<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5804b972dd0895c3338b4cee-1280/brain training.jpg" alt="brain training" data-mce-source="Paul Boxley / Flickr" data-mce-caption="Brain training games have been heavily criticised recently." data-link="https://www.flickr.com/photos/paulboxley/207501231" /><p class="source"><span><a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/paulboxley/207501231">Paul Boxley / Flickr</a></span></p><p class="caption">Brain training games have been heavily criticised recently.</p></div><p></p></div></div>When people get older, one thing that signifies the loss of independence is having to give up driving. For some, it means losing the convenience of travelling around as they please, and for others it's complete isolation.</p><p>A new study from Penn State University suggests that certain specific cognitive exercises are linked with prolonging people's ability to drive. Among a lot of scathing press, this study appears to be one of the rare cases that cognitive exercises, often collectively referred to as "brain training," has been shown in a favourable light over the past few years. </p><p>This could suggest that certain types of cognitive exercises are more beneficial than others, according to study author Dr Lesley Ross, who is an assistant professor of human development and family studies at Penn State.</p><p>The new research - <a href="http://gerontologist.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2016/10/03/geront.gnw143.abstract" target="_blank">published in the journal The Gerontologist</a> - studied over 2,000 adults aged 65 or older, who the team randomly assigned to one of four activities: reasoning, memory, divided attention training, or zero training. Those who completed 8 hours or more were then offered "booster training" which was an extra 4 hours.</p><p>All the participants were driving and in good health when they started, but were also assessed and divided into sub-groups depending on their risk of giving up driving.</p><p>Over the course of 10 years the participants were evaluated seven times, and those who were given either the reasoning or divided attention training tasks and were also considered high-risk were 49% less likely to have given up driving after a decade, and this increased to 55% if they had completed booster training.</p><p>In general, participants who were randomly selected to receive additional divided-attention training were 70% more likely to still be behind the wheel after 10 years.</p><h2>The type of training matters</h2><p>Divided-attention training uses perceptual exercises, where the participants were shown different objects on a screen and then asked questions about what they had seen. For example, participants would be briefly shown several different objects, and then have to answer questions about what they'd seen, such as the colour of a car or how many apples there were.</p><p>This type of activity, which study author Ross calls "speed processing training," is important because it requires the person doing the activity to process increasingly complex information faster.</p><p>Ross has been involved with cognitive training programs for a long time, and has noticed the tendency for all types of brain training being looped under the same definition.</p><p>"In the world of cognitive intervention, there are so many different things that fall under that [title]," she told Business Insider. "I would argue that there are specific types of training that are adaptive to the task - similar to exercise."</p><p>Just like different types of exercise are useful for different types of performance enhancement - such as weight training for strength, or jogging for cardiovascular health - Ross says that speed processing training has very different benefits to memory training. For example, in this study the team found that speed and processing training helped with driving safety as well, while memory training didn't have this effect.</p><p>Since brain training first came onto the scene, with games that claimed to predict the 'age' of your brain, there have been several studies debunking its usefulness. Back in 2014, <a href="http://longevity3.stanford.edu/blog/2014/10/15/the-consensus-on-the-brain-training-industry-from-the-scientific-community-2/" target="_blank">70 researchers signed a letter of consensus</a> which was damning to the brain training community, and accused it of making promises about boosting mind power that they said just weren't true.</p><p>One study, <a href="http://psi.sagepub.com/content/17/3/103.full?ijkey=hK6Y5zBI1Rv.M&amp;keytype=ref&amp;siteid=sppsi" target="_blank">which was published this month</a>, found no evidence that these games work as advertised, ie: they don't have any affect on the age your brain is supposedly working at.</p><p>From Ross' perspective, some groups of researchers are not necessarily being as subjective as they need to be when they're looking at the evidence.</p><p>"Some of these studies that are making large claims, when you look at them they're giving people very little training, it's not adaptive, and it's with small samples," Ross said. "I think it's doing a detriment to the population, because there is reasonable evidence that some of these things do work."</p><p>The other point is about dosage, such as following up with booster training, and this new study is the first to show benefits after such a long time period.</p><p>"We're finding that people stay on the road 10 years after doing 10-18 hours of training," Ross explained. "I would love it if I could go to the gym over five weeks and work out a total of 10 hours, and then 10 years later have anything to show."</p><p>Like a lot of research, Ross says the best thing you can do is look at things objectively and make up your own decisions, like everyone does with nutrition and exercise guidelines.</p><p>"Speaking personally, I just want to know, can my parents now drive okay, can they stay on the road, are they able to go to the doctor," Ross said. "It's a complicated debate that's going on right now, but we don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater because a few small studies aren't necessarily finding results."</p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/white-blue-purse-explained-2016-10">The internet can't decide whether this purse is white or blue</a></h3>        <div>            <div>    <script src="http://player.ooyala.com/v3/6e12e8b3387a44daacfb73afba25a76e"></script>    <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="cxMnJhNjE6eERfkUcfxeupleG5zzBWOW" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>    <script>    if (typeof RunFunctions === 'undefined') { var RunFunctions = []; }     RunFunctions.push(function()    {         var ooyalapopvideo = OO.Player.create('ooyalaplayer_popvideo', 'cxMnJhNjE6eERfkUcfxeupleG5zzBWOW',{ autoplay: 'false' });     });    </script>    <noscript><div>Please enable Javascript to watch this video</div></noscript></div>        </div>        <script>(function() { function createPlayer() { OO.ready(function() { RunFunctions.forEach(function(ooyalaFunction) { ooyalaFunction(); }); RunFunctions = [];}); } createPlayer(); }()); </script>    </div>

Perhaps you shouldn't completely write-off brain training - not yet at least

