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Huffington Post

Arianna Huffington: The Success Story of the Founder of The Huffington Post

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Arianna Huffington is a Greek-American novelist, syndicated writer, and entrepreneur. She is the co-founder of The Huffington Post and the CEO of and founder of Thrive Global. She has also authored fifteen books. Both the Forbes Most Powerful Women list and the Time magazine’s list of the 100 most influential people in the world include her.

Huffington Post
Image Source: huffpost.com

Early Life

Arianna Huffington was born in Greece. At the age of 16, she immigrated to the UK where she attended Girton College in Cambridge to study economics. There, she served as president of the Cambridge Union. She also went to India to study comparative religion at Visva-Bharati University.

Arianna Huffington and Bernard Levin both made appearances in a 1971 edition of Face the Music. In the 1970s, Huffington started authoring books with Levin’s editorial assistance. In 1980, she relocated to New York. Huffington collaborated with Bob Langley as co-host of the late-night chat and entertainment program Saturday Night at the Mill in 1980. She appeared in just five episodes before being fired from the show.

Success Story

When Arianna Huffington released a book titled “The Female Woman” in 1973, she officially started her writing career. Her career path was fraught with ups and downs. She received almost 37 rejections for her second book, After Reason, despite the success of the first. However, Arianna chose to grow in self-assurance and knowledge with each passing day rather than letting her emotions get the best of her.

Read More: Shou Zi Chew Success Story: From Ex-Facebook Intern to TikTok CEO

Arianna Huffington contributed several essays to National Review in the late 1980s. She wrote biographies of Pablo Picasso in 1989 and Maria Callas in 1981, respectively, under the titles Picasso: Creator and Destroyer and Maria Callas: The Woman Behind the Legend.

When her then-husband, Michael Huffington, ran unsuccessfully for the Senate in 1994, Huffington rocketed to national fame in the United States. This led to several special appearances as a social and political analyst on television, in addition to excursions into acting and television writing.

She was nominated for an Emmy in 1994 for her work on Politically Incorrect. Huffington is also a member of the boards of directors for Uber, Onex Corporation, Berggruen Institute, and Center for Public Integrity. Huffington pursued one endeavor after another in these fruitful years.

In the 2003 recall election for California Governor Gray Davis, Huffington ran as an independent. She swiftly picked herself up after losing her gubernatorial run and rebounded.

In 2005, Huffington, Kenneth Lerer, Jonah Peretti, and Andrew Breitbart, created The Huffington Post, currently known as HuffPost. It was established as a blog and discussion platform as well as a rival to news aggregators like the Drudge Report. In the past, the website has carried articles written by both paid staff reporters and writers and unpaid bloggers.

Huffington became editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post Media Group after AOL bought The Huffington Post for US$315 million in 2011. The Huffington Post won the Pulitzer Prize in 2012, making it the first commercially operated digital media company in the United States to ever win Pulitzer.

Huffington left her jobs at AOL and the Huffington Post in 2016 to start Thrive Global, a company that provides evidence-based remedies for stress and burnout. In 2016, Huffington was listed among the SuperSoul100, a list compiled by Oprah Winfrey to recognize the most inspirational and influential leaders around the world.

HuffPost continues to rule online media in the present. Huffington achieved her goals through steadfast hard work and determination.

Eventbrite

Eventbrite, manage events in a better way

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What was the last time when you heard about an international event management company? Big companies may hire employees separately for this purpose, but most of the independent organizations cannot afford that. We, especially in our college life come through the term “event management” very often. Event management is considered as an appreciable skill. Especially in a metropolitan city, where numerous events take place every day, there is a sheer need for event managers. But, to organize an event, promotions are needed as well.

Eventbrite, an US-based event management company meets all the requirements needed to organize an event. The company was founded in 2006 with the motive to help people surf events around the city. The website also provided the feature of creating events, promoting them along with online ticketing for the events. The founders of Eventbrite are Renaud Visage, Julia Hartz and Kevin Hartz.

Renaud Visage

Visage is a Cornell University graduate who acquired a degree in Engineering. Visage joined Geomatrix as a Project Engineer after a couple of years since his graduation. In 2000, Visage became the Director of Engineering for Zing Networks and left the company after a year.

