The Vikendi Blog

Back when I was in college (for the short amount of time I attended), there was no major for entrepreneurship. In fact, I would argue it’s something you can’t fully learn in school, no matter how diligent the curriculum. There’s no class that walks you through how to stomach the ups and downs of the journey.

I never finished college, but I went on to become a successful entrepreneur. It’s a story I tell in full in my book, All In: 101 Real Life Business Lessons for Emerging Entrepreneurs, but the shortened version is that in 1977 I was just a kid that had started a flea market business, with my dad as my business partner. My senior year of high school, we bought a hardware store to expand our business, and I told my dad I wanted to give college a shot.

One day, I was in my Introduction to Business Management class, and the teacher stopped me and said, “You come to school in a suit?”

I explained, “I have a business with my dad. After class, I leave school to go sell to clients.”

My teacher asked if I would speak to his sales class.
I said sure.

What I learned shortly after was that my teacher had never run a business much bigger than a little storefront on the Ocean City boardwalk in New Jersey. And here I was, working like a dog just to pay for these classes — which took little more than nothing to pass. I felt like school wasn’t going to teach me what I actually wanted to learn, so I left.

Now, I’m not saying to not get your education. Part of me regrets not finishing college for the experience of it all. But I do consider college to be a bit of a double-edged sword. Anyone who knows my story and the businesses I have built knows that I’ve reached success in many different industries. I’ve also had a few failures along the way as well. I don’t claim to be some know-it-all with a silver-bullet business solution that’s going to turn your goose gold and send your company to the top of the NASDAQ overnight.

Newsflash: that guy with the silver bullet doesn’t exist.

What has allowed me to become a successful entrepreneur, however, is the fact that I’m just a curious, determined person who knows how to adapt to the changing times and compensate for my shortcomings. I learned all I know on the street, talking to clients, knocking on doors, and pounding the pavement.

You don’t need an MBA to do what I do. In fact, you don’t even need to spend any money to learn these lessons.

1. Always be on time. No matter what.
This may sound like a no-brainer, but if you want to achieve any serious goal in life — always be on time. It’s part of being a professional, and it’s an easy thing to make part of your routine. It shows your customers and business partners that you have integrity. It shows that you can be trusted. It shows that you care and respect their time, and that when you say you’re going to do something, you mean it.

2. Be positive and smile.
Who wants to be around unhappy people? No one wants to work with people who have bad attitudes.

Be nice to everybody, and I mean everybody, all the time. You’ll be amazed how important “gatekeepers” like receptionists and assistants are to your success. You saw the move Wall Street, right? How did Bud Fox get in to see Gordon Gekko? He buttered up his secretary. Be like Bud. Be nice to everyone.

3. Return calls in less than 24 hours.
When I was building my first company, Wilmar Industries, it drove me crazy to hear customers complain that they hadn’t gotten a call back for three days. Wilmar may have become a massive company, but I was a mom & pop entrepreneur at heart. I felt (and still feel today) like every single person you do business with matters. It doesn’t matter if it’s a customer or a big-wig investor.

I constantly told all my employees, “No one wants to feel like they have been left blowing in the wind. If you want their business, you better be responsive. Call everyone back within twenty-four hours, no matter what.”

I was so passionate about this, I had a personal 800 number installed in my office just for customers. If I was in my office and the phone rang, I’d pick up and say, “Bill Green speaking, what can I help you with?” It was no publicity stunt, the CEO answering calls directly. I sincerely wanted to help any customer at any time.

4. Find a mentor.
Looking back, I can pinpoint all the different mentors at each fork and pivot on the road that helped me move past whatever obstacle I was facing at the time.

Mentors are valuable teachers, and often times become close friends. They are knowledgable, patient, and willing to teach — under the assumption that you are willing to listen, learn, and take what they say and run with it.

Nobody becomes successful alone. Even the world’s most accomplished entrepreneurs, CEOs, and business leaders today have mentors. We’re all learning from each other.

