fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
How Jewel-Osco Will Finally Attract Millennial’s with New Brand Position
By: Nicole Szymczak
Tags: Startup

Brand Positioning Statement

Jewel-Osco has no problem getting older generations into their door. On the other hand, their competitors have figured out how to get the attention of millennial's whereas Jewel-Osco has not. They now need a new approach on how to position their brand or else Jewel-Osco will be beat out by all of their competitors. The brand positioning statement that I came up with is:

For millennial's who want to experience exotic food adventures, Jewel-Osco is the grocery store that best delivers on bringing the taste of the world to your local grocery store, because Jewel-Osco, and only Jewel-Osco, brings in foods and beverages from around the globe you can let your taste buds experience the world.

Areas Where Jewel-Osco Must Improve

There are many ways that Jewel-Osco could improve to achieve this position. My group and I have strictly been researching this new position in order to gain the attention of millennial's. One of the biggest aspects that Jewel-Osco can improve on is listening to the feedback of their customers. By simply sending out a survey, we found that a great deal of young experiencers love the idea of having food and beverages around the world at a local grocery store. The research I found states that millennial's are attracted to new and exciting things. Additionally, they love to try something that they never have before. By offering something to them that has never been done before in a grocery store, it attracts new customers, especially millennial’s.

I also think that they could improve on the layout of their store. By strictly having a part of the store that is dedicated to the foods around the world, it allows a fun experience for the customers. Grocery shopping can be seen as a chore, but giving the customers a great experience while they are shopping will change that perspective. By bringing in new exotic foods and beverages and changing the overall layout of the store so customers can have a great shopping experience, this new position could make Jewel-Osco completely stand out from its competitors and attract millennial’s.
#GrowthHacks: How to Maintain Your Productivity at the End of the Year
Tags: Health, Career Advice, Fintech, Productivity, Startup

It’s been a grueling year, but we still have a month to go before it’s over. We’re at the end of the line, so we need to give it one last push before the New Year. The final round is always the hardest, but we have to hang on! Here are a few tips to get you to say focus and crush your 2019 goals.

Scatterbrained? Drink a cup of water first thing in the morning. Though there are no scientific benefits to drinking water first thing in the morning (Check out more information here), but we can all agree that a glass of water is heaven in a long summer day. After six hours of sleep, it’s best to drink water to replenish your body. Most people skip breakfast, so prepare a water bottle on your bedside table to enjoy your sip of freshness every morning. Anxious? A big fatty and protein filled breakfast will wash the anxiety out of you. You shouldn’t stress yourself on an empty stomach, it will destabilize the insulin production system, and it won’t stabilize unless you sleep again. Imagine this: you wake up, and then you stress yourself out with all the deadlines. Your body hyper produces insulin, and it takes all the sugar out of your blood. This causes a hypoglycemic crisis, which makes you feel cruddy throughout the day. It won’t be fixed until you sleep again! To avoid spiking up your insulin level, eat a big breakfast. Before you do anything, you must eat! Watch this video for more information. Sleepy? Another way to reduce anxiety is to wake up at the same time everyday, because this will sync up your body clock. You can go to bed at anytime, but consistently waking up at the same time is crucial to keep negative emotions at bay. A great tip from Modern Wisdom is to leave your phone outside your room, so you won’t be tempted to play with your phone all night long.

Working in a fast paced environment can effect you emotionally and physically, but by eating, sleeping, and hydrating you’ll be able to end the year with a bang. May these awesome tips help you maintain your productivity at work.

Catch a glimpse of how the employees at PAYFAZZ stay productive by stalking our LinkedIn and Instagram! If you’re just dying to be FAZZMILY, visit our career site to see our openings.
Maria Dantz closes a circle by joining Spacemaker as Head of Communications
By: Ellis Herman
Tags: Communication, AI, Architecture, Pr, Startup

From architect to technology communicator to communicator for architectural technology

Spacemaker is thrilled to have Maria join us full-time as Head of Communications. Maria comes with more than 12 years of experience in developing and running impactful and integrated communications and content marketing strategies across the world.

German by nationality, Maria’s career took her across the world, from Brussels to Beijing, Frankfurt, New York, and London. During her tenure at global PR agencies Edelman and FTI, she called big tech companies Microsoft, HP, Symantec, Nielsen, Adobe, Oracle, and Flex among her clients, along with ground-breaking innovation projects like Solar Impulse.

To be closer to her family and friends, Maria moved back to Europe and settled in Amsterdam. There, she advised the venture arm of global energy company DNVGL Energy as well as scale-ups MessageBird and Habito, both backed by Atomico. This work brought her directly to Spacemaker. Over the course of her career, Maria developed a wide skill set, covering tech communications, thought-leadership, and content creation from small to large, and national to international campaigns, making her a perfect fit for her new role.

