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Ethan Nicholas

Ethan Nicholas : From A Software Engineer to an Overnight Successful Game Developer

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In the programming world, which is already brimming with the tech experts and finest coders, only a few have achieved overnight success. Experience plays a vital role in the journey of a long-term accomplishment, but who knows when one can turn out to be a millionaire while just planning to earn some extra cash. Ethan Nicholas, a senior software engineer currently working at Google, developed a game with the sole purpose of earning some extra cash. But iShoot, the game he developed, turned out to be the biggest achievement of his life and brought him profit he never dreamt of.

Early Life

Nicholas started programming from the tender age of 8 and became a professional coder at the age of 16. He went to North Carolina State University and graduated in 1998. In June 1998, he joined GeoCities as a software engineer, but he shifted to Yahoo! only after a year and worked there as a lead developer. In July 2006, he joined Sun Microsystems and worked as a primary developer on the Java Kernel Project. And, while working for this company the idea of developing a game strike his mind, and he started learning objective C. Nicholas had to learn objective C so that he could start developing the game.

Development of iShoot

Ethan Nicholas
Image Source: wired.com

While he was working as a staff engineer in Sun Microsystems, he spent eight hours every day to develop iShoot. Since he didn’t know objective C and also didn’t have enough cash to afford the documentation he needed to learn it; he mastered it from various internet sources within six weeks followed by writing the code. Programming from an early age of 8, he was able to ace a whole different language very quickly.

Ethan Nicholas, in one of his interviews, mentioned that he was inspired by Steve Demeter, developer of Trism, a game that brought him overnight glory and became a connoisseur in the world of game development. In 19th October 2008, Nicholas launched iShoot, an artillery combat game which was available in Apple’s iPhone app store. The launch of iShoot changed his life dramatically by earning $37,000 in a single day.

He was still working at Sun Microsystems and decided to leave his job to work on the next version of the game. In January 2009, Nicholas left his job and founded the gaming software company, Naughty Bits, under which he launched the second version of the game. By then, he totally made up his mind to devote all his time to iPhone software development.

The Success of iShoot

Though many game and application developers release their apps on the Apple Store, the success of Ethan Nicholas was quite appreciable and unpredictable. Initially, when the app was launched in October the number of users was less than expected and to attract more of them, Nicholas created both paid and free (iShoot Lite) versions of the game. This hiked the selling of the app, and the game became ranked number 1 on the App Store, within a few months of its release.

The game also acquired the top spot on the Top Paid Apps list, witnessing minimum 10,000 downloads per day. The free app was downloaded around 2.4 million times and over 300,000 users bought the paid app. Revenue of $21,000 was confirmed for 10,000 downloads per day, which were partially the driving force for creating the second version of it. By early 2009, Nicholas had already bagged $800,000, which is a more than a decent amount.

He was pretty surprised about the success, the 6-weeks hard work brought to him. So, for the next version, he was ready to blow the minds of the users with better graphics and game strategies exposing more of his programming skills.

Apart From Being a Game Developer

While Nicholas focused on expanding Naughty Bits, he was also involved with other business tycoons to expand his influence on other fields.

In January 2010, he cofounded echoBase and served as the lead server engineer for four years. He developed software that was useful to the medical professionals to track patient’s data. He served as a software engineer at Oracle for eight months.

At present, apart from working at Google, he is developing a swift compiler in Apportable.

Duracell logo

Duracell, an American Company Leading in the Production of Finest Power System

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In a world full of premium technologies, the invention of rechargeable batteries and efficient power systems have lifted the performance of machines. But, only a few companies have achieved the advancements in the charging technology successfully. And, Duracell is one of those trusted and leading brands famous for its durable power systems. It is mainly known for the production of long-lasting alkaline batteries, specialty batteries and rechargeables.

Duracell was founded in 1924 by Samuel Ruben and Philip Mallory. The company has its headquarters in the U.S and Switzerland. Currently, the brand is under the acquisition of Berkshire Hathaway who bought the company from Procter & Gamble in November 2014.

When It All Began

During the early 1920s, Samuel Ruben was working as a scientist, who went to Philip Rogers Mallory for a special kind of equipment he needed for carrying out his experiments. Mallory, then, was a manufacturer of tungsten filament wire, under the name of P.R. Mallory Company. The company was established in Burlington, Massachusetts, U.S, and it also produced mercury batteries, which surpassed the carbon-zinc batteries used in most applications. Ruben explained his area of interest to Mallory, and both of them saw an opportunity in it, which led to their joint venture.

