Revolutionise The Phone Battery

Smartphone users of today. All of us have one thing in common, and that is our batteries just do not last long enough. Okay, some more than others have this issue, and it’s more than likely the more new-tech hungry crowd who thrive off of a particular company…ahem…that’s besides the point here. What we are starting to see in the tech world is the ability to charge devices in multiple new ways. Disposable battery pads have been cropping up a few times, and the likes of charging kits made to look like cases have been around for a while now. It’s all very mundane but very useful at the same time, it’s nothing ground breaking either but, maybe the most ground breaking chargeable tech yet has made it’s way on to the scene.

Interestingly, an Israeli company has developed a technology that can charge a mobile in under a minute, and will move on to charging an electric car in a matter of several minutes. They say the tech has integrated the use of nano-technology that actually synthesises artificial molecules, and in which has been developed for a battery to store a much higher charge a lot quicker. Now we’re talking!

These never before developed materials are set to make their way to the market in 2016 as, for now, the tech is too bulky for the smartphone market. We all like a slim model these days. StoreDot, the company behind this revolutionary piece of tech says that the ‘nano-dot’ tech in place are bio-organic peptide molecules. They alter the way the battery behaves to allow the rapid and speedy absorption of power.

If you think that is staggering, StoreDot have remarkably raised a whopping $48 million from just two rounds of funding. According to StoreDots founder, a major phone maker has also backed the company with a significant amount of money but declined to break the news as to who it was. The only information is that it is an Asian company. Intriguing…

Moving forward with the technology, its expectant that it will go on to supply electric cars later down the line, disturbing the current process that generally takes a whole night to charge a single car.

Gone will be the days of eagerly waiting to see the 100% status at the top of your screen before heading out on the town. Blissful!

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Top Accelerators and Their Differences

London, specifically, is crawly with accelerators. It is by no stretch of the imagination a bad thing, but what are the key differences that set them apart and key characteristics that define them? Well, my friend, you are about to find out!

You see, there are many points to look out for, and to find them you have to conduct a reasonably lengthy search through your friend Google in order to pick out the key players. It boils down to personal preference with resources and functionality as the tipping point in most instances.
You must remember that there is an aspect of scale to the companies also. Some are completely independent and some are backed by major corporations – they’re reasonably easy to distinguish.

A small handful of the top players you need to keep an eye on, and what they are doing in terms of programs is essential.

Microsoft Ventures

Backed by a massive conglomerate company, Microsoft. A strategic partner focused on business growth and development of startups around the world. They pride themselves on aiding in building locally and scaling globally. The three programs Microsoft Ventures offer include: Community, Accelerators and Customer Access. Amongst these programs they offer fully immersive services with partnered companies and globally accessible customers to connect the remarkable startups.

Mass Challenge

Non-for-profit. All the way from Boston, just arrived on the London scene. Their mission is to catalyse a startup renaissance so they definitely mean business. They address the seed stage and investment gaps to promote innovation, collaboration and commercialisation. The educational opportunities readily available to entrepreneurs is substantial and by launching the worlds largest accelerator in to the community mix, they will make it their mission to provide the top solution to startups. Whilst holding prominent locations in Boston, Israel and the UK, Mass Challenge operate an April to October timeframe with various rounds and deadlines as the lead up to the program.

Start up institute

Purely educational. Having recently moved to the London startup scene, Start Up Institute also have campuses in Boston, New York, Chicago and Berlin. Their aim is to bring in and educate their graduates to work in the startup community, to share the specific skill sets and to gain the knowledge they need to adapt. Their programmes run simultaneously together across all locations, and they run between February and April. The selection process is done in rounds with the first round deadline 1st December, second round closing on 12th January and the final round closing 19th February. They also operate two choices of programmes: Part-time and full-time.

It’s interesting to see the diversity that runs through these Accelerator players. While in some cases the main variables are timeframes and the like, their backgrounds with mentors and investors amongst movers and shakers is what can truly define their moves in the communities. Remember to keep an eye out for some friendly faces along the way!

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US Startup Receives Monumental Funding

Fresh off of Tech Crunch today comes a remarkable tale of a US startup receiving monumental funding. The Los Angeles based company, Scopely is a platform that was built for distributing and monetising mobile games. They previously went through a seed funding round and managed to secure a whopping $8.5 million back in 2012, but the most recent amount just trumps this figure by huge figures.