At Spacemaker, she will build our communications, content, and brand marketing capabilities across all offices and teams — and more interestingly, across all subjects. After many years of innovation storytelling, she couldn’t be more excited about the unique space that Spacemaker will enable her to venture into: The intersection of architecture, citymaking, and sustainability with AI, machine learning, and predictive analytics.

Believe it or not, before life turned her into a communications pro, Maria studied architecture at Bauhaus-University in Germany and added a joint MSc in urban and cultural planning at universities in Brussels, Tilburg, Manchester and Helsinki. With Spacemaker, she now found the “needle in the haystack” that allows her to (finally) make use of her academic degrees, while still following her passion for all things deep tech.

Maria is a certified yoga teacher and enjoys running and rock climbing. She loves the arts in all its forms — fine art, theatre, architecture, music, culinary — you name it. For her, it is the world communicating with us.
Startup Of The Week: Polyteia
By: Jennifer L. Schenker
Tags: Govtech, Startup

Polyteia CEO Faruk Tuncer

Today governments are facing the same challenges as big established companies: how to connect disparate legacy systems and extract insights from data in silos. Enter Berlin-based Polyteia which has developed a platform that allows local governments to unify and analyze data about their operations and constituents through a modular topic-specific a la carte system. The company is currently working with local governments in three German states and plans to expand into other European countries next year. It is one of a growing number of “govtech” companies in the portfolio of PUBLIC, a company that connects Europe’s public sector with startups and runs a growth program for tech companies in Denmark, France, Germany, and the UK.

When a government unit needs information it often has to send an email request, wait for weeks and then do most of the number crunching itself, says Polyteia CEO Faruk Tuncer, a speaker at PUBLIC’s GovTech Summit in Paris November 14(for more on the conference see The State of GovTech story on The Innovator’s homepage.) The type of data requested can be about anything from demand for childcare to information about street maintenance. The startup’s software can work with any type of legacy system. Its platform sits on top and can automatically aggregate relevant data from various kinds of enterprise software. Data kept in Excel, PDFs, and other types of documents is imported through its upload service. After the data from various sources is uploaded it is sorted, combined, and analyzed together. Decision makers benefit from the processed data in the form of KPIs, analysis, forecasts, and automated reports.

Tuncer said he recognized the need for such technology while working as an advisor on local government policy for Germany’s Christian Democratic Union party. In Germany alone there are 16 states. Local governments in each state use different legacy systems, including proprietary information technology infrastructure that municipalities have built themselves, technology from big suppliers like SAP, and software developed by medium-sized tech companies that dates as far back as the 1990s. “We have to deal with all of that,” says Tuncer. In his talk at the GovTech summit he made a plea for the European Union to develop standardized interfaces which would allow startups to more easily build govtech applications. Steps also need to be taken to streamline procurement. “We don’t have a legislative problem,” says Tuncer. “There is a lot of room for innovation. The problem is the understanding at the local level of how far they can take risks. What is needed is a three-page practical guide from Ministries of the Interior that tells local governments how to work with startups that are one-year-old , two-years-old or four-years-old,” he says. He also advises governments to develop a clearer view of what they are able to build themselves and where startups can add value and provide more economical solutions.
“FALL-BETWEENS”
By: Hali Palombo
Tags: Startup

“ROLLERCOASTER”

The man at the exit gate of the Batman roller coaster at Six Flags Great America is very upset because he dropped his cell phone and it landed on the ground underneath the tracks. The attendant is trying to explain to him that there is no way to get the phone back, because doing so would require them to temporarily cease operation, and could be highly dangerous. Also, it is likely that the phone is broken, as the height at which the man dropped his phone was very, very high. This is my own observation, not something the attendant said.

The interaction takes about five minutes. The man comes away from it red in the face, calling Six Flags Great America employees “thieves” and “fuckers”. The attendee is 19 or 20 years old. He seems unfazed, like he deals with this a few times a week.

“How much do you deal with that sort of thing?” I ask.

“Few times a week,” he says, taking a swig of his red Gatorade.

“What sorts of things do people drop?”

He wipes the sweat off of his forehead with a rag and pauses to think. “People are supposed to put all their stuff in the bins on the shelves before getting into the car. Mostly they do it, but sometimes you’ll get the guy who kept his phone in his pocket. Him.” He points his chin the direction the man from earlier walked away.

“Yeah.”

“And it’s our fault somehow. I get yelled at all the time.” He pauses. “But some people I feel bad for. A lot of people losing glasses.” He wipes the sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand. “One guy lost a prosthetic arm even.”

“Could you do anything about that?”

“No, all I could do was tell him to go to Lost and Found and file a claim,” he said. “That’s really all we can do. We can’t stop the roller coaster on account of one dude dropping his fake arm. Also, it’s dangerous to walk underneath the roller coaster. They tell you that in training like right away. I could get fired!”