From Durable Cell to ‘Duracell’

During the 1960s the company started shipping its first alkaline batteries under the brand name Mallory. These batteries were also supplied to Kodak after it introduced new cameras with an in-built flash.

Duracell founder samuel ruben
Image Source: blog.ofix.com

In 1965, Mallory launched Duracell brand as one of its subsidiaries, and the batteries had the Mallory brand name imprinted on it until 1980. The products of Duracell came into high demand due to the introduction of new portable devices like walkie-talkies in the market. Soon Mallory was supplying these new Duracell batteries to companies, like Kodak, Polaroid and Agfa for using them in their various devices, including cameras and tape recorders. In 1969, Duracell products were used in Apollo 11 mission (first step on the moon by humans), and it was the first battery that successfully fueled the equipment to land on a different planetary body.

Birth of the Duracell Bunny

Duracell was the first-ever battery to advertise in television, and by 1970s, almost every household used the Duracell batteries. The black and copper colour marked the brand icon of Duracell, and the launch of Duracell Bunny in 1973, won the hearts of millions, who added a playful charm to it. The colours of the icon symbolized conductivity and better strength than commonly used zinc-carbon batteries.

Acquisitions, Growth and Expansion

After Mallory’s death in 1975, P.R Mallory came under the acquisition of Dart Industries in 1978. In 1980, the company merged with Kraft, an American grocery manufacturing corporation. In 1988, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts (a global investment firm) acquired Duracell, and the next year, the company went public. Later in 1996, the company was acquired by Gillette for $7 billion. Procter & Gamble acquired Gillette, the then-parent company of Duracell for $57 billion, in 2005. This acquisition made P&G world’s biggest household goods maker pushing down Unilever to the second place.

In September 2011, Duracell came in partnership with Powermat Technologies Ltd. under the name Duracell Powermat. The company made wireless chargers for mobile phones and small electronics. P&G owned 55% of the share of this merged business and Powermat owned the other 45%.

In March 2012, Duracell along with Powermat, under P&G, formed Power Matters Alliance (PMA), a global non-profit organization developed for the leading industries with a mission to make advancements in the wireless power transferring system. Starbucks and AT&T also became board members in the same year. In 2015, PMA merged with Alliance for Wireless Power and formed AirFuel Alliance.

Ownership by Berkshire Hathaway

On 14th November 2014, Berkshire Hathaway announced that it would be acquiring Duracell in an all-stock deal which received approval from the European Commission on July 2015. The acquisition and entire transfer were completed in February 2016 with Berkshire Hathaway giving P&G back shares and P&G investing $1.8 billion in Duracell.

In September 2016, Duracell announced the shifting of its executive team to Chicago.

Success

Today, Duracell is the leading manufacturer of alkaline batteries and number one consumer’s choice when it comes to long-lasting, reliable, high quality powering devices. The company employs around 3,300 employees around the world.

The company is trying to make more progress in the areas of demand and make power systems more compatible. Duracell ensures high-quality tech and minimizes the impact on the environment at the same time. Significant investment in R&D and rigorous testing of the products makes it the most trusted company in the world of powering technology.

nomad Goods

Nomad Goods : The Founders of Most Portable Battery Chargers

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Many of the startups, today, have become famous only because of their uniqueness. But, most of the entrepreneurs did not know how and where to start. But, the ones who had strategised all the steps were able to gain success faster than the others. One such team, that was focussed and clear on its goals, was the founders of Nomad Goods, a company that builds consumer electronics accessories, especially the portable charging devices.

The Santa Barbara-based company, initially, known as ChargeCard was founded by Noah Dentzel, Adam Miller and Brian Hahn in 2012. They founded Nomad Goods to bring portable accessories, like the chargers for smartphones, so that people do not worry about draining out the battery of their devices.

Noah Dentzel is a native of Santa Barbara and completed his school education from Santa Barbara High School. Later, he joined the Dartmouth College and completed a Bachelor of Arts (B.A.). He started his career as an intern at Tuenti Technologies, an internet company based in Madrid, later becoming the project manager for the app development team of the company.

Nomad Goods team
Image Source: circleup.com

During the time he was working at Tuenti, most of the work was done over the phone. Dentzel had a BlackBerry phone and had to carry a charger or a USB cable with him all the time. This annoyed him, but as his work demanded, he had to stay near the charging point all the time. But then, he thought of buying micro USB or any other solution, and looked for the alternative for the long charging cables over the internet, but found nothing.

