Most of the time when we’re browsing the web, we’re really just looking for pictures to click on. There’s a reason that single frame memes and Instagram are two of the hottest online trends right now. Brands are catching on and realizing that a few stock photographs aren’t going to cut it. Some are investing in expensive, high quality photo shoots to show off their products, but others are taking a different approach. They’re crowdsourcing images from customers and fans. Olapic is a New York, NY based company that provides the technology that allows brands to “collect, curate and display high quality photos of” products that their “customers are already posting on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and more.” User generated content is not only free, but it also tells a story in a way that the brand itself can’t.
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software development,
technical support,
user experience,
web development
We often think of technology as a bunch of ones and zeros, but it’s really “the making, modification, usage, and knowledge of tools, machines, techniques, crafts, systems, methods of organization, in order to solve a problem, improve a preexisting solution to a problem, achieve a goal, handle an applied input/output relation or perform a specific function” (at least according to Wikipedia). Technology is really the story of human advancement, and that’s why The Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose, CA must be a fascinating place to visit. It’s a place that aims to create “experiences that invite people to learn through play, evoke emotions of wonder and joy, contain solid and accessible science, show how technology can improve lives, provoke thought and inspire action, and represent [their] local Silicon Valley community.”
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I’ve taken my fair share of web based courses–all with the intent of gaining skills to improve my business. I’ve learned to code, write copy, do SEO, and a lot more online. I even developed my own course on how to land a job. There are a multitude of companies in the online education space, and most are focusing on these kinds of topics. Sympoz is a Denver, CO based company that is taking a different approach. Yes, they have a few courses on entrepreneurship, but their bread and butter is the craft market. They have a section of their site devoted to woodworking and an entire brand called Craftsy that has the tagline “Learn it. Make it.” Sympoz’s goal is to create “an environment where you can watch, interact, and learn from renowned experts on your own schedule,” and so far it seems like they’re doing a pretty awesome job.
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video,
web development,
writing
The Internet is the great equalizer. It’s where upstarts and big brands can go head to head. The big guys still have a massive advantage, but the truth is that transferring a luxury brand online isn’t all that easy. I feel intimidated when I walk into a fancy store, but I don’t even feel anything when I visit the same company’s website. Intimidation may not be what many brands go for, but exclusivity is. How do you maintain that image online while doing SEO, affiliate marketing, media buying, and more? Morpheus Media has the answer. They’re a New York, NY based “full-service provider of interactive marketing solutions to Fortune 500 companies and those aspiring to land on that list.” They seem to work mostly with fashion, luxury, entertainment, and media brands, and I think that makes them even more interesting.
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strategy
Amy, my fiancée, and I communicate a lot over the course of the day. Beyond talking in person, we typically talk on the phone, we e-mail, we Gchat, and we iMessage. It works for us, but I could see how someone might want all of those communications in one place. Others might want to participate in some online PDA without the P. Either way, Pair is a solution. It’s an app created by a company called TenthBit in San Francisco, CA that is “for just the two of you.” Its features include “texting, sharing, videos, photos, sketching together, thumbkiss and more.” It’s a little overkill for me, but I can see why some couples love it.
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I grew up about an hour outside of New York City. My parents would take me in a few times a year, and from those experiences I developed an idea of what big cities are like. It took a while for me to realize that New York is remarkable as cities go. It’s huge. It has a prime geographical location. Its people are diverse in a multitude of ways. It’s filled with wealth, yet more than 20% of its citizens live in poverty. There is no other city in the world like New York, and that’s why the Museum of the City of New York must be a fascinating place to visit. They are a non-profit that explores “the past of this fascinating and particular place for lessons about our future” while celebrating “New York’s heritage of diversity, opportunity, and perpetual transformation.”
