Steve Case and JD Vance are speaking at Disrupt SF on startup opportunities outside of Silicon Valley

We’re excited to announce Steve Case and JD Vance will sit down for a fireside chat at Disrupt SF this September. There’s plenty to talk about, too, including the pair’s latest venture: A massive $150 million seed fund backed by an impressive group of investors that are targeted at startups outside of Silicon Valley.

As The New York Times put it after the fund’s announcement, the complete list of investors in the Rise of the Rest fund “may be the greatest concentration of American wealth and power in one investment fund.” It includes among others Jeff Bezos, Eric Schmidt, John Doerr, Jim Breyer, Dan Gilbert and members of the Walton, Koch and Pritzker families.

This fund is core to what Case and Vance are championing at Revolution. The Washington, D.C.-based venture capital firm primarily backs companies outside of major tech hubs. At Disrupt New York in May, Case told the audience that many regions are overlooked simply because investors can’t “get in their cars and drive to those companies” and he wants to convince other VCs to look outside of their comfort zones.

In August of 2017 Steve Case, founder of AOL and Revolution, tapped JD Vance to run Revolution as its Managing Partner.

“I don’t know if I’m ever going to be comfortable with being the media-dubbed spokesperson,” Vance told TechCrunch at the time. “But I do think you can talk about the issues and try to raise awareness or you can do something about the issues — my goal here is to try to do both. There’s an opportunity I’ve been given here with the platform the book has afforded.”

Vance is seemingly of the same mind as Case. In his book, which is a must read by the way, Hillbilly Elegy, he lays out his upbringing in Appalachia’s working class and explains the importance of striving to overcome obstacles — and startups outside the Valley have different obstacles to overcome than those located around San Francisco. As the managing partner of Revolution, we hear he has a keen focus that resonates with founders. Vance served in the Golf War, eventually graduating from The Ohio State and Yale and went on to serve as a law clerk and a principle at Peter Thiel’s  VC firm, Mithril Capital Management LLC.

Steve Case spoke at Disrupt NY last year about his current passion in shining a light on startups outside traditional tech hubs.

“It’s worth remembering that Detroit 75 years ago was like the Silicon Valley,” said Case at Disrupt NY in 2017. “At the time, it was the hottest innovation city in the country, because the automobile was the hot new technology at the time. Silicon Valley was like fruit orchards. These things change. But they lost their way. Detroit lost 60 percent of its population in the last 50 years and they went bankrupt because they lost their entrepreneur mojo.”

Case’s fireside chat was fascinating and we’re thrilled to have him back with Revolution’s managing partner, JD Vance. While Disrupt SF happens in the heart of Silicon Valley, there are plenty of founders, developers and investors who are constantly looking for opportunities in new regions — just like Steve Case and JD Vance.

If you’re looking to purchase tickets to Disrupt, you can grab those right here.

Klaxoon gets $50M to try to make boring meetings more interactive and productive

If you’ve ever been in a pointless meeting at work, odds are you’ve spent part of the time responding to messages or just putzing around on the Internet — but Klaxoon hopes to convert that into something a bit more productive with more interactive meetings.

The French startup today said it’s raised $50 million in a new financing round led by Idinvest Partners, with early round investors BPI, Sofiouest, Arkea and White Star Capital Fund also participating. The company offers a suite of tools designed to make those meetings more engaging and generally just cut down on useless meetings with a room of bored and generally unengaged people that might be better off working away at their desk or even taking other meetings. The company has raised about $55.6 million in total.

The whole point of Klaxoon is to make meetings more engaging, and there are a couple ways to do that. The obvious point is to translate what some classrooms are doing in the form of making the whole session more engaging with the use of connected devices. You might actually remember those annoying clickers in classrooms used to answer multiple choice questions throughout a session, but it is at least one way to engage people in a room — and offering a more robust way of doing that may be something that helps making the session as a whole more productive.

Klaxoon also offers other tools like an interactive whiteboard (remember Smartboards, also in classrooms?) as well as a closed networks for meeting participants that aims to be air-gapped from a broader network so those employees can conduct a meeting in private or if the room isn’t available. All this is wrapped together with a set of analytics to help employees — or managers — better conduct meetings and generally be more productive. All this is going to be more important going forward as workplaces become more distributed, and it may be tempting to just have a virtual meeting on one screen while either working on a different one — or just messing around on the Internet.

Of course, lame meetings are a known issue — especially within larger companies. So there are multiple interpretations of ways to try to fix that problem, including Worklytics — a company that came out of Y Combinator earlier this year — that are trying to make teams more efficient in general. The idea is that if you are able to reduce the time spent in meetings that aren’t really productive, that’ll increase the output of a team in general. The goal is not to monitor teams closely, but just find ways to encourage them to spend their time more wisely. Creating a better set of productivity tools inside those meetings is one approach, and that’s what Klaxoon seems to hope is the one that plays out.

What is Mix and How Do I Use it for My Business?

On June 30, 2018, StumbleUpon is moving to Mix. And the new platform has a few features that might be of interest to small business owners and entrepreneurs. Similar to StumbleUpon, the social network site that helps users discover unique and interesting things across the web, Mix provides a new way to discover and save people’s favorite things on the internet.

What is Mix?

Mix is created and provided by the makers of StumbleUpon. Like StumbleUpon, Mix is part of the Expa family. Expa works with proven founders to develop and launch new companies. Expa was founded by Garret Camp, co-founder of Uber and StumbleUpon.

Built upon the legacy of StumbleUpon, Mix enables you to curate and share the best of the internet. The platform learns what you love browsing and searching for across the web, to show you even more of what you are interested in.