<p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5823604bdd08959e518b4baa-1138/trump%20vaccine.jpg" alt="trump vaccine" data-mce-source="Michael Vadon / Flickr" data-mce-caption="Trump has some worrying views on vaccination." data-link="https://www.flickr.com/photos/80038275@N00/19587034648"><p class="source"><span><a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/80038275@N00/19587034648">Michael Vadon / Flickr</a></span></p><p class="caption">Trump has some worrying views on vaccination.</p></img></div><p></p></div></div>The President-Elect of the United States of America has said he believes&#xa0;that vaccines are harmful, and has repeatedly and erroneously claimed that they cause autism. This is untrue&#xa0;and it's dangerous.<p>Back in 1998, British medical researcher <a href="http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(97)11096-0/abstract" target="_blank">Andrew Wakefield published a paper in the health journal The Lancet</a> which claimed to show a link between children who were given the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine with autism and bowel disease.</p><p>No other scientists were able to reproduce his results - something that is vital in research. Most of Wakefield's co-authors withdrew their support for the study. After conducting an official inquiry, a&#xa0;<a href="https://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/andrew-wakefield-the-panel-is-satisfied-that-your-conduct-was-irresponsible-and-dishonest/" target="_blank">tribunal of the British General Medical Council concluded</a>&#xa0;that Wakefield acted dishonestly and irresponsibly, and even performed unnecessary invasive medical procedures such as colonoscopies on the children.</p><p>The Lancet eventually retracted&#xa0;the paper and <a href="http://uk.businessinsider.com/who-is-andrew-wakefield-2015-2" target="_blank">Wakefield was&#xa0;struck from&#xa0;the UK medical register</a> with a statement identifying that he'd deliberately&#xa0;falsified&#xa0;scientific results.</p><p>By then, however,&#xa0;the damage had already been done. Many people in the US and Europe still believe that vaccinations cause illnesses and conditions in children, including autism. Despite official medical advice that says vaccines are safe and vital, many parents still worry about inoculating their children. The belief is heavily ingrained in a lot of people's minds, <a href="http://uk.businessinsider.com/tribeca-film-festival-premiers-andrew-wakefield-documentary-2015-2">including celebrities</a>&#xa0;such as&#xa0;<a href="http://uk.businessinsider.com/jim-carrey-against-vaccination-law-2015-7" target="_blank">Jim Carrey.</a></p><p>According to <a href="http://www.people-press.org/2015/02/09/83-percent-say-measles-vaccine-is-safe-for-healthy-children/" target="_blank">a 2015 report by the Pew Research Center</a>, about one in 10 Americans believe that vaccines are not safe. One of those ten people is the President-Elect.&#xa0;</p><p><div><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>Healthy young child goes to doctor, gets pumped with massive shot of many vaccines, doesn't feel good and changes - AUTISM. Many such cases!</p>- Donald J. Trump  (@realDonaldTrump) <a href="https://twitter.com/mims/statuses/449525268529815552">March 28, 2014</a></blockquote><script async="" src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></div></p><p>"I've seen people where they have a perfectly healthy child, and they go for the vaccinations, and a month later the child is no longer healthy," <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxBACsmis_0" target="_blank">Trump said on Fox in 2012</a>. "It happened to somebody that worked for me recently. I mean, they had this beautiful child, not a problem in the world. And all of a sudden, they go in, they get this monster shot. You ever see the size of it? It's like they're pumping in - you know, it's terrible, the amount. And they pump this into this little body. And then all of the sudden, the child is different a month later. And I strongly believe that's it."</p><p>During the <a href="http://uk.businessinsider.com/donald-trump-vaccines-autism-2015-9" target="_blank">GOP debate in September 2015</a> he spoke about that supposed case again, and claimed that vaccines were causing an "autism epidemic."</p><p>"People that work for me, just the other day, two years old, beautiful child went to have the vaccine and came back and a week later, got a tremendous fever, got very, very sick, now is autistic," he said.</p><p>For starters, <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4232964/" target="_blank">there is no epidemic</a>. Secondly,&#xa0;Trump's opinions of vaccines do not appear to be backed up by any sort of scientific research either. He has claimed to be for vaccination, but argues that they should be given over an extended period of time.</p><p><div><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>No more massive injections. Tiny children are not horses-one vaccine at a time, over time.</p>- Donald J. Trump  (@realDonaldTrump) <a href="https://twitter.com/mims/statuses/507158396051927041">September 3, 2014</a></blockquote><script async="" src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></div></p><p><div><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>I am being proven right about massive vaccinations-the doctors lied. Save our children &amp; their future.</p>- Donald J. Trump  (@realDonaldTrump) <a href="https://twitter.com/mims/statuses/507158574670573568">September 3, 2014</a></blockquote><script async="" src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></div></p><p><div><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>I'm not against vaccinations for your children, I'm against them in 1 massive dose.Spread them out over a period of time &amp; autism will drop!</p>- Donald J. Trump  (@realDonaldTrump) <a href="https://twitter.com/mims/statuses/507546307620528129">September 4, 2014</a></blockquote><script async="" src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></div></p><p><div><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>So many people who have children with autism have thanked me-amazing response. They know far better than fudged up reports!</p>- Donald J. Trump  (@realDonaldTrump) <a href="https://twitter.com/mims/statuses/507546486553706497">September 4, 2014</a></blockquote><script async="" src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></div></p><p>This belief is also popular among vaccine-skeptics, because it sounds like it could be a legitimate argument, but <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/the-argument-that-kids-get-too-many-vacines-at-once-is-wrong-2015-9" target="_blank">there really is no evidence for it</a>. Vaccinations are given at set times for a reason, after decades of doctors giving them out and working out the best schedule.</p><p>Babies' immune systems don't get "overloaded" by vaccines -&#xa0;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/people-are-spreading-dangerous-lies-about-vaccines-2016-4" target="_blank">that's just not how it works</a>. A single bacteria has between 2,000 and 6,000 immunological components, and we&#xa0;encounter many bacteria every day. The total number of immunological components of all 14 vaccines given in the first years of life is around&#xa0;160.</p><p>In fact, <em>not</em> getting vaccines on time puts&#xa0;children at risk. Young babies can be easily exposed to nasty diseases because their immune systems are just getting started, and spreading vaccines out delays their protection. It also exposes young children to more doctor surgery visits. Also, if there is a long time between boosters, <a href="http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/123/1/e164#ref-7" target="_blank">some parents&#xa0;forget&#xa0;to bring their children back</a>.