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museum,
New York,
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program development,
retail,
rights management,
unpaid
At some point you’ve probably asked, “How the heck did Ke$ha get famous?” For some of you it was probably more of a sarcastic jab than a genuine question, but for those of you who truly want to know, I found the answer. It comes in the form of a case study for Gupta Media, a Cambridge, MA based online marketing agency that focuses on the entertainment and music industries. The story is that Ke$ha started to get attention with her “uncredited vocal performance on the chorus of Flo Rida’s hit single ‘Right Round.'” Gupta Media worked with her record label, RCA, and put together a plan for launching her debut album Animal. When it came out it was on the charts at #1 with 610,000 digital copies sold. Gupta Media can’t take all of the credit, but read through their case studies to learn more about the role they played.
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sem,
seo,
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software development
Most of you will end up in jobs where what you wear to work is based on looking appropriate. Comfort and style may also be considerations, but in most jobs it’s about looking like you fit in. In most jobs what you wear to work probably won’t affect your performance or safety, but it will if you’re a firefighter, law enforcement officer, first responder, or military service member. Those are jobs where what you wear matters–really matters. LION is a Dayton, OH based company that designs, manufactures, markets, and delivers products “to ensure the health, safety and performance of the first responders who serve our communities and our country.” LION has been owned and operated by the same family since 1898, and I have to imagine that they’ve come a long way over the past 100+ years.
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Washington DC
The only time that I’ve been able to redeem a filled loyalty punchcard has been when I’m buying for a group and I immediately fill the card. There’s no doubt that there’s a better solution, and it’s probably digital. The problem is that nobody wants to have an app for every local business they frequent. They want a single loyalty solution that they can use everywhere. We’re not there yet, but there are a number of companies trying to make that happen. In the past we’ve looked at a few businesses that operate in the space like Belly and Groupon (I love their product because you just have to use your credit card to get rewards from a merchant). FiveStars is a Mountain View, CA company that is keeping the loyalty card, but they’re making it universal. One physical card tied to your phone number (and your Facebook account if you want more points) allows you to get rewards at a variety of participating merchants.
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Texas,
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One of the hardest parts about starting a business is finding product-market fit (in other words developing a product or service that customers will pay for). It’s usually a big mistake to invest in a product without having validated the market. This is true whether you’re a first time entrepreneur or one of the biggest companies in the world. Affinnova typically works with the latter. They’re a Waltham, MA based “high-growth software and services company that enables innovative organizations to drive better ideas to market faster.” Affinnova has developed a technology platform that helps their clients do everything from generate new concepts to testing them with potential customers. This isn’t your typical market research company–Affinnova’s solutions are based on an algorithm that “mimics evolutionary principles to create a survival-of-the-fittest vetting process.”
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Maybe I’m making this up, but when I was in middle school, I’m pretty sure that Sam Goody had a list on one of their walls with all of the new CDs that were coming out soon. That list, recommendations from friends, listening to the radio, and watching MTV were how I discovered new music. It worked, but it was risky. Sometimes you’d end up buying an absolutely terrible CD like Pras’ Ghetto Supastar, the album not the song. Today it’s completely different. You can listen before you buy (or keep listening and never buy), and you can get recommendations based on real data. Whether you’re using Spotify, Vevo, MTV, or iheartradio to find or consume music, you’re actually benefiting from The Echo Nest and their big data approach to music. They’re a Somerville, MA based company, and they “provide the largest repository of dynamic music data in the world – over a trillion data points on over 30 million songs — to help application developers build smarter music apps.”
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I used to get excited about Black Friday, but never to the point that I’d actually join the crowds at the retail stores. I’d much rather search for deals online (though I barely do that anymore). While Cyber Monday used to be when e-commerce sites slashed their prices, it now seems that most of them have jumped on the Black Friday bandwagon. The nice thing about shopping online is that it’s really easy to see how good of a deal you’re actually getting. Shopzilla is a Los Angeles, CA based company that helps online shoppers do exactly that. They run a number of destination websites that “help shoppers shop and sellers sell.” Their network of sites reaches more than 40 million shoppers every month and helps them learn about more than 100 million products from thousands of retailers.