So entrepreneurs and small business owners can use this site either as a research tool to learn more about their industry and passions, as a networking tool to connect with partners and customers who share their interests or as another way of sharing their content with a specific target audience.

From articles and images to videos and music, you can save anything from anywhere on Mix. As long as it’s on the internet, you can add your favorite things to Mix.

The social media platform enables you to delve deeper into new topics and explore interests with greater comprehension. Rather than being merely a source for breaking news, Mix is aimed at taking its users deeper into the things that interest and matter to them, helping them learn more about their favorite topics and discover new and interesting things.

On this interactive and engaging online discovery site, you can share what you find with other users who have similar interests.

How Do You Use Mix?

You need to set up an account with Mix to be able to start using the site. You can set up a Mix profile with a StumbleUpon, Facebook, Twitter or Google account. When setting up on Mix, you’ll need to tell the site what you are passionate about surfing on the internet, in order for Mix to provide you with the news, information and recommendations you’re interested in.

The different categories of interest include cooking, technology, popular culture, travel, space, healthy living, nature, history, lifehacks, the environment, activism, art, outdoors, fashion and much, much more. Based on your selections, Mix then provides you with relevant stories and information from around the web to enlighten you about your passions.

You can create your own profile on Mix, including a bio and image. From your profile, you can post content and share it across the Mix platform, as well as onto other social media sites, including Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest. You can also email posts on Mix to chosen recipients.

Like other social media platforms, Mix is centered on interacting with other users by following people with shared interests and passions and growing your own list of followers.

It is important to note that Mix should not be confused with Mixx. Similar to Mix, Mixx was a user-driven social media site that enabled users to find content based on their interests. Through articles, images and videos, Mixx allowed users to search, discover and share media relevant to their interests and interact with other users. In 2011, Mixx became Chime.in, which has since terminated its services.

The new company Mix.com is built on content discovery. Garret Camp, Expa’s CEO, spoke of the ethos of this new content exploration site.

“Mix’s mission is to connect the curious with the creative, delivering personalized recommendations one click at a time. Mix will provide a modern and elegant way to discover the best content like by friends and experts, from across the web to your mobile device.”

Have you registered yet on Mix.com? We’d love to here what you think about the site.

Image: StumbleUpon

This article, "What is Mix and How Do I Use it for My Business?" was first published on Small Business Trends

This newly funded startup wants to help women gauge their reproductive health a lot sooner in life

It’s often the case that women don’t think much about their reproductive health until they have to. Sometimes it begins with an aside from a well-meaning gynecologist — or one’s impatient parents. Sometimes, it’s because a couple is ready to try conceiving and it’s proving harder than they imagined it would be.

A San Francisco-based startup called Modern Fertility wants to educate women about their reproductive health much earlier in their lives, enabling them to become more “proactive” instead of reactive, says cofounder and CEO Afton Vechery, who worked formerly as a product manager at the genetic testing company 23andMe and, before that, at a healthcare-focused private equity firm in Greenwich, Ct.

At both places, she learned a lot about the growing number of companies that are empowering customers with information about their own bodies. She also learned, particularly at 23andMe, about the important of making that information affordable. Indeed, after shelling out $1,500 for tests run by an reproductive endocrinologist to get a better picture of her own reproductive health, Vechery set out to create similar tests that are far more affordable. Toward that end, an at-home finger-prick hormone test that Modern Fertility began selling today sells for $199.

It owes to economies of scale, says Vechery. Though there are just 500 infertility clinics in the U.S. and roughly 6,000 endocrinologists — just 2,000 of which are focused on reproductive health — the cost of individual testing has been prohibitively high. Modern Fertility meanwhile has “systems and tech and integrations that support a high volume of tests” conducted at the same time, she explains (and with volume comes discounted pricing.

Modern Fertility is not analyzing its customers’ hormones itself. It is using Quest Diagnostics, the 50 year-old, publicly traded clinical laboratory company. (“We’re not making new instruments,” says Vechery. “Our differentiation is in access and the information that we provide to women.”)

In fact, Modern Fertility is also billing itself as more of an educational company than anything else. While it tell consumers about nine hormone levels related to ovarian reserves and overall reproductive health — which can be important, especially when it comes to considerations around egg freezing —  much of what it offers is related content based on peer-reviewed studies about menopause and when women typically start to lose their fertility.

Customers also receive one optional one-on-one phone consultation with a fertility nurse who won’t give out medical advice but can share more information about which hormones are being tracked and why.

For the price, that may be enough for many women. It was enough for investors. They just provided the startup with $6 million in funding led by Maveron and Union Square Ventures, which were joined by Sound Ventures, #Angels, SV Angel and additional individual investors.

No doubt these backers see a future where an offering like that from Modern Fertility is a perk offered by employers, more of which are offering fertility benefits to keep their employees happy and in place. Already, Vechery says that a “handful of companies” are interested in layering Modern Fertility’s tests into their other wellness benefits.

Modern Fertility is also counting on repeat customers, given that re-taking every now and then will give a woman a better idea of how her “fertility curve” is changing over time.

In the meantime, she says, Modern Fertility — cofounded by Carly Leahy, a creative strategist who moved to California from Boston in 2014 after Google recruited her and who most recently logged two years at Uber —  will be adding to its current, eight-person team.

It will also be “trying to understand the best way it can get this information” to potential customers, says Vechery.

“We want to meet women where there are and educate them that this type of testing is important.”

Pictured above: Modern Fertility cofounders Afton Vechery, left, and Carly Leahy

It’s getting harder to buy a puppy in the U.K.

