Royal Caribbean announces technology for Quantum of the Seas

At a media event in Germany, Royal Caribbean announced the technology advances coming to its newest cruise ship, Quantum of the Seas.

SMART Check-in

Before you even get onboard your cruise, guests can generate boarding documents online, upload their own ID photo, and receive digital boarding confirmation.  By the time they arrive at the cruise terminal for departure, Royal Caribbean guests can go from “sidewalk to ship” in 10 minutes with no check-in counter, no forms to fill out and no lines to stand in. 

Guests will be able to track luggage in real time on their smartphones.  Luggage will be tagged curbside with RFID technology at drop-off, and guests can monitor their bags’ progress through key points en route to the stateroom.  On departure, the process is reversed.   

SMART Concierge: Flexibility at your fingertips

Quantum of the Seas will offer new RFID WOWband wristbands, which require only a simple tap to quickly navigate the ship, make onboard purchases, serve as the room key and more.  

Simplicity and efficiency are also at the heart of two new apps that put guests in charge of their cruise choices: Cruise Planner, which allows guests to research and book dining reservations, shore excursions, spa appointments and more before their vacation begins; and Royal iQ, available as a downloadable app and provided at freestanding iQ stations around the ship.  Royal iQ allows guests to manage details during the cruise, includes a convenient calendar that provides at-a-glance views of their program, and keep in touch with one another and home via phone and text capabilities.

“Every vacation minute counts, especially on Quantum of the Seas where there is so much to see and do,” said Lisa Lutoff-Perlo, Executive Vice President, Operations, Royal Caribbean International. “Guests can now tailor everything about their cruise in advance, so they can start enjoying their vacation the minute they step onboard.  In essence, they get back the first day of their cruise.” 

Taken together, these features take the company’s time-saving efforts to a new level,” Lutoff-Perlo said. “Every minute we can save our guests is another minute of their vacation they have to enjoy.”

SMART Connect: Downloads at the speed of modern life

Quantum of the Seas will operate with unprecedented bandwidth using satellites launched by tech partner O3b Networks.  With speeds that match fast broadband connections onshore, guests can be online 24/7, no matter what personal device they bring onboard.  Guests can watch streaming video, check email, share images on social media and enjoy face-to-face video conversations – even in the middle of the ocean.

“Even when they are getting away from it all on vacation, people want to be able to connect,” said Lutoff-Perlo.  “Our satellite network will make things possible at sea that could never have been done before, and will make all the difference in the way guests share their Royal Caribbean experience.”

In addition, Quantum’s connectivity makes it possible for one of the SeaPods in SeaPlex to become a live global video gaming suite where guests can enjoy Xbox Live and compete with other gamers worldwide. 

SMART Experiences: Shaking martinis and spinning screens

Technology also powers surprise-and-delight elements on Quantum of the Seas.  A brand new venue, Bionic Bar, is set to make waves with robots at center stage.  Guests place orders via tablets and then have fun watching robotic bartenders hard at work mixing cocktails.   

Robots drive another entertaining feature on Quantum of the Seas.  Two70 is home to a playful and agile troupe of six Roboscreens that stage surprise performances during every cruise, creating scenes while soaring and twisting solo, or uniting as one.  Guests will also experience Vistarama, floor-to-ceiling glass walls that transform into an expansive ambient surface that projects any scene, real or imagined, including the multidimensional performance spectacle, Starwater.

Quantum of the Seas will take advantage of technology in functional forms as well.  Guest staterooms are equipped with device-charging USB outlets, as well as energy efficient and environmentally friendly lighting systems. Interior accommodations are outfitted with Virtual Balconies that display real-time sights and sounds of the sea through 80-inch LED screens, ensuring every stateroom has a view.

SMART Service: Crew can connect better with guests – and with home

The technology benefits of Quantum of the Seas extend to the ship’s crew.  Custom apps will allow crew members to keep better track of guests’ tastes and preferences, allowing staff to tailor their already remarkably personalized service to an even higher degree.  Whether a guest prefers gluten-free dining, early show seating, or shiatsu massage, the features of the smart ship allow crew members to anticipate every need.

