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Hello there!

Lots to unpack this week 🙌 

• Podcast: From Startups to Scale-ups with Venture Capitalist Yuri Navarro

• Success Story: Lauren Sherman, the Accidental Manager

• Finding a CTO for Your Startup

Weekly Business Challenge: A phone with A Dedicated Facebook Button 🤔

But first, a tour of the headlines…

Weekly Catchups

News | Industry Insights | Trends

• 🛎️ Empty Offices, Stressed Banks 

  Working from home is wreaking havoc on the commercial real estate market. Empty office buildings are causing financial stress for landlords struggling to refinance loans as vacancy rates soar. High interest rates further complicate the situation. While some smaller banks with heavy exposure to bad office loans might fail, experts believe it's unlikely to snowball into a full-blown crisis like 2008. Regulators are being proactive, and banks are working with landlords to prevent a fire sale of properties.

• 🟢 EU Approves the World’s Most Extensive AI Rules

  The European Parliament this week gave the green light to the world's first comprehensive framework for constraining the risks of AI. The new law addresses worries about bias and privacy. The legislation would ban AI’s use in detecting emotions at workplaces and schools and limit how it can be used in high-stakes situations like sorting job applications.

• ⏳️ TikTok on the Clock

  The US moved a step closer to banning TikTok after the House of Representatives passed a bill calling for the app’s Chinese developer ByteDance to divest from the company or be booted out of US app stores. House legislators have argued that the app could allow the Chinese government to access user data. TikTok has tried to reassure regulators that it has taken steps to ensure the data of its 150 million users in the US has been walled off from ByteDance employees in China.

Uncharted Horizons

Personal Development | Success Story

Lessons From A YouTuber

What lessons can YouTubers possibly teach CEOs, you’d think. To most Businessmen, they are attention-seeking solopreneurs rather than company builders. But Marques Brownlee is different. For starters, Brownlee’s YouTube channel, posting content on everything technology, has over 17.7 million subscribers. If that number doesn’t quite convince you to believe he is a thought leader in the tech space, consider this: in 2013—way before influencers had made their big splash on the internet—Google’s then VP of engineering Vic Gundota declared Brownlee “the best technology reviewer on the planet.”

When he began shooting videos in his suburban New Jersey home at age 15, childishly naming his first review MKBHD for ‘Marques Keith Brownlee and high definition,’ he would never have imagined swarms of reporters gathering to take note about his thoughts on the latest Apple event, better still receiving a shout out from Tim Cook himself. A YouTuber of Brownlee’s worth can reap as much as $5,000 per million views from YouTube Ad Sales.

Strategies | Tools | Marketing Tips

The Perfection Myth

Perfection-related procrastination is a real thing. Are your perfectionist tendencies holding you back at work? Here are a few strategies that may help you manage them, adapted from “Don’t let perfectionism slow you down” by Rajani Katta.

 Strategy #1: Allow Yourself Messy First Drafts

Author Anne Lamott is famous for her advice to writers. In her book Bird by Bird, she writes: “Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. Start by getting something, anything, down on paper. Take a break from your work, return to it with a clear head and then polish your writing.

Strategy #2: Counteract the Cold Start

Mark out time in your schedule for creative thinking. This could be a long walk or a conversation with a colleague. Then, dictate any ideas you have in a stream-of-consciousness fashion. This can help warm your thinking, giving you a place to start.

Strategy #3: Use the Effort-to-Benefit-Ratio

Before starting any assignment, figure out how much effort you need to exert to reap potential benefits. For example, say you’re tasked with taking notes in a meeting. Instead of writing things down verbatim, ask your colleagues what would prove to be most helpful. You may discover that they only want to review the action items discussed, saving you significant time and effort.

Strategy #4: Learning When to Ship

Eric Ries, the author of the book The Lean Startup, states that “instead of spending years perfecting our technology, we build a minimum viable product, an early product that is terrible, full of bugs…Then we ship it to customers way before it’s ready.” Sometimes releasing an imperfect product is acceptable.

Strategy #5: Incorporating Late Feedback 

The last 20% of a project can be incredibly frustrating, as you’re trying to fine-tune every aspect. This is where feedback late in a project can be so helpful. Ask for feedback, and specifically ask “How close to done is this?”

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Networking | Business Development | Entrepreneurship

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