(Image credit: Getty Images via @daylife) With Facebook’s shares plummeting after its IPO, it is increasingly becoming clear that in the investment world, the biggest winnings produced by Facebook will largely be enjoyed by the investors that bought pre-IPO stock in the social media company. Investors who got their first opportunity to buy into Facebook on Friday have lost money now that the stock is down 9% from its IPO price. Mark Zuckerberg will try to squeeze revenues out of his legions of users to build a company worth more than $90 billion, but with no IPO pop the big hype gains for Facebook will probably go to the likes of Goldman Sachs and billionaire Charles “Chase” Coleman’s Tiger Global, which both sold a large ... Continue reading →

This article is written by a member of our expert contributor community. Is everyone at your office sleeping with their smartphone? Here's how to break the habit--as an organization. Reflecting on his relationship with his smartphone, one manager pronounced: “I love the thing and I hate it at the same time. The reason I love it is that it gives me so much power. And the reason I hate it is that it has so much power over me.” Smartphones and other wireless devices give us the power to stay connected and free us from the shackles of the office. But that power brings ever-increasing demands to deliver to clients, customers, and superiors. We feel overwhelmed, overworked, and never free of interruption. Advice on how ... Continue reading →

It sounds so romantic, doesn't it? Dream up a great business idea, get funding, go public, become a billionaire.Well, take off those rose-colored glasses, because while new firms create about 3 million jobs every year, according to the Kauffman Foundation, an organization promoting entrepreneurship, working for one isn't a walk in the park. That fun stuff folks like Google and Facebook promote--free food, laundry service, beer keg parties—is there to take the edge off the 16-hour days necessary to get from idea to reality.If you're tempted to jump on the start-up job train, you'll be well-served to make a few considerations first. Below are seven characteristics of people who may not be cut out for life at a company in full-steam-ahead growth mode.If You Like ... Continue reading →

With candor and excellent research, Leslie Perlow tells us what we already know, but are afraid to admit: Turning off our work lives at predictable intervals allows us to perform better in all aspects of our lives. The 24/7 work week (or infinite loop...) that technology has prompted and promoted isn't good for anyone. If our work life is a grind, with no relief on the horizon, it's not good for supervisors, not good for senior staff, not good for support staff, not good for family life. The well-documented case study at Boston Consulting Group is convincing evidence of the efficacy of Dr. Perlow's approach. BCG's Rachel Levine and her team are impressive in their trust and collaboration, in developing a program so completely counter ... Continue reading →

Zuckerberg and Chan in Sun Valley, Idaho, 2011. (AP Photo/Julie Jacobson) Shortly after Mark Zuckerberg tied the knot with longtime girlfriend Priscilla Chan on Saturday, the Twitter jesters came out of the woodwork. “Mark Zuckerberg has changed his status to ‘Married’,” read one iteration of a popular joke. “Priscilla Chan has changed hers to ‘Jackpot’.” It seems, though, that the wedding’s timing had little to do with the $16 billion blockbuster Facebook IPO the day before. It wasn’t the social network’s flotation Zuckerberg was waiting for — it was Chan’s medical school graduation, at least according to a guest authorized to speak for the couple. This spokesperson told the AP: “The wedding had been planned for months and the couple was waiting for Chan to ... Continue reading →

This story appears in the April 23rd, 2012 issue of FORBES magazine. A few months ago Amazon reached what its founder and CEO Jeff Bezos demurely tells me was “an interesting milestone.” The retailing giant, so ubiquitously associated with books, then music and video, now has tens of millions of products in stock—and a majority are nonmedia goods: drills, dress shoes, tennis rackets and almost anything else that a human can ship. Adults may still mentally link Amazon with Barnes & Noble, but to teenage customers, Amazon is now synonymous with store. That turning point might be Bezos’ greatest accomplishment. In officially transforming Amazon from an online bookstore that sells other stuff to a retailer—and business ser­vices provider—that once sold mostly books, he has taken ... Continue reading →

What makes immigrants twice as likely to launch a high-tech startup, compared with their native born peers? Consider the rise of Christian Gheorghe, an entrepreneur who started life in Romania and now is thriving as a Silicon Valley CEO. Gheorghe’s latest company, Tidemark Systems, is in the spotlight this month. The Redwood City, Calif., maker of business-analytics applications is featured in the May 21 issue of FORBES as a part of a new breed of software companies that are holding down costs and speeding up innovation by building their businesses in the Internet cloud. That’s news; so is Gheorghe’s path to the top. Growing up in Romania, Gheorghe insistently charted his own path. His parents were solidly working-class: his father was a lathe operator, while ... Continue reading →

A few years ago, Harvard Business School professor Leslie Perlow set out to tame one of the modern world’s scariest addictions: managers’ descent into round-the-clock email, texting and the like. The malady is chronicled in her new book, “Sleeping With Your Smartphone.” If Perlow were a prudent person, she would have tested her remedies on small-time workaholics with a proper sense of shame about their always-on careers, such as professors, journalists, locksmiths or currency traders. But she had bigger ambitions. So she began a multiyear detox experiment on one of America’s most incorrigible sub-populations: BlackBerry-toting management consultants. As Perlow explains, elite consultants don’t just send one another emails at 1 a.m. They expect answers by 3 a.m. Their idea of wrapping up work early, in ... Continue reading →