(This post originally appeared on The Washington Post)

If you run a pet shop in the United States you should be keeping an eye on what’s going on across the pond in Britain. Pet stores and other third-party sellers there are finding it harder to sell puppies, and the trend is growing here as well.

According to a recent BBC report, more than 143,000 people in the United Kingdom signed a petition that supports “Lucy’s Law,” a proposed legislation that bans the sale of puppies by businesses. The effort is being led by a woman who said her own dog, Lucy, suffered years of abuse at a puppy farm. The issue was debated this week in Parliament.

In the U.K. an estimated 80,000 dogs are sold annually as part of the country’s legalized puppy trade, which includes pet stores, farms and people’s homes. Unfortunately, the industry has created a growing number of “sick, traumatized and dysfunctional” dogs, according to the petition, particularly due to premature removal from their mothers.

The laws in the U.K. for businesses selling puppies have already become more stringent. Puppies must be at least 8 weeks old before they can be sold, and the pup must be shown for sale only in the presence of its mother. Animal welfare advocates there — including comedian Ricky Gervais and other celebrities — say those restrictions are not enough. Government ministers have promised to explore the issue further in coming months.

The battle is heating up in the United States.

The Puppy Mill Project, an advocacy group based in Chicago, says there are an estimated 10,000 puppy mills in the United States where more than 2 million dogs are bred each year. According to U.S. News and World Report, Maryland and California have passed laws in the past year banning retail pet stores from selling puppies and kittens, and more than 250 municipalities have their own restrictions. Lawmakers in Ohio, New York, Pennsylvania and New Jersey are working on similar legislation.

But some U.S. pet stores are fighting back. A lobby representing the industry has been behind legislation in Arizona and Ohio that preempts municipalities from passing bans on pet store sales of puppies.

10 Gelato and Shaved Ice Franchises to Compete with Rita’s

In 2016, gelato accounted for approximately 5% of the $14.3 billion U.S. ice cream market. So, opening a gelato and shaved ice business can prove lucrative for entrepreneurs.

Still, like any business, starting from scratch can be challenging, particularly when it comes to competing with large gelato chains. One option is to become a gelato and shaved ice franchisee and open a store with an established brand.

Gelato and ice cream franchises have experienced massive growth over past five years leading up to 2017, according to one published report.

Starting from a humble porch in Philly Rita’s Italian Ice went on to become an international phenomenon with more than 600 locations across the U.S. and around the world. The brand remains a testament to the huge demand for gelato and shaved ice and the potential success of franchising within this industry.

Gelato Franchises to Consider

Of course you could always choose from a number of other franchises besides Rita’s when seeking a successful gelato or shaved ice opportunity with an established brand.

Gelato Go

An established gelateria brand throughout America, Gelato Go, offers franchising opportunities for proactive and determined entrepreneurs looking for a share of the profitable gelato market. A total investment of $183,500 to $400,100 is required to open a Gelato Go store. And franchisees will receive comprehensive training.

Papalani Gelato

Papalani Gelato serves gelato, frozen yoghurt, sorbetto and many more iced goodies across the U.S. The company offers franchise opportunities in the U.S., encouraging people to start their own fun and rewarding business. Depending on where you open a Papalani Gelato business, the costs can range from $152,475 to $478,550.

Amorino

Amorino provides Italian gelato available in a whole host of flavors, with customers being able to create their own Amorino rose gelato. Amorino gelaterias are available to franchise across America. The company looks for impassioned self-starters who are keen to contribute to the success of Amorino. Details about franchise costs are available upon application.

Shaved Ice Franchises to Consider

Mustache Mike’s Italian Ice

Mustache Mike’s Italian Ice manufactures Italian ice in California and then distributes it throughout the U.S. This popular Italian ice brand offers franchise opportunities the company describes as simple, flexible and providing excellent profit margins. The company doesn’t charge franchise fees and as the products are non-dairy, there are no health department issues.

Kona Ice

Kona Ice is another shaved ice opportunity in the U.S., with more than 800 shaved ice truck franchises across the country. An investment of $110,750, includes a franchise fee, inventory pack and truck.  The company seeks a strong, personal commitment and an active involvement in opening the business in order to become a Kona Ice truck franchisee.

Bahama Buck’s

Bahama Buck’s offers opportunities to run a shaved ice and tropical dessert shop for entrepreneurs wanting to surround themselves with fresh ingredients and innovative products. Bahama Buck’s says its franchising system is a proven ‘Plan to Win’, with support given by a team of professionals with experience in developing people and products. The initial cost for a Bahama Buck’s franchise ranges from $233,326 to $770,532.

Hokulia Shave Ice

If you fancy putting your flipflops on and working at the beach each day, then why not open a Hokulia Shave Ice store in a sunny location. Hokulia is one of the nation’s premier shaved ice and tropical dessert franchises. Franchisees need to make an initial investment of $81,500 to $133,500 covering start-up costs, equipment, inventory, payroll and ongoing support.

Tikiz

Another shaved ice truck franchise, Tikiz, has been offering opportunities for entrepreneurs to start their own businesses since 2012. With a financial investment of between $132,000 and $144,000, you too could be selling shaved ice and other frozen products from a Tikiz truck, which comes with a top-of-the-line high output ice shaver.

Wanna Chill?

From shaved ice to frozen yoghurt, smoothies to acai bowls, Wanna Chill? offers another growing shaved ice brand. The company offers three franchising options: a cart you can tow, a food truck, or a Wanna Chill? store. Investment requirements vary depending on which of these three franchise options you choose, ranging from a $51,000 initial investment to around $186,000.

