I tolerate living in Chicago because my wife is from here, the summers are awesome, and the food is exceptional. Unfortunately, it’s not the best place for someone like me who loves spending time in the wilderness. That means I spend a lot of time in Northern Michigan, which is five hours away. It would be nice if I could discover some recreation options that are a little closer. That’s exactly what AllTrails offers. They’re a San Francisco, CA based startup that has built “the leading digital network focused on outdoor enthusiasts, providing 1 million people monthly with the information and tools to discover top destinations near them.”
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About two months ago an organization that I’m a member of organized a letter writing campaign to prevent permits from being issued to allow fracking in an environmentally sensitive and recreationally (and economically) important area. The group is fly fishing focused, so it’s not the most tech savvy bunch. But we were able to spread the word quickly enough to get what we were asking for. Social media makes action like this much easier, but it can be hard to organize. Amicus is a New York, NY based company that turns a “nonprofit’s supporters into fundraisers and advocates.” They claim they can triple the effectiveness of outreach and fundraising efforts.
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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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Have you ever sat around and waited for a phone call? It sucks. Believe it or not, there are a lot of businesses in which you sit around and wait for customers to call you. A plumber is a great example, but there are much more sophisticated businesses that have the same problem. They can invest in marketing that drives more calls, but why do that when you can invest online and track every step of the conversion/sales process? Because people who pick up the phone are often much better leads than people who inquire online. That’s why Invoca is bringing online analytics to phone calls. They are based in Santa Barbara, CA, and their “inbound call marketing tools empower you to generate better leads, higher conversions, smarter spends and greater revenue.”
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The health and wellness industry is massive, and it just seems to keep growing. There are a lot of really smart business people who are playing a big part in the growth, but there are also a ton of people in the industry who would rather not concern themselves with businessy stuff. The kind of people who open yoga studios, salons, and spas usually aren’t in it for the money–they just want to make a living pursuing their passions. Unfortunately, running a business usually requires… running a business. MINDBODY is a San Luis Obispo, CA based company that believes that “small business owners deserve the time to do what they love.” Pursuing that belief has made them “the largest cloud-based software provider in the health, wellness and beauty industries.”
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Job searching comes with a lot of repetitive tasks. Imagine if you had the technical skills to automate the most annoying ones. You could focus on doing stuff that makes you more employable instead of wasting hours on mindless repetition. There are certainly some smart engineering types who build their own systems to automate their lives, but what about the rest of us? We can use IFTTT (If This Then That). They’re a San Francisco, CA based company that lets you “put the Internet to work for you.” The service plugs in to all of your favorite sites, so it’s not like you’re starting a new workflow from scratch.
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At this time last year, Amy and I were in the thick of wedding planning. Part of me is relieved that it’s in the past (because the wedding was awesome), but I also kind of miss it. We were lucky to have an amazing wedding planner who proposed great ideas and narrowed down the early decisions for us to make them manageable. Before we got to that point, though, we had to do our “homework.” That meant looking through all kinds of books and magazines to mark what we liked and what we didn’t like. It was a bit old fashioned, but it worked. Loverly is a New York, NY based company that brings that process online. It’s “a one-stop-shop for wedding planning where brides and grooms find ideas, people to hire and things to buy.”
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Now that we’re all walking around with HD video cameras in our pockets, it’s hard not to amass a huge collections of digital media. We might share some of the highlights on our favorite social media sites, but most of it just sits idle and waits for us to take another look when we’re stuck in a place with no cell service and no Wi-Fi. We can do more with our media, and that’s what Animoto is all about. They’re a New York, NY based company that helps regular people make and share extraordinary videos of anything imaginable.
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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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I pretty much shut down if I have to deal with paper documents. Luckily, in my line of business, almost everything happens online. While at one time I thought it might be a good idea for me to pursue law as a career option, I’m really glad I didn’t. Dealing with all of those documents–even if they were digitized–would drive me nuts. The good news for lawyers that kCura makes things a little more manageable. They’re a Chicago, IL based company that “develops web-based e-discovery applications for managing large volumes of electronic evidence during litigation or investigations.” The software is called Relativity, and it’s a web-based app that makes managing evidence way easier.
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Until today I’d never looked up the meaning of my last name. I always knew that Franzen was Swedish because my dad’s dad’s parents were both Swedes, but I never knew that it actually means French man. Other than owning a French breed of dog, parlaying a tiny bit of Français, and enjoying French food, I haven’t really lived up to the name. Todd Snyder has lived up to his surname. It means “one who makes outer garments” in Dutch. His eponymous Todd Snyder brand is a New York, NY based men’s fashion line that is inspired “by Savile Row craftsmanship, military tailoring, and a distinct New York sensibility.” I’ll guess that Todd Snyder’s Iowa roots have also had an influence on the company.
