Once your start-up begins to run like a fully-formed company, you have entered a different world. Instead of a fledgling company founder struggling to get investments, you have become CEO of a brand. You manage a big group of employees, not just a few brilliant minds.

According to Randy Komisar, lecturer on entrepreneurship at Stanford University and partner at venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, the most difficult transition in an entrepreneur's life is to manage a team correctly. "One of the hardest things for entrepreneurs to learn is that most of the time, the best thing they can do is get out of the way of the people actually doing the work," Komisar writes in the Harvard Business Review. Think of it as "Minimally Invasive Management."

Komisar says management, especially in tech start-ups, is becoming more like an "operating function, like payroll and finance and sales," which are all there to serve the employees who are doing the technically and creatively skilled work. "You've heard of software as a service? This is management as a service," he writes. "Managers serve the people doing the work. And nobody is more important in an organization than the people doing the work," he writes.

To serve your team better, you need to help resolve issues jamming up their workflow. Read below to find out what you can do to be a minimally invasive manager:

Hire the best.

There's no way around this one: in order to create a killer team (and have the time to manage them well), you need to higher the best employees. "If you hire badly, you'll spend most of your time as a manager dealing with personnel issues and you will find that 75 percent of your time is dealing with problems," Komisar writes. Hiring well means you can invest more time on issues like strategy, innovation, and goal-setting. So, the first step to minimally invasive management is to find people who do not need a boss to make them work. Hire skilled people who work hard and are passionate about their job.

Serve the people.

Once you've hired the best team, it's time to help develop and serve them. "A good manager doesn't make people cogs in a wheel, but instead gets all the wheels spinning together," Komisar writes. Give people clear priorities and communicate transparently about what's going on in the organization and why. "It's about taking individuals and making them 10 percent or 20 percent or 50 percent better than they ever thought they could be," he writes.

Fire the worst.

Keeping a bad employee will adversely affect the entire team. As your business evolves, so will jobs and roles and not all of your people will keep up. "There are high costs to getting rid of a B player if they have the competence to be a B+ or even an A player. But if they don't, you need to resolve that quickly," Komisar writes. "Organizations regress to the mean. If you have a bunch of B players that are not advancing, your organization will start to regress to their level."

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A common notion in Silicon Valley is that great products win.

But in actuality, that idea is quite lofty. Photo storage startup Everpix is the perfect case in point.

Everpix, a San Francisco-based startup, launched its cloud-based photo storage and sharing platform back at TechCrunch Disrupt in 2011. Just yesterday, Everpix announced it would be shut down effective Dec. 15, 2013.

Everpix didn't have a large user base, by any means. It only had 55,000 users, and just 6,800 of them paid to use the service. But those who did use the product loved it and were extremely loyal, Index Ventures Partner Neil Rimer told The Verge. 

Everpix had previously raised $1.8 million from investors including Index Ventures and 500 Startups. What ultimately killed Everpix was the funding crunch, startup advisor Andrew Chen recently wrote on his blog. 

"The Everpix story is a common one these days," Chen writes. "A lot of startups have built great initial products, and even shown some strong engagement, but ultimately not enough traction to gain a Series A."

SEE ALSO: Why I Just Deleted Snapchat

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For a young man, Matt Van Horn has had a long career in startups. He worked at Digg, back during its first iterations. Then he helped create ride-sharing startup Zimride, which is now called Lyft. For many years, he worked at social network Path.

Now he's quit his job and plans to start a new company.

You know who this terrifies?

Matt Van Horn's wife.

Lauren Van Horn went to law school, and then worked at a startup which was bought by Facebook.

She's written a blog post explaning how, even though risky entrepreneurship is a normal part of life in Silicon Valley, being married to a guy who just took the leap is "terrifying to me."

She writes, "Maybe Silicon Valley feels the same, and just never talks about it, but my heart definitely dropped the moment I entered the 'married to an entrepreneur' world."

"I was raised in a very traditional household. You were either a doctor or a lawyer, and that’s about it. Sure, I broke out of that mold a couple years ago when I quit my law firm and joined a small startup (2 weeks later to be acquired by Facebook), and sure I now embrace the unknown, the rollercoaster, the success and the failure, and the insanity. And yet, I am terrified! A lawyer can only be a non lawyer part of the time (fact). No doubt, I am inherently a planner, who loves security, and tries to counter this by doing crazy things every so often, all the while knowing that those crazy moments are way beyond my comfort zone."

Despite her fears, Van Horn says she fully supports her husband and that she's as excited for him and proud of him as she is worried.

One reason she's able to be so supportive is that her husband totally prepared her for this day.

"He made sure to repeatedly remind me throughout our past 7 years together that this would in fact happen. He wanted no misconceptions about our future: We would partake in some traditional life commitments (marriage, dog, house, children, in no particular order), but everything else was up for grabs, with guaranteed! career instability. He would be a founder and CEO of a company, he would change the world (intense, yep), and we would enjoy it every step of the way. Such confidence, right? One of the many reasons why I adore him."