I peer through the fence behind him. I count two pairs of 3D glasses, one rolled-up neon baseball hat, a lanyard, and in the distance, the man’s phone. Even from my somewhat distant vantage point, I can tell it’s broken — circled by a halo of black shrapnel.

“Guy has to buy a new phone,” the attendant says under his breath. “Nothing I can do. Whatever.”
How to sustain your culture in times of change.
By: Ex Podcast Employee Experience
Tags: Human Resources, Employee Engagement, Growth Mindset, Employee Experience, Startup

Change happens whether you like it or not. It’s up to each one of us to decide what we want to do with change.

As a CEO or HR leader, it’s your responsibility to lead change, but also to create an environment and a company culture that support constant change and business growth. Employees don’t have to suffer through change, they should embrace it and thrive. They should feel excited about what’s new, they should feel included in being part of the journey.

How do you sustain your culture in times of change?

It’s critical to have an open communication with your employees and answer this question “what’s in it for me (as an employee)?”. Be direct, transparent and honest about hat change means for the company and for every individual.

It’s also very important to involve and include employees in the process of change, so that they play an active role driving change, instead of suffering through change.

Karen Weeks is the VP of People at Ordergroove, where she is building the people strategy and focuses on maintaining a strong culture during the growth stage of the company, including winning its first Best Companies to Work in New York! Previously she was the VP of HR (creating & leading the HR Operations Team), the Talent Management Director (for Client Services & Technology) and the first Manager of Learning and Development at Yodle.

Today with Karen we talk about:

– How to live and develop company values in a rapid growth organization, what the process is, where to start, and what are some best practices.

– How to help your team members through change.

– How leaders can create feedback and development opportunities during times of change.

– How to scale your team and infrastructure to reach your business goals in a business environment that is continuously changing.

– Where Karen sees the HR and People function in 5 years?

http://traffic.libsyn.com/expodcast/Ep.95_-_Karen_Weeks_OrderGroove_FULL.mp3
What’s Your Story
By: Ten Capital Network
Tags: Growth Story, Fundraising, Strategy, Performance, Startup

When founding your startup, it is important to have a growth story. While investors may invest in teams and technology, they’ll still need to see your operating cost model, how you are finding customers and how much they pay for your products and services.

If you’re bringing in a lot of money, the investor will assume that you do have a story to tell. These investors will look at your business model to see how much you can grow as well as what challenges you’ll face and at what point.

If your company is low revenue or pre-revenue, you can show in economic units the proven and repeat business you have. If you haven’t already, take out $5K and prove the unit economic model.

Let’s say you can get a lead paying $1 for a social media ad. You then send follow up emails which give you one lead out of fifty. Your lead then spends an average of two hundred and fifty dollars for your products or services.

You can then take these numbers to come up with a basic financial model. It tells how much it costs to get a customer and the value of the loan.

Knowing your numbers and being able to tell investors how you’re growing is a key to fundraising.
Interviewing
By: Parabol
Tags: Friday Ship, Hiring, Agile, Jobs, Startup

This week, we began interviewing applicants for our newly opened roles. We’ve only had our roles open for a single week, and already we’ve had 75 candidates apply. Many of these candidates were referred to us by long time followers of our company. We are very grateful for your support in sending us talented people dear to you. Thank you!

Metrics

We’re still seeing the halo effects of our fundraising announcement. Top-of-funnel traffic climbed another 12% this week. User registration slowed slightly, but we still picked up more than 400 new users.

This week we…

…kicked off Sprint 46. The goal of this sprint is to lay foundations for re-implementing our meeting lobby to allow for one team to have multiple open, current meetings at the same time. In turn, this will unblock further sprints focused on delivering greater meeting customization (such as disabling the check-in round), a re-architecture of what a team sees when they navigate to their team room from the dashboard’s left nav, and many other future features.

…updated our invite dialog. Recently we decided to promote the invite link that can be copied and shared to the primary position. We’re hoping this will make it even more obvious for folks to be able to invite their teammates to Parabol. We’re adding custom illustrations as we identify experiences that can benefit from a little pizazz. The dialog condenses down nicely on mobile.

The new design

The previous design

…implemented the relaxing of constraints in the Reflect phase, allowing for new Reflection cards to be created all the way up until the Vote phase is completed. We’ve received feedback for weeks that disabling the Reflect input phase once the phase was completed was confusing. We anticipate this change will help a lot. It should go out to production next week.

Next week we’ll…

…continue conducting more interviews.

…ship a new version to production.

…conclude sprint 46.
Introducing the MediBloc Welcome Kit!
Tags: Company Culture, Blockchain, Startup

“Welcome Aboard!”

When you first join MediBloc, you will receive the welcome kit shown below.

We hope that with this kit you will feel like a part of the MediBloc team.

—

So, allow us to introduce the MediBloc Welcome Kit!

