8 Tips for Building Company Culture

Growing a team can prove just as challenging as building one up from scratch. Our co-founder, Lydia, gave a talk today at Draper University, detailing everything from her experience on building a company to growing the team. Lydia shares some valuable tips for expanding companies looking to establish a solid, reliable team: 1. Hire: Sunday Test. Ask yourselfif you were to go into the office on a Sunday, and you saw John, would you be excited to work or let out an exasperated sigh? You want to hire people you are excited to work with! 2. Avoid Dogmatic People. Test potential hires for dogmatic personality traits. It is important to have employees that are flexible and open to new ideas. In our interview process, we challenge interviewee’s suggestions to see how they react to suggestions and criticisms. 3. Ensure Intrinsic Motivation. You want employees to feel personally invested in the company and know they are making an impact. While equity and bonuses help, there are other ways to remind employees of their value to the company. You want them to take ownership of their work and call them to be accountable for their ideas. 4. Encourage Career Growth. Be an advisor to your employees. Find out what their career goals are. What are their interests besides their current role? Taking an interest in your employees and acting as a support system will help improve morale and productivity. 5. Decide on Data. Developer’s hours are sacred, but never shoot down an idea outright. Explain your concerns and if your employees are persistent, establish what you would need in terms of mock-ups and data to consider before introducing it to a developer. 6. Ask, Don’t Tell. Like the previous point mentioned, give employees control of their work. They want to feel as though you respect them and their decision-making process. A subtle, yet effective way to communicate this, is to ask, rather than flat out commanding. 7. Focus on Culture. Create a company culture that people want to be a part of without going overboard. Little things such as playing Cards Against Humanity, or going on outings to shows like Aziz Ansari and Amy Schumer create strong team relationships. 8. Don’t be too soft. You can’t please everyone all the time. It’s normal to hire friends when you’re starting out, but they might not be the best long term fit. You will have to make cuts. It will temporarily hurt morale, but in the long run, people will be happier if the company is successful. See which points best relates to your team, and what can be improved on. For more insights into building a company and growing a team, don’t forget to check out the full video!

The Difference Between a City and a Town

The Difference Between a City and a Town Do you live in a city or a town? Depending on where you live, the definition of these two terms may vary, as will the official designation that is given to a certain community. In general, though, cities are larger than towns. Whether any given town is officially designated with the term town, however, will vary based on the country and state it is located in. The Difference Between a City and a Town In the United States, an incorporated  city  is a legally defined government entity. It has powers delegated by the state and county and the local laws, regulations, and policies are created and approved by the voters of the city and their representatives. A city can provide local government services to its citizens. In many places in the U.S., a town, village, community, or neighborhood is simply an unincorporated community with no governmental powers. County governments typically provide services to these unincorporated communities.Some states do have official designations of towns that include limited powers. Generally, in the urban hierarchy, villages are smaller than towns and towns are smaller than cities, though this is not always the case.   How Urban Areas are Defined Throughout the World It is difficult to compare countries based on the percentage of urban population. Many countries have different definitions of the  population size necessary to make a community urban. For example, in Sweden and Denmark, a village of 200 residents is considered to be an urban population, but it takes 30,000 residents to make a city in Japan. Most other countries fall somewhere in between. Australian and Canadian cities have a minimum of 1,000 citizens.Israel and France have a minimum of 2,000 citizens.The United States and Mexico have a minimum of 2,500 citizens. Due to these differences, we have a problem with comparisons. Let us assume that in Japan and in Denmark there are 100 villages of 250 people each. In Denmark, all of these 25,000 people are counted as urban residents but in Japan, the residents of these 100 villages are all rural populations. Similarly, a single city with a population of 25,000 would be an urban area in Denmark but not in Japan. Japan is 78 percent  and Denmark is 85 percent  urbanized. Unless we are aware of what size of a population makes an area urban we cannot simply compare the two percentages and say Denmark is more urbanized than Japan. The following table includes the  minimum population that is considered urban in a sampling of countries throughout the world. It also lists the percent of the countrys residents which are urbanized. Not surprisingly, some countries with a higher minimum population have a lower percentage of ​urbanized population. In addition, the  urban population in almost every country is rising, some more significantly than others. This is a modern trend that has been noted over the last few decades and is most often attributed to  people moving to cities to pursue work. Country Min. Pop. 1997 Urban Pop. 2015 Urban Pop. Sweden 200 83% 86% Denmark 200 85% 88% South Africa 500 57% 65% Australia 1,000 85% 89% Canada 1,000 77% 82% Israel 2,000 90% 92% France 2,000 74% 80% United States 2,500 75% 82% Mexico 2,500 71% 79% Belgium 5,000 97% 98% Iran 5,000 58% 73% Nigeria 5,000 16% 48% Spain 10,000 64% 80% Turkey 10,000 63% 73% Japan 30,000 78% 93% Sources Hartshorn, Truman A.  Interpreting the City: An Urban Geography. 1992.Famighetti, Robert (ed.).  The World Almanac and Book of Facts. 1997.World Bank Group. Urban Population (% of total). 2016.