They progressed to a Series A funding round. First stage, off the mark and they secure $35 million. This is big! A startup that specialises in the publication of other games first and the development of their own games later. Co-founder and CEO Walter Driver, mentions that many of the top end studios creating the best in mobile gaming just do not have the facilities or tools to promote their product – and this is where they plan to come out on top.

Scopely’s games include Disco Bees, Dice With Buddies and Skee-Ball Arcade which recently made it’s way to the top of the iOS app charts in both the United States and Australia. We can expect big things from this intuitive company moving forward. They seemed to make their seed funding round last an impressive two years, showing off incredible capital efficiency that undoubtedly would work wonders for other startups in similar positions.

This is an incredible story that will only carry on growing and adapting as it progresses. Hats off to Scopely for successfully bagging a wonderful funding round, it’s very impressive. Definitely one to tell the grandkids some day!

Funding and investment is a crucial part in any startup situation. It can determine the lifespan of a business from inception through to multinational status. Of course there are other aspects that can help you out along the way; collateral, design, branding . They all act as crucial catalysts and should be treated as such.

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The worlds youngest capital funded entrepreneur?

A new article emerging on the Entrepreneur website has stated that a 13-year-old has gained investment from the tech giant, Intel in recent months. It’s unknown whether or not the young entrepreneur, Shubham Banerjee, is in fact the youngest to ever gain capital investment, but it’s very likely that he is. In fact if you ran a search for “Youngest funded entrepreneur”, Master Banerjee’s name is the most popular search result so by Google’s standards, he in fact is the youngest.

The innovative product that secured Banerjee’s funding is a remarkable brail printer that operates at avery low cost – of course he only has the one in production at the moment but with his funding, he wishes to push it out to the masses offering it at a very low price, much lower than existing products on the market.

The article compares Banerjee to the likes of funded teen entrepreneurs, Nick D’Aloisio, founder of Summly and brothers John and Patrick Collison for their payment service, Stripe. Both companies have been founded by nothing but teenagers with a passion for disrupting a marketplace.

Banerjee’s new business venture is aptly named Braigo. Why? Because his newly funded braille printer product uses the likes of high tech lego parts to form the machinery. A sum of money that has not yet been disclosed has only been reported to be in the hundreds of thousands to help the no 13 year-old expand upon his product. This is onto of the $35,000 his parents loaned him to start the business.

He is still in school. Reportedly achieving As and Bs in every subject, this kid has achieved a life times worth of work in just 12 years. Crack on!
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App Redesign

The world of creatives – you gotta love it. Beautiful redesigns are making their way to the surface of web more and more as the days tick by. Some of the UX designs that pop up are captivating and really very interesting to absorb and understand. All it takes is a creative mulling over the latest design of one of the most popular apps amongst smartphone users, and out of nowhere inspiration sparks a glorious flat design concept piece. Recently, some of the best out there to be redesigned are the likes of Snapchat and someone has even taken a stab at a redesign of Adidas – not that it necessarily needs it, it’s just an interesting brand to see redeveloped and reimagined.

So, taking a closer look at the scene, you start to notice a similar design pattern amongst the creative community looking to disrupt the makers and shakers of app design and development. They all tend to be in a very flat concept. This is a style that is flooding through the design communities more and more, making a huge impact on reconditioning our perception of new and popular apps.

A design that has been capturing the attention of many avid user is the Instagram app pictured below. This is an amazing piece that really makes you believe this could be the next design for the photo sharing giant.

The designer, who is from Kosovo, has taken it upon himself to create this re-imagination saying he was “bored” with the current one as the reason why he embarked upon doing so. As you can see from his design, he has taken a stab at redesigning the user interface and the logo as an all-in-one design piece. The Logo has turned from a full colour design to a plain white aesthetic, and this is mirrored throughout the app very clearly.

 

A feature that really makes the design stick out is the reposition of the menu. It gives the illusion of a completely new app, very streamlined and very clean. And very beautiful.

Go and see the full extent of the design!

What are your thoughts on this piece of work? – Visit the original post here

 

 

 

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Does Silicon Valley Have A Diversity Problem?