5. Look successful, act successful, be successful.
People want to do business with successful people. So guess what? You have to look and act like you belong in the room to win people’s business. You have to believe in yourself before anyone else will.

Some people call this “faking it until you make it,” but you can’t fake it. You have to put yourself in the mindset that you believe in everything you’re doing and everything you’re going to deliver on. It’s all about having a positive attitude and making your intentions clear to the world. You may not be the most sharply dressed person out there, but you have got to make an effort to do your best with what you have. I’m not saying you have to drive an expensive car. But you need to drive one that’s clean and presentable, if you want to be taken seriously.

6. Sweat everything.
Remember the book, “Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff” that came out in the nineties? I read it and took it to heart when it came to my personal life. Who cares if your spouse doesn’t put the cap on the toothpaste or if your kid keeps spilling milk at the dinner table? Life is too short to be that much of a stickler.

But let me tell you, I hate that book when it comes to doing business. You’ve got to sweat the big stuff, the small stuff — you’ve got to sweat everything.

It all matters. Especially when you’re running your own company.

7. Winging it is not a strategy.
And finally, when it comes to succeeding in business, here’s one sentence you never want to hear, or say yourself: “It’ll work out.”

Really? How do you know? Business isn’t always predictable. You can’t just sit back and wait for life to happen because when you do, unexpected stuff usually happens. You have to be smart. You have to be prepared. You have to walk in to every situation with a well-devised plan of attack.

I can’t stress this enough. When starting your own business, “winging it” is not an option.

Do your homework, and know everything you can about everything you can think of that’s relevant. The more you know about a customer, a product, a market, or even an employee, the greater advantage you have. And I’m not just talking about business and sales.

I’m talking about everything you do in this world.

#1 — Google tracks you. We don’t.

You share your most intimate secrets with your search engine without even thinking: medical, financial and personal issues, along with all the day to day things that make you, well, you. All of that personal information should be private, but on Google it’s not. On Google, your searches are tracked, mined, and packaged up into a data profile for advertisers to follow you around the Internet through those intrusive and annoying ever-present banner ads, using Google’s massive ad networks, embedded across millions of sites and apps.

In fact, it’s a myth that you need to track people to make money in web search. When you search ‘car’ we can show you a car ad without knowing anything about you. That’s how we make money and it doesn't involve tracking because it is based on the keyword and not the person. Google could do this too; they just choose not to— all that tracking is to power their ad networks so that ads can follow you around the Internet using your search history and other information they have on you.

So-called incognito mode won’t protect you either. That’s another myth. “Incognito” mode isn’t really incognito at all. It’s an extremely misleading name and in my opinion should be changed. All it does is delete your local browsing history after your session on your device, but does nothing from stopping any website you visit, including Google, from tracking you via your IP address and other tracking mechanisms like browser fingerprinting. Here’s the fine print:

To keep your searches private and out of data profiles, the government, and other legal requests, you need to use DuckDuckGo. We don’t track you at all, regardless what browsing mode you are in.

Each time you search on DuckDuckGo, it’s as if you’ve never been there before. We simply don’t store anything that can tie your searches to you personally, or even tie them together into a search history that could later be tied back to you. For more details, check out our privacy policy.

#2 — Block Google trackers lurking everywhere.

Google tracks you on more than just their search engine. You may realize they also track you on YouTube, Gmail, Chrome, Android, Gmaps, and all the other services they run. For those, we recommend using private alternatives like DuckDuckGo for search. Yes, you can live Google-free. I’ve been doing it for many years.

What you may not realize, though, is Google trackers are actually lurking behind the scenes on 75% of the top million websites. To give you a sense of how large that is, Facebook is the next closest with 25%. It’s a good bet that any random site you land on the Internet will have a Google tracker hiding on it. Between the two of them, they are truly dominating online advertising, by some measures literally making up 74%+ of all its growth. A key component of how they have managed to do that is through all these hidden trackers.
Google Analytics is installed on most sites, tracking you behind the scenes, letting website owners know who is visiting their sites, but also feeding that information back to Google. Same for the ads themselves, with Google running three of the largest non-search ad networks installed on millions of sites and apps: Adsense, Admob, and DoubleClick.

