Tag Archives: small business

Google tools to help your business prepare for natural disasters

When a devastating flood hit Cedar Rapids, Iowa in 2008, Pierson’s Flower Shop & Greenhouses—which has been a part of the community since 1928—found itself under eight feet of water. The store was closed for five months and business fell 40 percent, while many other small businesses in the area never recovered. When shop owner Allan Pierson was on the brink of giving up, he revamped his online presence and turned to tools like Google Ads to reach customers, and email to run the business remotely.


When disaster strikes, small business owners like Allan shouldn’t have to worry about their businesses on top of everything else. To commemorate National Preparedness Month, we’ve just released a new resource with tips on how digital tools can help your business prepare for a disaster,  like backing up critical documents in the Cloud and creating a Google Group to easily keep in touch with all of your employees. Preparation is particularly important for small businesses: according to FEMA, roughly 40 to 60 percent of small businesses never reopen after a disaster.

Preparedness Tips

Though we hope you never need to enable your emergency plan, by using digital tools we hope that you can minimize the long term impact on your business.

Making it easier to identify veteran-led businesses on Google

Since leaving the service in 2007, I’ve felt a strong pull to support my fellow veterans. I honor the  camaraderie and sense of community we share, and continue to be inspired by the new missions veterans find once we leave the service.  I've found my passion in data science, but for many veterans, starting a business is their new calling. More than 2.5 million businesses in the U.S. are majority-owned by veterans, and one way that I stay connected to the veteran community is by supporting those veteran-owned businesses. It's something I can do all throughout my day, whether I'm grabbing a coffee or recommending a local restaurant to a friend.

Now, as part of a broader effort to use technology to help the veteran community, Google is making it easier to identify your local business as veteran-led on Google Search and Maps. If your business is owned, led, or founded by a veteran, you can enable this "Veteran-Led” attribute through Google My Business, and it will appear on your Google listing alongside other details like “Has Wifi” or “Outdoor Seating.” You can add the Veteran-Led attribute to your  listing by following these steps.

Veteran-Led Attribute GIF .gif

There's no limit to the ways that veteran-led small businesses can impact their communities. Take Kevin Ryan, for example. Kevin is a West Point graduate and former Army commander who began brewing beer with the help of YouTube tutorials. Less than two years later, he and his partner Meredith Sutton, founded Service Brewing Company. In addition to creating a successful craft brewery, their mission is to give back to veterans and their community. In their first three years of business they’ve helped raise more than $70,000 for organizations that assist veterans and first responders, and about half of their 12 employees are veterans.

Service Brewing Company: On a mission

This is just one of a set of new resources and initiatives we announced today to support veterans through technology. Learn more about what we're doing via Grow with Google, including a new ability to search for jobs with an MOS code, at g.co/grow/veterans.

Empowering female founders in tech: the future is inclusive

Editor’s note: Nicola Hazell is one of Australia's leading voices on gender equality and social innovation. She is the Chief Innovation Officer and creator of the award-winning SheStarts program at Australia’s largest startup accelerator BlueChilli. Since SheStarts launched in 2016, the program has reached hundreds of women across Australia and invested in two cohorts of incredible female founders who lead businesses in a range of industries, including smart cities, finance and health.

Today, our SheStarts community becomes part of the Google for Entrepreneurs’ global partner network, a community supporting startups that includes dozens of co-working spaces and programs across 140 countries. Through this partnership, Google for Entrepreneurs will empower SheStarts founders with the best of Google's resources—which includes executive mentoring, as well as programming and technical support to help to kickstart their entrepreneurial journey and lead successful, global-minded tech startups.

It’s an honour to have Senator the Honourable Michaelia Cash, Australia’s Minister for Jobs and Innovation, join us today for our Google for Entrepreneurs partnership launch at Fishburners— Australia’s largest non-profit dedicated to supporting startups, and a fellow partner in the Googlefor Entrepreneurs network—to celebrate this important milestone for women and all entrepreneurs alike.