Gender and Ethnic diversity. It’s been an uphill struggle to create equality in the workplace for decades. Just as we thought it was leveling out, Silicon Valley had to go an disrupt it. I guess it’s in the nature of the beast to disrupt certain qualities so, not really a surprise there.
The NY Times goes into more detail surrounding the diversity issue in tech companies. While there are no hard stats, or stats at all for that matter, the article states companies such as Apple, Google, and Facebook have all agreed in the seriousness of improving the gender and ethnicity within their companies. This may not be hard evidence or a resounding answer from Silicon Valley as a community/singular economy/independant business hub as these companies, albeit giant companies, are only three to come out of Silicon Valley amongst hundreds more. They all have a burning desire to make in the big bad world and disrupt markets in true SV fashion. What about their employee base? Just because they aren’t in the FTSE 100 their staff base doesn’t count in the world of diversity. Get it right guys!

Moving swiftly on…there have been studies on how a diverse employment crowd can have encouraging effects on the overall business. Claiming to make the workplace more creative and profitable because of the differentiation of opinion and work style, eventually one of those styles helps to progress the business and favour it heavily in the long run.
Elaborating on the creative side, the study mentioned in the NY Times article does reference ideation and innovation increasing along with the prospect of a more thought provoking company. That being said, on the totally flip side of the coin it mentions that in the US big corporates put huge amounts of money in to attracting a diversity in their workplace to only carry on receiving discriminatory lawsuits. That sounds like a good investment of money, doesn’t it? Don’t get that wrong, diversity in the workplace is a very important aspect to consider but, these big companies, they don’t really know what they are doing the social end of a multinational company, do they?

The second study referenced looks at the financial aspect to a diverse cohort. Now, this starts off with the correct analysis in relation to The Big Three SV Co’s. The top fortune 500 companies were regarded in this article to have a significantly higher financial performance, with those that had the highest representation of women board directors, that is. For example, a few stats for you digest would be along the lines of:

– On average, 53% of those with a higher body count of women board directors had a higher return on equity

– And, on average, 66% of those with a higher body count of women board directors had a higher return on invested capital.

This isn’t to say that male directors, CEOs, Founders and other senior members of large companies should be worried for their job. Quite the opposite! They should be encouraging the diversification of their company to aid it, not to hinder it.

This loops right back round to the original article. These huge companies need to start by acknowledging the problem which, apparently they have admitted to start doing. There are many levels of a company that this can benefit from. It’s not only the programmer and developer levels in a tech company but the project side, there are customers and clients and partners, there are a whole heap of staff also. There is no one role for any gender or ethnicity and the scope of the article relays that message. What is needed is for these groups of people to stand strong and gun for those roles because from an employers view, there is great value in confidence, enthusiasm and determination. Not to mention the right qualifications, background, motivation, occupational history, Location and so and so forth!

What are your thoughts, though?

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The North West Fund breaks £100m investment

If you were to ask a small group of people from all walks of life where the best start-up community was housed right here in the UK, they would most likely turn and say London. Now, that can’t be completely true because as the nation finds out every week, that community continues to grow and isn’t showing any signs of slowing down. Up and down the country there are companies and businesses dedicated to pushing the start-up and entrepreneurial spaces to their highest limits through programmes, institutions and even larger companies. The effect it is having on the nation is remarkable and soon it will overtake the importance of conglomerates for sure.

The North West of England has a very well funded start-up community right now. Recent buzz has been around the North West Fund which has reached an immense figure pushing over £100m. Staggering! The association has shown tremendous outcomes with the start-up community further up the country.

Providing finance from £25,000 to a whopping £2m, the North West Fund grants applications to start-up companies in the area, relocating to the area/region with the vision to develop and grow their business. The private sector has placed a huge chunk of money into this institution that topped up the funds to an incredible £150m. The figures have been released to show that more than 20% of the investments made have been into developing start-ups which is something we are super stoked to hear.

The business benefits of such a magnificent fund institution is that they reach out to numerous industries and disciplines. The arenas are: Digital & Creative, Biomedical, Energy and Environment. Amongst the eligibility criteria to apply for the available funds, not only do you have to be in the region to be eligible but also be no more than 249 employees and have various balance sheet and turnover funds below particular thresholds. It’s all outlined within the European Union business specifications as well so it’s suggested you do your reading, and plenty of it.