You know those ads that creepily follow you around everywhere? Most of those are actually run through these Google ad networks, where they let advertisers target you against your search history, browsing history, location history and other personal information they collect. Even less well known is they also enable advertisers like airlines to charge you different prices based upon your personal information.

These ads are not only annoying — they are literally designed to manipulate you through targeting to make you buy more things, and just showing them to you is an act of Google profiting off of your personal information.

At DuckDuckGo, we’ve expanded beyond our roots in search, to protect you no matter where you go on the Internet. Our DuckDuckGo browser extension and mobile app is available for all major browsers and devices, and blocks these Google trackers, along with the ones from Facebook and countless other data brokers. It does even more to protect you as well like providing smarter encryption.

#3 — Get unbiased results, outside the Filter Bubble.

When you search, you expect unbiased results, but that’s not what you get on Google. On Google, you get results tailored to what they think you’re likely to click on, based on the data profile they’ve built on you over time from all that tracking I described above.

That may appear at first blush to be a good thing, but when most people say they want personalization in a search context they actually want localization. They want local weather and restaurants, which can actually be provided without tracking, like we do at DuckDuckGo. That’s because approximate location info is automatically embedded by your computer in the search request, which we can use to serve you local results and immediately throw away without tracking you.

Beyond localization, personalized results are dangerous because to show you results they think you’ll click on, they must filter results they think you’ll skip. That’s why it’s called the Filter Bubble.

So if you have political leanings one way or another, you’re more likely to get results you already agree with, and less likely to ever see opposing viewpoints. In the aggregate this leads to increased echo chambers that are significantly contributing to our increasingly polarized society.

This Filter Bubble is especially pernicious in a search context because you have the expectation that you’re seeing what others are seeing, that you’re seeing the “results.” We’ve done studies over the years where we have people search for the same topics on Google at the same time and in “Incognito” mode, and found they are significantly tailored.
On DuckDuckGo, we are committed to not putting you in the Filter Bubble. We don’t even force people into a local country index unless they explicitly opt-in.

#4 — We listen.

Google is notoriously hard to get a hold of. Locked out of your Gmail account? Sorry, we can’t help you. The Knowledge Graph says you’re dead? That’s unfortunate. Unless you’re a journalist or influencer of some kind, good luck getting anyone at Google to listen.

Meanwhile at DuckDuckGo we read every piece of feedback we get. We respond on social media. In short, we listen. My DMs are open and I read all the email sent to me personally. Feel free to reach out.

#5 — We don’t try to trap you in our “ecosystem.”

It used to be that you search on Google and then you click off to the top result. Over time, Google bought more and more companies and launched more and more of their own competing services, favoring them over others in their search results. Google Places instead of Yelp, TripAdvisor, etc. Google Products instead of Amazon, Target, etc. They’re in travel, health, and soon jobs. Anywhere there is money to be made, you can expect them to get into it eventually.

Even when you do click off, Google AMP tries to still trap you in Google. And these tactics are not just on the search engine.

On Android on many implementations there is immovable Google search widget and you can’t even change its search engine if you want to. By just installing it by default, this behavior is a direct analogue to Microsoft putting IE on Windows in the 1990s, but worse since it takes up more of the smaller screen. The same is true for other Google services on Android as well, forcing carriers to bundle and promote them. We personally have similar issues with Chrome search engine integration.

At DuckDuckGo, we aren’t trying to take over the world. We don’t have an “ecosystem” to trap you in. We just want to help you get to where you want to go as fast as possible, and protect you as much as we can in that process.

#6 — We have !bangs.

