Your Tech Story

Raghav

Raghav is a student and a content writer. He loves to write about emerging as well as the existing technologies around and about the ones who bring them to you. Music is the other passion that Raghav processes. It is like the fuel to his body. He is also in writing songs and poems. He believes that life is short, so live the best out of what you have got. Raghav considers himself a sci-fi guy, having stories and tech all around in his head, all the time.

John McAfee : The American Computer Programmer and the Founder Antivirus Firm McAfee

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The rise of the internet has brought a lot of facilities for humans. But for every good thing, one has to pay the price. With the increased facilities, there is another thing which is growing at a fast pace, i.e. Cyber Crime. As much as your valuables are important, your identity is too. But with cyber-crimes expanding, it is very hard to keep one’s identity inclosure. Hacking is at its prime with hackers have been spread all over the world. But how could it be possible that humans would not look out for a solution to this problem, too?

There exist antiviruses and several other safety measures that make one’s data safe from those hackers. One of these antiviruses is McAfee Antivirus, which, as of now, is the largest dedicated security technology. The founder of McAfee, John McAfee, also shares a story which is none the less than the rise and falls of a rollercoaster ride.

Early Life

McAfee was born in Forest of Dean, Gloucestershire, the United Kingdom on September 18, 1945. He was raised by his mother in Virginia. His father, at quite a young age, committed suicide. This incident left McAfee with a scar in his memory. He received a bachelor’s degree from Roanoke College. And, the same college awarded him with an honorary Sc.D. degree in 2008.

Career

McAfee always had an entrepreneurial spirit in him. During his college days, he started his business career by selling magazines door to door. Alongside, he started working at a company that coded punch card systems in the late 60s. With this job in the hand, he learnt basic computer operations. And, with this computing knowledge, he acquired a job at Missouri Pacific Railroad, where he helped the company to use IBM systems to calibrate train schedules. During this time, he got addicted to drugs and with time the addiction was only increasing.

John McAfee
Image Source: newyorker.com

One of the interesting stories that revolve around this is that once McAfee was sold a bag of DMT (Hallucinogenic drug). He sniffed a little bit of it and felt nothing. So he decided to sniff out the whole bag. When he did, the world around him changed as if the hell breaks loose. He ended up hiding behind a trash can hearing voices and hoping that no one would look at him.

After this incident, he never went back to the Pacific job. He moved to the Silicon Valley, in the 1970s, where he was employed as a programmer by NASA’s Institute for Space Studies in New York. McAfee switched many jobs starting from NASA to Univac as a software designer, to Xerox as an operating system architect, and then moving to Computer Sciences Corporation. He also worked for Booz Allen Hamilton. This was all going on, while he remained high on drugs. It was until 1983 that he got clean. While working for Lockheed, he came across the first computer virus. Computers in that era were still a new concept, but for McAfee, the virus situation became an opportunity. He decided to start his own company to fight back viruses.

Founding McAfee

In 1987, he founded McAfee Associates, a computer anti-virus company. He started working full time at the company. Initially, the company operated through his home in Santa Clara, California, which now is the headquarters of the company. By the end of the 1980s, the company made around $5 million and was the best anti-virus software that was in the market.

The company’s large popularity was due to the virus “Michelangelo”, which entered the digital scenario in 1992. Due to the rise of Michelangelo, McAfee Associates too rose, as the fever of security got into many minds. In 1992, it was incorporated in Delaware, and in 1994, McAfee resigned from the company keeping some shares to himself. As McAfee Associates became a multimillion-dollar business, the company went public, and McAfee sold all the remaining shares giving him nearly $100 million. McAfee Associates was merged with Network General to form Network Associates. In 2004, the name of the company changed to McAfee Inc.

In August 2010, Intel announced that it would be acquiring all the services of McAfee Inc., keeping the company separated. The deal was valued nearly $7.68 billion and $48 a share.

John, when asked about the acquisition, gave a surprising expression by saying, “I am now everlastingly grateful to Intel for freeing me from this terrible association with the worst software on the planet. These are not my words, but the words of millions of irate users.”

Life After McAfee

After leaving McAfee, John looked for a low-profile life. He started giving lectures at business schools, startup advice to the young and worked on his own projects. He worked on ‘Tribal Voice’ and ‘PowWow’ which, however, could not make the mainstream. In 2009, a report from The New York Times suggested that McAfee was hit hard by the global recession of 2008, which reduced his $100 million to a mere $4million. Although, McAfee denied the report and has always referred it to as false. In the late 2000s, McAfee sold his land and decided to move to Belize. He believed that he could enter the Antibiotics industry and make a product that would, eventually, cure illness using plants. In February 2010, he alongside his microbiologist friend Allison Adonizio opened a company, named QuorumEx. The company was headquartered in Belize and aimed to produce natural antibiotics.

