Whenever someone wants to videoconference with me, I tell them that I prefer a plain old phone call. I don’t get a lot of value from seeing them face to face, and I work from home, which means there’s a decent chance that I look like a slob when I”m taking a call. However, in more corporate environments videoconferencing is supposed to be an immersive experience that replicates a real in-person meeting. Lifesize is a company that is constantly working to offer that kind of experience. They are based in Austin, TX, and they “set out to make video conferencing truly universal.” When Skype of FaceTime isn’t enough, Lifesize offers a professional level tool that is still accessible.
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I haven’t worked in a real office since my internships during college, but that office had a great cafeteria. The food was always pretty good, and the view was spectacular. The chef also made really great cookies in the afternoons. A lot of companies aren’t big enough to have a cafeteria, but they still want to offer in-house food options for their employees. That can be a huge hassle, but not with Cater2.me. They are a San Francisco, CA based company that “was founded with the goal of connecting inspired kitchens with the masses.” A lot of companies have complicated systems for ordering food in. Cater2.me does all of the administrative stuff so that employees stay well fed and productive.
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I’m pretty bummed that we’re going to have to wait almost a full year for a new episode of Mad Men now. If you need your fix, you’re going to have to take a look inside a real advertising agency. Today we’re going to do that for you, and the focus is going to be Mason Zimbler, an Austin, TX based “integrated agency rooted in the digital space.” They’re owned by a bigger company called Harte Hanks, but they seem to operate mostly on their own by combining “a love of creative” with a “desire for results.” They have quite a roster of big name clients, so they must be very good at finding that balance.
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What if I told you that there was a product that could increase your personal privacy, reduce your heating and cooling costs, and make your home much more stylish? You might think that I was talking about some sort of new home automation/security system, but I’m really talking about blinds. You know… shades, drapes, curtains, window treatments. You can buy all of them from Blinds.com, a Houston, TX based company that is “the world’s largest online window covering store.” In fact, they’re twice as big as their closest competitor.
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Over the past 7 years, I’ve heard from a lot of frustrated college grads who can’t find jobs. Some of the most frustrated have been international students. They came to the U.S. to get an education, and they’d love to stay here and put that education to use. Unfortunately, the current laws make that extremely difficult. Right now we have a system that is both unfair and economically damaging. We can do better, and FWD.us is a San Francisco, CA based non-profit lobbying organization that wants to make that happen as soon as possible. It was “started by key leaders in the tech community to promote policies to keep the United States and its citizens competitive in a global economy—including comprehensive immigration reform and education reform.”
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Chances are that you’ve been to a few McDonald’s restaurants in your life. You’ve probably noticed that most are generally the same, but occasionally you visit one that is exceptionally nice or exceptionally dumpy. A big reason for the variance is that 80% of the locations are franchises. Franchising is a great business model when it works, but it can present some pretty tough business problems. Square Root is an Austin, TX based company that solves many of these problems. They have developed “a single platform to improve operations and performance throughout franchise networks.” It’s designed to give employees and managers “the insight, focus, and confidence to work on the right things and drive your business forward.”
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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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I’ve worked in two real offices in my life (I’ve mostly worked from home). The first was in an old tide mill on a bridge in an estuary. The second was a beautiful building located on 377 acres of black bear habitat. They’re not your typical commercial real estate options, but what are? How does a company know what office space is available? I have no idea, but apparently there isn’t much information available online as you would hope. RealMassive is working to change that. They’re an Austin, TX based startup that has developed the “first-ever source of real-time commercial real estate information.”
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When I was a little kid, I’d visit construction sites with my dad, the architect. I absolutely loved it, but at some point I lost interest in the construction industry. For me building things online seemed more interesting than building homes and offices. If you disagree, you might want to check out Hanley Wood. They are based in Washington, DC, and they are “the premier media, event, information and strategic marketing services company serving the residential and commercial design and construction industries.” For nearly 40 years they have been the go to source for “builders, remodelers, residential and commercial architects, multifamily and public-works executives, and materials dealers and distributors.”
