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Ordermark

Ordermark : A Service that Streamlines the Online Orders for the Restaurants

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It has become so easy for us to get things delivered to our doorsteps with just a few clicks, especially food. Numerous food apps provide 30 minutes delivery service, and for us, it is quite easy to use those apps. But for the restaurants, despite the high revenues generated through these apps, it is quite a complex process to keep track of every single app and serve the customers efficiently. Since people are making more online orders, to keep up, the restaurants need to register in all the apps. But some times, it becomes very confusing for them to operate so many apps and carry out the other processes. To deal with this problem, Alan Canter came with Ordermark, a single platform that can connect different apps at one place and streamline the whole food delivery process.

Alex Canter: Early Life and Career

Alex Canter is a native of Los Angeles and a graduate in Computer Science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is also the 4th generation owner of the famous nine decades-old restaurant, Canter’s Deli, based in Los Angeles.

As soon as Canter grew thirteen, he started waiting tables at his family restaurant. And after he graduated, he started working full-time at the restaurant. At the restaurant, he handled the post of operation manager and started experimenting on new ideas to grow their business and improve the services. He came up with the point of sale system and also revamped the restaurant website. With time, the online order services also started expanding, and he also registered his restaurant with multiple online food delivery platforms, like Eat24, DoorDash and Grubhub.

Alex Canter Ordermark
Image Source: prweb.com

Initially, he experimented with the various food items that their restaurant could serve fresh, sandwiches being the first item on the menu. In fact, he himself went to deliver over 20 orders a day, through some other delivery services. As time passed by, a larger menu was already built for the deliveries. The online deliveries were getting them 30 per cent more revenue, but soon it becomes quite hectic to handle the online as well as offline customers.

Most of the times, the staff was confused, and the various devices that were logged in to different delivery apps caused chaos among them. There were multiple smartphones, laptops, and tablets, all specially used for operating the various food delivery apps. This way, sometimes the online customer was getting late deliveries or wrong food items, or the live customers were turning back without having their food.

These reasons were enough for Canter to think of a better option, as he could not shut down his four generations old live business nor he could bear the loss that shutting down the online deliveries could cause. He even went to meet the other restaurant owners and discussed the matter with them. It did not surprise him to hear that these restaurant owners were also finding it difficult to manage all the orders online as well as offline.

Founding Ordermark

Canter hired a professional team, and after analysing the problem, got to the conclusion that the restaurants wanted a system that could streamline all the orders at one place and print a similar-looking order summary through a single platform. So the aim was to centralise the online orders from different apps to a single app.

Finally, Canter launched Ordermark in January 2017, with six other co-founders, including Mike Jacob founder of TapInto and Paul Allen. The platform included all the locally running delivery services into one and chose Epson to develop a single printer to print every transaction in a similar format. Finally, Canter launched Ordermark in January 2017, with six other co-founders, including Mike Jacob founder of TapInto and Paul Allen. The platform included all the locally running delivery services into one and chose Epson to develop a single printer to print every transaction in a similar format.

With the Ordermark subscription, every restaurant receives a tablet and a printer. The service provided the users with a single dashboard, from where they could streamline the process of taking and processing the orders, such that there is no confusion and the customer service is improved.

Canter and his team helped restaurants with curating their menu and taught them how to use the platform. Also, the Ordermark created a pick-up zone for the delivery drivers.

Ordermark raised a $3.1 million series round led by TenOneTen Ventures, Act One Ventures, and Mucker Capital and a $9.5 million Series A round led by Nosara Capital in 2018. The company raised to 35 employees and 500 signed up restaurants in the same year serving in twenty states in the U.S.

Ordermark Today

Today the company has got four offices in different parts of the U.S. It has gained over 3000 signups from various restaurants, including TGI Friday’s, Qdoba, Veggie Grill, Dickey’s Barbecue Pit, Yogurtland, Johnny Rockets, and Sonic. In July 2019, the company raised an $18 million in a new round of funding. The company intends to target the already running 1 million restaurants, and the ones that will be opened in the coming future.

Alex Canter’s unique idea brought him success in his 20s, which is a great achievement for a person just graduated and a dream for many. For his early achievement, he got his name listed in Forbes 30 Under 30.

