Wall Street analysts remains bullish on LinkedIn, investors not so sure

(Reuters) – Wall Street took a long-tem view on LinkedIn Corp's prospects on Friday, with at least six brokerages raising their price targets despite the company's slower-than-expected shift to a marketing model based on selling ads on news feeds. LinkedIn on Thursday forecast a weaker-than-expected current quarter, even after first-quarter results blew past estimates. …

Wall Street analysts remains bullish on LinkedIn, investors not so sure

(Reuters) – Wall Street took a long-tem view on LinkedIn Corp's prospects on Friday, with at least six brokerages raising their price targets despite the company's slower-than-expected shift to a marketing model based on selling ads on news feeds. LinkedIn on Thursday forecast a weaker-than-expected current quarter, even after first-quarter results blew past estimates. …

From Wall Street careers to Main Street entrepreneurship

By Becky Beaupre Gillespie

Adrissha Wimberly readily admits that not every entrepreneur needs an MBA to succeed. But for her, business school was a perfect incubator: That’s where she met Charisse Conanan — and it’s where the two of them drew on the rich resources of academia to begin developing their idea for paycheck management software. Ms. Conanan had come to the University of Chicago Booth School of Business from Wall Street with the beginnings of an idea: She wanted to offer young professionals an easy-to-use financial planning program.

“I felt a disconnect (in my Wall Street job) with the services we were providing our wealthy individuals and institutions and the services that were being offered to my friends,” Ms. Conanan said. “I looked around and said, ‘Man, my friends don’t have access to this great information.’ “

The idea continued to take shape after graduation and, in 2011, the two Chicago women launched Smarteys. Last week, they took some time to talk with me about the challenges facing female business owners, why it’s critical for women entrepreneurs to manage their personal finances well — and why they’re glad they earned MBAs.

What specific tools did your MBA program give you that helped as you developed and launched your company?Ms. Wimberly: The first was a network of talent around us — our professors, fellow classmates who had diverse experiences. The second piece was a platform on which to exercise our new entrepreneurial wings . . . in a safe and very protected environment.

The third piece was some real-world applications. That came in the form of being able to sit through different classes — the marketing class, the entrepreneurial strategy class, the private-equity class — and to be in those classes while we were dealing with that subject matter in real time. We had one experience where we were actually negotiating a term sheet at the same time we were going through a mock term-sheet negotiation in one of our classes.

So do you recommend business school for other budding entrepreneurs?

Ms. Wimberly: I do think it’s a personal choice. I 100 percent believe it was appropriate for my life. My previous experiences had trained up my skill set to be great for a corporate setting — I understood how to play on that field, but I needed to switch my hat to an entrepreneur’s hat. . . .I needed an environment that would encourage it and bring it out of me.

What were the biggest challenges you faced as you were starting?Ms. Conanan: I think one of the challenges for us was silencing the noise (from critics) as we were figuring this out. And really being comfortable in our own skins and believing in our own abilities (to tap into) what we did well, such as understanding personal finance and understanding how to sell and understanding the finances it takes to secure enough capital to really get this business started. It’s having a strong belief that what you’re doing is the right thing to do at this moment in your life, and you’re doing it with purpose and with the passion that it takes. And it’s going forward despite the things around you that might take you in a different direction.

Do you have advice for entrepreneurs for managing their personal finances?

Ms. Conanan: Absolutely. I’d say three things:

The first is to understand how much cash you’re going to need to get to those first few (business) milestones.

The second one is (knowing) what your stop point is for your personal savings, credit cards, debt that you want to incur. Having a stop point for how much you are going to personally put into your business is really important. We advise folks to tell someone else what that stop point is so when you come up against it, you can rely on that person to hold you accountable.

The third thing is to truly be organized in how you manage your cash. We apply the same philosophies of managing the finances of our business that we use with our customers. We highly believe in automating the way in which money comes in and out of the business. We’re pretty adamant about paying off debt . . . and we’re pretty adamant about looking at things in terms of tradeoffs. So we may not buy a $1,000 server, but we might be able to use that same $1,000 to hire an intern. It’s really looking at the tradeoffs — what is one purchase going to do versus another for . . . the goal that you want to reach.

What are the biggest issues facing female entrepreneurs today?

Ms. Wimberly: I think the biggest challenge facing women entrepreneurs now is being invited into conversations that have, for the most part, not included other women. I don’t think it’s intentional, but the nature of life is that we form bonds with people who are like us. . . .Women entrepreneurs struggle with finding a way to connect with some of the people who pull the levers (of business deals) in an informal way.

Ms. Conanan: The one challenges I would add is . . . having examples of other women who have done it as women. There’s a lack of exposure to women who do things a little bit differently than the model male would do something. When you put male entrepreneurs as examples, there’s nothing wrong with that, but they do things as men would do them. There are specific and unique challenges and opportunities because of the fact that you are a woman.

What advice do you have for other women-owned startups?

Ms. Wimberly: Just go for it. Entrepreneurship is the strongest test of figuring out a path when there seems to be nothing but a hurdle and brick wall. Whatever (your constraints are) . . . just find a path and start one thing a day.

