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During his workshop on incorporating service design as a startup, Marc Mueller, a UX researcher at Universal Mind, noted that commodities are fungible, goods are tangible, services are intangible, and experiences should be memorable. As a startup, there’s ample opportunity from day one to consider every touch point you will have with a customer – from their first interaction with your website to purchasing your product. Mueller followed by asking a thought provoking question to the room: How do you craft an experience that helps you compete with (or beat) the incumbents of your industry?...

Later in 2012 Tim Gray founded his agency, Neuro Web Marketing, with Reece Howe – another successful entrepreneur and marketer, who previously advised Innocent, Deloitte and even built his own company in the care industry from the ground up – through to sale. Tim originally started from nothing and grew his previous firm to £4m a year in revenue, using his unique methodology (which he later sold for a hefty sum as well)....

However, all this easiness also generates an informational excess that, sometimes, can get absolutely out of control, thus becoming a huge problem in the lives of many people. In order to prevent the situation to reach that point, some precautions need to be taken. With Pyrus, and without having to send a single email, any company (from a company with two people up to companies with over 7,000 employees) can handle complex business processes with less effort than ever before....

Among the events scheduled for the Challenge Festival is the lunchtime conference, Grand Challenges – The Rise of Startups. Held on Monday, May 12 at 1776, the Grand Challenges conference will bring entrepreneurs representing early- and late-stage startups that are successfully solving major issues in heavily regulated industries, and will discuss the ways through which startups can take advantage of the market opportunities in taking on these issues. Speakers will include executives from DC darlings Opower and EverFi – startups that effectively revolutionized energy and education respectively, and have managed to grow into two of the most successful companies in the DC region....

Or maybe it’s more literal. Her brand Urban Zen has partnered with AMEX and is using their technology to create an easy, quick and effective checkout experience for their new charity bracelet. Made by Haitian artisans, 100 percent of the proceeds go to the artisans, creating sustainable entrepreneurs and helping a country very much in need. Donna Karan says she’s had to remove herself from the chaos of the fashion industry – and be a little bit unfashionable – to find her peace....

My partner, Yakir Gola, and I understand the excitement and anxiety that go along with building a company. In 2013, the launch of our first business, goPuff, a speedy food delivery service, taught us the dedication, passion, sacrifice and imagination it takes to create something. It also taught us that planting the seed would not be enough; to build something with longevity and impact, you must maintain it, keep it breathing, and grow it....

The participants on the panel included Sheikh Shuvo, the senior regional manager for the Asian Pacific and MENA (Middle-East/North Africa) for UP Global; Donna Harris, the cofounder of Washington, DC-based incubator 1776; Mike McGee, the cofounder of Starter League; Shaun Johnson, the cofounder of Startup Institute; and Rebecca Lovell, the startup liaison for the City of Seattle. With their varied backgrounds in both the public and private space, the panelists each went through the resources offered through their cities and through their individual programs that support the growing needs of a population that’s quickly transitioning into this new economy....

What I’ve found through raising bank financing, angel investment, and venture capital – including the most recent $18 million through Morgan Stanley Expansion Capital – is that the data requests are surprisingly similar. In order to prepare, and reduce any potential stress by being proactive, you can assemble a collection of documents and data sets before you start the fundraising process. I’ve found that putting together a data room is one of the best moves you can make as an entrepreneur....

IdealSeat, a Galvanize member company, has created a fan intelligence platform for fans with the largest database of stray Major League balls in existence. With that data — and their proprietary machine learning special sauce — they’ve figured out how to predict where fouls and homers are most likely to land in the stands. So when fans go to purchase tickets, they have the option of paying for the probability of catching an historic ball like Rizzo’s Game 6 shot to right field....

So what’s your business’s brand voice? Many businesses have no idea. Making a proper identification; however, is an invaluable asset to the success of any social media marketing campaign. In a past report, Marketing Land identified “20 Great Social Media Voices.” Included on the list was Penmaker Sharpie, newsletter Thrillist, beer maker Sam Adams, retail giant Target and several other big name brands. What did the digital marketing daily publication profess the key qualities of the voices of these and other “greats” to be?...

