The Internet has made travel so much easier. Not only can you fully research all of your options, but you can use sites like Expedia and Airbnb to find affordable places to stay all over the world. Additionally, you have social networks like Facebook that allow you to stay connected with friends who might have a spare bedroom or couch in a city that you’re visiting. Before all of these options, there were hostels. Hostelling International USA is the Silver Spring, MD based American affiliate of Hostelling International, and they’re “a non-profit membership organization that has been serving young travelers for 79 years strong.” They have a network of more than 50 locations that each offer “a unique and local stay experience” with “inexpensive, safe, clean and fun accommodations.”
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Events are inherently social. A lot of time who is going to be there matters more than what is going on. Yet all of our major social networks are about showing off what we’ve already done. If we’re going to broadcast our lives, it might make sense to let other people in on the fun. Fever is a New York, NY and Madrid, Spain based startup social network that is “changing the way people make plans.” Their idea is to take event discovery away from the calendar and make it all about the people.
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If you need to make a decision about something that you don’t know a lot about, your best bet is to consult an expert. That’s why friends usually come to me for all of their meat related questions. Since text messaging a buddy won’t always get you the right answer–especially in the business world–there need to be other ways to find expertise fast. AlphaSights is a New York, NY based company that provides “today’s investors, deal-makers and corporate strategists with access to the knowledge they need to succeed.” Unlike consulting firms, they don’t actually provide the knowledge. Instead they play the role of “knowledge brokers.”
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I haven’t updated my business cards in years; in fact, I’m not sure that I’ve given anyone a business card in at least a year. I do most of my business online, so it makes sense that I don’t use a lot of paper products. More and more people are moving in my direction, so if you are going to use printed materials, they need to pop–they need to be able to compete with the interactivity of a website. MOO is an East Providence, RI based company that loves to print. They’ve even invented a word to describe what they do: “printfinity.” It’s a technology that they’ve developed that allows you to “print a different photo or design on every Business Card, Sticker or Postcard in a pack.”
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You’ve probably looked at thousands of ads already today, but chances are that you haven’t thought about how they got in front of you. Behind all of those ads is a group of people who made a complicated set of decisions to get that specific message to you in a specific place at a specific time. Managing those kinds of decisions at scale is really hard. Centro makes it easier. They’re a Chicago, IL based company that works “to improve the lives of those working in the advertising industry by building media management software that helps marketers engage with audiences across all digital channels in the most successful manner possible.” The goal is put all of the options in one place so that advertisers can make the best decisions for themselves or for clients.
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It still amazes me how much old media drives new media. If you’re already famous, you can almost instantly carry that fame over to social media. A show like Shark Tank can drive millions of dollars in online sales. And the right tv mention can crash a website. What I think is cool is that we’re starting to see the reverse happen. People who are famous on Youtube, Twitter, or Instagram are carrying that fame over to more traditional channels. In short, it’s all coming together, and marketers need to be ready for it. Fullscreen is a Los Angeles, CA based agency that is aiming to build “the first media company for the connected generation—together, right at the intersection of tech and entertainment.”
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I tolerate living in Chicago because my wife is from here, the summers are awesome, and the food is exceptional. Unfortunately, it’s not the best place for someone like me who loves spending time in the wilderness. That means I spend a lot of time in Northern Michigan, which is five hours away. It would be nice if I could discover some recreation options that are a little closer. That’s exactly what AllTrails offers. They’re a San Francisco, CA based startup that has built “the leading digital network focused on outdoor enthusiasts, providing 1 million people monthly with the information and tools to discover top destinations near them.”
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A few decades ago chicken wings were essentially a throw away. This year Americans will eat 1.25 billion chicken wings… for the Super Bowl. The prices are actually down significantly from last year, but the longterm trend is up and to the right. Chicken wing popularity really seemed to take off when the Buffalo Bills went to four straight Super Bowls and shined a spotlight on the city’s culinary speciality. It continued with the growth of a national restaurant chain centered around the wing. Buffalo Wild Wings was actually founded in 1982 (by a guy who moved away from Buffalo, NY and couldn’t find buffalo wings), but it took a while for the Minneapolis, MN based company to go public and grow to 925 locations. In fact, the company’s growth seems to mirror the growth in popularity of the buffalo wing.