He became a Venture Partner at Index Ventures after which he became a very prominent Investor. He invested in many companies which include Snips, Mobius Motors, Hokodo, Engineer.ai etc. He is also a Board Partner of Point Nine Capital. Even after Visage co-founded Eventbrite in January 2006, he still serves as an Investor. He is also a mentor at StartupBootcamp.

Julia Hartz

Julia went to Pepperdine University and acquired a Bachelor’s degree in Telecommunication. After graduation, Julia joined MTV as a Development Executive followed by contributing to FX Networks. She left FX Networks in 2005 and co-founded Eventbrite next year. She is the current CEO of the company and also a member of the Board of Directors.

Hartz is a very significant figure in the women entrepreneurial world. She has been featured in the Fortune magazine as one of the most powerful women entrepreneurs. Julia is also an investor and she was featured in the Forbes.

Kevin Hartz

Brought up in California, Kevin holds a Bachelor’s degree in Arts from Stanford University and a Master’s degree from University College, Oxford. Kevin started his career as a Product Manager in Silicon Graphics. Kevin co-founded a start-up, ConnectGroup which was later acquired by LodgeNet. Before co-founding Eventbrite, Kevin along with Alan Braverman founded Xoom.

The crisis

The three founders chose the wrong time to launch Eventbrite. During the 2000s, an aura of the economic crisis was spread around the globe. None of the venture capitalists wanted to invest in any new start-ups creating a really difficult situation for Eventbrite. But, luckily the three of them were well-experienced. Visage knew how to be more strategic and play tactically without enough funding.
Eventbrite started emphasizing more on SEO and reach out to people through unique contents. The marketing strategies of Eventbrite played the ace and they were finally able to conduct Series A funding at the end of 2009.

Strategies

In the beginning, Eventbrite launched a 100% free business model which lured a good number of customers. Eventbrite proposed this model for the so that the organizers can test the managing system of Eventbrite and then get start paying for it. After Eventbrite started making progress, many organizers shifted from free to paid model to have better access and services.
In 2008, the company launched its application which solely served the purpose of surfing events. With time, more people signed up and the demand rose drastically. This led Eventbrite to launch the feature of online ticketing and earn through it.

The Success

Once Eventbrite started landing investors, the list expanded day by day. Eventbrite closed their Series E funding by raising $50 million from Tiger Capital in 2011. Another $60 million was raised by the company from the same investor in 2013. Some of the major investors of Eventbrite include Sequoia Capital, Tiger Capital etc. In 2017, the company raised $134 million from Series G funding. The next year, Eventbrite filed for its first IPO worth $200 million. According to 2018, the company’s annual revenue sums up to $291.6 million. Eventbrite made some significant acquisitions including Nvite, Ticketfly, Picatic and Pandora.

Today, apart from managing events on the land of the US, it has offices in the UK, Ireland, Germany, Argentina, Netherlands, Brazil and Australia.

cognizant

Transforming India’s Digital Landscape- Success Story of Cognizant

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A while back Cognizant went ahead of Infosys to become the second-largest IT company in India. It was an iconic milestone wherein a pioneer gave to a young contender, the baton for the future. The man steering this rise of Cognizant was a boyish-looking, exuberant 44-year-old by the name Francisco D’Souza. Here’s a look at how the mild-mannered D’Souza has energized and uplifted the technology company to even greater heights.

About the Disruptor

Francisco D’Souza was born in 1968 in Kenya to Placido D’Souza, an IFS officer and Sushila. Most of his childhood was spent shuttling between countries and D’Souza has lived in over 11 countries. He graduated from the University of East Asia Macau with a degree in Business Administration. He followed this up with an MBA from Carnegie Mellon.

After graduating, D’Souza joined Dun & Bradstreet in 1992, as a management associate. Cognizant started as an experiment two years later within Dun & Bradstreet. Francisco led this experiment, which later turned into a full-on, in-house project. From 1996, D’Souza held various positions in Cognizant and joined the Board of Directors in 2007. Six years later, Francisco joined General Electric, becoming the youngest member on their board. In 2018, he became the Vice-Chairman of the Board at Cognizant.

Founding Cognizant

Cognizant began as an in-house unit of Dun & Bradstreet in 1994. The company started catering to the needs of external clients in 1996 and went public two years later. Cognizant was one of the fastest-growing companies in the early 2000s and became a Fortune 500 member in 2011.