Ahley Qualls

Ashley Qualls : A Successful Entrepreneur Who Became a Millionaire at 17

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Many of the people around us have a dream of becoming a successful entrepreneur in their life. But, how often do you hear about a 14-year-old teenage girl creating history in the entrepreneurial world?

Ashley Qualls, an American entrepreneur, from Detroit, Michigan, started her website at the age of 14 to provide tutorials in the domain of web designing. In 2004, Qualls released whateverlife.com providing mainly HTML tutorials and free MySpace layouts. She mainly opened this website as a hobby to help teenagers, especially of her age, learn graphic design and coding.

The First Step into the Business World

Qualls neither belonged to a financially predominant family nor did she have a lucrative investor by her side while creating her website. Her mom was a single mother and Qualls was the eldest daughter in her family. She really struggled her way to the top, and ultimately, became one of the successful teenage entrepreneurs of her time.

Ahley Qualls
Image Source: networthbuzz.com

At first, 14 years old Ashley Qualls wanted to create an interesting website for everyone without any future perspective and strategies. Initially, she planned on publishing her own portfolio having graphics and pictures create by herself. Applying her knowledge of web designing in the project, she finally launched the website in 2004, under the domain name whateverlife.com. It was the first stepping stone for her towards creating something funny and attractive for the people, especially teenagers.

Just after a few months of the launch of the website, Qualls earned $70,000. Eventually, she started uploading different tutorials in her website regarding web designing and programming, thus, helping out the teenage students. As the number of unique viewers started increasing, many modifications were made to whateverlife.com. Every user, who created an account on the website, was allowed to upload their own projects, which in turn helped them gain more popularity and even earn rewards. These rewarded points are used to buy digital goods online.

This strategy escalated the rate of popularity of the page, and within a year, it had visitors from around the world. Whateverlife.com became famous among every youngster throughout the globe, witnessing 300,000 users every single day.

The Growth

Before the company turned three years old, whateverlife.com observed 3-4 million page views, especially, for tutorials of HTML and CSS. Qualls’s website became so popular that it started giving tough competition to websites like cbsnews.com and oprah.com.

In 2006, a buyer, whose name has not yet been revealed, offered a price of $1,500,000 to buy the portal, which was humbly turned down by Qualls. Her performance in the field was so impressive that Brad Greenspan, co-founder of MySpace, offered her a hefty amount of money twice in exchange for her website. But, Qualls had more craze for knowledge, and a passion to drive her business even higher than just giving up the ownership to someone else. So, she rejected the offer from Greenspan twice, irrespective of the money he was willing to pay. It is very rare that a young entrepreneur has such high spirit to turn down business tycoons and stand tall by her own. She also bought a house in 2006, where she started living with her mother and younger sister.

Soon, the number of visitors on her website turned to 7 million, and by the time Ashley Qualls turned 17, she was a millionaire.

When Life Turned Upside Down

The flow of success suddenly hit a pause when Qualls was diagnosed by an autoimmune disease, due to which she experienced gastrointestinal issues. The turmoil of her life wasn’t just limited to this, as she lost her business, her house followed by her miscarriage. But she never thought of giving up. She joined a job in 2015, which unfortunately hit an end the very next year due to her worse health conditions and regular visits to doctors.

But, after reading an article in The New Yorker by Meghan O’Rourke, she realized that there are many people out there who are suffering from the same disease.

SickNotDead

After realizing the harsh certainty that this disease will haunt her forever, and there are about thousands of women suffering from the same, Qualls decided to open a blog, SickNotDead. She accepted the reality and started writing to provide advice and support to everyone out there who is prey to this unfortunate veracity. And, through her motivational writings, she has been able to bring a difference in the lives of these people.

Unity Technologies

Unity Technologies Co-founder, David Helgason, Teaches Us ‘Never Give Up’

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In the past fifty years, the video game industry has evolved tremendously, and an infinite number of video game developers are currently contributing to the very field in their own way. David Helgason is one such developer, who along with Nicholas Francis and Joachim Ante, created a gaming engine that is used by half of the active game developers in the world, under the name of their company Unity Technologies. Unity Technologies is one of the biggest video game software development companies which are responsible for the development of most popular video games running today.