All in all, this is a fantastic association helping to fund start-ups in the areas they need it most – to develop and discover. The expansion of start-ups within the UK is reaching a phenomenal growth rate and is a very exciting place to be in and witness everything going on.
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A world of Podcasts

Podcasting is slowly becoming a huge market branching off from the likes of blogging and social media. Effectively, it is the same as blogging except instead of reading some words and looking at some pretty pictures, you actually hear the tone of voice behind the ideas and innovations. With a podcast you can infact truly determine the depth of the conversation and analyse the angles of communication through an individuals mind set. Reading is a huge global culture. It occurs every day from the sight of morning headline news to the vast pages in a legal document and the lunch menu at a team end-of-month munch-fest. You cannot escape it, even as you stare at the pixels on your laptop screen, text is everywhere.

Blogging is very much a big thing in the business world at the moment. It gives you the scope to put fingers to keys and hash out your internal thoughts, processes and levels of opinion. This is great and all but there is no real conversation, right? Some users find it difficult to find a voice for the internet when in fact they have a voice that they carry around with them everywhere. It almost makes it obsolete to write streams and streams of copy when talking about it with someone is actually the best form of getting your opinion heard and count for something. This is where the podcast comes in to play.
If you were looking to get some meaningful information on, branding let’s say. You may conduct several searches a day only to be overwhelmed with hundreds of thousands of results, the majority of which aren’t related to what you are trying to find.

A recent top-notch find was the ‘Branding Cow’ podcasts. The fairly new series of podcast injections takes a stance on brand analysis of unexpecting companies. They take a look at all aspects of the business and push their opinion out to the audience.

A feature of the podcast being a pre-recorded piece of content being fundamentally audio and no visual does mean you have to do your own search for what they are talking about. For example the first infrastructure they “dissect” is the Tim Ferriss podcast series. Being a very new series also means that Mr Ferriss may not have gotten around to optimising the bits and pieces they were speaking about but, thats kinda irrelevant right now.
What this did was actually invoke the action of going away and listening to one of the podcasts to get a feel of what they were talking about. Now this can be seen as a downside or a very strong promotional piece of communicating. The reason why it could be a downside is that if you are listening offline and deep underground in London, you can’t simply open up your browser and follow the narration of the analysis. This can understandably turn you off from going any further but it is definitely recommended to carry on. On the other hand, it makes you want to go and view what they are talking about. Therefore, this platform can be seen as extremely powerful in pulling traffic to the point of interest. Are you still following?

The underlying point is this…there isn’t one, frankly.
Any number of platforms can use this method of preaching what they believe in, it just so happens that with the increase of podcasts (especially now it is strongly displayed on the face of the latest iOS update) this may become the next biggest thing for pushing out marketing material. Or any material for that matter.

Big-Bucks Brand Reboot

In a world where major brands rule the roost, there is just no escaping their marketing campaigns is there, really. All you have to do is turn on your TV at home and when those mid-programme adverts come on it’s like a glaze descends over the eyes of the nation as each and every company tries to win you over with witty, ad hoc campaigns. With branding, our minds have been reconditioned to spot the bad design from the good a mile off. TV advertising acts in a similar way when adverts you have seen time and time again become so old that you no longer need to watch the whole advert, let along past the first 5 seconds, to understand the message they are putting across to you. The old adverts get forgotten about, but whenever a new one comes on your attention is immediately sucked back into the screen as your eyes transfix on to shiny new products and people.

So when Virgin decided to do a brand reboot for their Trains and chuck several million dollars at it, it was bound to be top notch. You may have seen the advert, you may not have. Sooner or later you are guaranteed to have seen the colossal expenditure in all its glory. The full one minute advert brags about the arrival of their customers and the speed at which it happened. The tagline ‘Arrive Awesome’ is the delivering line for the speedy service and is visualised by customers exiting the train in slow motion acting debonair and almost suave. A cheeky selfie is thrown in for good measure among streamlined business men and women and the odd cheeky chappy applying his sunglasses in a closed environment.