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An agency is only as good as its work. That’s why I look for ones whose website are light on buzzwords and heavy on showing off what they’ve done. Not surprisingly, that’s exactly what employers want from you. Less talk, more show. There aren’t many words on the 160over90 website. When you land on their home page you can either choose “Our Work” or “Our Agency.” That’s why I like the Philadelphia, PA based branding agency. They tell their story the same way that they tell their clients’ stories. They show. The only part that seems to be missing is an explanation of what 160over90 means.
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If you’ve ever been to a trade show or big conference, you may have noticed that the people working the shows will try really hard to get your contact information. That used to mean getting your business card, but now it might be scanning your badge or getting you to fill out a form on an iPad. The branding these shows can provide is fine, but most of the businesses that attend want to come away with leads. eshots is a Chicago, IL based company that ensures their clients “get the highest possible return on [their] event marketing investments.” eshots offers a line of what they call “activation products.” These are tools that help manage the entire event lifecycle from pre-event e-mails to follow up campaigns after the event, but more importantly they offer a better way to get potential customers to allow you to communicate with them.
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I can’t remember the last time that I went on a real scavenger hunt–it’s been too long. There’s something really fun about the combination of physical and mental activity. The problem is that a scavenger hunt is only fun if someone else sets it up for you. Occasionally there will be citywide events that challenge teams to trek across the city hunting for clues, but those can be kind of overwhelming and they don’t happen all that often. What if you and your friends want to do a scavenger hunt right now? You can try Stray Boots. They’re a New York, NY based company that offers scavenger hunts and interactive walking tours of a variety of cities through your mobile phone. It sounds like a pretty cool way to explore a city whether you live there or are just visiting.
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We’re a week away from one of the worst travel periods of the year. If you’re flying between next Wednesday and the following Sunday, good luck. Look forward to long lines, getting groped by the TSA, crying babies, no legroom, and probably a delay or a lost bag. Wouldn’t it be nice to travel without those headaches? That’s why ridiculously rich people buy their own jets. But what if you’re only really rich and can’t afford your own jet? You buy time on one. That’s what Sentient Jet does for its clients. They’re a Cleveland, OH based company that “arranges more air charter flights than any other jet charter procurement business in the country.”
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transportation,
travel
I finally had to turn my heat on. I made it through October, but November got me. I like being comfortable, so I don’t worry about keeping the thermostat at 62 or buying energy efficient bulbs. When you don’t spend all that much on energy, it’s not worth putting a lot of effort into reducing your energy consumption. But for large companies and institutions, energy costs can become a huge expense–and that’s when investing in energy efficiency really becomes worthwhile. EnerNOC is a Boston, MA based company that wants “to make energy management as integral as accounting to the operation of every organization.” A few readers have landed jobs at EnerNOC recently, so I thought it would be worth a looking at a company that helps its clients “use energy more intelligently, pay less for it, and generate cash flow that benefits the bottom line through [a] complete suite of technology-enabled energy management solutions.”
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supply chain,
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There’s about a 70% chance that you found us through Google. That’s by design. I’ve learned that search is by far the best way to reach job seekers, so I’ve invested a ton of time, money, and effort into my SEO strategy. So far I’ve done it mostly on my own (with the help of a few awesome interns), but if I ever get to the point where I need to hire an agency, I’ll look for one that is aligned with the people in the industry whom I trust. SEER Interactive definitely clears that hurdle (I’ve even heard their Founder called “quite brilliant” by one of the best in the industry). SEER Interactive is a Philadelphia, PA based online marketing agency that specializes in SEO, SEM, Analytics, and Conversion Optimization. I actually decided to take a closer look at SEER after I got a link request e-mail that they sent out for one of their clients. (Honestly, I think the the request could have been better, but it stood out from most of the crap I get.)