</p><p>Thanks to vaccinations, smallpox was eradicated, but anti-vaccination rhetoric has halted this happening to other diseases. Polio came close to eradication, <a href="http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2014/05/05/309868063/the-comeback-of-polio-is-a-public-health-emergency" target="_blank">but there have been instances of it cropping up in countries recently</a>. In 2014, <a href="http://www.wales.nhs.uk/sitesplus/888/page/66389" target="_blank">an epidemic of measles spread across Wales</a> due to vaccine skepticism. Whooping cough was at an all time low in the 1980s -&#xa0;<span>10 years after the vaccine was introduced - with</span>&#xa0;2,900 cases in the UK. After&#xa0;<a href="https://www.cdc.gov/media/subtopic/matte/pdf/2010/whoopingcough.pdf" target="_blank">Wakefield's paper, this rose to 26,000 in 2004 and 50,000 in 2012</a>.</p><p>These things simply should not&#xa0;be happening when we have tried and tested ways of preventing&#xa0;people from getting sick. Currently 83% of Americans think that vaccines are safe, so hopefully this doesn't change.</p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/pros-cons-protein-shakes-exercise-workout-2016-10">The pros and cons of drinking protein shakes after exercising </a></h3>        <div>            <div>    <script src="http://player.ooyala.com/v3/6e12e8b3387a44daacfb73afba25a76e"></script>    <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="ZqZ2JsczrDjVUHT2uP379dh93NsXulO9" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>    <script>    if (typeof RunFunctions === 'undefined') { var RunFunctions = []; }     RunFunctions.push(function()    {         var ooyalapopvideo = OO.Player.create('ooyalaplayer_popvideo', 'ZqZ2JsczrDjVUHT2uP379dh93NsXulO9',{ autoplay: 'false' });     });    </script>    <noscript><div>Please enable Javascript to watch this video</div></noscript></div>        </div>        <script>(function() { function createPlayer() { OO.ready(function() { RunFunctions.forEach(function(ooyalaFunction) { ooyalaFunction(); }); RunFunctions = [];}); } createPlayer(); }()); </script>    </div>

US President-Elect Donald Trump has said vaccines cause autism, and he couldn't be more wrong

<p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5823604bdd08959e518b4baa-1138/trump%20vaccine.jpg" alt="trump vaccine" data-mce-source="Michael Vadon / Flickr" data-mce-caption="Trump has some worrying views on vaccination." data-link="https://www.flickr.com/photos/80038275@N00/19587034648"><p class="source"><span><a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/80038275@N00/19587034648">Michael Vadon / Flickr</a></span></p><p class="caption">Trump has some worrying views on vaccination.</p></img></div><p></p></div></div>The new President of the United States of America has said he believes&#xa0;that vaccines are harmful, and has repeatedly and erroneously claimed that they cause autism. This is untrue&#xa0;and it's dangerous.<p>Back in 1998, British medical researcher <a href="http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(97)11096-0/abstract" target="_blank">Andrew Wakefield published a paper in the health journal The Lancet</a> which claimed to show a link between children who were given the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine with autism and bowel disease.</p><p>No other scientists were able to reproduce his results - something that is vital in research. Most of Wakefield's co-authors withdrew their support for the study. After conducting an official inquiry, a&#xa0;<a href="https://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/andrew-wakefield-the-panel-is-satisfied-that-your-conduct-was-irresponsible-and-dishonest/" target="_blank">tribunal of the British General Medical Council concluded</a>&#xa0;that Wakefield acted dishonestly and irresponsibly, and even performed unnecessary invasive medical procedures such as colonoscopies on the children.</p><p>The Lancet eventually retracted&#xa0;the paper and <a href="http://uk.businessinsider.com/who-is-andrew-wakefield-2015-2" target="_blank">Wakefield was&#xa0;struck from&#xa0;the UK medical register</a> with a statement identifying that he'd deliberately&#xa0;falsified&#xa0;scientific results.</p><p>By then, however,&#xa0;the damage had already been done. Many people in the US and Europe still believe that vaccinations cause illnesses and conditions in children, including autism. Despite official medical advice that says vaccines are safe and vital, many parents still worry about inoculating their children. The belief is heavily ingrained in a lot of people's minds</p><p><span>According to </span><a href="http://www.people-press.org/2015/02/09/83-percent-say-measles-vaccine-is-safe-for-healthy-children/" target="_blank">a 2015 report by the Pew Research Center</a>, about one in 10 Americans believe that vaccines are not safe. One of those ten people is Trump. Another is&#xa0;the nephew of former US President Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.</p><p>Kennedy has&#xa0;pushed hard against the use of a chemical called thimerosal - a preservative used in vaccines to prevent the growth of bacteria and fungi that <a href="http://antiantivax.flurf.net/#Thimerosal" target="_blank">anti-vaxxers often confuse with mercury</a>. &#xa0;He also thinks parents should choose whether their children are vaccinated.</p><p><a href="http://uk.businessinsider.com/trump-picks-vaccine-skeptic-robert-kennedy-to-oversee-presidential-review-on-vaccines-2017-1" target="_blank">After a meeting at Trump tower</a> this month, Kennedy said:&#xa0;"Trump has some doubts about the current vaccine policies and he has questions about it," and said the President had&#xa0;asked him to chair a commission on vaccination safety, but Trump's team has since denied this.&#xa0;</p><p>This wasn't the first time we've seen the President hint towards his views on the matter though.</p><p>"I've seen people where they have a perfectly healthy child, and they go for the vaccinations, and a month later the child is no longer healthy," <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxBACsmis_0" target="_blank">President Trump said on Fox in 2012</a>. "It happened to somebody that worked for me recently. I mean, they had this beautiful child, not a problem in the world. And all of a sudden, they go in, they get this monster shot. You ever see the size of it? It's like they're pumping in - you know, it's terrible, the amount. And they pump this into this little body. And then all of the sudden, the child is different a month later. And I strongly believe that's it."</p><p>During the <a href="http://uk.businessinsider.com/donald-trump-vaccines-autism-2015-9" target="_blank">GOP debate in September 2015</a> he spoke about that supposed case again, and claimed that vaccines were causing an "autism epidemic."</p><p>"People that work for me, just the other day, two years old, beautiful child went to have the vaccine and came back and a week later, got a tremendous fever, got very, very sick, now is autistic," he said.</p><p>For starters, <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4232964/" target="_blank">there is no epidemic</a>. There may be more cases of autism nowadays, but this is likely due to better diagnosis rather than anything else. Secondly,&#xa0;President Trump's opinions of vaccines do not appear to be backed up by any sort of scientific research. He has claimed to be for vaccination, but argues that they should be given over an extended period of time.</p><p>This belief is also popular among vaccine-skeptics, because it sounds like it could be a legitimate argument, but <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/the-argument-that-kids-get-too-many-vacines-at-once-is-wrong-2015-9" target="_blank">there really is no evidence for it</a>. Vaccinations are given at set times for a reason, after decades of doctors giving them out and working out the best schedule.