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So you're graduating from a top business school and you think you're hot stuff, eh?

So did David Rogier.

But he kept striking out with the companies he wanted to work for.

Finally, his advisor told him: Go have lunch with a guy named Tristan Walker and find out how he got his career going.

Walker is currently an entrepreneur in residence at Andreessen Horowitz. He made his name as the first business development guy for Foursquare.

In a blog post, Rogier tells the story of how Walker got that job. It wasn't easy.

Tristan wanted to work at the hottest start up in the Valley — Foursquare (it was 2009).

He applied on Foursquare’s website.

No response.

Tristan found the CEOs email address on the website and sent him a note.

No response.

Tristan emailed him again.

No response.

Tristan emailed him again.

No response.

Tristan emailed him again.

(I have chutzpah, but I would have stopped at the fourth email)

Tristan didn't and emailed him again.

No response.

Tristan emailed him 3 more times. No response.

So what did Tristan do? He started working for them. He wanted a job in business development, so he started doing business development. He called up companies said he was a student and asked if they would be interested in advertising on Foursquare (remember, Tristan did not actually work for Foursquare). He had to explain what Foursquare was — but, miraculously, a few companies said yes.

Tristan then emailed the Foursquare CEO a 9th time and said — I’ve lined up a few advertisers for you.

This time, the CEO replied. They met the next day. Tristan went on to run Business Development at Foursquare.

Rogier now works for IDEO, the design consultancy. He says he learned a lot from eating lunch with Walker, including the idea that your job application should actually emphasize the areas you’ll be perceived as weak.

He writes:

"Before I applied to IDEO (the revolutionary product design consultancy), I asked a former IDEO employee (the wonderful Emily Ma) what IDEO would perceive as my biggest weakness. Her answer: are you actually creative? I didn't have a portfolio and I came from supply chain. Instead of filling out their application, I decided to make a book. I spent 10 hours in 4 different airport baggage claims, interviewed 23 people and put together a book on Snapfish about how I would improve baggage claims (the book). I got the internship."

For lots more wisdom, go read Rogier's whole post: "Recruiting Advice No One Tells You."

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Slader is the Wikipedia of homework.

Students stumped by a math or science question in their textbooks can consult the Slader site or app to not only get answers to problems, but help on how to actually arrive at those answers.

It's obviously aimed at younger teens and students, but it took some experimentation to build to the 750,000 active users on the site last month. For one thing, Slader had to drop its ad-free interface!

Think like a skeptical teen for a moment. If you're getting homework help on an ad-free site, you start to wonder where the catch is. Slader monetized its site with three ads per page and it gained users.

The app currently catalogs 450 math and science textbooks (more are added all the time) and lets students browse by chapter to a specific problem. Yes, the answer is there just like it would be at the back of a high school math book, but the answers are user-generated and quality controlled. Users write out all their work and explain specifically what they're doing and why.

Kyle Gerrity and Scott Kolb met in high school and even shared the same formative math teacher. They founded Slader as a perfect middle ground between hiring an expensive tutor and mindlessly copying the answers out of the back of your textbook – students get the specific help they need on the specific problem that's escaping them.

Their old math teacher, now retired, is among the most active users on the site.

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SmartThings, a company that makes a platform manufacturers can build into to make "smart" every day objects like Internet-connected light bulbs, door locks, and alarm systems, announced today it has raised $12.5 million in Series A funding from Greylock Partners and Highland Capital Partners.

The series A round adds to the $3 million seed round the startup raised from First Round Capital, SV Angel, Lerer Ventures, Max Levchin, Start Fund (by Yuri Milner), A-Grade, David Tisch, and CrunchFund.

SmartThings is one of a bunch of companies working on bringing the "Internet Of Things"— that buzzy industry term that describes every day objects that can be controlled over the Internet. 

SmartThings isn't one product, but a platform app developers and manufacturers can build into. All your SmartThings-powered gadgets in your home can talk to each other via the SmartThings hub, a small white box that looks a lot like a normal WiFi router. Using the SmartThings app on your smartphone, you can control all those gizmos in your house. And you can get as specific as you'd like, telling your coffee pot only to turn on if a sensor in your bedroom detects you getting out of bed, for example.

In an interview with Business Insider, SmartThings CEO Alex Hawkinson said the company plans to use its new round to increase distribution and enhance its product. Right now you can only buy a SmartThings kit, which includes the SmartThings hub plus a few other standard connected gadgets like a motion sensor, on Amazon or through the SmartThings site directly.

Hawkinson also hinted at a new product from SmartThings in the coming months, but wouldn't get more specific about it beyond saying that it'd be more consumer friendly than its current offering.