Initially, it was set-up to help Dun & Bradstreet manage large-scale IT projects. Two years after its creation, Dun & Bradstreet merged Erisco, IMS International, Nielsen Media Research, Strategic Technologies and DBSS, to form Cognizant Corporation. The same year, the company changed its name to Cognizant Technology Solutions. In 1997, Dun & Bradstreet acquired 24% shares of DBSS for $3.4 million. A year later, the company moved its headquarters with Kumar Mahadeva serving as the CEO.

Early Days

The same year Cognizant Corporation, split into IMS Health and Nielsen Media Research, with the technology wing becoming a part of IMS Health. In June the same year, IMS Health went public with Cognizant stock raising $34 million. Kumar Mahadeva focused on applications management, and the company grew under his leadership.

In 2002, Cognizant brought in over $229 million, with zero debt. In 2003, IMS Health sold their 56% stakes to prevent hostile takeovers and Lakshmi Narayanan replaced Kumar Mahadeva as CEO. Gradually, the company expanded and ventured into the fields of business process outsourcing and consulting. Finally, in 2006, D’Souza took over CEO from Lakshmi Narayanan. The company then grew exponentially, becoming a part of Fortune’s 100 Fastest-Growing Companies list from 2003 to 2012.

Growth and Success

In 2014, Cognizant acquired TriZetto which specialises in healthcare IT services for $2.7 billion. Owing to this stellar buy, the shares of Cognizant rose by over 3% on that day. A year later, they signed up with Escorts Group in India to help them transform their business segments. The same year, they partnered with NTUC FairPrice to help them revolutionise their business.

Currently, Cognizant employs over 280,900 people globally, with more than 150,000 based in India. The company has centres in main cities such as in Bangalore, Chennai, Noida, Hyderabad, Kochi, Mangalore and Mumbai. Globally, they have centres in Spain, China, Canada, Mexico, Argentina and Brazil. Under D’Souza their revenue increased from $1.42 billion in 2006 to $16.1 billion in 2018. It will be interesting to see how Cognizant utilises its presence to further change the digital landscape in India.

Nikola Tesla

Guiding the Future: Story of Nikola Tesla

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Remote controls are without a doubt something that symbolises modern technologies. Most electrical devices we use come with a remote of their own, and most of us own at least a dozen remotes. We have remotes scattered on our coffee tables and even access devices from remotes on our phones now. Although we associate remotes to TVs, they were a staple long before that. So how did the remote control come to be? Read on to find out more about the history, origins and story of remote control systems.

About the Creator

Nikola Tesla was born in Lika in 1856 to an Eastern Orthodox priest who had an interest in mechanical appliances. He attended a primary school in Smiljan and completed his high-school from the Higher Real Gymnasium. His physics teacher inculcated in him an interest in electronics, and that would life-long passion for Tesla. He was a prodigy while at school, being able to do integral calculus in his head. Tesla ran away from home in the 1870s to evade enrolment into the Austro-Hungarian Army.

He then joined the Austrian Polytechnic and learnt electrical engineering but received no degree. Rather, he gained practical knowledge working for Central Telegraph Office in Budapest and the Continental Edison. In 1884, he shifted to the United States and worked for Edison Machine Works. He left soon after, setting out to form his laboratories and companies. His patent for an AC motor through Westinghouse Electric earned him large sums of money, which he utilised to fund his research. During the 1890s, Tesla pushed for wireless lighting and communication, becoming a pioneer in the field. with his devices.

The Famous Boat Experiment

Famous American inventor Nikola Tesla created the world’s first wireless remote control. He unveiled the system at Madison Square Garden in 1898 to much awe from the public. He called the system, which could control several mechanical devices, a tele automaton. To demonstrate his new invention, Tesla used a boat and controlled it via radio waves using a small metal antenna. Tesla sent radio signals to the using a version of remote control. The box consisted of a lever and a telegraph key and generated signals. These signals moved electrical contacts on the boat, adjusting the rudder, thereby controlling it.

Idea Catches On

Financially though, Tesla’s system was a flop. He planned on selling the system to the U.S. Navy, but the contraption was too unreliable for use in war. However, the idea caught on and spread like wild-fire to other equipment. Following in Tesla’s footsteps, Leonardo Torres-Quevedo devised a system utilising wireless telegraphs. With this system he first controlled a tricycle, then a boat, and later even submarine torpedoes.

