I’ve learned firsthand that running a very small business in a single country in a single language can get extremely complicated. Trying to operate across many countries, cultures, and languages must be insane. But for many companies the allure of growth through international expansion is impossible to pass up. It’s often impractical or impossible to build a team that can do everything required to operate internationally, which is why TransPerfect exists. They’re a New York, NY based company with 70 offices across 5 continents that provides “a full range of language and business services including translation, interpretation, website globalization, subtitling/voiceovers, multicultural marketing, diversity and inclusion consulting, deposition services, and litigation support to multinational companies.”
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Internships,
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project management,
software development,
translation,
web development
Bonobos is one of my favorite companies that I’ve written up. Right now they’re offering a free $50 gift card to new customers. Their awesome men’s clothing makes a great holiday gift, and it’s the kind of stuff that guys can wear to a new job.
This morning I learned that Audiogalaxy is being acquired by Dropbox. Audiogalaxy was the ultimate way to find and download awesome music back in the day. The experience that it offered back in the early 2000s was pretty remarkable, but they operated in a legal gray area and eventually had to drastically change their service. Today downloading is out and streaming is in. And if you’re streaming music, chances are that you’re using Spotify. The Swedish company launched its product in the US (their US headquarters is in New York, NY) about a year and a half ago and pretty much blew away the competition. While most streaming services offer a “radio” type experience, Spotify allows you to listen to any of their 20 million licensed songs whenever you want.
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Poland,
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software development,
Sweden,
united kingdom,
user experience,
web development
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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crafts,
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user experience,
video,
web development,
writing
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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It’s almost impossible for a brand to stick to a single marketing channel these days. But picking the right channels and staying consistent across them is a tall task. This is why the integrated marketing communications agencies exist. Unfortunately, there are a lot of agencies that describe themselves as such, but don’t really deliver on the “integrated” part of the equation. Phelps does. They’re a Santa Monica, CA based agency that describes what they do as “All Communications. One Voice.” Phelps’ focus is on tying everything that their clients do “into ONE consistent, cohesive message that is much more noticeable and memorable.”
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California,
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online marketing,
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social media,
software development,
web development
It’s hard not to have a closet full of clothes that you don’t wear. No matter how ruthless you are with culling your collection of clothing, you always end up with some things that you wear a lot and some that you don’t. There are two ways to look at this first world problem. You can buy more stuff that you like, or you can get rid of the stuff that you don’t want anymore. Twice is a company that solves this problem (but only for women at this point). They’re a San Francisco, CA based company that buys and sells “high-quality, affordable secondhand clothes online.” It’s an ages old business that should play well online, and it even has a positive social/environmental impact.
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fashion,
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Logistics,
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paid,
software development,
web development
I’ve you’ve ever played on a team that watches game film, you know that what you think you did, what your coach thinks you did, and what you actually did are often three completely different things. The film can’t lie, but absorbing the facts of the film without letting your biases creep in is extremely difficult. If only there were a way to turn game footage into stats. Krossover does that and a lot more. They’re a New York, NY based company that is aiming to “disrupt the current sports content, analytics and technology landscape.” Their platform allows coaches to upload raw video and “get back searchable film, box scores, visualizations, and more.”
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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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I hear the word “crowdsourcing” come up a lot, but it’s usually by people who don’t really know exactly what it means or how to do it. They’ll often say things like “Oh, we’ll just crowdsource it.” Ok, you do that! I have things that I’d love to crowdsource, but I can’t figure out how to manage such a project without making it more work than just doing the task myself. Maybe CrowdFlower is the answer. They’re a San Francisco, CA based company that allows you to “instantly hire millions of people to collect, filter, and enhance your data.” We’re at a point where technology can do a lot of heavy lifting, but sometimes a human of average intelligence is far better at solving a problem than even the most powerful computer.
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While I built this site to help college students internships at interesting companies, I’ve heard from a few people who use it very differently. One of the most surprising uses was from someone in Corporate Development at a pretty big company–she was using the daily e-mails to source potential acquisitions (though I don’t think any have actually happened). I think that’s pretty cool, but there are certainly better places to find deals. AxialMarket is one of them. They’re a New York, NY based company that “is revolutionizing the capital formation process for private companies.” In other words, they’ve built a marketplace where private companies can find partners for “M&A, capital raises, and debt financings.”
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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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events,
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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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writing
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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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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I have no doubt that I benefitted from educational gaming. While Oregon Trail only taught me not to shoot too many buffalo in one place, Type to Learn taught me how to type and SimEarth taught me about evolution. The games were simple and so were the concepts that they taught because that’s what the technology allowed. Today technology is no longer the bottleneck–imagination is. Wowzers is a Chicago, IL based company with plenty of imagination. They offer a cloud-based adaptive learning platform in the form of a game. Children pick an avatar and advance through math-based challenges. Teachers and administrators are able to monitor students’ performance as they progress through the challenges.
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Illinois,
math,
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video games,
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writing
Happy Election Day! I’m not going to scold you to vote today because I find that insufferable. Whether you vote is as much a personal choice as whom you vote for. I know plenty of people take politics seriously, but in a lot of ways it’s a spectator sport for people who don’t like sports. You cheer for your guy or girl. You’re jubilant when he or she wins or you’re crushed when he or she loses. But in reality you have as much control over the outcome as you had over last night’s Saints-Eagles game (and some may say that the outcome affects you about as much too). You need more skin in the game, and that’s what Fantasy Politics is about. They’re a Boston, MA based company that offers “a fun opportunity for you to build a team of national politicians and pundits and get points from their real life actions.”