According to Dentzel, it was one of his friends from the mobile division of his company who gave him the idea of shaping up the cable charger into a thinner charger that looks like a credit card. It was a great idea, and along with his partners, Dentzel started working on the same. Meanwhile, he left his job and debuted the first product of the company on Kickstarter, on 18 July 2012.

The three co-founders did not want to take any risk by putting in a lot of money in the project, rather they decided to launch the product in front of people and know their reaction about it. The three participated in the event with an intention to raise about $50,000. But, since they had brought an amazing idea and a great product to the stage of Kickstarters, they ended up making $161,000 for the company from 5,500 backers.

The uniqueness of the idea was to create minimalist and practical tools, which anybody could carry to any place with them. The first product that Nomad Goods developed was a charger named ChargeCard, with the shape of a credit card and could easily fit into a wallet or a pocket.

Though the company got a really good start, the company had no marketing team, or a customer service department. It was all on the shoulders of the co-founders. So to get the attention of people around the world, they started sending the sample of their product to different writers, and as a result, they got featured in the New York Times. This gave another kickstart to the company.

In 2013, they developed their next product, named ChargeKey, a USB cable of the shape of a key, capable of holding other keys as well, such that the user did not need to carry an extra charger, but his keys were the charger. Another smart step the founders took was that they launched the ChargeKey at another fundraising platform, i.e., IndieGoGo. The launch helped them to raise another sum of $172,000.

In 2014, the company took part in CircleUp, and eventually, raised a sum of $1.2 million. The company hosted its series A funding in the month of November of the same year. Till the mid of 2015, the company had shipped over 150,000 units to its national and international customers.

Since its inception, the company has launched over thirty charging and non-charging products. The most successful charging products from the company includes Pod Pro (a charger for the iPhone and Apple’s smartwatch), RoadTrip (a car charger), Wallet (a charger of the shape of a note capable of giving a full charge to a smartphone), PowerPlant (a charger having two ports supporting multiple charging), etc.

Other than the charging products, the company also produces leather phone cases, leather and silicone Apple Watch bands, wallets, etc.

The company provides battery packs and charging hubs for iPhone, Apple smartwatch as well as Tesla Model 3. There are chargers for BlackBerry and Android smartphones as well. The chargers from Nomad Goods are compatible with almost any USB port you can find, such that you can plug it into any device like TV, game consoles, computers, car stereos, and even electric keyboard and charge your phone or the smartwatch.

N26

N26 : Transforming the Financial-services Industry in Europe and Beyond

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There is no denial in the fact that technology has taken a huge leap in the past few years and has introduced us with many useful inventions. Whether it is booking a hotel online, getting food delivered at your doorstep, or making big financial decisions on a mobile app, everything is possible now. In simpler words, technology has made our life easier. One such convenient result driven by the use of technology is N26, a Berlin-based fin-tech mobile bank, that has changed the way people of Europe do banking.

N26 is a banking startup that was founded by Valentin Stalf and Maximilian Tayenthal in 2013. Stalf and Tayenthal both are natives of Vienna Austria. Stalf has got a master’s degree in accounting and finance from St. Gallen University in Switzerland, whereas Tayenthal is a Master’s degree holder in Law from the Vienna University.

After completing his education, Stalf started working with an investment bank. But soon, he moved to Berlin and joined a tech incubator called Rocket Internet, where he worked on fin-tech-related projects. The work he was doing here was quite different from what actually was done in the finance domain of the country. Here, he learned more about how technology can be mixed with finance. He realised that traditional banking is way more complicated, and technology can easily transform the outline of banking operations.

N26 Founders
Image Source: businessinsider.com

Stalf left his job in 2013 to found N26, and the together with Tayenthal, launched the first product of the company in 2015. Founding a fin-tech company in a city like Berlin, where people clearly avoid visiting a bank and does not even use credit or debit cards was not an easy task.

When the two were working on the startup, like every other newbie, they were looking for investors. According to the co-founder and CFO N26, Tayenthal, “They did not take us seriously. If we called ten banks while looking for a partner, about eight of them did not pick up the phone.”

It took them 12 months to launch their first product, and as soon it was launched, it was a huge success. The company gained over 80,000 users just in one year, and the next year, the number was doubled. According to the two co-founders, they never intended to build an online bank, but “Spotify” banking. Stalf calls Uber and Spotify the inspiration behind N26.