Species Divergence Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Species Divergence - Essay Example physiology, the mode of interaction with its environment, nutrition regime, etc. While evolutionist ideas may be discerned in several pre-modern scholars’ ruminations, it was only with the advent of the 18th century Enlightenment that modern evolutionary theories formed, with that of Charles Darwin soon taking the pre-eminent place among them. The formation of currently mainstream version of evolutionary biology was immensely helped by the respective advances in the fields of genetics and molecular biology, which helped define the organic basis for evolutionary processes. From a biological organization point of view, evolution proceeds on a species level, as individuals comprising a species do not themselves evolve over the course of their lifespan. However, the results of their interaction with the environment enable the accumulation of new heritable responses within their genotype structures, giving rise to a process of natural selection. The latter, in its turn, conditions the changes in the species’ phenotype (i.e. the complex of biological features). Natural selection may be properly defined as a gradual process of genetic variation whereby the individuals with most favorable gene combinations are more frequently able to transplant their genes to subsequent generations of a species, so that their descendants will define the face of their species. While natural selection process is individual, being transmitted across a species only indirectly, it is genotype of a species as a whole that it impacts on, so that heritable changes in those individuals’ genotypes that are favored by natural selection are spread to the subsequent generations of a species as a whole. The mechanisms of natural selection are varied; however, some of them may be assigned more prominent roles in its perpetration. Of those, ecological selection, with an emphasis on fitting with one’s biological environment, and sexual selection, with an individual’s fecundity and ability to find prospective sexual partners as a key factor, may be considered the primary ones. In turn, these mechanisms may be sub-divided into more specific methods of selection, with, e.g., ecological selection encompassing the mechanisms of intraspecies competition, kin selection, etc., and sexual selection including those of intrasexual selection, intersexual selection (sexual dimorphism), etc. b. Evidence for biological evolution is manifold and comprises the number of data from different scientific disciplines. Within the context of this essay, five types of this evidence will be examined. Plate tectonics. The discovery of the movements of plates in the 20th century laid to rest the notion of unchangeable nature of Earth’s tectonics, contributing to an idea of nature’s propensity for change. On a more specific level, Charles Lyell’s studies on the impact of climatological and geological changes on the distribution of species, with specific emphasis on extinct flora, led the researchers to conclude that movements of large land masses lead to conversion of climates, which meant that animal and plant species had to be dynamic entities, the spatial distribution whereof changes in accordance with the changes of topography brought about by geological agents. Consequently, the changes in floras and faunas were decisively connected with the corresponding shifts of land masses, contributing to the development of an idea of ecological selection. Biogeography. The research in the connection between plate tectonics and changes in life on Earth that was referred to above has been directly connected with the research in the field of biogeography. Such scientists as Edward Forbes, Wallace and Willer Matthew conducted an extensive research in the