Here is a list of 10 ingredients found in these individuals.  If you have 75% of these, then you aren’t an “employee”, you’re an athlete in today’s work world.

In Early, Out Late, Never Counts the Hours

A business athlete works long hours and loves every minute of what they do.  They’re very hard working, frighteningly efficient and will never let you do the work for them.   They don’t spend their time finding extra ways to live off the company, but rather have the company’s interest in mind at all times.

Their Work Becomes a Part of Their Life

A business athlete doesn’t end the day at 5 PM, or the equivalent of 8 hours.   Their commitment and dedication is to the mission, not just the money, and this is fully apparent in after hour emails, texts and phone calls.  Be weary of keeping anyone on your team who shuts off after a certain time.  More than often you will end up driving them, rather than them driving the company.

Skin Thick as a Dinosaur’s

A business athlete understands that intense work can create intense conversations and criticisms.   They understand that sometimes information must be communicated with a tone and passion that sets the appropriate intensity and urgency for a project or challenge at hand.  Their mind is not fragile and can withstand any harshness in delivery for the sake of accomplishing the mission.

Driven to No End

These folks are driven and are an absolute source of energy. They are usually ambitious and almost never satisfied with the status quo, seeking self betterment in nearly every corner.   They will go to their managers with ideas, projects, challenges and solutions to keep themselves, their teams and the company growing. When the work load increases, they simply smile back.

Perfection is Never Perfect

More than often their own harshest critic, a business athlete is almost never satisfied with the quality of their work.   They constantly seek betterment and work long hours to ensure the quality of their work remains optimum.  Their drive for more and their drive for better often serve as a lightening rod for their teammates and colleagues.

Smart

In any business, its important for team members to be able to make quick decisions with less than 100% of the necessary information.   A business athlete is smart and can take the information available, deduce, induce and extrapolate estimations by which they can make a quick and quality decision.  They make intelligent assumptions to maintain speed and keep moving forward.

Proactive as Paranoia

A business athlete is driven paranoid with a pro-activeness that is made to ensure their success.  They often have a plan A, B and C for everything.  They continuously double check and triple check their work for quality and accuracy.  And.. rarely will they miss directives, fail to update managers or be caught missing a deadline.   They are proactive and will not allow circumstances or the environment to blind side them or derail their missions.

Whining is For Losers

Business athletes don’t whine, they don’t blame others and they have very little excuses.   They take what they have and get the job done.  They are identifiers of problems and makers of solutions and almost never make it personal.  Every struggle in their way to success is viewed as a challenge.

Strong as An Ox

Its not easy for circumstances of a challenge to knock these folks off their course.   They will speak their mind, they will never take no for an answer and if something gets in their way, they will move it.   They are strong willed and rarely have trouble maintaining control over the destiny of their initiatives.

Confident Enough to Make Mistakes

Its takes a certain amount of confidence to take risks knowing you may fail.   These folks aren’t middlemen, they have substantial skin in the game.  They personally take on Big Hairy Audacious Goals that not only promote their own growth but also the growth of those around them.   They expect a lot from themselves and they’ll commit to big quotas, take on difficult projects and set nearly impossible deadlines knowing full well they may fail.  They always see the glass half full and they shoot for the moon every time.

At DotNext we strive to employ a two pronged approach to increasing team happiness and wellbeing during recession times like these.  First, we immediately roll out substantial, structured and predictable performance based compensation in the form of bonuses and spiffs. Nearly anyone, including managers and directors, can earn additional compensation if they are able to perform above general standards on a challenge by challenge basis. As a result, regardless of economic slow downs, team members are still able to maintain control over their financial destiny.

Second, we aggressively enhance the quality, frequency and quantity of spirited culture activities that play directly into happiness and wellbeing.  For example, our team holds competitive monthly ping pong tournaments, gathers weekly at pubs and cafes, has weekly trivia contests and just recently joined a corporate softball league. Simply put, there is a direct correlation between increased positive cultural events and team happiness and production.

Each of these efforts enhances our level of happiness, strengthens our bonds and positions us for great production and growth even in recession times.

Best,

Ben Behrouzi

As with anything else, a company is a progressively evolving entity that passes through different phases in the course of its evolution.  However in a startup everything is and must be accelerated in order to gain the critical mass and stability necessary for sustained growth and development.  

Imagine the difference between the way a jet’s mechanics are situated during its take off and climb versus once its reaches cruising altitude.  You cannot govern the jet or the business with methods that belong to a different phase of its evolution, else neither the jet nor the business will take flight.  

Too often startups make the mistake of applying too much brakes and governance to alleviate the growing pains and challenges they face.  Managers instill too many protocols, policies, procedures that weigh down a business during a time where speed and agility are everything.  It is supremely important for managers to detect the problems and apply the exact amount of governance necessary without comprising the climb of the business.  