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I’m a little disappointed that I didn’t get to experience the coldest weather of my life last night, but it’s pretty good to be “stranded” on a tropical island. Since I work from home, I used to get through cold snaps by not leaving the house for extended periods of time. Now that I have a dog and no yard, that would be… messy. Shockingly, if you were more and better clothing, you can stay pretty warm in even the coldest temperatures. Less shockingly, quite a few of the companies that make awesome cold weather gear are based in Canada. We don’t usually cover opportunities outside the U.S., but we’re making an exception for Arc’teryx. They are based in Vancouver, BC, and they merge their “unrivaled designs with the best quality, highest performing materials and assemble them in the most innovative and most durable manner for the intended use.” In other words, they make high performance for extreme situations–whether it’s climbing a mountain or walking your dog on the coldest day of your life.
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Despite moving in 5 months ago, I still haven’t put up most of the framed pictures and art that we have in our apartment. It’s a ridiculously easy task, but for some reason it’s always the last thing that I want to do. In other words, don’t give us art for Christmas! However, if you have friends or family who know exactly where to put every new piece on their walls, then you may want to buy them a gift from Art.com. The company is based in Emeryville, CA, and it “is a leading authority in wall décor and the world’s largest online retailer of posters, prints, and framed art.” Every single person has his or her own taste in art, and Art.com allows each of them to find the kinds of pieces that appeal to them.
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In 1961 John F. Kennedy initiated the Alliance for Progress, “a 10-year, multibillion-dollar aid program for Latin America.” The goal was to revitalize relations with our neighbors. In 1964 Partners of the Americas was founded “as the people-to-people component of the Alliance for Progress.” It’s a Washington, DC based non-profit that works to “build partnerships that create opportunity, foster understanding, and solve real-life problems.” This is done through a chapter model that encourages countries and states to build north-south partnerships.
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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 we featured Duraflame, I thought they’d be the only company that I’d write about with an office on a boat (excluding companies that use boats as parts of their businesses, of course). Today’s company really made a name for itself when they turned a retired ferryboat into a floating workshop on the San Francisco Bay (they now have offices all over the world). That move certainly helped build the Landor brand, which is kind of funny, since that’s what they do for clients–they “help the world’s best brands stand up, stand out, and stand for something.” Many of their clients already have massive brand awareness, so Landor is tasked with making the most of that brand equity.
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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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There are a few kids who I knew growing up that ended up playing professional sports. For one it was destiny. His dad was a pretty good MLB player whose cousins played in the NFL. Despite the pedigree and signing an NFL contract, I don’t think my friend ever got in a game. Another kid (with a crazy intense dad who got banned from coaching in at least one local league) played a few years of minor league baseball. However, the most successful pro athlete that I knew growing up was a kid who I never would have expected to make it. He never struck me as super athletic, but he ended up being extremely good at lacrosse. In fact, he has already won a Major League Lacrosse Championship and made an All Star Team. It may not be one of the four major sports leagues, but it’s a serious league with serious growth potential (lacrosse keeps getting more popular). While the league is headquartered in Brighton, MA, it has teams in Boston, MA; Charlotte, NC; Annapolis, MD; Denver, CO; Hamilton, ON; Hempstead, NY; Columbus, OH; and Rochester, NY.
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I haven’t developed much of an opinion on the Syria situation yet, but I know that there are some things that everyone can agree on. One is that we need people looking out for the country’s children. More than a million kids have already fled the war, and there was a non-profit working to help them well before Syria became a staple of the evening news. It’s called Mercy Corps, and it’s a Portland, OR based organization that helps “people in the world’s toughest places survive the crises they confront and turn them into opportunities to thrive.” (Here’s what they’re doing in Syria.) They got their start in 1979 by raising $1 million to provide aid in Cambodia, and ever since they’ve been doing work all over the world.
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I’m fascinated by Japan. I’ve never been there, but my wife and I are planning a trip there for our honeymoon. There’s an intensity to the culture that I absolutely love, but there are also some things I just don’t get. Pepsi flavored Cheetos is one, and anime is another. In case you didn’t know, anime is the Japanese word for animation. But here in the U.S. it’s typically used to describe “a Japanese-disseminated animation style often characterized by colorful graphics, vibrant characters and fantastic themes” (at least that’s what Wikipedia says). While anime isn’t for me, A LOT of people love it–and most of them are adults. Crunchyroll is a San Francisco, CA and Tokyo, Japan based company that caters to this audience by offering “the leading global video service for Japanese Anime and Asian media.”