The Journey of McAfee (The Company)

McAfee is premium in its services. It provides digital security tools for every bit of your computer. Some of the services that it provides are – IntruShield; McAfee Anti-Malware Engine Core; Change Control; DAT Reputation; Site Advisor; Virus Scan.

The company also has come with important acquisitions to strengthen its build. It acquired Nitro Security in October 2011, which enabled McAfee to provide high-performance security and event management solutions. Another acquisition that the company made is tenCube. This allowed it to provide mobile security for anti-theft and data security. Several other purchases the company made are Trust Digital, Sentrigo, ValidEdge, Stonesoft, Site Advisor, Foundstone, Onigma Ltd., TunnelBear, and many more. McAfee is today, the largest firm when it comes to security technology.

Hence, the story of the McAfee, the company, and its founder, John McAfee, vividly say that fortunes do come with hard work but they need to be preserved using one’s persona and attitude.

Prezi : Communication Made Effective

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Expressions are the prime contributors to effective communication. And, in professional life, presentations are the ones that help in expressing even the most complex terms in the most sorted manner. Presentations are considered as one of the best ways to communicate efficiently. Over the years, presentations have been recognised as the mainstream source for telling analytics, strategies and stories, because visual representation is always much better and interesting. One such tool which converts stories into visual presentations is Prezi.

Founding Prezi

The story of Prezi falls back to 2007. In 2007, a Hungarian architect student, Adam Somlai-Fischer, who had a craving for innovation, was working over the design of a building. He, being creative, was not satisfied with the service that PowerPoint or Keynote would provide in terms of building a presentation. He wanted his viewers to look at the building in every possible angle and details of the buildings. So, he built a zooming presentation prototype that helped him achieve the vision he wanted to. Peter Halacsy, an engineer, saw one of these presentations and looked forward to improving the software. Soon enough, they were joined with Peter Arvai, who was an entrepreneur, in the journey of Prezi.

prezi founders
Image Source: hungarytoday.hu

The company was incorporated on May 20, 2009, with Peter Arvai, appointed as its CEO. The launch of the company took place at The Next Web Conference at Amsterdam, in April 2009. Prezi means ‘presentation’ in Hungarian. The very first office of Prezi in the US was launched in November 2009, after it received its first major investment from TED. Prezi is an out of the box software, which turns the boring presentation into interesting slides. As the website mentions, “Unlike slides, which literally box you in, Prezi gives you a limitless zoomable canvas, and the ability to show relationships between the big picture and fine details. The added depth and context make your message more likely to resonate, motivate, and get remembered, whether it’s your bread-and-butter sales pitch, a classroom lecture, or a TED Talk to the world’s foremost thinkers.

Peter Arvai once said, “Prezi helps you organize your thoughts and deliver them in a clearer way that really makes an impact on your audience and helps them reach that ‘ah-hah’ moment faster.”

Prezi has been growing ever since its foundation because of its reinvention of how one sees a presentation. It came to the mobile devices in 2011, when the company launched an iOS app for the iPads. The app gained $14 million in Series B venture capital funding. It also was indulged with Barack Obama’s ConnectED, promising over a $100M free licenses to Title1 schools.

Prezi has launched a number of services. It released an iPhone app in 2012, followed by the unveiling of ‘Nutshell’, a feature which helps in creating a mini-movie from one’s photos, and then an Android app in 2015. The company rolled out Prezi business in 2016.

Arvai admits that it was difficult to get funding from investors. He told that even though investors were impressed by the prospect of the software, they believed that it had no potential in the market. He also expressed that the company supports a healthy corporate environment. It allows employees to switch offices for a six-week period from San Francisco to Budapest and vice-versa. Prezi believes in the policy of inviting failure as a guest and learn from it.

Arvai is in the board of directors for WeAreOpen (Over 1000 companies coming together who aim to establish workspaces of openness) and Bridge Budapest (A group of entrepreneurs coming together to contribute to the future of Hungary). He remained a founder board member of Sanocore till February 2014. He was also the Vice President of Product Management at Mobispine. Peter approached companies via TED conference giving the common vision of promoting the open exchange of ideas. Also, in 2015, it came out that he was considered as a role model by Forbes for young people considering to be entrepreneurs.

The story of Prezi shows that creativity always makes way for innovation and freshness in the atmosphere of staleness. It has over 100 million users and has created over 350 million Prezis. It gives us a clear message that empty canvas and an artist can change the way one looks at the world with his/her astonishing ideas.