As the size of MediBloc has expanded more and more, many new members have joined us. During our transition from a small team to what we have now, we decided to create a welcome kit that could help new team members come on board more easily, share a sense of purpose with their teammates, and feel a greater sense of friendship and loyalty. And so, in line with the rebranding of MediBloc, the design and marketing teams have worked together to create this wonderful kit tailored to the characteristics of the MediBloc crew.

MediBloc’s welcome kits are available with a range of contents, including a T-shirt, a sports bag, slippers, an eyeglass cleaning cloth, an A-to-Z guide for a better on-boarding process, and a coupon for meals with MediBloc’s co-founders.

Let’s take a look at the items one by one.

—

WELCOME TO MEDIBLOC!

In order to adapt quickly to a new company, it is important to catch up with how things work, how its systems run, and what its culture is. Of course, you’ll get used to it over time, too, but it’s great to have a guide to help you adapt, right? That’s why MediBloc has prepared “The MediBloc Guidebook” with Notion, a business groupware tool. And now new employees, as well as existing ones, can find answers they need about the company and its members.

You can access the boarding instructions directly through the QR code on the welcome card. Are you curious? Then get on board!

—

<Meal Coupon with MediBloc’s Co-founders>

With this meal coupon you can request a meal at any time with MediBloc’s co-founders. This might be very handy if you have a problem in the future!

<Sticker Pack>

For office workers, stickers are a fun and easy means of self-expression. If you are curious about the MediBloc logo, please read the following article:

A new start for MediBloc

<T-shirt>
Envel to Participate as a Title Sponsor of HackHarvard 2019
Tags: Hackathons, Banking, Fintech, Harvard, Startup

October 16, 2019

A new FinTech startup, Envel will be participating as a title sponsor at the annual HackHarvard hackathon, stirring up conversation about their new approach to banking. The company is launching a digital bank account app in late 2019 that uses AI to optimize its users finances to autonomously, it’s something they call “driverless banking.”

At HackHarvard, 600 of the brightest students from different colleges will participate in the incredible 36-hour event, where they will be challenged to come up with and code a plethora of new ideas. HackHarvard will be located on Harvard’s campus and will run from Friday, October 18, 2019 until Sunday October 20, 2019.

Envel’s AI powered banking mobile application created to address the needs of college students that automates the steering of customer finances in real-time to help stabilize spending and support wealth accumulation. Envel is seeking to revolutionize the mobile banking industry, and to make consumer finances more accessible by putting their users financial health first. Envel aims to bring awareness to common financial issues in an effort to promote financial literacy among a broad range of individuals, but mainly college students anf young adults. Envel seeks to tackle the problem of lacking financial literacy among students to ultimately help them manage their money.

As a title sponsor, Envel will be hosting a keynote speech, giving out merchandise, and hosting their own competition with prizes to get students thinking about how coding can be used in finance. This will allow students to essentially design their own Envel bank accounts, indicating the metrics they would use to control the flow of their finances.

In late September, Envel hosted a mini hackathon where students were presented with a similar prompt, resulting in ideas that were extremely creative and clever. The sky is the limit with this competition, as Envel encourages students to take a more active role in their finances while making it fun and enjoyable.

This year, the theme at HackHarvard will be “connecting the dots”. Today, technology is tightly intertwined with everything around us. HackHarvard invites students to let creativity and innovation blossom as they push for progress at the intersection between technology and society.

Envel is incredibly grateful and excited to be sponsoring HackHarvard, and plans to have a large and memorable presence at this event. A key goal is to make students more aware of the intersection between coding and finance, and of the vast possibilities the app provides to let users design their own bank account.

To learn more about Envel, visit them at www.envel.ai or follow us on Instagram @envel_ai, Twitter @envel_ai, Facebook @envelai and on Linkedin @envel.
Poultry farming has never been this easy
Tags: Agriculture, Startup Lessons, Entrepreneurship, Technology, Startup

How does your incubator work?

The digital egg incubator uses both electricity and solar energy. We designed it this way so that anyone is able to use it regardless of where they are. The incubator works by maintaining temperatures at 37.8 degrees and humidity level at 60 for 21 days. The incubator also has a display that shows the temperatures and humidity. This informs the farmer when the humidity levels are low thus when to add water. We know this may seem complicated, thats why we always show the farmer how to use the machine to incubate their eggs while we do the installation. For the best results we insist that the farmer doesn’t open the incubator for 21 days.

Who is your target market?

We try to make the incubators as affordable as possible. We have great payment plans, fit for everyone. The incubators cost Kshs. 45,000 in total. But if a farmer can not afford that, all they need is a down payment of Kshs. 4,000 then pay a daily instalment of 40 shillings.

What made you start this business?

I started rearing chickens since I was in class 6. I know everything about poultry farming, I have a passion for it. It is a way for us to be able to feed ourselves as country. I also see it as a good way of creating jobs for the youth and women in my community.

What progress you have you made so far?

