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Jordan Preston and George Pafitis were high school friends from real estate families. They saw their families working too hard. And an industry ripe for disruption… Tell us about the product…
Behind every great tech company is a person, or team of people, who make sure that company puts its best foot forward. These are the public relations professionals who often work tirelessly behind-the-scenes.
Although the relationship between PR people and reporters can often be rocky, some PR folks really make our jobs easier. It’s time for our annual shout-out to them: Our PR 50 list of the best communications pros in the tech industry.
We’re fairly sure we already know who most of them are. But we also wanted to give you a chance to tell us about the fabulous PR person at your company.
So Deadline for nominations is August 15.
We’re looking for people who are …
(Special note: Please don’t email the nominations or email us asking us if we got the nominations. We promise will look at all nominations submitted via the form below.)
Feel free to share this story with your favorite PR social network, too.
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In the spirit of fun friday, I thought we might have a debate here at AVC over the Snowden affair and particularly whether Snowden is a traitor or a hero.
My opinion is he’s a bit of both, but more hero than traitor.
What’s yours?
ERN, the London-headquartered startup that’s planning to use Big Data to enable banks and merchants to create loyalty-based offers for cardholders, has acquired two U.K. companies to bolster the analytics side of its platform.
In a transaction consisting of “undisclosed fees and stock”, the company has purchased Inspired Analytics, which offers analytical consultancy services — specifically to help design and build production analytics solutions — and Elucidata, which also provides consultancy and specialises in “data strategy and high-complexity, regulated data implementations”.
As a result, Jim Jeffrey, Inspired Analytics’ Director of Analytics, will become ERN’s Analytics Director, and James Baldwin, Managing Director of Elucidata, will become Managing Director of ERN’s Analytical Consulting Division. If it smells like an acqui-hire, it probably is an acqu-hire, though a spokesperson for ERN stressed that the acquisitions are for both the tech and the teams of the respective companies.
Meanwhile, ERN is announcing yet another round of seed funding. This time it amounts to a further $ 1 million, once again from unnamed high-net worth individuals, all of whom have previously helped finance the startup to the tune of $ 3.6 million. This brings the total raised by the company before it’s shipped a commercial product to $ 4.6 million. As we’ve noted before, Big Data costs big money, not least when you’re gunning to be a major player in the FinTech/transactional data space. However, my understanding is that ERN is on the cusp of announcing its first commercial customer after trials with a number of “household names”. More on that should follow shortly.
ERN’s analytics platform, dubbed “Looop”, enables banks (or more specifically, card issuers) and participating merchants to boost customer loyalty by creating new products and offers based on the analysis of their card transactions. The idea is that by drilling into the Big Data around a customer’s transactional history — after they’ve opted in, of course — individually-tailored offers can be pushed to their smartphone via the Looop app, in the form of an e-coupon redeemable in-store.
In addition to insights gained through mining customers’ transactional Big Data, the targeting of offers can also be geo-fenced e.g. only push an offer when a customer who has previously bought a dress is within a certain radius of the participating store.
The new management personnel picked up via the two acquisitions being announced today are definitely a good fit for ERN’s mission, and presumably should provide in-roads to exactly the type of B2B customers that the young startup is hoping to sign up.
Inspired Analytics’ Jeffrey is the former Head of Data Innovation at Barclaycard Freedom, where he developed “market basket analysis algorithms” for retailers, and was also a Business Partner within Lloyds Banking Group’s Customer Insight area.
Elucidata’s Baldwin also has ties with Barlaycard as former Head of B2B Targeting where he developed the analytics platform for the bank’s cardholder offers programme.
This is the first post in ReadWriteBody, an ongoing series where ReadWrite covers networked fitness and the quantified self.
I’m on a treadmill and I can’t seem to get off of it.
That’s a metaphor, actually. I am, as it happens, on a literal treadmill—a treadmill desk, part of the technological toolkit I’ve assembled for a four-month-long experiment on myself I’m conducting publicly, here on ReadWrite. I can hit “pause” and hop off anytime. But I don’t want to.
The challenge: Using the plethora of apps, gadgets, and networked services that have sprung up to turn our bodies into nodes on the data net, can I drop 20-25 pounds and get in the best shape of my life?
I’m looking at a steady diet of metrics, a strict regimen of oversharing, and a disciplined approach to data capture.
Oh, and maybe some attention to workouts and nutrition.
Stuck At One Speed
Back to the treadmill. So far today, I’ve walked 10.82 miles on a LifeSpan TR800-DT5 treadmill desk. (LifeSpan lent ReadWrite this model for editorial review during the period of my experiment.)
