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Acquia

Dries Buytaert and Tom Erickson journey to set up Acquia

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Acquia enabled the Drupal-open source platform, on which one can build, run, as well, optimize sites. It is a software service firm set up by Dries Buytaert and J. Batson. The founder established the platform considering providing enterprise products, and services. Also, to provide technical support especially to Drupal. Currently, Michael Sullivan is serving as the CEO of the firm. Acquia, set up in 2007 has marked the name as the fastest-growing private tech firm of North America by 2013. As well, it was among the DELOITTE’s fastest 500 in 2014.

About Acquia

It is one of the leading software firms that enabled the best Drupal platform. In 2007, Dries set up the firm with his partner. Currently, it is providing miscellaneous software service. Also, it is helping some of the world’s leading brands succeed, including Twitter, Mercedes Benz, Warner Music Group, and Stanford University. More than 4,000 organizations are using Acquia’s solutions for content, community, and commerce.

Glimpse to founders Life- Dries Buytaert

He attended Ghent University, Belgium to study computer science. Earlier, Dries worked as Linux-WLAN FAQ maintainer from 1999 to 2000. Presently, he is a well-known software programmer, who is recognized as one of the lead developers of the Drupal content administration platform.

The Backstory of Acquia Foundation

As a well-experienced software programmer, he always wanted to develop a feasible platform for Drupal. With his partner Jay Batson, the idea came into reality after setting up Acquia in December 2007. A software company that enabled products and services as well, technical support for Drupal. As Red hat is important for Linux similarly, Acquia is for Drupal. In a short duration, the firm assists to re-launch Whitehouse.gov on Drupal in 2009.

Dries Buytaert’s other contributions

Apart from being a co-founder, he served as a CTO of the company. In 2008, he launched a service called Mollom. It is especially for stopping website spams. So that sites can keep clean as well, content quality will maintain high. Nowadays, this service is a spam filter as well, a CAPTCHA server.

Awards and Recognition

BusinessWeek selected him as a Young Entrepreneurs of Tech in 2008. Also, Dries named as one of the top 35 innovators under the age of 35, worldwide by MIT Technology Review TR35.

Tom Erickson- Former CEO

He is a founding director of the company, who worked with co-founders to develop the company’s open-source commercialization model. Also, he assisted to recruit the early team members during 2008. In 2009, he joined Acquia as CEO. Before that, he served as a Chief product officer, managing the sale of Tele Atlas to TomTom. During his tenure as a CEO, he guided the firm to exponential growth depends on the fanatical commitment to the customers. At Acquia, he leads the unique blending of open source, enterprise software, and digital agency.

Personal life

He attended the University of Wisconsin, Madison for studying electrical and computer engineering. After that, he began a career in the technical field. Tom worked in many countries including England, Australia, and France, where he spent almost 14 years of his career. Apart from Acquia, he also was the Systinet’s CEO.

Michael Sullivan- Present CEO

He succeeded T. Erickson and became the Chief Executive Officer of a firm in 2017. Also, he is SVP and General Manager, SaaS and Information Management at Micro Focus. Michael also worked as a VP & General Manager, HP Software, Autonomy Protect at HP Autonomy. Furthermore, he is the founder and former President of Steelpoint technologies Inc. Sullivan attended Bentley University for his graduation. Currently, he is serving at Acquia. Under his guidance, the company continues the miscellaneous software products and services on the Drupal platform.

Awards and Recognition of Acquia

In 2012, Acquia was ranked 8 on the Inc. 500 list, 1st software company and 8th company in Boston. Also, Inc. Magazine named it in a 500 fastest-growing private companies list. It also names as fastest-growing private tech firm of North America by 2013. As well, it was among the DELOITTE’s fastest 500 in 2014. Apart from that, it has famous at the industry level after Gartner Magic Quadrant honored it as a Leader for Web Content Administration in 2014. Further, also honored as a Strong Performer in 2015 in Web Content Management.

99designs

99designs – Hire The Best Designers For Your Business

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Designing is a very crucial part of any business. With digital marketing becoming the ruler of the empire, one needs to hire top-class designers for the company. It varies from company to company whether they want to hire a designing team or hire freelancers. But, with freelancers, things get easier and faster. You hire them, assign a job, set a deadline and the job is done. When it comes to freelancers, many websites provide the service of hiring freelancers. Websites like Fiverr, Freelancers.com are ruling the market for a very long time. But, they tend to cover most of the categories needed for business operation. For example, content writers, graphic designers, software developers, web designers, etc. 99designs is a platform that is solely created for connecting graphic designers to the clients. Matt Mickiewicz and Mark Harbottle founded the company in 2008. The company’s headquarters are based in Melbourne, Australia.