And the ship’s remarkable capabilities give the company an opportunity to make life better for crew members too, since Royal Caribbean will present every crew member on Quantum of the Seas with a free, personal Microsoft Windows tablet, with a suite of services and apps that is theirs to keep.  And as technology upgrades are made across the company’s fleet, every shipboard employee in the entire Royal Caribbean International fleet will also receive their own tablet – a total of 40,000 tablets.  

“The Royal Caribbean men and women who provide such great vacations are the real heroes of our fleet and these gifts demonstrate our appreciation in a tangible way,” Fain said. “This technology isn't only about giving our guests a better vacation – it’s also about giving our crew and their families a closer connection than we’ve ever been able to” 

SMART Sustainability: Cleaner and greener

Technology has even played a part in making the ship more environmentally friendly.  Sophisticated computer modeling was used to reduce the vessel’s energy consumption with efficient hull configuration, engine design and energy saving devices.  The ship has eliminated the use of incandescent bulbs; all lighting will be provided by low-energy LED or fluorescents.  Motion sensors even dim hallway lighting when no one is present. 

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The future of recruitment technology

The use of technology in recruitment isn't new. But a seismic shift in technology is underway that is fundamentally changing an employer's interaction with potential candidates

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An old proverb goes "time and tide wait for no man". For today's times it can be modified to "time, tide and technology wait for no man". A glance at the world around us will show how every minute a technological advancement is taking place. Systems have moved from occupying rooms to pockets and might even disappear in thin air as ubiquitous computing gains momentum.

Recruitment technology is also undergoing transformation. There was a time when technology in recruitment was an embellishment used by a handful of organisations; today it has become a necessity to meet the cost and efficiency demands of the function. And the small world connected via social media has further transformed the landscape for recruitment technology. What next? A lot of things.

A recent mobile recruitment survey by Simply Hired (2013 Mobile Recruiting Outlook) shows 70 per cent of active job seekers are currently using their mobile devices to search for jobs. Against that a mere 7 per cent of employers have a mobile version for their career site while even less than 3 per cent have a mobile 'direct job apply'. It is certainly time for recruitment systems/career websites to focus on a 'mobile-first' strategy. It is time for smart mobile apps with personalised interfaces for managers, candidates, recruiters that are as easy to use as, say, Google Maps.

Another area that would see rapid changes is social recruiting. The typical Applicant Tracking System for social recruiting and referrals, with a "post a job on a wall" button is not going to work. With the technology world moving from engineering to ease, effectiveness to engagement and efficiency to experience, solutions that leverage social media information for personalised messaging in a targeted and non-spam way would make sense. Career sites will be transformed into active talent communities as employers learn to connect with top talent on the candidate's terms. This will include one-click applies, remote video interviewing capabilities, opportunities for two-way communication, social referrals, and more. Smart use of social media might even make the "resume" obsolete because the complete profile (including personality related details) of a candidate can be captured in a less biased environment.

These systems when used with a combination of biometric data, behavioural patterns and proprietary algorithms will predict which candidates are a likely fit. Together with other tools that support decision making, things like online skills testing and background checks will be the future screening system that would help companies manage applicant volumes.

While it is important to keep up with the technological development, sustainable advantage cannot be achieved merely on technology. The approach should be to understand candidate's behaviour and use a combination of human intervention and technology to orchestrate the best OFFER. An example would be to create a candidate impression centre to make the most of the candidate's experience in the recruitment process. It would have a typical applicant tracking system with a self-service functionality, personalised interfaces, and an integrated contact centre to help the different stakeholders during the recruitment cycle. So while the process is on every person involved will have real time information on current and future steps and activities. Such a system will not only reduce the time and cost but also increase overall user satisfaction.

To sum up, while the future of recruitment technology resides on mobility, personalisation and predictive intelligence, for sustainable business advantage a pinch of "candidate experience" will do wonders.

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Google buys special effects technology firm Zync

Picture for representation purpose

San Francisco: Google announced that it had bought Zync Render, a service that trims costs of special effects by pushing the work into the Internet ‘cloud’. Google did not disclose FINANCIAL terms of the deal to acquire the company whose technology was used in films such as ‘Star Trek Into Darkness’ and ‘Looper’.

Zync will become part of the Google Cloud Platform, product manager Belwadi Srikanth said in a blog post. "Creating amazing special effects requires a skilled team of visual artists and designers, backed by a highly powerful infrastructure to render scenes," Srikanth said. "Many studios, however, don't have the resources or desire to create an in-house rendering farm, or they need to burst past their existing capacity." Zync and Cloud Platform will OFFER special effects rendering as a service, billing studios by the minute for work to let them manage costs, according to Srikanth.