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Five years ago today I launched One Day One Job. Six months earlier I had given up on a job search that was going nowhere and decided to try to find a way to make the job search suck less for college students and grads. I knew a little about HR, a little about how to build a website, and a lot about how to fail at the job search. It took me six months to build something launch-worthy. Five years later I have a website and e-mail list that has reached millions of people. My business is profitable. And most importantly, I’ve helped people land jobs they never would have found without me. I still have a long way to go, but what I’ve done so far is all thanks to some rudimentary coding skills that I developed in middle and high school. Being able to build a website or write software opens up a world of opportunity, which is why I think Codecademy is the perfect company to feature today. They’re based in New York, NY, and they are building “a better way for anyone to teach, and learn, how to code.”
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Every website goes down at some point. Even Facebook and Google have outages. The causes can range from a natural disaster like Hurricane Sandy to a mistake by an engineer to too many people trying to use the website at once. Downtime is expensive (except for startups with no revenue), and the most important way to manage downtime is to monitor it. Rigor is an Atlanta, GA based company that provides tools to monitor and improve performance for websites and apps. I use a site called Pingdom to monitor my uptime, and it’s free. For most web site owners, a free or cheap solution is good enough. But as a site gets bigger and faces more complex performance issues, the needs for monitoring and testing increase. That’s the market that Rigor serves.
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Two competing marketing campaigns that combined for more a billion dollars in ad spend just came to an end (and the result was maintenance of the status quo). Some would say that any money spent on advertising is wasted, but as someone who makes a living off of advertising, I disagree strongly. I’ll take a wager that the folks at Direct Agents are on my side. Direct Agents is a New York, NY based “digital marketing agency specializing in performance-based digital solutions including lead generation, email marketing, search engine marketing and Facebook advertising.” They must be doing a good job, as they’ve more than doubled their revenue since 2007 (to $34.3 million).
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A lot of people bounce their business or product ideas off of me. It’s fun, but it can also be frustrating because most people can’t see the obvious holes in their thinking. The one thing that I push everybody to do is to validate their ideas. That means talking to customers and getting them to either tell you what they think or, preferably, to actually commit to buying your product. Validation isn’t an easy process whether you’re an aspiring entrepreneur or a billion dollar brand. Finding potential customers and getting them to give honest feedback is almost never easy. Qualvu is a Lakewood, CO based company that solves this problem (I found out about them from a reader who landed a job with them). They connect “you with your truth, anywhere, at any time, through the power of web and mobile video.” In other words, they’ve developed an online platform that makes the focus group way more flexible, powerful, and affordable.
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I did a lot of my most valuable learning outside of school. I attended plenty of camps and after school activities, but I also dug holes in my backyard searching for historical artifacts and learned to build websites on my own. Not only were the out of school activities more fun, but many of them helped me develop skills that I still use today. School shouldn’t be the only educational outlet for children, which is why non-profits like Edventure More are so important. They’re based in San Francisco, CA, and they “inspire the playful pursuit of enrichment for the next generation” through summer camps, enrichment programming, motivational tutoring, and mentoring.
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I was a total wimp when I was a kid. Despite many opportunities to do ropes courses and other similar challenges, I always sat on the sidelines. To be completely honest, it was because I was chubby and figured that I couldn’t actually complete the courses. I’m now more adventurous, but I still prefer adventure with a functional goal (like climbing down into a gorge to go fly fishing). Project Adventure is a Beverly, MA non-profit organization that offers adventure with a goal, but it’s all about personal and group development. They “seek to expand Adventure-based experiential programming, with the goal of developing responsible individuals, productive organizations and sustainable communities.” They’ve been doing it since 1971, and they keep growing their ability to advance active learning.