Ohana Bros

Inspired by the world travels of the Ohano Bros Surfer Dudes, Ohano Bros stores specialize in Hawaiian shave ice and a variety of other products. For an investment ranging from $192,670 to $368,070, entrepreneurs with enthusiasm to sell shaved ice can grab themselves an Ohana Bros franchise business.

Photo via Shutterstock

This article, "10 Gelato and Shaved Ice Franchises to Compete with Rita’s" was first published on Small Business Trends

Scout.fm turns podcasts into personalized talk radio

Scout.fm wants to change the way people listen to podcasts. Instead of scouring through the over 500,000 available shows available in your current podcast app, this startup’s new curated podcast service will just ask you a few questions to find out what you like, then create a podcast station customized to you. The experience is primarily designed for use on smart speakers, like Amazon’s Alexa-powered Echo devices, but is also available as iOS and Android applications.

The company was founded just over a year ago by Cara Meverden (CEO), previously of Google, Twitter, Indiegogo, and Medium; along with Saul Carlin (President and COO), previously Head of Publisher Development at Medium, and before that, Politico; and Daniel McCartney, (CTO) previously an engineer at GrubHub, Klout and Medium.

At Medium, Meverden explains, they saw an explosion of people creating great written content; but now those publishers had begun to create great audio content, as well.

But unlike on Medium, which helps to guide readers to topics they like, people today have to seek out new podcasts for themselves. Scout.fm wants to offer a better system, and hopefully bring more listeners to podcasts as a result.

“We want to take podcast listening mainstream,” she says. “We think the key to that is making podcasts as easy to listen to as the radio – and we think that’s even more critically important, as we enter the smart speaker era.” 

The Scout.fm service began as a series of experiments on Alexa.

The company launched over 30 Alexa skills, including a “Game of Thones”-themed podcast radio that was popular while the show was airing on HBO. The goal was to test what worked, what topics and formats drew listeners, and gain feedback through calls-to-action to participate in user surveys.

The result is Scout.fm, a curated podcast service that’s personalized to your listening preferences – and one that improves over time.

Here’s how it works on the Alexa platform. You first launch the app by saying “Alexa, open Scout.fm.” The app will respond (using a human voice actor’s voice, not Alexa’s) by explaining briefly what Scout.fm does then asks you to choose one of three types of talk radio stations: “Daily news, brain food, or true stories.”

The first is a news station, similar to Alexa’s “Flash Briefing;” the second, “brain food,” focuses on other interesting and informative content, that’s not day-to-day news; and the last is a true crime podcast station.

The voice app will then ask you a few more questions as part of this setup process to find out what other subjects appeal to you by having you respond, on a scale of one to ten, how much of a history buff you are, or how much you’re interested in culture, like art, film and literature, for example.

On subsequent launches, the app will simply ask if you want to return to your “Brain Food” (or other selected) station. If you say no, you can try one of the other options.

However, once the setup process is over, the experience becomes very much like listening to talk radio.

A podcast will begin playing – Scout.fm favors those without ads at the very beginning – allowing you to listen as long as you’d like, or say “next” to move to the next one. Each new podcast episodes has a brief, spoken introduction that Scout.fm handwrites, so you know what’s coming up. Your listening can go on for hours, offering you a hands-free means of switching podcasts and discovering new favorites.

The app will also adjust to your preferences over time, removing those you tend to skip – much like how the thumbs down works on Pandora.

Scout.fm doesn’t include every podcast that’s out there. Instead, it’s a curated selection of a few hundred with high production values, narrative storytelling and tight editing.

“So if we listen to something and the two co-hosts kind of go on for half an hour at the beginning, that’s not a great podcast for this format,” Meverden says. “We want shows where they’re going to get right into it. That right away limits things, but there’s still an abundance of content.”

For example, some of the podcasts Scout.fm includes come from The Wall St. Journal, The New York Times, ESPN, and podcast networks like Gimlet, Wondery, Parcast and others.

The same curated selection of podcasts is also available in Scout.fm’s mobile apps for iOS and Android, which work with the voice assistant on the phone. (For example, you can tap your AirPods to wake Siri then say “Next” to move between podcasts.)

“If you’re jogging, our apps are an excellent companion because you don’t have to go back to your phone and try to find a new thing to listen to,” notes Meverden.

Since Scout.fm’s launch, it has accrued 1.5 million minutes listened across its network of experimental apps ahead of today’s public debut. The Alexa user base listened for twice as long as mobile users.

Currently, the service is not generating revenue, but, in the future, the team envisions call-to-action ads that could work with the Alexa app to share more information about the products, as well as ways it could utilize the newer in-app purchase mechanisms for Alexa skills.

The company is backed by $1.4M in seed funding from Bloomberg Beta, Precursor Ventures, Advancit and #Angels.

“The Scout team’s unique insight is that podcasts, no matter how good, won’t go mainstream until it is much simpler for consumers to find and listen to the content that’s right for them,” said Charles Hudson, managing partner at Precursor Ventures, in a statement about the investment. “The fast adoption of smart speakers changes this. We can open up podcasts to an entirely new audience,” he said.

Scout.fm is available on Alexa, iOS and Android.

A Guide to Boston Startups

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Boston recently ranked first among the top 25 startup hubs in America. Discover some of the elements that make Boston an ideal place for entrepreneurs.