Acts of War

These inventors led the way for the concept of remote controls. In World War I, Germany made use of such boats to launch attacks against the opposition. Hence, remote controls were the start of a new kind of warfare, which saw armies fight from a distance. During World War II, both the Germans and the Allies used several guided torpedoes and missiles.

Part of Our Lives

By the end of the 1940s though, remote controls became a part of consumer electronics, like garage doors and toys. Soon enough, several products started using technology, radically changing the technological landscape. Afterwards, Philco started production of radios utilising a wireless, battery-powered remote known as the Mystery Control. The most significant contribution, however, was of Zenith who introduced the Lazy Bones remote. Soon after, Eugene Polley made the Flashmatic TV remote, which made use of light technology.

Resounding Success

A few years later, Robert Adler, created a system which made use of ultrasonic sound in place of light. This new remote was more expensive but was still a resounding success. These clicker remotes forever changed the nature of the interaction between customers and electronic devices. It gave people the power to change channels without having to rise from their seats. Ever since then, remotes have been continually evolving, making use of IR technology, and even universal remote technology.
In 1898, the world had little understanding of Tesla’s brilliant idea. But in the years to come, the spark he started grew to become a raging flame. His innovation paved the way for future inventors to build a system that changed the world.

Broadcom

Broadcom, Success story of the communication industry

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Semiconductors are an integral part of the broadband communication industry. Products like integrated circuits, wireless networks, cable modems are in huge demand today because of the rising efficient in existing technology and making it accessible to every corner of the world.

Pioneering in the world of communication engineering, Henry Samueli along with Henry Nicholas co-founded Broadcom Corporation in 1991. The company was built mainly to produce semiconductors and products that can contribute to today’s communication system.

The company came under the acquisition of Avago Technologies in 2016 and is currently a wholly-owned subsidiary of Broadcom Inc. Headquartered in Irvine, California; Broadcom has made more than twenty big acquisitions till date and listed as Gartner’s Top 10 Semiconductor Vendors.

Henry Samueli

Samueli’s Jewish parents moved to the United States with nothing but lucky enough to survive in the Nazi terror land. The family ran a liquor store in Los Angeles and this is where Samueli grew up. He went to Bancroft Junior High School followed by Fairfax High School.

His great interest in electronics started growing inside him since he was a child and he built a radio all by himself in junior school. He went to UCLA School of Engineering to complete his graduation and passed with all the three successive degrees from Bachelor’s to PhD from this very place.

Samueli studied Electrical Engineering and after completing his PhD he joined UCLA as a professor. This is where he met Henry Nicholas who was a PhD scholar at UCLA. Apart from being an engineer, Samueli is also a great philanthropist who is the founding director of the Samueli Foundation, a non-profit organization. Recently, Samueli has donated $100 million for the development of UCLA.

Henry Nicholas

Nicholas was born to a prosperous family in Cincinnati, Ohio. When he was four years old, his parents got divorced and he moved to Los Angeles, California with his mother and sister. Nicholas did his junior years schooling from Malibu and later went to Santa Monica High School.

Nicholas pursued his degree in Electrical Engineering from UCLA and before that went to the United States Air Force Academy. Nicholas received his Master’s degree from UCLA as well and got admitted for the PhD program under Samueli.

After completing his PhD, Nicholas moved to Cerritos and joined PairGain Technologies as Director of Microelectronics. But he left the company soon and joined his business partner who was also his advisor to co-found Broadcom.

History of Broadcom

In the beginning, both Samueli and Nicholas invested $5,000 from their pocket to start this business. They didn’t have a proper workplace and temporarily worked at Nicholas’s beach house. It’s a good thing one of them was a bit richer. After a year of rigorous hard work, both of them were finally able to rent an office in Westwood.

This was Broadcom Corporation’s first office which was shifted to Irvine three years later. The company went public in 1998 and made a kick-off start with serving more than fifteen countries around the world.

In 2009, the company was listed in the Fortune 500 and by this time Broadcom hired more than 11,000 employers. At the end of 2013, the company’s annual revenue summed up to a massive figure of $8.01 billion with its ranking coming down to 327 in Fortune 500.

Acquisitions

Broadcom has got a never-ending list of acquisitions starting from 1999. The company mainly bought other small semiconductor companies and networking companies like Maverick Networks, Epigram, Altocom, BlueSteel Networks and many more. Some biggest acquisitions before the company was sold were in 2000 and 2011. The company bought Silicon Spice and NetLogic Microsystems for $1 billion and $3.7 billion respectively.

