Remember when the only way to interact with a brand was to call the 1-800 number on the side of their packaging? If you complained they might send you some free product or a coupon, but it would probably take 8-72 weeks to arrive. Technology is bringing brands and their audiences closer and closer together. This is generally a good thing, but only if the brands do it right. Mass Relevance aims “to inspire brands to involve their audience.” The Austin, TX based company does this by offering a platform and products that “help your brand become an integrated part of your customers’ lives, anywhere they are.”
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I pretty much shut down if I have to deal with paper documents. Luckily, in my line of business, almost everything happens online. While at one time I thought it might be a good idea for me to pursue law as a career option, I’m really glad I didn’t. Dealing with all of those documents–even if they were digitized–would drive me nuts. The good news for lawyers that kCura makes things a little more manageable. They’re a Chicago, IL based company that “develops web-based e-discovery applications for managing large volumes of electronic evidence during litigation or investigations.” The software is called Relativity, and it’s a web-based app that makes managing evidence way easier.
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My New Year’s Eve has been the same for the past 9 years. I’ve never celebrated in a big city, but from what I hear, it’s awesome… until you realize it’s 2 AM, 12 degrees, and you’re a long way from your nice warm bed. You made the smart decision to leave your car at home, but now what? Everybody in the city is trying to get home at the same time, and every cab that drives seems to be full. You’ll probably die of hypothermia before you can hail a cab, so you might as well use an app to find a ride. Uber can get you a black car or a cab, but their “surge pricing” will make it hurt. If there’s a time to try Lyft, it’s tonight (though Lyft has its own surge pricing called “Prime Time Tips”). They are a San Francisco, CA based company that offers “on-demand ridesharing” in nearly 20 cities across the country. They call it “your friend with a car.”
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Merry Christmas Eve! Tonight my family will go to the candlelight service at the church I grew up in. It’s the only church that has ever felt like home to me. I’m not exactly sure how my parents started going there, but I’ll guess that it had something to do with the fact that it was about 150 yards from our house. Finding a great place of worship isn’t always so easy. I church-hopped in college, and never really found one that felt right for me. FaithStreet might have helped. Whether you’re looking for a local Christmas Eve service or a place to worship for the rest of your life, the New York, NY based company can help you find the right faith community. The founders asked, “Why is it so hard to find a church?” And instead of admitting defeat, they decided to do something about it.
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I got my wife an Airport Express for Christmas. I’m not the typical male idiot portrayed on many American sitcoms–it was a good gift idea. The whole point was that I could hook up our wireless network to the fifteen-year-old wired speaker system that came with our apartment. The speakers were working when I started (I had the radio playing in all of the rooms), but after three hours of frustration, I ended up with the music from my iPhone playing in one room, and no music whatsoever in any of the other rooms. I’m going to have to find a way to fix this, and I think Sonos might be the answer. They are a Santa Barbara, CA and Cambridge, MA based company that set out in 2002 “to reinvent home audio for the digital age.” Their products certainly look a lot better than the circa 1997 sound system that my landlord left behind.
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Yesterday I received close to ten packages. It’s that time of year! I can barely look out the window without seeing a UPS, FedEx, or USPS truck on my street. The only problem is that it’s getting to the point where Amazon is the only company I trust to still ship me stuff on time. So many online merchants have terrible shipping experiences, and there’s no way I’ll trust them to get me what I ordered when they say they will. Hopefully that will soon change with the help of EasyPost. They’re a San Francisco, CA based startup that “is changing the way shipping works and helping a lot of people” at the same time. By “tying together disparate data sources and APIs” they’ve been able to create “a scalable shipping API for developers everywhere.”
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If you want to see me act like a child, take me furniture shopping on an empty stomach. It’s weird. I really appreciate what good furniture does for a space–whether it’s home or office–I think I just get freaked out by all the fake setups in a furniture store or something. I much prefer looking in a catalog and seeing a really cool office setup or a cozy living room. Even though they’re still staged, it feels more authentic. Haworth is a Holland, MI based company that “can make your environments work harder for you.” In other words, they make and sell furniture that is stylish yet functional (and they sell a lot of it–more than $1 billion a year).
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Much of what we do on social media sites is completely frivolous, but we all know how powerful they can be when directed in the right way. Whether it’s raising money, awareness, or a volunteer force, there’s no better medium than the Internet for pushing a specific cause. Causes is a San Francisco, CA based company that wants to be the place that people go to when they want to “discover, support and organize campaigns, fundraisers, and petitions around the issues” that matter to them and their communities.