Managers with little experience with startups, and boards with traditional seat holders tend to want to drive a business to have the same governance they have experienced at companies at much further positions in the course of maturation.  Too often startups fail because they have busied themselves in making everything run smoothly during a phase where growth and product development are everything.  What is often overlooked is the fact that there is no point in having a smoothly operating operation that has no revenues or growth trajectory.  

Clearly there is a certain amount of governance that needs to be put in place before a business steps on the accelerator, but the growing pains made present as a company moves from one phase of development to another must be met with a progressive governance application that takes into account what is most important and maintain intense focus on the ball.

Managers in startups have to learn to walk the line of too much and too little governance to keep the business moving forward while mitigating the occurrences of inefficiencies and incidents but to a degree where the business still maintains climb.

Best,

If you liked this post, follow me on Twitter.com/benbehrouzi.

Ben Behrouzi

Founder

DotNext Inc.

LeapFish.com just released a no-click search technology that delivers instantaneous search results as you type.  No need to use the mouse to click a submit button, the engine displays results in real time.  The brand new search engine is also an aggregator that conveniently gathers results from YouTube, Google, Yahoo Images and other authorities and offers them up for every search in one easy to use interface.

So Why LeapFish?

Because you can’t fit everything that we care about on page 1 of Google.

LeapFish provides an answer to the ongoing information overload and filter failure by allowing users to access more than one data type in one place.  Users are empowered with constant access to videos, images, blogs, news and other types of results that are made available at the perimeter of the core web results that are provided by Google and other engines.

So what.

Users gain access to more information without having to do the individual searches one by one on different portals.  Users are surprised by finding new information relevant to their search terms that they would have ordinarily been forced to look for independently.

Try a search and find out immediately whether there are videos and/or images you never knew existed.

So how does it work?

Future :

LeapFish is building a customizable interface that allows users to determine what online authorties they want in their version of the search engine.  Want an engine designed specifically for real estate related searches?  You can build it with LeapFish Dashboard set to be released in 2009.

Recent Press :

http://www.mercurynews.com/breakingnews/ci_11465546?nclick_check=1

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28684013/

http://www.killerstartups.com/Search/leapfish-com-a-new-search-portal

http://www.jaimeviniciusbarros.com/2009/01/leapfishcomanewsearchportal/

http://www.thestandard.com/news/2009/01/16/leapfish-launches-click-free-search

http://au.sys-con.com/node/811715

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Think about it. How many social networks are we a part of? How many shopping sites do we jump to and from? How many job boards do we use to post jobs or find job seekers? Even more so, how much relevant data that we don’t know about exists in cyber space? How much of it can search engines like Google and Yahoo capture on page 1 without being forced to essentially discard the rest due to low viewership numbers on page 2 and 3? The variety and breadth of the Internet is being lost as fast as it is being created because our traditional methods of accessing this data are slowly but surely becoming less adequate. As more and more unique services are born, the more and more fragmentized accessibility becomes.

So what is the answer? One answer is more time. More time to be able to utilize all the different kinds of unique services one by one. So when we search for something to purchase we can search Google, Ebay, Amazon and others. The second option is aggregation. In the same way that a search engine aggregates and indexes websites and web content, we require a mechanism that aggregates the variety of unique services, not just websites, that are available to us and we care about. Aggregation is key to maintaining accessibility of the entire sophisticated web.

Take Indeed.com for example, an all in one search engine and dashboard for job seekers. Indeed combines, integrates and displays a large percentage of all jobs published out in cyber space in one search. The innovation not only provides convenience but also defragments the accessibility of all job sites online. Indeed is a prime example of a much needed and accepted aggregation service for the online job space.

Or take our latest portal LeapFish.com, an all in one Internet dashboard that works to capture the variety of the web by integrating results from major online destinations including YouTube, Ebay and others in a single search query. LeapFish lends more accessibility to all of the different kinds of data we care about. As a result users are conveniently surprised with information that they wouldn’t have normally been aware of had they used a traditional engine.

Aggregation is big area of growth. For entrepreneurs, grappling with the information overload can deliver great value. I foresee big growth in aggregation and would be willing to invest in any serious startups in this space.

Best Regards,

Ben Behrouzi

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Our Vision

From the get-go our vision has been to create and grow ground-breaking Internet companies that challenge the status quo. Our goal has been to find areas where we can deliver new found value back to consumers and execute. And we’ve done that with some of the most innovative service products out there including LeapFish, iHype and up-and-coming Ziddler.

Hard Work

The team has worked extremely hard to build sophisticated applications and systems in record time, assemble one of the most successful sales forces in the country and navigate through some of the most brutal economic times we’ve ever faced. We continue to employ, we continue to innovate and we continue to take on the big risks that help push the envelope as well as stimulate our ailing economy.

Our People

Without our people DotNext is nothing. I am thankful to our people as they are our driving force and it is through them that we’ve been able to perform month after month and build a great company from the ground up. It is through their will, commitment, creativity, and relentless drive to build that DotNext has been able to produce the very companies it now operates. A big thank you to all of you.