You should also take today's announcement as a hint into what the future of consumer electronics looks like. We already have Web-connected tablets, computers, and phones, but many think the next several billion online devices will be everyday objects in your home. 

But there's a challenge here, and there are already two schools of thoughts emerging in the Internet of Things space. The first is a "closed" platform, akin to Apple's iOS operating system for the iPhone and iPad. That's best exemplified by Nest, a company that makes smart thermostats and smoke detectors. Nest's devices can talk to each other, but not necessarily other connected devices in your home. (However, Nest did recently announce it would allow developers to build into its platform.)

The second school of thought is an "open" platform like Google's Android operating system for smartphones and tablets. That's what SmartThings is. Hawkinson's team wants anyone from app developers to hardware manufactures to build into its platform. 

So is there room for both? Hawkinson says there is. And in SmartThings' case, he will focus a lot of the software side, making it easy for you to control all the connected stuff in your home.

"I think there's room for both and there's certainly room for people building apps on our platform and to have their own native apps," Hawkinson said. "I think there will be one central interface like we're building. There are all these new things being built that don't have a standard interface yet." 

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Today's buzzy startup? Coin, a company that makes a "smart" credit card that can store all your other credit cards.

For $100 you get a Coin card, which you can load up with all your other debit and credit cards using a special reader that plugs into your smartphone's headphone jack. (It's $55 if you pre-order now.) When you're ready to pay, you pull out your Coin card and select which card you want to pay with using a built-in display. You then swipe it like a normal credit card.

Coin doesn't launch until summer 2014, but don't let that stop you from watching the startups promotional video. It's a neat idea, assuming it works as advertised. You can sign up to try Coin when it launches right here.

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In spring 2012, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg spent a long weekend with Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom. 

After three days of talks, the pair agreed that Facebook would buy Instagram for ~$1 billion. 

In an instant, the 28-year-old Systrom put hundreds of millions of dollars into his bank account and made millionaires out of the startup's dozen employees.

It was an amazing story. Instagram was only two years old. It had no revenues. For some skeptics, the deal was evidence that a new bubble was growing in Silicon Valley.

Now, 18 months later, industry people are starting to believe that Systrom was wrong to accept that deal.

They believe that if Instagram had stayed an independent company, it could be worth between $5 billion and $15 billion today.

This morning, activist investor Eric Jackson tweeted:"Systrom has to be feeling like he totally missed this wave. Instagram likely worth $15B today minimum."

Jackson told us he came up with that valuation figure by looking at Instagram's total active users, about 150 million, and Twitter's, around 236 million. Assuming that Instagram's user-base is more US-weighted, and therefore more valuable, he figures Instagram's market cap as an independent company would be at least half of Twitter's $30 billion.

Startup investor Shervin Pishevar agrees that Systrom sold cheap. He wrote a tweet saying, "Instagram would be worth $5B+ today. It buttressed FB stock & gave it's mobile strategy legs. Insanely smart,cheap acquisition by Zuck."

Another group of people who believe that Systrom sold too soon are some of his former Instagram investors.

This morning, the New York Times's Jenna Wortham reported that venture capital firm Benchmark was "disappointed when Instagram’s founders decided to sell to Facebook for $1 billion last year."

Wortham writes, "Despite the high price tag, the firm thought Instagram could have succeeded as a stand-alone company, or at least could have brought a higher offer."

Wortham says this disappointment was a big reason why Benchmark pushed another startup it has invested in since, photo-sharing app Snapchat, to reject an all-cash $3 billion offer from Facebook.

So, did Systrom screw-up selling early?

Technically…yes. Instagram, if were an independent company today, would easily be worth 10X what it sold for back in 2012.

But no, Systrom did not screw up.

Mark Cuban once sold a company to Yahoo for stock. He sold the stock as soon as he was able. Then the stock went up some more. The next time he was on CNBC, an anchor asked him:  “Don’t you feel dumb that you cashed out your Yahoo (YHOO) stock at $200 and now it’s trading at over $230?”

Cuban's answer: “Well, it’s hard to feel dumb when you’re flying around in your G-5.”

This is a G-5:

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Prezi, the San Francisco startup that let's you create visually compelling presentations, now has over 30 million users, and it just added several new features to make it more appealing to enterprises.

The site has grown so popular that it's adding over a million new users a month with a new Prezi being created every second, it says. It's on track to end 2013 with 36 million users, CEO Peter Arvai told Business Insider.

People like Prezi because instead of flipping through slides, the whole presentation is on one big screen and you zoom into one part or another while talking.

"It's a unique ability to arrange information spatially, not just visually," Arvai says.

But it's also popular because it's free, as long as you're willing to publicly share your presentation. Private presentations cost $5 per month hosted on its cloud and $13.25/month for a combo cloud/software version, that lets you work offline on a PC, Mac, and iPad.