Booking.com – The Company that Changed the Course of Online Hotel Booking

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One of the challenges, while travelling and touring, is ‘staying at a hotel.’ Staying at a hotel gives a traveller either the best comfort in the trip, or it becomes the worst part of the vacation. That being said, it is undeniable that booking a hotel is the key to a perfect vacation. However, booking a hotel in a place that is unknown to self is a challenge, and hassle to the mind. Booking.com is a travel fare aggregator website and travel metasearch engine for lodging reservations, and steps in to help you with booking a hotel.

booking.com office
Image Source: officesnapshots.com

Booking.com’s journey started when Booking.nl was founded in 1996 by Geert-Jan Bruinsma after he graduated from college. He discovered the internet and borrowed code from Hilton.com to open a hotel website. Booking.nl was merged with another hotel-booking site Booking online, which operated as Booking.org. On the other hand, in Cambridge, UK, in 1999, cousins Andy Phillips and Adrian Critchlow founded Activebooking.com, which focused more on independent hotels. Later, the name of the internet website was changed to Active Hotels. It too copied some of the basics from WorldRes business model.

Active Hotels and Bookings went on to become the leading hotel-bookings in their respective markets and beyond. Both the ventures met at a travel trade show in London. Years after, both caught the eyes of Priceline.com’s chief mergers and acquisitions master, Glenn Fogel. He put in the efforts to buy both the ventures. The deal took place in 2004 for Active hotels, and in 2005 for Bookings. Priceline then merged both the companies and created Booking.com (Under Booking Holdings), which changed the course of online travel history.

Booking.com took the competition by storm. It kicked its rival companies out of the competition and changed the way consumers book hotels. The company started with setting the prices lower than their competitors which eventually helped them to gain a wide customer base. One of the most prominent features on the website was the search engine. The hotel search engine of the company is still compared to the websites that have emerged in recent times. Also, Booking.com looked out for the best online marketing by posting ads on Google and other internet websites. At the time, the concept of online marketing was less known which gave the company an advantage.

Another change that made people switch from Expedia and other hotel-booking websites, was the way customers pay for their hotels. Unlike Expedia, Booking.com allowed its customers to pay on the spot rather than prepaying months before their journey. The company started the new payment method in 2009, which tripled the bookings made on the site. It ensured its customers, ‘a top-quality service’, including offering 24/7 support to them. It attracted a large hotel database, due to the favourable commissions and great services, they gave to the hotels.

Another formula that they applied was showing the most recent booking and displaying the number of users currently viewing a hotel. The wildly successful “one room left” message is the signature technique that Booking.com uses to get its customers cash-in the booking as fast as possible. One of the major factors that made Booking.com successful was their conversion to an agency model from a merchant model. It allowed the company to ease out its operations and processes.

Since the merger of Active Hotels and Booking in 2006, Booking.com has been touching the heights of success. Booking.com is largely responsible for making Booking Holdings, a $100 Billion Dollar company. The website has massive 28,425,726 listings in 148,470 destinations from 228 countries. Each day, more than 1,550,000 rooms are reserved on the website. The site is available in 43 languages. It has been constantly perfecting its user experience displaying that in business, customer satisfaction means the most.

WOW Air – The Success Story of the Ultra Low-Cost Airline

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Travelling by air is leisure. The comfort it provides is ultimate in nature but this leisure comes at a pocket-emptying cost. Leisure flights’ tickets often come at a quite high-cost, disturbing one’s travel budgets. WOW Air was an Icelandic carrier service and a perfect solution to high-cost flights. It was an ultra-low-cost service that operated services across continents. Sadly, the company ceased its operations on 28th March 2019 due to some operational issues.

WOW Air was founded by Skúli Mogensen, an entrepreneur with an experience of years in the field. Mogensen was born on 18th September 1968 in Iceland and spent most of his childhood in Sweden with his father. He was an exchange student in San Diego in California, then studied philosophy at the University of Iceland. During his college time, he co-founded his first business ‘OZ.com.’ He dropped his college studies as soon as his business flourished.

Skúli Mogensen
Image Source: independent.ie

Mogensen founded OZ.com, a software company which provides consumer mobile messaging solutions, in 1991. The service involves various telecommunication benefits for the consumer, including social networking, e-mail solutions, instant messaging communities. It has strategic partnerships with America Online, Inc., Microsoft, and Yahoo!. The company’s name was later changed to OZ Communications. Mogensen sold the company to Nokia Corp. on November 4, 2008.