In the past, Boston has been an underestimated player in the startup scene. However, it recently ranked first among the top 25 startup hubs in America, according to a report by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation and startup incubator 1776. The findings are based on talent, specialization, capital, density, connectivity, and cultural statistics, among other data. “Boston earned the top spot by having clear emphasis on next generation tech companies specializing in education, energy and healthcare industries,” according to the Boston Business Journal.

Not only is the city of Boston a startup hub, next-door neighbor Cambridge is thriving, thanks in part to the plethora of world-class universities located nearby. Facebook and Microsoft are just two of the most famous examples to come from the intellectual capital of the United States. That’s one of the reasons tech leaders are taking notice of the area’s impressive growth. Companies like Amazon and Twitter have opened headquarters on the East Coast or established offices in Boston.

The Boston Startup Scene

In addition to high quality of life ratings and a welcoming regulatory environment for startups, Boston has a lot to offer. Because of critical factors like a collaborative community and innovative business concepts, its growth as a startup hub is expected to continue. There are many elements that make Boston an ideal place for entrepreneurs and startups. Here are just a few:

Access to Venture Capital

For companies looking for access to startup funds, the city is ideal. “Boston has topped the charts alongside California for the most venture capital per capita invested in the U.S.,” according to the Startup Institute. This figure increased 37 percent in 2014, as Massachusetts companies raised $4.2 billion in venture capital funding.

Its status as a startup hub makes Boston highly attractive to investors. Numerous “super-angels and angel groups” have institutionalized, creating a broader set of seed-stage funds, according to investment capital firm NextView Ventures. “A handful of industry-focused funds have also burst onto the scene. These promise to add significant expertise and capital,” NextView Ventures says.

Spirit of Innovation

Boston’s tech giants, top-tier universities, and medical centers are constantly driving new developments in technology, energy, culture, politics, education, health care, and more. Boston’s startup culture makes it a hotbed for growth and new ideas. Even companies in the early stages are growing fast, hiring larger staffs, and boosting the local economy.

A collaborative approach to entrepreneurship means that more established enterprises continue to drive innovation, working with local talent and smaller startups to create what The Next Web calls “a tech mecca.” Top-tier universities also contribute to the area’s startup culture with new ideas and the latest research.

An Ecosystem of Support

There are more than 40 university and industry incubators and accelerators throughout the state of Massachusetts, The Next Web points out. This means that entrepreneurs have access to the resources they need for success.

Local government is playing an important role as well: “City Hall has built programs that support startups to help Boston evolve into a world-class tech ecosystem, including the hiring of the first ‘Startup Czar,’ an advocate for the city’s entrepreneurs and early-stage businesses,” The Next Web continues.

Boston also offers other resources. Professional services like legal, public relations, and finance abound, so Boston startups have access to the support they need. In addition, companies like Techstars Boston, MassChallenge, and Startup Institute Boston provide guidance and other resources to first-time founders and entrepreneurs. These programs provide selected early-stage ventures with office space, capital, mentorship, peers, industry connections, investor introductions, and other support. In addition, Cambridge Innovation Center (CIC), founded in Cambridge’s Kendall Square, supports more than 1,000 companies in the startup community by providing infrastructure and co-working space. CIC has also expanded to include a Boston center.

The Talent Pool

As home to more universities than any other city in the United States, Boston is full of well-educated young professionals — 39.2 percent of adults ages 18 to 34 in Boston have a bachelor’s degree. The city is also home to many of the top STEM schools in the country. This means that a large amount of tech research and development is taking place locally.

The talent pool feeds an impressive tech sector workforce as well. JLL’s 2015 Technology Office Outlook report found that Boston is second only to Silicon Valley. The Boston Redevelopment Authority Research Division’s Boston’s Economy report in 2015 also found that employment in high tech industries has grown 9 percent each year since 2010. Consequently, there is a wealth of both raw and seasoned talent to choose from in the area.

Women Are Major Players

Boston has a positive startup climate for women, with female-led startups in mobile, health care, finance, and other industries. Statewide, there was a 21.4 percent growth rate of women in tech between 2009 and 2013, putting Massachusetts second among competing tech states, The Next Web reports.

Twenty-nine percent of startup founders in the city are female — second only to Chicago, which has 30 percent female founders, according to the Global Startup Ecosystem Ranking report. For example, the CEOs of Boston startups like Baroo and Care.com are female, and more than 10 percent of companies “invested in by some top venture capital firms are women founded in Boston,” according to Alice Rossiter, founder of Alice’s Table. Considering the average is 3 percent, this statistic is indicative of the important role women play in the Boston startup culture.

5 Boston Startups

The following are just a few of the many startups that call Boston home. Their industries range from fitness to utilities, but each business is focused on innovation and bringing new ideas to the marketplace.

• Circle was founded in 2013 by Jeremy Allaire, who also helped create online video platform Brightcove. This venture aims to bring digital currency like bitcoin into mainstream commerce by “building products to make it easier for consumers and merchants to accept the currency,” according to Mashable.
• Runkeeper is a fitness app that allows users to track their workouts. It was founded in 2009 and was cofounded by Michael Sheeley, who later began working with another area startup, Mobee.
• Boundless was founded by Aaron White, Ariel Diaz, and Brian Balfour in 2011. Its goal is to help students save money by offering free online textbooks and “high-quality content from the Web,” Business Insider says.
• WegoWise focuses on reducing energy and water usage by gathering utility information and sharing it with users. The company was founded in 2010 by Edward Connelly, DeWitt Jones, and Barun Singh. WegoWise aims to “make buildings more energy efficient and to simultaneously save customers money,” according to Planted, an online talent community.
• Whole Heart Provisions is a vegan fast-casual restaurant founded in 2015 by chef Rebecca Arnold and restauranteur James DiSabatino. Whole Heart Provisions offers healthy food options in a quick-serve setting for an affordable price.