Early Life

David Helgason was born and brought up in Iceland. After spending the first ten years of his life in Iceland, he moved to Denmark with his mother. He was a little kid when his mother brought him a computer. As soon he got his hands on the computer, he grew an interest in learning more about it. Once after breaking the computer, he tried to fix it and got some video games to play on it. He even started learning programming languages, so that he could build games on the computer.

He spent a whole 22 years in Denmark, and from education to his first job, he did all there. Though he never got a degree from the university, as he dropped out of university at least four times, and studied different subjects every single time, including psychology, physics, computer science, Arabic, and middle eastern studies.

Unity Technologies founders
Image Source: globenewswire.com

Founding Unity Technologies & Initial Struggling Years

Helgason was never sure of what he wanted to do in future, except becoming a scholar. But studies did not interest him, and after dropping out for four times from the university, he finally thought of starting a software development company.

In the year 2000, he started Over the Edge Entertainment (later rebranded as Unity Technologies) with his friends Nicholas Francis and Joachim Ante, inside a basement. To pay the rent and the taxes, all three were working part-time in restaurants and coffees shops.

The three friends had started the business but without a business plan. So they had nothing to do better than sticking along. So for a long time, they were doing some consulting projects and other non-technical jobs to support their company. The three finally launched their first game, GooBall, in 2005, and the bizarre thing about the game was that it only supported Mac. This way, the first project of the company failed badly.

The Rise of Unity Technologies

But this failure brought the three into the light, and they started working on another project. This time, they added support for Windows PCs and Web browsers. They also shifted their focus from developing games to developing a gaming engine. They aimed at creating a gaming engine that could ease out the process of development of 2D and 3D interactive content.

In 2006, the co-inventors participated in the Apple Design Awards and were the runner-up for Best Use of Mac OS X Graphics. In the next year, with the release of the iPhone, the company started working on adding the support for the iPhone in the engine. In 2008, they released the new version of the engine that supported iPhone games, becoming the first gaming engine to do so. This made the engine popular among the people. The company started developing support for mobile games and began to grow at a faster rate.

In 2008, Cartoon Network used the Unity engine to create FusionFall. FusionFall is an MMORPG for kids and has been played by 8 million people. In the following years, other big names like Electronic Arts, Microsoft and Ubisoft, also used the same engine for their projects.

In 2010, the company launched the Unity Asset Store, and in 2012, Unity Technologies acquired the animation company Mecanim. The next year, the company recorded 1 million registered developers, the 50 per cent of the total game developers of the world. Facebook also added Unity engine to its platform, in 2013,

The Fundraiser

By 2016, Unity Technologies had earned more than 5.5 million registered users. The same year the company raised a $181 million round of funding making the company valued at approximately $1.5 billion, and in another round of funding in the next year, the company raised $400 million that valued the company at $2.8 billion. In 2018, with $145 million raised in another funding valued the company at $3 billion.

In the year 2017, the company released the Unity 2017 version and partnered with Google to develop augmented reality tools for Android devices and apps on ARCore. The two companies also joined their hands to offer online game development on Google Cloud. Unity Technologies also started working with DeepMind, an Alphabet subsidiary, to develop a virtual world artificial intelligence.

Unity Technologies Expansion

Today, the Unity engine is also used in various other fields other than game development, including film, television and automotive. Since its inception, the company has acquired much other game development and media companies, including Digital Monarch Media (2018), Vivox (2019), Applifier (2014) and Multiplay (2017).

As of 2018, the company has hired more than 2000 employees and has established its offices in various parts of North America, Europe and Asia. John Riccitiello replaced Helgason as the CEO of the company in 2014. Since then, Helgason has been working as a member of the board of the company and has moved to Copenhagen. He has also spoken as a motivational speaker at many events, such as TechBBQ, Copenhagen Tech Festival, Techfestival.se, Tech Open Air Berlin, Slush, etc.