Ms. Conanan: Embrace failure. Women can often fear what they don’t know or that they’ll fail. And failure isn’t a bad thing. Failure means you learned something and you can pick yourself up and start again.

Becky Beaupre Gillespie is a Chicago-based journalist and the co-author of “Good Enough Is the New Perfect: Finding Happiness and Success in Modern Motherhood.” She speaks on work/life issues and perfectionism at corporations, conferences and to women’s groups, and she blogs at TheNewPerfect.com.

Her posts on women in entrepreneurship appear here every Wednesday.

Follow Becky on Twitter: @beckyinbalance.

Join Crain’s LinkedIn group for Chicago entrepreneurs. And stay on top of Chicago business with Crain’s free daily e-newsletters.

Facebook's first earnings report since going public will be crucial

After its highly anticipated IPO flopped, Wall Street is hoping the social networking giant will deliver something to be optimistic about. — After flopping on Wall Street, Facebook Inc. will get a chance this week to win over investors when it reports quarterly earnings for the first time as a public company.

Facebook's first earnings report since going public will be crucial

After its highly anticipated IPO flopped, Wall Street is hoping the social networking giant will deliver something to be optimistic about. — After flopping on Wall Street, Facebook Inc. will get a chance this week to win over investors when it reports quarterly earnings for the first time as a public company.

Facebook Admits It Doesn’t Know How Mobile Works

As Facebook moves inexorably toward its much-anticipated initial public offering , attention has been focused on all kinds of things about the giant network with the $100 billion potential market valuation—including the earth-shattering fact that Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg insists on wearing a hoodie during his meetings with Wall Street bankers and analysts.

The long haul

By Raman Chadha

From a recent piece in the New York Times, in response to the recent Goldman Sachs episode:

Wall Street, of course, has always sought profits — but if greed were to be countenanced, it should be long-term greed, not short-term greed, in the words of Gus Levy, who led Goldman Sachs in the 1960s and ’70s. With long-term greed, money was made with clients, not from them.

With the rapid growth of proprietary trading beginning in the 1980s, as firms used their own capital to make bets, a short-term mentality came to dominate firms, according to Mr. Elson. “You make a much bigger buck on a transaction than on the long-term relationship,” he said. “You have profiteers as opposed to advisers.”

When I read this article, it was the proverbial icing on my cake, in a high-profile and broad-reaching way.

You see, over the past year-and-a-half, I’ve increasingly observed and experienced a pattern of transaction trumping relationship, cost-cutting trumping investment and outcome trumping process. Some of that has been personal, but much of it has been environmental, as seen in the Goldman Sachs case.

It all has me wondering, whatever happened to the long haul? What happened to planning for, and thinking about, the future? How come we rarely hear about predictions, forecasts and prognostications beyond one year out? Why don’t we romanticize technologies of the future, like we once did with robots and flying cars? Is it because we ignorantly believe that the future is here? Or is it because we’re just so content with iPhones and the internet?

What I’ve found equally worrisome is the increasingly short-term view in the world of startups and entrepreneurship. Having been in that world for over 16 years, it’s a trend I noticed over the last three to four years (save for the dot-com boom). Some people have said it’s another sign that we’re living in a bubble. But for me, it’s more than just financial; it almost feels like a cultural shift, manifested in the expectations we now have.

These days, we get giddy about startups that form over a weekend but don’t bother following up to see what happens to those ventures. We celebrate wildly when companies go public in a few years and then beat them up for drops in stock price weeks after the IPO. And startups that get into highly competitive accelerators? After fawning over them for three months, we’re disappointed when they can’t raise a boatload of capital or get covered by TechCrunch. And, of course, it doesn’t help when companies go from “0-60 in four seconds” (although the lesson there is to simply never, never, never give up).

So let me address both my worries about the long haul in one fell swoop: I predict things are going to change.

I believe we’re going to start investing in people rather than companies. People build things, create value, and make progress. Companies come and go. When they fail, people bounce back but companies vaporize. When they succeed, people push themselves to greater heights but companies trip over themselves trying to replicate their success.

I believe founders will increasingly put their foot down and insist that they know what’s best for their startups, not investors, bloggers, or self-proclaimed experts. After all, it’s their baby; anyone who’s a parent knows what I’m talking about.

I believe we’re going to value learning over metrics. Learning has a compounding effect; it builds upon itself so that over time, one gains wisdom. Metrics change with the wind and are a snapshot view at a single moment in time. In and of themselves, they have zero value.

Speaking of learning and metrics, I believe we’re going to evaluate entrepreneurs differently. Rather than where they went to school or how much passion they have, we’re going to look at what they’ve built, if they’ve failed, and whether they have the moxie to be a strong leader.

Finally, I believe we’re going to get more connected in real life, not less. Interaction by text and Facebook is most productive as an outcome of relationships, which are an outcome of face-to-face interaction. Deals get done in person, not virtually. The trend toward telecommuting is already shifting toward co-working. The word “meetup” has become part of our vernacular.

So there you have it . . . my predictions about the future are really about a shift back to the long haul: making investments today in order to build value over time. Sure, I may be naive and idealistic, but isn’t that what people said when JFK predicted we’d go to the moon?