</p><p>Babies' immune systems don't get "overloaded" by vaccines -&#xa0;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/people-are-spreading-dangerous-lies-about-vaccines-2016-4" target="_blank">that's just not how it works</a>. A single bacteria has between 2,000 and 6,000 immunological components, and we&#xa0;encounter many bacteria every day. The total number of immunological components of all 14 vaccines given in the first years of life is around&#xa0;160.</p><p>In fact, <em>not</em> getting vaccines on time puts&#xa0;children at risk. Young babies can be easily exposed to nasty diseases because their immune systems are just getting started, and spreading vaccines out delays their protection. It also exposes young children to more doctor surgery visits. Also, if there is a long time between boosters, <a href="http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/123/1/e164#ref-7" target="_blank">some parents&#xa0;forget&#xa0;to bring their children back</a>.</p><p>Thanks to vaccinations, smallpox was eradicated, but anti-vaccination rhetoric has halted this happening to other diseases. Polio came close to eradication, <a href="http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2014/05/05/309868063/the-comeback-of-polio-is-a-public-health-emergency" target="_blank">but there have been instances of it cropping up in countries recently</a>. In 2014, <a href="http://www.wales.nhs.uk/sitesplus/888/page/66389" target="_blank">an epidemic of measles spread across Wales</a> due to vaccine skepticism. Whooping cough was at an all time low in the 1980s -&#xa0;<span>10 years after the vaccine was introduced - with</span> 2,900 cases in the <keyword id="6354868" type="COUNTRY" weightage="60" keywordseo="UK">UK</keyword>. After <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/media/subtopic/matte/pdf/2010/whoopingcough.pdf" target="_blank">Wakefield's paper, this rose to 26,000 in 2004 and 50,000 in 2012</a>.</p><p>These things simply should not&#xa0;be happening when we have tried and tested ways of preventing&#xa0;people from getting sick. Currently 83% of Americans think that vaccines are safe, so hopefully this doesn't change.</p><div><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>Healthy young child goes to doctor, gets pumped with massive shot of many vaccines, doesn't feel good and changes - AUTISM. Many such cases!</p>- Donald J. Trump  (@realDonaldTrump) <a href="https://twitter.com/mims/statuses/449525268529815552">March 28, 2014</a></blockquote><script async="" src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></div><div><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>No more massive injections. Tiny children are not horses-one vaccine at a time, over time.</p>- Donald J. Trump  (@realDonaldTrump) <a href="https://twitter.com/mims/statuses/507158396051927041">September 3, 2014</a></blockquote><script async="" src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></div><div><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>I am being proven right about massive vaccinations-the doctors lied. Save our children &amp; their future.</p>- Donald J. Trump  (@realDonaldTrump) <a href="https://twitter.com/mims/statuses/507158574670573568">September 3, 2014</a></blockquote><script async="" src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></div><div><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>I'm not against vaccinations for your children, I'm against them in 1 massive dose.Spread them out over a period of time &amp; autism will drop!</p>- Donald J. Trump  (@realDonaldTrump) <a href="https://twitter.com/mims/statuses/507546307620528129">September 4, 2014</a></blockquote><script async="" src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></div><div><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>So many people who have children with autism have thanked me-amazing response. They know far better than fudged up reports!</p>- Donald J. Trump  (@realDonaldTrump) <a href="https://twitter.com/mims/statuses/507546486553706497">September 4, 2014</a></blockquote><script async="" src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></div>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/mario-odyssey-trailer-gorgeous-nintendo-switch-2017-1">Here's the gorgeous trailer for 'Super Mario Odyssey' -&#xa0;the first Mario game for Nintendo Switch</a></h3>        <div>            <div>    <script src="http://player.ooyala.com/v3/6e12e8b3387a44daacfb73afba25a76e"></script>    <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="NwNnN2ODE62wPrJrkIbeQa_J2hgoAhQn" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>    <script>    if (typeof RunFunctions === 'undefined') { var RunFunctions = []; }     RunFunctions.push(function()    {         var ooyalapopvideo = OO.Player.create('ooyalaplayer_popvideo', 'NwNnN2ODE62wPrJrkIbeQa_J2hgoAhQn',{ autoplay: 'false' });     });    </script>    <noscript><div>Please enable Javascript to watch this video</div></noscript></div>        </div>        <script>(function() { function createPlayer() { OO.ready(function() { RunFunctions.forEach(function(ooyalaFunction) { ooyalaFunction(); }); RunFunctions = [];}); } createPlayer(); }()); </script>    </div>

Trump has said vaccines cause autism - and he couldn't be more wrong

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16. NASA Uncut

<img class="gwt-Image" src="/photo/22455695.cms" /><br />
Is e-commerce 2.0 over in India? Going by the recent ripple of mergers and closures, impacted by an overall volatile economy, we often assume the worse. Investors’ loss of trust in the Indian ecosystem has become a litany for some time now but in spite of the downtime, a handful of Indian e-commerce firms have hit the headlines in 2013 for fast-paced growth and the big bucks they have managed to raise. Their operations vary widely – it can be as simple as business listing, as predictable as selling books and lifestyle items online or as unique as creating a whole new platform for a consumer requirement. But routine or innovative, these six Indian companies have gained both investors’ support and consumer trust that keep them going. Find out what’s making them tick while we bring you a tongue-in-cheek account of possible mergers &amp; acquisitions that may happen on their way.<br />
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<strong><keyword id="430602" type="COMPANY" weightage="100" keywordseo="JustDial">JustDial</keyword>: What’s next after a roaring listing business? </strong><br />
Forget MakeMyTrip and its iconic NASDAQ listing – here is one success story just as good. Fresh from a mind-blowing IPO that was oversubscribed 12 times, this India-focused local business listing site has already entered online food ordering space and has some more projects in the pipeline. Of course, the Rs 950 crore IPO – a pure offer for sale in which founder VSS Mani and investors, including Tiger Global, Sequoia Capital and SAP Ventures, sold some 1.75 crore shares – is the largest on the Indian bourses this year and one of the biggest by an Indian Internet firm.<br />
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However, the start-up had done its fair share of tight-rope walking earlier in the day. Since his first-ever business directory service AskMe failed in the early 90s, Mani made sure to make the next initiative failure-proof – taking one cautious step at a time (initially answering consumer queries over phone, then graduating to web queries and next moving on to mobile apps). Finally, India got its biggest business listings company, built from a paltry seed capital of Rs 50,000. And here is another interesting bit of information. Since 1999, Mani had taken six shots at the bourses and the last one has gone right home.<br />