End of an Era

The company which achieved a great deal of success for more than two decades came under the acquisition of Avago Technologies in 2015. The company was sold for $37 billion with Samueli becoming the CTO of the newly merged company and Nicholas playing the role of strategic advisor. After all the legal works were completed by February 2016, Cypress Semiconductor bought Broadcom’s entire IoT sector in May 2016. The acquisition was made for $550 million.

It was estimated that after the merging, Broadcom Inc. (present parent company) would have an estimated market value of $77 billion.

Broadcom Inc

The company was formerly known as Avago Technologies, that is, from 1961. Tan Hock Eng is the current CEO of the company with more than 15,000 employers to date. According to the records of 2018, the company’s annual revenue is $20.84 billion.

Oneplus

Oneplus, A Company To Outweigh All Its Competitors In Six Years

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Well, I admit there is a particular group of people who drools over the products of Apple but did you guys not see how strategically OnePlus became the premium mobile brand around the world. Leaving iOS aside, OnePlus to date has become the best mobile company with Android OS because the founders wanted to improve the existing user experience cost-effectively.

Before OnePlus was launched in 2013, Samsung and Nokia mobiles ruled in the world of Android OS smartphones. But, brands like these faced an unexpected downfall when OnePlus started setting the market on fire with its alluring flagship products.OnePlus was launched in 16th December 2013 by Pete Lau and Carl Pei. The company is based on China and currently, its annual revenue is $1.9 billion.

Pete Lau

Lau passed out from Zhejiang University in 1998 and joined Oppo Electronics. He worked there as a hardware engineer and with time became the director of Oppo’s Blu-ray division. Attaining the peak of his career just started with his promotion to the position of head of marketing of Oppo. Lau was soon named as the Vice President of the company and he was solely responsible for incorporating Android OS in Oppo smartphones. He stepped down from his position and quit Oppo in November 2013.

Carl Pei

Pei went to Stockholm School of Economics to pursue his Bachelor’s degree in Science but he dropped out soon and started working in the smartphone industry. Before he dropped out of college, he started working at Nokia and continued for three months. In 2011, Pei joined Meizu and worked there as a full-time employee. After a year, Pei joined Oppo in 2012 and started working there as an international market manager. Pei worked under Lau and both of them together came up with the idea of OnePlus.

A café conversation

The idea of OnePlus exclusively and solely came out of a coffee table conversation while discussing smartphones and how the user experience can be made better. The founders noticed that most of the population tends to use the iPhone and not Android. The question was why? Aftermarket research and recording the feedbacks of users, they concluded that most of them either have faulty software or the quality is not up to the mark. So, both of them started their new start-up and at the beginning OnePlus only had five employees.

Launch and Success

When the two of them were working on their new project of OnePlus, their main motive was to build a product with a minimal amount of cost and which can provide the best user experience. When they were ready with the product, the strategy of launching was very off-track. They didn’t want to sell the product through conventional retailers and pursued the audience in an only way.

The marketing experts said that the idea might face a strict downfall as the model was based on high priced subscription method. But, the prediction was proved wrong when OnePlus breaking the records of every successful mobile company ever sold 1.5 million OnePlus smartphones in a single year.

The product became famous as the “Flagship killer” and the magnitude of success was enormous. Lau expected 50,000 units sell and it crossed millions. The first product was OnePlus One and it was first marketed outside China in 2015. OnePlus expanded to South-East Asia after they partnered with Lazada Indonesia.

The next product of OnePlus, OnePlus 2 was released in July 2015. The next year company lifted the invite-only system on OnePlus 3 followed by making it available in the markets of China, North America, the European Union and also in Amazon India.

The company’s profit became thrice in the financial year 2017-2018 and the annual revenue almost increased to five times within a single year. The company’s goal turned out to become a huge success as most of the users rated their smartphones 4 stars or more.

In early 2018, the launch of OnePlus 6 broke into the market like a plague and even outran the market for Apple iPhone. Within the next half of the year, OnePlus 6 became the highest selling flagship product of the company.

India majorly contributes to the success of OnePlus products as Lau (CEO of OnePLus) said in an interview that India is accountable for OnePlus’s 2018s global revenue of $1.4 billion.