Reuben's Blog: August 2019

Saturday 31 August 2019

Get Attention for Your Business-to-SMB Product or Service, Read More

Speaking with the media can be great marketing for your small business. Make the most of it by asking 5 questions when preparing for a media interview.
Key to the success of small businesses across the country is finding the right suppliers. And the Business-to-Small-Business marketplace (B2SMB) is essential in finding the best suppliers.

The 2019 BEST2 SMB AWARDS will recognize the best brand to small businesses with the products, services and innovation the provide.

With a market value of $500 billion, the B2SMB supports 30+ million small business who buy products and services in the U.S.

The yearly award is organized by the B2SMB Institute, which looks to bring together the highly fragmented B2SMB marketplace.

The mission of the organization is to ensure the growth of B2SMB professionals so they can succeed by winning, keeping and growing small business customers.

The B2SMB Institute’s Influencers’ Circle will choose the winners. The influencers are an independent council of journalists, bloggers, thought leaders and authors.

Anita Campbell, CEO and Founder of Small Business Trends, is one of the judges who will be choosing the winners.

The awards luncheon will showcase the winners on October 3, 2019, at the B2SMB Institute’s Global Conference in Chicago.

The deadline for all submissions is 5 pm EDT, September 4, 2019.

You can enter for free, so click the red button to get the submission guide.

Submission Guide

Featured Events, Contests and Awards

Best SMB Awards
September 04, 2019, Online

Does your product or service stand-out in the crowded marketplace for Small Business? The B2SMB Institute invites any enterprise that markets, sells and delivers products and/or services to Small Businesses to submit their entry for the 2019 Best2SMB Awards. We’ll be awarding excellence and achievement in three categories: Best2SMB Product or Service Offering, Best2SMB Innovation, Best2SMB Brand of the Year. We will also be awarding our first-ever Best2SMB Hall of Fame recipient.

Free seminar: Learn how to optimize your business (San Francisco, CA)
October 15, 2019, San Francisco, Calif.

Join us to learn how one complete view of your business, with apps that effortlessly integrate, can enhance your productivity, increase customer satisfaction, and help you effectively collaborate with staff, partners, and investors. Our free educational seminar will cover basics of the Zoho One platform, plus tips, tricks, and best practices to help optimize your business.

Listening to the Voice of the Customer
October 16, 2019, Chicago, Ill.

Led by veteran product development and market research experts, this course will introduce Voice of the Customer (VOC) market research and teach you to use it to accelerate innovation in business-to-business markets. The workshop uses a lively, interactive format with numerous hands-on activities and practice exercises to build skills and will also expose you to the latest applications of these techniques in areas such as machine learning and journey mapping.
Discount Code
SMALLBIZ ($100 Off)

Free seminar: Learn how to optimize your business (Irvine, CA)
October 17, 2019, Irvine, Calif.

Free seminar: Learn how to optimize your business (San Diego, CA)
October 18, 2019, Online

Free seminar: Learn how to optimize your business (Miami, FL)
October 22, 2019, Miami, Fla.

Free seminar: Learn how to optimize your business (Boston, MA)
October 24, 2019, Online

Free seminar: Learn how to optimize your business (New York, NY)
October 25, 2019, New York, N.Y.

Free seminar: Learn how to optimize your business (Seattle, WA)
November 12, 2019, Online

Free seminar: Learn how to optimize your business (Denver, CO)
November 14, 2019, Denver, Colo.

Free seminar: Learn how to optimize your business (Chicago, IL)
November 15, 2019, Chicago, Ill.

Free seminar: Learn how to optimize your business (Atlanta, GA)
November 19, 2019, Atlanta, Ga.

Small Biz: Banking Conference
November 19, 2019, Los Angeles, Calif.

The small biz: banking conference delivers access to thought leadership, best practices and leading solution providers. Discover how industry leaders attract and retain small business deposits, fee-based services, and loans, and much more.
Discount Code
BIZTRENDS ($200)

Free seminar: Learn how to optimize your business (Dallas, TX)
November 21, 2019, Dallas, Texas

Free seminar: Learn how to optimize your business (Phoenix, AZ)
November 22, 2019, Phoenix, Ariz.

More Events

DigiMarCon Europe 2019 – Digital Marketing Conference & Exhibition
September 12, 2019, Amsterdam, Netherlands
Launching a Business – Application Deadline
September 13, 2019, Oakland, Calif.
DigiMarCon Asia Pacific 2019 – Digital Marketing Conference & Exhibition
September 18, 2019, Singapore
World’s Largest MBA Tour is Coming to Philadelphia – Register for FREE
September 30, 2019, Philadelphia, Pa.
DigiMarCon Singapore 2019 – Digital Marketing Conference & Exhibition
October 02, 2019, Singapore, Singapore
World’s Largest MBA Tour is Coming to Miami – Register for FREE
October 16, 2019, Miami, Fla.
World’s Largest MBA Tour is Coming to Austin – Register for FREE
October 21, 2019, Austin, Texas
TECHSPO Dubai 2019
October 22, 2019, Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Rhodium Weekend
October 24, 2019, Las Vegas, Nev.
World’s Largest MBA Tour is Coming to Denver – Register for FREE
October 28, 2019, Denver, Colo.
Small Business Expo 2019 – LOS ANGELES (October 30, 2019)
October 30, 2019, Los Angeles, Calif.
IMPACT>MOBILITY USA 2019
November 04, 2019, San Diego, Calif.
HR World 2019
November 14, 2019, Nashville, Tenn.
4th Annual Blockchain Opportunity Summit 2019
December 10, 2019, New York, N.Y.
Pitch Deck Summit
December 11, 2019, Austin, Texas
National Small Business Week
May 03, 2020, Online

More Contests

This weekly listing of small business events, contests and awards is provided as a community service by Small Business Trends.

You can see a full list of events, contest and award listings or post your own events by visiting the Small Business Events Calendar.