To further this point, we have a built-in feature called bangs that enables you to search other sites directly, completely skipping DuckDuckGo if you like (But remember, you’ll be subject to those other sites’ privacy policies, including their data collection practices). Here’s how it works. Let’s say you know you want to go to the Wikipedia article for ducks. You can just search for “!w duck” and we will take you right there.

The ! tells DuckDuckGo you want to use a bang shortcut, and the w is an abbreviation for Wikipedia. You can use the full name, though we have a lot of shortcuts such as !a for Amazon, !r for Reddit, etc. There are literally thousands of sites that this feature works with, and so most sites you think of will probably work. It also works with our autocomplete so you can see what’s there easily.
If you routinely search a particular site, like Stack Overflow for coding answers or Baseball Reference for stats or All Recipes for something to make, you can just go right there.

If DuckDuckGo is your default search engine, you can just type this right into your browser's address bar, and skip loading our search engine altogether. We will just route you to the right place!

#7 — We strive for a world where you have control over your personal information.

Our vision is to raise the standard of trust online. If you share this vision, supporting DuckDuckGo helps us make progress towards it. For the past seven years, we’ve been donating a substantial portion of our profits to organizations that also work towards the Internet we want — an open Internet where you can take control of your personal information.

We believe that privacy policies shouldn’t be default “collect it all," but instead offer a clear and compelling case as to what benefits you get by giving up your personal information. If you share this view for the future of data privacy, you can vote with your feet.

#8 — Our search results aren’t loaded up with ads.

For many Google searches, most of the entire first page is ads. On mobile it can be even worse.

Not so on DuckDuckGo. We keep ads to a minimum, and naturally they're non-tracking ads, based only on search keywords and not on a personal profile or search history. In fact, as stated above, it’s a myth that you need to track people to make money in web search. When you search ‘car’ we can show you a car ad without knowing anything about you, based on the keywords you type in.

#9 — Search without fear.

When people know they are being watched, they change their behavior. It's a well-documented behavior called the chilling effect, and it happens on Google. For example, an MIT study showed that people started doing fewer health searches on Google after the Snowden revelations, fearing that their personal ailments might get out.

“Suppressing health information searches potentially harms the health of search engine users and… In general, our results suggest that there is a chilling effect on search behavior from government surveillance on the Internet.”

Your searches are your business, and you should feel free to search whatever you want, whenever you want. You can easily escape this chilling effect on DuckDuckGo where you are anonymous.

#10 — Google is simply too big, and too powerful.

Google is GIANT, the epitome of Silicon Valley big tech, with a market cap of around 750 Billion dollars (at the time of writing), 75,000 employees, dominating search, browsing, online advertising, and more, with tentacles in everything tech, online and offline. Last year they outspent every other company on lobbying Washington.

By comparison, DuckDuckGo is tiny. We’re currently a team of about 45 people, scattered across the globe; I’m in Pennsylvania. We have a very narrow focus: helping you take control of your personal information online.

The world could use more competition, less focus on ad tracking, fewer eggs in one basket.

Here are six good reasons why you should do it as well:

News you can use
Support emails are fresh off the press. It is your current state of service, product or company. It is not some week or month old aggregated information related to a discontinued feature or product.
Getting to know what is happening in you business right now (!) makes it easier to react before shit really hits the fan.

A great conversation starter
Support emails, no matter how aggressive the initial email has been, can provide insightful information through conversations with your customer. Insights which cannot be put into numbers and tables.

Customers writing you regarding support issues are more than often willing to engage in conversations, which can give you a much better understanding of how your company and product is perceived in reality.

You probably don’t have enough data
Too many entrepreneurs and startup founders are hooked on data dashboards, A/B testing and funnel optimization too early in the process of building their venture — long before having a significant sample size on their data. Instead of seeing data points fluctuating 10 to 40 percentage points, you should spend time writing or talking with people who has spent the time writing you an email.

A nuanced overview of your business
Dashboards and spreadsheets will never ever provide a nuanced overview of who your customers are, how they feel, what their intentions are and how happy they are.

