure something out, even though there is very little data that can really help us make our decision. In order to stay scrappy, take the little piece of data that helps you make the decision and just move forward; speed is more important than perfection.
4. Go down one-way streets. You can’t do what everybody else does and expect different meaningful results. The people that break out of the pack are those that are willing to do something meaningfully different than everyone else. If all the cars are coming one way and you are going the other way, you will get dramatically different results.
5. Negotiate everything. When my dad goes to the drug store, he tries to negotiate the price of his prescription drugs and you know what? Sometimes he gets a discount on them. You will be surprised what you can negotiate down to a lower price when you commit to negotiating everything possible.
6. Ask for favors. A lot of times the smartest folks feel like we can do this all on our own, and maybe we can— but by asking favors of lots of people, you will get things done more quickly. You may be surprised how much people will be willing to help you.
7. Exploit your competition’s weakness. If you are playing a game of tennis or basketball, you don’t only play up your own skills, you play your opponent’s weaknesses. You can often beat people much better than you by exploiting the areas they are bad at. It is the same in business. If you have a much bigger target you are competing against, don’t work against your own set of resources, figure out what their Achilles’ heel is and keep attacking it until you chip away at that armor.
8. Work more. It’s trendy to talk about how you can work less and get more done, but sometimes more is just more. If you work an eight hour day and I work a fourteen hour day, guess what? I’m going to beat you. All things being equal, I will beat you every single time.
9. You need a sense of urgency. If I told you that somewhere in your office there is a golden ticket, and if you find it in the next hour I’ll give you a million dollars—how much urgency would you feel to find that ticket? And what if I told you if you don’t find it in the next hour you are going to lose your job, your house and your spouse? What kind of sense of urgency would you have around finding that result? That is the same kind of urgency you must have in business.

Source : http://onforb.es/1j7f6RH

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7 essentials for gauging the real value of PR and social media

Despite what we've said elsewhere about the difficulty of determining ROI for PR and social media, gauging the value of what you do is eminently doable and highly recommended. You just have to do it right.

Follow these seven steps, and your calculations will resonate with your top executives:

1. Count all costs.

Calculate ROI as an accountant or CFO would: Use "all in" costs. Take into account all costs, not just your paid ad spending or what your agency billed you. Factor in internal time and resources, as well as any miscellaneous expenses and, of course, salaries. It's better to be accurate and transparent than appear to be fudging your numbers.

2. Be conservative with your counting.

Always err on the downside. You don't want to appear to be massaging numbers to make them look good, so take the low end of any estimate on the "results." Be conservative; let senior leaders do the inflating if they want to.

3. Explain everything.

Even if it seems obvious to you as a professional communicator, it will not be as obvious to those green-eyeshade guys. We throw around terms that CFOs may never have heard of. So make sure you can explain your "engagement index" or "quality index" to your mother before you bring it to a meeting. Always include that explanation on any chart that has an index.

4. Make sure the value matches the objectives and/or goals.

There is no point in demonstrating value in terms of leads if the goal was to change perceptions. Make sure that whatever value you are assigning reflects the goals of the program. Just as important, the value you are claiming must be relevant to the priority stakeholders or business objectives. So if saving money isn't a priority (and I've worked for clients for whom it hasn't been), then measuring cost efficiency won't be perceived as a value.

5. Don't try to measure a long-term strategy with short-term value.

Increasingly, social media is being dismissed as "not worth it" or seen as lacking a sufficient payout. The problem with this thinking is that, done correctly, social media can build long-term value in customer relationships, trust, forgiveness, enhanced perceptions and recruitment—none of which is measured by "likes," pins or follows. If the goal is building relationships, then you should measure that over time. If the goal is to sell stuff instantly, then social media probably isn't your best bet. (Hint: Email has been shown to be more effective in that regard.)

6. Don't use the lingo of accountants to articulate social change.

Unless you've done the math, borrowing the lingo of accountants will not help you articulate value to your senior management or board. Quite the opposite is true. If you use the term ROI improperly, you are very likely to confuse and frustrate your organization's leaders.

7. Don't fall for the "ROI" excuse.

Communications skeptics use "What's the ROI?" or "What's the dollar return we can expect?" as ways to resist new campaigns or any sort of change. They question the true value of these programs and seek a convenient way to reject them.