Image: Depositphotos.com

This article, "Get Attention for Your Business-to-SMB Product or Service, Read More" was first published on Small Business Trends

Startups Weekly: Peloton’s 29 secret weapons

Hello and welcome back to Startups Weekly, a weekend newsletter that dives into the week’s noteworthy startups and venture capital news. Before I jump into today’s topic, let’s catch up a bit. Last week, I wrote about a new e-commerce startup, Pietra. Before that, I wrote about the flurry of IPO filings.

Remember, you can send me tips, suggestions and feedback to kate.clark@techcrunch.com or on Twitter @KateClarkTweets. If you don’t subscribe to Startups Weekly yet, you can do that here.

What’s new?

Peloton revealed its S-1 this week, taking a big step toward an IPO expected later this year. The filing was packed with interesting tidbits, including that the company, which manufacturers internet-connected stationary bikes and sells an affiliated subscription to its growing library of on-demand fitness content, is raking in more than $900 million in annual revenue. Sure, it’s not profitable, and it’s losing an increasing amount of money to sales and marketing efforts, but for a company that many people wrote off from the very beginning, it’s an impressive feat.

Despite being a hardware, media, interactive software, product design, social connection, apparel and logistics company, according to its S-1, the future of Peloton relies on its talent. Not the employees developing the bikes and software but the 29 instructors teaching its digital fitness courses. Ally Love, Alex Toussaint and the 27 other teachers have developed cult followings, fans who will happily pay Peloton’s steep $39 per month content subscription to get their daily dose of Ben or Christine.

“To create Peloton, we needed to build what we believed to be the best indoor bike on the market, recruit the best instructors in the world, and engineer a state-of-the-art software platform to tie it all together,” founder and CEO John Foley writes in the IPO prospectus. “Against prevailing conventional wisdom, and despite countless investor conference rooms full of very smart skeptics, we were determined for Peloton to build a vertically integrated platform to deliver a seamless end-to-end experience as physically rewarding and addictive as attending a live, in-studio class.”

Peloton succeeded in poaching the best of the best. The question is, can they keep them? Will competition in the fast-growing fitness technology sector swoop in and scoop Peloton’s stars?

In other news

Last week I published a long feature on the state of seed investing in the Bay Area. The TL;DR? Mega-funds are increasingly battling seed-stage investors for access to the hottest companies. As a result, seed investors are getting a little more creative about how they source deals. It’s a dog-eat-dog world out there, and everyone wants a stake in The Next Big Thing. Read the story here.

Rounds of the week

Time to Disrupt

Don’t miss out on our flagship Disrupt, which takes place October 2-4. It’s the quintessential tech conference for anyone focused on early-stage startups. Join more than 10,000 attendees — including over 1,200 exhibiting startups — for three jam-packed days of programming. We’re talking four different stages with interactive workshops, Q&A sessions and interviews with some of the industry’s top tech titans, founders, investors, movers and shakers. Check out our list of speakers and the Disrupt agenda. I will be there interviewing a bunch of tech leaders, including Bastian Lehmann and Charles Hudson. Buy tickets here.

Listen

This week on Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, we had Floodgate’s Iris Choi on to discuss Peloton’s upcoming IPO. You can listen to it here. Equity drops every Friday at 6:00 am PT, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast and Spotify.

Learn

We published a number of new deep dives on Extra Crunch, our paid subscription product, this week. Here’s a quick look at the top stories:

How Pivotal got bailed out by fellow Dell family member, VMware by Ron Miller
How to use Amazon and advertising to build a D2C startup by Matt Altman and Tyler Elliston
Customer success isn’t an add-on — Start early to win later. By Dale Chang and Jay Nathan.

10 Unique Strategies and Expert Tips for Your Small Business

Is your business stuck in neutral? If you want to take things to the next level, you might need to access new tools and resources. Things like video marketing, expert insights and even memes can help you break out of a rut and help you grow effectively. Here are tips from members of the online small business community for utilizing these strategies.

Boost Your Traffic With Video Marketing

Video can be a powerful medium for getting a message across to your potential customers. But it can also help you drive traffic to your website and other online content. Learn more about this process and how to make the most of it for your business in this Search Engine Watch post by Nat McNeely.

Learn How to Use Memes for Your Marketing Message

If you’ve spent any time online over the past several years, then you’re probably familiar with memes. But what you might not know is that they can actually help your marketing efforts. Julia Enthoven dives into the concept and offers some helpful tips in this Social Media Examiner post.

Stand Out from the Competition on Social Media

Your business probably already uses some social media platforms for promotion and communication. But chances are, your competitors use them too. If you want your business to stand out, read the tips in this post by Moss Clement of Moss Media. Then see what BizSugar members are saying about the post here.

Survive SEO Algorithm Changes

SEO can be one of the most effective online marketing tactics for any business. But constant algorithm updates can change things in an instant. If you want to survive those upgrades, you might want to follow instructions that come right from the source — Google. Neil Patel explores Google’s advice in this blog post.

Use Squeeze Pages to Generate Leads

Are you dissatisfied with how your website is performing in terms of lead generation? You might be better off driving new potential customers to a squeeze page instead of your basic home page. Michal Leszczynski examines the concept and offers tips for using squeeze pages in this GetResponse post.

Boost Your Business with Marketing Podcasts

If you’re looking for new ways to improve your company’s marketing strategy, you might be able to find some unique tips and insights from podcasts. In this TopRank Marketing post, Lane Ellis lists ten options for marketers to add to their regular rotation.

Address the Cyber Skills Education Gap

If you have a small team working for your small business, you might notice a difference in skills when it comes to using various tech tools. Instead of only seeking out people who already have specific, in-demand skills, you can use education to close that gap. David Wagner elaborates in this post on the SMB CEO blog.

Learn from Other Google My Business Listings

Google My Business can be a very effective way for local companies to reach new customers. If you want to make the most of it, you could try learning from what others are doing. In this Bright Local post and video, Kristian Bannister details findings from a recent study and explains what they mean for other companies.