Zync is optimized for an Amazon.com cloud services platform, but the takeover heralded a switch to Google. "Our service will be back, and better than ever, on Google Cloud Platform," Zync said in a post on its website. "Yes, we are excited, and yes, great things are coming." Zync's website indicated the company's technology has been used for special effects in hundreds of commercials and more than a dozen feature films including "American Hustle" and "Transformers: Dark of the Moon."

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Luxury fashion takes on fitness technology

Luxury fashion is making inroads in wearable tech as more designers try their hands at developing smart, stylish accessories and clothing aimed at tracking performance and health, or simply making connected lives easier to manage.

(AFP)

"We actually think the fashion industry should be in the driver's seat," Ayse Ildeniz, vice president of business development and strategy for Intel's new devices group, said at a January event in Las Vegas.

Designers are listening.

Luxury brand Ralph Lauren plans to unveil its high-performance smart compression shirt, the Polo Tech, on Monday at the start of the US Open. The company took in feedback from players and ball boys during practice sessions and plans to begin selling the shirt this spring, said David Lauren, an executive vice president of his father's namesake company.

Hewlett-Packard Co. called on designer Michael Bastian and online retailer Gilt to develop a high-design smart watch that is Android and iOS compatible, allowing a user to take in notifications for email, text and calls, and to manage music and apps. It reportedly, could hit the MARKET this fall.
And Tory Burch partnered with Fitbit for accessories she designed exclusively for use with the fitness brand's Flex, including a brass pendant and bracelet, and patterned silicone wristbands.

Does the geek side of the equation need the luxury fashion side?

It's the hope of Lauren that Polo Tech, featuring sensors knitted in to read heartbeat, respiration and other biometrics, will resonate with the fit and the trying-to-get-fit.

Data collected by the shirt is stored by a "black box," which also is enabled with ways to capture movement and direction. The black box transmits data, including stress levels and energy output, into the cloud for display on a tablet or smartphones.

Also read: This dress goes transparent when you are sexually aroused

"What Ralph Lauren is hoping to do is take the technology and to look at opportunities that we believe, and that our customers believe, would help them to live happier and healthier lives," Lauren said in an interview ahead of the Open, where the company is the official outfitter.

The tennis tournament, he said, is a great testing ground as sports technology has improved in the last year. Football helmets can measure impact and tennis rackets can tell how hard you - or Roger Federer - hit the ball, and how good his - and your - backhand are in real time.

"We're going to take our time with it now, and we're going to learn," Lauren said. "Our goal is to introduce this technology into a variety of different kinds of shirts over the next year."

Fashion also has Intel's ear.

Ildeniz said at the winter Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas that the chip company is collaborating with the design cooperative Opening Ceremony, the Council of Fashion Designers of America and luxury retailer Barneys to find new ways for technology developers and fashion designers to work more closely on wearables.

The first item up is a luxury smart bracelet to be sold at Barneys New York. The idea is to draw other designers in as well. An update on the bracelet will come in the next few weeks, said Humberto Leon, who founded Opening Ceremony.

"Through this relationship, we have truly pushed boundaries of wearable technology by converging fashion and tech," he said in an email.

According to the NPD Group, the digital fitness category has grown to more than $330 million, a MARKET large enough to accommodate consumers ranging from serious athletes to hobbyists, NPD analyst Ben Arnold said in a statement. A recent NPD study showed that 52% of consumers say they've heard of wearable technology devices, including smart glasses, bracelets, watches and fitness tracking devices, and one-in-three say they're likely to buy one.

Misfit's Shine, a waterproof aluminum orb that comes in nine colors, has been on the MARKET for a year. It sells in big-box stores that include Best Buy and Target, in Apple stores and on Amazon, along with numerous other outlets around the world, said spokeswoman Amy Puliafito.

It retails for $99, with accessories that include a more formal necklace that costs an additional $79.

In September, the device will make an appearance on the New York Fashion Week runway of Chromat and its designer Becca McCharen. She's a former urban planner known for structural exoskeletons worn by Beyonce, Nicki Minaj and Madonna.