If you are feeling cocky, you might reply by asking whether they know the ROI of the potted plants in the lobby, or whether they demand precise ROI analyses for their lunches with potential big clients or donors.

The point is that ROI cannot be easily calculated for many investments, but that doesn't mean they are bad investments. So don't automatically accept "What's the ROI?" as a legitimate critique of a program that you propose. Be prepared for this tactic by presenting the value of your proposal in terms that are closely aligned with the social change and/or financial goals of the organization.

Source : http://bit.ly/1RIIaLr

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8 Things I Learned About Twitter

I already thought Twitter was brilliant but I am amazed after reading “140 things you don’t know about twitter.” I love that Langer chose to find 140 facts in relation to the 140-character limit for tweets. If you have 30 minutes and are a frequent tweeter, I highly suggest giving the article a read.

The elimination process was hard but here are my 9 favorite facts about Twitter that I didn’t know:

• .Twitter was created on a playground. Founding team member Dom Sagolla says the group went on the top of a slide at a playground in South Park, a small neighborhood in San Francisco, and Jack Dorsey discussed an “idea so simple that you don’t even think about it—you just write.” This moment of inspiration has turned into a multibillion-dollar company

1. The official name of Twitter’s bird is Larry. Yes, his name is Larry Bird. The iconic little fellow—seen in Twitter’s logo shown in TV commercials, print ads and practically every website—was named after Boston Celtics legend Larry Bird.
2. Twitter was almost called Twitch. Before finalizing on the name, the team looked at the Oxford English Dictionary. “We found the word Twitter,” Dorsey says. “And Twitter means a short inconsequential burst of information, chirps from birds. And we were like, that describes exactly what we’re doing here.”
3. Ending a tweet with an empty hashtag is called a hangtag, and it’s Twitter’s version of the mic drop, the team at Medium declared recently.
4. You can find your first ever tweet at First-Tweets.com.
5. Twitter’s fourth co-founder Noah Glass was kicked out of the company, according to the book “Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal,” by Nick Bilton of The New York Times. Glass is said to have made almost no money from Twitter’s IPO, according to Bilton.
6. Glass has only tweeted five times over the last five years. His bio reads, “I started this.”
7. The “unfollow” button was almost called “leave.”
8. The cost of a Promoted Trend in the United States for one day is $200,000.

Source : http://bit.ly/1OuYCk3

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Five social media hacks to make you a better boss

Social media can be a tool to help you better manage your employees.

When the words 'social media' and 'work' are used in the same sentence, it is usually in relation to one of two activities – self-promotion and time wasting. Either you're the one watching the cat video, or you're the one who filmed it (in the hope it will make you and your feline a viral sensation).

But, can social media also make you a better manager? I believe that it can if you're calm, calculated and compassionate when posting, pinning, liking and lurking.

Do you want to boost team morale, exert your authority or just spruce up the office? Then follow my top tips:

Show your trust

​I remember at the dawn of Twitter, many employers banned their employees from mentioning who they worked for in their social media bios. Or, if they did say they worked at [insert company name] they had to put a disclaimer saying, "views are my own". I take the opposite tack with my team members. Not only am I happy for them to proudly say they work for The Collective, but I encourage them to have strong opinions, because I trust their ethics and morals. Imagine sending a staff member to a party in the real world, but banning them from telling anyone where they worked.

Track their overtime

I've written before about the downsides of over-dedication in staff members. Although I applaud passion and adore anyone who goes the extra mile, I am also extremely aware of the dangers of burnout. Is a star employee uploading Facebook posts at 9pm on a Wednesday ("Location: the office")?

Are they posting Instagram snaps from their desk when everyone else is tucked up in bed? If you start to notice patterns that a staff member is neglecting rest and restoration, it could be time to sit them down and check they're not burning the candle at both ends.

Find a virtual mentor

Social media isn't just a way of boosting staff morale, but also your own. On Twitter I follow an inspiring army of business leaders and managers, including Sheryl Sandberg, Sir Richard Branson and Tony Hsieh, the CEO of Zappos. They share wise words and insightful articles and what it's really like to run a company.

I also use social media to peek behind the scenes at other people's offices. No, I'm not just nosy! Pinterest boards like The Muse and Instagram accounts like Todd Selby (@theselby) give me ideas for how to design a creative and productive office space for my own team.