The N26 mobile app started with a collaboration with a local bank, and now, it has major names as its partners, like Mastercard, Clark, TransferWise and Auxmoney. Prominent investors, like the Chinese tech giant Tencent, German insurer Allianz, and Peter Thiel’s (PayPal co-founder) venture arm Valar Ventures, are backing the company.

The company does not have any physical bank branches, and there are no ATM machines have been installed in the cities. But the users can use other bank’s ATMs for the withdrawals, and the N26 credit/debit cards are accepted at over 7,000 affiliated retailers, without any extra usage fee. In fact, the users can open a bank account on the N26 app in just eight minutes.

N26 was named as one of the hottest fin-tech startups in 2016. In 2017, the company started its efforts to expand in the US and the UK. In 2018, Stalf received the ‘Founder of the Year’ award from the University of St.Gallen.

The basis of the success of this very app was the user-friendliness it provided to its users. According to the CEO, Stalf, they wanted to create an app that people would love to use, as most of the banking apps are complicated, and the users are bound to use these apps.

In January 2019, the company raised a good amount of $300 million from investors in a round of funding, and ultimately, valued at $2.7 billion, becoming the first fin-tech Unicorn in Europe. The company is currently operating in 24 European countries, including Germany, Austria, France, Spain, and Italy. It is providing its services to over 2 million users signed up to the app and is attracting 2000 users a day.

Since its inception, the company has raised more than $500 million, and over 1000 employees are, currently, working full-time for the company. The company is continuously working to maintain the security of the app and improving its service.

N26 co-founders count their startup among the breed of digital banking challengers, like Revolut, Monzo, Starling and Atom, who are on the mission of replacing the traditional way of banking.

Arumugam and A Gopinath

Arumugam : An Indian YouTuber in his Sixties, Influencing Viewers with his Unique Cooking

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YouTube has been a blessing for the content creators, and for those, who had never thought that they would face the camera. Now, millions of people are seeing and liking them. In the past five years, YouTube has changed the lives of millions of content creators from different fields, including music, dance, acting makeup, fashion, travelling as well as cooking. One such content creator and one of the most viewed YouTuber is Arumugam. Though the channel is created by his son, A Gopinath, the protagonist of the channel is Arumugam.

A Gopinath is a native of Tiruppur, a small town near Coimbatore in western Tamil Nadu. He earned a diploma in electronics and communication at the age of 20 and started working at a local cable service provider. He then moved to Chennai and began to work for a nameologist, where he edited and uploaded videos on YouTube for the company. After a few months, he left the job at the nameologist and joined the Tamil film industry. He worked as an assistant director in a few small-budget Tamil films, but none of his films got to see the face of daylight. After struggling in the field of film-making for over four years, he returned back to his village in 2016.

Gopinath’s father Arumugam, a building painter, most of the time used to cook food for his family as his wife worked as a full-time tailor in a garment factory. Gopinath had already seen many cookery videos on YouTube. So, looking at his father cooking, the 27-years old Gopinath decided to film his father and put his video on YouTube. For that, he created a channel named ‘Village Food Factory’.

Arumugam and A Gopinath
Image Source: theweekendleader.com

Gopinath made videos of his father cooking food and edited it accordingly. The videos went viral in no time, and people started liking the content. The uniqueness of the content grabbed the attention of most of the people, as Arumugam did not cook the food in a fancy kitchen with ultra-modern tools, but in an open place in the farms and jungle, that too with limited resources.

Arumugam sets up a traditional homely earthen stove and big wide utensils to cook the food. The channel received huge appreciation from its audience. In fact, by November 2016, the duo uploaded over 42 videos on the channel that gained over 66000 subscribers for the channel. In a span of four-five months, the channel had also gained over 30 million views and earned over 2.5 lakh rupees.

According to Arumugam, he received an 8000 rupees cheque the very first time as the earning from his videos, followed by a 45000 rupees cheque in the next month, and the number continued to increase.

To make the videos look better every single time, the father-son duo keeps changing the locations and try to add new-unique elements to it. Arumugam’s wife and his younger son also help him with his videos.

The family is entirely focussed on the channel, where Gopinath’s wife and mother do the pre-cooking preparation, Gopinath films the video and edits it, whereas his father and brother cook in the video. There is minimal talk in the video, but the detailed cooking helps the audience to see the whole process properly. The channel has helped the father-son duo reach even the international audience. According to Gopinath, one day a white man recognised his father in a flight and praised his work.

