fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
Royale Partners with DeFi Insurance Industry Disruptor TIDAL Finance
Tags: Polkadot, Cryptocurrency News, Defi, Insurance, Protocol

We at Royale strongly identify with TIDAL as they too are looking to disrupt an already established and lucrative mainstream industry with the future-proof tools DeFi has to offer. With our commitment to the Buyback & Make model made possible by the Balancer protocol, we were instantly intrigued by TIDAL’s proposition to create “a Balancer-like insurance market built upon Polkadot that allows users to create custom insurance pools for one or more assets.”

This unique design rewards insurance pool creators with a portion of returns from their deposits while at the same time provides competitive insurance premiums to prospective insurance buyers. At Royale, our aim is to integrate the TIDAL protocol into our platform. Not only do we intend to use TIDAL insurance markets to provide our own coverage to the monolithic Royale optimised stablecoin liquidity pool, but we also plan to make it easy for our platform users to buy their own coverage from TIDAL as well. Our developers will work closely with their team to share DeFi insights and cross-chain experience to deliver superior performance and sustained impact across our respective target industries.

We are excited to harness this tidal energy governed by the moon as we bring iGDeFi to the world and be among the first DeFi platforms to be able to offer this insurance coverage as soon as the TIDAL protocol goes live.

Royale continues its mission tidally locked in the orbit of the effulgent binary stars of our modern era, iGaming and DeFi, building an armada of blockchain partners along the way. It will be hard to follow up our first public partnership, among many to come, because this one covers more than two-thirds of the Earth’s surface. Yes, we took the tidal analogies there! That is just how amped we are about this coupling!

We look forward to the discussions and community engagements in the coming weeks ahead as both projects propel forward into the cross-chain DeFi future. Stay tuned for more information as we continue to bound from strength to strength, building a better and fairer iGaming future with DeFi.

About TIDAL

TIDAL is a multi-chain open market for programmable insurance, empowering users to create custom insurance pools for multiple assets. With pool statistics and ranking, it is the most efficient smart contract insurance market, launching on the Polkadot Ecosystem.

Please visit our partners on Medium or Twitter.

About Royale

Royale Finance is an industry-focused decentralised lending protocol. Its purpose is to create Web 3.0 smart-backed funding solutions using DeFi primitives in order to support the innovation of iGaming products and platforms. The combination of iGaming returns, uncorrelated to DeFi cryptoassets but powered by base layer DeFi protocols, we call iGDeFi.

Follow us on Twitter and join our community on Telegram.
Startup Of The Week: Thimble
By: Jennifer L. Schenker
Tags: Insurtech, Insurance, Startup

Thimble, a U.S. startup, is targeting opportunities most traditional insurance companies are missing. It is offering flexible and short-term business insurance to SMEs and microentrepreneurs, a class of customer that is showing explosive growth during the COVID pandemic, and it is supplying APIs to clients that want to bundle insurance policies with their offer, a burgeoning market in its own right.

This article is part of The Innovator’s premium content offer and available only to The Innovator’s Radar subscribers.

If you are already a Radar subscriber click here to sign into your account.

For a free trial Radar Subscription click here.
Etherisc’s crop insurance initiative in Kenya earns support from Ethereum Foundation
Tags: Acre Africa, Defi, Insurance, Etherisc, Ethereum

We are very happy to announce that the Ethereum Foundation has decided to support our project aimed at providing crop insurance to smallholder farmers based on blockchain technology in cooperation with ACRE Africa. Etherisc received a grant from the Ethereum Foundation Ecosystem Support Program, which exists to provide both financial and non-financial support to projects and entities within the greater Ethereum community, in order to accelerate the growth of the ecosystem.

As announced in our blog post on November 14th 2020, Etherisc was able to start with the development of innovative parametric crop insurance built on top of our “Generic Insurance Framework” (GIF) with ACRE Africa thanks to the financial and technical support from Chainlink.

The grant from the Ethereum Foundation is a crucial element to complete the financing for the first phase of the project in Kenya.

Opportunities in emerging markets

The Ethereum Foundation’s Executive Director, Aya Miyaguchi, highlighted the potential of blockchain technology in the area of inclusive finance when discussing the project cooperation during her keynote speech at EthOnline this October. The Ethereum Foundation is seeing opportunities in emerging markets as an important part of their scaling strategy to reach the next billion users. The use case we are building with ACRE Africa can make a valuable contribution to these goals.
Dear NY FBI, be a doll and feed Verizon and Verizon’s insurance carrier Sedgwick Claims my degree…
Tags: Government, Insurance, Law, Psychology, Education

Pretty please (with sugar on top)

Whipped cream works wonders with our cats, by the way. Dear Word Detective: You know how hard it is to get a cat to do…
18 Reasons to Protect Those You Love With Life Insurance
By: Armando Almase
Tags: Life, Insurance, Society, Family, Education

The thought of Life Insurance makes most people cringe, but it’s not about you (the insured), it’s about the people you love (your beneficiaries).