Get Motivated by Expert Entrepreneurs

Motivation is essential for running any successful venture. If you’re feeling a bit unmotivated, it can help to turn to the experts. Carol Roth shares motivation from more than 150 entrepreneurs in this post. And BizSugar members weighed in with thoughts here.

Save Money for Your Business

No matter what types of marketing or growth strategies you want to try for your business, you probably need some kind of funding. If you’re not able to access extra capital, you need to find ways to save money on your regular operations. Check out this Daily Bits post by Fleur Hamilton for tips.

If you’d like to suggest your favorite small business content to be considered for an upcoming community roundup, please send your news tips to: sbtips@gmail.com.

Image: Depositphotos.com

This article, "10 Unique Strategies and Expert Tips for Your Small Business" was first published on Small Business Trends

Most Trusted B2B Brands in 2019

Sagefrog 2019 B2B Trusted Brands Report

Your brand is just as important as your product to overall business success. The 2019 B2B Trusted Brands Report from Sagefrog lists the ones who are the most trusted. Small Business Trends contacted Mark Schmukler, CEO & Co-founder to find out the names and what small businesses need to look for in the B2B companies they work with.

Sagefrog 2019 B2B Trusted Brands Report

FedEx

This was the company that took the number one spot. Good news for SMBs that are shipping goods and or services and need a courier to rely on. One of the filters that helped FedEx take the number one ranking was trust.

It’s a great metric for SMBs looking to make the right B2B choice. The right decision is about more than name recognition.

“Customers trust the top-scoring B2B brands because they take a personal approach to content,” Schmukler writes. “They demonstrate shared values with customers, and stay current with marketing tactics.”

Good advice for your own marketing efforts. And when narrowing down B2B choices like suppliers.

Apple

If you’re an ecommerce or omnichannel company, you’re no stranger to the technology this mainstay offers. Another important lesson from the report is awareness doesn’t equal trust. For small business, that means you shouldn’t sign on with the most recognizable brand. It’s important to look for those little extras like the abovementioned personal approach to content.

Schmukler underscores this aspect.

“This was one of the biggest takeaways from this year’s report. Personalized content that connects with customers on what they care about will always be one of the keys to building trust.”

American Express, UPS and Amazon took the next three positions. Trust is becoming the biggest deciding factor as the fields get more crowded in the B2B sector.

“B2B trust is important now more than ever. Because customers are constantly seeing and hearing messages from B2B companies vying for their attention. They know who the companies are, so the question becomes: who do they trust?”

For the small business, this is also about aligning yourself with authentic businesses. This is a big deal especially when you work online.

Other Important Points

The report also highlighted some other important points. People were making B2B decisions based on referrals. Customers needed to hear good things about any company they wanted to do business with. Johnson & Johnson, Google and LinkedIn were in the six, seven and eighth positions.

That translates into some advice for small businesses.

“Small businesses should look for positive reviews and companies that have long-standing contracts with similar companies to their own.”

Other Takeaways for SMBs

There were some other takeaways for small businesses. Even in the big pond of social media, some companies were able to stand out. Case in point was LinkedIn. They were able to bump up their brand trust by “establishing a strong professional reputation,” according to Schmukler.

They showed how it was possible to break away from the competition in your industry by working the pr angle.

In fact, LinkedIn being listed in the top 10 brands was a surprise. It’s a big deal. Consider other companies in the same space like Twitter, YouTube and Facebook had trust factor scores 30 points lower.

The features that set LinkedIn apart included sponsored InMail and their general professional appearance.

The industry your business is in has a relationship to how trusted you are too. The report found high scores in the shipping industry for companies like UPS and FedEx. Communication businesses like Verizon and AT&T scored in the middle. Financial institutions like Goldman Sachs and Wells Fargo were lower on the trust ranking.

Something else to think about if you’re planning a small business start up.

Image: Depositphotos.com

This article, "Most Trusted B2B Brands in 2019" was first published on Small Business Trends

Labor Day Special: One extra week on early-bird pricing for Disrupt SF 2019

Happy (almost) Labor Day to all the hardworking members of the early-startup community — entrepreneurs, founders, investors, engineers and everyone in between. We know how hard you work to build your dream, so we’re cutting you a break and extending our early-bird pricing on passes to Disrupt San Francisco 2019 through 11:59 p.m. (PST) on September 6. One extra week to save up to $1,300.

Don’t fritter away this absolute last opportunity to save big bucks on our flagship event, where you’ll find more than 10,000 attendees, 400 media outlets and a passel of eager investors. Get your early-bird tickets now.

Disrupt events always feature incredible speakers, and we’ve got an amazing agenda lined up for you this year. Let’s take a look at just some of the discussions and interviews you’ll enjoy over the course of three Disruptive days.

Reigniting the Space Race: Blue Origin CEO Bob Smith intends to return the U.S. to crewed spaceflight, with a goal of doing so this year with its first suborbital trips. Hopefully, we can also get Smith to tell us the ticket price for a trip, once it begins taking on paying customers.

Could the U.S. Government Be Your Next Investor: No founder likes dilution, which is why the U.S. government is becoming an increasingly popular source for early-stage, ambitious venture capital. Hear from Steve Isakowitz (The Aerospace Corporation) along with other VC leaders and founders who have navigated the process to discover your next source of non-dilutive capital.

How to Build a Sex Tech Startup: As the old adage goes, sex sells. Cyan Banister (Founders Fund), Cindy Gallop (MakeLoveNotPorn) and Lora Haddock (Lora DiCarlo) will discuss the opportunities — and challenges — of building a successful sex tech startup, and how to capitalize on a market that’s projected to be worth more than $123 billion by 2026.

The Grass Is Greener: The cannabis industry is projected to reach $50 billion in 10 years. Keith McCarty (Wayv) and Bharat Vasan (Pax Labs) represent two of the biggest names in the market. Hear the duo talk about an industry with undeniable potential, but plenty of red tape to deal with, too.

Quite the appetizer, no? Then there’s the big event that everyone wants to watch — Startup Battlefield. Which awesome startup will outshine the rest and take home $100,000?