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I have about six lightbulbs out in my house that are in impossible to reach places. If one more goes out, I’m going to have to break out the ladder and risk my life for the sake of lighting. Since I don’t own the place, I’m probably not going to invest in a more expensive energy-efficent bulb that takes years to pay itself off. But if I did own a place, that would probably be the best decision, which is why TCP is worth taking a look at it–energy efficient lightning is a huge growth industry. The Aurora, OH based company (their world headquarters is in Cham, Switzerland) calls itself “the home of lighting innovation.” They “offer one of the largest selections of ENERGY STAR-approved products” and “distribute them throughout North America and abroad.”
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Ever have a class that required a clicker? Wouldn’t you rather use your phone? Top Hat Monocle is a San Francisco based company that is reinventing the college lecture experience. They’re looking for Campus Business Development Associates all across the country to spearhead campus adoption by reaching out to professors, raising awareness about Top Hat Monocle, and working closely with our sales and marketing teams to create a strategy that works. Find out how to get one of these internships!
I’m kind of obsessed with subscription based business models right now. I’ve been trying to come up with some new ones on my own, but I’ve also been investigating those that are already out there. One non-obvious (at least to me) subscription offering that seems to be gaining a lot of traction is underwear. There are a number of players in the market, so it must mean that people like getting new pairs of underwear on a regular basis. One of these companies is Me Undies. They’re based in Beverly Hills, CA, and they offer “the world’s most comfortable underwear in all your favorite colors and styles.” Oh yeah, and they do it at a way better price than designers who offer underwear of the same quality.
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One trend that I’ve noticed is that there are a lot of companies popping up that look like digital marketing agencies, but they don’t take on clients. Instead of building out Sales and Account Management teams, these companies focus on building income generating products for themselves. That’s exactly what Restoration Media does. They’re a Tustin, CA based company with a team of “marketers, designers, developers, and project managers” that “turn great ideas into successful brands.” The company made the Inc. 5000 this year with 63% three-year growth to $4 million in revenue. Those numbers aren’t as eye popping as some of the other companies that we featured from the list, but they’re still impressive.
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I was at a wedding last night. It served as a reminder that I can’t dance. I still try, but I don’t think that it’s ever going to happen for me. That’s ok–I can leave the dancing to the dancers. Maybe I would have different feelings if I had been involved with Dancewave. They’re a non-profit that “transforms the lives of New York City youth through unique exposure to world-class, pre-professional performing arts training.” Dance is right at the intersection of arts and athletics, which makes it an ideal activity for youth programming–it builds confidence, gets kids active, and introduces them to new cultures.
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I’m going to a wedding this weekend. I’ll wear the same black Bonobos suit that I wear to every wedding. All I have to think about is what tie to wear. I’d never even consider buying a new outfit for a wedding other than my own or one I’m in. But it’s not an uncommon thing for a lot of women to wear a different dress to every wedding they go to. That can get expensive, unless you choose to Rent The Runway. Rent The Runway is a New York, NY based “community designed to fill the needs of women who know and love high fashion, who want to look glamorous for all their nights out, and experiment with new brands without the anxiety of investing in piece after piece.” (Use this link to try it for $20 off.) The company was started by two women (Jenn and Jenny) who met at Harvard Business School, and it’s taken off since as the “Netflix for fashion.”
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public relations,
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I don’t hide the fact that I’m skeptical of social media marketing. I was an early adopter, and it never really paid off for me. Still, I see tons of major brands investing heavily in social. They’re not stupid, so whether they’re hedging or actually getting a good return, social media marketing is going to keep growing. Since it’s such a new field, it’s a great industry for young people to make a name for themselves. That’s exactly what Aseem Badshah has done. When he was 16 he started a site called ThinkEssay.com “where students could post their schoolwork – such as essays, term papers, class notes, lab reports, and presentations – to provide inspiration and resources for other students.” That’s how he got his social media street cred. After he graduated from the University of Washington in 2010 he started Uptown Treehouse, a Bellevue, WA based (but they appear to be growing a team in Los Angeles) “full service marketing agency that helps brands meet their goals by leveraging social media to connect with current and potential customers.”
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