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I didn’t start cooking until my sophomore year of college, but I picked it up pretty quickly once I was off of a meal plan. If I was trying something new, I’d look up a basic recipe, but for the most part I just learned a few basic concepts and used those to come up with my own preparations. This made trips to the grocery store fun. I’d invent a meal based on what I saw at the store, and then try to make it at home. I’ve been doing that ever since, and I love it, but some people don’t want to spend the time shopping and creating meals even though they still would like to cook dinner at home. HelloFresh is for them. It’s a New York, NY based company (actually it’s Berlin, Germany, but the U.S. business is based in NYC) that offers weekly subscription packages that include recipes and all of the ingredients to make healthy, delicious meals. It’s kind of like those brownie mixes that come in a box (all you have to do is follow the instructions), except the end result is a dinner that your mother would approve of.
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People are completely irrational when it comes to travel deals. Sometimes it means wasting an entire day of a five day trip in some random airport (in the opposite direction of where you’re headed) to save a hundred bucks. Other times it means spending hours looking for the best fare only to end up paying more than if you had booked right away. It’s almost become a sport–even really rich people do this–and that’s why travel websites are such a great business. You can get a ton of attention for only saving people a few bucks. Smarter Travel Media is a Boston, MA based company that has developed “a unique group of online travel planning brands” that cater to the massive number of people who gain immense pleasure from getting the best fare or rate. The brands include Airfarewatchdog, BookingBuddy, Tingo, OneTime, Smarter Travel, and SniqueAway.
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While yesterday’s organization’s name was a play on Rhodes Scholar, Road Scholar has no affiliation with The University of Oxford. Today’s company does. The Oxford University Press is not only a department of the University, but it is also “the world’s largest university press with the widest global presence.” You can trace its origins all the way back to 1478; however, their U.S. presence only dates to 1896. Oxford University Press now has two offices stateside–one in New York, NY, and the other in Cary, NC (there other offices all around the world). They both play a big part in furthering “the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide.”
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Every business has to make a decision about what kind of payments they’ll accept. Some take cash only, many accept credit cards, and some even accept local currencies like Ithaca Hours. Typically, making it easy for customers to pay you is a good business decision (unless you’re one of those scummy companies that loves to tack on late fees). Unfortunately for some businesses, accepting payments isn’t always easy. This is especially true for certain industries like online gaming, dating, and rewards. Paymentwall is a San Francisco, CA based company that offers “the leading digital payments platform for globally monetizing digital goods and services.” They offer payment options for over 100 locations in more than 25 languages (and offices in Berlin, Kiev, Istanbul, and Manila) with options including “credit card, debit card, mobile payments, land-line payments, prepaid cards, ATM, terminal transactions, bank transfers, direct bills” and more.
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Yesterday we looked at Institute for Educational Leadership, one of a seemingly endless number of non-profits devoted to improving educational outcomes. Education seems to be one of the most worthy and, as a result, pursued causes, but I think poverty reduction has to come in number one. Project Concern International is a San Diego, CA based international development non-profit that works to “prevent disease, improve community health and promote sustainable development worldwide.” The core idea behind PCI is that they identify areas with the greatest need and then deliver help in a way that can have lasting community impact.
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When I think about the environment, I usually think about water quality. That’s because I’m a fisherman, and the ecosystems that I practice my sport in are particularly sensitive. Air quality issues are much easier to ignore because they’re usually not as immediately apparent (until you run into a 100 degree day with an air quality advisory and can’t breathe). Yet the fight for clean air may be the environmental cause that is most important during our lifetime. That’s certainly what the people at the Center for Clean Air Policy think. The CCAP is a Washington, DC based non-profit that is “a recognized world leader in climate and air quality policy and is the only independent, nonprofit think tank working exclusively on those issues at the local, U.S. national and international levels.”
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Market research is an essential part of marketing these days, but it can get out of hand. It’s easy to keep requesting more research and never take action. The goal is to predict people’s behavior, so once you have a good idea of what they’ll do, it’s time to put the research to work. BrainJuicer is a market research firm that aims “to inspire brave clients to do great marketing by translating a generation of breakthroughs in psychology, behavioural economics and social sciences into Juicy tools that better understand & predict people’s behaviour.” That extra u in behavior may have tipped you off that BrainJuicer is based in the United Kingdom, but they U.S. based offices in Chicago, IL; Los Angeles, CA; and New York, NY. There are also quite a few other offices across the world. BrainJuicer’s website is pretty funky. It has a fun feel and makes it interesting to explore what they do (there’s a simpler version if you find it overwhelming).