Want to meet and greet even more top early-stage startups? Be sure to stop by Startup Alley and connect with the TC Top Picks — and hundreds of other cool startups. This year, our editors hand-picked 45 companies that represent the very best in their tech categories. Check the list of winners right here so you can see which ones you want to meet IRL.

Disrupt San Francisco 2019 takes place October 2-4. Enjoy your Labor Day weekend, but be sure to take advantage of the one-week early-bird price extension. Buy your passes to Disrupt SF and save up to $1,300 — but only if you beat the new deadline: September 6 at 11:59 p.m. (PST).

Is your company interested in sponsoring or exhibiting at Disrupt San Francisco 2019? Contact our sponsorship sales team by filling out this form.

Bear Robotics is raising big bucks for robots that deliver food to restaurant patrons

Some days, it feels like there’s almost no end to the number of jobs that might be replaced altogether or in some part by smart machines, from radiologists to truck drivers to, gulp, journalists. You might be tempted to sob about it to your friendly restaurant server, but wait! It’s a robot, too!

So it may be if the 25-person, Redwood City, Calif.,-based startup Bear Robotics has its way. The two-year-old company makes “robots that help,” and specifically, it makes robots that help deliver food to restaurant customers.

It’s a market that’s seemingly poised for disruption. As Bear says in its own literature about the company, it was founded to address the “increased pressure faced by the food service industry around wages, labor supply, and cost efficiencies.”

CEO John Ha, a former Intel research scientist turned longtime technical lead at Google who also opened, then closed, his own restaurant, witnessed the struggle firsthand. As the child (and grandchild) of restaurateurs, this editor can also attest that owning and operating restaurants is a tricky proposition, given the expenses and — even more plaguing oftentimes — the turnover that goes with it.

Investors are apparently on board with the idea with robot servers. According to a new SEC filing, Bear has so far locked down at least $10.2 million from a dozen investors on its way to closing a $35.8 million round. That’s not a huge sum for many startups today, but it’s notable for a food service robot startup, one whose first model, “Penny,” spins around R2-D2-like, gliding between the kitchen and dining tables with customers’ food as it is prepared.

At least, this is what will theoretically happen once Bear begins lining up restaurants that will pay the company via a monthly subscription that includes the robot, setup and mapping of the restaurant (so Penny doesn’t collide with things), along with technical support.

In the meantime, Bear’s backers, which the startup has yet to reveal, may be taking a cue in part from Alibaba, which last year opened a highly automated restaurant in Shanghai where small robots slide down tracks to deliver patrons’ meals.

They may also be looking at the bigger picture, wherein everything inside restaurants is getting automated — from robotic chefs that fry up ingredients to table-mounted self-pay tablets — with servers one of the last pieces of the puzzle to be addressed.

That doesn’t mean Bear or other like-minded startups will take off any time soon in restaurants that aren’t offering a futuristic experience. One of the reasons that people have always headed to restaurants is for good-old human interaction. In fact, with take-out ordering on the rise, people — waiters, bartenders, restaurant owners who flit around the dining room to say hello — may prove one of the only reasons that customers show up at all.

Friday 30 August 2019

In the News: Recession Warnings Don’t Worry Small Business Owners

Recession talk continues to make headlines and small businesses can’t avoid getting caught up in it — or can they?

Two pieces of news reached us this week that indicate small business worries about a recession are pretty low or non-existent.

Earlier this week, the Money Anxiety Index found that small business owners are generally not worried about their financial situation — any more than usual — and definitely not worried about a possible recession.

And then we heard about another survey this week that echoed similar sentiments. However this one could be a result of general lack of planning on the part of small business owners. The survey found 44% of small businesses in the U.S. have no plan for an economic recession.

For more news unrelated to the predicted recession, check out the rest of the week in headlines in our small business news and information roundup below.

Marketing Tips

Brick and Mortar Marketing: Secrets You Must Know

Many popular retailers are going out of business these days which can make it seem even riskier to have a brick and mortar business. With so many stores moving online, I still believe that small local businesses can survive and even thrive. It all comes down to how you market it and manage profit.

39% of US Businesses Have No Employer Brand Strategy, How About Yours?

Brand strategy generally means the effort which takes place with the consumer side of a company. But it also applies to the workforce of an organization. Employer branding now plays an important role in recruiting and retaining the best candidates. However, a report from iHire shows businesses are not all the way on board with this concept. More than two thirds or 39.

Retail Trends

Consumer Buying Habits: What You Need to Know

Has your retail business kept pace with the way consumers prefer to buy today? Shopping habits are changing faster than ever. And there are a myriad of options for shoppers to choose from. So it’s a good idea for every small retailer to regularly consider.

Social Media

When Contacting Your Business, Generation Z Prefers Phones Over Social Media

Social media gives consumers more access to the brands they like. And brands are using these channels to engage with their customers on a more personal level. But this relationship is changing as users reexamine the impact of social media on their lives.

82% of Job Seekers Try to Hide their Social Media Profiles from You

Background checks are par for the course when it comes to applying for a new job. In the past, this meant checking references, criminal records and even drug use. But with the advent of social media, companies are now trying to check every post from a candidate. So, it is not surprising 82% of people seeking jobs try to hide their social media profile with some degree of privacy settings.

Startup

How a Small Business Saved 20 Hours Per Week With This One Technology

Traditional small businesses may be hesitant to dip their toe into new technology. But for 5P Consulting, a small consulting firm founded in San Diego, technology is the very business of their business. 5P Consulting’s mission is to optimize organizations and drive them to improve business productivity through process and technology.

Can Emotional Exhaustion Cause You to Quit a Profitable Business?

Are you not clear about your job as a small business owner? Are you frequently having work-family conflict? If your answer is yes, then you need to take a paradigm shift for your own good.

12 Small Business Tips from Podcasts Used by the Pros

Not all the advice that a budding business leader hears on a podcast will be particularly actionable or beneficial. There is, however, some very good information and perspectives out there.