Give out gold stars

Do you name an 'employee of the month'? No, me neither. My employees are no longer 15-year-olds working in a burger joint. But I do think it's important to give credit where credit's due, publicly, and social media offers a subtle way to do this. I recently posted a picture on Instagram which just read, "Thankyou".

I gave a shout-out to my extraordinary team who make my big vision a reality. I also tagged all of them in the picture. It not only (hopefully) gave them a happy glow, but also reminded me how much I appreciate them all.

Send a postcard home

As a manager, you might travel – a lot. I am personally on a plane at least once a week, travelling to an event, speaking gig or far-flung meeting. As I head to another airport, I never want my team to think I'm just jetting off on a frivolous vacation. That's why I use social media like a postcard from my working holiday, to prove it's not all play.

Although I will sometimes post a photo taken by a hotel pool, I always try to make the point that I just had a quick dip before a conference or to unwind after a long day of negotiations. When you're remote-managing a team, don't let social media undermine how much work you're really doing.

Source : http://bit.ly/1LfHpsp

The 10 Startups That Are Changing Social Media

Innovation can take the world by storm in just a matter of months, sure, but it can also take years to change the market through a slow shift implacable as the tide. Whether causing explosive change or subtle, here are 10 startups that are impacting social media today:

1. Bubbly

Self-described as “like Twitter and Instagram for your voice,” Bubbly is a social media platform that allows users to create voice recordings and share them with family, friends, or followers. The voice recordings can be accompanied by text or a picture, but the focus is the voice recording element, the differentiating angle for this social media startup.

Based out of Singapore, Bubbly currently has 40 million users worldwide, primarily in Asia and the Middle East, and has received nearly $50 million in funding. In 2014 Bubbly was acquired by Altruist Technologies, a large Indian mobile social networking company, and this year the company is poised to break into the European and American markets. In a visually driven market, Bubbly is proving that audio can be just as successful in a social media startup.

2. Kenshoo

A huge aid to marketers, Kenshoo is the global leader in agile marketing software, allowing users to create and manage mobile, search, and social marketing campaigns. The company is bridging the gap between search and social data, connecting user search queries on Google, Yahoo, and Bing with advertisements on Facebook and Twitter, an incredibly useful tool for any company with the budget to afford it. Kenshoo also provides tools to analyze data from social media in order to find target audiences and optimize the campaign’s performance.

Kenshoo is backed by Bain Capital Ventures and Sequoia Capital, among others, and the company produces over 1 trillion digital advertisements a year that in turn provide over $350 billion in annual revenue for clients. Kenshoo’s success is no small matter, and this startup is changing the way that businesses interact with the world of social media.

3. Periscope

Sorry, Meerkat, the crown goes to Periscope. Meerkat is a live-video streaming app released in February 2015 that allows users to broadcast live streams through Twitter. Meerkat caused quite a stir in late winter/early spring of this year, acquiring a loyal following and making noise in the social media world. But when Twitter noticed Meerkat’s success, the company turned on Meerkat and acquired Periscope, a similar live video streaming app in development, in March 2015. Shortly after, Twitter blocked Meerkat’s access to Twitter’s social graph, limiting Meerkat’s compatibility with Twitter and damaging its growth.

Both apps are good and are together pushing live video streaming into the forefront of social media this year, but Periscope has the more intuitive interface and the backing of Twitter, giving them an edge. In August 2015, Periscope announced that it had over 10 million user accounts, and this only 4 months after launch, a further sign that the balance between Periscope and Meerkat is shifting in Periscope’s favor.

4. Frilp

Frilp is the latest startup entering the social network of recommendations and reviews, but it plans to upset the models of TripAdvisor and Yelp. Frilp (short for Friend’s Help) aims to spread recommendations the way they would in real life: through your network of friends, family, and acquaintances. Frilp uses your social network, your work place, and address book to create your Frilp network, in which you can then ask specific questions or look at your network’s posted reviews for ideas on where to eat, shop, or explore.

The company is only in Beta testing, but once it’s officially released, this app could change the way people approach online recommendations and references by reducing information overload and providing that information through a source you know and trust rather than a stranger.