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The majority of my Facebook friends are on the East coast, so I’m feeling a little left out right now. Everyone seems to be having fun preparing for Hurricane Sandy, even though the storm will likely cause billions in damage and cost some people their lives. Hurricanes and blizzards tend to generally more enjoyable than things like earthquakes, tornadoes, and riots. It all has to do with predictability and control. When you know a storm is coming a few days ahead of time, it’s pretty easy to prepare. But in reality we should all be prepared for emergency situations whether they’re expected or not. There may be a time when running to the store won’t be an option, and that’s why Emergency Essentials exists. They’re an Orem, UT based company that has been “helping people prepare for emergencies” for the last 25 years through their catalog, website, and retail stores. (I was tempted to write about weather related careers today, but we’ve already done a bunch of those.)
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There’s no doubt that we’re in the middle of the second phase of e-commerce. The first stage was all about helping you find and buy the stuff that you want or need online. Amazon has that mostly covered, and there are plenty of retailers who fill in the gaps. But what if you want shopping to be fun? It’s all about discovery, which is why sites and companies that help you find interesting products are so popular right now. The term “curation” is being used a lot, and I think it’s appropriate. Stitch Fix is a San Francisco, CA based company that is using strong curatorial talent to sell clothing and accessories to women. They’re like a Trunk Club for women in that they send you a box of stuff (as often as you’d like) based on your response to style survey questions, and you can choose to keep as much or as little of it as you like.
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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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There is almost no better business model than selling subscriptions. You do the hard part of making the sale once, and then you reap the benefits for (hopefully) years to come. Most people think of subscriptions in terms of things like magazines, web sites, and gym memberships, but we’re quickly moving towards a world where many of our purchases are made on a subscription basis. I’ve already subscribed to paper towels and toilet paper on Amazon (though they’re sending them too often right now). Any product that we consume on a somewhat predictable basis should become a subscription. OrderGroove is a company that helps other businesses make that happen. They’re based in New York, NY, and they have built a platform that makes adding subscriptions to an already existing e-commerce platform very simple.
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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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I constantly get asked where I find all of the companies that I write about. The short answer is everywhere. But one of my favorite sources is you. You may be running short on ideas right now (that’s why you signed up for my e-mails), but things will change. You’ll get an internship, and hopefully you’ll report back where. That’s what one reader did, which is why I know about Ampush. They’re a San Francisco, CA based company that helps “advertisers leverage the scale and precision of the Facebook media platform to develop and engage their customer graph.” Facebook’s advertising options are amazingly powerful, but only if you know how to use them. I’ve toyed with buying ads, and it has never been ROI positive for me. Ampush combines knowhow with technology to helps make sure that their investment in Facebook advertising is worthwhile.
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I can’t tell you how many hours I spent watching infomercials when I was a kid. I’d watch the same ones over and over even though they offered (questionable) solutions to problems that were completely irrelevant to a 9 year old. I have no explanation for why I’d watch them, but it’s a testament to the power of content marketing. When you make your advertisement the main event instead of an interruption, it suddenly becomes way more interesting. An infomercial is both the best and worst example of this. The content isn’t all that compelling, but the marketing message is very direct. Magnet Media is a company that helps brands lean towards the other end of the spectrum. They’re based in New York, NY, and they “specialize in telling the brand’s story by producing and syndicating compelling video and interactive content, using social platforms to help brands share their story, reach and engage their target audiences, and ultimately drive actions that deliver on business results.”
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I’ll fess up to it… I watch Storage Wars. How can you not enjoy a show where people make exorbitant bids for other people’s junk and then find out whether they won big or overpaid? Isn’t part of the American Dream finding treasure in someone else’s trash? I don’t know where they get the valuations on some of this stuff, but who cares if the “value” of all of the world’s antiques and collectibles is greater than the total amount of money in the world? (I’m making this up, but I’m convinced it’s true.) If you really want to make money from storage units, you’re better off owning them–or helping their owners market them. That’s what SpareFoot. They’re an Austin, TX based company that “has the largest inventory of storage units on the web” and allows you to “search by location, price, unit size and amenities.”
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I had exercise induced asthma as kid, but I really enjoyed playing sports. That probably explains why I loved baseball, tolerated basketball, and avoided soccer and lacrosse as much as possible. Despite the fact that more and more kids are as out of shape as I was, soccer and lacrosse have both seen a ton of growth over the past two decades. The Moylan family has been well ahead of the the trend. In 1984 one of the family’s six kids (Mike) was assigned a high school business project, so he decided to start a small soccer catalog called Eurosport. The family embraced the business, and it became Sports Endeavors. They spent a decade doing the mail order thing, and then they made an amazingly smart move in 1994. The Hillsborough, NC based company bought Soccer.com and Lacrosse.com. Combining an already existing business with those domain names made for a killer combination, and that’s why Sports Endeavors has continued to grow–though they still only focus on soccer, lacrosse, and rugby.
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The walk from my first apartment in Chicago to my gym used to take me by an office building that had a handful of below ground offices with windows at street level. Nearly every time I walked by, I would see the same guy sitting at his desk playing Solitaire on his computer. I eventually developed a sad story in my head about this guy’s life–his wife left him, he hates his job but has nowhere to go but his office, and Solitaire is his only joy in life. I’m sure it was wildly inaccurate, but I’ll never know. The office is now unoccupied, and my walk to the gym doesn’t go by there anymore anyway. But let’s be honest, everybody can enjoy a little mindless gaming. It’s not something that we’d want to do in full view of everyone else like this guy, but it’s a great way to kill some time or take a break. Arkadium is a New York, NY based company that develops “casual, mobile, social, and Windows 8 games.” If only the guy knew about all of his options beyond Windows Solitaire.
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