Instacart cites “market turbulence” and a need to attract talent as reasons why it has reassessed. Another reason could be a steep drop in sales growth rate since the start of the pandemic, when many people suddenly became interested in getting groceries dropped off at their door. Deliveries for food as well as other products are only becoming more common, but the gig economy may not be as well positioned to offer stable infrastructure for full-time vehicle drivers....

In this episode, I’m chatting with David Hauser, co-founder of Grasshopper, a Boston based company that provides a virtual phone system for entrepreneurs. If you can’t see the video, please click here. A special edition episode from Big Omaha I caught up with Dennis at the Big Omaha conference, which happened May 13-15, 2010 in Omaha, Nebraska. This episode is part of a series of special edition interviews I shot while at Big Omaha....

Image Credit: Flickr/Trans-Media-Akademie In recent years we have seen increasing amounts of video design in live events. The most popular examples being Tupac Shakur and Michael Jackson’s holographic projections performing at Coachella music festival and the Billboard Music Awards. But it’s not just in music events where we see innovative video design in the form of projections or holograms. With dynamic backgrounds, virtual characters interacting with real actors or static objects coming to life, technological theatre, or ‘technodrama’, is on the rise....

Technology experts at NextAdvisor.com have taken a deep dive into the new face recognition of the iPhone X, examining how it works, what sets it apart from past phone tech and what privacy implications it surfaces. I talked with NextAdvisor.com’s Michael Osakwe to ask him whether you should be using the new technology. Consumers just need to know a few bullet-points in order to understand how Face ID functions. One of the more important factors: It’s attention-based, meaning it only works when your gaze is on the phone....

That cruelty may have been the moment he burned out. Tech reporters may be admired, but the job can involve lots of long days, frantic writing, and getting paid way less than the PR people who annoy you, Kincaid recounts in The Burned Out Blogger’s Guide to PR. The job that was once exciting loses some of its luster. More than a how-to guide, Kincaid’s book is a peek inside the tech reporter’s brain....

Some small business may think that they are safe as hackers will aim for juicier, bigger targets. But the reality is that 90 percent of data breaches target small businesses, and the average cost of a data breach for a small business is around $36,000. Most of the time, hackers target payment data so that they can steal information and money for themselves. A small business may have to pay the costs of proving new debit and credit cards to customers whose data was stolen, undergo a forensic examination, and many other things....

Feel free to reread that last sentence again, because I did a few double takes when I first read about it as well. A self-healing car? Sounds like a feature of the Batmobile, not an actual car. But it’s true. At the EmTech conference in Cambridge, MA on Monday, Automobili Lamborghini announced the Terzo Millennio, a concept car designed by MIT that can heal itself, which is objectively the coolest thing I’ve ever written about a car....

It’s a move that everyone saw coming, and follows up on a 16-month-long investigation into the power of tech giants. Assuming these bills are passed in some form or another, it’s safe to say that the world of tech will be completely reshaped. Here’s what to know about each of the bills. No More Buying Up Competition The biggest bill is likely The Platform Competition and Opportunity Act, which stops any major platform (defined as one with 500,000 or more monthly active users) from acquiring other companies unless they can demonstrate “clear and convincing” evidence that they aren’t in competition with each other....

Every day, CEOs looks for a way to hedge against this uncertain future. If they don’t, massive numbers of jobs — and possibly companies themselves — will simply cease to exist. How can a CEO hedge against an uncertain future? By becoming smarter. On every level of a company, inside the mind of every employee, create a culture of continuous learning. This will arm the business with the most resilient and innovative force that exists: the agility and potential of the team....

According to the team behind Intercom, these digital platforms actually diminish the interpersonal aspects of commerce. However, there’s no overthrowing this digital trend, so it’s best to go with the flow: Intercom wants to make digital commerce just as personal as face to face. The Intercom team lives to make web businesses personal, and they’ve built out a platform that gives said businesses an easy way to communicate with their users....