The strategy is working for Prezi, which was founded in 2009. It's been "cash flow positive since year one," Arvai says. While he wouldn't say how many users pay for the service, he said enough of them to cover their costs without dipping into any of the money they have raised.

Prezi raised $14 million in 2011, lead by Accel ($14.2 million total) and is also backed by TED Talks.

Now Prezi is upping its game to attract more enterprise users, otherwise known as the Microsoft PowerPoint holdouts.

The Windows, Mac and iPad/iOS versions have added real-time collaboration, allowing up to 10 people to work on a Prezi at the same time.

You can also give use Prezi over the Internet for up to 30 people in different locations. They can simultaneously view the Prezi while you present.

SEE ALSO: A Look At Aereo: The Live Internet TV That's Scaring The Pants Off Broadcasters

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Zulily, a flash sales site for children's clothing and accessories, is going public today at $2.6 billion valuation.

As Fortune's Dan Primack points out, the tech press has largely ignored Zulily's big day, despite it's high valuation and the fact that its shares are priced above the IPO range.

Well, Primack is right. This is a pretty big IPO, especially because flash sales sites haven't been doing so hot lately. (Maybe you've heard of Fab and its recent troubles.)

According to Primack, Zulily is slightly profit ble and brought in $439 million in revenue for the first nine month of the year. That's up from $202 million for the same period in 2012. Sounds like a healthy, growing business.

Zulily (ZU) will start trading on NASDAQ later this morning.

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British technology firms continue to grow at a rapid pace despite the uncertain economic environment, pushing into areas from television and media to payment processing and internet dating.

Now consultancy firm Deloitte has published its Technology Fast 50, which charts the 50 most rapidly growing tech companies in the UK. Their combined annual revenue is a relatively modest £672m but the average five-year growth rate is 1,382% – a number any bricks-and-mortar company would die for. Here's the top 10:

1. Infectious Media

Given Google's astonishing growth, it is no surprise that a firm linked to internet advertising comes out on top. Based in London, with offices in Paris and Hamburg, Infectious Media was founded in 2008 and has achieved a stellar growth rate of 9,774%. It specialises in real-time bidding for website advertising, processing more than 40bn advert decisions per month.

2. Avecto

The second-fastest growing company has capitalised on the flipside of technology – the growing problem of cyber-security. Based in Manchester, Avecto is a Windows security specialist and has posted a growth rate of 4,731% over the last five years.

3.AlertMe

The third-placed company has benefited from the booming demand for energy meters, which monitor power use in homes and are at the forefront of attempts to drive down bills. Based in Cambridgeshire's Silicon Fen, AlertMe specialises in cloud-based services that allow consumers to control and monitor their homes. Partnering with companies such as British Gas, with massive customer bases, AlertMe has grown 3,393% since 2008.

4. Mobile Account Solutions

Can't tell the difference between an iPhone 5S and an iPhone 5C, or worried whether BlackBerry will be around next year? Hertfordshire-based Mobile Account Solutions answers those questions by providing and managing mobiles for businesses – and has grown by 3,332% since 2008. It keeps up with rapid changes in mobile technology, replacing handsets within 24 hours if needed.

5. Lovestruck.com

Given the success of online dating sites, it is inevitable that one would make the top 10. The dating company for busy people, Lovestruck aims to "help you find other gorgeous singles who live, work – or simply are – near you". It accomplishes this through geo-targeting, or matching you to people close by. Operating in London and the home counties, Lovestruck's growth rate has been 2,658%.

6. Monitise

Online payment has made billionaires of entrepreneurs like Elon Musk, co-founder of PayPal, but it is a field that is still breaking new ground. Monitise is a company that helps make banking, paying and buying with a mobile device possible. Based in London, it has grown by 2,319% over the last five years.

7. Sixteen South

Belfast-based Sixteen South specialises in children's TV programmes and its hits include Pajanimals and Driftwood Bay. The latter uses software that replicates stop-motion animation, bringing Ray Harryhausen into the 21st century. It has grown 2,214% since being founded in 2008.

8. FreeAgent

FreeAgent exists to banish that bugbear of every freelancer and small business: the tax return. The Edinburgh-based accounting software service allows users to send invoices and manage expenses, and has grown by 2,128%.

9. Equal Experts UK

Like a digital version of Savile Row, London-based Equal Experts employs a network of freelance developers to produce bespoke software. Clients include O2 and the British government, helping the business achieve growth of just over 2,000%.

10. Backbone Connect

Backbone Connect specialises in data centres, offering services ranging from cloud storage to internet connections and virtual private networks. It has grown 1,810%.

This article originally appeared on guardian.co.uk

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The tablet and smartphone have invaded the workplace and are changing everything about the way we work.

Office-bound employees are now free to roam and work on their personal devices. Road warriors and field workers now have a device as powerful as a PC that fits in their pockets.

