While the residential real estate market is often driven by emotion and hype (as the season premier of Million Dollar Listing L.A. reminded me), that’s not nearly as true when it comes to commercial real estate. The market for commercial properties is much more data driven, but getting your hands on the right data to make decisions can be very difficult. That’s why CompStak was started. They’re a New York, NY based company that aims to “create transparency in commercial real estate by gathering information that is hard to find, difficult to compile or otherwise unavailable.” How do they do this? By offering a place to buy and sell lease comparable data.
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For most of us social media is a time waster. It’s mindless entertainment that fills in gaps in our days. But for some people it’s a job. For them the mobile app just won’t do. They need power tools to manage all of their social media accounts, and that’s exactly what Sprout Social offers. They’re a Chicago, IL based company that offers “a management and egnagement platform for social business.” Sprout Social’s software offers all of the tools that one might need to engage with customers, publish content, and analyze the effectiveness of social marketing. This kind of platform is a must have for any company that takes social seriously.
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Having a personal chef would be pretty life changing. Not only would it make healthy eating much easier, but it would also free up a ton of time. Unfortunately, most of us can’t afford to employ a chef full-time. So how can regular people get the personal chef experience? Kitchensurfing is a New York, NY based company that matches “up chefs and people who need a cook at high and low price points and for a variety of types of engagements, from cooking lessons for the kids to fried chicken parties to 10-course anniversary dinners.” Almost anyone can afford a personal chef when it’s only for one night.
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I wrote a lot of research papers in college, which means that I spent a lot of time poring over academic journals, research papers, and even primary sources. While there is something kind of fun about digging to find facts to support your thesis, I can’t say that I miss it. But I’m sure that there are plenty of you would absolutely love it if you could spend all day searching for sources on ProQuest. In case you’re not familiar with them, they’re an Ann Arbor, MI based company that “is committed to empowering researchers and librarians around the world.” They do this through a variety of products and services that will help you find the information that you need. When Google can’t find what you’re looking for, there’s a decent chance that ProQuest can.
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I used to like golf, but I quit playing about ten years ago. It started when I signed up for P.E. Golf during my Freshman year of college. To pass I had to play ten rounds of nine holes during the semester. I didn’t play my first round until October 1st. The course closed on October 31st, and it was a really cold fall. The last few rounds were played in a face mask and gloves. After that experience I started to realize that I’d rather catch the fish in the ponds on the course than hit a little white ball around. Then I broke the head off of my driver at a driving range and decided never to play again. It happened to be a Callaway Big Bertha. The Carlsbad, CA based company aims “to deliver the best performing products the game has ever known—products that perform so well, they literally put the joy of the game in your hands.” It didn’t quite work out for me, but it has definitely worked out for lots of other golfers.
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Do any of you remember Flip cameras? They were all the rage for a few years, and then they got completely crushed by smartphones. Who would buy a standalone consumer level point and shoot or video camera when you already have something that offers comparable quality in your pocket? The only good reason that I can think of is that you’re worried you might destroy your phone. That’s where GoPro came in. They’re a San Mateo, CA based company that has built a huge business by offering “the world’s most versatile camera.” While other manufacturers were killing each other with battles over megapixels and size, GoPro was focusing on a niche market of users who wanted to be able to take their cameras on adventures. It turned out that it was a really big niche.
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Last week we looked at a company called Destination Maternity that has done really well become expectant mothers are often big spenders. Guess what–once they have the baby they keep spending. This is good news for Kids II, which is an Atlanta, GA based company that has “been inventing and reinventing baby toys and gear for over 40 years.” Even though they’ve been around for a while, their continued innovation has made them “one of the world’s fastest growing baby product companies.”
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I’ve been married nearly 9 months now. Slowly more and more people are asking, “When are you going to have kids?” Getting a puppy deflected a little bit of attention, but it’s only going to gain in intensity. If we do eventually give into the pressure, we’ll face a time in our lives that makes preparing for a puppy seem like nothing. That’s why it should be no surprise that the expecting parent market is absolutely huge. In fact, Destination Maternity Corporation, which is based in Philadelphia, PA, does $500 million in annual sales as “the world’s leading maternity apparel retailer.” Yes, a single company (albeit with quite a few brands) can generate half a billion dollars in revenue selling clothes for pregnant women.
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One day I hope to have a business that makes real products. There’s something extremely alluring about designing and selling something tangible. Even though it may seem like every new company is operating entirely online, there actually has never been a better time to build physical products. Not only is it easier than ever to connect with manufacturers, but prototyping has been revolutionized with 3D printing. There’s still a barrier to entry in that it’s expensive and time consuming to get into 3D printing, and that’s why you can go to a studio like FATHOM in Oakland, CA which uses its “expertise in 3D printing and additive manufacturing to help customers innovate faster and more efficiently.”