Who Needs Life Insurance:

This broad list applies to people who are:

Single.

Life partnered.

Married.

The breadwinner of a life partnership or marriage.

The stay-at-home life partner or spouse.

What can life insurance help pay?

House. Car. Mortgage. Rent. Vehicle loan. Utility bills. Grocery bills. Medical bills. Home owner’s insurance premiums. Renter’s insurance premiums. Car insurance premiums. Child Care bills. College tuition. Student loans. Joint credit card accounts. Personal property tax. Business property tax. Cremation/funeral/burial bills.

… and more.

Misconceptions

1. A stay-at-home life partner/spouse doesn’t need life insurance

The breadwinner often believes that their stay-at-home life partner/spouse doesn’t need life insurance. However, according to a 2019 article, the estimated annual salary of a stay-at-home spouse/life partner is approximately $178 thousand dollars if they have kids at home. This “salary” is based on how much it would cost the breadwinner to pay for all of the services that a stay-at-home life partner/spouse performs throughout the year (e.g. cooking, cleaning, childcare, laundry, accounting, errands, and more).

2. Single people, with no dependents, don’t need life insurance

Single people with no dependents almost always believe they don’t need life insurance, and this might seem logical, but consider this if you’re single with no dependents: One day, you will die. Who will pay for your cremation/funeral/burial? Whoever handles your estate is the person responsible for your bill, and usually, that’s the nearest living relative. Otherwise, your resident county or state will pay the bill — which means your neighbor’s and your best friend’s tax money might be paying for your final expenses. Are you okay with that?

3. Donation requests will pay off debt

Family and friends often believe that starting an online donation page for someone in need, will bring in enough money to pay for medical bills, final expenses, and more. The hard reality is that rarely do donations provide enough money to pay off debt. Additionally, the taxes associated with these donations are not guaranteed to be tax-free or even deductible. Furthermore, misuse of money from donations could result in personal lawsuits, loss of friends, a tarnished reputation, and banishment from donation websites.
Demystifying Insurance | Money Talks with Finny
By: Jimmy Cerone
Tags: Money, Insurance, Personal Finance, Finny, Ideas

This post begins a new mini series I’m doing about personal finance. I thought I knew my way around the money world, but since I’ve been learning on Finny¹ I’ve been stunned by the gaps in my knowledge.

The following graphic was humbling. I am “failing” most financial categories and at best pullings Cs (except for my inexplicable score in debt management).

My Finny quiz stats.

One of the most confusing aspects of personal finance I’ve come across so far is insurance, as evidenced by my horrific 59% grade in the category.

Before starting my Finny education, I did not know even know the basic terms of insurance. I thought a premium meant you had good insurance, copay was a fancy word for Venmo, and I couldn’t even guess what a deductible was.

Now, I know a little more, and to lock it in I’m going to give explaining the basics a shot.

Insurance for Dummies | Jimmy’s Version

First, a premium does not mean great insurance. I kind of had the idea right, i the sense that the higher the premium the better the coverage (unless you are getting ripped off). But, in reality, the premium is how much you pay monthly for the coverage you get.

The deductible, which I was clueless about, is how much you have to pay out of pocket before your coverage kicks in. Generally, your deductible and your premium are inversely related. The higher your deductible, the lower your premium. As a rule of thumb, your deductible should be no more than you can handle as a one time expense.

After you meet your deductible, your insurance company starts doing its thing. Technically the name is “coinsurance” and it describes the percentage of the bill you have to foot. Generally, there is a limit to this called the “out-of-pocket maximum”. What that means is after a certain point, the insurance company will cover everything.

So if I were to chart this out, it would go something like this:

<$500 = Out of Pocket via Deductible (All You) $500 => $100,000 = Coinsurance (20% You 80% Insurance) >$100,000 = Out of Pocket Maximum (All Insurance Company)

That’s the basics! I am stunned I didn’t know this and thankful to Chihee Kim and her team at Finny for getting me started!

¹ For those of you who don’t know what Finny is, it’s a game based financial education platform that I’m digging.
We have a winner! Corda Challenge: Insurtech 2020
By: Prem Munday
Tags: R3, Challenge, Insurance, Corda, B3i

Following the success of the Corda Challenge: Insurtech 2019, we came back in 2020 alongside our sponsors B3i to propose a new problem statement to challenge start-ups to build innovative insurance applications on Corda.