We are living in an era when technology provides the vehicle to create lasting change at a global scale. But the possibilities of technology and innovation will never be truly realised if we're missing out on the ideas and creativity of half the population. This is why SheStarts exists—to ensure women have the opportunity to unleash their talent and passion on the world, and to demonstrate that you don’t have to be a man in a hoodie and sneakers to make a big impact in the startup economy.

SheStarts provides founders with access to capital, engineering talent, world-class training and a global network of mentors and advisors backing them to succeed. The program supports founders as they take their startups from idea to launch, working with them to build and test their technology, to land major national and international partnerships, and grow their companies as they secure millions of dollars in investment. These emerging leaders have now attracted great teams into their businesses—creating exciting new jobs within Australia’s economy and redefining what it means to be a tech entrepreneur.

As Australia's only corporate and venture-backed accelerator designed specifically for female-led startups, our goal is to significantly grow the number of women leaders in the tech industry. We work in close collaboration with organisations across the ecosystem—including the wonderful coworking community at Fishburners, led by an empowering and passionate female CEO, Pandora Shelley—as we build support for female founders, together.

We’re making progress, but there is still much work to do. According to the most recent Startup Muster Report, women represent only one in four startup founders in Australia. What's more, access to investment remains a huge barrier for female founders, with less than 5 percent of venture capital going to female-led startups.

With the support of SheStarts, startups like BindiMaps (an indoor navigation app for the visually impaired), Neighbourlytics (a social analytics platform for neighbourhoods, pioneering the use of social data in cities) and Longevity App (a micro-savings app that boosts a user’s retirement savings every time they spend) are flourishing—and changing the industry’s gender ratio in the process.

The stories of these female-led businesses have the power to inspire the next generation of entrepreneurs. That’s why storytelling is such a vital part of the SheStarts mission, amplified through our award-winning SheStarts documentary series, with season two set for release later this year.

The stories of these female-led businesses have the power to inspire the next generation of entrepreneurs. That’s why storytelling is such a vital part of the SheStarts mission, amplified through our award-winning SheStarts documentary series, with season two set for release later this year.

Backing female-led startups is an investment in a better future and the growing global support for our founders in SheStarts demonstrates this. In May this year, the World Bank announced that globally, countries are losing $160 trillion in wealth because of the earnings gap between men and women over their lifetime. Meanwhile, international research continues to make the case for women in tech leadership, finding that female-led tech companies are more capital-efficient, achieve higher return on investment and bring in higher revenue than male-owned tech companies. Gender equality is not just a nice-to-have, it's a global economic imperative.

  • Pandora, Sally-Ann & Nicola.JPG

    Collaboration is key! Left to right: Pandora Shelley from Fishburners, Sally-Anne Williams from Google, and Nicola Hazell from SheStarts are working together to change the gender ratio in tech.

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    Members of the inaugural SheStarts cohort during their visit to Google’s office in Mountain View in 2017.

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    Nicola Hazell from SheStarts at BlueChilli, announcing the first cohort of female founders selected for the accelerator in 2016.

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    The second cohort of SheStarts founders taking part in a workshop at BlueChilli with Google’s Sally-Ann Williams in February this year.

Through our partnership with Google for Entrepreneurs, SheStarts’ founders in Australia will have the opportunity to connect with experts, investors, and women across the world, shedding light on a new wave of leadership that is redefining what it means to be a tech entrepreneur. We couldn’t be more excited to embark on this journey together with Google.

Four businesses, four inspiring missions: see them in action

Editor’s note:Google Business Group (GBG) is a community of business professionals sharing knowledge about Google web technologies for business success. Our chapters are voluntarily run by passionate entrepreneurs who champion the benefits of the web by hosting educational workshops and running GBG meetups within their local business communities.