From examples like these, it’s clear that startups in Boston are thriving. The city offers “a passionate and talented workforce and an abundance of investors and government support—all the things that position this city as a high-tech force to be reckoned with,” The Next Web says.

The Path to Success

Lesley University’s online business degree programs are ideal for those looking to create innovative business ventures like the ones featured here. Lesley’s online BS in Business Management features a curriculum focused on management skills that prepare graduates for a variety of business careers.

Lesley also offers an online MS in Management degree. This program prepares graduates to become business leaders. It uses a multidimensional approach to leadership that helps students develop the skills for successful entrepreneurship.

Republished by permission. Original here.

Photo via Lesley University

Photo via Shutterstock

This article, "A Guide to Boston Startups" was first published on Small Business Trends

Neighborhood Goods raises $5.75M to reinvent the department store

Neighborhood Goods, a startup rethinking the traditional department store experience, is announcing that it has raised $5.75 million in seed funding.

Co-founder and CEO Matt Alexander told me via email that while the largely static layout and offerings of a department store provide a degree “consistency and reliability,” they’re also “dull and unchanging,” as well as “fairly transactional with little more to provide.”

So instead, Neighborhood Goods will allow around 15 brands to create their own “activations,” each highlighting the aesthetic and products that the brands choose. (Bulletin is another startup looking to bring a pop up approach to traditional retail.) The store will also have a restaurant and bar, and communal spaces that could be used for things like speaking events or art installations.

“At Neighborhood Goods, we’re creating something more social and communal around an ever-changing landscape of products,” Alexander said, later adding, “Neighborhood Goods ostensibly takes the polish and approachability of the typical department store, but combines it with the dynamism and community of a pop-up store or pop-up marketplace.”

He also said technology will play a big role in the experience — particularly with an iOS app that will allow customers to learn more about the brands, text the staff, have products brought to them and make purchases.

The funding was led by Forerunner Ventures, with participation from Maveron, CAA Ventures, Global Founders Capital, NextGen Venture Partners, Dollar Shave Club founder Michael Dubin and Retail Connection co-founder Alan P. Shor (who’s also joining the board of directors).

“Community and emotional connection are a big part of what drives consumer spending — something Matt and [co-founder Mark Masinter] understand wholeheartedly,” said Forerunner’s Kirsten Green in the funding announcement. “The delicate balance of both experience and discovery is reshaping the retail industry as shoppers crave brands that are unique and worth getting excited over.”

Neighborhood Goods plans to open its first location — a 13,000-square-foot store in Plano, Texas — this fall. Asked why he chose Plano, Alexander said:

Specifically, we’re able to tap into an aggressive consumer market, whilst bringing brands closer to exceptional customers. And we’re able to do so without the brands having to invest exorbitant amounts, hiring extensive retail teams, or developing marketing initiatives from the ground-up in new markets … That’s not to say we won’t look at markets like LA, NY, and SF in future, but, as a launchpad for a new concept, Plano is uniquely good for us today.

15 Sales Objections Your Small Business Will Face and How to Handle Them

Picture this. You’re on the phone with a prospect and your sales pitch is going smoothly. They’re responding positively to everything you say and you think you have this sale locked down. Then comes the dreaded objection. They don’t agree with your pricing, your features, or they just simply don’t have the ability to implement your product or service at the moment. But this doesn’t mean that all hope is lost. Rather than getting downtrodden and simply hanging up the call, you can navigate those objections and turn them into opportunities.

Tips for Overcoming Sales Objections

Here are 15 common sales objections and some suggestions for handling them so you can continue to grow your business.

Your Services Cost Too Much

The most common objectives that sales professionals tend to get are about price. Some prospects legitimately don’t understand the value of your product or service, while others who have every intention of buying simply want to see if you’ll offer a better deal. So rather than immediately dropping the price, call attention to the features that add value for them.

We Don’t Have the Budget Space

Another objection that’s related to price, this slight difference does require a slightly different approach. Since it has more to do with the prospect’s own cash flow issues rather than a problem with how they perceive the value of your product or service, you can navigate this issue either by working out an alternative payment plan that allows them to balance their budget in the short and long term or by arranging a time to speak again in the next quarter.

We Don’t Have the Time to Implement This Product/Service

Time is another pressing issue for a lot of potential customers. This can be especially relevant for B2B software companies or those that sell systems that need to be implemented throughout an organization. In these instances, it’s best to give a realistic estimation of how long that product takes based on the experience of past buyers — it may be shorter than they think. It can also help to call their attention to the pain points of their current situation. Perhaps they’re wasting a ton of time by not using your product, so that implementation period can easily be made up in the weeks that follow.

It’s Not the Right Time

Vague brush-offs like this one can be difficult to navigate. Try to segue the conversation into a question about their pain points. Perhaps they don’t have the time to speak right now because their organization isn’t running efficiently, which your product or service could help with. However, it’s also important to read the conversation and know when to stop, so you can reach out to them again later without them having formed a negative opinion of your pushy tactics.

I’ve Never Heard of Your Business

In some cases, a prospect might be interested in what you have to offer, but not necessarily sold on getting it from your business in particular. Without getting into a lengthy explanation, provide some quick and valuable information about your company and why they should trust you. You could share how long you’ve been in business, how many products you’ve sold, or even point them to some testimonials on your website, which they might not even check out but feel better knowing they exist.