Image: Depositphotos.com

This article, "In the News: Recession Warnings Don’t Worry Small Business Owners" was first published on Small Business Trends

At-home blood testing startup Baze rakes in $6 million from Nature’s Way

By now, the venture world is wary of blood testing startups offering health data from just a few drops of blood. However, Baze, a Swiss-based personal nutrition startup providing blood tests you can do in the convenience of your own home, collects just a smidgen of your sanguine fluid through an MIT manufactured device, which, according to the company, is in accordance with FDA regulations.

The idea is to find out (via your blood sample) what vitamins you’re missing out on and are keeping you from living your best life. That seems to resonate with folks who don’t want to go into the doctor’s office and separately head to their nearest lab for testing.

And it’s important to know if you are getting the right amount of nutrition — Vitamin D deficiency is a worldwide epidemic affecting calcium absorption, hormone regulation, energy levels and muscle weakness. An estimated 74% of the U.S. population does not get the required daily levels of Vitamin D.

“There are definitely widespread deficiencies across the population,” CEO and Baze founder Philipp Schulte tells TechCrunch. “[With the blood test] we see that we can actually close those gaps for the first time ever in the supplement industry.”

While we don’t know exactly how many people have tried out Baze just yet, Schulte says the company has seen 40% month-over-month new subscriber growth.

That has garnered the attention of supplement company Nature’s Way, which has partnered with the company and just added $6 million to the coffers to help Baze ramp up marketing efforts in the U.S.

Screen Shot 2019 08 30 at 2.27.12 PM I had the opportunity to try out the test myself. It’s pretty simple to do. You just open up a little pear-shaped device, pop it on your arm and then press it to engage and get it to start collecting your blood. After it’s done, plop it in the provided medical packaging and ship it off to a Baze contracted lab.

I will say it is certainly more convenient to just pop on a little device myself — although it might be tricky if you’re at all squeamish as you’ll see a little bubble where the blood is being sucked from your arm. For anyone who hesitates, it might be easier to just head to a lab and have another human do this for you.

The price is also nice, compared to going to a Quest Diagnostics or LabCorp, which can vary depending on what vitamins you need to test for individually. With Baze it’s just $100 a pop + any additional supplements you might want to buy via monthly subscription after you get your results.

Baze’s website will show your results within about 12 days (though Schulte tells TechCrunch the company is working on getting your results faster). It does so with a score and then displays a range of various vitamins tested.

I was told that, overall, I was getting the nutrients I require with a score of 74 out of 100. But I’m already pretty good at taking high quality vitamins. The only thing that really stuck out was my zinc levels, which I was told was way off the charts high after running the test through twice. Though I suspect, as I am not displaying any symptoms of zinc poisoning, this was likely the result of not wiping off my zinc-based sunscreen well enough before the test began.

For those interested in conducting their own at-home test and aren’t afraid to prick themselves in the arm with something that looks like you might have it on hand in the kitchen, you can do so by heading over to Baze and signing up.

Jeremy Epstein of Never Stop Marketing: Blockchain Can Make CRM’s Future Decentralized and Disrupt Ownership of Data

I’ve known Jeremy Epstein for years going back to his days at Microsoft. But over the past couple of years he’s been one of the leading voices in the blockchain space, working with a variety of startups focused on bringing the technology to a host of industries. So I try to touch base with him from time to time to see how things are progressing in the space and what implications are starting to emerge. And of course one of the areas I’m keeping a special interest in is how blockchain could impact CRM.

Blockchain and CRM

I recently caught up to Jeremy, and I mean literally caught up with him, as we recorded a conversation while he was walking in the forest near his home. So this was definitely a different kind of conversation, but a fun one in addition to being extremely informative and insightful. And we cover a lot of ground as Jeremy Epstein touches on the current state of blockchain development, how the number of tech startups has grown roughly 20X over the past couple of years, the industries being impacted the most, and his future prediction of how blockchain will disrupt CRM as we know it today.

Below is an edited transcript of our conversation. To hear the whole interview watch the video or click on the embedded SoundCloud player below.

Blockchain and CRM

Brent Leary: Give me a high-level, overview synopsis of where, and particularly where the enterprise and the tech enterprise… Where are they in terms of blockchain adoption? Is this early days? Have we even begun the game yet? Just tell me where we are with it.

Jeremy Epstein: Okay, well, I’ll put this in terms that I know you can understand. We are well past kickoff, and we are into the first quarter. There’s a few points on the board, no major touchdowns, a couple field goals maybe, but the way I would substantiate that claim is as follows. Two weeks ago, we conducted what we call our Blockchain Marketing Immersion Day for OMD, as I’m sure you know, one of the world’s leading agencies. We had the entire C-suite there, top-level strategy, account planners, probably 75 people in the room for a full day, and we helped them understand, or we just shared our knowledge about, what we see happening in the intersection of blockchain technology with the marketing function.

On top of that, we had seven curated and hand-picked vendors, who are sort of the leaders in the space. And what was really interesting to me is, at the very beginning of the day, our client sponsor there surveyed his colleagues, and he said, “How many of you have either had a conversation with your clients or have had a conversation that your clients initiated about how to potentially use blockchain technology to reduce ads, ad fraud, increase transparency, improve billing reconciliation, improve loyalty, all types of things like that?” I would say that maybe 10% to 15% of the room put their hands up.

Now, you could say that’s not a lot, but I would say that two years ago, the answer would’ve been zero.

Brent Leary: Wow.

Jeremy Epstein: And so, the most important thing, I would say, is we’re seeing validation on the demand side from agencies, from brands. We’re talking with multiple innovation marketing leads at top-50, top-100 brands about how to use these technologies, and we’re trying to advise and help them understand the market because the second part of this story is the explosion of vendor offerings on the supply side.

We have this thing which we borrowed liberally from our mutual friend Scott Brinker (chiefmartec.com) called the Blockchain MarTech Landscape. We started tracking all the vendors in the space. Two and a half years ago, or three years ago, when we did the first one, there were 22. We just released version four this month. There are 415.