Raman Chadha is an entrepreneurship expert and educator, having consulted, taught, and mentored hundreds of startups over 16 years. Most recently, he left the Coleman Entrepreneurship Center at DePaul University to co-found a new incubator, venture fund, and co-working space. At DePaul, Raman remains a Clinical Professor, teaching New Venture Lab, Entrepreneurship Strategy, and Corporate Entrepreneurship. He also runs an entrepreneurship club at his children’s school, and is a regular speaker and writer on the topic.

Check out his blog here. And follow him on Twitter: @RamanChadha.

In search of the biggest brain in e-couponing

By Dan Gershenson

Being the first to launch an idea in the business marketplace often gives you a great head start as a leading authority, but it doesn’t guarantee long-term success. Because one thing is for certain: The minute you think of it, the next minute someone else is going to try to get in the game with something better.

Take the e-coupon market, for example. There’s Groupon (which delivers its first quarterly earnings report as a publicly traded company to Wall Street today). There’s LivingSocial. And now we have Google getting into the action with Google Offers.

All with slight differences but all still functioning from the basic premise that each day you have the opportunity to take advantage of an offer from a local business.

It’s worked well for Groupon up to this point, so well that they had to reject a multibillion-dollar buyout from Google.

But that was then. Now the stakes get raised beyond deal versus deal, the competition really begins and things get interesting.

The problem with couponing sites is that at their very core, they offer no brand loyalty unto themselves. They can offer discounts to a variety of places and, yes, if the coupons of one site appeal to you more regularly than another site, you may wander over to that site more frequently. But even if they have great deals, that’s not enough to keep you going to that one site over another.

And while the three sites mentioned are the predominant players, it’s not terribly difficult to get into the e-offer game.

The true winner in the Groupon/LivingSocial/Google Offers war will be based on four factors:

• Vendor relationships and control

The coupon site that accomplishes all four will be the brand that wins the greatest loyalty, and that’s no minimal thing.

Personalization and “learning”

The time has passed for offering generalized buckets of coupons for a city or neighborhood or even coupons based on event preferences. The winner here will be the site with the biggest “brain.” In other words, the site that has the greatest capability to learn what you like most and suggest offers that fit your lifestyle preferences.

Much like how StumbleUpon might learn your news preferences or Pandora might learn your music preferences, it’s the offer site that learns your favorite places and connects you with them that will grab the greatest market share and loyalty. You select more, it gets “smarter” in its suggestions. You thumb it up or down (or something similar) to help it “learn.” It’s not a matter of who has this capability first as much as who does it best.

True, some people like being surprised by offers outside of their preferences now and then, giving them options to try something new. But it stands to reason that many more will want to stay within their range of things they like to do.

Sharing

The ease (and fun) of sharing offers with friends is such a given that I’d almost not mention it, but it is that important. You must have the ability to share coupons with ease on any major social media channel and, assuming you’d like them to, your friends should be able to see the kinds of places/events you like to frequent so they can take advantage of those offers, too. Much like Facebook’s Timeline feature, you should be able to see where your friends went so you can get in on the action, if not this time, then the next.

Mobile integration

Pay-by-smartphone is going to become even bigger in 2012, to where you can use your phone at an establishment or venue to purchase what you need. The coupon site that integrates this functionality into its offer system is going to smoke the competition as more customers in the mainstream adopt this convenient feature and get comfortable with it. It’s not a “nice-to-have.” It’s a “must have.”

At the moment, Google’s ability to merge its Offers with Google Wallet is a strong indication of just how formidable the company could be in this area. When its programs stand alone, Google’s offerings historically can be a hit or miss. When they tie programs together, such as where you can pay with your smartphone and show a coupon, Google becomes a competitor that’s difficult to ignore.

Vendor relationships and control

Of course, when you’re talking about small-business merchants, you can’t relate to them on code alone. If the coupon war is won on the ground, you have to cultivate relationships through sales people. Groupon has a strong head start here in terms of sheer number of sales reps getting small businesses to enroll. That is, unless too many of them are overaggressive reps like the ones described by a former Groupon employee in this TechCrunch article. Yikes.

Who wins? For brand equity, it may be none of them.

I like the potential of Google Offers best in terms of the technology it utilizes. But the one Big Asterisk on all of these e-coupons for businesses to consider: From a brand standpoint, I hate it when price is the lead factor in getting someone to come through the door. The argument may be that e-couponing gets new customers you didn’t have, but I would like to see more businesses go for building loyalty among their best, most frequent customers who can spread word-of-mouth than for mechanisms that aim to get the most bodies through the door at all costs, because I’ll bet a decent number of them aren’t really that loyal as the ones you’ve had already.

Dan Gershenson is a Chicago-based brand strategy and marketing consultant who works primarily with small and mid-sized businesses.

His column on branding and social media strategy appears on Crain’s blog for Chicago entrepreneurs on Wednesdays.

Reach Dan at Dan@ChicagoBrander.com and follow him on Twitter: @DanOnBranding.

Join Crain’s LinkedIn group for Chicago entrepreneurs. And stay on top of Chicago business with Crain’s free daily e-newsletters.