"Knowing your pulse, your wellness level and your activity level should be something that isn't a burden, isn't something that people don't look forward to, so having something beautiful makes it way more fun and way more enjoyable for the consumer," Puliafito said.

Adam Roth, the CFDA's director of strategic partnerships, is the fashion TRADE group's point person on the Intel collaboration. He also helped with a recent roundtable where Intel designers sat down with about 70 fashion designers to exchange ideas.

"There are so many wearable products coming out," Roth said. "Not every one is useful but may look beautiful. Not every one is beautiful but is really useful. We're getting to the sweet spot, where it's both."

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Why Are PC Sales Up And Tablet Sales Down?

Editor’s note: Peter Yared is the founder and CTO of Sapho and was formerly the CTO/CIO of CBS Interactive.

When iPads first came out, they were hailed as the undoing of the PC. Finally, a cheap and reliable computing device for the average user instead of the complicated, quirky PC. After a few years of strong growth for iOS and Android tablets and a corresponding decrease in PC sales, the inverse is suddenly true: PC sales are up and tablet sales are “crashing.” What happened?

The tablet slowdown shouldn’t be a surprise given that tablets have hardly improved beyond relatively superficial changes in size, screen resolution, and processor speed. The initial market for tablets is now saturated: grandparents and kids have them, people bought them as Sonos controllers and such, and numerous households have them around for reading. People that want tablets have them, and there’s just no need to upgrade because they more than adequately perform their assigned tasks.

Businesses and consumers alike are again purchasing PCs, and Mac sales are on the riseyear-over-year. Businesses in particular are forced to upgrade older PCs now that Windows XP is no longer supported. When purchasing a new PC, the main driver to choose a PC versus a tablet is fairly obvious: If you are creating any type of content regularly, you need a keyboard, a larger screen, and (for most businesses) Microsoft Office.

Reigniting Tablet Growth with “Super Tablets”

For the tablet category to continue to grow, tablets need to move beyond what Chris Dixon calls the “toy phase” and become more like PCs. The features required for a tablet to evolve into a super tablet are straight from the PC playbook: at least a 13” screen, 64 bit processor, 2GB of RAM, 256GB drive, a real keyboard, an actual file system, and an improved operating system with windowing and true multitasking capability. Super tablets form factors could range from notebooks to all-in-one desktops like the iMac. Small 7” and 9” super tablets could dock into larger screens and keyboards.

The computer industry is littered with the detritus of failed attempts to simplify PCs ranging from Sun Micrososytems’ Sun Ray to Oracle’s Network Computer to Microsoft’s Windows CE. But this time, it’s actually different. The power of mass-produced, 64-bit ARM chips, economies of scale from smartphone and tablet production, and — most importantly — the vast ecosystem of iOS and Android apps have finally made such a “network computer” feasible.

Businesses Need Super Tablets

As the former CIO at CBS Interactive, I would have bought such super tablets in droves for our employees, the vast majority of whom primarily use only a web browser and Microsoft Office. There will of course always be power users such as developers and video editors that require a full-fledged PC. A souped-up tablet would indeed garner corporate sales, as Tim Cook would like for the iPad … but only at the expense of MacBooks.

The cost of managing PCs in an enterprise are enormous, with Gartner estimating that the total cost of ownership for a notebook computer can be as high as $9,000. PCs are expensive, prone to failure, easy to break and magnets for viruses and malware. After just a bit of use, many PCs are susceptible to constant freezes and crashes.

PCs are so prone to failure that ServiceNow — a company devoted to helping IT organizations track help desk tickets — is worth over $8 billion. Some organizations are so fed up with problematic PCs that they are using expensive and cumbersome desktop virtualization, where the PC environment is strongly controlled on servers and streamed to a client.

And while Macs are somewhat better than Windows, I suggest you stand next to any corporate help desk or the Apple genius bar and watch and learn if you think they are not problematic.

The main benefits of super tablets to enterprises are their systems management and replaceability. Smartphones and tablets are so simple and easy to manage that they are typically handled by an IT organization’s cost-effective phone team rather than more expensive PC technicians, who are typically so overwhelmed with small problems that they cannot focus on fixing more complex issues. Apps can be provisioned and updated by both IT and end-users without causing conflicts or problems. If a device is lost, it is easy to remote wipe data and to provision a new device with all of the same settings.