About the Founders

Born in Poland, Matt moved to Germany at a very young age. He was very much interested in developing websites and designing them as well. Matt created his first website, SitePoint at the age of fourteen and after a couple of years, he met Mark Harbottle. When he was in high school, he managed both attending classes and his advertising business.

Matt met his business partner only at the age of sixteen and established 99designs as an independent company in 2008. In 2011, Matt came in the list of 30 Under 30 Entrepreneur by Forbes and INC. He attends seminars and conferences around the world as an important speaker.

Mark Harbottle has plenty of experience in the entrepreneurial world. He co-founded 99designs in 2008 and presently invests in many companies. He has co-founded other companies as well which includes Flippa.com, Learnable.com, and SitePoint (parent company of 99designs and later spun off). He is the Founding Investor at Elto.com, Hired Inc., Influx Inc, and Assembly Payments.

How did it start?

Matt created SitePoint when he was in high school. But, then he didn’t know it would take a bigger shape in the future. Initially, the people at SitePoint competed with each other regarding who could create the best design. But, with a little entrepreneurial idea, the journey of 99designs started. They decided to design the logo and get a cash prize for the winner in return. And, finally, 99designs spun off from SitePoint.com.

Success and Growth

After Matt and Mark established the company in 2008, they found that most of their clients and designers are from the United States. So, they opened an office in San Francisco. Currently, the U.S. headquarters are situated in Oakland, California. The company grew fast and by the next four years, 99designs had more than 175,000 designers from 192 countries. In 2009, the company became one of Australia’s top innovations.

In 2011, 99designs raised $35 million from Accel Partners for carrying out global expansion. By this time, the company had around 100,000 designers and hosted more than 75,000 projects. In 2012, 99designs acquired a European company, 12designer which later became the European headquarters of the company. In 2013, the company acquired LogoChef, one of Brazil’s leading designing company. This year the company also expanded its business to Latin America and the Netherlands providing Dutch version of it.

In 2015, the company raised another $10 million. Though the company mainly conducted competitions and see whose logo wins, after a few years, they decided otherwise. From 2016, the company allowed the clients to directly choose and hire designers from the registered designers. At the end of 2018, the company’s annual revenue summed up to $60 million.

In 2018, the company also announced that the total earnings of the designers crossed $250 million by the end of the year.

Why in demand?

The platform has turned out to be advantageous for both the clients and the designers. In 99designs, the clients are provided with the best designer as they are given the liberty of choice. On the other hand, the designers also don’t need to interact with every other client asking for the project. If you are a designer you only design your project. 99designs does the rest of the job. Through the span of twelve years, it has become successful in establishing trust among the company and clients.

coursera

Coursera Is Taking Massive Open Online Courses To New Heights

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Have you ever realized that after the advent of online education, millions of students have been benefited? Extra knowledge has become a pre-requisite for landing either a lucrative job or making it into one of the finest institutions around the globe. But, everyone can’t pay for extra courses when basic education seems far-fetched. Especially in a developing country like India, e-learning is the need of the hour. Because most of the population belongs to middle-class society and they need the privilege to acquire proper education. Learning the crucial need to educate the world, especially the young minds in an affordable way, MOOCs are needed. In 2012, two professors from Stanford University, Daphne Koller and Andrew Ng founded Coursera. Coursera has become one of the largest and successful websites for MOOCs. And, this platform mainly focusses on making people learn about the emerging demanding topics like AI and ML.

About the Founders of Coursera

Daphne Koller’s research area is mainly based on the application of artificial intelligence in biomedical sciences. She is an Israeli-American professor in the department of computer science. In 1985, she graduated from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem at the age of seventeen and received her master’s degree at the age of eighteen. Daphne went to Stanford to acquire her Ph.D.

She received the ACM-Infosys Foundation Award in 2008 which came with a cash prize of $150,000. In 2012, she along with another Standard professor, Andrew Ng, co-founded Coursera. She served as the co-CEO of the company and later as the President. Daphne left the company in 2016 and joined Calico as the Chief Computing Officer. Later, she left Calico to start her company, Insitro, a drug discovery start-up. Daphne is also the recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship.