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<strong>Road ahead: </strong>What feels good about this start-up is that, JustDial is already up and about, looking at new businesses. In a recent media interview, Mani confirmed that the company would soon expand its online service range – diversifying into cab, movie ticket and doctor appointment booking.<br />
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<strong>If consolidation happens: </strong>What if... search giant Google wants to focus more on India and requires a local partner that has scale and reach across multiple businesses? In fact, <keyword id="45395" type="CITY" weightage="40" keywordseo="Google-India">Google India</keyword> has already introduced Product Listing ads that will display features like product images, pricing and more, to highlight merchant offerings. Will it thrive more if JustDial comes on board?<br />
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<strong><keyword id="541988" type="COMPANY" weightage="100" keywordseo="SnapDeal">Snapdeal</keyword>: All about pivots, deals &amp; marketplace, but can it do a TaoBao?</strong><br /> Talk about pivots and you have Kunal Bahl who has done it as many times as Robert Bruce and courted success. His business pivoted seven times as Bahl started by selling restaurant deal vouchers (and printed ones at that); came up with a daily deal site and finally pivoted to a zero-inventory, e-commerce marketplace just like Amazon, with a B2C (business to consumer) focus. That definitely makes it different from <keyword id="161767" type="COMPANY" weightage="60" keywordseo="eBay-India">eBay India</keyword> where the focus is C2C. Snapdeal claims to be doing it big – with 20 million registered users and around 14-15 million visitors each month, according to his recent interaction with <em>AllThingsD</em>. And a total funding of $114 million or so (eBay is an existing investor in the company as well) definitely speaks a lot in terms of investor confidence. Snapdeal is not profitable yet, but it is eyeing an annual GMV of $400 million this fiscal and wants to do a billion dollar in GMV by 2015.<br />
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<strong>Road ahead: </strong>Media reports say Bahl is all set to do a TaoBao Mall (a dedicated B2C e-commerce marketplace run by China’s Alibaba Group) right here in India. The seasoned entrepreneur prefers to call the marketplace a vast product discovery platform with fast and furious growth and has recently introduced a customer protection service called TrustPay – a service that ensures 100% money-back guarantee in case of any issue with product quality, size or delivery. It also serves as a seller protection service against any kind of consumer fraud. Snapdeal’s agility to move ahead of the market could be its USP, especially now that it has started working on ad revenues, but can it really achieve the momentum and the scale in the Indian context?<br />
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<strong>If consolidation happens: </strong>That eBay is one of the investors in Snapdeal is an interesting fact. If the company ever considers a readymade marketplace with a B2B focus, this will be a good deal. Then there is <keyword id="6354743" type="COMPANY" weightage="40" keywordseo="Amazon-India">Amazon India</keyword> who could be buying out all competition. But given a choice, would it buy <keyword id="6354742" type="COMPANY" weightage="100" keywordseo="Flipkart">Flipkart</keyword> or Snapdeal? Well, your guess is as good as ours.<br />
<br />
<strong>Flipkart: Big bucks are rolling in, but is the business booming?</strong><br />
Don’t shop, Flipkart it – that’s the new mantra of this prolific e-com player, founded by Sachin and Binny Bansal (they are not related). They started as a book e-tailer, but soon expanded into all possible categories – from fashion to fitness and accessories, gadgets &amp; electronics to home &amp; lifestyle products, baby care items, toys and more. The success mantra is simple – best pricing and speedy delivery, backed by a dedicated logistics team. Understandably, the traction is awesome – the company claims to have 10 million registered users and over 1 million unique visitors a day.<br />
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Flipkart has recently raised a fifth round of funding worth $200 million from its existing investors – Tiger Global, Accel Partners, ICONIQ Capital and South African Internet company Naspers – taking the total funding to more than $380 million. But that doesn’t mean all is well in paradise. It has recently shut down some digital businesses like Flyte (a much-hyped MP3 store launched only a year ago) and cut down on a number of electronics categories. On the plus side, it has launched its own payment gateway called PayZippy, introduced a voice-based search on the site, started selling e-books and has come up with a marketplace where third party vendors can sell directly to consumers. Flipkart has also entered a deal with the US-based indie e-book distributor Smashwords, Inc., which gives it access to Smashwords’ eBook store – a catalogue of 2 lakh-plus vetted and formatted e-books from more than 60,000 authors and publishers.<br />
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<strong>Road ahead: </strong>Ambitious, to say the least, especially after the Series E booster. Just like Snapdeal, this e-com biggie wants to reach an annual GMV of $1 billion by 2015 besides doubling up the number of sellers on the marketplace to 1,000 by the end of this year. Although Flipkart is constantly harping on global level hiring, the biggest chunk of the funds raised is bound to be spent on technology, supply chain and (don’t be shocked) product development. PayZippy could be just the beginning and going ahead, Flipkart may evolve into a technology enabler for offline businesses keen to have an online presence. Infibeam’s Build A Bazaar, SmartStore from BigFoot Retail and PayU India’s PayUPaisa are doing just the same, but Flipkart can actually do a PayUPaisa by integrating the proprietary payment gateway with the Web stores for additional revenues (just like PayUPaisa does).<br />
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But it is the Smashwords deal that intrigues us most. According to Nielsen BookScan Retail Panel data, in 2013, Flipkart holds an average of 40-45% in terms of value when it comes to the organised books market in India and the company has plans to grow it substantially. If that happens, it will become the undisputed market leader in the books category – both online and offline. And before we forget, Flipkart may focus even more on private labels – it already markets a private label brand called Digiflip for digital accessories such as laptop bags and camera pouches. But the biggest challenge is to get over the few setbacks, bring back the positive drive and get ready for a much-anticipated IPO.<br />
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<strong>If consolidation happens: </strong>A head-on between Snapdeal and Flipkart or Amazon and Flipkart will be extremely interesting. However, the company is not losing much sleep over the competition from existing marketplaces. Another possibility is Flipkart acquiring Tradus since they have a common investor in Naspers and such deals have taken place before.<br />
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<strong><keyword id="6388367" type="COMPANY" weightage="100" keywordseo="Jabong">Jabong</keyword>: Fashion e-tailing on a roll, but for how long?</strong><br />