Programs like BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) just accentuate the fact that smartphones and tablets are so easy to manage that enterprises are comfortable letting their employees pick the devices themselves. Users also get great benefits, including instant-on, long battery life, simplicity, and access to legions of apps from the iTunes and Play app stores.

Why Can’t the Big 3 Deliver a Super Tablet?

Former Apple executive Jean-Louis Gassée has long pointed out that Apple is graduallyconverging Mac OS X and iOS and will likely replace Intel processors with ARM processors. However, Apple is steadfast in maintaining a separation between the tablets and PCs and is bridging the divide with its new Continuity features. While Microsoft is willing to hack a touch interface onto a desktop experience, Apple will understandably not go there until the experience is perfect.

Apple will have to make this switch at some point soon, however, as users are increasingly expecting every screen to be touch-enabled. Tim Cook claims that he is not afraid ofcannibalizing businesses, but Apple seems reticent to cannibalize its growing $20 billion Mac business.

Google’s Chromebook is essentially a PC that can only run web apps. As many commentators have puzzled, Google should be focusing on a desktop version of Android rather than Chrome OS. The market has decided that it wants native apps on smartphones and tablets, so clearly users are going to want native apps on their PC replacements, as well.

Android has a huge advantage with its large app store and developer community. The Chrome OS has an inherently flawed mission – why try to compete with Windows whilst Microsoft itself is moving beyond Windows? The new generation of ChromeBooks based on ARM chips closely matches the specs of a super tablet – there just aren’t any apps because of the Chrome OS constraint. The hardware is right, but the operating system is wrong.

Microsoft is actually very well positioned for a super tablet world with its Office 365 for iPad and Android, since as a subscription product it can draw revenue long after a manufacturer cashes in the thin margins on the hardware itself. This is an opportunity for Microsoft to make more money on a Mac than Apple does, as Microsoft did in the 1990s. Microsoft has already written off making money on Windows on low-end hardware and is setting itself up for a post-Windows future around devices and services under Satya Nadella’s leadership.

Microsoft’s Surface Pro 3 is a somewhat valiant attempt to reinvent the PC as a super tablet; however it is expensive and has a small screen, a subpar keyboard, a power hungry Intel processor and all of the headaches of managing Windows. The much-panned Surface 2 with Windows RT is ironically a step in the right direction, but its 32-bit ARM processor is underpowered and there aren’t many apps in the Windows Store. Microsoft coincidentally offered Windows CE devices in the late 1990s that were actually quite close to super tablets, but like with Windows touch tablet, they entered the market far too early.

The ecosystem around building, distributing and maintaining PCs is massive and Apple, and the PC companies are understandably reluctant to cannibalize their sales. Lenovo offers a10″ Android notebook and HP is reportedly soon shipping one, but these are intentionally small and underpowered in order to not compete with notebooks. This vacuum presents an opportunity for companies like Sony that have exited the PC business but continue to sell smartphones and tablets.

Samsung in particular is reportedly looking to shutdown its PC business, and must be evaluating how to grow its tablet business now that its smartphone sales have slowed. Samsung could offer up Office 365 bundling in exchange for royalty-free device sales in its next patent conflict with Microsoft.

The Enterprise Legacy Web Holdup

An interesting side note is that large enterprises typically run numerous legacy web applications that do not work on modern web browsers, with some legacy web applications only working on ancient browsers like Internet Explorer 6. Many of these applications were built in the first wave of the Internet to enable “employee self-service” and have not been touched since that era. Perhaps the move to a simpler, cheaper PC replacement will finally shift the cost/benefit equation such that these web applications will finally be upgraded or replaced with SaaS solutions.

Here’s hoping that the Apple, Google and Microsoft can soon move into a super-tablet future where most businesses and consumers will be able to manage and customize their PCs as easily as they manage their phones and tablets … and us techies can move on from our part-time tech support jobs.

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San Francisco Open Exchange Aims To Be The E-Trade Of Bitcoin

Y Combinator-backed startup San Francisco Open Exchange (SFOX) is an online trading platform that helps people find the best bitcoin prices at various exchanges. In other words, it would like to help you buy, sell and invest in bitcoin exchanges kinda like and investor buys and sells stock on E-Trade.