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Remember when the only way to interact with a brand was to call the 1-800 number on the side of their packaging? If you complained they might send you some free product or a coupon, but it would probably take 8-72 weeks to arrive. Technology is bringing brands and their audiences closer and closer together. This is generally a good thing, but only if the brands do it right. Mass Relevance aims “to inspire brands to involve their audience.” The Austin, TX based company does this by offering a platform and products that “help your brand become an integrated part of your customers’ lives, anywhere they are.”
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Have you ever heard the saying “You don’t know shit from Shinola!”? I haven’t heard it since I was a kid, and back then I had no idea what it meant. Today I learned that Shinola was a brand of shoe wax. The company went out of business more than 50 years ago, but a group of people still saw value in the brand. They bought it and turned Shinola into a company that is all about bringing back the strength of American manufacturing. Right now the Detroit, MI based “startup with the resources of a well-established corporation” is producing watches, bicycles, leather, and journals. By taking an iconic but defunct brand and turning it into something new and thriving in a city like Detroit, Shinola is making a huge statement about what they think American Made should mean.
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I’m really excited for Thanksgiving, even though I don’t get to go back home this year. I love having the opportunity to cook new stuff for a big group of people, and I think that meals at a big table are almost always fun. If you agree, you might be interested in Dinner Lab. It’s a New Orleans, LA based “membership-based social dining experiment that unites undiscovered chefs with adventurous diners who are looking for something different from the traditional restaurant experience.” They’re already in Austin, Nashville, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, Miami, DC, and Atlanta, and it looks like the expansion will continue.
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Today few businesses can afford to ignore online marketing. The baseline has changed, and customers expect to find an online presence. Whether you’re a local restaurant, a consulting firm, or a toy manufacturer, people want to learn about you and interact with you on the web. The problem is that most small and local businesses don’t have the expertise or the resources to make wise investments in social media, SEO, SEM, and other online marketing options. They need affordable automation, and that’s exactly what Signpost offers. They are a New York, NY based company that has moved out of the deals space (just like yesterday’s company) and into offering a “cloud-based platform that makes digital and mobile marketing simple and effective for SMBs.” Without options like Signpost, small businesses would have to hire a full-time person just to run online marketing (I know that you’d prefer that they do that).
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While our government’s intelligence programs seem to be getting a lot of attention lately, they’re not the only one’s gathering information for strategic purposes. The same stuff that is important for our government to know can also be important for businesses, non-profits, and even individuals. Unfortunately, you can’t just knock on the NSA or CIA’s door and say, “Hey, what’s going on in Southeast Asia lately?” That’s why Stratfor exists. They are an Austin, TX based “geopolitical intelligence firm that provides strategic analysis and forecasting to individuals and organizations around the world.” They do this through two main product lines: subscription services and consulting. In other words, you can buy the information that they’re collecting, or you can hire them to get the information that you want.
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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 often find charity events frustrating. It’s not the events themselves that bother me–it’s the auctions and raffles. Non-profits have an amazing ability to get all kinds of high value donations (which should be the hard part), but they completely fail when it comes to extracting as much value as possible out of those donations. It could be an inexperienced auctioneer, poorly priced raffle tickets, a confusing silent auction, or a complicated payment process. Technology can solve a lot of these problems, and that’s exactly what BidPal has done. They’re an Indianapolis, IN based company that “improves charitable fundraising events from start to finish with event management solutions, automated auctions, payment processing, online fundraising, consulting services, and much, much more.” BidPal actually came in at #74 on this year’s Inc. 5000 with 4,323% three-year growth to $10.2 million in revenue.
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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 I’m talking to a potential advertiser for One Day One Job, I tell them how special our audience is. I’ll spare you the details since you certainly know how special you are, but the point is to convince them that they should pay more to reach you. Nearly every publisher does this, but most publishers don’t have special audiences. How do the ones that do prove it? That’s a problem that Umbel is working to solve. They are an Austin, TX based company that helps publishers “leverage social and big data to prove your premium audience story to advertisers and sponsors.” What I think is really cool about Umbel is that they can even help publishers whose audiences aren’t that special on average by segmenting out the groups that are most valuable to advertise to.
