the creators of a product review website head to the center of the digital universe the south by southwest to network and find potential investors, and creating foolproof passwords to protect your company from cyber attacks. staying profitable in this digital age coming up next on "your business."

hi there, everyone. i'm j.j. ramberg. welcome to "your business." if all of your neighborhood tech entrepreneurs were in their usual slump this week, it was highly possible they were in austin, texas. that's where the annual south by southwest festival was happening. we headed down there. >> hi. i'm at south by southwest.

>> t called south by southwest. it's one-third film expo. one-third tech convention and 100% all american tech rally for the hottest new thing. >> the first year twitter was really popular. the year after that four square became popular. the year after that all these other apps saw the growth happen and so everyone tried to get in on that. everyone started talking about what is the big app of south by. >> he is a third year veteran of south by. >> you realize you met so many people you may only know from twitter or phone calls. >> it's all about the real life

networking. >> has taken place every year in texas since 1994. today it's the event for tech entrepreneurs. including tom young and his partners ian and steven. >> there really isn't anything that comes close in terms of this concentration of other founders of investors and journalists. >> well, it's a huge stage. at the very least we get to be known by a lot of people who might not see it otherwise. tom and ian a few months ago back in seattle the yabley founders first got word they were invited to compete in south by's prestigious accelerator pitch contest. tom immediately started working on his pitch. >> i'm tom from yabley. what i'm about to tell you is a

100% true story. >> and he hasn't stopped practicing since. >> here is a guy twho gets to describe what he needs. >> as much as they want to win the contest. they say the true goal isn't so much about winning. >> i think you want to find the right match. you doend need 20 investors. you need just a few to transform the trajectory of the company. >> with so many complex variables involved finding mr. or mrs. right is never easy. it took a lot of networking for these two founders to find each other. >> this is actually the exact table where ian and i first met.

>> you have to treat it like getting married. not, oh, this guy is available with the skill sets i want. let's do it. you have to dig into who they are and what makes them tick. >> a friend told me about this and it sounded perfect. >> i'm here to find other people with great ideas. >> we have an event that's cofounder speed dating, with the idea being see if there's an initial connection, if there's chemistry. >> kerry is the managing partner of dream it ventures runs a speed dating for founders session. much like the one and and tom went to in seattle. it's purpose is to help start-ups, well, start up. at another location, tom young finally dpoes live to make his pitch for yabley. >> we have the team from yabley. they are working on changing the way people shop for products. please give it up for yablye.

>> what i'm about to tell you is a real story. >> when tom finished the team had a long wait before hearing if they would make it to the finals. finals or not they were there to meet people. >> it's having all these people interested in the same place. >> let's move over to the social media group. and the final group advancing to tomorrow's finale is yabley. >> congratulations. >> thank you. thank you very much. >> while they were thrilled to make it to the finals, they didn't end up winning the prize. but in many ways the real victory was being able to participate and making the connections they hope will take their business to the next level. >> south by southwest offered

entrepreneurs many opportunities to network, meet investors and get public tis for their businesses. ramon is the editor of smallbiztechnology.com and author of the new book, facebook guide to small business marketing and david is an entrepreneur who focused on social, mobile and digital advertising. you guys were both there. great to see you guys. >> thank you for having us. >> you're sort of our reporters on the scene without knowing it at the time. ramon, you've been on the show a bunch before. you know the audience. what was so interesting for small business owners? >> i learned a couple of things. if you wrpt there, you missed a great networking opportunity ls. there's such a diversity. one session i went to was all about how to tell a story or a narrative without telling a story.

>> well, south by is famous for launching companies. and just in the activated dialogue between the networks you build down there and also the things you are exposed to. you have to like see it and experience it a lot to understand how to be successful in your own right. there's few event where is you can go over a period of four or five days and be overwhelmed with the amount of content and learning that takes place. was there something a lot of people were talking about? >> i would definitely say 75% of the companies are bad ideas. you don't have to be right.

so you're in good company if you are not sure where you are. it's a place you can be accepted and get nitty-gritty feedback. >> and i think a lot of businesses were there to get attention. you saw people wearing funny t-shirts and contests. so the piece we did was all about networking. when you go to a conference that is 20,000 people, how do you network effectively? so you do a lot of scheduling by the time you get down there. keep it tight and loose in the

never eat alone principle. in between, really concentrated thick environments to navigate and pick up new relationships. cell phone numbers are a must: don't sit quietly. hey, how are you? where will you be at? >> for anyone who is sort of shy if you go to something like this and you're shy, it's okay. all right. thanks, guys. >> thank you. >> i bet if a did a poll, more than half of you say you use the same one for every site. it's hard to remember different passwords. get hacked once and you'll regret you weren't more thoughtful about this. nicole is a technology reporter for "the new york times."

