Have a startup interview coming up and want to dazzle with a witty aside about the next big thing in tech? Want to impress your colleagues with informed and intelligent water cooler chat? Were you recently asked your top five up-and-coming unicorns, and blanked? This is for you…
Here are some things to consider when consuming news, and our five top ways to stay in the loop about the world of startups:
Quick Tips
- Keep your sources diverse – at the risk of sounding like a Critical Thinking teacher, when reading an article consider the motive for putting pen to paper. Try to get a range of journalistic sources, amateur opinionists and corporate copy (also bare in mind almost everyone has a political leaning!)
- Think international – this plays into source diversity, but it’s good to receive content from both sides of the pond (not all startup news comes out of Silicon Valley!) Look at Australia, Germany, India and throughout the UK.
- Sibling Industries – it can be quite useful to keep up-to-date on parallel sectors. Big players here include developments in tech, financial news and international politics.
Old adages say it best: Variety is the spice of life. Take everything with a pinch of salt. Read between the lines.
Sources
Here are just a few different ways you can consume media to get a broad understanding of the startup industry and it’s changing tide.
- Daily Digest – Want your news while waiting for the tube or eating your cereal? There are so many websites and services that cater to this. Some business models include three minute news briefs from Finimize straight to your inbox or the ‘online magazine’ popularised by TechCrunch and TechRound. If you prefer a blunter instrument try the Reddit threads r/futurology and r/startups.
- Good Ol’ Yellow Journalism – While the days of yellow pages are seemingly behind us, the ‘regular’ print media is still a source of relevant startup news. All the big players have moved to apps and online formats – the Independent has a ‘Startups’ feed of curated articles that’s pretty comprehensive.
- ‘Newstand’ Apps – Revolutionising print news, Apple, Google and Microsoft have apps or web pages devoted to collating and personalising your news consumption. Hot Take: Google News is (in our view) one of the nicest and most convenient to use; filter or hide stories, use key search words and (typically with Google) it uses your search data to get more relevant results.
- The Startups themselves – If you’re interested in startups and startup news, the social media handles for your favourite companies are a good place to start (they tend to be pretty clued in about their industry). Not only will they often tweet or post their latest vacancies (so you can be the first to know about that hot product manager role), but they’ll often have good general news updates too. If you want occasional interesting posts about startup news then of course do give Work in Startups a follow on LinkedIn – we’re a startup focused on startups so you can bank on us knowing our stuff!
- Job Boards – This is particularly relevant for the ‘new startups’ part, there’s no better way to see what the next big thing is than seeing who is hiring. Google Jobs is quite a nice way to do this quickly in feed form. Without tooting our own horn, as the biggest startup job board in the UK, Work in Startups is a really neat way to see who is growing and hiring… toot!
Hopefully some of these tips will spice up your news feed and keep you in the loop on startup news everywhere!