Shun the incremental and go for the leap, said Jack Welch of GE. And if there’s one online retailer in the fashion and lifestyle segment that has literally fallen for this mandate, it’s Jabong.com, the dark horse in the fiercely competitive Indian e-commerce space. In less than 20 months, the Rocket Internet-backed venture has banged into the top rung – the third most-visited online shopping site after Myntra.com and Flipkart.com, according to a recent report by comScore. Reasons for such eyeballs? Huge inventory, aggressive marketing, speedy delivery and best-in-class customer care (including third-party logistics services). The deep pockets of the Samwer brothers help it burn the cash left, right and centre, and around 50-60% of its sales are coming from small towns, its founder, Arun Chandra Mohan, said in a recent media interaction.<br />
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<strong>Road ahead:</strong> Could be bleak, going by Rocket’s reputation of creating hype and disposing its assets at the earliest. Jabong claims to do around 14,000 orders a day (average ticket size not disclosed), but it is yet to hit profitability. The company is said to be experimenting with private labels, but does not seem to be pushing it big time in spite of potential big margins. Moreover, just like Flipkart, Jabong has also handed out the pink slips. At the end of the day, it has to find a viable business model and we hope that the third-party logistics can bring in some hard cash as e-tailing spreads across the country.<br />
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<strong>If consolidation happens: </strong>A takeover bid, either by Myntra or by Flipkart, will definitely put the bidder on the top. However, Flipkart is an unlikely candidate as its late initiative to enter fashion and lifestyle space is yet to gain traction and scale. Of course, it is not lacking in funds, but considering that the firm has already launched a marketplace in April this year and facing some stiff competition from Amazon India and other <em>desi</em> e-com marketplaces, will it really invest in an inventory-led model? Myntra, on the other hand, could be game if it is seriously considering a No. 1 slot. Interestingly, Bangalore-based Myntra is one of the heaviest funded players in the e-commerce space and has raised around $64 million till date. It has also made some interesting acquisitions and a shot at a competitor might not be unlikely.<br />
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<strong>Just Zomato it: You can’t find a spicier chunk of food business</strong><br />
Is this online restaurant guide doing a Jabong in terms of fast and furious growth? Well, apparently, going by the latest report card. Just five years into the business, this Gurgaon-based firm has expanded to 28 cities across 8 countries (India, the UAE, Qatar, Sri Lanka, the UK, the Philippines, South Africa and New Zealand) – with listings of over 1,18,000 restaurants and 15 million monthly users (web and mobile). And it all happened because founder Deepinder Goyal, while working for Bain &amp; Co. in Delhi, decided to do something about easy access to food joints, rather than stomaching an overcrowded office cafeteria or flying blind to find nearby eateries.<br />
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Zomato’s USP is its user-generated reviews (pretty stringent, going by the new parameters set up not too long ago). Moneywise, it is pretty well-funded. Info Edge (India) Ltd, which runs a string of consumer internet portals including the coveted job listing site Naukri.com, is the majority stakeholder in Zomato and invested around Rs 86.06 crore in the company.<br />
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<strong>Road ahead:</strong> Next destinations are Brazil and Turkey, to say nothing of the recent tie-up it had with UK-based toptables for restaurant booking in London, Manchester and Birmingham. And for a change, this start-up has reached break-even in India and Dubai could be next on the cards. As of now, revenues roll in via ads, event ticketing and restaurant booking.<br />
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<strong>If consolidation happens: </strong>If you are not on Zomato, you are not really there – that’s how the saying goes for restaurants. So the next logical step is to expand into restaurant booking (it has already done it in the UK) and online food ordering. Zomato has reportedly declined such expansion plans in India, but going by JustDial’s latest foray into the online food ordering space, a look at Foodpanda (India), a food ordering platform backed by Rocket Internet, or other homegrown restaurant reservation sites like TableGrabber.com, Dineout.co.in, PoshVine.com and Tablewalla.com may just work out well for Zomato.<br />


<b>Watch Out! These 5 Indian
E-com Players Can’t Stop Growing</b>

<p><div class="image-container float_right" style="width:480px"><div class="image"><img src="http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/51bf5f5fecad04da01000001-4368-3276/brian-halligan.jpg?maxX=480" border="0" alt="Brian Halligan" width="480" /><p class="source">Matt Plays, <keyword id="249410" type="COMPANY" weightage="60" keywordseo="HubSpot">HubSpot</keyword></p></div></div>Marketing software company HubSpot has gotten attention from <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/hubspot-slidedeck-on-company-culture-2013-3">media</a> and even <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/professor-studies-hubspots-culture-2013-6">academics</a> for its radical transparency.</p>
<p>The Cambridge, Mass. company  reveals everything from cash burn rate to valuations on its Wiki page.</p>
<p>It turns out this is only the start of HubSpot's push toward <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/HubSpot-slidedeck-on-company-culture-2013-3#-1">a modern corporate culture</a> that's vastly different from most companies out there.</p>
<p>We got the lowdown from CEO <span>Brian Halligan, who started the company in 2006 with MIT Sloan classmate and current CTO Dharmesh Shah.</span></p>
<p>Here's our conversation, lightly edited for length and clarity.</p>
<p><strong>BUSINESS INSIDER: Did you have a clear focus on <keyword id="24504" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="60" keywordseo="culture">culture</keyword> from the start or did it evolve?</strong></p>
<p><strong>BRIAN HALLIGAN:</strong> We didn't think at all about it when we first started the business, we didn't ever talk about it for the first two years of HubSpot. Then two things happened at the same time. I joined a CEO forum of 10 Boston-based CEOs who got together once a quarter. In the first forum [I attended], the topic was culture, and I kind of rolled my eyes about it, and I thought, "Well that's stupid, when are we going to talk about selling or hiring — the meaty stuff?"</p>
<p>I remember during the meeting one of the other CEOs was this brilliant guy named Colin Engle, he's the CEO of iRobot — they make the the Roomba — and he spoke so eloquently about it, and talked about how powerful it was as a tool to manage a growing business. He sold me on the fact that I was missing the boat, and I needed to get going. So I came back all fired up about culture. It turned out that at that exact same time we had done our first survey of the HubSpot employees. When we surveyed them one of the questions was something like "what do you like about working at HubSpot?" Almost everyone came back and said that they really liked the culture.</p>