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I went grocery shopping yesterday at Whole Foods. Usually at 2 PM on a weekday, it’s a ghost town, but not during Thanksgiving week. I actually like grocery shopping, so it was fun to be a part of the madness, but I know a lot of people who hate it. Some use services like Fresh Direct or Peapod. I tried the latter once, but it feels like your groceries were picked out by a robot. That won’t cut it if you’re buying meat or produce. Instacart offers a different kind of grocery delivery service. They are a San Francisco, CA based startup that offers personal grocery shopping in a growing number of markets (Chicago and Bay Area right now), and sometimes they can get you your groceries within an hour.
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Though it was more than a decade ago, I still have very strong memories of the college application process. I knew where I wanted to go, so I didn’t do a lot of research on other options. Back then research meant requesting brochures from any college that you were interested in. There was some information available on the web, but you had to go to each individual school’s site. A lot has changed in how people seek out educational opportunities (and it’s not just about undergraduate admissions anymore). Noodle is a company at the forefront of that change. They’re based in New York, NY, and they are “the first and only life-long education related search company in the world.” What does that mean? They offer “extensive data on over 150,000 schools and hundreds of thousands of education providers.” In other words, they’re taking a much broader view of what an education search is about.
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Yesterday there were terrible storms across the Midwest. In the immediate Chicago area (where I was), it mostly amounted to torrential downpours, wind, and lightning, but in other parts of the state tornadoes leveled entire communities and killed six people. One of the few positives coming out of the situation is that there has been an outpouring of people who want to volunteer as part of the recovery effort. The problem is that right now only trained professionals should be working in the disaster area. A bunch of random volunteers would get in the way and actually hinder relief efforts. So how do we take the positive energy and direct it to the right places? GiveGab might be the answer. They’re an Ithaca, NY based company that has built a “social network for volunteers and volunteer managers.”
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Early in the wedding planning process I proposed that we try to do as much online as possible. I quickly lost that battle, and I must say that our custom designed paper goods turned out amazingly well. I’m just glad that I wasn’t paying for them. If only there was a way to get beautiful, custom designed paper goods for a reasonable price. That’s exactly what Minted offers. They are a San Francisco, CA based company that aims “to find exceptional artists and designers all over the world and bring their work to consumers who appreciate great design.” They were early to the crowdsourcing model in 2008, and since then they’ve grown into a place where consumers can find great designers and great designers can get exposure that will help them build their careers.
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InvestmentNews is our sponsor this week, and they would like to tell you about their NextGen Virtual Career Fair on November 8th. It’s an awesome opportunity for students and interns to network and find finance jobs on the spot.
I often find charity events frustrating. It’s not the events themselves that bother me–it’s the auctions and raffles. Non-profits have an amazing ability to get all kinds of high value donations (which should be the hard part), but they completely fail when it comes to extracting as much value as possible out of those donations. It could be an inexperienced auctioneer, poorly priced raffle tickets, a confusing silent auction, or a complicated payment process. Technology can solve a lot of these problems, and that’s exactly what BidPal has done. They’re an Indianapolis, IN based company that “improves charitable fundraising events from start to finish with event management solutions, automated auctions, payment processing, online fundraising, consulting services, and much, much more.” BidPal actually came in at #74 on this year’s Inc. 5000 with 4,323% three-year growth to $10.2 million in revenue.
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InvestmentNews is our sponsor this week, and they would like to tell you about their NextGen Virtual Career Fair on November 8th. It’s an awesome opportunity for students and interns to network and find finance jobs on the spot.
When you visit most websites, you’re paying for access even though you probably don’t realize it. You’re paying with your attention to advertisements. It’s a terrible model, but it’s pretty much the best idea that we’ve had so far. It’s the reason that Google is one of the most successful companies in the history of the world. Ideally we’d pay the content creators directly on the sites that we like, but managing subscriptions can be a nightmare for both site owners and their visitors. Tinypass has a solution that just might usurp advertising as the preferred way to monetize an audience. They’re based in New York, NY and they enable sites to collect micro payments to access content. They “believe that bloggers, magazines, newspapers, and all creators shouldn’t have so much trouble making money online.”
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I’m not much of a gamer, but occasionally I get wrapped up in a mindless iPhone game. It starts as a little diversion while waiting for something, and before I know it, I’m staying up past my bedtime playing. The addiction usually lasts a few weeks, and then I forget about it and get my life back… until I discover a new game. I haven’t tried any games from Pocket Gems, and I don’t intend to… I never intend to. They are a San Francisco, CA based company that “develops free-to-play mobile games that are ridiculously fun.” While their games may be pretty simple, Pocket Gems takes them very seriously. That’s why their dual mission is to “build the world’s best mobile engineering team” and “become a global leader in the mobile entertainment industry.”