Co-founder Akbar Thobhani left his job at Airbnb to create this platform. However, he soon found that using bitcoin was even more expensive than using credit cards. This is because there’s not a lot of transparency. So he started thinking that if he could find a way to compare prices this would help drive widespread adoption for the bitcoin market.

There are similar systems that directly buy and sell. CampBX, based in Atlanta, is one of many hundreds of exchanges out there that allow buying and selling. Although, Thobhani says CampBX is a different business because it’s just one exchange on a closed system. “Our goal is simple – find our customers the best price for their bitcoin. To do this, we work with multiple exchanges and use our algorithms to route the transactions,” Thobhani explained in an email.

The key thing to understand here is that SFOX does not actually allow you to buy or sell bitcoin directly, like CampBX or other exchanges. Rather, it is a platform which facilitates finding the best price on these exchanges. Prices can vary wildly, depending on the exchange used. One bitcoin could be $508.58 on Coinbase but $507.90 on Coindesk or $508.50 on Bitstamp.

There’s also the btcReport app for iOS. However, this app merely shares information about the different prices on different exchanges. It does not allow someone to actually buy or sell bitcoin. This is what makes SFOX unique in the market. It actually finds the prices on different exchanges and then, like a stock exchange platform, facilitates the trade. It also allows you to use standard equity trading features like limit orders, just like someone might find on a platform like E-Trade or Charles Schwabb.

Another thing that SFOX attempts to solve is the location of where the exchanges exist. According to SFOX, 90 percent of all bitcoin trades are done in the U.S. However, the most popular exchanges like Bitstamp and BTC-e are based outside of the U.S. The problem is some exchanges have failed to adhere to U.S. currency regulations. The now infamous Mt. Gox was one such exchange that has faced this very issue. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security issued a warrant to seize money from Mt. Gox’s US subsidiary’s account with payment processor Dwolla in 2013. The Tokyo, Japan-based exchange was at one point handling 70 percent of all bitcoin transactions. But then it announced that around 850,000 bitcoins had gone missing and were likely stolen. The amount of missing bitcoins was valued at more than $450 million at the time.  Mt. Gox didn’t register in the U.S. as a money transmitting company, which is a requirement for U.S. money services and Dwolla had no choice but to comply with handing over the money. SFOX, which is based in the Bay area, claims to be in line with U.S. regulations.

Thobhani and his co-founder George Melika’s idea was pretty well received at last week’s YC Demo Day, too. We asked around to a few investors during the breaks which company they were most impressed with. Many of them mentioned SFOX. The company is now in several talks with potential investors.

Thobani hints at possibly adding other cryptocurrencies such as dogecoin and litecoin to the platform. He also says SFOX could go international at some point.

Trading in SFOX is currently by invitation only.

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E-Businesses In Africa Have A Responsibility To Help Alleviate Internet Poverty

Editor’s note: Johan Nel is the country manager of Gumtree South Africa.

In Soshanguve, a township just north of Pretoria in South Africa, there was a small kiosk that sold fruit, cigarettes and snacks to passersby. The owner of the kiosk had recently installed Wi-Fi and, soon after, placed tables and chairs out front. And then her customers soon began to linger. They bought more items; they socialized. Her business became a hub, transforming from a corrugated tin to a kiosk and then to a cafe, growing 800 percent. The Internet anchored passersby to her business and made her — and the community — see things differently. Operate differently. Shop differently.

Access to the Internet should be a basic human right. In today’s world, you are at a considerable disadvantage without it. Considering that most companies — even in the developing world — only accept scholarship and job applications via email, not having access to the Internet is tantamount to not having the means to dig oneself out of poverty.

Elon University asked 1,500 experts to compile their predictions about what the Internet will look like in 2025. What emerged — judging not just by their predictions, but also by past behavior — is that access to the Internet is essential today. If we can’t get people connected, we are leaving them behind. Everything will be affected: our economy, our social environs, our education system. Better schools, more government assistance and reforms are mere stop-gaps compared to the online world that has endless, up-to-date information, tips and self-instruction. The Internet doesn’t discriminate; it doesn’t have borders; it doesn’t antiquate.

That doesn’t mean we tackle connectivity as a charitable initiative. In fact, we shouldn’t. Any business with an e-commerce or web-based community can draw a direct benefit when the unconnected are connected – if of course, you are willing and able to provide them with the tools they need. Connecting an unconnected operating environment should be part of your long-term business strategy.