<p>I remember talking to my co-founder and saying, "Well that's funny I didn't think we had a culture, we never talked about it." Those two things sort of came together at the same time, so we decided we needed to invest in this and figure it out because it seems like it's a key asset. It also seems like a key tool we can use to scale the business.</p>
<p><strong>BI: What's something that people get wrong about culture? </strong></p>
<p><strong>BH:</strong> At the core of it the happy hour and the ping pong table are not culture, they're like health insurance or a 401k. I think of culture the way I think about marketing. The main thing behind Hubspot is that we feel like humans have radically changed, they've changed the way they shop, and Hubspot is building a modern marketing platform that enables marketers to change the way they market to match the way humans actually buy stuff.</p>
<p>The way I think about culture is that modern humans have radically changed the way that they work and the way that they live. Companies need to change the way they manage and lead to match the way that modern humans actually work and live. We're trying to re-craft culture in a way that really matches that. I think that 99% of companies are kind of stuck in the '90s when it comes to their culture.</p>
<p><strong>BI: What's the biggest change you've had to make going from being an employee to being CEO?</strong></p>
<p><strong>BH:</strong> In a weird way, going from employee to CEO hasn't hasn’t changed me that much. The way I think about management is, it’s overrated. I think it's a little silly and antiquated how in startups that the frontline employees are talking to customers, and the CEO has like a 50X difference in salary, it seems a little silly to me.</p>
<p>We’re trying to create an extremely flat organization, an extremely transparent organization, and there's all sorts of things we do around that. I think that if you were in the company, on a day-to-day basis, you’d have a hard time figuring out that I was the CEO of the company versus just one of the employees.</p>
<p>I’ll give you an example: I sit out with everybody else, I don’t have a desk inside of HubSpot, I don’t have an office or anything like that. My salary is not that different from regular employees. There’s a Wiki inside of HubSpot, probably the world’s most active Wiki, and people have no problem calling me out on the Wiki.</p>
<p>I believe the Gen y-ers coming into the workforce, the millennials, they like this idea of the highly transparent organization, and they expect transparency and authenticity from their leaders. So, I’m trying to be as transparent as I possibly can. I feel like people who grew up on Facebook and Twitter and social media sites just have a different a sense about hierarchy in life, and so we’re a little bit allergic to hierarchy over here.”</p>
<p><strong>BI: What's your involvement in the hiring process?</strong></p>
<p><strong>BH:</strong> In the early days, I interviewed everyone and at some point that wasn't scalable. We hired 40 people last month, and of all the people we hired, we probably interviewed 10 for every opening. I work more on the criteria than I do on the actual interviews themselves.</p>
<p>Hiring sales people — it’s a pretty inefficient process. Most companies have very high turnover in their sales organizations. What I’m trying to put in place is a much more scientific way to hire sales people. What I'm doing is I want all of our existing sales people, and all of our past sales people who we've let go, to take a relatively long survey, and map the results of the survey to their performance. That’s why it’s key to have people leave; if we push them out for non-performance we need their data here. Then I want to get a sort of good profile of what the recipe is — here’s how they answered certain questions. Then I want to shorten that test and then for every candidate who comes in — for sales we get about a hundred candidates for every person we hire — rather than have the first step in the process be a big staged interview or role-play, that first step is just, take the test.</p>
<p>If you look and smell, based on the survey results, like a current star employee, then you get to that next step. And that next step isn't an interview, I think interviews are radically overrated. The next step in the sales process is you’ve gotta go and start a trial of our software and learn about it and, then we’re going to do a sales role-play with you on the telephone. If that goes well, then we’ll do an interview itself and we’ll hire you. So I want to have a much more scientific way for hiring sales people than most companies will.</p>
<p><strong>BI: Have you guys experienced a tech talent crunch?</strong></p>
<p><strong>BH:</strong> Absolutely. And I have a theory behind it. I feel like there’s a massive supply and demand problem, and there are two reasons for it in my mind. One reason, I think for a long time people didn’t go into computer science because they thought the whole computer science industry was going to be outsourced to India. It turns out that wasn’t true. While that was going on, kids and fathers and mothers didn’t rush into computer science. That's one thing that really hurt from the supply side. The second thing that really hurt from the supply side is there are so many alternatives for good software developers today. They can go to a Google or Facebook, they can go to a HubSpot, they can start their own darn company. There's just this plethora of nice opportunities for them, so the supply and demand ratio is way, way off. There's a massive demand for high-quality developers and a low supply. We’re being extremely aggressive about it.</p>
<p>For example, our referral bonus for new software developers, is $30,000. If you know a software developer, and you refer them to me and I hire them, we cut you a check for $30,000. That's 10X more than we do for any other function inside of HubSpot. So we're working hard to try and get the best and brightest developers here.</p>
<p>We're doing crazy stuff to coax them in. That supply and demand problem doesn't exist for us on the sales or services side where we get 100 resumes for every opening, and it's all inbound. On the software developer side its 10x harder, so we think about our funnel, referrals, and everything about that in a very different way than we do the rest of the business. I think everyone's going to have to deal with that reality. You're going to have to think about hiring and raises and stock options and all of that stuff in a very different way for software developers than other parts of the company.</p>
<p><strong>BI: Is there a particular company out there that you look up to?</strong></p>
<p><strong>BH:</strong> It's totally cliché but it's Google, and it's Google for a couple of reasons. A lot of companies, when they're in hyper-growth mode, they win awards for being the best place to work and stuff like that. Google always won those in the early days, and people are like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a goldmine — they've got AdWords, they're printing money, its growing fast, of course people like it, people like working for a winning team."</p>
<p>Now Google's in much more of a steady place, their growth is slower, their stock price is relatively stable, but it's still a remarkable place to work. People love working at a talent magnet — they've scaled that unique culture over time and they use that as a real competitive advantage. And when I say unique culture, what I like about the Google guys is that they reject conventional wisdom in so many ways. They'll look at a playbook of how to hire people, the playbook of how to motivate people, they'll look at the playbook for every aspect of culture: hiring, and motivation, and HR, and they throw it away and start from scratch on everything</p>