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About a year ago I woke up to a loud chirp. It wasn’t a bird (though we did have two birds fly down our chimney in two days around the same time). It was the smoke alarm. This wasn’t the “OH MY GOD THE HOUSE IS ON FIRE” alarm. It was the “let’s wake you up in the middle of the night so that you can change the battery” alarm. I ignored it… until it went off again five minutes later… and again… and again. So I’m in my underwear standing on a chair trying to disable this thing. It’s 3 AM and the smoke alarm is just out of my reach. I am at the point where I’ll do anything to go back to sleep, and there’s a baseball bat in the nearby closet…. and then I’m finally able to disable the alarm. I understand that smoke alarms with dead batteries can’t save lives, but there has to be a better way (especially considering that climbing on a chair when you’re sleep-deprived is pretty dangerous). Nest agrees. They’re a Palo Alto, CA based company that “takes the unloved products in your home and makes simple, beautiful, thoughtful things.” Their first product was a thermostat, and now they’ve just announced a smoke and carbon monoxide alarm.
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If you use Facebook, it’s almost a guarantee that you’ve seen a friend post a story from Upworthy. The company’s goal is to get their content to go viral, and they’re really good at it. The difference between them and companies like CollegeHumor and Spartz Media is that Upworthy tries to focus on stuff that is both awesome and meaningful. Let’s be honest; most viral content is silly and mindless. Viewing it often makes you feel stupider (especially when you consider the way it’s displayed with ads and slideshows engineered to pillage every bit of attention they can get from you). Upworthy (which isn’t really based in any single location) calls itself “a mission-driven media company.” The goal is “to encourage that debate by curating great pieces of content that represent different sides.”
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A couple months ago I was raving to you about our web host WP Engine. While I’m still generally happy with them, they had a pretty big screw up a couple weeks ago. I worked with their support team, and we were able to find a resolution (though it took much longer than I would have hoped). All of the communications ran through Zendesk, which is “beautifully simple customer service software.” It’s basically a platform for managing all of the back and forth that is typically a part of delivering good customer service. Zendesk is based in San Francisco, CA, though they were originally founded in Copenhagen, Denmark in 2007 (they made the move in 2009).
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Despite the fact that I haven’t shaved in over 7 years, I won’t be winning a facial hair competition any time soon. That’s because I use a beard trimmer to maintain that “I shaved 4 days ago” look. I don’t plan on ever going back to shaving with a razor, but if I do I’ll consider Harry’s. They’re a New York, NY based company that was started “out of respect for quality craftsmanship, simple design, modern convenience and most importantly for guys who know they shouldn’t have to overpay for a great shave.” Back in my shaving days, the choice was to use Gilette’s latest “development” or to use some cheap alternative that would irritate my face even more (like the free razor that I got as a freshman in college). I believed the marketing hype and went with the expensive option, even though it still didn’t give me a great shave.
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One of the worst things about being able to build websites is that people constantly ask you to build them websites. They don’t understand that doing web development for your own projects is very different from doing it for clients. Even the simplest project can become a total headache when you’re trying to meet someone else’s specifications (especially when it’s family). I was never cut out for client work, which is why I stopped doing it when I was 18 even though it was really good money. However, there are many firms that only do client work. One here in Chicago, IL is called Tecture. They design and build “custom web and mobile applications, ecommerce websites, and custom content-managed websites” for all kinds of clients.
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I despise administrative tasks that can’t be done online. It’s embarrassing to admit, but I still haven’t registered to vote in Illinois because I have to fill out actual paperwork and mail it in. I’m just happy that I’m in a line of work where nearly everything can be done online. I’m not sure what I’d do if I was in a business like real estate where back and forth paperwork is a necessity. Actually, I’d probably use dotloop. They are a Cincinnati, OH based company that has “completely streamlined the buying and selling process for real estate in a way that works so well, it’s driving a movement tagged by the press as ‘Revolutionomics.'” It’s nice to see a real estate focused startup that isn’t just another marketing/lead generation platform.
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The technology of the 90s and early 2000s was durable. Most devices were built like tanks because a few extra ounces (or pounds) here and there don’t really matter when many of the components are already so heavy. Today size and weight are main selling points for most types of electronics. The only problem is that today’s devices seem far more susceptible to breaking. It’s a tradeoff, but it sucks to be on the losing end when you drop your three-day old $600 phone on the grass and the screen shatters. Manufacturers and third parties have started offering all kinds of repair services, but they’re still expensive. Why can’t you just do it yourself?
With the help of iFixit you can. They are a San Luis Obispo, CA based company that wants “to show the world how to fix every thing.” They seem to be having some success with that, as they landed on the Inc. 5000 with 223% three-year growth to $9.8 million in revenue.