It’s been quite an interesting journey of failing and learning from our mistakes. We started off with nothing and now we are able to source for materials and we have pieces to sell. We have been able to sell our products to a few farmers and so far they love the incubators.

What makes your incubator different? Why not stick to the traditional methods of hatching eggs?

There are certain benefits of using our incubator; Number one, It can either use electricity or solar which means you do not have to be connected to power, Number two; Our incubator incubates between 90–96 eggs at a go and last but not least our incubators have a success rate of 90% and above depending on the quality of eggs.

What is your vision for your business?

Simple; In the next 2 years we plan to raise brand awareness and expand our operations to; Mombasa, Kilifi and Kwale. We also aim to teach as many farmers as possible about poultry farming and become the main suppliers of poultry food in the coastal region.

What lessons have you learnt throughout the leap2 program?

The crowdfunding process was difficult for us. We were unable to raise enough funds to receive a match fund but we tried our best. On the bright side, we learnt a lot; like how to talk to people, making the perfect pitch and the icing of the cake is that the platform allowed us to network and through that we got our very first client who ordered in bulk. We are grateful for the program, the lessons we learnt and the people we met.
I’ve always wanted to start a podcast.
Tags: Startup, Gaming, Gaming Culture, Podcast

I’ve always wanted to start a podcast.

Now I’ve actually been given the opportunity and I am ever so excited. It all started from a project in one of my courses; we were instructed to create a website and upload some content (either short videos or podcasts). The group I became a part of ultimately agreed that podcast would be the way to go, so we decided to create our own gaming podcast: The X Button.

Now being a huge nerd with a fascination in games, this is exactly the ideal type of thing I wanted to do. A podcast with a few buddy’s just chatting about our favorite video games and discussing topics in the gaming community is as good as it gets.

Now I will say; starting it up wasn’t so simple. We initially planned on going into a studio to record, then realized we didn’t have enough working mics. We tried to get three of us in the studio and two on call but had no luck due to poor internet. What we ended up doing (which we should’ve thought of from the beginning) is we ended up just recording it over discord.

In the first episode we discussed micro transactions in the gaming world and what was good and bad about them. As of writing this there is only one episode recorded (but not yet edited), but we have so topic ideas for future episode including music games, censorship, VR, and the one that I’m most looking forward to: our own gaming ideas that we would create if given the chance.

I know there is a lot more to gain out of this course, and I know that this podcast that we created is only for a group project. But I along with some of the members are happy to continue it after the initial five episodes for the project. And I am hoping with fingers crossed that this can become a full-fledged gaming podcast.
Tips for getting to #1 on Product Hunt
By: Cristian Moisei
Tags: Product Hunt, Tips, Startup, Launch

When I launched my side project, a productivity app called Thrive, on Product Hunt, I didn’t expect much. Nevertheless, I did my best with the launch and it ended up making it to #1 Product of the Day. This article will share some of the lessons learned.

1. Presentation makes a big difference

This may seem obvious, but the more effort you put into thinking about every detail of your presentation, the better received it will be. Everything from the title, icon, tagline, screenshots and description matter.

I created a one minute promo video for Thrive too, and this helped a lot. Not everyone has the time to look at all the screenshots and patiently read the description so a video is a great way to quickly convey what your product does. I’ve put this together in After Effects but the bulk of the work was based on templates and stock footage from Envato Elements.

2. It’s not all about upvotes

From what I can gather, the PH algorithm looks at more than just upvotes. On the day that Thrive launched, there were two products with more upvotes for a while, but it was still #1 (I’m pretty sure one of them bought upvotes because they started with ~60). I’d say the PH algorithm looks at engagement, so that’s the number of comments left, the number of reviews, the number of people who click on it, etc. This means that it pays off to really engage with everyone in a positive way. Try to answer all questions, invite people to share feedback (which is helpful regardless), and just don’t be mean or defensive to anyone.

3. Making it to #1 early helps

I’ve noticed that once a product gets to #1, it will usually get upvoted more than the others. Try to get on the home page as early as possible, and then if you’ve done everything else right, the product will climb pretty easily.

4. Picking the right time is crucial

Which brings me to the last, and probably most important point: pick the right time. Posts can be scheduled on PH, so you can launch it exactly when a new day starts, to make sure you get the maximum exposure time and have a fair shot. There’s even an app on PH that tells you what the time is at PH HQ. It’s also important to pick the right day. I found that picking a less busy day will mean less competition. There’s an app to help with this too.
Smart Boards Practice Before IPO
By: Athena Alliance
Tags: Board Of Directors, Business, Corporate Governance, Entrepreneurship, Startup

by Coco Brown

Athena Alliance Founder & CEO

IPOs around the world skyrocketed in 2017 — there were 1,624 and more than $188 billion raised. Not only was it a banner year for IPOs (the biggest since 2007), it was a nearly 50 percent increase in the number of deals since 2016.