Revolut

Nikolay Storonsky : Founder of Revolut, the Amazon of Banking

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No one better than a traveller would know the worth of every single cent as he/she has to pay an extra fee on the exchange of currency when crossing borders. This is not only the problem of a traveller but many others, who need to get their currencies exchanged, and that too, over different exchange fees. Would it not be better if we get a personalised and accurate platform that would help us with the foreign spendings and the currency exchanges, so that the whole process remains transparent, and we always pay the right amount?

Nikolay Storonsky, a British-Russian entrepreneur, went through the same problem, every time he planned vacations out of the country. But, in the end, he came up with Revolut. Revolut is a banking app that helps you with your finances and spendings across the globe.

Early Life

Nikolay Storonsky was born on 21 July 1984 in Moscow, USSR, to Nikolay Mironovich Storonsky. His father is the Deputy General Director of Science for Gazprom Promgaz, Russia.

Nikolay Storonsky
Image SOurce: vixc.com

Storonsky, after completing his school education from a public school, joined the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, where he completed a master’s degree in Physics. During his time at the university, he also participated in various swimming competitions and became a state-level swimming champion. Later, he went to the New Economic School in Moscow, where he completed another master’s degree in economics.

Storonsky started his career as a trader and worked for Credit Suisse and Lehman Brothers.

Founding Revolut

Storonsky loved travelling and even went abroad for small trips. But every time he went out of the country, he faced issues with the currency exchange and their hiked fees. This annoyed Storonsky a lot and wanted to find a better solution for the same.

After a lot of searching and brainstorming, Storonsky reached to a conclusion that he should develop a system that could help people with their finances. So, along with Vlad Yatsenko, and with the help of former Credit Suisse and Deutsche Bank developer, he started working on Revolut.

In the beginning, he raised a $3.5 million for the startup and launched Revolut as an exchange platform on 1 July 2015. The new and convenient concept of Revolut helped it reach more people and make other investors interested in it. In the next two years, the company raised $71 and valued at $350 million. The company also added some other financial services to the platform like cryptocurrency exchange, peer-to-peer payments and pre-paid debit card, etc.

In 2018, the Revolut raised a $250 million in another round of funding, led by Hong Kong-based DST Global. The company became a unicorn and valued $1.7 billion after the round of funding. The same year, the company was able to get the Specialised Bank licence from European Central Bank and an Electronic Money Institution licence, both facilitated by the Bank of Lithuania.

This way, the company is allowed to accept deposits from the consumers and offer them credits. But since it has the Specialised License, it cannot process the investments from the consumers.

Further Expansion

Revolut is one of the fastest-growing fintech, and as of February 2019, it has earned over 4 million users out of which half of them uses the Revolut debit card. The Revolut app offers withdrawal of around 120 currencies through ATMs, and around 29 currencies can be sent to people directly using the app. The app also supports the exchange of cryptocurrency with 20 different fiat currencies. The cryptocurrencies that the app support includes Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Litecoin (LTC), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), and XRP, etc. The app has its own wallet that can be used to make online payments.

The app had been developed to help people cut the extra fees they pay on exchanges, so the app provides a minimal or no fee for all of its services.

The company headquarters is based in London, United Kingdom, and Nikolay Storonsky is serving the company as the CEO. Currently, 600+ people are working for Revolut. The net worth of Storonsky is estimated to be $510 million.

Awards and Recognition

Revolut has been ranked number three in the LinkedIn Top Companies (UK Startups) list in 2018. It has been also awarded the Top 10 Employed Brand (UK) by Hired in the same year. Revolut won the award of Hottest Fintech Startup 2018 by Europa Awards and Innovator of the Year 2018 by Amazon Growing Business Awards. It was also named the Fintech Company of the Year 2018 by CityAM Awards.

For now, Storonsky is working hard and wants to extend the scope of Revolut services to other countries as well.

roblox

David Baszucki : Founder of Roblox, the Biggest Video Game Building Platform

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Video games are the best way to pass time and also good for some brain exercises. But it takes a lot of efforts to create a video game as it is quite a complex task. But what if there be a platform that helps the keen developers to create those video games in some simpler steps? It would be great, Right? Roblox is such a platform that allows its users to design their games, and even play games created by other developers. The platform not only is helping people create their own games, but also establish themselves as tech entrepreneurs. Roblox was founded by American internet entrepreneur David Baszucki in 2006.