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Whenever Amy and I enter volleyball tournaments, I end up pushing myself too far (it doesn’t help that the tournaments always end up being on 95 degree days). In past tournaments I have burned the arches of my feet on the sand, nearly thrown up in the middle of a match, and collapsed on to my bed convulsing as muscle cramps moved from muscle to muscle. Each of the three situations was preventable, and the latter two were all about hydration and nutrition. Water isn’t enough some days. I’m not a big fan of sugary sports drinks, and coconut water hasn’t seemed to do the trick. Maybe I’ll try Nuun. They’re a Seattle, WA based company that “was the first to separate electrolyte replacement from carbohydrates.” Their flagship product is a “simple, self-dissolving, sugar-free electrolyte tab” that you can pop in a bottle of water before, during, or after intense physical activity.
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We all know that you can’t wear white after Labor Day. It’s a rule. However, unless you’re a cowboy (or you read our profile on Stetson from 5 years ago), you probably didn’t know that there’s a similar rule about cowboy hats. Today’s the last day to wear a straw hat. Tomorrow you must break out the felt hat. And if you own a cowboy hat, there’s a really good chance it was made by Resistol. They are a Garland, TX based company that sells about a million hats a year, which apparently makes them the largest headwear manufacturer in the world. They don’t have a Jobs page, but they have to have a lot of employees to produce that many hats. I did find some evidence of internships and other jobs, so use Resistol’s Contact page to investigate further.
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I try to avoid going to the doctor at all costs. While I’m not one of those people who constantly self-diagnoses via WebMD, I do try to use the Internet to inform my decision on whether an office visit is necessary (it usually isn’t). Most younger people are like me, they turn to the web first when they have a health issue. Patient Conversation Media is a company that aims to be found when people make those initial searches. They are based in Austin, TX, and they publish “doctor-reviewed health-related content online for consumers” and use that influx of traffic to connect “patients to [their] network of physicians and other health care providers.” Patient Conversation Media came it at #22 on the Inc. 5000 with 8,782% three-year growth to $9.8 million in annual revenue.
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From the beginning One Day One Job has been built on top of WordPress. To many it’s simple blogging software, but it’s amazing how far you can take it with a little bit of tweaking. The problem with self-hosted WordPress (as opposed to WordPress.com) is that it requires running your own server. You can find a host that makes it easy to get started, but as soon as your site starts to grow, you’ll run into problem after problem. I used to spend at least a week’s worth of workdays every year worrying about server stuff (downtime, optimization, security, and all kinds of other details). That all changed when I moved my sites to WP Engine. They are an Austin, TX based company that “host tens of thousands of the 75 million WordPress sites and apps on Earth.” I’ve had almost zero downtime since I switched, but more importantly, I no longer worry about my server configuration (and I’m even paying less than I used to for hosting).
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Finding office space is easy for me. It’s anywhere that I can put my laptop, get an Internet connection (which is especially easy with a mobile hotspot), and occasionally find enough quiet to talk on the phone. Most companies need something a bit more formal, and that means leasing space. Finding an appropriate office space can be a grueling process, which is why View The Space is aiming to simplify and expedite it. They are a New York, NY based startup that is “built around streamlining the leasing process through HD video tours, targeted distribution and analytics.” The company’s customers are broker and landlords, but the software saves lessors a lot of time too.
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The last time that I picked up a hard copy newspaper was because I was in it. I consume almost all of my news online, and I don’t even have much loyalty to a particular source. I guess it’s people like me who have ruined the news business, but I’m not going to change. The news businesses that adapt and innovate are the ones that have the best shot of being around in a decade. Digital First Media might be one of them. They are a New York, NY based group of companies that has more than “800 multi-platform products” that reach “61 million Americans each month across 18 states.” They’re still all about the news, but they realize that an outlet can only continue to put out quality content when it is backed by a solid business.