<p>They built a very unique culture which makes it a very attractive place to work not just as an early-stage startup not just as a high growth company, but as a big stable-state company.</p>
<p><strong>BI: Do you remember the moment when you realized you wanted to start a company?</strong></p>
<p><strong>BH:</strong> When we were going to start HubSpot I had three choices in my career. At the time I was an entrepreneur in residence and a venture partner, so I could keep doing that. I could go run sales at kind of any company — I had grown up through sales I had a strong sales background. Or I could be a CEO at kind of a crappy company. I wasn't quite pedigreed enough to get a CEO at kind of a top-tier startup, so I was interviewing for CEO jobs at re-starts.</p>
<p>My fourth choice was to start HubSpot. I never thought I would start a company, and I'm absolutely thrilled I did it. But the idea was, "Could I start HubSpot and turn it into a great company?" Fortunately that happened. With lots of luck along the way, a lot of good decisions and good hires along the way but that was sort of the decision tree.</p>
<p>I don't consider myself born and raised to be a founder of a company. I always thought I'd be somebody who would help the founder of a company move it along. But I had the right idea, I had the world's perfect co-founder and we just kind of closed our eyes and did it.</p>
<p><strong>BI: How'd you find that perfect co-founder?</strong></p>
<p><strong>BH:</strong> My co-founder's name is Dharmesh, and I'll tell you a funny story about him. He and I went to MIT together, and there was an event the night before the first day of classes at MIT and he's very introverted. So what he does at parties is he has his wife go out and kind of scout people and look for people who she thinks he'll like and get along with. So she came over to me and she chatted with me, and we had a nice chat. I realized about halfway through the conversation that she was the spouse of a student. So she went away and went back to Dharmesh and she said, "I met this guy Brian, I think he's kind of interesting, he's got a software background. I don't think you'll get along with him though, he's kind of a sales guy, kind of a jock, I don't think you'll like him very much."</p>
<p>I think that's so funny because two years later we started a company together, and eight years later we got one of the hardest startups on the East Coast together. We're pretty close and best friends at this point. We took some classes together and got along and I thought we were a good match. I think of the Venn diagram of so many firms is you've got a real tech person and a real kind of marketing sales person, and there's a Venn diagram that overlaps a little bit not too much. It's where you have somebody who can really sell, and somebody who can really build, and that really worked for us, it's a little one plus one equals three.</p>
<p><strong>BI: How do you deal with rapid growth?</strong></p>
<p><strong>BH:</strong> We're growing fast, we've probably added 200 people in the past year, and we grow in kind of spurts. When we grow too fast the way I think about it is like a car, if I put my foot all the way down on the gas, the car starts to shake a little bit, you can physically feel it start to shake a little bit, the decisions aren't as good, and things start to break. And so we've gone through a couple starts and stops. When we've hit the gas hard and started to hire very aggressively things tend to break so we're a bit "fits and starts" on how fast we grow in terms of head count, and we've found it hard to manage that.</p>
<p>Interestingly along the way our culture's been a great guide. The culture and the systems and the processes really broke around 150 employees. We changed a bunch of stuff around then, and kind of got back on track. It's been relatively smooth since then. I don't know what that rate is but I can kind of feel it when we're growing too fast.</p>
<p><strong>BI: Why'd you stay in Boston?</strong></p>
<p><strong>BH:</strong> There are a couple of reasons. I'm from here, I like it here, my network is here, so we didn't even consider moving to the Valley. I think there are a couple of big pluses to starting a company in Boston relative to the Valley, let's say.</p>
<p>One is just the corporate talent is rough here, it's not even close to as rough as it is in the Valley, particularly for that R&amp;D talent, it's so hard to get up there. That's one big thing. The second big thing is the pond syndrome. We're a pretty big fish in a pretty small pond here in Boston and that pond in the Valley is a very large one and it's hard to get heard, it's hard to be seen out there. So I think Boston is sort of underrated in terms of a place to start a company. You walk around in the Valley and go to LinkedIn or Google or any one of many great companies, and it is chock full of kids from MIT and Harvard. So what we try to do is catch them before they go to the West Coast. The talent here is excellent and we try our best to keep it here.</p>
<p>In Boston we missed the PC revolution and we really missed the internet, and to bring it back I think we need to build anchor companies that really stand alone as a business. Employees make some money and they leave and they take some risks and start a company and the other employees fund it. Very much what happened with people at Facebook and PayPal and all these great companies on the West Coast. We want to be one of those anchor companies in Boston that's around for decades and spawns out lots of other companies. That's part of it; we're real Boston boosters.</p>
<p><strong>BI: What do you think about the assumption that millennials are bad workers or narcissistic?</strong></p>
<p><strong>BH:</strong> I think the disconnect there is that Gen Yers think, work, act differently, and we're trying to manage them with the Baby Boomer or Gen X playbook, and it just doesn't match very well. If you have a new playbook that embraces them, they're plenty loyal, they're not narcissistic, and they're terrific.</p>
<p>I think when the history books are written they'll be the best generation that's come along. They're just smart. They grew up on the Internet, they know how to get stuff done, they're much more sophisticated, I've found, at least than I was when I graduated college. So we do a whole bunch of stuff to embrace that.</p>
<p>If your mission is to increase your bottom line by three-fifths this year, gouging customers and gouging the Earth — that really turns off Gen Yers. I don't think Gen Xers care about that stuff, but I think these new folks do.</p>
<p><strong>BI: How do you maintain a work-life balance?</strong></p>
<p><strong>BH:</strong> I do work a lot. One of my hacks is that every Wednesday is my work-from-home day, so if I'm not traveling in a given week, or even if I am traveling, I keep Wednesday open and that's the day that I can just think and get stuff done, so that's one big hack — staying at home on Wednesdays.</p>
<p>The other hack I have, I find that people work work work and don't think think think, and that the percentage of time people work versus think is off. I've tried to shift that, and I try to think lot and try to increase the amount of time I spend thinking about things versus on the phone or in a meeting or emailing people. So I see people working a lot and I say what's your time spent thinking versus working?</p>

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