Brent Leary: Wow.

Jeremy Epstein: And so, the vendor space is exploding as people start to say, “Wait a second. How do we use this distributed technology? How do we use cryptographic tokens? How do we use all these new capabilities to improve the operational efficiency, the transparency, the trust, most importantly, of the marketing function?”

Brent Leary: Is it mostly driven by marketing blockchain tech, or are there other categories that folks are getting in on?

Jeremy Epstein: Yeah, great question. So, for the most part, we copied the Brinker landscape. We’ve since added a few that are unique only to blockchain. The biggest categories are, not surprisingly, programmatic advertising, things like that, because you don’t have to be an expert in advertising to know just how screwed up that ecosystem is, and it has blockchain written all over it. So, that’s where the heaviest concentration is, but if you look at the landscape, you’ll see that it’s really covering a lot of parts nicely, and it’s been very exciting to literally watch this industry get born and start to mature.

Brent Leary: All right. So, it sounds like… Like you said, we’re… Are we into the first quarter, moving into the second quarter? Is that where we are with this?

Jeremy Epstein: Yeah, I would say we’re in the first quarter because the third part of this triad, if you will, is the pilot and the case studies. So, for example, there’s one company called Lucidity. I should disclose I’m an advisor to Lucidity, so keep that in mind. But they did a A/B test with Toyota where it was for a campaign designed to drive test drives, and the A team had all the traditional infrastructure, everything they were doing normally, what have you. The B team used… They weren’t the B team meaning they’re less good. They were just the second team. They used Lucidity to basically simplify the backend process.

When all was said and done, the reconciliation, the insurance, the assurance that the ads were being delivered where they had been purchased, all that kind of stuff… when it was said and done, they had a 21% improvement in business outcome, not in click-throughs, in business outcome.

Brent Leary: Wow.

Jeremy Epstein: And we’ve seen a bunch of those from people like Amino and other players who are now really starting to get some traction and demonstrate the value of the solution.

So, increased interest on the buy side, increased supply on the vendor side, and most importantly, actual true measurements of value delivered in the pilot and initial implementation phases. Still early. We’re probably one or two drives into the game, but I can see just from the people in the room and the conversations that we’ve had, more and more people are taking this stuff seriously, which… It’s going to be great for a lot of people. So, it’s good to see that.

Brent Leary: Last year, didn’t see that much discussion from the CRM vendors about blockchain. This year, I’m seeing it. Salesforce did a real big rollout in terms of blockchain, CRM, and they had a use case with higher education about being able to leverage centralized data from these participating colleges and universities because, let’s face it, there are people, there are students that take courses and classes at multiple colleges, and it’s kind of hard to see their total transcript because it’s hard to get them from here and there and over here. So, they roll out this use case of being able to have an agreed-upon, common, universal transcript that the colleges, universities have participated and bought into, and then Salesforce, being able to provide a tool that leveraged that centralized data and marries it with what they have on the CRM side.

So, you’re starting to see these use cases of CRM data being leveraged alongside of decentralized, blockchain data, and it’s basically use cases that are industry-driven. All right. That’s the one use case that I’ve seen across the board. But when I talked to, and when you talk with CRM Evolution, that’s not the CRM blockchain scenario that you’re focused on. All right. So, I can set the stage for you.

Jeremy Epstein: That is-

Brent Leary: Let me get out of the way and let you talk about what your vision is for CRM and blockchain.

Jeremy Epstein: Right. I’m either a total visionary or a total idiot who should be put away into an asylum. So, we’ll find out in a few years. Look, the stuff that all those guys are doing, it’s nice. It’s the kind of thing that will make data cleanliness less of an issue because, as a former CMO, I’m very familiar with those issues, and that’s fine. That’s great. It’ll make marketing operations more efficient, but that’s not where the innovation’s coming from. So, as long as you have a centralized database, it’s not really… that’s under the control of anybody, or even a small group of people, it’s not really a blockchain.

I’m a purist in the sense that there’s distributed ledger technology, which will help all these colleges and universities, but a blockchain requires a native cryptographic digital asset to pay for the services that the network provides. Now, in order to do that, by definition, for it to be of value, it has to be outside the control of anyone else. And so, these data stores have to be decentralized.

The future that I see when it comes to CRM, and it could be 20 years away… I have no idea. The future that I see is going to be one where people have their identities stored on a decentralized blockchain. It’s under their control, and then they can give access, permission, which can be revoked at any point, to other entities that might want to pay for it, rent it.

And I think in that world, CRM will not be about who has the most data in their data store. It’s, Who can take advantage of the data that’s available? Who can analyze the behavior of these anonymous wallets and these transactions in order to deliver value without knowing anything about the actual person aside from just that information? Because the fundamental premise of CRM companies is we need as much data as we possibly can get. The fundamental premise of decentralized networks is, “We don’t want any of your data, and we make it impossible to take it.” And those are two entirely different worldviews, and I think… and maybe this is wishful thinking on my part, but I think there’s a slowly growing zeitgeist that people are becoming increasingly unintended leery of trading their data for “free” services, and some people are starting to make the transition… trade-off of privacy instead of convenience.

Now, it’s early, and most people are not willing to do that, but as decentralized networks become faster, better usability, people will start making those choices in large numbers, and then existing companies will be faced with the challenge of having decreasing data about their customers. Now, there’ll always be some, but I think the future of CRM is about understanding how to deliver value without the need for capturing, storing, and oh, by the way, making exceedingly vulnerable to hack, theft, abuse, and misuse the limited data that’s available on public networks.

Brent Leary: To me, it will be kind of hard to see this from a traditional CRM vendor . So, you’re thinking that it’s probably going to be somebody coming from out of nowhere who doesn’t already have the CRM infrastructure built, because It’s kind of hard to let that go. Now we’re going to basically change our whole platform to allow users who are in our databases…” basically allow them to say when they take back control of their information. And that is a big paradigm shift, and I think it’s going to be really hard for vendors to control. What do you think?