Here at Google, we love shining the spotlight on entrepreneurs. Every year, through our annual Google Business Group “Stories Search” contest, we ask entrepreneurs from around the world to tell us how they harness the internet and technology to do extraordinary things. By taking their business online, they’re able to reach new customers and see their unique business models thrive.

Last year, we announced our four winners here. While these four businesses stood out among the amazing submissions we received from GBG members and independent entrepreneurs across 17 countries, they weren’t the only standouts. Finalists from as far as Morocco took part in this wonderful GBG tradition.

As part of their award, the contest winners had the opportunity to tell their business story in a short video format for all the world to see. As we documented the journeys these amazing entrepreneurs undertook, we found a common theme: Each individual leads a business with a socially-conscious mission.

  • Cafe Yagam, Philippines — Meet Poleen, owner of Cafe Yagam, who wanted to share her indigenous culture with people all over the Philippines and the rest of the world through food and coffee. Watch her story and see how the GBG team helped put her cafe on the map, literally, to spread her mission to the world.

Cafe Yagam - GBG Stories Search 2017

  • Khalti, Nepal (the People's Choice Winner) — Meet Manish, the managing director of Khalti, a mobile and digital payment solution geared to address the unique needs of Nepali people, many of whom are coming online for the first time.

Khalti - GBG Stories Search 2017

  • Riliv, Indonesia — Meet Maximilian, founder of Riliv, an Android app and website that anonymously connects users to certified psychologists no matter where they are. See how GBG meetups gave him the know-how to harness Google Adwords and Analytics in building his user base to 50,000–just one more step in reaching the 48 million people in Asia suffering from depression.

Riliv - GBG Stories Search 2017

  • Virtualahan, Philippines — Meet Ryan, founder of Virtualahan, a platform that helps disadvantaged people overcome employment barriers. By using Google Classroom and other tools, Virtualahan provides digital skills training to people with medical, physical and psycho-social disabilities in developing countries and connects them to meaningful employment online.

Virtualahan - GBG Stories Search 2017
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From left to right Manish Modi of Khalti, Poleen Carla Rosito of Cafe Yagam, Ryan Gerseva of Virtualahan, Audrey Maximillian Herli of Riliv and Googler Marcus Foon.

These winners inspire us all with how they run their businesses for the benefit of others. If you love these videos and have a story of your own to tell, keep an eye out for our 2018 GBG Stories Search contest. We will welcome more entries from around the world. Winners will have the chance to travel to our headquarters in Mountain View, California for Google I/O in 2019 where they’ll get to meet tech thinkers, innovators, and business leaders.

G Suite Pro Tips: how to sync one spreadsheet to another in Google Sheets

When it comes to analyzing data at work, we often have to pull information from several different sources in order to see the big picture. But if you need to manage product inventory or report on quarterly sales figures, spending time flipping between spreadsheets or manually copying and pasting data into one place can take up too much time. There’s a better option.

With G Suite—Google’s suite of cloud-based collaboration and productivity apps—there are a ton of ways you can skip repetitive tasks, including in Google Sheets.

Today, we’re kicking off a tips series to help you become a G Suite pro—starting with how to combine data from one spreadsheet into another. Check it out.

G Suite Pro Tips: syncing one spreadsheet to another

Combining data from two Google Sheets in four steps

With Sheets, it’s easy to combine data into one spreadsheet to create a single source of truth.

Step 1: Identify the spreadsheets you want to combine.

Pull up the two spreadsheets that you’d like to import data between. You should have the original spreadsheet (Ex: “Sales Revenue”) and the one you want to add information into (Ex: “Product Inventory”).

Step 2: Grab two things from the original sheet.

You need two pieces of information from the original spreadsheet in order to move the data: the spreadsheet URL and the range of cells where you want to pull the data from. In this example, our original spreadsheet’s name is “Sales Revenue.”