Browsing through support emails will give everyone in the company a much better understanding of the current condition of your company and product.

Also, colleagues form a personal understanding of the state of business — which can be used internally in more varied conversations.

Support emails are loaded with emotions
Numbers are just numbers. And often aggregated into totals and averages.

Which gives you nothing but a total or an average. No background. No story. No heart. No soul.

Support emails on the other hand are full of emotions:

“Hi Company. Thank you for nothing. You made my daughter cry for 30 minutes yesterday, because we couldn’t login to stream Dora The Explorer. Switched browser which seemed to solve half of the issues :-(”.
Unless you are a soulless robot, the above statement will probably trigger more emotions and requirements for actions than:

“Week 27 — Users experiencing issues on service: 57%”
Seeing real customers having real relatable issues provides a much better understanding of the current state of your company.
Emotional statements from real people also contributes much better in internal discussions and in pitch decks.

Downgrading a group of people to “57% of users…” in a spreadsheet is just disrespectful.

Increased Responsibility
My experience with everyone reading support emails is, that everyone feels an increased responsibility and a sense of urgency to eliminate whatever emails hits your support inbox.

Seeing real problems trigger actions and priorities much faster than just seeing numbers in a spreadsheet. And it makes it much easier to prioritise for better customer experiences.

I won’t claim, that you should completely ditch your spreadsheets and numbers on customer acquisition, funnels and all sorts of support interactions overview. But you should spend more time on real insights.

And the monthly slide on “what customers said” just doesn’t do it.

Reading real support emails provides an up-to-date overview, triggers emotions and responsibility while providing conversation starters externally and internally. For everyone in the company.
So grab your morning coffee and wind through all those valuable insights from real people having something valuable on their mind….

Founding a startup in the modern world is becoming increasingly difficult. Between fierce competition for venture capital, market share and new challenges presented by an ever-changing business environment, entrepreneurs are regularly stepping headfirst into unclear waters when they decide to create their startup and naturally quite a lot of them fail. In this post, we will be exploring some of the reasons why.

Despite these challenges, we have statistics to show that the startup market is still going strong. For example, according to Fortune, the number of people who are self-employed in the United States has increased by around 150,000 to 8,602,000 in 2017. This shows that even with the unforgiving environment, an increasing number of people are founding their own startups.

Furthermore, the worldwide outlook for startups is equally hopeful, with a GEM Global Report showing that over 100 Million startups are being launched worldwide, every year. This is a staggering 3 new businesses being founded every second. This shows that even with the intense climate for newly founded businesses, there is no shortage of people willing to take the plunge and try their hand at running a startup.

One popularly cited and particularly damning statistic about the startup climate suggests that over 90% of startups actually fail, with only 10% actually experiencing long-term success. This statistic comes from a report by Startup Genome. The reason for this? According to Startup Genome, over 70% of startups experience premature scaling, which could provide some insight as to a big reason why a lot of startups are failing. Hackernoon have also been exploring why startups have been failing, publishing a chart which shows that when startups fail, the following reasons are the most common.

The 10% of startups that do succeed, seem to have a lot in common, even if they don’t share the same industry. Firstly, they’ve managed to create a product or service that perfectly fits in with the objective of solving a major problem for their chosen market. Secondly, their team will have the adaptability and the presence of mind to change things in the event of a crisis, to prevent their startup from failing, in the business world, stagnation ultimately leads to failure. Finally, members of their team will all work together and there will not be a strict protocol on sticking to your roles, everybody will chime in with their own take on an idea to achieve group consensus, two heads are better than one after all.

• Product: 42%
• Finance: 38%
• Regulatory: 10%
• Team: 6%
• Growth: 5%

When it comes to iPhone security, the steps you need to take aren't quite the same thing what you'd do with a desktop or laptop computer. Sure, everyone wants to keep their data safe from people who they don't want to have access to it, but traditional computer security concerns like anti-virus software aren't really issues for iPhone and iPod touch owners.