Early Life

Baszucki was born on 20 January 1963 in Canada. He completed his high school education from Eden Prairie High School in Eden Prairie, Minnesota. He was an active participant in the extracurriculars of his school and was the head of the quiz team of the school. Later, he joined Stanford University, where he studied engineering and computer science. He then graduated as the General Motors Scholar in electrical engineering in 1985.

Career

Baszucki was always into starting up his own business, so only after four years from his graduation, along with his brother, he founded ‘Knowledge Revolution’ in 1989. Knowledge Revolution produced educational applications for Macintosh users. The first product of the Knowledge Revolution was Interactive Physics, an application that helped users learn Physics. The platform simulated a 2D environment where the users could carry out Physics experiments.

Roblox founder David Baszucki
Image Source: bizjournals.com

The next year, the company released ‘Working Model’, another application that helped users learn mechanical physics. After building various educational applications, MSC Software, a California based company acquired Knowledge Revolution in 1998.

After the acquisition, Baszucki joined MSC Software as Vice President and the General Manager in 2000. After working for two years in the company, he left the job to start an investment firm named Baszucki & Associates. He even hosted a radio show named KSCO Radio Santa Cruz from February to July 2003.

Founding Roblox

Baszucki was inspired by the success of the Knowledge Revolution, and how popular Interactive Physics had become among the young kids. This led him to start working on a new project in 2004 that would also involve its users in the development work. Baszucki started working on a new project and founded DynaBlocks with Erik Cassel.

Later in 2005, the company was rebranded as Roblox. The official launch of the company and its website took place in 2006. The company produced a creation engine named Roblox Studio that allowed people to create their games and experiences on the platform. The users could also play games created by other developers on the platform. In 2007, the company released a premium membership, i.e. Builders Club, that offered extra features to the subscribers.

The platform became a place to learn and create codes for the teenagers, and it received maximum engagement form the children under the age of 13. In 2009, the company raised a $2.2 million in crowdfunding, and it raised a $4 million in the second round of funding in 2011. In the same year, the company hosted Hack Week, an event for the developers where these developers could present some out-of-the-box ideas.

The company has launched its own virtual currency named Robux, that players use to buy games on the platform.

In December 2012, Roblox released an iOS version of the platform, and in the next year, the company developed a currency exchanging platform, Developer Exchange system, using which the developers could exchange their Robux virtual currency with real-time currency.

In 2015, Roblox then released a new and revamped feature for the game development, ‘Smooth Terrain’, that offered, even smoother game development. The next year, the company also introduced Roblox VR for Oculus Rift that could be used for playing over ten million 3D games available on the platform. Roblox also released a Windows 10 compatible version of Roblox in the same year.

The company even raised a huge sum of $92 million in another funding round led by Meritech Capital Partners and Index Ventures in March 2017.

In 2017, there was a total of 2 million Roblox developers on the platform, and it had over 56 million monthly active players. The collective earning of this year was calculated to be $30 million. The platform has helped many teenagers to make some money for their expenses, many of which have also paid for their college fee with the same money. Developers are even making $50,000 a month through Roblox.

Roblox is one of America’s fastest-growing companies, and it also received the same title from Inc. 5000 in 2016 and 2017. It was also awarded the ‘Economic Development Association (SAMCEDA) Award of Excellence’ in 2017.

Baszucki also received various awards and accolades for his invention, including the ‘San Mateo Visionary Hero Award’ for Roblox’s contributions to education and encouraging kids to code (2015). He was also named as one of ‘100 Most Intriguing Entrepreneurs’ by Goldman Sachs (2017-18). He has over 15 patents in his name.

Toshiba

Toshiba : An Uproarious Success Story of a Brand in the World of Electronics

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Gone are the days, when mankind still managed to survive without the help of high tech equipment and power systems. Life in the 21st century would have been vulnerable if we didn’t have access to communication equipment to transfer signals, medical equipment to carry out surgeries, and most importantly, power systems to fuel up the machines. And, amongst the growing advancement in electronic products, Toshiba, a Japanese multinational corporation, has sailed the world through a wave of premiere wide-ranging devices, starting from household appliances to social infrastructure systems. The company has its headquarters based in Tokyo, Japan, with a robust number of subsidiaries.