This year the competition was fierce, with an intense final pitch session being judged from teams at R3 and B3i. With 4 fantastic finalists we had a difficult time making the decision, however, our eventual winner was IntellectEU for their ClaimShare product.

ClaimShare is an innovative solution to solve the problem of ‘double dipping’ in the insurance industry, where insurance fraud is committed when claims are registered with multiple insurers.

If you want more information on ClaimShare, you can read their blog HERE which explains how the product works and below is their experiences of working with R3 and B3i in the challenge.

The Insurtech challenge by R3 and B3i has overall been an incredible experience. Combining some of the most exciting and newest technologies to solve a well-known industry problem has been as much a challenge as it has been fun to work on with the team. The support provided along the way by R3 and its partners has been of tremendous value. We’re really looking forward to seeing what 2021 will bring! — Chaim Finizola, Head of Business Development at IntellectEU

As winners of the challenge IntellectEU will win a 1-year Corda Enterprise licence and $20k grant from R3. Furthermore, B3i will explore working with them to further develop the solution on their network.

Special mention the runners-up: Fardoe Software, Photocert and Rexs.io, who all presented great Corda applications and will have the opportunity to speak with B3i and join the Venture Development program to help propel their solutions further.

If you are interested in exploring more Corda Challenges, check out our 5G challenge with AWS, Swisscom and Vodafone.

Finally, if the challenge has inspired a start-up idea of your own, please do not hesitate to reach out to the R3 Venture Development team (venturedevelopment@r3.com) to see how we can support you in your start-up journey today!

Want to learn more about the blockchain platform that is fast-becoming the de facto standard for a wide array of industries? Be sure to visit r3.com, check out our content library to learn about all things Corda, and sign up for one of our newsletters for the latest updates.
Money, Pie, and Healthcare
Tags: Health Insurance, Insurance, Healthcare, Finance, Business

People in general do not have a good understanding of American healthcare insurance. They might think they do but actually do not. I got my graduate degree in public health, otherwise known as preventative medicine. I had to take an entire class on the subject “healthcare finances” where we ended up discussing many different financial aspects of the healthcare system in America, hospital costs, as well as how people create these very complex webs of financial relationships in the healthcare sphere. The short version: it is extremely grueling to figure out how what affects what and who determines what cost in the healthcare hemisphere.

What it all comes down to at the end of the day, however, is money. The simplest way to describe it to others is by using a pie as a metaphor. The pie represents money. Everyone wants a piece of the pie. Who gets what portion of the pie comes down to negotiation. If someone isn’t happy with their slice of pie at the end of the day, they may choose to not partake at all in the pie and negotiate another pie altogether. This is the easiest way to explain why some doctors and medications get covered by a healthcare insurance plan (or don’t). It doesn’t matter who is offering the plan. It doesn’t matter if it’s health insurance “offered through the government”, your employer, or any other potential option for who can give you health insurance.

This is a gargantuan lie I see being spread around with healthcare insurance in the USA. So many political ads, trying to get you to elect someone are spreading the lies of “you can choose/not choose the healthcare provider you choose/don’t choose this specific person to be your politician”. That just isn’t the case. It comes down to the pie metaphor. They can choose to partake in the pie (or not) depending on what money they want from the big pie deal. If they aren’t happy after negotiations, they will simply go to another person offering pie altogether.

Many doctors across the USA however are sick to death of the headache that is health insurance. Many are choosing to go by a monthly payment system from patients or “pay per appointment” (so you only pay for exactly what is needed/what was done to you).

I could write an entire book on the complexity of healthcare finances. I really hope this article helps at least untangle the myth of “healthcare provider coverage” when it comes to healthcare finances. Before and after the affordable care act became a thing (aka “ACA”, aka “obamacare”), you could always choose a plan, but the provider totally depended on if the provider was happy with their slice of the pie offered through the different plans.
How to Hire Top Trucking Insurance Companies
By: Truck Insurancehq
Tags: Transport, Insurance, Truck Insurance, Trucking

The best way to get a good insurance policy is to buy it from top trucking insurance companies. How do you reach a reliable insurance company? Rather than finding them one by one, reach a platform that brings all the top insurance companies to one place. It allows you to compare their plans and choose the best among them.
Underwriting Is The Next Big Thing To Be Transformed By AI
By: Jennifer, The Chatc Group
Tags: Chatbot Development, Underwriting, Insurance, Insurance Companies, Insurance Industry

The insurance industry has traditionally been slow to embrace change. Embedded within the industry are processes that require manual input and lots of paperwork. However, there are benefits and efficiencies that artificial intelligence (or AI) could bring to underwriting. Customers are looking for safer and more convenient ways to deal with their insurance needs. Enter: bots, AI and machine learning.