Gopinath intends to make this channel his full-time job and has already covered over 25% of south Indian dishes in the videos. Currently, the father-son are posting one video a week. The future plans of the two include establishing a restaurant in their native place.

YouTube has become the biggest source of income for many content creators. The idea like Village Food Factory is getting popular among people for its rawness and authenticity. Village Food Factory is among the top ten food channels in India, and currently, has over 250 videos and 3 million subscribers.

Gogoro

Gogoro : Tesla of Scooters, Building Energy-efficient Smart Scooters

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The environmental crisis is the biggest concern for humans, and soon, we are going to run out of many things that have become necessary for us. One such thing is fuel. In this growing world, the population is increasing, and so is the demand for fuel. Today, having a vehicle is a priority for people as it is not only comfortable to travel with personal transport, it is also a symbol of status. This has led to extra consumption of fuel, increased pollution as well as traffic. But, to help out all these situations, Gogoro has brought stylish electric scooters that are efficient and helps in saving the environment.

Gogoro was founded by Horace Luke and Matt Taylor, in 2011. It is a Taiwan based and venture-backed company that produces Smart scooters running on battery. Though there have been other electric two-wheeler manufacturers in the world, people using those electric scooters always complained about their mileage and efficiency. The two co-founders wanted to overcome these flaws for the e-scooters and build the energy-saving Smart scooters.

Luke and Taylor, before founding Gogoro, worked with major tech giants including Microsoft and HTC. Luke worked with Microsoft’s Xbox and Windows XP team, whereas Taylor was one of the key people involved in the development of Window’s Pocket PC “smartphones”. After working for ten years at Microsoft, Luke joined the developer team of HTC as the chief innovative officer that developed some of the Android smartphones. On the other hand, Taylor worked at HTC as the chief technologist.

gogoro founders
Image Source: gogoro.com

The two established the company in Taiwan, as it was the best place for accessing the most reliable supply-chain. The idea was quite promising, and that is why the company was able to raise a huge amount of $50 million from Dr Samuel Yin of Ruentex Group and Cher Wang as the seed funding. In fact, in the other rounds of funding the company raised a really good amount. In 2014, Gogoro raised $100 million in Series B funding from a collection of investors, followed by a $30 million round of investment from Panasonic and Taiwan’s National Development Fund. With a $300 million Series C round in 2017, the company’s collection reached the US $480 million.

Gogoro launched its first Smart scooter at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas in January 2015. The speciality of these scooters is that the batteries when drained can be exchanged with other batteries at a battery-swapping station named Gogoro Energy Network. The company has already built over 300 charging and battery swapping stations in Taiwan, and it will be adding 500 more stations to its charging and battery swapping network, soon. Gogoro has set up these stations at every 1.3 km distance from each other.

Gogoro Smart scooters are associated with an app. The company has launched the app to monitor the health of the scooter, adjust performance settings, check out for the nearest GoStation, see the correct statistics on battery reservations as well as check the vehicle’s battery level, etc. The scooters are for sure smart, as these can analyse riding patterns, optimize energy use, and dim its lights when necessary to maximize energy. These update their condition to the app every 10 minutes.

The batteries used in the scooter are the lithium-ion batteries that the company primarily purchases from Panasonic. In the year of its inception, the company sold over 4000 Smart scooters. According to Luke, the stylish and cool design of the scooter, and the comfort it gives to the users is the prime reason for its success. Also, people are saving a lot of money on fuel with the help of these scooters.

Being experienced enough, the two co-founders knew the real marketing strategy and built the scooters based on the users’ choice. The scooters are available in different colours and styles, including a few of its models, having the bike-type look. There are scooters also in pink colour to attract female customers.

Due to its energy-efficient model, Gogoro has also received the Government support as these help in reducing the greenhouse gas emissions. The Ministry of Economic Affairs has been supportive of Gogoro Smart scooters and have helped the company in establishing the Gogoro Energy Network in the country.

The company is already supplying its electronic products to other companies as well, and it plans to provide energy-support for offices, data centres and homes, with its lithium-ion batteries.

Gogoro has got its own retail stores where it sells its scooters, batteries and other electronic products. The company is called the Tesla of two-wheelers as it is similar to the former in many ways. Both the companies are working to find better power-saving technologies and builds the edgiest designs for its automobile.

The growth of the company and its reach can be the biggest benefit to the world, as with time we need more energy-efficient solutions for our daily needs.