Your Product/Service Is Missing an Important Feature

If your product doesn’t have a specific feature that a prospect is looking for, you could try suggesting a complementary product that they could use in conjunction with yours. If it’s easy to implement and less expensive than a more fully featured offering, they might consider. If not, they’re probably just not a good fit.

Your Product/Service Doesn’t Work for Our Business Currently

This objection could be another sign that your offering simply isn’t a good fit for a prospect. However, it is a good opportunity for you to ask questions and find out what features or services the company is looking for, or what they might be looking for in the future. This can help you determine if this lead is still worth pursuing, and could help you create a more beneficial pitch down the road.

I Don’t Understand Your Product/Service

If a prospect simply doesn’t understand what you’re selling, it’s a great opportunity for you to explain it in basic terms. Make sure you frame your explanation in a way that details how the experience will look to them and how it can benefit them, rather than focusing on the technical elements.

I Don’t See the Need for This Product/Service

If they aren’t sold on the need for your product or service, call attention to their current pain points and relate the benefits of your offering directly back to them.

I Don’t Want to Make Any Change

Complacency is a pretty common objection, and one that gives you an opportunity to ask questions. Find out why they’re happy with their current setup and why they’re hesitant to make a change. This could lead to an opening for you to really call attention to how your offering could help with their current pain points.

I Don’t Want to Get Stuck in a Contract

Contracts are a major issue for buyers. They don’t want to get stuck with a product or service if they’re not 100 percent sure they’re going to be satisfied. It can also be a sign of cash flow concerns. So if possible, see if they’d be interested in a month-by-month version of your product or even a trial period, rather than locking them into a full year or whatever your lengthy contract period is.

I’m Locked into a Contract with Another Company

If the prospect is already in agreement on a contract with a competitor, you can try to come up with a creative discount that could help them offset the cost of breaking that contract, or call attention to the ROI of using your product over your competitor’s.

It’s Just Not a Priority Right Now

This objection is an opportunity for you to ask questions about what the prospect’s priorities are. Once you get that information, you could use it to formulate a pitch that positions your product to help with those specific priorities. It can also help to create a sense of urgency by referring back to their specific pain points.

I Can’t Sell This to My Boss/Partner

If the objection is a question of authority within an organization. It suggests that the person you’re speaking to is sold, but the higher-ups won’t be. In this case, see if you can set up a time to speak with them directly. If not, ask the prospect what objections they anticipate so that you can address them.

I Need to Run This By My Partner First

A similar objection with slightly more optimistic outlook, this phrase gives you the opportunity to set up a meeting with that third party or schedule a specific time to get back in touch with the prospect. Ask if they need any information or materials from you if they’ll be reaching out, so you can increase the likelihood of a positive outcome.

Photo via Shutterstock

This article, "15 Sales Objections Your Small Business Will Face and How to Handle Them" was first published on Small Business Trends

Trilogy Education gets $50M to build a market-driven bootcamp program for universities

While coding bootcamps may be in the middle of a shakeout, technology companies around the world are still going to be struggling to fill slots with people equipped with the skills to tackle real-world problems right from the get-go — and Dan Sommer hopes the answer is through universities.

That’s the premise behind Trilogy Education, which today said it is raising another $50 million round after raising $30 million last year. This round is led by Highland Capital Partners, with participation from new investorsDan Sommer and Macquarie Group. The company works with around 35 universities to identify skills gaps that they can fill with programs — such as through continuing education — that can get students ready to work at a variety of technology companies right away. Throughout all this, the startup works to collect data and feedback on each course and tune it as workforce needs change over time.

“The mission of these institutions through these programs is to open access to new types of learning,” Sommer said. “The average age of the student that takes one of these programs is approximately 32. We have students in classes that are 19 and some that are 76. If you zoom out and you think about the transformation that’s happening overall in the workforce, and you think about the number of open positions in the areas, that’s where we focused. I believe universities are the place where individuals should go to learn new skills.”

All this is increasingly relevant as tasks that machine learning-driven tools can tackle — such as autonomous driving — may end up displacing millions of jobs and requiring those individuals to learn a new set of skills in order to find some new employment. Companies are internally recognizing that in some ways, such as through tools like Degreed, which look to help employers identify those same skills gaps and find ways to train their own employees to fulfill those more complex knowledge worker roles. Degreed raised $42 million earlier this year, and there are still other programs like MissionU (which raised $8.5 million late last year) looking to rethink education as the tech economy booms.

Still, there has indeed been a shakeout in the coding bootcamp world. Whether a product of just not keeping up with workforce demands or struggling business models, there have been several that have shut down. Galvanize in August last year said it would lay off around 11% of its staff, while Dev Bootcamp and Iron Yard shut down altogether. And for some employers, all it takes is a few bad interviews from one of those bootcamps to lay down a layer of pessimism across the board, depending on who you talk to out here in the Valley.

That may be why Trilogy Education is partnering directly with universities. By doing that and running the programs through those universities, it can piggyback on the substantial brand equity they’ve built up over time. Trilogy Education says it gathers feedback from each class — either through surveys or other data points — and uses that to provide its university partners with robust reports on ways to tune the model and what specific roles to go after for potential programs. Trilogy Education works with programs in UI/UX, data analytics and visualization, cybersecurity and web development. The curriculum itself is developed centrally in Github. The goal here is to ensure that the programs are future-proofed and to “teach students how to learn,” Sommer said.

That software extends to the programs’ connections with students as well. Trilogy Education helps track student performance, helping universities identify which students might be falling behind and need additional tutoring. For students that are outperforming, it helps connect them with the resources to progress even faster and potentially begin teaching some elements themselves as a way to acquire additional soft skills in addition to the core program.