Image Source: Google

Apart from being one of the most famous and successful computer scientists, Andrew is also an investor, writer, and businessman. His parents were immigrants from Hong Kong and thus he grew up in London. He went to Carnegie Mellon University and acquired his bachelor’s in three subjects in 1997. He majored in computer science, economics, and statistics. Later, he went to the Massachusetts Institute of technology and acquired his master’s degree in 1998.

Andrew joined Stanford University in 2002 and co-founded Coursera in 2012. He is also the co-founder of Google Brain and the former Vice President and Chief Scientist at Baidu. He was listed in Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in 2012. Andrew has also founded AI Fund that financially backs the AI-based start-ups.

The Beginning

Both Andrew and Daphne were inspired by the online courses of Stanford in the fall of 2011. They were driven by the idea of how an online learning platform is advantageous to millions of students out there who cannot afford to take coaching classes. Moreover, through this platform people can learn from the best professors in the world.

When they founded the website, Stanford, Princeton, the University of Michigan and the University of Pennsylvania joined their hands to contribute. It included many specialization courses as well. The content of Coursera eventually became very elaborate.

Growth, Funding, and Investors

The first funding that Coursera raised was an amount of $16 million. It was led by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Buyers and New Enterprise Associates. The series B funding took place in 2013 where Coursera raised $63 million from World Bank Group. The amount of funding raised shows how fast it was gaining popularity. In the next round of funding, the start-up raised around $60 million from EDB Investment. After a few more rounds of funding, Coursera’s valuation crossed $1 billion at the end of 2019.

To date, Coursera has established a relationship with 200 partners across twenty-nine countries. Apart from college and other educational institutions, Coursera has also come into partnership with many government agencies.

Strategies and Business Model

Within one year of its product going public, Coursera made an annual revenue of $1 million. Students from all over the world signed up for the courses especially because of the valid certificate provided after the completion. After a couple of years, Coursera decided to provide financial aid to the students who cannot pay the course fee.

After this, more students started enrolling and learning new skills. The students were highly benefited as the certificates were only given after passing the assignments with 80% gradation. This is one of the best features of Coursera that they are genuinely interested in educating people and not just making money.

Currently, Coursera has 47 million users around the world. The company has 450 employees and the headquarters is situated in California.

WebEngage

Marketing Is Getting More Realistic With Avlesh Singh’s WebEngage

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Most companies jump into establishing a business before having much idea about internal operations. There are start-ups founded by brilliant minds and excellent team efforts, achieving great success. But, those are the only companies we tend to know about. In the business world, many new start-ups are coming up every day but dissolving due to a lack of strategic moves.WebEngage is a very important sector for every business to expand and reach out to people. Most of the companies are indeed more interested in making a profit. But, a few understand that customers are the prime key to that. WebEngage is a marketing company that is focused mainly on personalized marketing experience for its customers. Alves Singh and Ankit Utreja founded the company in 2010. And, currently, it is one of the top 25 software companies in India.

About the Founders

Avlesh Singh went to the Indian Institute of Technology (Indian School of Mines), Dhanbad. He graduated in 2005 with a bachelor’s degree in Mineral Engineering.

Avlesh started his career with burrp! where he worked as the Principal Engineer and Search Architect. He worked there for more than three years and joined InfoMedia18 Ltd. Avlesh left the company earlier in 2010 and co-founded WebEngage. Currently, he is the Chief Executive Officer of the company.

Before WebEngage, Ankit Utreja has fourteen years of experience in the field of tech stacks. He is extremely skilled at managing the database system. Currently, he is the Chief Technology Officer of WebEngage.

Early Days

When Avlesh and Ankit developed the company, its main focus was on making more engagement between companies and their customers. They emerged as a company providing an on-site survey and a feedback tool. But, once they started engaging customers, Ankit wanted to create more of a high-tech environment for the company. With the assistant of Ankit and the tech team, WebEngage became a full-stack mobile-first marketing automation platform.

Since then they believe in making marketing more personalized. The user should feel genuine engagement with the company and become more comfortable. WebEngage thus came up as an opportunity for digital companies to improve user engagement.

Growth and Success

WebEngage has been listed in the Winter 2020 Grid Report for Marketing Automation & Push Notification and the High Performer Category. The tool of WebEngage is also very easy to set up which attracts more customers around the globe. Due to this reason, WebEngage received an Implementation Index of 7.96 out of 10. This rate is higher than companies like Oracle and Adobe.

In 2018, the company helped more than 300 digital enterprises to make their user engagement better. Currently, the company is trying its best to help all the B2C companies make more annual revenue. Instead of landing new customers, WebEngage lets the companies reconnect with the existing customers and make a better relationship.