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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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I’m a little disappointed that I didn’t get to experience the coldest weather of my life last night, but it’s pretty good to be “stranded” on a tropical island. Since I work from home, I used to get through cold snaps by not leaving the house for extended periods of time. Now that I have a dog and no yard, that would be… messy. Shockingly, if you were more and better clothing, you can stay pretty warm in even the coldest temperatures. Less shockingly, quite a few of the companies that make awesome cold weather gear are based in Canada. We don’t usually cover opportunities outside the U.S., but we’re making an exception for Arc’teryx. They are based in Vancouver, BC, and they merge their “unrivaled designs with the best quality, highest performing materials and assemble them in the most innovative and most durable manner for the intended use.” In other words, they make high performance for extreme situations–whether it’s climbing a mountain or walking your dog on the coldest day of your life.
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There are a lot of advertising and marketing agencies out there. Some are huge and part of even huger conglomerates, and others are small and independent. They all have different strengths, weaknesses, and specialities, but in the end they all share a common goal: to drive attention towards brands with the hope of getting them to take a specific action (usually buying something). Hiebing is on the smaller side. They are a Madison, WI based integrated marketing and advertising agency “with a keen focus on the target market and the cartwheeling curiosity of a bright-eyed first grader.” Hiebing has been around for 30 years, is employee owned (~50 employees), and does about $50 million in billings annually.
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Wisconsin
Happy 2014! While New Year’s resolutions are probably one of the worst ways to make a positive change in your life, people continue to set themselves up for failure by assuming that a change of calendar will give them all of the motivation that they need to accomplish a goal. The first few weeks are pretty easy, but how do you keep it up when the new year isn’t all that new anymore? You need other sources of motivation. If your resolutions are fitness based Fitocracy might be the answer. They’re a New York, NY based company that aims “to make fitness a more fun, more addictive experience.” They do this with the power of social networks and gamification.
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My New Year’s Eve has been the same for the past 9 years. I’ve never celebrated in a big city, but from what I hear, it’s awesome… until you realize it’s 2 AM, 12 degrees, and you’re a long way from your nice warm bed. You made the smart decision to leave your car at home, but now what? Everybody in the city is trying to get home at the same time, and every cab that drives seems to be full. You’ll probably die of hypothermia before you can hail a cab, so you might as well use an app to find a ride. Uber can get you a black car or a cab, but their “surge pricing” will make it hurt. If there’s a time to try Lyft, it’s tonight (though Lyft has its own surge pricing called “Prime Time Tips”). They are a San Francisco, CA based company that offers “on-demand ridesharing” in nearly 20 cities across the country. They call it “your friend with a car.”
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transportation,
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writing
Merry Christmas Eve! Tonight my family will go to the candlelight service at the church I grew up in. It’s the only church that has ever felt like home to me. I’m not exactly sure how my parents started going there, but I’ll guess that it had something to do with the fact that it was about 150 yards from our house. Finding a great place of worship isn’t always so easy. I church-hopped in college, and never really found one that felt right for me. FaithStreet might have helped. Whether you’re looking for a local Christmas Eve service or a place to worship for the rest of your life, the New York, NY based company can help you find the right faith community. The founders asked, “Why is it so hard to find a church?” And instead of admitting defeat, they decided to do something about it.
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Personalized shopping used to mean that you were buying something with a monogram, but today that word is being used more and more often to mean buying items that are recommended specifically for you. I love Amazon’s recommendations engine, but I think that it could be a lot better (and I’d like to see other merchants adopt similar technology). Lela must be paying attention. They’re a New York, NY based company with a mission “to improve consumers’ online experience by helping businesses deliver a new level of personalized engagement.” From what I can tell, Lela is using their technology on their own property (Lela.com) while also offering it to other publishers and merchants.
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Despite moving in 5 months ago, I still haven’t put up most of the framed pictures and art that we have in our apartment. It’s a ridiculously easy task, but for some reason it’s always the last thing that I want to do. In other words, don’t give us art for Christmas! However, if you have friends or family who know exactly where to put every new piece on their walls, then you may want to buy them a gift from Art.com. The company is based in Emeryville, CA, and it “is a leading authority in wall décor and the world’s largest online retailer of posters, prints, and framed art.” Every single person has his or her own taste in art, and Art.com allows each of them to find the kinds of pieces that appeal to them.
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Yesterday I received close to ten packages. It’s that time of year! I can barely look out the window without seeing a UPS, FedEx, or USPS truck on my street. The only problem is that it’s getting to the point where Amazon is the only company I trust to still ship me stuff on time. So many online merchants have terrible shipping experiences, and there’s no way I’ll trust them to get me what I ordered when they say they will. Hopefully that will soon change with the help of EasyPost. They’re a San Francisco, CA based startup that “is changing the way shipping works and helping a lot of people” at the same time. By “tying together disparate data sources and APIs” they’ve been able to create “a scalable shipping API for developers everywhere.”
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When Amy and I were looking for a new place, we had a lot of trouble sifting through real estate listings. Between the junk, spam, and properties that were of no interest to us, it was really hard to zero in on the kind of places that appealed to us. Working with a real estate agent helped us narrow things down, but the software that they used to show us listings was pretty terrible. One trick that I figured out for searching mainstream sites like Zillow and Redfin was to use very specific, high-end keywords (I bet you could adapt this to job searching). It’s almost as if the people who built RealScout had my exact experience. They’re a Sunnyvale, CA based company that “leverages over 500 datapoints to make home search more personal for clients and more efficient for Realtors.” By focusing on the little things, they help people look at the right kind of properties.