“The sincerest sign of learning is when a student that has learned Angular in class all of the sudden builds a portfolio project in React,” he said. “We’re focused on teaching people how to learn more so than teaching people how to learn any particular technology or skill. We’ve made over 7,000 changes to the curriculum over the last 3 years. It’s truly a piece of software, it changes over time. We bring in a market-driven curriculum fully vetted through the institution.”

ShortPixel Image Optimizer Can Speed Up Your Business Site

There are plenty of reasons you need a faster website, but the top two include keeping your visitors happy and getting a higher Google page rank.

In fact, starting this July, Google will be using page speed as a ranking factor for mobile searches.

There are lots of ways that you can increase your website’s loading speed, including applying sophisticated caching or even upgrading to a faster server, but one of the easiest and cost-effective way to go about it is to reduce the size of images that are displayed on your website.

And get this right, this doesn’t mean literally reducing the size of the image. You want larger images for better visibility. However, image files contain a lot of unnecessary data that once removed makes file sizes smaller, allowing your website pages to load much quicker, without any visually detectable loss of quality.

Installing the ShortPixel Image Optimizer

The sign-up process is fast and easy. Just go to shortpixel.com and you will receive your API Key and password after signing-up on your email. They have a wide range of pricing plans, ranging from the Free Plan to the $49 per year plan. The free plan includes 100 image optimization credits per month.

How ShortPixel Works

ShortPixel offers image optimization via an API from their cloud. They also plan to add other tools as client libraries for Ruby and Java, plugins for Magento and Joomla and a mobile app.

For a simple image optimization, just click the compress button on your account and you will then be allowed to choose your compression level that ranges from Lossy to Glossy to Lossless. You can as well optimize up to 50 files at once. The acceptable formats include PNG, Jpeg and GIF. You can as well compress PDFs.

Here is the before and after photo. It is safe to say that there is no noticeable loss in quality.

ShortPixel On Your WordPress Site

ShortPixel also has a WordPress plugin that allows you to optimize all your WordPress images with just a push of a button.

To get started, search for ShortPixel on WordPress.org, download and install.

Before you start using the plugin, ShortPixel will ask you for an API key, which would have already been sent to your email upon signing up.

Make sure you choose your compression level, which basically tells ShortPixel how aggressively you want to compress your images. The default Lossy setting is okay, but if you want high-quality photos you might want to choose between the less aggressive Lossless and Glossy options.

ShortPixel Pricing

Besides the free plan that you can use to test out the optimizer, there are a number of other monthly and one-time paid plans.

If you just want to optimize a ton of images (not more than 10,000 images at a go) then you should try the one-time $9.99 plan.

The monthly and one-time plans are adequate for any small business owner that seeks to optimize his/her website images. However, bigger companies can go for the Dedicated Servers option that gives them a dedicated physical server and for $1,000 per month they are able to get up to 16 million optimizations per month.

Conclusion

Overall, ShortPxel offers a solid service and it is easy to use. The optimized images are smaller in size, yet the quality is as good as advertised.

For occasional bloggers, the free plan might just be enough, but a small business owner running an e-commerce site or a blog would still get a decent number of image credits for a fair price. Upload the compressed images to your website and take note of the faster page loading speeds.

Image: ShortPixel

This article, "ShortPixel Image Optimizer Can Speed Up Your Business Site" was first published on Small Business Trends

Virtru secures $37 million Series B led by Iconiq

Virtru, the security startup that came out of research at the NSA, announced a $37 million Series B financing round today led by Iconiq Capital.

The company also announced the formation of Virtru Labs, an entity to be led by company co-founder and CTO Will Ackerly. The Lab will act as an innovation engine for the company, while trying to make Virtru’s underlying technology, Trusted Data Format (TDF), an industry standard for exchanging data securely in a similar manner that PDF developed into a standard way of exchanging documents.

CEO and co-founder John Ackerly (and brother of Will) says this has been a goal since the earliest days of the company and starting the lab is one of the reasons they wanted to raise this round. “My brother and I firmly believe you need an open framework in order to achieve the vision of true default security,” he told TechCrunch.

They believe by investing time and dollars to get third parties to adopt the TDF and adopting all tiers of this data format, it could remove the friction we have today when data is being shared across systems, while eliminating vendor lock-in.

The company currently offers tools for end-to-end email encryption in G-Suite and Office 365, but they hope to expand to file sync and share applications and chat. They also want to promote technical partnerships through the SDK they launched earlier this year. Finally, they want to expand globally by growing a channel partner system.

Ackerly says all of that takes money and that’s why they went looking for this round. It didn’t hurt that the company has experienced explosive growth over the last year adding 3000 new customers for a total of over 8000 using their products, while tripling revenue (they did not provide an exact figure).

Ackerly says one of the reasons for this growth is an increasing desire on the part of users to have a trust mechanism for sharing information online. “If you look at our partnership with Google, with Microsoft, with Amazon; these are all platform companies that are coming to grips with this privacy imperative. We are in a crisis of trust as a society and Virtru has always taken the approach of partnering closely because these workflows matter to end users,” he said. He adds that this really wouldn’t work if the company tried to create a new set of tools.

Vitru has around 80 employees today and Ackerly expects that to grow by around 50 percent over the coming year as they move into new markets, grow the lab and expand channel and partner support.

The round was led by Iconiq Capital with participation from returning investors Bessemer Venture Partners, New Enterprise Associates, Samsung, Blue Delta Capital, and Soros Capital. Today’s round brings the total raised to over $76 million since the company was founded in 2011.