Investors

The major investors of the company are IndiaQuotient, Blume Ventures, Social Capital, Capital Group, and Indian Angel Fund. And, the recent investors are Social Capital and BlackSoil. The Angel round of WebEngage took place in October 2011 and the company raised $100,000. The next funding round took place in August 2012 where they raised $500,000 followed by $1.3 million in 2016. Till now, WebEngage has raised a total amount of $2.1 million from six funding rounds.

Application of AI and ML

Since WebEngage is an initiative to improve user engagement, the application of AI and ML is quite mandatory. The application of AI is needed here mainly to categorize the requirements of the customers based on business requirements, user action, demographic data, etc. It also checks the suitability of the content across different types of user groups.

Accusations

The company was making remarkable success. But, in 2017 one of the former female colleagues of the company accused Avlesh Singh of sexual assault. It spread all over social media like a wildfire. The investigation continued for a long time and they concluded about the relationship is consensual. But, after she came up with the same accusation once again, investigation presumed.

Later, all the charges were removed from him. But, the news affected the growth of the company to some point. Though, the action didn’t lead to something bigger like striking his name off the company. But, the company still suffered some loss.

37signals

37Signals: Jason Fried’s Web Design Company that launched the first commercial product Basecamp!

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37Signals is a remote software firm, which is, later on, changed its name as a Basecamp. Earlier, it worked in the field of web design. However, Basecamp shifted its focus towards web application development since 2004. Ruby on Rails, Basecamp, Campfire are the best-known products of the company. It is based in Chicago, Illinois and three web designers set up the firm back in 1999.

Jason Fried is one of the founders, presently serving as the CEO of 37Signals (Basecamp). Under his policies, the firm continued to build miscellaneous web-based productivity tools that match the requirements of the present era. Let’s see the journey of 37Signals, from web design company to web application development firm.

The Backstory of Foundation

It was a web design firm set up in 1999 by E. Kim, Jason Fried, and C. Segura. As a matter of fact, they named it after 37 radio telescope signals. Earlier, the firm worked for other several organizations to build and re-design their websites. The business was also running great and the company acquired lots of projects in a few months. But keeping track of all things got complicated as well, the team was somewhat disorganized. As a result, taken projects dragged on too long, miscommunication between team members increased, and things began to fall out of the track.

That time, Email was only medium for handling work, but it had limitations for long-running projects taken by the company. And so, founders realized that a better project supervision tool is a must to keep the track of all things. They searched several tools which can help them to organize the work to be done, communicate ideas as well as to share work with clients. Well, they found few, but those were complicated and hard to use.

Basecamp was born

After using several project management apps, the needs of owners didn’t fulfill. Thus, they opted to build a simple app on their platform. Soon, they started to use the tool for project administration with the clients. However, this tool showed results; projects ran better. As well, their clients appreciated the organization and improve communication. In fact, 37signals’ clients started asking about the software they were using for project managing.

That’s how the product of a 37Signals called Basecamp was born. Founders priced the software fairly and launched it in the market in 2004. 37signals adopted a new strategy in 2014, the company entirely focused on the flagship product. Also, renamed the company’s name from 37signals to Basecamp.

Basecamp boomed

37Signals’ first commercial product was Basecamp. After its launch, the Basecamp software used by many for project management. Churches, schools, consulting firms, publishers as well as governments started using Basecamp for its better project supervision. Thereafter, the firm launched several other applications in the market. Includes, Backpack, Campfire, Highrise, etc. Also, the web application Ruby on Rails, which was created for internal use of the company made public in 2004.

In 2014, Basecamp first hit the market, 15,000,000+ people have worked on a project with Basecamp. Since then every week, thousands of firms sign up to use Basecamp. As everything runs smoother with Basecamp, people like to use Basecamp for their project management. Basecamp enabled better handle on the business, in return, the teams become more self-sufficient. Also, Basecamp apps are available on various platforms including, iOS, Android, Mac, and PC, integrations.

Other Products of 37Signals

Apart from Basecamp, the company launched several other products in the market. In 2006, it launched an online chat platform called Campfire. However, it then merged into Basecamp 3. Thereafter, a free web application framework known as Ruby on Rails made open source in 2004.

Glimpse to Founder Life- Jason Fried

Jason shared a great contribution to set up 37signals in 1999. Also, he is the makes of Basecamp and other web-based tools of the company. He attended the University of Arizona to study Finance. Apart from that, he is Rework’s co-author. In addition, he is also a columnist at Inc. Magazine known as Getting Real. Where he published his articles monthly.

