Clara Shih
My high school, the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy, showed me that anything is possible and that you're never too young to think big. At 15, I worked as a computer programmer at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, or Fermilab. After graduating, I attended Stanford for a degree in economics and computer science.Collection: Science
Rather than wringing our hands about robots taking over the world, smart organizations will embrace strategic automation use cases. Strategic decisions will be based on how the technology will free up time to do the types of tasks that humans are uniquely positioned to perform.Collection: Technology
As entrepreneurs, we must constantly dream and have the conviction and obsession to transform our dreams into reality - to create a future that never existed before.
Data is valuable, so let's be mindful of how we're sharing it.
The whole point of social media is continuity and continual engagement.
I wrote 'The Facebook Era' because I felt like it needed to be written, and I was one of the people who might be qualified to do so. Specifically, my background is that I developed the first business application on Facebook.
Social networks particularly will tend to converge and consolidate over time, especially because they're inherently governed by network effects. So the bigger ones will just get bigger, their value will multiply exponentially, and the smaller ones will become less and less relevant.
Technologies and specific vendors may come and go, but massive cultural transformations and new kinds of relationships? Those don't go away.
My entire life, I have viewed every problem as an opportunity - I've had no choice.
Technology may be traditionally perceived as a male-dominated industry, but it won't always be that way. Every day we see more and more powerful women leaders boasting outstanding achievements.
Like many of my fellow entrepreneurs, I didn't create Hearsay Social with my co-founder Steve Garrity because it would be fun and easy, but because we're at our best when faced with enormous challenges.
Listen more than you talk.
Strong emotional connections between individuals, customers, and salespeople that trust each other will always be 10 times more powerful than the most expensive ad campaign. That's the power social media makes possible.
I was born in Hong Kong and immigrated to the United States with my family when I was 4. I spent most of my childhood in Chicago. My elementary school had no program in English as a second language, so I was placed in a class for students with speech impediments.
My father, a math professor in Hong Kong, worked as an electrical engineer here. My mother was an art teacher, but once we came to the United States, she went back to school and became certified as a special-education teacher.
The immigrant experience had a profound effect on me. It taught me the importance of hard work and the value of being entrepreneurial.
Companies can't delegate social media to the new college grad and think they have it covered.
Social media teams can and do launch clever campaigns, but game-changing Social Business initiatives are typically driven by management teams.
Social media provides the modern-day version of mystery shopping and walking the halls.
Social media isn't a one-way broadcast; it's a multiway opportunity for dialogue.
There is, in fact, nothing easy about being an entrepreneur.
When startups succeed, they do so against all odds. In the beginning, you have nothing except for your own talents and resources. By definition, everyone else is bigger, further along, and more established than you. To win, you have to swim upstream early on - and that requires hard work and long hours. There are no shortcuts.
The need for strong partners and employees persists throughout the life of a company, but it is especially important in the beginning.
Many companies talk about customer success, but how many actually put the customer first above all else, always?
Looking back at my first job, even when I was asked to do something seemingly menial, unglamorous, or very difficult, I always went all-in. In my most trying moments with managers I liked the least, I did not give up, complain, or slack off.
Though decisions regarding work/life balance are important and vary widely from person to person, it may not be wise in the long run to optimize for doing the bare minimum at work.
Great work, professional relationships, and learning experiences compound over time, much the way money does - investing $100 today creates much more value than investing $100 a decade from now.
With new technologies promising endless conveniences also comes new vulnerabilities in terms of privacy and security. And nobody is immune.
If there can be three certain things in life, instead of two, it might be death, taxes, and data.
I believe that rather than it being a case of humans versus machines, the future of financial advice more likely lies somewhere in between, where human advisors leverage artificial intelligence and automation to become smarter and more efficient at doing their jobs.
'The Facebook Era' articulated a radical vision for how social media would transform media, relationships, and influence, creating new opportunities for businesses in the process.
In addition to replacing many jobs, automation will also transform other jobs. Professions involving high touch, personal relationships - such as clergy, dentists, and financial advisors, for instance - face the least risk of automation but will nevertheless be profoundly transformed.
I don't watch TV or movies or play video games.
The most important thing I've done at work has been to surround myself with amazing people who I trust and empower fully to do stuff better than I could.
I am going to take one day a month to visit non-technology companies to learn and get inspiration from other industries and organizations.Collection: Inspiration
Your customer is not your userCollection: Customers
Trust has shifted from institutions to individuals.Collection: Individual
Nearly 7 in 10 Fortune 500 companies have a corporate Facebook page, and more than that have active Twitter accounts.Collection: Pages
Only in high school when I began programming computers, did I become interested in tech and start-ups, which led me to attend Stanford and major in Computer Science.Collection: School
Facebook is a CRM for people. The days of the anonymous web is over. People expect more.Collection: People
There is inherent value in sharing a billion people are doing it.Collection: People