Blogs

If you have a beautifully crafted email with a thoughtless headline, no one will open it. It’s as simple as that. There are three main...

If you've ever lost a big contract or project to a competitor, you'll know the true meaning of commercial frustration. Sure, we all deal with...

Every now and then, we get invited to a conference, an event or an announcement that we can’t possibly attend. (In fact, it happens...

To kick start 2013, we're creating a new event for business builders. It's a cooking class. That's right. We're calling it our Master Business Bake Up series. At every event, a business leader will teach a business 'recipe' that that he or she will ‘cook’ on the day, in under 90 minutes. Can you help us choose a logo?

Jobs within startups generally offer no security, the founder will often have little or no clue about what he or she is doing and the odds of the job description staying the same over a six month period are zero to none. So, how does an aspiring business builder recruit for a startup?

The following summary of Australian Facebook user activity was compiled by social media analysts SocialBakers. For some reason, seeing number six on the ' Top...

Did you know that one if four Australian SMEs are afraid of cloud computing? Furthermore, according to the same MYOB report, SMEs that embrace cloud computing were 53% more likely to see their revenue rise in the last financial year and were 55% more likely to have more sales/work than usual in their three-month pipeline.

Are you a high-tech business looking for funding? If you have a business in the high-tech industry that is looking for funding, you are probably interested in pitching at Innovation Bay's Angel Dinner in Sydney on Tuesday, 20 November.

What do Facebook and dogs in the office have in common? They make staff more productive. Seriously.

Recently, I was sharing the history of my business, CheckinLine, with Anthill founder James Tuckerman. As we talked about typical startup struggles, I was reminded...

In this edition of the Anthill Quickfire Question, I sat down with Nick Smoot, Co-founder of Here On Biz. Nick and his co-founder Allen Hartwig have only been out of stealth for a couple of months but, in that time, they've secured meetings with companies such as Seqouia, HP and LinkedIn. They are currently raising their series seed round.

This week, Anthill has undergone a massive facelift, along with the addition of a whole bunch of new features. And we're slightly embarrassed about it. Here's why.

In 2009, I was interviewed by Tim Burrowes for mumbrella and asked to share some of my 'contentious' views about the future of media. I've been heckled at events before (often and willingly) but I've never felt physically threatened, like I felt that night. I had accidentally made some already anxious people very angry. Four years later, what initially caused ire (then dismissed as science fiction), is now making headlines... for real.

Two events happened this week that, together, have got me fired up. Firstly, I watched an aspiring Olympian make a collection in a busy cafe on Swan Street, on the outskirts of Melbourne. Sure, he was handsome, well-spoken, physically capable of doing things once thought humanly impossible. But, at the same time, I had to ask myself, to what extent does Australia truly stand to benefit from the physical accomplishments of this man? Secondly, that same morning, I received a thoughtful request for assistance from two young entrepreneurs seeking support for a delegation. Who would you back?

Large companies spend big bucks on making their organisations look uber-sophisticated and polished. This video, on the other hand, took three minutes and 12 seconds to film and maybe a little less to edit. (Maybe.) It's a very 'lean' debut for a much needed addition to the Queensland startup ecosystem. And that's exactly how it should be.

An old buddy of mine recently mentioned that his business had no place on Facebook. What my unsuspecting friend didn't realise was that, on the following day, I was scheduled to make a presentation on "How to create a self-building, largely self-managing Facebook prospect base" on behalf of Interactive Minds. While that exchange lasted, maybe, 45 minutes, I have distilled my main arguments into this two-minute hump dump.

Last week, I caused an online ruckus by questioning whether Cool Company Finalist LeadBolt should be named our 2011 Cool Company Awards Readers’ Choice winner. LeadBolt totally annihilated the competition – because its business model is based on triggering online actions, such as Facebook Likes. Starlettos, the first runner-up, had courted reader praise and social media reactions the old fashioned way – by rallying their mates. So, who should get the award? Short-cutting LeadBolt or hard-working Starlettos? The results were smashing.

Can you remember the winner of TIME magazine's Most Influential Person poll in 2009? Was it Barack Obama? Oprah Winfrey? The Dalai Lama? No, it was Moot, the pseudonym of 21-year-old Christopher Poole, a college student and founder of online community 4chan.org. So, why the long winded introduction to this year's Cool Company Awards Readers' Choice Award? Did we get gamed?

Businesses make this mistake time and time again: their customers buy from them but they never get their details. Then they just sit around and hope and pray that they will remember them...that somehow the "exceptional" service they have offered will keep them coming back for more.

Phil Staub is the Executive Chairman of General Pants, one of Australia's largest fashion brands. As a successful entrepreneur, he explains why good customer service controls the retail game.