Here are 4 ways that AI can transform the insurance world:

Risk Assessment: At its core, AI aims to learn from past data. And while we pay close attention to patterns, AI can help to identify risks, pinpoint trends, conserve manpower and gather information for future planning. This wealth of data and efficiency boost will allow customers to feel more comfortable with their insurance choices. Fraud Detection: Non-health insurance fraud in the US is estimated at over $40 billion per year. Machine learning can be used to improve fraud detection models that flag suspicious behaviour and actions. Ultimately, this will save consumers (and insurance firms) money in the future. Disease Management: Due to various medical conditions, there is a segment of the population that is unable to qualify for insurance. AI is allowing those who were once considered uninsurable access to insurance. For example, those diagnosed with diabetes can now access technology that continually provides digital biomarkers, such as glucose levels, blood pressure, and heart rate. Committing to active monitoring of their health with AI lets the tech predict when a person’s health may be at risk. The result: a win-win for patients and insurance companies. Sales and Marketing: AI can be used to track policy prices and recommend useful products to customers. When data is collected by a chatbot or even a CRM system, AI can recommend products and services based on the customer’s individual needs. Customers get exactly what they require without having to spend any more money than necessary. Satisfied customers will continue to recommend the company to friends and will remain loyal, which will also help the bottom line of the insurance company.

Using machine learning, underwriting will one day be done solely by computers and it will provide faster and more efficient solutions. AI in insurance can lead customers to the policies they actually need while making the process smoother.

Curious about how chatbots are already starting to transform the insurance industry and others? Visit our new website to book a call with one of our consultants.
CBI’s Comments on Treasury’s Request for Comment on Terrorism Risk Captives
By: Jason Schupp
Tags: Captive Insurance, Insurance, Terrorism Risk

Photo by Casey Horner on Unsplash

Last month U.S. Treasury published a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking and Request for Comments with respect to the Terrorism Risk Insurance Program.

Treasury seeks comments on ways to address the outsized role captive insurers play in the Program and whether the Program should permit public identification of individual captive insurers.

CBI has filed comments urging Treasury to adopt the same level of public transparency to insurers participating in the Terrorism Risk Insurance Program as it has applied to small business borrowers participating in the Paycheck Protection Program. Specifically, CBI urges Treasury to publicly disclose:

The name and address of each participating insurer or insurer group;

The nature of the participating insurer (i.e., small insurer, non-small insurer, alien insurer or captive insurer); and

The participating insurer’s “insurer deductible” as an indication of the amount of risk the participating insurer has shifted into the Program.

CBI further recommends that, for captives, the publicly available information should also include:

The captive’s ultimate beneficial owner;

The limits of terrorism insurance provided other than for NBCR; and

The limits of terrorism insurance provided for NBCR (if any).

To illustrate the unjustifiably disparate treatment of participants in the respective programs, CBI contrasts the transparency Congress, Treasury and the American taxpayer enjoy with respect to:

An $8 PPP loan recently granted to a California medical transport company; and

The $1.2 billion nuclear, biological, chemical, and radiological terrorism reinsurance commitment TRIP has been making to a Swiss banking giant for more than a decade.

For one of these participants, Treasury gives us a name, address, amount of program benefit received and even the gender, ethnicity, and veteran status of its owner. For the other, Treasury has told us nothing — because Treasury itself has no record of the transaction.

There is more governmental oversight and public transparency applied to an $8 federal loan than to a $1.2 billion federal reinsurance commitment. The only difference seems to be that one program is for small businesses while the other has been overrun by multinational corporations.

This is not right. Treasury’s request for comment offers some hope it is prepared to do something about it.
A finance strategy (CPPI), implemented on Streamlit/Python, deployed on AWS EC2
By: Eyup Gulsun
Tags: Insurance, Cppi, Heroku, Streamlit, AWS

A finance strategy (CPPI), implemented on Streamlit/Python, deployed on AWS EC2

In this article, I would like to show you how to design a CPPI (Constant proportion portfolio investment) strategy and publish it on the Internet. The result is http://18.219.211.47:8501/ (much more fun if you open the link on a big screen rather in a mobile browser)

Here are the steps.

First, let’s remember what CPPI is.

DIVERSIFICATION allows you to eliminate specific or idiosyncratic risks. It cannot help you deal with systematic risk as in 2008 crisis, when systematic risk impacted all the assets simultaneously.

The Bermuda Triangle of Investing

HEDGING, as an alternative, helps you with systematic risks but it is purely symmetric: you get protection on the downside only if you give up on the upside proportionately. Not very attractive…

CPPI Insurance Strategy gives you downside protection but offer much more upside potential by dynamic hedging nature. It is all about allocating to a risky asset in a multiple of the difference between asset value and a given floor, and then reducing the risky allocation if/when getting close to the floor.