A lot of attention is given to startups that create mobile apps for consumers (from Flipboard to Snapchat) but the companies on this list are focusing on a different, and huge, market: enterprises. Businesses will spend a whopping $340 billion on mobile products by 2017, says ABI Research.

We created this list by asking several enterprise venture capitalists to name the mobile startups they were most excited about, inside and outside their own investments. We also threw in a few picks of our own.

Clari: apps built from other cloud apps

Clari is a platform for enterprise developers for writing mobile apps.

It's still in beta but eventually it will helps them write beautiful apps that can easily tap into a lot of different cloud services like Box, Dropbox, Evernote, Chatter, Salesforce.com

Recommended by: A number of VCs named it as hot. Jim Goetz, Sequoia.

Why it's hot:Goetz says, "Mobile-first enterprise app and cloud service bringing consumer grade design to business applications. The team's had $1B+ in successful exits and has really strong customer traction pre-release.

Relationship: Investor.

Expensify: Easy expense reports

Expensify is an app that does your expense reports.

Snap a picture of your receipt and it inputs that info, so you don't have to type it all in by hand.

Recommended by: A VC that didn't want to be named.

Why it's hot: The Valley has been buzzing about Expensify since 2008, when its alpha product won a prize at a TechCrunch conference. In 2009, the entire Expensify team went to Istanbul for a month and wrote an award-winning Salesforce.com Expensify application. 

Relationship: No relation, just thinks the company is cool.

Workspot

Workspot lets enterprises instantly and securely give employees access corporate apps on a mobile devices.

It has even issued a challenge: Give them 60 seconds and they can get any enterprise app running on a mobile device.

Recommended by: Jerry Chen, Greylock Partners

Why it's hot: Chen says, "They are building enterprise app access for a mobile-first world. They do the important job of securing mobile access to legacy enterprise apps in addition to email and newer apps."

Relation: No relation, just thinks the company is cool.

The NFL and MLB are threatening to move over to cable if fledgling Internet TV startup Aereo continues its expansion.

According to Variety, both leagues filed a joint suit over the weekend urging the Supreme Court to look over a separate suit that major TV broadcasters have filed earlier this month.

Essentially, the organizations argue that Aereo's antennas which provide streams of local channels directly to tablets and smartphones is illegal. This prevents the networks and these leagues from obtaining retransmission fees ultimately violating copyright laws.

For those of you unfamiliar with how Aereo works: it's a service that lets you stream live network TV from stations like NBC, ABC, CBS, and Fox to your smartphone, tablet, or computer. You also have the option to record shows in a virtual DVR and beam the video back to your device over the Internet later. 

Aereo has a separate antenna for each user, which the company claims makes the service legal and allows it to retransmit the TV signal over the Internet. Aereo costs $8 per month to use.

The leagues get about $100 million of the $300 million broadcasters get when they structure deals for each season. Since cable channels require carrier fees to be paid and operate on a subscription basis, a jump to cable would ensure the MLB and NFL continue their lucrative deals.

Aereo argues its service isn't against the law, but broadcasters obviously disagree. The company considers its transmissions to be legal and private but they need to file a reply brief before December 12.

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As we previously reported, photo sharing site Everpix was forced to close its doors this month, for lack of money, even though business was going well. 

We just talked to one of its first employees, Sameer Sundresh, a lead engineer who is surprisingly chill over the situation. Sundresh was hired by Everpix about a year ago, after Everpix landed its seed money.

With a PhD in computer science, he's already juggling a number of job offers, he said. The startup had seven employees, and some, like Sundresh are still working there, winding it down.

The Everpix experience also didn't leave him gun shy about startup life. He's sure he'll do it again.

The good news is that, even though Everpix couldn't get an investor or buyer, it was able to sell some of its technology (to an undisclosed buyer for an undisclosed sum) and fund the costs of a proper shut down.

For instance, employees like Sundresh, who were working for minimum wage for about the last month, will get their back pay. Customers will be able to get their photos back and refunds. Amazon will be paid its roughly $35,000.

Everpix raised $1.8 million in angel and seed rounds, and took on $625,000 in debt, according to its CrunchBase profile, and those investors will be mostly out of luck.

But employees survive, and sometimes even thrive, in the Valley after a failed startup so long as the startup didn't just close shop and vanish, Sundresh says. He has no concerns that Everpix's fate will hurt his career in any way.

"If you're doing the right thing for people. If you're making something that people want, even if for a while things go slower, in the end people respect that in society," he said.

A failed startup, or one that rises from its death bed, is almost a badge of honor in the Valley. Everyone in the startup scene seems to have lived through at least one.

There are "cases where their startup was shut down, cases where you are able to cut back massively and then you get a big customer. But to get a big customer, you have to be enterprise, or be able to license some software," he says.