5. Conspire

A social networking tool gaining steam, Conspire wants to rectify LinkedIn’s wrong: that LinkedIn has grown too large for its own good, making many connections meaningless. Conspire requires access to your email (it doesn’t see the actual email, just who you are talking to) and analyzes your contacts and emails and learns how strong your connections actually are based on how frequently you talk to them. If you want to meet someone, Conspire shows you who to ask to make the introduction by following the strongest path to the desired contact.

The site also has the useful benefit of teaching you how to email better. Users can see their average response time with specific contacts, as well as the contact’s response time to them, helping them to identify if they are being over- or under-communicative. Conspire is only as effective as the breadth of its network, and while the company has not released any actual figures as to how many users it has, there are over 70 million people in the network created from users’ emails. Not bad for a company just two years old.

6. Unmetric

It’s no secret that social media analytics is useful. It can help improve your business or even predict the results of political elections. Unmetric is an intelligence and social media analytics startup for branded businesses. The company provides several useful tools, from providing lists of successful campaigns to inspire clients with ideas to comparing clients’ social media campaigns with those of their competition. No other service provides as comprehensive a look at what branded social media campaigns are succeeding and how they do it. The startup also provides real-time updates of clients’ campaigns, so if unusual activity is occurring, whether it’s positive or negative, clients know immediately and can take action accordingly. With branded clients like Toyota and American Airlines and agencies like Edelman, Unmetric is getting recognition from high profile clients for its in-depth analysis drawn from over 150 million pieces of microcontent on the web.

7. Flipboard

Flipboard is, in essence, a sort of Pinterest for articles and RSS mash-up. The site handpicks content from trusted sources all over the internet and presents them in a beautiful format, sorted by topic. Flipboard allows users to tailor their Flipboard feed according to their interests and also to curate their own magazines by “flipping” articles and photographs to include them in a personal magazine-styled format that can then be shared with other users.

Originally a mobile app that released in 2010, Flipboard has remained an independent entity and has amassed 70 million monthly users as of June 2015, a jump aided by Flipboard’s website, which launched earlier this year. With this growth and a recent $50 million announced for Series D funding this summer, Flipboard is poised to go bigger with its content curation platform.

8. SocialFlow

SocialFlow is a software company that provides analytics on social publishing and advertising and works with their clients to increase their brands’ visibility and business by posting content on social media at optimal times when more of the audience is active online. Partnered with Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Google+, SocialFlow is one of the biggest social media analytics companies out there with clients such as Pepsi, Walmart, eBay, L’oreal, and Redbull, among others. With an additional $5 million in funding acquired this year in July, SocialFlow will continue to grow and push its social media optimization through the rest of this year.

9. 500px

The banner on 500px’s website reads, “home to everyone’s best photos,” and the banner isn’t lying. 500px is a photo community of photographers and fans of beautiful shots alike. Users can follow specific photographers or like individual photos and see what their friends on the site follow and like as well. The posted photos are also available to purchase and use as stock photos for web, print, or reselling purposes (with different price points for each). Andreesen Horowitz has invested in both 500px’s Series A and B funding rounds, the second of which occurred this past July for a total of $13 million. Pricier but with high quality than its primary competitor Eyeem, 500px is on the campaign to support high-end photography and usher in a new bar for quality photographs in a larger market.

10. Yik Yak

Probably the most well-known company on the list, Yik Yak is the app everyone loves to hate (and also happens to be valued at ~$400 million). In the past year, most of Yik Yak’s coverage has focused on the anonymous bullying and racism that has occurred on the app, but these are always issues with anonymous content hosters. For those not in the know, Yik Yak is an app in which people can make short Twitter-style posts anonymously that can then be voted on by readers. The catch? The newsfeed only includes yaks from within a 1.5 mile radius of a phone’s location (though they’ve sinced added a “peek” ability that lets you read yaks from other areas but not vote or comment on them).

Given the restricted location of the app, Yik Yak became wildly popular on college campuses and has active users at 1,600 US colleges today. The question now is can they survive the negative backlash the app has received because of its ability to host cyberbullying. Yik Yak has been blocked on high school campuses, and the company is actively working to make the app’s content more constructive, but only time will tell if their efforts work. Whether people continue to “ride the Yak” or not, the app has shown how popular location-based posting is, for sports arenas and college campuses alike.

Source : http://bit.ly/1PVTFhm