In developing nations, we can only go as far as our (relevantly) small, connected market can take us. When you find yourself ranking at the top of your game, it’s time to change the game. The Internet is boundary-less, unlimited and full of potential — if your business  plays in the online space, it should be too. When you are expanding a network of Internet users, you are directly or indirectly expanding your own market.

For sites such as our own, that already own the bulk of the Internet population, we cannot grow if the Internet population doesn’t grow. That has to factor into our long-term business decisions. Ultimately, providing another business with Internet access benefits everyone, placing a stamp of goodwill and knowledge on a community that is priceless.

Perhaps being a market leader in 2014 and the coming years is also being a connectivity leader. Maybe it’s not the responsibility of governments and nonprofits to provide that connectivity. Perhaps, waiting for someone else to provide your customers with the connectivity they need to transact with you is the worst business decision companies are making.

E-businesses in Africa have a responsibility to alleviate Internet poverty, and the responsibility is to themselves.

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A Look Back At Yahoo’s Flickr Acquisition For Lessons Today

Editor’s note: Tomio Geron is head of content at startup Exitround. This is part of a series on the tech M&A market. 

When Yahoo offered to buy Flickr in early 2005, co-founder Stewart Butterfield and his team had a tough decision to make. There were many reasons  to sell. But there were also many reasons to wait for a larger exit.

Today, deals like WhatsApp and Oculus to Facebook, as well as Nest to Google, can make it seem like massive exits are easy or common. But they’re often complicated and provide some lessons, according to Butterfield — now co-founder and CEO of Slack — and Cal Henderson who was head of engineering at Flickr and is now co-founder and VP of engineering at Slack.

Vancouver, Canada-based Flickr launched in February 2004 and started to take off in summer of that year, drawing the attention of Yahoo and other large Internet companies. While it held some meetings with these companies, the startup didn’t receive any offers.

But six months later, with usage doubling every month and showing no signs of slowing, Flickr started to talk to venture capital firms such as Accel Partners about a substantial funding round. Until that point it had received angel funding from Esther Dyson, Reid Hoffman, James Currier and others. It also began receiving real acquisition interest. Yahoo was the most serious, flying to Vancouver to make a full pitch to the Flickr team.

There were good reasons to take venture funding and keep going. The site was exploding in growth and had no real competition. Even the popular blog platform Blogger used Flickr for photo uploads on its site. In social networking, Facebook was still an on-campus phenomenon – so Flickr could have taken some of what Facebook eventually gobbled up with social photos.

But there were also compelling reasons to take the deal, as many of Butterfield’s advisers said. Yahoo was still the top search engine. And there wasn’t much confidence in consumer Internet startups, as many investors and entrepreneurs still had the dot-com crash fresh in their minds. There hadn’t yet been consumer Internet exits since the crash, with the exception of Blogger, which Google acquired in 2003 for a small sum. And the risks of some unknown financial crash seemed significant.

Everyone wants to be Zuck, keep independent and go all the way. But there’s only one Zuck or Bill Gates.

— Stewart Butterfield

In addition, technology storage and bandwidth was expensive, and open source technology was not as mature as it is today. Flickr had to rack its servers and build much of its technology. Joining Yahoo would supposedly solve some of those problems. Flickr decided in January 2005 to take the Yahoo offer — reportedly for $35 million. There were too many compelling reasons to take the offer during what was still an uncertain time. Because it was early in the growth of tech startups after the dot-com crash, Flickr missed some of the up-tick in the market, as others sold for more when the market took off: Myspace sold to News Corp. for $580 million in July 2005 and later YouTube, which Google acquired in October 2006 for $1.65 billion in stock. “We definitely made the wrong decision in retrospect. We would’ve made 10 times [what we did]. But it’s not like I regret it,” Butterfield says.

How can something be a mistake and also be completely correct? The sale left potentially 10 times more on the table. But Butterfield doesn’t regret it because he believes they made the right decision knowing what they did at the time. And he and other team members have all gone on to do well at other ventures.

It was one of the first significant consumer Internet acquisitions after the dot-com crash, and it illustrates the tough decisions that entrepreneurs have to make — particularly when facing acquisition offers.