she covers cyber security and privacy, and she's here to give us tips oncoming up with the perfect password. hi, nicole. great to see you. >> hi, j.j. thanks for having me. this is really smart. i haven't paid enough attention to it. >> it's a big problem. we're all guilty of coming up with basic passwords. when "the new york times" was hacked, one colleague admitted his password was newspaper. >> it's better than his name or one, two, three, four. you say first forget the dictionary. >> get rid of the dictionary. there are tools out there. one is called john the riper. it can crack millions of passwords within a couple of minutes hackers will hit go and it will crack it. >> don't use passwords twice.

how do i remember a different password for every place i'm going to? >> it's so hard. there are so many sites that we all log onto and forever we all just use the same password. when one of the sites get hacked, and it will get hacked, you will just lose the pas word to something far more scary like your bank account or 401(k). try and use different passwords for different accounts. i have one password that i use for a couple of sites. i only use it for stuff like, maybe, my linkedin account, but i would never use that same password for say my bank account or stockbroker account. >> what is a pass phrase? >> so come up with say you favorite quote from a movie. then use the first letter or

first two letters. combine them. try and make it as long as possible. my favorite movie quote, and this has nothing to do with any password i have, is my name is anigo montoya. you killed my father. prepare to die. take the first letter of each word in the quote and piece it together and use that as the password. >> then you have to have different quotes for every site that you go to. >> that's right. >> this is a big memory game really. >> it's a big memory game. i think it's fine for the average person, although, you know for that article i talked to people who are getting hacked every day and high volume targets. and so if you're paranoid, which i am, i don't use those services. i like to think writing out my passwords on a piece of paper is

safer than keeping them online or your desk top. god forbid in your e-mail. >> or in your contacts under password. all right. jam on your keyboard. >> this is funny. the two guys i talked to, one is jeremiah grossman. he is a penetration tester. so he's always work with different sites so he himself is paranoid. he'll jam on his password and copy and paste that and hold onto it. he says if someone holds a gun to his head and asks him for his password he couldn't tell them. >> we have the password. store passwords securely. what can be secure enough to to store these hundreds of passwords you can't remember. there are services that will restore your pass words for you. if you're extremely paranoid,

you may not use those services. write them down on a piece of paper. some people i talk to keep them stored on a completely different computer for which they have some extremely long password that they have added all sorts of security to. there is a far less chance of that happening than someone getting into my desk top or e-mail. do not store your password file on your computer. do not store it in a google doc or in your e-mail. >> well, i hope everyone was listening. thank you for joining us. >> thank you so much. >> we really appreciate it. nicole has a lot more tips for us. i'm going to be talking with her again and putting that up on the

website later this week. when we come back, more advice on operating a business in this digital age, includesing managing inventory among several websites and the risks of mobile banking. and an austin based business owner also at south by southwest gets into the elevator with his line of customizable guitars. we've all had those moments. when you lost the thing you can't believe you lost. when what you just bought, just broke. or when you have a little trouble a long way from home... as an american express cardmember you can expect some help. but what you might not expect, is you can get all this with a prepaid card. spends like cash. feels like membership.

today's elevator pitcher is austin based. let's see if his product rocks our panel. >> hey, guys. my name skeckevin tully. we build kus tom guitars that you can build on our website. as young guitar players we looked at the guys like jimi hendrix and stevie ray vaughn. unfortunately we haven't sold millions of records yet, so we launched modern guitars.com. you can choose the body shape, paint colors, parts and do custom texts and graphics.

we build them at our shop in austin and ship them to you in three or four weeks. they start at a base price of $50 and we are looking to go our first real marketing campaign. in return we're offering a 20% equity stake in the country. >> kevin, thank you so much. either of you guys guitar players. >> now you don't need to. let's get to business. the pitch. how do you you did? >>over all you did well. you're definitely having a solution to a problem. people who want fancy and interesting guitars. i would add more on the money that's been made. i would focus on the success you may have had before, no matter how small. >> yeah, this business is passing one of the best tests. this is isn't innate. it's really important. the amount of money you're raising and the ek wetive you're

giving is probably market appropriate. i think you have a very good shot of raising the money and growing the business. >> now the key for someone who isn't necessarily a customer, this shows how good your pitch is, would you take another meeting? >> i think so you have a company already. you're not just a startup in a home office. sy think yes. zbl i like to invest in painkillers and not vitamins. i think this business is in between. i do think it will be a successful business and potentially be very big. i would probably take the next meeting but you want to find someone who loves the space. they're certainly beautiful. i hope south by southwest was great for you. thoung g thank you guys for your advice.