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Sales is all about relationships. Whether you’re trying to convince someone to make a one time purchase or enter a ten-year contract, you need to build a certain level of trust and empathy (the level is much higher in the latter case). Sometimes it only takes one conversation, but it often takes many more. A sales person has to be organized to ensure that his or her communications are continuously moving towards a sale. The tools for doing that used to be a rolodex and a notebook, but that has obviously changed. What hasn’t changed is the need for mobility in a customer relationship management system, and that’s exactly what Base CRM offers. They are a Chicago, IL based company that “is paving the way by building the next generation of CRM software.” They realized that most competing software is a burden (not a useful tool) for salespeople, so they decided to build something that people would actually want to use.
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If you’re taking your job search seriously, you’ve probably read at least one article that advised you to start monitoring your personal brand online. Most people who spend time doing this face the sad reality that nobody is talking about them. Still, it’s nice to get a notification when your name does pop up. For many brands this kind of tracking is a necessity. The tools that you or I might use can’t keep up with the volume, and that’s why Brandwatch has grown so quickly. They’re a Brighton, UK based company with a growing New York, NY office that is “all about monitoring what people say about your brand, products, competitors, industry or any related topics.” If someone is saying it on a publicly accessible website, they’ll find it.
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Amy and I are headed to Japan for our honeymoon, but not yet. We decided to take short, domestic trip to relax after the wedding, and we’ll do the real honeymoon sometime early next year. Japan isn’t the most traditional destination for a romantic trip, but we’re excited by the prospect of experiencing a country that is radically different in terms of culture, but relatively similar economically. While experiencing the difference between Eastern and Western culture makes for a great adventure, it can be a huge business challenge. btrax is a San Francisco, CA based company that helps clients overcome those challenges as a “cross‐cultural consulting, branding and marketing agency focused on the US and Asian markets.”
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I used to watch a show called BattleBots. It was a competition between teams that built robots designed to kill each other. I particularly enjoyed the robotic violence, but I could still enjoy watching friendlier robotic competition. That’s what FIRST promotes. They’re a Manchester, NH based non-profit that uses robotics and other forms of technology to “to transform our culture by creating a world where science and technology are celebrated and where young people dream of becoming science and technology leaders.” FIRST stands for “For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology,” and it was founded in 1989 by Dean Kamen–the guy who invented the Segway along with quite a few other amazing things.
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Most college kitchens are filled with decades old hand-me-down tools (at least mine was). They’re not the best, but they get the job done. That used to be the way that all kitchen tools were. OXO changed that in 1989 with the launch of their Good Grips brand. Their focus on design helped take kitchen tools from a commodity to a product where brand matters and grow from startup to acquisition. A lot of the credit for the success has to be attributed to Oxo’s working with Smart Design, “an award-winning design and innovation consulting firm with offices in New York, San Francisco and Barcelona.” Smart Design has been around since 1980, and in that time they’ve worked “with companies of all sizes and across diverse industries to create human-centered design solutions that delight customers and help companies achieve their business goals.”
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Right now I’m in the process of getting some of my friends together to coordinate my bachelor party. I have less than zero interest in the traditional approach, so I’m looking for some good outdoor activities for a bunch of dudes. We haven’t decided where we’re going yet, but ideally we’ll rent a house instead of staying in a hotel. One of the best places to find vacation rentals is HomeAway. They’re an Austin, TX based company that offers “the world’s leading online marketplace of vacation rentals, with sites representing over 711,000 paid listings of vacation rental homes in 171 countries.” I figured that VRBO.com was their biggest/most similar competitor, but it turns out that they own them. I guess maybe the biggest competitor is Airbnb then, though they serve a slightly different market (more apartments fewer houses).
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Job searching and looking for love can be similarly painful. There’s the fear of rejection, the lack of useful feedback, and the constant pressure to make something happen from family and friends. While there’s no holiday that makes being unemployed feel like being alone on Valentine’s Day, there are plenty of day to day reminders that you need to get a job (hopefully these e-mails are a positive reminder). I think that one of the reasons that people struggle to find both love and jobs is that they try to do it alone. What if you had a few friends to help you along the way? That’s what Grouper is proposing. They’re a New York, NY based dating startup/social club “that sets up drinks between 2 groups of friends.” They don’t even use the word “dating” on their homepage, and I think that’s a brilliant branding decision–it’s all about meeting new people. I’m especially fond of Grouper because they’re running with the fish theme.
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