The harder part, he says, is engineering a product during dubious times. "You have to decide what you are going to work on. Until we were working on the premise that we were going to shut down, we had to release features that will be useful regardless of if we shut down."

For example, in those final months, the engineering team focused on features to let people to remove their photos, useful functions if they survived. Necessary if they didn't.

There's also a culture of cooperation among failed startups, he said. After news broke that Everpix would close its doors, he's gotten calls from all sorts of people, looking for advice and lessons learned.

The biggest lesson he's learned, he says, is that a startup has to balance the risks and rewards of taking on outside investment.

"The particular path we ended up taking as a company wasn't the ideal path for the kind of product we were building," he said. "Personally, I'm not a fan of taking investment. Or if you do take it, you can't rely on it being there for future investment. If you have the money you can build a fuller product. If you don't have the money you have to figure out what kind of product you can build with the money you have."

SEE ALSO: The 17 Hottest Enterprise Mobile Startups Right Now

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There's a new "luxury" work space that wants entrepreneurs to get out of their homes and offices and code in enviable locations instead.

Poolsidepreneurs was founded in Los Angeles. For $99 per month, you can work in the fresh outdoors, hotels and lounges around your city (the founders wants to launch Poolsidepreneurs in 14 markets next year, PandoDaily reports). It also offers discounted office tools.

The concept is easy to mock. How could anyone possibly do work with the glare of a computer battling the glare of the sun, or concentrate when there are cocktail waitresses running around serving startup teams under cabanas?

But if you've ever been an entrepreneur or seen one at work, you can see why someone is trying to invent a luxury work space.

Being an entrepreneur is lonely. Many founders don't see the light of day for multiple days on end. Sometimes, they forget to eat altogether they're working so hard. If Poolsidepreneur can somehow turn the phony-sounding idea into a productive alternative to a windowless office, it could be a good alternative for many founders, even if it's just for a day or two per week.  

Here's the complete description of Poolsidepreneurs.

Poolsidepreneurs is an exclusive, members only club that offers entrepreneurs access to private pools, lounges, and meeting rooms at hotels around the country as a place to work. We want you — our moving and shaking business owners, consultants and freelancers  — to get out of your office (or home) and slip away to a relaxing environment where the creative juices flow and glittering pools and cocktail waitresses abound.

Although our cheekily name “Poolsidepreneurs” does indicate access to hotel pools, it is far from the only benefit we offer our members. In addition to poolside workspace, we offer:

• Discounts on business products and services
• Networking events and access to educational seminars
• Access to hotel amenities and meeting spaces
• And many more benefits that are in the works!

Consider us your luxury pop up office. You’ll gain access to a discreet, upscale solution for mobile workspace and for leveraging your network and professional persona in a luxe setting with amenities that are not met at modern co-working spaces or virtual offices.

Quite Simply: We give you the workspace you deserve.

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Aaron Levie is the CEO and co-founder of Dropbox competitor, Box. Box is raising a new round of financing that will value the company at $2 billion. But a few years ago, Levie had the opportunity to sell his startup and become fabulously rich.

In 2011, reports circulated that Levie was offered hundreds of millions of dollars for Box. Specifically, Levie reportedly turned down more than $550 million from an unnamed company. At the time, Levie was 26 years old.

Ultimately, Levie decided to hold on to his startup. The following two weeks, Levie says, were "gut-wrenching." He wondered if he had made the right decision. He explained his logic to New York Times' Quentin Hardy:

"The mind-set was: Is this a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to build something really new, create products and services that no one has had before? Are you better off doing that on your own, or can you do it better with the resources of a big company?” he said.

Levie's decision didn't come down to the hope of getting a larger offer later. 

"You think more about the company and the mission than whether you should hang in there so you can someday afford two really big yachts, instead of one.”

SEE ALSO: These Startups May Have Blown It By Turning Down $100 Million

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Vowch, the social discovery app co-founded by 90s rapper Jesse Itzler, seems to be becoming a staple on the phones of arguably some of the coolest people in the U.S.

Its all-star list of users include LeBron James' DJ, DJ Steph Floss, Shawty Slim, Rev Run, and prominent investor Mark Cuban.

"From music to restaurants to getaways, etc, the users are essentially helping each other become more familiar with things they may not have been so familiar with," DJ Steph Floss, who has vowched over 300 times, says. "Unlike other platforms, which are seemingly a popularity contest, Vowch is about immediate and authentic influence and I love it."

On Vowch, users "vowch" (yes, the proper spelling is "vouch") for things they like, be that songs, artists, gadgets, restaurants, TV shows, movies, etc. When you "vowch" something, you get to pick the image, description, and even add video, links, songs, or maps.

Countless apps have tried to tackle the social recommendations space, but Vowch seems to be doing well so far. Vowch isn't currently sharing any user numbers or growth statistics, but Apple has continuously featured as one of the best new apps in the social networking category since last month. That usually drives a lot of downloads.