Achieving IPO marks an incredible achievement for any organization. The path to get there tends to disrupt company operations as executives and boards of directors scrutinize the business from numerous angles. While many areas of a business experience transformation pre-IPO, what about the board of directors? IPO brings about many changes, including the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) reporting, a public view of the executive team, and additional financial and accounting responsibilities. IPO also means a sea of modern responsibilities and challenges — ones that boards of decades past did not deal with, such as the need for modern social media strategies, navigating with a demanding workforce, and massive cybersecurity challenges

To tackle these new challenges, smart boards must prepare — and practice — early. Getting to IPO typically takes many months, but private companies that know IPO is in their future can and should begin preparing as early as a few years in advance. Another way of thinking about this is guiding your company to a higher standard of operations. It makes a lot of sense to operate and act as an IPO-ready organization, even if you aren’t ready to make the move just yet.

Today’s public companies face modern challenges

Achieving IPO may not be a modern concept, but the world in which a newly public company operates is hardly anything like it was just a decade or two ago. It moves faster, it’s tech-powered and global. As companies prepare for IPO, they need to not only hit the regulatory requirements and button up their financial affairs, but their boards must also be prepared for an onslaught of contemporary issues. Here is an outline of the top issues facing boards as they consider an IPO:
Shop Keeping, Episode 1
Tags: Family, Retail, Women In Business, Cooking, Startup

Shop Keeping, Episode 1

“Nice things, made by nice people”

That’s my reply to “What do you sell, Anne?”

When the government informed me that I was no longer entitled to the state pension at age 60, I realised I needed work. I looked for a little shop.

My Unique Selling Point? Absolutely no retail experience. Not even a “Saturday Job”. So how would that go?

I enjoy cooking; my hobby was writing a blog about free range eggs; cookware accumulates in my kitchen cupboards. So that settled it. I would have a kitchen shop.

Easy decision. Next, the practicalities.

I found a shop, I hired tradespeople, I started looking for nice things to sell. (I’ll pick up the story of “nice things” in a future episode. This one is “nice people”)

Before I bought even one item of stock, I made a decision. Not only did I have to like the product, I had to like the person supplying it. From the Jam Maker to the Enamelware Importer, I was looking for a colleague. Faceless companies could offer me fabulous items at fabulous prices. I’ll say “No thanks”. My suppliers are people, our transactions and deals are conversations.

A local woman who makes cakes and snacks (Yes Lesley, you!) jokingly said I should stop selling and start giving business advice. Well that’s not happening; but it started me thinking about my shop. Primarily, why is One Basket, Kelso so idiosyncratically “me”? Part of the answer is, my suppliers are my colleagues. It means a lot to me that I can tell customers about the products: who made them, where they come from, how I discovered them… In simple terms, they’re made by Nice People.
Top 4 reasons to build a software team with remote talent
Tags: Engineering, Remote Working, Startup, Team, Software

Through trial and error, we have found here at Upstack that remote talent is quite the future. The barriers have been long broken and the universality of the English language makes any type of project work as it should.

We have found 4 reasons to build your software team with remote talent to be the most important reasons for which you should take into consideration a remote team. We do encourage our clients to go remote as you get more benefits than dealing with an office.

It’s really hard to find talent locally

Wherever in the US, it can be really hard for startups to find reliable and in budget talent. Remember you are battling big names on the market that are competing for the same talent as you are.

Even fresh graduates are more inclined to tackle great big companies that develop software that is used by even millions of users, rather than to head for a startup. When it comes to senior developers, well, as much as we’re sure you would just love such a developer on your project, seniority can reach a top budget. A heartfelt project might spark interest for either of them but the chances are not that optimistic.

That’s why we recommend to open up to a pool of talent beyond your city or even the US. Go international. Opening up to a global pool will increase the finding of great talent for your company.

Costs

Limiting yourself to local talent can exponentially increase your expenses on salaries. By going remote you actually drop some of these expenses that might come from:

managing an office,

having an entire HR team,

dropping taxes as you are getting involved in the global economy.

This can lead to a 10–20% deduction or even to dropping your development costs to half. It’s an aspect that can be a really sensitive spot for those startups that are cost-conscious.

Diversity in people

Attacking a more global pool will actually increase also the ideas and visions that other people might have.

If you limit yourself locally, you engage in people similar to you and your beliefs that also have similar character traits. When you’re searching remote, of course, you want people to relate too, but these people share a different environment and culture and can bring great insight to your product. In our opinion, this can be only a benefit to any startup.

Work-life balance

One of the biggest issues we have right now when it comes to choosing a workplace is how long is the commute. Each day we lose around 2–3 hours on it, and it only makes us get to work already tired, or at home already annoyed.

Working closer to home, in a co-working space or your home office means that you can be available right away and also that you can split your working day into however you wish:

Keep your meetings in the morning

Do your searches in the afternoon

Develop on your project late at night.