Jeremy Epstein: Dude, I mean, you and I are old enough that we’ve seen this movie already. It’s Barnes & Noble. It’s versus Amazon. It’s Blockbuster against Netflix. It’s Craigslist against the classifieds. We have literally seen this movie many, many times. So, you’re right.

Marc Benioff is a bajillion times smarter than I am and certainly a bajillion times richer than I am, but I think it’s going to be just challenging absent what… If I were Marc Benioff, I would probably take some of my venture capital fund and go put it into buying tokens in some of these crypto-CRM networks. That’s what I would do if I were him in order to hedge. He probably won’t do it, and he doesn’t really call me that often, so whatever, but absent that, I think it’s going to be tough for them to change their paradigm.

And you don’t want to get so full of hubris that you just assume the world’s going to continue because 20 years ago, he was the disruptor. And this is how it happens. Man, we’ve seen this… in our own lifetime, we’ve seen this, let alone going back hundreds of years of innovation. So, I think you nailed it, bro.

Brent Leary: What industry do you see blockchain going mainstream in first?

Jeremy Epstein: Well, that’s a great question, but there are multiple answers.

Brent Leary: Okay.

Jeremy Epstein: And it depends on the sector and the geography. So, first of all, financial services is an obvious one, remittances, but it’s not going to happen in the U.S. or any Western country. It’s going to happen in South America, West Africa, Caribbean, places where there’s been a demonstrated lack of confidence in their central bankers, in their governments, and when there’s a huge expatriate community of people who are paying 18% to send money back to the Dominican Republic or whatever.

Brent Leary: Wow.

Jeremy Epstein: So, that’s one use case. If you live in Atlanta, Georgia, you have no idea what it’s like to wire money to Lagos, Nigeria unless you’re Nigerian.

Brent Leary: No.

Jeremy Epstein: Number two, we’re already starting to see the growth of something called decentralized finance, which is basically co-op funding for startups. There’s already a billion dollars… And keep in mind, this is an industry that didn’t exist last year. There’s already a billion dollars locked up in networks where people are loaning their money secured by smart contracts in the blockchain, no bankers, no brokerage, nothing. So bonds… I mean, you can earn 10% interest right now on dollar-equivalent deposits if you do it in crypto, and I’ve been doing that. So, there’s that, number two. Number three… Not enough, but whatever.

Number three is gaming. I think gaming is a big area because what gamers are… they are already very technically savvy. They have a high tolerance for new stuff and buggy stuff, but what’s also interesting is, if you think about Fortnite, two billion dollars on Fortnite, but when you buy all those digital assets, when you quit the game, you lose them. Imagine being able to take them, resell them on the open market, trade them for something in World of Warcraft or Call of Duty. How awesome would that be if you’re a gamer? Well, that’s possible.

And then, another one that I think is kind of a little bit of a dark horse is artificial intelligence because right now, AI is the province of really, really big companies. You need huge data scientists, but imagine having an AI data marketplace that anyone who’s a small businessperson can say, “Oh, I would love to have an AI for this.” You’d go in, make a request. Someone’s built a little thing. You rent it, and they get ongoing residuals because their ownership is secured by the blockchain, and that’s what SingularityNET provides.

And then I’d say the last one, if I’m going crazy, is this idea that I mentioned before of decentralized, autonomous organization. I mean, there’s a building in Prague, for example, that’s managed on the blockchain. The whole governance and bylaws is on the blockchain. It’s people who… they vote. There’s no… all that back office stuff. We’re talking orders of magnitude cheaper. I call it decentralized ERP. It’s orders of magnitude cheaper.

This article, "Jeremy Epstein of Never Stop Marketing: Blockchain Can Make CRM’s Future Decentralized and Disrupt Ownership of Data" was first published on Small Business Trends

Credit Sesame, a platform for managing loans and credit scores, picks up $43M en route to IPO

Household debt in the US continues to rise and as of this year now stands at nearly $14 billion. Now, one of the startups that’s building tools to help consumers better cope with that is announcing a round of funding and plans for an IPO — signs of the demand for its services, and its success to-date.

Credit Sesame — which lets consumers check their credit scores and evaluate options to rebalance existing debts and loans to improve that score and thus their overall “financial health” in the words CEO and founder Adrian Nazri — has raised $43 million. With the company already profitable and growing revenues 90% each year for the last five, Nazari said that this round is likely to be the last round the company raises before it goes public.

Credit Sesame is not disclosing its valuation, in part because this round is likely to have some more money added to it. But Nazari noted that it’s on track to be valued at over $1 billion when it does close in the coming months. It’s now raised $110 million in total.

The round is a mixture of equity and debt, and includes both strategic and financial investors. Led by growth-stage investors ATW Partners, it also includes participation from previous investors. Past backers of Credit Sesame include Menlo Ventures, Inventus Capital, Globespan Capital, IA Capital Groups, Symantec, Capital One Ventures, and Stanford University. There will also likely be new investors coming to the company when the round does expand.

The reason the startup is raising both equity and debt is worth a note: Nazari said Credit Sesame is profitable and has been “for some time,” Nazari noted, so when it raises money now, it would prefer to do so with less dilution. The funding will be going towards continuing to work on Credit Sesame’s artificial intelligence algorithms, and to continue expanding this business, but not likely acquisitions: there are a lot of companies in the fintech arena that are working on products adjacent to what Credit Sesame does, but Nazari said that it would likely only start to work on some M&A and consolidation plays after it IPOs, using the proceeds from that to fuel that.

In addition to a number of companies building tools and products to help people manage their money better, there are direct competitors to Credit Sesame, too, including Credit Karma, NerdWallet, Experian, ClearScore, Equifax and many more. Nazari’s view is that while Credit Sesame maybe targeting a similar initial function, its approach and how helps you manage your credit score is what differentiates it.