Over all the advert is very powerful. But is this because it’s Virgin and they have always appeared to be a very powerful brand or is it the $8 million figure that sets them apart?

The huge figure wasn’t all spent on the making of the video though, that much I may have breezed over. In fact, the marketing campaign that will be running continuous throughout all the Virgin brands will be for the next three years, and was a somewhat celebration piece for securing a further three years to run the west coast service. As ever, the Virgin marketing team have succeeded in making this campaign as irresistible as the last. Even though Usain Bolt doesn’t make an appearance, there is still hope yet for the likes of the Wi-Fi, Tv and Phone brand. Here’s to hoping!

On top of the pazazz of the Virgin trains, they are also looking to provide carriages with services replicated on the in-flight entertainment front. Better Wi-Fi, movies, TV, Beauticians. Yup, Beauticians! It’s no wonder they are one of the best train companies out there. If they had a Virgin train running on the Met line every 12 minutes, the commute to work would be sheer bliss!

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$1000 in 24 hours

Is it doable? Evidently, it is!

American entrepreneur and founder of AppSumo, Noah Kagan accomplished setting up a business, finding the right customers and made in excess of $1000 in just 24 hours. Taken on as a challenge, Kagan set out to set up and organise a business from nothing but his laptop and the resources he had readily available to him, and make a small amount of money with it in what might be considered as ‘no time at all’.

Many of us know that starting a business does require a lot of thought, validation and funds in order to get it off the ground. Kagan abolished the traditional steps and instead worked in a very succinct method for identifying his product, finding the solution and implementing the process to gain customers and accomplish the final goal, $1000.

Listen up because this can all be transferred into any start-up of any kind. The challenge made Kagan think about a problem he regularly faces himself. A regular eater of Beef Jerky who doesn’t have enough time to go out every day to buy it decided this would be his service. He provided the people with a Beef Jerky delivery service that could be opted in to for either 3 or 6 months at the low price of $20 per month. That equated to $0.67 worth of Jerky per day. After doing the math, Kagan quickly realised this amount of money was both cheaper and more viable than going out every day and buying singular bags at the local kwik-e-mart. Bargain!

With this in mind, the proposition started to take shape. The idea was forming in his head, he had the fundamentals now all he needed was the execution. He went through the various inception stages any business goes through: choosing a name and getting a website. For a low, low cost he acquired the site and after various name suggestions (noahisajerk.com) he settled with SumoJerky after his company, SumoApp but that’s neither here nor there in terms of relevancy, it’s only a small business, what can you expect with the span of a 24hr business?

Moving on…Kagan was essentially successful with his idea. He went through the necessary validation stages, asking people what they want as opposed to guessing what they need. Working backwards he saw a clear path to what he needed to do and how he needed to do it to succeed. A keen Kagan found that tools available to him such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn proved to be valuable resources for him when sourcing out potentially customers and businesses. He placed a referral scheme with his campaign, asking his friends to share his pre-made post so to reach out to more people. He would ask if the person he addressed was interested, if they weren’t he asked if they knew someone who would be. Never did he ask for that person to spam his or her friends with the business, nor did Kagan expect that to happen. He strategically placed the content in from of them, gave a smile and a cheeky wink and left them to decide whether or not to pass the message on. Simple as.

The end result saw Kagan walking away with over $3000 in revenue that equated to just over $1000 in profit neatly folded and placed in his back pocket. Under 24 hours, nothing but what was a personal problem (a first world problem) and the platforms on his laptop, and the occasional disruptive co-worker or mate, Noah Kagan successfully started and operated a fully functional business. In the end he turned a 24 hour business in to a minimum of 6 months with the packages he was offering. Think about the profit he would have made carrying on that model in a month…by the logic of what he made in a day, somewhere around the $20,000 a month, $240,000 a year, $720,000 after the first three years. PROFIT! That might be pushing it a little but you catch my drift.

 

To round up. Why can’t you do this? I’m not saying solve my personal issue because I’m too lazy to do that myself but, why can’t you make your own success story like Noah Kagan’s? Nothing is stopping you. Create that Side Hustle and hustle yourself some extra wonga on the side. Who knows, you might be the next Zuckerburg, Jobs AND Bezos all rolled into one.

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