First, highlight and copy the full spreadsheet URL from the original spreadsheet (Note: you can also use the spreadsheet “key,” which is a code hidden inside the URL between the “d/” and “/edit.” It looks like a jumbled mix of letters and numbers.).

G Suite Pro Tips: image 1

Next, before you switch to the new spreadsheet, make sure to note the range of cells where you want to pull the data from in the original spreadsheet. For example, A:1 to C:10.

Step 3: Use a Google Sheets function to port your data over.

Now we use the IMPORTRANGE function. First, click into the new spreadsheet where you’d like to add data into. In this example, it’s named “Product Inventory.” Insert columns or rows into the spreadsheet where you want to put data.

Next, type =IMPORTRANGE in the cell (you can choose to use all caps or not, it doesn’t matter.). The function will then ask you for three things:

  1. The URL of the original spreadsheet (or the spreadsheet key, both options work.)
  2. The name of the specific tab in your spreadsheet that you’re pulling information out of
  3. The range of cells for data you need

It will look similar to this:

=IMPORTRANGE(“https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1RNez4bhTMt_evAdHrFOBHeBgk1l5HAWVTb43EKpYHR8/edit#gid=0,””Sales Revenue by Quarter!A1:C10”)

It’s important to note that you have to use the specific name of the tab in the sheet in the formula. So for this example, the name of the original spreadsheet housing multiple datasets is called “Sales Revenue,” but the name of the specific tab with our data in it is called “Sales Revenue by Quarter.” We want to use the specific tab’s name to avoid our function breaking in the future when new sheets or tabs are created.

Oh and another trick: don’t forget to add the exclamation point (!) before the data range. That’s important, too.

Step 4: Import your data.

After you’ve added your IMPORTRANGE formula, you can click enter.

If it’s the first time you’ve imported data from that particular spreadsheet, a pop-up might appear. Don’t worry! This security check makes sure you’re okay with granting any collaborators on this spreadsheet access to data that lives in another spreadsheet. It will ask you to “Allow access” when you see the #REF in your cell. Go ahead and click yes.

Voilà! Your data will appear in the new spreadsheet.

Focus on work that’s important

Google Sheets has more than 400 functions you can use to help speed up work. To learn more about how cloud-based tools like Sheets can help businesses uncover insights quicker—and, as a result, encourage employees to spend time on strategic work—check out this post.

Start making your business more accessible using Primer

Posted by Lisa Gevelber, VP Marketing Ads and Americas

Over one billion people in the world have some form of disability.

That's why we make accessibility a core consideration when we develop new products—from concept to launch and beyond. It's good for users and good for business: Building products that don't consider a diverse range of needs could mean missing a substantial group of potential users and customers.

But impairments and disabilities are as varied as people themselves. For designers, developers, marketers or small business owners, making your products and designs more accessible might seem like a daunting task. How can you make sure you're being more inclusive? Where do you start?

Today, Global Accessibility Awareness Day, we're launching a new suite of resources to help creators, marketers, and designers answer those questions and build more inclusive products and designs.

The first step is learning about accessibility. Simply start by downloading the Google Primer app and search "accessibility." You'll find five-minute lessons that help you better understand accessibility, and learn practical tips to start making your own business, products and designs more accessible, like key design principles for building a more accessible website. You may even discover that addressing accessibility issues can improve the user experience for everyone. For instance, closed captions can make your videos accessible to more people whether they have a hearing impairment or are sitting in a crowded room.

Next, visit the Google Accessibility page and discover free tools that can help you make your site or app more accessible for more people. The Android Developers site also contains a wide range of suggestions to help you improve the accessibility of your app.

We hope these resources will help you join us in designing and building for a more inclusive future. After all, an accessible web and world is a better one—both for people and for business.

"Excited to see the new lessons on accessibility that Primer launched today. They help us learn how to start making websites and products more accessible. With over 1 billion people in the world with some form of disability, building a more inclusive web is the right thing to do both for people and for business."