Presently, he is serving as the president of Basecamp, earlier known as 37Signals. Under his guidance, the company continued to build miscellaneous web-based productivity tools that match the requirements of the present era.

Bottom Line

The first commercial product of 37Signals, Basecamp is becoming popular amongst several firms that needed a better project management platform. In 2004, only about 45 clients were using Basecamp, which increased every year. Presently, more than 3.3 million peoples are using Basecamp for better project management. In fact, the number is rising day by day!

Spacemaker

How Spacemaker Is Helping To Build Sustainable Urban Cities Under Havard Haukeland Policies?

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As we can see, cities of the world are growing immensely day by day. Nothing wrong to say that it will grow more in the future. In fact, the definition of living quality in urban areas is changing with time. Thus, the constructions should be higher and denser as well, faster than before. Also, it is necessary to provide high living quality and an urban environment that is sustainable. Obviously, the construction industry has adopted these changes. But it is one of the industries, which is yet one of the least digitized. The construction industry needs a transformation to match the requirements of the future urban area. Here comes the role of Spacemaker, which is playing an important part to bring transformation in this industry. Spacemaker aims to assist in building sustainable cities that are the need for the future.

However, it is set up by Havard Haukeland in 2016, which is named among the world’s 500 most innovative science and deep tech startups. Moreover, it was invited to Paris as a finalist in the world’s biggest early-stage start-up competition in science and deep tech start-up section.

About Spacemaker

It is a Norway-based startup that creates AI software to assist property developers and architects. So that they can make better design decisions to build the cities. Recently, the firm has picked up 25 million dollars in Series A funding. In addition, it claims to enable property development specialists, like real estate developers, urban planners, and architects. Thus, enabling evaluation and development of the optimal environmental design for any multi-building residential development.

Havard Haukeland co-founded the firm in 2016.

The world’s first AI-assisted design and construction simulation software

Spacemaker developed “the world’s first” AI-assisted design and construction simulation software for the property development sector. In fact, it has developed a game-changing AI technology that enables users to find smarter ways to maximize the building site’s potential. The products of Spacemaker enables users to explore a multitude of site proposals. This helps to sort out the best ones; as well, provides details analysis for each. Furthermore, the company enables insights and collaborative workflow among different levels of authorities needed to build any site. Such as municipalities, real estate developers, engineers, and architects. Currently, it acquired partners such as Skanska, OBOS, AF Gruppen, etc. These are Northern Europe’s most impactful real estate developer and architect firms. 

How Spacemaker is Helping to Build Sustainable Urban Cities?

With rising urban populations, we need sustainable and liveable cities. But it is not possible to build the same with old construction methods. To developed new urban areas, the available land should be used wisely to create a comfortable residency. Also, to develop sustainable urban cities, many other factors need to consider. Like, space optimization, sunlight exposure, noise, wind, and many others. 

To achieve this, Spacemaker developed AI-based software, which enables a sense-check of their construction plans. As well, shows design optimization considering various factors as mention above. For that, this software crunches various data. Includes, physical data, regulations, environmental factors, and other preferences. Thereafter, it provides twenty to thirty options at most, considering all factors.

The mastermind behind Spacemaker- Havard Haukeland

He is the present CEO and co-founder of Spacemaker, a Norway based deep-tech start-up established in 2016. The firm is well-known for building the world’s first Artificial Intelligence for urban site development. Before that, he also worked at Link Architecture as an urban designer. It is one of the leading architect offices in Scandinavia. Also, Havard is the former architect at Element Architects. Apart from construction industry jobs, Haukeland also worked as director and scriptwriter at Seefood TV.

Educational Background

Havard went to The Oslo School of Architecture and Design (AHO) for studying masters in architecture. Further, he attended The Norwegian School of Information Technology and Westerdals School of Arts, Communication, and Technology. As well, he studied mathematics and physics at Nadderud VGS.

Awards and Recognitions

He was listed in 40 below 40 of Capital and among the Top 5 Innovator of the year, Top young leaders in Norway in 2017. Havard won Statsbygg´s award for the best Master Thesis in second place.

The company set up by Havard won HAI / Machine Learning startup of the year-Nordics, Startup of the year-Norway. In 2019, it won Best AI / Machine Learning startup of the year, Norway. Also, the firm honored with many such awards including, the Construction industry’s Innovation award, B2B startup of the year-Norway, CogX Sustainable Cities and Communities Award.