Though, it's worth mentioning that Vowch has yet to monetize its platform. That's because, Vowch says, it wants to first focus on creating a great product. 

I've been using Vowch for the last couple of weeks or so and I've been pleased with what I've discovered so far. I only follow 10 people, including Jesse Itzler, Mark Cuban, Pitbull, Rev Run, Sara Blakely, Shawty Slim, and DJ Steph Floss, but I've already discovered some pretty cool stuff. 

Check out DJ Steph Floss's Vowch profile below:

Here's my Vowch profile:

SEE ALSO: This Rapper From The Nineties Has A Sick New Startup

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On March 26, 2012, a new media startup called Upworthy launched. Now it has 50 million monthly unique readers.

Almost all of its readers come from Facebook. The headlines, which Upworthy's editors toil over, leave much to be desired and tug at heart strings. Although there's little more to the stories than something visual, like an infographic or a video, many of the posts are shared by millions of people on social media platforms.

With a staff of just 40 people, not all of them writers, Upworthy is earning more than 1 million pageviews per employee. It's sneaking up on BuzzFeed, the first publication to really play into people's emotions. BuzzFeed boasts more than 75 million monthly uniques.

Here's what Upworthy's 2013 monthly traffic looks like:

Lately, other startups have started to catch on to Upworthy's magical, social recipe. They've gained millions of readers in just a few months. Here are a few of them.

1. Distractify

Like Upworthy, Distractify tries to find positive stories to present to readers with vague headlines. It also teases cute animals, like Buzzfeed. Recent headlines include:

• He Found A Barely-Alive Creature Under A Bag Of Mulch. What He Did Next Will Take Your Breath Away.
• This Corgi Might Look Innocent Until You See Him Unleash A Hidden Talent

Distractify is a 3-person bootstrapped team, founded by 20-year-old Quinn Hu. The one-month-old site says it earned 21 million uniques in its first 30 days, but 90% of that traffic comes from Facebook. Quantcast shows a more modest — but still amazing — 14 million uniques since November 18.

2. ViralNova

ViralNova launched over the summer and it's unclear who is running the site.  The domain was registered anonymously about one year ago and updated in May. Its headlines are even more mysterious than Distractify's. Here are some examples:

• The Only Thing More Unbelievable Than These Photos Is How They Were Taken. Wow.
• This Dad Had A Crazy Idea To Build Something For His Son. Seemed Ridiculous But Turned Out PERFECT.

The site isn't measured on Quantcast, but it has nearly 450,000 Facebook fans. It definitely has millions of monthly readers by now.

3. TwistedSifter*

TwistedSifter has amassed more than 300,000 Facebook likes and 38 million YouTube views. It was founded three years ago by Ben Matthew Wong. Since it's been around for years, instead of months, it more closely resembles BuzzFeed than Upworthy*. But like Upworthy, its stories are visual and light on text. It headlines are more direct though.

Here are some of its recent headlines:

• 10 Amazing Close-Ups Show Now Two Snowflakes Are Alike
• The Most Interesting-Looking Corn In The World

4. KnowMore

KnowMore is an Upworthy-inspired blog published by The Washington Post. It launched in early October and in just three weeks, it became the Washington Post's biggest blog. Dylan Matthews is the writer and producer of it.

"Single KnowMore items can do enormous traffic; one on the pope drew more than a million page views in two days," Washington Post executives told employees in an emailed memo obtained by BuzzFeed.

How long did that article take to produce? "The text is 44 words long, and the post took less than 10 minutes to create,"The Washington Post's Timothy Lee revealed.

Here are some sample headlines:

• Do Not Use A Turkey Fryer This Thanksgiving. You Will Die
• This Cartoon Breaks Down The Most Important Feminist Concept You Haven't Heard Of

5. Independent Journal Review

In recent months, ijreview.com has exploded past competitors in website rankings. Its founders say the conservative-style Upworthy clone is "solidly profitable."

The site, led by Bert Atkinson, has fewer than ten people working on it. Its Facebook page, Conservative Daily, has more than 3 million likes. It also has 1 million email subscribers, according to BuzzFeed.

Here are some recent headlines and their respective Facebook likes, pulled out by BuzzFeed's Katherine Miller:

• This Teen Thought He Could Knockout an Innocent Victim. Then He Learned About the 2nd Amendment (51,000 Facebook likes)
• Judge Jeanine Takes Obama to the Woodshed for Lying in This Scathing Tongue-Lashing (26,000 likes)

What all this means for the future of media

Media startups like ViralNova and Distractify don't care how you find them. They don't care how long you stay on their websites, if you type in their URLs directly, or if you even know their websites' names.

They aren't trying to build brands. They're trying to earn traffic from social media referrals instead of through SEO or direct visits. 

Is it a lasting trend? To some degree.