The code below is a step-by-step implementation of CPPI. I agree a vectorized-implement code would be more efficient but also equally hard to understand.

Below show the benefit of CPPI over fully invested in Turkish equity indices. As you can clearly see, CPPI protects the investment in large drawdowns whereas it provides quite a lot of upside.

CPPI Implementation on BIST 100 index

Also, if you compare the risk parameters of two portfolios, you can clearly see how Sharpe ratio, VaR and Drawdown Ratios of CPPI portfolio show huge improvements over the risky portfolio.

Let’s also look at the performance of another index, the transportation index, with and without CPPI strategy below. Wow! Such a big protection in CPPI portfolio!

In the execution part, I implemented CPPI in nonparametric and parametric ways using several sector indices. I also included a random walk path to the assets using Geometric Brownian Motion. All parameterized!

Snapshot of the app

To make the app online and web friendly, I used Streamlit library of Python (https://www.streamlit.io/) . Definitely worth checking out!

Below is a shortened code snippet with Streamlit code, but you can fork the whole code from my github account: https://github.com/deimosnphobos/cppi_strategy

Final task was to deploy it on a Cloud Application Platform. I tried Heroku: Cloud Application Platform first, but somehow I couldn’t be able to run it smoothly -sometimes it worked, sometimes not. So I switched to Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2 - Amazon AWS). It was much harder to configure than Heroku, but just did what it was supposed to do!

The result is at http://18.219.211.47:8501/. Please feel free to play with it, and let me know if you have any questions about it.
Why don’t Apple step into Insurance
By: Alex Ha
Tags: Lemonade, Insurance, Tesla Insurance, Apple, Technology

Main Question: Why isn’t Apple into Insurance?

Apple, the largest electronic hardware company is known for its exclusive ecosystem featured with smartphones, laptops, and wearables. If you had to ask a question: Between Apple, Amazon or Google, who knows you personally the best? To most iPhone users, the answer will undoubtedly be Apple. With a great understanding of user habits at an unmatched level, Apple could formulate Tesla with its insurance go-to-market strategy, as early as 2017 when the AppleWatch series was released.

With the iOS ecosystem, Apple has information about individuals about iOS users better than no other company. While Amazon could take your browsing data and draw conclusions about your shopping habits where Facebook could monitor your engagements to define your entertainment preference. Apple could draw your day out by looking into your screentime, app activities, with wearables that track your physical activeness and fitness health. Apple is in such an advantageous position to assert its competitiveness in life & health insurance just like Tesla with auto insurance.

Point 1: Brand Perception

Insurance companies are built with a socially positive image but it is meant to “insure” your financial security if any unexpected accident happens. However, these companies are seen as “devils”, as its business model of collecting premiums from policyholders and investing them does not quite aligned with the socially-good perspective of “insuring” one's security.

Apple’s decision to not enter the insurance company is primarily not reasonable from profitability and competitive standpoints, but however if Apple started selling insurance products, it will create negative sentiments towards Apple’s brand, which had taken them 40+ years to build.

Point 2: Regulatory Perspectives

“FAANG” (Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Google) has consistently been placed under scrutiny, for reasons such as monopolist act, misuse of private information, oppression against software developers. Apple’s attempt to go into the insurance industry will alarm most regulators with their ability to heavily disrupt traditional life & health insurance businesses. Any form of acquisition will be easily seen as a redline for regulators to file complaints about Apple’s corporate practices.

Point 3: Opportunity Cost — EcoSystem

It is not likely that Apple’s insurance will continue to further enhance Apple’s ecosystem to any extent, with regards to Apple’s moves from iPhone to Accessories, to Softwares, to Computer Chips. All of them have shared a strong tie to the iOS ecosystem. Hence, even though Apple is better positioned than no one else to monetize its comprehensive data from Apple users, it is not worth it for Apple to take substantial non-financial risks.
Kronnika Magazin Postası #12
Tags: Roboticprocessautomation, Startup Life, Yazılım, Startup, Teknoloji

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Our Story
Tags: Sewing Machine, Startup Life, Entrepreneurship, Startup, Sewing

We are a couple who set out on an entrepreneurial journey in the middle of the pandemic. What better time to start a new adventure! The world was doing a reset which pushed us to do the same.

This year we witnessed so many tragedies. The claustrophobia that most of us felt during months of confinement paralleled the feeling of being unable to escape the horrifying reality around us.

But in the middle of the pandemic there were also valiant stories of compassion, bravery and ingenuity. People who refused to give up in the face of difficulties. Instead, they saw an opportunity to turn a new leaf.