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So far Amy and I have yet to receive a single Christmas/Holiday card. I’d like to blame it on the fact that we moved a few months ago, but I fear that we may not be as popular as I had previously thought. The reason that I can’t blame the move is that we made sure to update our address with the USPS. The most shocking thing about forwarding your mail is how easy it is to do. That’s why it’s interesting that Updater uses USPS change of address as the free part of their freemium model. It’s smart. The New York, NY based company offers a slightly slicker way to do something that you can do quite easily on your own, and then they use that as an opportunity to sell you a product that helps you will all kinds of other change of address issues.
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Lately when I talk to new parents, I like to compare what they’re going through to what I’m going through with my puppy. I know that it’s a completely ridiculous comparison, but I enjoy the fact that it makes them a bit uncomfortable. We all know that parenting is one of life’s biggest yet most rewarding challenges. Today’s parents are lucky that there are all kinds of resources to help them do a better job (that’s true for puppy owners too!). One is CafeMom, a New York, NY based digital media company for moms that reaches more than 20 million users every month. Their properties include CafeMom.com, MamásLatinas.com, TheStir.com, and TheProwl.com. The goal is to bring “moms together by hosting hundreds of communities that reflect moms’ personalities, passions and needs.”
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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 ate a lot on Thanksgiving, and I kept it up through the weekend. I used to be able to do that without feeling any ill effects, but those days are over. I guess it’s time to get back to a healthier lifestyle. Maybe I need to head to the store and buy some natural products. Though I’ll probably just do my typical meat cleanse instead, if I went the natural route, I’d probably be buying from clients of Pure Branding. They are a Northampton, MA based consultancy that “builds leading brands for values-based companies in the natural products industry.” They’re selective about the clients that they take, as they want to ensure that they’re working world changers.
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I went grocery shopping yesterday at Whole Foods. Usually at 2 PM on a weekday, it’s a ghost town, but not during Thanksgiving week. I actually like grocery shopping, so it was fun to be a part of the madness, but I know a lot of people who hate it. Some use services like Fresh Direct or Peapod. I tried the latter once, but it feels like your groceries were picked out by a robot. That won’t cut it if you’re buying meat or produce. Instacart offers a different kind of grocery delivery service. They are a San Francisco, CA based startup that offers personal grocery shopping in a growing number of markets (Chicago and Bay Area right now), and sometimes they can get you your groceries within an hour.
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Though it was more than a decade ago, I still have very strong memories of the college application process. I knew where I wanted to go, so I didn’t do a lot of research on other options. Back then research meant requesting brochures from any college that you were interested in. There was some information available on the web, but you had to go to each individual school’s site. A lot has changed in how people seek out educational opportunities (and it’s not just about undergraduate admissions anymore). Noodle is a company at the forefront of that change. They’re based in New York, NY, and they are “the first and only life-long education related search company in the world.” What does that mean? They offer “extensive data on over 150,000 schools and hundreds of thousands of education providers.” In other words, they’re taking a much broader view of what an education search is about.
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Local marketing has been all the rage for the past few years. All kinds of startups have popped up to help small business owners use technology to reach more customers. It’s easy to forget that local marketing doesn’t only happen online. Radio and live events are two marketing channels that have been complemented instead of replaced by technology. That’s good news for Townsquare Media, since they’re a Greenwich, CT based “local media and entertainment company that owns and operates radio, digital and live event properties in 66 small to mid-sized markets across the country.” The last part of that sentence is important because it means that they have jobs all across the country. Townsquare Media owns more than 300 radio stations, and that makes them the third largest owner of radio stations in the U.S.
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Yesterday there were terrible storms across the Midwest. In the immediate Chicago area (where I was), it mostly amounted to torrential downpours, wind, and lightning, but in other parts of the state tornadoes leveled entire communities and killed six people. One of the few positives coming out of the situation is that there has been an outpouring of people who want to volunteer as part of the recovery effort. The problem is that right now only trained professionals should be working in the disaster area. A bunch of random volunteers would get in the way and actually hinder relief efforts. So how do we take the positive energy and direct it to the right places? GiveGab might be the answer. They’re an Ithaca, NY based company that has built a “social network for volunteers and volunteer managers.”
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Health insurance. Need I say more? You already have your own associations with those words, and they’re probably negative. We all want to be healthy, and when we’re not, we want to know that doing whatever we can to get healthy won’t send us into financial ruin. That was the whole point of health insurance, but it seems that the opposite has happened. There’s a lot that needs to change, but where do we start? How about with insurers themselves. Take New York state for instance. They haven’t had a new commercial health insurer in a decade and a half–or at least they didn’t until Oscar came around. They are a New York, NY based startup that dubs itself “a new kind of health insurance company that is using technology to make insurance simple, intuitive, and human.”
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