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Most of you are probably too young to remember when travel agents were a thing. Before the Internet, booking and planning a trip was much easier with the help of a professional. Today, having someone book your travel is often an unnecessary complication for most travelers. But if you’re the kind of person who travels all the time for work or wants everything to go perfectly, then you might appreciate something higher touch than booking online. That’s what FROSCH offers. They’re a New York, NY and Houston, TX headquartered company (with 30 offices across the country) that provides “high-touch leisure and corporate travel to individuals and companies.” While most travel agencies have been made obsolete by the Internet, FROSCH has continued to grow by offering a superior level of service.
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As a job or internship seeker, you’re constantly being assessed. It doesn’t matter whether you’re in an interview or meeting someone new in an informal setting–when you identify yourself as someone who is looking for a position, people start sizing you up. The problem is that most people (even the ones who make hiring decisions) aren’t all that great at parsing the information that you give them. It’s almost comforting to be evaluated in a more formal process (like school). That’s what PeopleAnswers offers employers. They’re a Dallas, TX based company that has developed a “web-based assessment tool [based on] proven and validated Industrial Psychology principles to extract the Behavioral DNA® from both job applicants and existing employees to provide an unprecedented level of insight into their future on-the-job capabilities.”
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A wedding is a perfect example of how live music brings people together. I got married last night, but I’m writing this beforehand, so I can’t tell you how good the live music was. But I’ll bet that young and old were hitting the dancing floor together. Since we can’t go to wedding every weekend (though it can start to feel like that sometimes), we have to seek live music elsewhere. Levitt Pavilions is a non-profit organization that provides exactly that. They are a Los Angeles, CA based non-profit that “partners with cities to build and transform outdoor music venues into community treasures.” There is actually a Levitt Pavilion in the town that I went to high school in, though I must admit that I’ve never been. I assumed that it was just a local thing, but today I learned that there are six Levitt Pavilions across the country (Los Angeles and Pasadena, CA; Westport, CT.; Bethlehem, PA.; Memphis, TN.; and Arlington, TX).
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As commerce continues to move online, selling things in a retail setting is becoming more and more about offering an experience. Apple is the ultimate example of this–whenever you walk into one of their stores you’re instantly surrounded by excitement. That’s exactly what Charming Charlie is going for. They’re a Houston, TX based “fashion accessories retailer” with more than 200 stores across the country. Their “in-store experience features a breath-taking volume and variety of accessories, ingeniously arranged by color, making that perfect accent fun and easy to find.” It’s something that they’ve been working on since 2004, and they seem to be getting it right.
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Advertising has changed a lot over the last century, but it’s also stayed the same. While the media, tactics, and trends are always evolving, the general premise of creating an emotional response in potential customers hasn’t changed. Few companies know this better than Campbell Ewald, a Warren, MI based advertising agency that was founded in 1911 and continues to “create game-changing solutions that drive [their] clients’ business.” Despite their centenarian status, Campbell Ewald doesn’t show their age. They’re still coming up with edgy campaigns like the Zipcar ad on their home page that says, “No booty call should go unanswered.”
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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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It used to be that brands communicated, and you listened. There was always the 1-800 number on the back of the product for you to share your thoughts, but I’ll bet that .1% of consumer made 99.9% of those calls. Today communications is like one of those place where six highways come together and people are merging all over the place. Brands can no longer control the conversation–they can only hope to guide and influence it. WCG is a San Francisco, CA based “independent strategic communications firm” that is embracing “the positive future of communications.” The company also has offices in New York, Washington, D.C., Austin, Los Angeles and London, and they specialize in “branding, design, digital, interactive, social media, traditional marketing, corporate and product public relations, media relations, investor and advocacy relations, clinical trial recruitment, location based marketing, and grassroots direct-to-patient consumer campaigns.”
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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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