It can be lonely and challenging not being surrounded by colleagues, but it can also be fulfilling in choosing your schedule in accordance with your life, so you can actually spend also quality time with friends and family.
Why “idea” isn’t the most important part of your startup
By: Brenda Lai
Tags: Entrepreneur, Startup Ideas, Entrepreneurship, Product Market Fit, Startup

“Oh wow! So how did you come up with this idea”?

This is one of my favourite questions at business functions, when the person I am talking to ask about what I do & what the business does.

I 100% understand this is one of those small talks, where the person asking the question doesn’t actually care about the answer. I just find it facinating that somehow, we think that a business idea was “created” by someone at some point, like a lightbulb moment or an epiphany, and then the idea becomes the million dollar company.

In most cases, there was indeed an epiphany. However that original idea usually doesn’t stick around and become the opertaionl business that most people see.

3 years ago I would think the same thing. Like many first time entreprenuers I’d think the idea I came up with during a lightbulb moment is extremely valuable and should be kept as a secret.

3 years later, after numourous failures and pivots, I learn that is not the case at all. It’s not about the idea, because it is merely an assumption that I made — that I might have a solution for a problem (…that I personally have).

It soon became clear to me that perhasps my solution isn’t commercialisable; worse yet, the problem I believe wholeheartedly that needs to be solved, is not a problem for the rest of the population.

So when people ask me “How did you come up with this idea?” I said I didn’t. The truth is we (yes, we — my cofounder and the team) worked on the idea for 3 years, going through various changes to find product-market fit, and it eventually becomes what you see today.
Will Your Tech Scale at Launch?
By: Basis Set Ventures
Tags: Scalability, Engineering, Startup

Will Your Tech Scale at Launch?

Are you preparing your technology to scale for a product launch, Black Friday, or a major PR / marketing campaign?

A few weeks ago, we hosted one of our advisors Niniane Wang for a tech talk at our office. She shared lessons learned from being the VP Engineering at Niantic overseeing Pokémon GO and Harry Potter: Wizards Unite, CTO of Minted during numerous TV and viral consumer moments, and an engineering leader for a number of product launches on Gmail and other Google products.

Niniane shares lessons learned from launching Pokemon Go and Harry Potter: Wizards Unite

She covered topics such as:

Tips to make your loadtesting more representative of real traffic

Working with third-party infrastructure (e.g. AWS, GCP, third-party logins)

How to “expect the unexpected” by giving yourself server-side levers that you can pull in real-time

Making the cost-benefit tradeoff when increasing scalability will require weeks of extra work

Check out slides for her talk below:

We recorded her talk to share with our community:
Don’t ask “Why?” 5 times.
By: Guerrilla Product
Tags: Product Management, Internal Tooling, Ask Why, Startup, Jobs To Be Done

If it pisses off adults when kids do it, don't do it to your users.

As Product Managers, we know that the one thing all PMs must be able to do is to understand the problem. We’re told that the best way to do this is to focus on the “why” and not the what. A point made clear by this fake but illustrative quote from Henry Ford:

If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.

We’re told that the best way to narrow in on the problem is following a theory accredited to Sakichi Toyoda: Ask “Why?” 5 times, to get to the core of what is actually the problem.

This is the fastest horse. Why? Because it is Red. Why? Because red is the fastest. Why? Because Science.

Actually, now that I think about it, why is this is accredited to Sakichi Toyoda? Literally every child that has ever existed since language happened has independently invented this strategy. And every time a child utilises this technique, it ends up pissing off the adult….. Obviously!!

So, if it's so obvious in the context of a child and a parent, why has this lesson been skipped on Product Managers? I think its easy for us to know the benevolent intentions of such a tactic and forget the effect. We see videos like this one showing the effectiveness of the Jobs to Be Done technique and assume that because a willing participant from the seminar/audience was willing to jump through hoops for an hour about why they bought a mattress, that anyone will.

But think about it; if we grabbed a random person off the streets, and grilled them for an hour about why they bought the mattress that they did, only to slowly tease out an explanation that was different to their immediate conscious explanation, do we really think that they’re gonna be happy? Unlikely.

My situation is quite sensitive to this conundrum. I’m a Product Manager for Internal Tools, the users who I’m ‘grilling’ are my colleagues. They’re not random Dad’s off the street buying a mattress on Saturday morning from Walmart. They’re paid professionals, who are good at their jobs. They know the job inside out and have a wealth of information about how the different tools work together. They work hard, are sometimes under stress, and I’m waltzing in, doubting their actions, asking them why they pressed this button and not that one.

Obviously i’m using a bit of hyperbole to highlight a point. I’m not saying we shouldn’t care about why things are done. And I’m not taking on the Jobs to Be Done movement either (more taking the Micky). But I think it's important to understand the limits of such a technique, that benevolent intentions aren’t all that matter and the sensitivities that it might arouse.