And what a great culture we’ve fostered. From brutal ping pong tournaments, blowing off steam in Vegas, sweating it out in long go kart races to our day to day interactions with each other, I can honestly say we work hard, play hard and we all love to work here.

What We’ve Learned

We’ve learned that it’s a brave new world. From challenging market and economic conditions to online predators, we’ve learned of the new terrain that companies like ours will have to navigate.

The Future :

We continue to be excited at operating and growing our current companies, serving our clients, and developing our future products and services. We continue to grow rapidly while maintaining our profitability during these harsh economic times and look forward to a bigger and better 2009!

Come join our team!

Ben Behrouzi

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Here is the press release :

Newly Released Beta of Multi-Dimensional Search Portal Offers the Best of the Web in a Single Search

PLEASANTON, CA (November 20, 2008) LeapFish, a multi-dimensional search aggregator, announced today the launch of its beta search engine, LeapFish.com, that promises to conveniently surprise users with new- found search information as it combines the best of the web in a single search.

Type in a search term and LeapFish instantly delivers a plethora of relevant results from Google, Yahoo, and MSN, along with blogs, news, Q&A, videos, images and shopping results from major online destinations including Ebay and YouTube, all conveniently organized in a single, easy to use interface.

“The growing complexity and variety of the Internet has naturally fragmented data accessibility online. Today’s users are driven to utilize more than one online destination to find the data they seek,” said Behnam Behrouzi, President and CEO. “LeapFish offers a one-stop convenient solution for more complex searches by querying the web’s most sought-after destinations and rendering the results to users in a surprisingly easy-to-use format.”

More than just a useful aggregator, LeapFish features a refreshingly clean interface with search widgets that display up-to-the-minute news, images, videos and more, on every search term. Click “see more” under a search widget and get a complete list of relevant results. Hover over a video and view it right on LeapFish. Hover over an image thumbnail and see the actual image on demand.

“Future releases will allow LeapFish to intelligently decipher the search term entered and deliver the most relevant search widgets from a growing list of over 200 currently being developed,” Behrouzi said. “Users will receive instant results from relevant online authorities in maps, music, real estate, social sites and more, based on the search term they enter.”

Behrouzi points out that LeapFish does not intend to race alongside Google or Yahoo, but instead seeks to leverage what is already working and wanted online. “LeapFish utilizes what already works to capture the breadth and variety of the web and lends more accessibility to what is already valuable to us in the vastness of the Internet,” he says.

LeapFish utilizes proprietary hyper-threading technology to communicate with all major online portals simultaneously to deliver the various search results from across the web to users in a single search query. The beta search platform has been under development since early 2008 and is geared for considerable advancements over the coming months.

LeapFish Features Summary:

•New-Found Knowledge: By developing relationships with more than 200 leading online destinations in search, news, imagery, videos, real estate and more, LeapFish is defragmenting the accessibility of valuable information online.

•Convenience and Variety: LeapFish conveniently surprises users with new-found search information by bringing the variety of the web right to their finger tips.

• Simplicity: LeapFish’s comfortable and familiar interface allows for the organization and display of various types of search information in a single easy-to-view format.

So will you make the leap to LeapFish? To try LeapFish for yourself, visit http://leapfish.com.

About LeapFish

LeapFish empowers Internet users with a radically simple way of searching the breadth and variety of the growing web. The first multi-dimensional search aggregator in the world, LeapFish gathers, organizes and renders the most relevant information from the depths of the internet’s most valuable destinations in one simple search. LeapFish Inc. is a privately held corporation headquartered out of CARR America Corporate Center in Pleasanton California. For more information, visit www.leapfish.com.

Additional LeapFish Links :

• Tinycomb.com

• Marketwatch.com

• Ibtimes.com

• Betanews.com

• Earthtimes.org

• Infinityarts.com

• Digg.com

• Tmcnet.com

• Blog.leapfish.com

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I’ve built some of the most sophisticated applications online in record time, supported by some of the most advanced systems infrastructures known in Silicon Valley. I’ve helped raise millions of dollars in capital and have hired, trained and managed hundreds of employees nationwide. I’ve had several failures in my life with some lessons that have left their spots, and have even been victim to online lies and an actual blog war instigated by the many that are motivated by the basest of human qualities.  

This is a blog about startups.  This is a blog for young entrepreneurs.  This is a blog about entrepreneurship, the American dream and building big internet businesses that change a bit of our future.

I am going to tell you my stories and the stories of many others blessed and plagued by the successes and challenges of building startups, with an objective to build a fluid and dynamic exchange of knowledge for building startups.

MaxStartup is here to share with you the many lessons learned, challenges faced and experiences had in the path of entrepreneurship and I invite you to follow and contribute as MaxStartup analyzes different challenges in the past and in the future for popular startups throughout the internet.

Thank you and stay tuned.

Best regards,

 
Ben Behrouzi

If you liked this post, follow me on Twitter.com/benbehrouzi. Thanks!