Something similar happened to me and my partner. It was March 2020 and we had been frustrated with our corporate jobs for quite some time. Hiding behind our zoom screens those frustrations silently grew more and more painful.

Meanwhile, during confinement like many others we decided to take on a new challenge: sewing. At some point in time the frustration of wanting to leave our jobs brilliantly collided with our growing love for sewing. This was what led to our EUREKA moment!

Initially it was simply meant to make it easier for us to sew some masks and fix are clothes, and eventually make our own clothes (the dream!). But soon we realized we were not the only ones who had this problem. We had countless conversations with our friends, neighbors, coworkers and even fellow sewers on FB groups who all shared our need for something simpler and easier to use.

And so the idea of a minimalist sewing machine specifically designed for beginners started to grow in our heads.

After several weeks of work, we came up with the above concept design for a simplified sewing machine. We shared it among our friends and colleagues and realized there was potential. And thus our startup was born.

While searching for an inspiring name, we came across Miletos, an ancient Greek city considered the birthplace of modern science and philosophy. We knew instantly that this would be our name. More on Miletos and its history in another post!

We are now hard at work at making this machine a reality. Everyday is a new exciting challenge towards that one goal, and everyday brings us closer to our objective. We are currently building the first prototype, and we can’t wait to share it with you guys! Meanwhile we are getting better at sewing and are excited to share with you our experiences and creations.

Here on our blog we will not only share our journey as entrepreneurs, but also as sewing beginners learning and discovering the various joys and frustrations of sewing. Brace yourself to see our creations, both failures and successes! (mostly the failures, at the beginning 😜)

We hope you will get to enjoy our musings on sewing, entrepreneurship and #life.

Cheers, see u soon! 🖖

#miletos #sewing #sewingbeginners #sewingmachine #entrepreneurship #startup #happyfounders #smartsewingmachine
Customer experience vs Numbers while starting a startup
By: Rahul Kandoriya
Tags: Startup Life, Growth Strategy, Startup, Startup Marketing, Startup Lessons

Let me start with my experience with one of the startups to which I applied for the business development job. The main problem they were facing was, their users were not increasing and they tried to re-launch the product after the first failed attempt.

When I got involved they asked me just the blunt question How many users I can onboard within a quarter(3 months)?

Before telling my answer consider this.

There are two kinds of growth

Non-Sustainable Growth: For example getting a spike of growth after smoking money on an advertisement.

Sustainable Growth: User comes from the actions of the existing customers.

And my answer was “Nobody can give the numbers while the startup is in the initial stage. Even if I give a number, that is bullshit”.

I think giving importance to the “Numbers” in the early stage is every startup’s problem. While it’s important to keep an eye on the number it’s equally important to not get bothered about it as well.

Whenever that startup posted something on Facebook they only got single-digit likes despite having followers in few thousands and it clearly stated that it was paid followings, and it was the same story for all the social media handles.

While beating around the bush in the early stage the main thing they missed was on giving the customer the best possible experience.

I told them that even if they can get 500 or 1000 users by smoking money in marketing they will require 10X money and effort to reach 10,000 from 1000 and this thing will continue to follow.

Customer experience is the thing which should be given the highest importance. Not how many users you gain in a quarter. Even if you give the one customer the best experience of his/her life then he/she will tell 10 other people to use your product and thus making Sustainable growth.

Originally published in a blog.
A sapling in desert (Poem)
By: Vikas Kumar Prajapati
Tags: Life, Startup Life, Growth, Poetry, Love

tornado of solitude is disturbing

‘a sapling’ in desert.

there is no water (love)

as long as you can see.

it’s raining fire from the sky.

transpiration of water (love) from

its stem and leaves i can see.

roots are intruding to the core of the earth

very soon

plant will modify

and replace its stem and leaves

in thorn and spikes

but it will not lose its existence

evils (thorns) will save it.
Where is Your HQ?
By: Brian Zwerner
Tags: Startup Life, Entrepreneur, Entrepreneurship, Startup, Startup Lessons

Before your business gets fulling rolling you will want to give some thought into where your team will be located. You can decide to have an office, work from home, or sign up at a co-working space. You also should think about where your team members will work as you grow the business. If your team will not be located with you, then you need to figure out how and when you will meet in person, if at all. The COVID-19 pandemic has upended expectations for company locations, and everything may change when the virus is controlled. Either way, your want your approach on this subject to be deliberate and not something where you just wing it when new team members are needed.

The first decision around your business location starts with you. Where do you want to work each day? Do you even have choices if you are reading this post and it is still COVID times? Try to think about how you are most productive. Is that with headphones on jamming away on your own? Do you need a quiet place you can make phone or Zoom calls all day? Or do you perform better with other people in the room to feed off their energy? Beyond what is best for you, make sure to consider your budget. Co-working places generally cost $50–150 per person monthly. They also usually come with benefits for your business beyond just a place to sit. There might be networking opportunities or business services, make sure to factor those into your decision too.