Skúli also co-founded ‘Scandif hf’ and ‘Arctic Ventures’. He also led a buyout of MP Bank. After selling OZ Communication, Skúli had thought to retire. A few years into his retirement made him miserable, and he decided to return back to his entrepreneurship days. “I was a failure at retirement. I wanted to use technology and disrupt the market, and the airline industry is a good sector for that,” said Mogensen ensuring his return to the business market.

In 2011, Mogensen founded WOW Air. It had its first inaugural flight on May 31st, 2012 to Paris. The air service was surprisingly very cheap with fares as low as $99 from select US cities to Iceland and Europe. The fair provided the most basic seats and services.

In 2012, Mogensen took over the company as the CEO. In October of the same year, WOW Air acquired Iceland Express’s operations and network. At the end of the year, WOW Air expanded its services to Berlin, Kaunas, Salzburg and Warsaw. Flight frequencies to Gatwick and Copenhagen also saw an increase. A year later, in October 2013, the airline was awarded the Air Operator’s certificate (AOC) by the Icelandic Transport Authority.

The service rapidly became popular in Iceland and all over Europe. In 2013, it carried over 400,000 passengers and was the most punctual airline in Iceland. In December 2014, the company achieved a milestone by reaching its one-millionth passenger. In 2015, WOW Air expanded to North America and Canada the following year. Its annual passenger count increased from 740,000 in 2015 to 1.6 million in 2016. The airline went on to grow its annual passenger number to 3.5 million in 2018.

Mogensen spoke, “I often say it was a moment of insanity. When I started, everyone thought I was completely crazy and wanted to stay far away from me. I chose to go all in on my own,” on the success of the airline service.

In late 2018, Icelandair Group decided that it would acquire the entire share capital of WOW Air with both airlines operating under separate names. However, the conditions of the deal were unlikely to be met and Icelandair abandoned the deal. Indigo Partners, on the same day as the abandoning of the deal with Icelandair Group, reached a preliminary deal to buy WOW Air. The airline cut down its working staff, cancelled flight routes to Delhi, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Vancouver. The deal again was cancelled as Indigo Partners withdrew their offer to buy the company. The airline fell into multiple cancellations, technical failures and more knock-on effects. On 28th March 2019, WOW Air announced that they will be ceasing all the operations. The action left many passengers stranded as they were advised to book flights from other airline services.

Skúli wrote to his employees, expressing his regret for not acting sooner to stabilize the airline’s finances. “I will never be able to forgive myself for not taking action earlier, as it is obvious that WOW was an incredible airline, and we were on the right track to do great things again.”

In an interview with Business Insider, Mogensen said, “One of the mistakes that we made in the last 18 months, was that we were moving away from the low-cost model. Most significantly we made our fleet structure unnecessarily complex with the addition of the wide-body A330 to our fleet.”

However, Skúli is speculated to enter the airline industry soon with another brilliant idea. He was awarded Iceland’s Businessman of the Year in 2011 and 2016. The story of Skúli Mogensen speaks that failures are a part of the journey but can be avoided if suitable action is taken sooner.

Talmon Marco – The Co-Founder of Instant Messaging Software Application ‘Viber’

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When technology, in its early years swooped into our lives and started developing, everyone hoped that it would connect people more efficiently than ever. The telephone was one of the best results produced from the growth of technology, but with the evolution of the internet, the demand for something new and instant started to increase. This demand sparked a lot of genius ideas across the world, which today, have given us n-number of mediums to connect that we operate on today. Talmon Marco, an American-Israeli entrepreneur, also had an idea in his mind, and that idea led to Viber, an interaction-based application software over call and messaging.

talmon marco
Image Source: zimbio.com

In 2010, Igor and Marco started their next startup, ‘Viber’. Viber is a cross-platform voice over IP and instant messaging software application. The inspiration for Viber was the love story of Talmon and his girlfriend (now wife). Talmon lived in New York, and his girlfriend lived in Hong Kong. They both talked a lot on the phone, which eventually, led to huge phone bills. This got Marco thinking that how he can stay in touch with his loved one without sacrificing much from the pocket.

The funds generated by iMesh supported the cause of Viber. Viber’s service started on December 2, 2010, in Israel, and it was rather a soft launch in a market that was willing to try a new app. The software uses telephone numbers to register, though it is accessible through desktop without needing any mobile connectivity. Viber did not receive any venture capital money, and the company was all funded by friends and family.

The company was producing a promising product from the very beginning, in fact, since it released its first iOS version. The latter gained Viber nearly 350 million users. The company also released an Android app six months later but at first, it was limited only to 50,000 users. A full version of the app was released a year later. In May 2012, Viber announced that it would be rolling out the software for Blackberry and Windows phones. In the span of two months, Viber gained a total of 90 million users. The company was progressing at a pace and decided to bring in the availability of high-definition voice calling, “Viber Out” and group messaging.