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We all have at least one friend who has a brilliant idea for an app or website, but no way of building it. They think that if they can just find some geek to develop it for “equity,” they’ll be instant millionaires. Building a digital business isn’t even close to that easy, and marketing/business talent is just as important as tech talent. Most people who want to start a company on the web need to either figure out how to do it themselves or pay a lot of money (not equity) to get someone to build it for them. Even then, most agencies are designed to help clients later in the game. That’s not true with Digital Intent. They’re a Chicago, IL based business that helps “clients identify products customers will pay for, design compelling user experiences to make customers happy, and rapidly build high performance products that scale.”
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One of the best things about the Internet is that it allows creative people to find a market for their work. What used to be a hobby for someone can now be a living. The problem is that creating isn’t enough–you have to learn how to run a business too. Gumroad is a company that makes that part easier. They’re based in San Francisco, CA, and they “help millions of creators earn their livings in an interesting, authentic way.” Gumroad’s platform takes all of the complications out of selling digital goods online. Whether it’s a book, music, a video, or something else, Gumroad will help you with marketing, accepting payments, and offering secured downloads.
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There’s no doubt that health and fitness are the most popular categories for New Year’s resolutions, but many people also want to improve themselves in the areas of education, finance, and careers. It seems easy at first–if you make better decisions, you’ll be better–but good decision making can be really hard. Tree.com is a company that aims to be the place “where good decisions start.” The Charlotte, NC based company operates a portfolio of brands and businesses that can help you whether you’re “buying or selling a home, financing a new car, sending a child to college or shopping around for a new credit card.”
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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 hate to get personal, but raise your hand if you’re wearing underpants! I guess it’s not really all that personal unless you didn’t raise your hand. Most of us wear undergarments on a daily basis because that’s what we’ve always done. There are certainly some comfort and hygiene benefits, but those wily marketers really pulled one over on us when they convinced us that we had to wear clothes under our clothes. I’ll bet that the folks at Jockey International had something to do with it. They’re a Kenosha, WI based company that aims “to satisfy the human need for comfort.” They got their start selling socks to lumberjacks in Michigan in the late 1800s, and they now offer more than 600 styles of underwear and t-shirts (and socks, sportswear, and loungewear too).
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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 haven’t seen snow yet, but I did experience some sort of frozen precipitation while I was in Michigan over the weekend. It’s hard enough to accept that summer is over and that the shorts need to be put away, but it’s really difficult to come to terms with the fact that winter is coming (especially when you live in Chicago). It’s even worse because almost everything that I love to do is better with good weather (fishing, playing beach volleyball, grilling, walking the dog). Yet for some people it’s almost the opposite. These are the type of people who buy gear from Black Diamond Equipment, a Salt Lake City, UT based company that is “all about climbing and skiing.” In fact, Black Diamond Equipment makes it possible for people to enjoy weather that might otherwise keep you stuck indoors with a bad case of the shack nasties.
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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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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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I think that live sports is just about the only thing keeping broadcast television alive. I’m waiting for the day when DVRs aren’t even necessary because everything is always on-demand. Unfortunately, it’s still going to be a while because the media behemoths have a lot to lose and a strong enough market position to put up a huge fight. We’ll get there eventually, but it will happen faster if upstarts like Bedrocket Media Ventures start to see a little success. They are a New York, NY based company that “is leading a revolution in creating networks and programming that people love, delivered through the cloud.” While they may be trying to beat the establishment, they’re getting a little help in the form of $15 million of venture capital investment.
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I have a platonic man crush on Ramit Sethi. I’ve pretty much been stalking him since 2007 (when I started ODOJ) by subscribing to his blog, signing up for his e-mail list, reading his book, poring over his Delicious links, and buying one of his courses. We even met in person once. It was in the lobby of a trendy W hotel waiting for him, and when he walked up I played it cool by slamming my head into some stupid lamp that was hanging over the lounge chair that I was sitting on. Why am I so obsessed with some random Indian dude who is only a couple years older than me? Because he has built an amazing business that helps people achieve their career and financial dreams. I tend to gag at most of the advice that I hear from “career experts,” yet when I see something come from I Will Teach You To Be Rich (Ramit’s company–he used to have to reiterate that it’s not a scam because the name sounds so questionable), my eyes get all dreamy and I just start nodding in agreement. I occasionally even yell “YES!” at my computer.
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Yesterday we looked at Yoga Alliance and how they’re helping the field of yoga grow from a cultural curiosity to a mainstream activity that millions of Americans participate in. Yoga is a perfect example of how we can take traditions from other cultures and integrate them into our lives to improve our health. The problem is that for every tradition that will actually make you healthier, there are probably a few that have little or no benefit (or even a negative effect). ALOHA is a New York, NY based startup that “combines traditional wisdom from diverse cultures across the globe with the latest scientific research and collaborates with the world’s most esteemed experts and health gurus to develop innovative products and inspiring content.” They’ll help you discover new ways to live a healthier, more enjoyable life–and you won’t have to worry that you’re wasting time with something that is scientifically unproven.