Maybe the most pressing concern when it comes to iPhone security isn't electronic, it's physical: theft. Apple's devices are attractive targets for thieves and are often stolen; so much so that at one time up to 18% of grand larcenies in New York City involve iPhone theft. Those figures have declined over time, but iPhones still catches thieves' eyes.

Tips to Prevent iPhone Theft
With theft being a major security threat to iPhone users, you need to take steps to keep your iPhone safe and make sure it stays yours. Try these anti-theft tips:

• Do the obvious: Keep your iPhone close to you, don't leave it unattended, don't leave it exposed in your car when you're not in it.
• Ditch Your Earbuds: The trademark white Apple earbuds have become well-known indicators that the headphone cord snaking into your pocket or bag is connected to an iPhone. Try a different set of headphones to throw them off.
• Don't Use Belt Clips: Belt clips aren't great for keeping your iPhone safe in public. Since the iPhone is exposed on your body and potentially easy to pull off a belt clip, keep the clips at home.
• Be Aware of Your Surroundings: This can be hard. When you're listening to your iPhone, you probably won't be able to hear everything going on around you. This potentially puts you at a disadvantage relative to thieves. Be alert and aware of your surroundings, and who's around you, when you're listening to your iPhone.

5. Test Yourself
It’s a strange thing, but sometimes simply entering an exam environment is enough to make you forget some of the things you’ve learned. The solution is to mentally prepare for the pressure of having to remember key dates, facts, names, formulas and so on. Testing yourself with regular quizzes is a great way of doing this. And don’t worry of you don’t perform brilliantly at first – the more you practice, the better you’ll become. Don’t believe us? Then just take a peek at what the experts have to say.
6. Find a Healthy Balance
Take this opportunity to evaluate yourself both physically and mentally. Is your engine running on low? Instead of  complaining “I never get enough sleep” or “I’m eating too much convenience food” take control and do something about it! Make the change and see how it positively affects your attitude and study routine. This should motivate you to maintain a healthy balance in the future.
7. Be Positive
Your attitude has a big impact on the level of study that you get done and the effectiveness of your learning process. If you keep saying that you can’t do it and won’t commit to the idea of learning, attempting to study is only likely to become more difficult. Instead, focus your mind on positive outcomes and on how you can use your own individual strengths to achieve them. When you think positively, the reward centres in your brain show greater activity, thereby making you feel less anxious and more open to new study tips.
8. Collaborate with Study Partners

At this stage of the school year, you should know your classmates pretty well. This is a good point in time to select a couple of study partners who you know you work well with and are motivated to achieve good grades also.
9. Turn lessons into stories
Everybody likes to read or listen to a good story, and with good reason – not only do stories entertain us, they help us to understand and memorise key details too. You can apply this to your studies by weaving important details or facts into a story – the more outlandish and ridiculous you can make it, the better (since you’ll be more likely to remember a particularly crazy story).
10. Establish a Study Routine
Your study routine is comprised of more than planning what to learn and when. One of the main concerns is your study environment.Find a place to study that is quiet and with few distractions. Alternatively, you could also try switching it up by sitting in a different place in your school library every day and seeing how this works for you.
11. Mark Small Challenges
When you have to face very long and dense subjects, you can set small challenges to keep your spirits high; a good way to focus on the day-to-day and find motivations while you study. According to scientific analysis, the more motivated and excited we are, the better our brain performs.
12. Consult teachers
Any questions you have about the exam, the best you can do is go to the teacher of the subject and expose your doubts. Not only is the person best suited to solve your questions, but your initiative will be well received and you’ll show good attitude by demonstrating that you’re interested in his subject.

There really aren’t any hard and fast rules to play by when it comes to best times for studying or how long you should work for. Everybody is different, so the best way to establish a routine is to try different things and see what works best for you, then modify your routine for maximum learning effectiveness.

• The time period gets extended because someone takes longer to finish what they wanted to say.
• Interruptions derail the topic. This can also make the discussion run longer than planned.