As you add other people to your business, do you want them right next to you where you can coordinate all day or do you feel comfortable with them being in a different location? If working separately is acceptable, think about how often you will want to meet in person. It is fine if you say “not necessary” but make this a choice not an afterthought. If your co-founders or employees are not in the same place as you, you might want to consider a plan to meet up in person on a regular basis. Even as the video conferencing options are rapidly improving, there is typically no substitute for being in the same room to get the team on mission.

More businesses today are choosing to be fully remote, and I think this will be powerful for some. To be successful remotely, you will need to put in place a strong onboarding process to ensure your business culture and processes are persistent. Consider who new team members will need to meet virtually to do their job and how they will feel welcome. Also consider what equipment they may need to work from home. Put the effort in upfront to make this a smooth process.

Thanks for reading today’s post. Sorting these issues out upfront will help avoid confusion or missed expectations in the future.
Wrapping up 2020
By: Capital House
Tags: Startup Life, Impact, Reflections, Entrepreneurship, Community

This has been a challenging year for everyone, and we’ve been dedicated to making the most out of it and offering our support wherever possible.

With the current lockdown in our hometown Amsterdam, we wanted to take this opportunity to spread a little bit of love and positivity.

Our community plays a big role in the creation of everything we do, which is what we kept at our core during this turbulent year.

With this year coming to an end, we’re looking back at some of our proud moments — but also excited to start revealing our plans for 2021!

What did you conquer in 2020? We’d love to hear some of your proud moments in the comments!

[ Here are some things we can cross off our 2020 bucket list ]

🏡 We organized Live House Sessions to help startups beat the uncertainty of covid-19, where our guest speakers answered the top questions of 400 founders. You can still watch them here ➞ exploring funding, mindfulness, team, legal & bootstrapping.

🦠 We helped on a few hackathons, including Hack the Crisis & Odyssey Momentum, joining as mentors for the global hackathon teams who spent their weekend coming up with solutions.

👩‍💻 We partnered up with Capital Tour and organized an online program to help founders prepare for the online matchmaking, together with Growth Hacker Talks — hosting a series of sessions around Hacking Capital.

😸 We’ve found new ways of working from home — even if that meant having the occasional cat walking through our Zoom calls

🎉 And last but not least, we launched our agency — Capital House — supporting purpose-driven founders & organizations by connecting them with the knowledge and networks needed for growth. Finding new ways to build meaningful connections with Human, Social, and Financial Capital. Have a look at our new website 👉 capital-house.co!

www.capital-house.co

With this year coming to an end, we’re more dedicated than ever to re-boost the ecosystem and come together in 2021. Joining forces to continue supporting founders.

Save the Date: Our annual Amsterdam Capital House event will take place March 24–26th, 2021!

Interested in becoming a partner of the event or hosting a city event?

Feel free to reach out 👉 team[at]amsterdamcapitalweek.com

Next to our annual event, our brains are overflowing with ideas, and we can’t wait to share more of our plans for 2021 with you. More on that soon!

Bring the Capital House Agency in house…

Want to work with purpose-driven founders? Collaborate with Capital House to design tech-focused events and programs, connect with purpose-driven founders, or build an entrepreneurial community of your own.

Have another idea? We don’t believe in one-size-fits-all. Let’s catch up in the new year to see how Capital House can support you!

Happy holidays! And most importantly, have a healthy and mindful New Year 🙏

See you at the House,

Shahar & Simone

(Co-Founders, Capital House)
Connect with us
Tags: 2020, Startup Life, Coworking, Entrepreneurship, Pittsburgh

Learn more. Medium is an open platform where 170 million readers come to find insightful and dynamic thinking. Here, expert and undiscovered voices alike dive into the heart of any topic and bring new ideas to the surface. Learn more

Make Medium yours. Follow the writers, publications, and topics that matter to you, and you’ll see them on your homepage and in your inbox. Explore
Something exciting ahead…
By: Saket Nalegaonkar
Tags: Startup Life

I’m embarking on a journey to fulfil the digital nomad inside me.

I was laying low for the last year without any definitive initiative which would challenge me, excite me. But my recent collaboration with ……. has brought me to think about it seriously.

I have completed some work earlier on this, but now I’m going to do it without any safety net, which leaves space for a VERY BIG Learning Curve for me.

Not expecting PERFECTION as this will be first real effort at spreading the wings, but I will try and make it interesting.