The app gave a tough competition to WhatsApp, Skype, and the other similar software present. It had an advantage over Skype. For using Skype, one had to register using password and had to maintain a buddy list, whereas to use Viber, the one simply needed to register using the phone number.

After 2 years, when the software established itself as one of the top connectivity apps, the company generated no revenue, and so it started to monetize itself via user payments for Viber Out voice and stickers store. The company’s support system was attacked by the Syrian Electronic Army. However, the company disclosed that there was no important information that was compromised.

On 13th February 2014, Viber was purchased by Japanese Electronic commerce and internet service ’Rakuten’ for a massive $900 million. The founders saw a 30-times return for what they invested. Rakuten merged its 200 million user client base with Viber. As of now, Viber has more than 650 million registered users. Marco stepped down as the company CEO in 2015.

The story of Talmon Marco’s founded Viber shows that anything can be done even when one has limited resources. All one needs is to find the light at the end of the tunnel.

Scott Lee – The Founder of the Startup Helping You Find Your Perfect GooRoo

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Learning is a never-ending process. Constant learning generates brilliant minds and indigenous futures. Learning, with technology, i.e. alongside the internet has made it easier, portable, ageless, and does not require one to go to an institution. Everyone is capable of learning anything at any time and any place, by just simply having a smart device near them. GooRoo is one such leading service in terms of education with technology. It is AI-powered tutoring and learning platform with a strong focus on personalization, and the man behind this educational startup is Scott Lee. The success story of Lee, speaks up that challenges and life experiences often paves the best ways to success for you.

Scott Lee was born in Seoul, South Korea. As a child, he travelled to the United States to study in the Connecticut Boarding School. The problem for him was that he didn’t know a single word of English. That being so, navigating his way around the school was a challenge for him. After schooling, he went on to do graduation in engineering from Columbia University. After his sophomore year, Lee returned to Korea to serve the army for two years, in order to keep hold of his Korean citizenship.

Scott Lee
Image Source: newlearningtimes.com

After returning from the army, Scott started his first startup, ‘PeerTutor’, which was inspired by his ordeal in childhood. PeerTutor was meant for Korean students who could not speak English. The service-connected impoverished high school students to English tutors. He returned to the U.S. for his college and ended up working at JP Morgan & Chase as a financial analyst. Since the time he had come back from the army, Lee was encouraged to start his life as an entrepreneur, and it didn’t take long for him to quit his job to do so.

In June 2015, Scott launched his 2nd startup, ‘GooRoo’. GooRoo is a monthly subscription learning platform that matches you with the perfect tutor, the best learning programs and the most helpful educational guidance according to your needs – all with the help of AI.

GooRoo reflects on everyone deserves a good education and has a mission to cater to every student’s unique needs while bringing the excitement of learning to the world. “We believe everyone can succeed to fulfil their desired goals with flying colours. Whether it’s looking for a new hobby, to ace the next test, or an extra push, we’ve got you covered,” says the official site.

GooRoo implies four simple steps to work out perfectly for every individual. The first step is to request a GooRoo which is followed by receiving personalized matches in the second step. The third step involves to book and have a first session proceeded by receiving feedback and actionable recommendations.

GooRoo is a partner of Books for Africa (an initiative that donates one textbook to a child in need for every session completed), NYC Department of Education, NYC Department of Aging, TAL, Related Reality and CBN. Now, more families have access to high-quality tutors at affordable prices. The company has provided more than 3,500 tutoring sessions and has grown to have more than 1,000 tutors in New York City. GooRoo is looking forward to expanding to Boston and San Francisco.

The company has had only two funding rounds, in which they have raised about $4.2 million. GooRoo promises to be transparent and fair in the pricing to ensure that every individual gets an honest education.

Lee recalls his time in the army and explains how the experience shaped him to be an entrepreneur. “My time in the army tested my patience, resilience, and ability to adjust to changing conditions,” he said. He also added that the army taught him leadership, teamwork and humility. “The army works much like a startup -you are part of a small team with huge tasks, and you have to work together to problem solve on a daily basis. Needless to say, it was a life-changing experience,” Scott explained on his life in the Korean army.

GooRoo is available on both Android and iOS and makes it easier to find a tutor. Scott Lee, who turned his childhood struggle into a company, makes sure that it has a strong dedication towards the education that extends even beyond its tutoring services. He hopes that GooRoo continues its work at its best. Scott is surely someone to learn from.