That feeling of going nowhere is familiar: It sums up how I feel about my fitness progress over the past couple of years. In 2011, I wrote about using social networks and fitness apps to drop from a weight of 258 pounds to 175—a number I hadn’t seen on a scale since my teens.
I wish I could say I held things there, but I haven’t: My schedule changed, my discipline slipped, and I gained back 25 pounds.
At 200, I’m not in bad shape, but I’m keenly aware I could do better. That’s part of the challenge, though: I’m already very active, and some cheese-related incidents aside, fairly strict in my diet. (Just ask my friends, whose photos of cronuts on Path are regularly greeted with my laconically judgmental comment, “Carbs.”)
Tracked To Distraction
How does this relate to ReadWrite? As I noted in my first post on ReadWrite, the “entire world is becoming readable and writable”—and that includes our own bodies. Fitness trackers and apps have become part of our regular coverage. There’s a new vogue for hardware startups on crowdfunding websites and, increasingly, conventional venture-capital sources, and many of them are fitness-related.
The smartphone is perhaps the ultimate fitness tracker, serving as a do-it-all GPS tracker, food logger, and digital personal trainer, thanks to an explosion of apps. And the quantified-self movement is seeking smarter ways to capture and make sense of all the data exhaust these gadgets and services are spewing.
(By the way, I recently ranted about how much I hate wrist-based devices. Despite my aversion, I’m currently wearing an EB Sync Burn to track calories, steps, and heart rate; I haven’t found a less-intrusive alternative, and I wanted to be objective about testing devices that my readers might find useful, even if they aren’t ultimately for me.)
Big Data Can Make Us All Smaller
As important as capturing data is, I’ve also found it vital to harness social networks. My Twitter followers and Facebook friends are used to hearing about everything from my daily calories burned to my gym soundtrack. MyFitnessPal, a food-tracking app I’ve used for years, is still a mainstay. I’ve added some newer apps, likeLift and GymPact, to reinforce my habits.
But what’s changed since my last big fitness push has been the mass adoption of these services. Since 2011, for example, MyFitnessPal has quadrupled in size to 40 million users, while those same people have shrunk by a collective 100 million pounds, cofounder Mike Lee recently told me. His company is now trying to hire its first data scientist.
“We have a lot of data we can make meaning of,” Lee said. “Obesity researchers are lucky to get a thousand people.”
It may not be perfectly scientific, but we’re running a lot of experiments on ourselves these days. MapMyFitness cofounder Kevin Callahan, whose company is currently running a series of online fitness challenges with running-shoes maker Brooks, is interested in whether “gamification”—adding game-like aspects to an activity like tracking fitness—will boost participation and deliver results for his users.
(Full disclosure: Callahan and I have a challenge on to see who can drop 20 pounds first. Follow and on Twitter to track our progress through the hashtag .)
“An Experiment Of One”
Ultimately, though, the body of research that matters most is always your own. That’s a bit of wisdom I got from Steve Ledbetter, a San Francisco-based personal trainer and self-described “fitness nerd” who’s better known as Coach Stevo.
“With quantified self, it’s always going to be an experiment of one,” says Ledbetter. “There’s no other test case.”
With the human body, there are so many variables to track—and too many to control for.
Some of Ledbetter’s clients come in “with more gadgets than common sense.”
“What I tell them is that what matters is the delta, the change, the trend,” he says. “Only bad things happen quickly with the human body.”
And so I carry on, one foot in front of the other on the treadmill. I’ve walked another two miles while drafting this post. What’s the end goal of this experiment? The only aim I’m certain of is to learn something, and share it with you.
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LinkedIn disclosed another crackerjack quarter today, with Q2 2103 revenue up 59% to $ 363.7 million.
But not all LinkedIn’s revenue lines are equal. The company saw strong growth from its personnel recruitment division, “Talent Solutions” (up 69%) and from people buying subscriptions to its premium membership packages (up 68%).
Its ad sales business, “Marketing Solutions,” was the weakest of the three units in Q2, perhaps because companies do less hiring as they move into the summer. It saw sales of $ 85.6 million, up 36%.
Overall, though, LinkedIn is an incredibly healthy social media business:
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T Dispatch construct a dispatch software for passenger transport providers, such as taxi, limo and minicab companies. The team have developed a cloud-based software for fleet management, an app for drivers and open source booking platforms.
As a fleet controller, T Dispatch provides you full control and communication with your drivers. It makes your live easier and your work efficient, assigning properly all your bookings to the proper driver at the proper time.