The digital world is shifting from one that is page-ranked (Google) to people-ranked (Facebook), which means people-recommended content is here to stay. Also, content that is light on text and heavy on visuals is easier to consume on mobile devices. So the Upworthy-inspired article format won't disappear either.

But there is one serious issue these sites will run into: they rely almost entirely on Facebook for traffic. If their Facebook referrals go away, so do their readers and ultimately, their businesses.

Other startups that have relied heavily on Facebook have fallen hard. They include Zynga, Viddy, Fab, Path and BranchOut. The minute Facebook changed its algorithms and stopped promoting their products, their traffic nosedived. Viddy returned money to investors and pivoted. BranchOut pivoted. And Zynga's stock tanked.

Right now, Facebook is being kind to publishers, sending them more traffic than ever before. But all that could change. (LinkedIn, by the way, used to do the same thing. The traffic surges stopped when LinkedIn created an in-house editorial team.) 

Bryan Goldberg is on his second media site. His first was Bleacher Report. Now he's working on a site called Bustle. This time, he feels diversity of traffic is the single most-important metric for his startup.

"Even though the 1 million uniques is a great early milestone, the thing that has me really excited is the [diversity of traffic],"Goldberg recently told Business Insider."The distribution of sources is almost perfectly even, which shows that Bustle is finding readers a lot of different ways. Having done this for a second time, I cannot overstate how important that is to me."

But until Facebook decides to pull the plug, the Upworthy clones will keep growing.While you can bemoan them for their clickbait headlines, no publisher can force a reader to share content with friends. And these sites' readers are sharing a lot.

UPDATE: Here are more Upworthy clones we just found: FaithIt and Bizopy

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How do you build a really big company?

"All companies that grow really big do so in only one way: people recommend the product or service to other people,"says Sam Altman, who founded and sold Loopt, a mobile startup. 

Altman currently spends part of his time working at Green Dot, which bought Loopt, and part of his time at Y-Combinator, the startup school in San Francisco that has birthed companies like Reddit, Airbnb and Dropbox.

He continued, saying, "What this means is that if you want to be a great company some day, you have to eventually build something so good that people will recommend it to their friends--in fact, so good that they want to be the first one to recommend it to their friends for the implied good taste.  No growth hack, brilliant marketing idea, or sales team can save you long term if you don't have a sufficiently good product."

You might want to file this under: "Duh." 

It's a little bit like saying, "The best way to be successful is to be successful." 

But this post has 40,000 views. It's getting shared in Silicon Valley. As obvious as it sounds, it sometimes takes a simple view to make things clear.

The reason this post is getting shared: Right now, there are a lot of small startups getting funding, but no traction. So they're looking for "growth hacks," or ways to bump up their users. 

VC Chamath Palihapitiya for instance says his firm has figured out a way to guarantee growth for a startup. He told AllThingsD he can make just about any company grow.

Maybe it helps to have people unlock your growth potential, says Altman, but really, it all boils down to one thing: "The only way to generate sustained exponential growth is to make whatever you're making sufficiently good."

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Glassdoor, the job-hunting site where employees share inside skinny about their companies, raised a big $50 million round. That brings its total funding to $93 million.

The company will use the money to expand its international operations and also hire like mad. Glassdoor, founded in 2008, now employs 200 and will add another 100 people to its staff, cofounder and CEO Bob Hohman told Business Insider.

Hohman says that sometimes he looks out the window of his offices in gorgeous Sausalito, Calif. (just north of San Francisco across the Golden Gate bridge) and ponders how Glassdoor has been a game-changer.

It was cofounded with Rich Barton (founder of Expedia and Zillow) and Tim Besse, all of whom worked together at Expedia.

"When we started this company six years ago, we thought it was crazy that you could get more information on where you should eat and where you should travel but zero information on where you should go to work," he told Business Insider.

Today, the halls of the Glassdoor offices are covered with quotes from people about how it helped them avoid a bad-fit job or land their dream job, he says.

Glassdoor has seen impressive growth. It makes its money selling recruiting services and now has:

• Data from employees on 300,000 companies in 190 countries, especially companies in the U.S., the U.K., Canada and India.
• 22 million registered members.
• 150% growth (CAGR) in revenue for three years.
• 15,000 registered employers who interact with Glassdoor "on a daily basis".
• 1,400 of those registered employers pay for the recruiting service.
• 200 employees, with goal to ramp up to 300.

For the record, Glassdoor employees rate the company 4.5 stars out of 5 as a good place to work and Hoffman has a 98% approval rating, according to its own Glassdoor profile.

The $50 million round was lead by Dragoneer Investment Group with participation from existing investors Battery Ventures, Benchmark Capital, DAG Ventures and Sutter Hill Ventures.

SEE ALSO: These Charts Prove Facebook Is A Better Place To Work Than Google

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