I’ll have to start on 3 frontiers

Subject Matter Expertise (I’m a novice at this domain— Level 0) Latest Advancements in the Tech space (Feels like decades have passed) Personal Peace and Focus (Although I try to keep in touch with myself)

I’ll try to post abstract progress as a reminder of why I started in the first place
Advice for First-Time Founders: What to Include in Your Pitch Deck
By: Caroline Yeager
Tags: Advice For Founders, Venture Capital, Startup Life, Entrepreneurship, Startup

Hi everyone! This is my last post of the year. I’ll be taking some time off over the holidays to refresh, and then I have an exciting announcement coming in January! I hope you all have a wonderful holiday season.

Here’s what I believe makes for a compelling pitch deck:

The problem — outline what problem or pain point your product/service is solving.

The solution — explain what your solution is and how it works. What additional development is in the pipeline?

Market size — how big is this market? Walk us through your calculations. We look for markets that are $1B+ in size and growing.

Competition — what does the competitive landscape look like? Most importantly, what sets your product/service apart? Why is it unique/different/better? Do you have any IP?

Team — Who are the rockstars on your team? Why are they the right team to build this with you? Who are your advisors? Who is on your board (if you have one)?

Existing Traction — this could be historical financials and financial projections (if post-revenue) or it could be the number of users or beta customers (if pre-revenue). It’s also important to share growth rates (revenue growth and/or user growth) if applicable.

Go-to-Market / Sales Strategy — How do you plan to enter the market? Will you leverage direct sales? Paid advertising? Are you hiring a sales team?

Exit Strategy —Where do you envision your company in 5 years? In 10 years? Who are some potential acquirers?

Investment — Last but not least, what are the terms of the investment? How much capital are you raising? What valuation are you targeting? Do you have a lead investor?

I hope you find this information helpful. Please leave any comments and questions below!
8 Lessons I Learned From My Startup Journey
By: Mayur Patil
Tags: Writing, Startup Life, Startup, Startup Lessons, Journey

A year ago, I was offered the role of content writer at an early-stage media startup. Having previously worked as a tax accountant for almost two years and subsequently interning as a content writer for an educational consultancy for nearly two months, I was unaware about the media industry and the budding startup culture in India. So, naturally, this seemed like an exciting opportunity.

And to my delight, it was one of the most fulfilling experiences of my life as I got to learn many new things that I hadn’t thought I’d get to learn. In over a year, I learned about what goes into building a startup from the grounds up and its ever-changing, dynamic, and always evolving culture.

While working in a startup can be the best decision for some, for others, it may not be so fruitful of an experience. Fortunately for me, it was quite enriching, all thanks to my two incredible bosses and colleagues for helping and guiding me whenever I got stuck working on a particular problem. Having said that, here are 8 things I learned while working in a startup —
What I do when I fail In this situation do you think it is good to take another path because we…
By: Amna Saeed
Tags: Success, Students, Startup Life, Struggle, Motivation

I'm an Educationists and simple going lady
【創育機構】台北市各區域創育大蒐羅｜新創團隊進駐辦公室｜創業資源｜
By: Coco Lu
Tags: Startup Office Space, Startup Office, Startup Life, Startup, Startup Trends

Learn more. Medium is an open platform where 170 million readers come to find insightful and dynamic thinking. Here, expert and undiscovered voices alike dive into the heart of any topic and bring new ideas to the surface. Learn more

Make Medium yours. Follow the writers, publications, and topics that matter to you, and you’ll see them on your homepage and in your inbox. Explore
Ads Review
By: Am Arifin
Tags: Indonesian Startup, Startup Life, Business

I run some ads starting from 1 December. First set aiming on Mesermang Facebook Page Like, 2nd set aiming on Instagram post popularity, 3rd set aiming on spesific Product Promotion on Instagram and Facebook, 4th set on the most important one : App Installation.

In general i am trying to setting up a fan base for Mesermang Facebook Audience and follower based on Instagram so in mid 2021 there will be enough audience to start socialcommerce engagement such as Instagram Shop. While from product promotion ads i am trying to figure out which one is more effective, web landing page or whatsapp chat link.

After about 2 weeks, this is how the ads become in terms of cost and quality ranking perfomance :

Instagram Posts Ads. Seems Black Pink ads is the best performer (Above Average)

Facebook Page Like Ads (the most optimum ads-visual after 2 weeks)

Product Promotion Ads. The Egg promotion perform badly, it’s 10x cost than Avocado ads.

App Install Ads. Still very expensive.

I will update the effects of these ads on each target on next post. But at least i can conclude that Instagram Post Ads does not impacting on your follower, but it helps to increase engagement on Mesermang account that might help increase awareness and confidence of follower candidate to at some point decide to follow Mesermang instagram account.