The company has coined the term “Personal Credit Management” (as opposed to personal financial management), and has built an algorithm it calls RoboCredit, which is based on a basic score provided by TransUnion (one of the big agencies that calculates scores, alongside Equifax and Experian) but also includes other factors that it calculates to show consumers what actions they can take to improve their scores. Checking initial scores is free on Credit Sesame, as are evaluating options for how to rebalance loans and other debts to help improve the score. But users that take products referred through the engine — such as refinancing a mortgage or taking a new credit and/or transferring your existing balance — or other premium services (such as an advanced level of identity theft protection), pay fees to do so.

The credit rating industry has seen some big setbacks in the last several years — first the big breach at Equifax, and then the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau fining both Equifax and TransUnion for misrepresenting what kind of data it was providing to consumers, and for not being transparent enough in its charges. But Nazari said that in fact, this has had a positive impact on the company.

“The impact from Equifax has been net positive,” he explained. “Incidents like these create awareness and the need for consumers to watch their credit and be on top of that,” he noted. “Identity theft from breaches could happen any time.”

Indeed, online security has become a bit of an unknown variable for many of us: we can try to prepare as much as possible, but we never know what news of a new breach might come around the corner, or when one fragment of our disclosed information might be the missing piece to someone using it to steal something from us. On the other hand, the startup is giving more transparency at least to how some of the other aspects of our online financial identity work, and how it can be used by others to evaluate us as consumers.

“Credit Sesame is revolutionizing how consumers manage their credit. What once was a mystery and black box is now distilled by Credit Sesame’s PCM platform into easy to digest actionable insights that can effortlessly and meaningfully change a consumer’s credit and financial health,” said Kerry Propper, co-founder and managing partner at ATW Partners, in a statement. “We’re thrilled to open the gates to a new age of Personal Credit Management with the Credit Sesame team leading the space.”

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The lighting in the room has big impact on your mood. energy level and productivity. These tips can help you find the proper lighting environment.

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Update on Nigerian fintech firm Interswitch and its speculative IPO

Nigerian fintech firm Interswitch has been circulating in business news around a possible IPO on the London Stock Exchange.

Last month Bloomberg News ran a story—based on unnamed sources—reporting the financial services firm had hired investment banks to go public on the LSE later in 2019. The piece spurred additional aggregated press.

That Interswitch—which provides much of Nigeria’s digital banking infrastructure—could become one of Africa’s earliest tech companies to list on a global exchange isn’t exactly news.

It’s more deja vu of a story that began several years ago.

As TechCrunch reported, Interswitch was poised to launch on the LSE in 2016. CEO and founder Mitchell Elegbe confirmed “a dual-listing on the London and Lagos stock exchange is an option on the table,” in a January 2016 call.

Two additional sources wired into Nigeria’s tech market and close to Interswitch’s investors also said the public launch would happen by the end of that year.

The IPO would have made Interswitch Africa’s first tech company to go from startup to a billion-dollar plus unicorn valuation status. Of course, it didn’t happen in 2016.

In 2017, TechCrunch checked in with Interswitch on the delay and was told the company could not comment on its pending IPO. In other public interviews, executives Mitchell Elegbe and Divisional Chief Executive Officer Akeem Lawal named Nigeria’s recession as a reason for the delay and reaffirmed a likely dual Longon-Lagos listing by the end of 2019.

Will Interswitch still be the company that brings Sub-Saharan Africa its big tech windfall?

After the latest round of IPO buzz, TechCrunch asked Interswitch this week about the Bloomberg reporting and an imminent public stock listing. ““Interswitch does not comment on market speculation,” was the only info a public spokesperson could offer.

So, its tough to say if or when the company could list. There are still a few reasons why the company (and its possible IPO) are worth keeping an eye on.

One is Interswitch’s growing role as a nexus for payments and financial services infrastructure in Nigeria (home of Africa’s largest economy), across Africa, and between Africa and the world. Back in 2002, the company became the pioneer for creating infrastructure to digitize Nigeria’s then predominantly paper-ledger and cash-is-king based economy.

Interswitch Quickteller Interswitch has since moved into high-volume personal and business finance, with its Verve payment cards and Quickteller payment app. The Nigerian company (which is now well beyond startup phase) has expanded with physical presence in Uganda, Gambia, and Kenya—the latter being home-turf of M-Pesa and Safaricom, which are largely responsible for making Kenya the mobile-money capital of Africa.

Interswitch also sells its products in 23 African countries, through bank partnerships, and has presence abroad. Through its Verve Global Card product, the company’s cardholders can now make payments in the U.S., UK, and UAE. Interswitch launched a partnership this month for Verve cardholders to make payments on Discover’s global network. The first transaction for the partnership was placed in New York, with an advertisement for the Nigerian company’s payment product flashing across Times Square. Verve Times Square Interswitch Another facet to a possible Interswitch IPO is its potential to spark more corporate venture arm and acquisition activity in African fintech, which as a sector receives the bulk of the continent’s startup capital. Interswitch launched a venture arm in 2015—called its global ePayment Growth Fund—that made two investments, but then went largely quiet.

A windfall of IPO capital and increasing competition from fintech startups could spur Interswitch to fire up its venture investing activity again. Startups such as Flutterwave and TeamAPT (formed by a former Interswitch alum) have already entered some of Interswitch’s product territory. If a public listing led Interswitch to ramp up investing in (or even acquiring) startups, the net effect would be more capital and exits in Africa’s fintech sector.

Nigerian fintech firm TeamApt raises $5M, eyes global expansion

And finally, if Interswitch does IPO on the London and Lagos stock exchanges, it could provide another benchmark for global investors to gauge Africa’s tech sector beyond Jumia. This spring the e-commerce company became the first big tech firm operating in Africa to launch on a major exchange, the NYSE.

So far, Jumia’s IPO has been an up and down affair. The company gained investor and analyst confidence out of the gate, but also came under a short-sell assault and share-price volatility.

Two successful global IPOs of tech companies from Africa would and could become the best-case scenario for the continent’s startup scene. But for that to be a possibility, Interswitch will have to confirm the speculation and finally list as a publicly traded fintech firm.

Africa e-tailer Jumia issues post-IPO results amid short-sell assault