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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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It seems that geek culture has finally become mainstream. Maybe it’s the fact that engineers are in high demand at companies like Facebook, Apple, and Google. Or maybe it’s the upsurge in popularity of sites like Reddit. Or maybe it’s shows like The Big Bang Theory. I don’t really know, but for the first time in my lifetime, it’s good to be a geek. So good, in fact, that many of the “popular” kids are now claiming geek status. Whether you’re a true geek or a poser geek, you need geek gear, and ThinkGeek is the place to go for that. They’re a Fairfax, VA based company that started with the “simple idea to create and sell stuff that would appeal to the thousands of people out there who were on the front line and in the trenches as the Internet was forged.”
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Over the weekend I wrote about how important parental involvement is for our education system. I might have been wrong. Today I learned that parents are completely replaceable–and by robots nonetheless. When I first came across 4moms, I thought it might be a later April Fool’s joke, but they’re a totally for real Pittsburgh, PA based company that is “dedicated to finding innovative solutions that make parenting tasks easier and more enjoyable for families all over the globe.” That’s a nice way of saying that they’re building a future in which parents are obsolete. Ok, I’ve completely overplayed the robots thing, but it’s really cool to see how 4moms has used to technology to overcome some of the more frustrating parts of parenting young children.
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When I was a kid, making t-shirts was a big thing. We had fabric markers and some sort of glittery paint in a squeeze bottle. The end result was always a huge mess and a t-shirt that I would be embarrassed to wear. Then there was tie dye, which is even messier and more embarrassing to wear. My mom once had a photo t-shirt made for me, and that was awesome, but there was no way that I could do that on my own. Things have changed. Lumi is a Los Angeles, CA based company that has developed “a revolutionary photographic print process for textiles and natural materials.” It’s basically Instagram, but your photo ends up on a t-shirt or pretty much any other appropriate surface.
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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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What if I told you that the Reebok Pump, the Swiffer, and the portable ascender (it’s straight out of Batman) were all designed by the same company? You’d probably assume that there’s some giant holding company that owns Reebok, Procter and Gamble, and Atlas Devices. That’s not true. Continuum is the company in question, and they certainly don’t own any of those three companies. They’re a Boston, MA based “global innovation and design consultancy” that helps “organizations drive business innovation through the design of products, services and experiences that become part of the fabric of people’s lives.” Continuum has been at it for 30 years, and they’ve worked with some of the world’s biggest brands (PepsiCo, American Express, Johnson & Johnson, and Nestle in addition to the ones that I’ve already mentioned) to improve business outcomes through design.
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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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A few months ago my cleaning lady brought a printed out picture with her to work. It was a pair of headphones that her grandchild in Poland wanted for Christmas. She explained to me in broken English that the headphones were very expensive in Poland and much cheaper here. She wanted to know where to buy them. When I told her that I could order them on Amazon for what would amount to nearly four house cleanings for her, she decided that her grandchild would have to appreciate a less expensive gift. In case it isn’t obvious, the headphones on the print out were from Beats by Dr. Dre, a Santa Monica, CA based company that “provides a premium sound experience at every touch point of the consumer’s life.” In only six years Dr. Dre has built an iconic brand (one that Polish kids tell their grandmothers in America about) in a market where most people used to use whatever came free with their CD or MP3 players. (I’m still perfectly happy with my Apple earbuds.)
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If there’s a time of year for candles, this is it. Between Hanukkah, Advent/Christmas Eve, and having the shortest daylight period of the year (at least here in the Northern Hemisphere), we collectively burn through a lot of wax. My family’s Christmas Eve tradition includes a candlelight church service and a lot of candles around the house, though we’re smart enough not to try the candles on the Christmas tree thing (we had a close enough call with a blanket that got too close to the fireplace one year on Christmas Eve). I can’t think of a bigger name in candles than Yankee Candle, so I thought we should take a look at the South Deerfield, MA based candle maker and retailer. The company actually got its start during the Christmas of 1969. Mike Kittredge couldn’t afford to buy his mother a Christmas gift, so he melted down some crayons to make a candle. A neighbor insisted that he sell the candle to her, and Mike used the money to buy enough wax for two candles–one for his mom and one to sell. The business kept growing from there.
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Give Postmates a try. Use this link to get a free delivery.
I didn’t make any progress on gift buying yesterday, which means that my online shopping options are getting pretty slim. I’m either going to have to pay for expedited shipping or step foot in a retail store. If I lived in San Francisco, CA, I’d have a hybrid option. Postmates is a company that offers “a revolutionary same day urban logistics & delivery platform.” Yesterday we talked about how Quiet Logistics has enabled e-commerce upstarts to compete with Amazon in terms of fulfillment. Postmates is doing that for local retailers. If it can be purchased in your city (legally of course), you can probably have Postmates deliver it to your door for a price starting at $6.99.
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