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As I’ve spent more time with the annual Inc. 5000 lists, I’ve noticed quite a few trends. Some carry on from year to year (companies that land government contracts grow really fast), while others are more fleeting. One trend that is continuing to gain strength is the growth in the advertising industry-especially for companies that focus on data and optimization. Videology is a perfect example. They’re a Baltimore, MD based company that has developed “a video advertising technology that works across all video screens to connect brands with those consumers they most want to reach” (“all screens” is definitely a buzzword/trend now). This platform has led the company to #136 on the Inc. list with 2,727% three-year growth and $137.5 million in revenue. Four-digit growth is so much more impressive when it leads eight and nine-digit revenue.
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Amy and I have been in our new place for just over a month now. We love it, mostly because our landlord allowed us to get a puppy (but the neighborhood, deck, and everything else are pretty awesome too). We did a lot of looking on Zillow, Redfin, and other sites, but they all offered pretty disappointing experiences (lots of junk listings and hard to use interfaces). We eventually ended up using a real estate agent, and she found the rental for us. I was the first person to say that real estate agents were being made obsolete by websites, but my recent experience proved me wrong. Still, the web keeps becoming a better and better tool to find a place to live. Lovely is a San Francisco, CA based startup that is playing a role in the progress. They know “how painful it can be to rent an apartment and think it should be faster, easier, and more transparent.”
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From the beginning One Day One Job has been built on top of WordPress. To many it’s simple blogging software, but it’s amazing how far you can take it with a little bit of tweaking. The problem with self-hosted WordPress (as opposed to WordPress.com) is that it requires running your own server. You can find a host that makes it easy to get started, but as soon as your site starts to grow, you’ll run into problem after problem. I used to spend at least a week’s worth of workdays every year worrying about server stuff (downtime, optimization, security, and all kinds of other details). That all changed when I moved my sites to WP Engine. They are an Austin, TX based company that “host tens of thousands of the 75 million WordPress sites and apps on Earth.” I’ve had almost zero downtime since I switched, but more importantly, I no longer worry about my server configuration (and I’m even paying less than I used to for hosting).
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When social media marketing first started getting serious attention, I was all about it. SEO had been huge in helping me grow this site, so I thought that social would be the next big thing. But as I started working on using Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and other sites to drive traffic, I realized how ineffective they were. I’ve recently decided to give social another shot because I see a lot of companies making it work for them (though I fear that the Careers space will never be as social as it should be). Most companies that take social seriously use a platform “to measure, engage and advertise across social media.” Unified is a New York, NY, San Francisco, CA, and Chicago, IL based company that offers exactly such a platform. Unified’s software is especially focused on “activating social audiences and impacting consumer actions.”
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The quickest way to convince your friends that you’re a nerd is to start talking about safety. There’s nothing cool about smoke detectors, security systems, or locks on your doors, but they’re all extremely important. It’s easy to take your personal security in your home for granted until your house gets broken into (happened to me in college) or your smoke alarm starts chirping in the middle of the night and you can’t turn it off (this is more frustrating than scary). There has to be a better way of protecting ourselves without having to be a total freak. Canary is a New York, NY based startup that is working on that exact problem. They have developed “patent pending technology to bridge the physical world and the mobile world” and keep your home secure.
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In the 80s and early 90s it was popular to foretell that we were only a few years away from having robots ingrained in our daily lives. That obviously didn’t happen. Even with today’s technology, a seemingly sentient robot like Screech from Saved by the Bell’s Kevin is unrealistic, but we’ve made a ton of progress. There are robots that sweep floors, wash floors, clean gutters, clean pools, dispose of bombs, and lots more. iRobot makes robots that do all of those things, and much more. The company is based in Beford, MA and “was founded in 1990 by Massachusetts Institute of Technology roboticists with the vision of making practical robots a reality.” That reality is finally here.
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I’ve mentioned a few times that I’ve been working hard to get in shape for my wedding. So far I’ve lost about 35 pounds while adding muscle. All of my success has come from the Paleo diet and a personal trainer. I like sticking to the basics when it comes to health, but some people are looking for an answer in a bottle. NutraClick provides such answers. They are a Boston, MA based natural products company that builds “brands by developing winning products and leveraging the power of online marketing to drive offline demand.” So far they have products in Sports Nutrition, Natural Health, Age-Specific Skincare, and Beauty (with a side of social selling), and I’m sure more are on the way.
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There used to be three places that you could buy video advertisements: ABC, NBC, and CBS. Now there are millions. Nearly every website has the capability to sell video advertising, though very few have a team to sell the ads the way a tv station would (and that’s not even the best way to do it necessarily). SpotXchange is a Westminster, CO based company that makes buying and selling video advertising easy. In fact, they claim to have “the largest global marketplace of video ad inventory, reaching 110 million unique visitors each month in more than 35 countries.” It allows publishers and brands to link up that might never have connected without SpotXchange.
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