I’m atop a famous observatory with a breathtaking 360 degree view of one of my favorite cities, Chicago. Below is Navy Pier and Lake Michigan, with the historic Lakeshore Drive curving next to it.
Never been to Chicago in the winter, heard the place gets a little nippy.
Road trip through northern Indiana | July 2012
I have reluctantly designated northern Indiana, the swath of land and roads between Ohio and Illinois, as no man’s land. If you seek a lack of access to restaurants, QuickTrips and restrooms, I highly recommend a cross-country road trip through this part of our nation. Not only is there no sustenance whatsoever, each exit has a toll station where you pay to apparently see nothing more than grazing cows and water tanks. It is truly an extraordinary feat on the part of our people to not have an accessible McDonald’s or Taco Bell to satiate our appetite, much less provide traveling circus roadshows that may warrant toll fees.
It does have clouds, though.
Downtown NYC | Fulton Street
I was walking down the street (how original), and came about an angle that I had to capture.
Have a brilliant idea? Looking to build the next big startup that gets sold for millions? Before you get ahead of yourself, you need to sit down and do some homework. Any startup, irrespective of industry, needs these key 7 points necessary to build its foundation. Your customers and users will demand it. Your investors will ask it. The markets will scrutinize it. Write down on eight pieces of paper exactly what your startup will do with each point. Take a weekend and make it work for you – it’ll pay off.
1. Value Proposition: What are you providing that is of value? Be honest. Does the product or service have specific features or unique qualities that differentiate it in the market and from competitors? Determine the size of the market opportunity and address the problem or void your product/service is looking to address or solve. Then, determine how to best execute that product/service in its most basic way to gain feedback from users.
2. Revenue Sources: Your startup does plan on making money, right? Yes, there’s Instagram that pulled off a $1B acquisition by Facebook with $0 in revenues (less now thanks to Facebook’s IPO nosedive, but who’s counting pennies in the gram scheme of things). But unless the gods of timing and luck fall on you in an extraordinary way, you should prudently prepare for some cash flow. Identify key revenue sources that will generate, in time, profits. Prioritize them in terms of size and timing within your startup lifecycle.
3. Cost Structure: If your costs are too high, or exceed your revenues, you’re losing money. While this is normal for startups in the first few years of its life, after a point people will begin to wonder. This is not only bad business, but will potentially signal the demise of your beloved vision. Chart out your fixed and variable costs necessary to your business operations and growth.
4. Key Initiatives. What does your startup need to do to succeed? This may be industry-specific, so do your research. But also think outside the box.
5. Customers. Who are they?What do you believe they want or need which can be met by creating demand? How does your product/service fulfill that?Steve Jobs once said that customers don’t know what they want. He’s right. Reveal the void, create the demand.
6. Channels: How will you distribute your product/service to generate sales. This may be industry-specific, but don’t limit yourself – perhaps you’re creating new ways of distribution that helps bypass established channels. Disruption is the word on the street my friend.
7. Key Resources and Partners: Identify any critical suppliers, vendors and stakeholders who will be essential to the operations and success of your startup.
Remember why you’re doing this. Make sure it’s a reason that motivates you. Now go and plant the seeds of your startup.
Sheheryar Sardar
Sardar Law Firm LLC
Shoot me an email: sardar@sardarlawfirm.com
The Hunger Games arrives to theaters across the U.S. in unprecedented form — over 4,300 screens sold out through online sales, an extraordinary but strategically timed social media marketing blitz that statistically surpassed Twilight fever (complete with Twitter and Facebook games and contests), and grassroots anticipation built off the machinery surrounding the best-selling Hunger Games trilogy penned by Suzanne Collins (For an insightful article by Salon on how the marketing wheels worked to make The Hunger Games a bestseller, click here). The film’s stars, Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson and Liam Hemsworth, are poised for fan mania (and likely three more films under contract, with the last book broken into two). The suits at Lionsgate, the studio behind the film, must be salivating at the predicted $140M opening weekend.
It’s no surprise the massive fan base and media hype surrounding the film. The Hunger Games provides a richly layered, riveting plot that pits 24 young tributes from twelve districts that must fight each other until one tribute survives. Its set in a dystopian society in former North America called Panem. A ruthless President Snow and the power establishment (perhaps best referred to as the “1 percent”) control society by inflicting brutal violence, imposing inhumane food shortages and maintain electric fences around each of the twelve districts where the population resides. The citizens of Capitol, the central city, walk around in outlandish couture, cosmetically altered and gluttonously fed. No amount of opposition is tolerated, in fact crushed, and Panem’s district citizens meagerly and hopelessly scrape by. The political dimensions of the book (and the film) are certainly not lost on its audience, particularly in these uncertain, restive times.
This narrative would not be complete if it weren’t for a strong protagonist, who we get in the form of Katniss Everdeen, a brave but unassuming heroine from District 12 who volunteers to take her sister’s place when the tributes’ names are randomly selected. The beauty of this character lies in the fact that she is not a superhuman or possessing superpowers (consider Buffy), but a 16-year old girl who naturally harbors fears and doubts and is yet thrusted into an extraordinary situation where not only her life hangs in the balance, but her family’s and loved ones, at the mercy of the sadistic pleasures of the powers that be.
Read the rest of the article at The Broadstreet Times here: http://broadstreettimes.com/the-politics-of-the-hunger-games/
Video courtesy of MSNBC, Today Show.
Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy’s Saving Face deserves to take home the gold tonight at the Oscars! Pakistan’s first entry shares the story of an acid attack victim and how a doctor provides life-changing reconstructive surgery.
A story that needs to be honored by the Academy.
My Other Winner Predictions:
Best Picture - The Artist | Best Dir - Michel Hazanavicius, The Artist | Best Actor - Jean Dujardin, The Artist | Best Actress - Viola Davis, The Help | Best Supp. Actor - Christopher Plummer, Beginners | Best Supp. Actress - Octavia Spencer - The Help | Best Adapted Screenplay - The Descendants | Best Original Screenplay - Midnight in Paris | Best Foreign Film - A Separation (Iran) | Best Animated Film - Rango
Check out my piece published on The Broadstreet Times on copyright issues and Pinterest. Yes, that insanely popular publishing site.
While scouring the web, you found high quality images on the latest trends in gothic interior decoration that captured your aesthetic. You save them onto your computer and upload them on your Pinterest profile. It immediately enhances your profile and attracts a legion of followers. Pinterest finds them unique enough to sell the images to third parties. In four weeks you are served with a demand letter by counsel for an interior decoration company that owns the photos for damages, threatening a lawsuit if you don’t pay up. What happened?
Read the rest here.
Stunning, high pixel composite of Earth generated by NASA. Definitely in the top photo echelons of 2012.
Auroras in Anchorage during the 2012 Solar Storm hitting Earth.
