solution
Now THIS Is The ‘Right Way’ To Start A Company
Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/now-this-is-the-right-way-to-start-a-company-2012-11
Ok, fine.
There probably is no “right way” to start a company.
But, if there WAS a picture-perfect, fool-proof method, it might look like Percolate.
Percolate, a SaaS solution for marketing managers, was founded by James Gross and Noah Brier in early 2011. Today it raised a $9 million Series A round and it has more than 30 Fortune 500 companies as clients. They’re each paying Percolate about $10,000 per month.
There are a few things Gross and Brier did in their startup’s earliest days that set them up for success.
- They each worked for marketing companies before founding Percolate.
- When they had enough knowledge and industry connections, they quit.
- They bootstrapped until they proved their model.
- The used outside capital to step on the gas.
Gross was a former sales executive for Federated Media and Brier worked for a marketing agency, The Barbarian Group. While they were there, they created a lot of contacts in the marketing and advertising departments of major corporations. They were also able to see inefficiencies and demands in the industry. Later, while the two were bootstrapping Percolate, everything they absorbed at Federated Media and TBG became very valuable.
Being employed also enabled the pair to save up money and bootstrap. They funded their startup themselves for one year, during which Brier ! and Gros s worked out initial kinks.
When they finally had a working model and paying clients, they sought outside capital. They used a $1.5 million seed round to accelerate growth; they didn’t waste it stumbling around and pivoting.
Of course, a lot of successful companies have been founded other ways. Zuckerberg never had a job before founding Facebook. Ben Silbermann initially set out to be a doctor, but he ended up founding Pinterest
It’s too early to guarantee Percolate’s success. But whatever Gross and Brier have done up until now, it seems to be working.
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Source: http://gizmodo.com/5942873/is-streaming-media-bad-for-the-planet
Streaming is fast becoming the way most of us consume media, whether it’s music, TV of film. But caught up by the sheer convenience of it all, it’s easy to forget to question its environmental impacts. Could streaming actually be bad for the planet?
That’s just what a study by Music Tank set out to discover. Some of the results are interesting. How, for instance, does streaming music compare to buying physical media? The report explains:
Streaming or downloading 12 tracks, without compression, just 27 times by one user would, in energy terms, equate to the production and shipping of one physical 12-track CD album.
In other words, repeated streaming of favorite tracks might not be a desirable long-terms media solution. Fortunately some apps—like Spotify—feature a local caching feature, which avoida repeatedly streaming the same song over and over.
But what about the fact that teenagers use YouTube as their main music source these days? The mighty ‘Tube’s rise is seeing it use more and more electricity—and the report speculates that its energy consumption looks set to rise from around 0.1 percent of 2010 global electricity levels to 1 percent by 2013.
The report offers one extremely leftfield solution to the problem: observing Moore’s law, it speculates that a 1 petabyte drive capable of storing all the songs ever recorded could soon cost just $100. Ship that to every user, it suggests, along with some remote server-based player required to access the content, and the planet’s resources won’t be drained as quickly. Convinced? [Music Tank via Paid Content]
How Apple Can Upend Mobile Payments With The iPhone 5… (AAPL)
Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/heres-how-apple-could-upend-mobile-payments-with-the-iphone-5-2012-8
The biggest new feature on the iPhone 5 may be a relatively under-reported one: the installation of a Near-Field Communications (NFC) chip that would allow the iPhone 5 to process mobile payments.
The Wall Street Journal recently detailed the high-level debate Apple executives are currently having over whether and how to do just that.
In a recent report, BI Intelligence explores the state of mobile payments, explaining how NFC differs from other solutions in the market, and analyzing how Apple has a unique opportunity to own NFC and upend the mobile payments market.
Access The Full Report By Signing Up For A Free Trial Today>>
- NFC essentially turns phones into wallets: NFC lets people pay for products at retail stores by simply waving an NFC-enabled phone at a receiver. Credit card companies and carriers are talking about it, OEMs are adding NFC chips to phones, Google built it into Google Wallet, and Microsoft announced that Windows Phone 8 will support it.
- But, NFC suffers from the chicken-and-egg problem: Retailers will not add NFC receivers to their point-of-sale systems until they see an economic rationale to do so — that is, until enough consumers are paying with NFC or want to pay with NFC. Meanwhile, consumers will not see the point of using NFC until there are enough receivers for it. This is a very large network effect to overcome.
- And, there is no evidence that NFC is actually more convenient than cash or credit: Handing out cash at the register or giving out a piece of plastic and signing is very convenient. Whateve! r mobile solution attempts to replace cash and credit needs to be at least as convenient to have a hope of breaking into the market.
- Apple is therefore uniquely able turn NFC into a viable payments solution: Hundreds of millions of consumers have accounts with Apple and already use them to purchase goods. That consumer power, combined with strong iPhone 5 sales, would give Apple a great shot at bringing big retailers along with their move to NFC. NFC would then have a chance to suddenly reach critical mass all at once, and Apple would be in an incredibly strong position in the sizable and growing mobile payments space.
In full, the report:
- Analyzes the four kind of solutions that currently matter – card readers, apps, carrier billing, and near-field communications — and their prospects for success.
For full access to the report sign up for a free trial subscription today.
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Dr. Augustine Fou is Digital Consigliere to marketing executives, advising them on digital strategy and Unified Marketing(tm). Dr Fou has over 17 years of in-the-trenches, hands-on experience, which enables him to provide objective, in-depth assessments of their current marketing programs and recommendations for improving business impact and ROI using digital insights. 
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Sony’s Ultra High Definition TV will come with world’s first 4K delivery system
Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/11/19/sony-4k-ultra-hd-first-content-delivery-system/
If there’s $25,000 or so burning a hole in your pocket and room in your living room for Sony’s 84-inch XBR-84X900 Ultra HDTV, but you’re worried about a lack of 4K res content to play on it, allow us to put your mind at ease. Sony’s Ray Hartjen has picked up the blogging pen and revealed each of the supersized sets will ship with “the world’s first 4K Ultra HD delivery solution, complete with pre-loaded, native 4K entertainment.” There’s no specifics on what the pack-in content will be (or what form the “delivery system” will take), but he says it will include full length feature Hollywood productions exclusive to purchasers, probably courtesy of Sony Pictures. We’re told to expect more details after Turkey day, so stay tuned.
Filed under: Displays, Home Entertainment, HD, Sony
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Source: The Sony Blog
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