The First Step, Tanaka Engineering Works

In 1873, Hisashige Tanaka, a renowned engineer of that time, was given the charge to build a telegraphic equipment to enhance the development in Japan. This contract led him to establish Tanaka Seisakusho (Tanaka Engineering Works), in 1875, the first Japanese company to build telegraphic equipment. The company also produced various electrical devices like switches for the communication systems. The company, later, came under the control of Tanaka’s adopted son.

On the other side, Japan still didn’t have enough technology to build its own electric lamps. But, in 1878, Ichisuke Fujioka, a student of Imperial College of Engineering, under the guidance of Prof. William Ayrton built Japan’s first arc lamp. He also built Japan’s first power generator with the help of Miyoshi Shoichi, a worker from Tanaka Seisakusho. Thus, in 1890, Hakunetsu-Sha Co., Ltd was established by Fujioka to produce light bulbs.

The Growth

Toshiba Headquarters Japan
Image Source: wikimedia.org

After the death of Tanaka in 1881, Tanaka Seisakusho was partly acquired by General Electric, followed by the acquisition of the company by Mitsui Bank in 1893, renaming it as Shibaura Seisakusho. Both the companies, Shibaura Seisakusho and Hakunetsu-Sha Co Ltd, were at their best phase when the Great Kanto earthquake hit the city and took away a lot of lives. A lot of employees of these two companies fall victim to this calamity, and hence, suffered a major loss.

During the 1930s, the government put a ban on the production of home appliances and shifted its interest to make war equipment. In 1939, Tokyo Denki (previously known as Hakunetsu-Sha) and Shibaura Seisakusho were merged to form Tokyo Shibaura Denki (now Toshiba) with General Electric Company holding 24% share.

The company expanded during the time of war, as it supplied military needs, radios and generators. During the postwar period, the company again started focusing on producing electrical and electronic equipment, and it expanded its business by exporting the machinery to Southeast Asia.

From the 1950s, Toshiba started growing exponentially and established a lot of industries. In 1984, the company was rebranded as Toshiba, replacing Tokyo Shibaura Denki. During the late 1990s, the company established further new firms, including Toshiba Music Industries, Toshiba International Corporation, Toshiba Electrical Equipment, Toshiba Chemical, and many more. The company was also responsible for developing some of Japan’s first electronics. The company built Japan’s first TAC digital computer followed by transistor television and microwave oven colour video phone, MRI system, DVD, and sub-notebook personal computer. These are some of the few inventions that helped the company pioneer the electronics industry.

2000-Today

To meet the growing demand in the North American market, Toshiba signed an agreement with Orion Electric in 2001 to supply TV and video products for the company. In 17th October 2006, Toshiba made one of the greatest acquisitions in the history of the company by acquiring Westinghouse Electric Company, the world’s largest nuclear power company for $5.4 billion. Toshiba had a 77% share of the company while The Shaw Group and Ishikawajima-Harima Heavy industries had 20% and 3% share, respectively. In January 2009, Toshiba bought the Hard Disk Drive business of Fujitsu.

On 16th May 2011, Toshiba announced the acquisition of Landis+Gyr for $2.3 billion, followed by the acquisition of IBM’s point-of-sale business $850 million. In December 2013, Toshiba established its own manufacturing unit in India after acquiring Vijai Electricals Limited Plant, Hyderabad, India. In January 2014, Toshiba acquired OCZ Storage Solutions, and in the same year, Toshiba and United Technologies came in a joint venture and expanded it outside Japan. Since then, Toshiba has acquired a lot of other companies, and even, faced many scandals. The company sold Westinghouse as it suffered a wide loss in 2017.

Currently, Toshiba produces one of the finest electronic products and services in the entire world and is getting stronger day by day. The company has around 140,000 employees as per the statistics of 2019. It believes in creating more efficient products in future and thrives for excellence.