Fleet managers, fleet controllers, taxi drivers, minicab, private hire and limo companies/offices and booking app who wants to integrate their apps in our fleet network.
T Dispatch is focused on technology, which makes that T Dispatch launch new innovative features continuosly.
Moreover, the team puts a lot of effort in providing the best user experience.
T Dispatch wants to build a fleet network in order to everybody can integrate in our system and all the drivers has in one device all the bookings received from all the different channels.
LEGOs can be expensive. Some of those super cool kits will set you back more than $ 100.
So Thomas Langenbach, a former SAP executive reportedly living in a Silicon Valley home worth millions, came up with an interesting scheme to get them on sale, reports Palo Alto Online’s Sue Dremann.
Police say he printed up his own barcode stickers that gave him hugely discounted prices. Then he walked into the store, put his own barcodes on the boxes and headed to the checkout counter.
For instance, Langenbach allegedly bought a $ 279 box of Millennium Falcon LEGOS for just $ 49, and a $ 90 Anakin Lego set for about $ 35.
Langenbach was arrested in May and this week took a plea bargain. He was facing up to five years in prison. With the plea bargain, he’ll serve 30 days in a county jail, six months in custody and another three years probation, Dremann reports.
Selling Legos was quite a business operation for Langenbach, as we previously reported.
Langenbach sold many of his Legos on an eBay account that generated about $ 30,000 between April and the time of his arrest, the police said.
Langenbach is no longer at the company, a SAP spokesperson confirmed. He was previously a vice president at the SAP Integration & Certification Center (ICC) in Palo Alto. He had been with SAP since 1988, according .
SEE ALSO: Here’s What Happens When Wine And Geeks Mix
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Intuit is conducting a really cool small business contest called Small Business Big Game. The winner gets a free 30 second commercial during the 2014 Superbowl.
The ad for the winning company will be created by RPA, an advertising agency that has produced past Super Bowl commercials, including an Acura ad starring Jerry Seinfeld and a Honda spot with Matthew Broderick.
BTW if you haven't seen the Honda ad – a take off on Ferris Bueller's Day Off – . It's a great ad.
Any small business can enter the competition. The first round consists of signing up at www.SmallBusinessBigGame.com and writing a short story describing your business. The public will then vote on who advances to the next round.
The 50,000 companies with the most votes then continue telling their stories, with Intuit employees voting for the 20 best. Four of those will become finalists chosen by Intuit employees, and the public will then choose the winning company.
I was really looking forward to entering this contest, but I discovered our relationship with Intuit – they've been a client of ours for years – means we can't. This is disappointing, but I'm looking forward to following the contest.
Apple’s Passbook is already the fourth-most popular mobile commerce app among U.S. consumers. It ranks just behind giants like eBay, Amazon, and Groupon in terms of user adoption.
One-fifth of iPhone owners already use Passbook to download “passes”— coupons, gift and loyalty cards, airline boarding passes, and movie and event tickets. It’s Apple’s attempt at a virtual wallet.
Large retailers — from Sephora to Target — and restaurant chains and Major League Baseball are already using it as a channel for acquiring and retaining customers.
So why don’t we hear more about Passbook?
In a new report from BI Intelligence, Business Insider’s paid subscription service, we look at the trends and numbers behind the Passbook ecosystem.
Access The Full Report By Signing Up For A Free Trial Today >>>
The report includes over a half-dozen charts and datasets — and an ecosystem graphic — examining the intricacies of the Passbook ecosystem. Subscribers receive full access to the BI Intelligence library of over 100 in-depth reports on the mobile industry, and hundreds of datasets you can put to use.
In our report on Passbook, we also look at some misconceptions and underrated opportunities:
We also discuss Passbook’s relationship with the burgeoning and competitive mobile payments space, and the uncertainty surrounding its future as a payments platform.
Will Apple add a payment-processing capability, so that users can make “walletless” credit card payments with Passbook? Will it be joined with fingerprint-reading technology, the rumored authentication feature to be included in iPhone 5S?
Apple has over 500 million credit cards on file. We review what brands and retailers are doing to hook into the ecosystem and prepare for the possibility that Apple will one day leverage these credit card relationships and turn Passbook into a real transactions platform.
It also includes an examination of the top barriers to widespread Passbook adoption: namely, the chicken-and-egg problem that ties relatively low app publisher adoption to a lack of wider consumer awareness.
For full access to the report on Passbook sign up for a free trial subscription today.
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