if any of you want feedback, just send us an e-mail. the address is yourbusiness@msnbc.com. include a short summery of what your company does, how much money you're trying to raise and what you intend to do tw the money. at music company has been around for 390 years. they have survived kpik turmoil and values long time employees while embracing automation. bob has the story. >> reporter: american industry was built by immigrants. who looked beyond quarterly profits. this factory in norwell, massachusetts, still does. the company maybes symbols.

they have been testing them more than half a century. >> you're not going to find two of these are that are the same. >> i've been here 26 years. ? june. i've never seen a layoff ever. >> because no one competes with a machine. the employee is taught another one is worth the pain. george has been retained seven times in 40 years. for 15 years debbie has offered pay for not just working faster or producing more, but for jobs that are done right the first time.

# 100% made in usa. >> the notion of sending your quality,out sourcing your quality half way around the world is unthinkable. >> symbols were hardly heard at all until he made some of them thinner he began hiring when all around him businesses were firing. zl it comes down to trust, doesn't it. a pledge you think broken since the beginning. quality became more than a slogan. 125 people in this little american company have cornered more than half the symbol market

in the world. what is the best piece of advice your dad gave you? >> follow the music. >> from big bands to the beatles. and beyond. musicians are always invited to help the company innovate. this pressurized broom can recreate the acoustics of concert venues across the country rjs. >> in a place like this, you know, in a big place, all the cymbals are designed to be quick and bright. >> the success attracts people with deep pockets. >> have you ever been tempted to sell the company? >> we could be quite wealthy. but it would not happy. >> debby's 4-year-old granddaughter is in line to take over one day. >> do you want to work at the

company some day? >> yes. >> new electronic cymbals have already been named after her generation. the 16th. >> it's time now to answer some of your business questions. the first one is about inventory. >> i currently sell on several websites. my own website and etsy. i want to find out if there's a way to control and manage the inventory among several websites. >> is there something? >> absolutely. a lot of solutions. the beautiful thing about the internet with api, this technical term, you can connect all these together to one source. that's the next shell. >> where does she find out what to buy? i would like at the small business web. it's a compilation of 50 to 90

companies. >> okay. easy. thank you. this is an e-mail from peter. he writes i've never heard anyone discuss the potential risks of mobile phone banking for business. what do i need to know? is it risky? >> within reason. security was the big scare of the '90s. a lot of those issues have gone away to a big extent. i would stick with trusting partners. and use main street platforms. so the back end, the infrastructure is a pretty mature space. >> and just remember basic due diligence. just do basic common sense things as well. >> let's move on. this is a question about turning off customers.

>> how do we leverage social immediate yo to generate revenue without alienating our retail customers? >> i think this is an interesting question. i was listening to it before and thinking, why should she alienate her customers? she should think of it as one big brand, correct? >> you wrote the book on social, and i think it's really important to be next to your customer, sitting shoulder to shoulder with them in the real world. so weather the conversation is next to each other. but getting across the table, that's where it gets risky. >> and the thought is an old school mentality. that i have retail and nonretail. today's world is all one. i think there's things you can do to build your brand on social media. people who want to go to a retail store, they're going to go to a retail store.

>> absolutely. >> all right. thank you guys. really helpful advice and if you have questions, you know what to do. just go to our website. once you get there, hit the ask the show link. or if you would rather, please send us an e-mail. that address is yourbusiness@msnbc.com. you can learn a lot about running your business from following social media. let's see what hot entrepreneurial products are trending on twitter. when trying to make a sale, your job so to help your customer solve their problem. mompreneur says without a business plan, you're running on empty. and frequent panelist john jantz says why you need a people

bucket list, building relationships with people who accomplish much is a smart strategy. smart business owners know to keep a close eye on the competition. if you want a simple way to track what they're up to, check out our app of the week. perch is a location app that will give you a live personalized stream of social media activity for similar businesses in the neighborhood. also, you can learn in their successes and mistakes. to learn more about today's show, just click on our website. it's openforum.com/yourbusiness. you'll find all of today's segments plus web exclusive content to help your business grow. you can also follow us on twitter. and please don't forget to become a fan of the show on facebook. next week the founders of the

company tongle try to get companies to reimagine the way they produce commercials. but to get their first clients they have to give a big discount. i think it's being transparent. this should be worth "x." we are doing this to build a relationship. >> how they made a big bet that paid off in the end. until then, i'm j.j. ramberg, and remember, we make your business our business. we've all had those moments. when you lost the thing you can't believe you lost. when what you just bought, just broke. or when you have a little trouble a long way from home... as an american express cardmember you can expect some help.