The Decision To Sell

Making a decision to sell is a tough call for any founder or CEO. Many have invested valuable time, money and energy for years. There is no simple right or wrong answer. Butterfield suggests that first-time founders with a strong offer from a good buyer — a similar situation he was in — should probably take it.

“I’d say most should take it. Everyone wants to be Zuck, keep independent and go all the way. But there’s only one Zuck or Bill Gates. It’s such an individual choice.”

For founders worried about being acquired by a big company, he says there are benefits to working at one. You can get access to many more resources from the acquirer to build the product, which can make it easier to just focus on building it. You can also gain much wider distribution from the acquirer to reach a broader audience for the product. And on a personal level, founders can gain liquidity for an illiquid asset – your private company stock.And no matter what, you should have many options even if you don’t like the big company.

That said, it’s not always easy for an acquired startup to integrate into a large corporation. It can be the toughest part of an acquisition. Many acquisitions fail to live up to expectations for both the buyers and sellers. “M&A in general is super dangerous,” Butterfield says. “There’s always a high risk.”

Flickr, which had seven people move to Yahoo, faced a number of issues. Many departments in Yahoo wanted to use Flickr photos for everything from dating apps to cars to maps. Much of Butterfield’s first year was spent meeting with different Yahoo departments while trying to keep Flickr focused on growing itself as a product.

For startup teams, this can be distracting from their focus on building a product. Often these discussions end up with the other department head telling the new startup team, “Tell us what you do and convert to our roadmap.” That can be a shock.

An acquired startup team also often has to deal with corporate politics, for example, with different VPs battling each other. The acquired team can get caught up in these battles, Butterfield says, even when the ultimate target of these battles is not the startup itself but some other larger goal.

The Difference in Today

Today, Butterfield is often on the opposite side of the table as a potential buyer of smaller startups. Slack just raised $42.8 million led by Social + Capital Partnership along with Andreessen Horowitz and Accel Partners.

While building Slack, Butterfield and Henderson took some lessons from their past startups. Previously, their team created Glitch, an online game that was well-reviewed but never took off as a business. The team shut down the game but the company (Tiny Speck) eventually became Slack.

The idea came from the team’s communication methods while building Glitch. Half of the Glitch team was in San Francisco and half was in Vancouver. The team had hacked together a way to communicate with messaging and file sharing on top of IRC. “We got to the end of the game and thought: whatever we do next, we want to use the same system,” Henderson says.

There’s some unrealistic expectations of how easy it is [to start a company].

— Cal Henderson

When looking at acquisitions, Butterfield generally looks for startups that can fill a need on his company’s roadmap in areas like communication, collaboration and scheduling. But Butterfield is operating in a different environment than the one Flickr was in at the time of its acquisition. In today’s market, startups are raising venture capital funding at high valuations with seemingly little trouble. There is also much more competition on the buy side from private companies with billion-dollar valuations, such as Uber, Dropbox Pinterest and Airbnb. “The challenge now is by the time it’s apparent something is a good idea — team or product — and successful, everyone is all over them,” Butterfield says.

The competition for acquisitions is similar to the competition for hiring, Henderson adds. Strong candidates have multiple offers with strong salary packages.

Meanwhile, founders see a big upside to starting a company with billion-dollar potential (realistic or not), so hiring companies have to pay up. “There’s some unrealistic expectations of how easy it is [to start a company],” Henderson says. “Even if they acknowledge how unlikely it is to succeed, they reasonably want to try it, because the upside is so big. If it doesn’t work they can go back to a big company.”

Butterfield’s biggest lesson learned for founders is to be clear about the post-acquisition terms. This still can’t guarantee everything will go as planned, but it can help. Both sides having a well-defined agreement about what will happen to the team and product post-acquisition is key. These are some baseline questions to start with:

• Is the acquisition going to be run independently?
• Will existing management remain in charge? If not, who will?
• What are the key goals/targets of the acquired team or product?
• What resources will be available from the acquirer?

If you just assume the answers to these questions and don’t agree, don’t be surprised if people aren’t happy with the outcome. And for founders, asking for a firm commitment from an acquirer on resources and timelines is key. While not always possible, the best way for a startup to become successful post-acquisition is to remain independent, he says.

Butterfield says there’s no magic bullet for a successful integration, but keeping clear on the many details can prevent a number of problems.

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