How my team and I get around this is for another post…
What Makes The Top 10% of Founders Different — Michael Siebel from YC
By: Rodney Gainous Jr
Tags: Tech, Yc, Ycombinator, Technology, Startup

Michael Siebel has interviewed over 2500 founders.

Great founders execute.

Great have the consistent ability to say they are going to do something, and do it. Great founders learn from doing.

They always figure out a way to make progress.

Great founders are often intimidating because they get shit done. Not in a bad way, they just demand respect.

When you talk to these founders, you often talk to these founders with more respect.

Great founders have formidability. They have the ability to keep going. They’re built to last.

You often treat their tasks and goals with more respect because you know they’re going to do them. They’re not joking.

One difficult roadblock that great founders overcome is explaining what they do to anyone. Clear.

Great founders require great communication. Communication with users, employees, and investors. They learn to communicate.

The best founders can explain their business in 1–2 sentences. They can explain it to anyone without hiccups.

Michael says that the best founders are internally motivated. They don’t get discouraged when things go wrong, they stay persistent. These people can make the wrong move 5 times in a row and still try again.

It’s very hard to tell if an early-stage founder has a good idea. Michael decides not to decide whether something is a good idea.

Make something people want.

Original Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtfTOuSHGg8

#️⃣✍🏾 #CodeSigned #CodeSignedBy

RJ /// Rodney Gainous Jr /// @RG2Official /// (424) 334–8004

Life is a game.
The Marketer’s Guide to Customer Lifetime Value
By: Joshua Vandebrake
Tags: Venture Capital, Business, Marketing, Work, Startup

Defining LTV

Think of it as self-care for your business. Essentially, LTV is your chance to focus on your own needs instead of your customers’. It’s all about asking, “How valuable are these customers to me?” and “How much money should I spend to get them?”

I personally like how internet marketer, Neil Patel defines it:

“LTV is the projected revenue that a customer will generate during their lifetime.” — Neil Patel

Though, if I could change just one part of that, I’d say, “LTV is the projected value that a customer will generate during their lifetime.”

Some, like Neil, categorize value as revenue while others see value as profit. Which one you use is best determined by the stage of your business, but I usually prefer profit.

When to use revenue

Use revenue if your company is in its early stages (Seed or Series A). You may want to focus more on revenue for calculations, as the earliest stages of the business are more about finding if and where your product fits in the lives of your customers.

This is the only time I’d recommend using the revenue model. If you’re running a mature business (or a VC-backed startup beyond Series A) and someone is trying to convince you to spend more money by showing your marketing ROI using a revenue LTV model, you should get a second opinion — or run.

When to use profit

Use profit if your company:

is rapidly approaching or has passed Series B funding or

is bootstrapped or

has matured beyond fundraising

In my opinion, to raise Series B and beyond, you should have a pretty good idea of product-market fit and what profit your revenue will generate, so you’d do best to focus on profit.

Whichever way you look at it, we can use LTV to find our best customers and best marketing channels. For our calculations below, we’ll assume a mature business or Series B (or later) startup and use the profit LTV model.
Tundra named one of the most promising startups in 2019 by CNBC
By: Arnold Engel
Tags: Ecommerce, Retail, Entrepreneurship, Marketplaces, Startup

We are honored to be selected as a 2019 CNBC Upstart 100 company and to be invited to discuss Tundra’s mission on CNBC’s Instagram live. The exclusive Upstart 100 list was unveiled Tuesday morning and features a diverse group of 100 startups that are on their path to becoming tomorrow’s household names. Tundra was chosen from over 600 nominated startups worldwide who were evaluated against several quantitative metrics, including scalability, sales growth and user growth.

CEO Arnold Engel with CNBC’s Kate Rooney and Redpoint Venture’s Annie Kadavy talking on Instagram Live about Tundra and its mission to empower small businesses.

We are truly grateful to the Tundra community for partnering with us in our mission to build the modern wholesale marketplace. This award belongs to all of the suppliers and buyers that make Tundra the best place to buy and sell wholesale. Thanks to our community, we’re closer every day to our goal of putting a billion dollars back into the pockets of local businesses.

We know that retailers care about the fundamentals: low pricing and on-time delivery. Our new guarantee for best prices and on-time delivery ensures that buyers can shop without stress this holiday season. When buyers shop from brands with our Gold Badge, they know that they are always getting a brand’s best offer. And our new Gold+ Badge recognizes brands with guaranteed on-time delivery: get it on time, or it’s on us. These are just some of the ways Tundra is making wholesale hassle-free for the thousands of businesses on our rapidly-growing platform.

It has been a year of tremendous growth for Tundra and it is a testament to the substantial value we provide business owners. We now have over 100,000 products that buyers can choose from. The Tundra community of buyers and suppliers continues to grow each day. And we’ll continue to add to our amazing team in San Francisco and Zurich (come join us!) to support our growth.

Be a part of the modern wholesale marketplace. Join the Tundra community.