Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

" Every day I'd come home after school, pop the hood of my mom's car, put alligator clips on the battery, and wire into the house and go play on my computer. If I used it for too long, I'd wear down the car battery, and my mom would be all mad at me the next day. "

Related Quotes:

" At the most basic level, prioritizing design also represents a practical consideration. It's far easier to design first and engineer later. "

Ryan Holmes

First

Far

Engineer

" When my company was first getting off the ground, we were completely lost in the shuffle, despite our best efforts. In 2012, however, we had a 28-foot-long, 15,000-pound secret weapon. To stand out amid the gala parties and blow-out bashes hosted by much bigger tech companies, HootSuite decided to take to the streets. "

" Silicon Valley isn't the only game in town. Tech is increasingly decentralized. Around the world, new tech centers with younger companies are able to embrace a different approach to talent: recruit locally, identify homegrown prospects and, in a phrase, bring them along for the ride. "

" Importantly, companies are using social media to do things that go way beyond just chatting up existing customers on Facebook. Sales departments use social to nurture leads and close sales. HR posts job openings and vets applicants. Community and support squads mine networks, blogs and forums with deep listening tools. "

" Social media marketers have already shown unusual savvy in executing campaigns in Brazil. "

" The decision to leave a company you founded and move on to a new project is never an easy one. "

" Amongst high unemployment rates, a competitive job market and a shrinking global economy, the emerging social media industry only continues to grow. "

" Facebook, Twitter and Google have all opened offices in Brazil, recognizing the importance of localizing their products and customer service efforts. "

" The reality is that SXSW is packed with brilliant entrepreneurs, investors and partners. They're everywhere, zipping back and forth like thousands of atoms. Your chances of colliding with one actually improve just by standing still. "

Ryan Holmes

Reality

Standing

" It helps to look at branding as a challenge that entrepreneurs spend years perfecting. "

" For an older generation of employees, social media often remains misunderstood and underutilized. "

" Don't be scared to try new things, but remember to hold on to the vision of your company and the initial successes that defined your brand. "

" Tech companies have a finite lifespan: For the successful ones, an IPO or exit is never more than a few years off. But by recruiting locally and developing homegrown talent, companies can build something that remains after they're gone. People, skills and a culture of innovation persist. "

" Ultimately, I'd love to see a legacy company that has alumni that come out of it and go on to create other big things. A maple-syrup mafia, a HootSuite mafia. "

Ryan Holmes

Create

See

" You can run a sprint or your can run a marathon, but you can't sprint a marathon. "

" As social is where consumers' eyeballs are, businesses must take ownership of their online company profiles. By providing their customers with a place to share content, social media managers can monitor and track content which directly relates to their brand. "

" Social media is the future, with employers recognizing they need to start hiring people with the right skills. "

" Certification programs for social media are blossoming as a response to the demand for more social media training. Both industry professionals and recent graduates are tapping into tactical training programs to help them stay up to date as the industry grows. "

" South America's most populous country, Brazil, is also emerging as one of the region's most social-media savvy. "

" One of the ironies of a conference dedicated to all things digital and virtual is that the best ways to connect with people are surprisingly old-school. Social media tools can improve the odds of a serendipitous encounter at SXSW, but old-fashioned hustle, palm-pressing and - above all - creativity go a long way. "

" Everybody getting a significant exit creates a legacy and creates something that you can pay forward and bootstrap an industry in a substantial way. "

" Hammer down product fundamentals first. Make sure you've got something that works before doubling down on promotion and marketing. Create a groundswell of organic support, and only then leverage PR and advertising to spread the word. "

" Payfirma has revolutionized the payment process, consolidating mobile, e-commerce and in-store payments under a single solution, much like HootSuite did for social media. "

" Early in my career, I was involved with engineer-led projects, where designers came in late in the game and were expected to put lipstick on an existing code base. This almost never works. "

" As an entrepreneur, one of the biggest challenges you will face will be building your brand. The ultimate goal is to set your company and your brand apart from the crowd. If you form a strategy without doing the research, your brand will barely float - and at the speed industries move at today, brands sink fast. "

" When you think of technology that gets people excited - long lines at stores, enthusiastic reviews in the blogosphere, passionate evangelists - the first thing to come to mind probably isn't thermostats. Then, along came Nest. "

" For anyone who devours the web on a daily basis, the biggest problem is too much of a good thing. There's so much extraordinary content - from articles to images, videos and Tweets - that it's almost impossible to keep track of it. "

" It may be coincidence that the decline of newspapers has corresponded with the rise of social media. Or maybe not. "

" While consumer social like Facebook and Twitter gets the headlines, perhaps the greatest untapped potential for social networking lies in business applications. "

Ryan Holmes

Potential

Networking

" Customer service teams at many companies have already embraced social media, often out of necessity. "