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patreon

Patreon.com : An Online Crowdfunding Platform to Support Your Favourite Creators

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Today YouTube is the biggest platform for the creators from different fields to gain fame and money. But, in the beginning, there were not many creators on it, and it had not reached many people. There was a time when the creators did earn praise from the audience, and it was their passion that kept them hooked to the platform, not the money. But not many might know that there is a huge expenditure when it comes to creating a simple outdoor video. Considering this, a singer/computer science graduate/entrepreneur Jack Conte and his college buddy, Sam Yam from Stanford, came up with the idea of Patreon.com, a platform where the subscribers can support their favourite content creators financially, not only on YouTube, but also on many other platforms, to keep them encouraged to create more and more content.

About the Founders

Conte was studying at the Standford University, where he opted for music as major for his undergraduate. He formed a duo named Pomplamoose with his then-girlfriend (now wife) Nataly Dawn in 2008. At the time, YouTube had just started getting popular, and the two started their YouTube channel at the same time, along with working for some of the famous labels. They also registered to various other platforms, where they could connect with their fans directly.

On the other hand, a computer science student at Stanford University, Yam was doing significantly well at studies. He even got the letter of recommendation from Marc Andreeson for his Master’s in Computer Science from the same university. While studying at the university, he took leave of absence and joined a startup company named Loopt, as one of the first engineers. The company was acquired in 2006, and Yam went to found his own company named AdWhir, which he later sold to AdMob in 2009. Yam then joined Google as an engineer, but soon, he left the job to look forward to finding new ideas for his startup.

Patreon.com founders
Image Source: forbes.com

Founding Patreon.com

Despite being really popular on YouTube, the duo had to face a three-years long hiatus. The income was really low as compared to the investment Conte made on every video for YouTube. Conte thought of building a website, from where his fans could donate him some money as support. He then printed his whole plan and reached out to Sam Yam, who was his roommate at Stanford and a coder too. The two met at a coffee shop in March 2013 and started working on the idea. They, finally, built a website naming it Patreon in 2013. Yam, at the same time, was working on another startup named OurSpot a photography marketplace.

The next month, Conte built his account on Patreon and put a link to his account asking his fans to support him financially, in the description of his YouTube videos. He and Yam also asked many other creators to create an account on Patreon, but nobody really took an interest in the same. In the first few weeks of his announcement, Conte got over $5000 donation from his supports (also known as Patrons). This was one big achievement for both Conte and Yam, and the other creators also got attracted to the platform, creating their accounts on Patreon.

Raising Money & Growth

In June 2013, they received a funding of $700,000 from Josh Felser giving a kickstart to the company. Later in August, it raised a $2.1 million in the seed round of funding, led by CRV and Freestyle, including other investors like Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian. In June 2014, the company hosted the A-Series round of funding and raised a $15 million, and in its Series B round of funding, the company raised a $30 million in January 2016.

Patreaon.com was an instant hit, and in 18 months it had registered 125,000 users. By this time, the platform was receiving around $1,000,000 per month. In 2015, the company acquired a similar platform named Subbable, and the next year incorporated payment through PayPal feature into it. By January 2017, the platform had managed to bring in $100,000,000 for the different creators registered to Patreon.com from their Patrons. In the second quarter of the same year, 50,000 creators were active on the platform, and around 1 million monthly patrons were sending about $150 million to their favourite creators through the platform.

Jack Conte serves Patreon.com as the CEO and has also continued his career in music. Similarly, Yam, besides serving the company as CTO, is also working on other projects side by side. He has even joined Y Combinator as the YCE. Patreon has headquartered at San Francisco.

Gett

Gett : Online Taxi Service, Making the Lives of Israeli People Easier

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Have you ever noticed that the majority of the successful start-ups have emerged out during the time of crisis? Bored with the monotonous life, saying no to 9to5 jobs, addicted to gaming, and in this case, a 30 long minutes waiting for a taxi resulted in a successful story of getting a Taxi. We all have heard about the famous online cab hiring companies, like Grab, Uber, Lyft, which are majorly dominating in the United States. But, Gett is an Israel based start-up, launched in 2010, not only used for customer’s transportation but also couriers.

Shahar Waiser and Roi More are the two entrepreneurs, who created the Gett app for people of Israel and expanded it to Russia, the United States, and the United Kingdom. It was in the year 2009 when Waiser decided to open his own company when he became tired of waiting for a taxi for more than 30 minutes. Since Waiser was already good at doing business; the journey wasn’t that hard for him at all.

Shahar Waiser

Before further confusion arises, Shahar Waiser and Dave Waiser are the names of a single person, that is, founder of Gett. He completed his education in Computer Science from The Academic College of Tel-Aviv, Yaffo. Waiser mainly focused on learning Java, and Gett was not his first startup. Before Gett, he founded Infoauto, an online service that provided information about used cars and real estate. He created Infoauto while studying in college, and it became the first and largest company for classifieds informational system. Later, it was acquired by MARAM Group.

Shahar-Waiser Gett
Image Source: sk.ru

In April 2001, Waiser became the first CEO of Comverse, a company dealing with mobile data, telecommunication and related things. He then moved to Moscow and worked there for the Russian Federation and also received the “President Annual Sales Award”.

After leaving Comverse in March 2005, he founded Loyalize. Waiser designed a Social TV solution that dealt with real-time management that can be used by millions at a time. This product was used during the times of Oscars, Grammys, and many such prestigious awards, and even, got featured in Forbes as one of the topmost entertaining technologies. Later, it was acquired by Function(x).

Before launching GetTaxi, Waiser already became famous due to his smart inventions and entrepreneurial skills. Gett success emerged out as the brightest solution to the poor transportation condition of Israel, followed by becoming a very profitable company.

Roi More

More completed his graduation from Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya and passed out in 2002 with a Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration. Apart from co-founding Gett, More also founded Kamay Holdings (later acquired by 888.com) and MyLotto.com.

Success of Gett

Waiser started his work in 2009 and released the beta version of the app in Hebrew, which only operated in the area of Tel-Aviv. The company was officially launched on 1 November 2010 and eventually, expanded to London in 2011. In 2012, GetTaxi expanded to Moscow as well and opened their first United States office in the city of New York. The company raised $30 million in the funding round held in June 2012, in addition to which, an American Billionaire offered $9 million to help Gett enter the U.S market. The company operates as Juno in New York.

In 11th April 2016, Gett launched the new feature of splitting the payment among six people at the max. This definitely increased the number of booking, as it was more affordable. The biggest news of Gett, in 2016, was its partnership with Volkswagen Group, which helped Gett raise $300 million only from this partnership.

In June 2018, the company raised more than $80 million from its existing investors, Volkswagen Group, private firm Baring Vostok Capital Partner, and the American billionaire Len Blavatnik’s Access Industries. By 2018, the company raised $700 million in total and sales rides worth more than $1 billion. Among all the markets, Gett doing business in the New York market is expanding exponentially with approximately 45,000 drivers. This was closely followed by the London market, where most of the black cabs available were doing business with Gett.

Today, Gett is available in more than 120 cities, used by 20,000 companies worldwide to transport goods and couriers. The last round of funding helped Gett achieve the status of Unicorn, which is really a great success for any company.

The company is also focused on making rides more eco-friendly, hence reducing the dead mileage. Gett also invests in R&D significantly to use more recycled products.

Busuu

Busuu : An Interactive Online Language Learning Platform

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There can be any reason if a person wants to learn a new language, whether it is required for a new job, or settling down in another country, or for fulfilling a long-time desire or hobby. But it is not necessary that one would get the required language’s classes near them, and that too, at affordable prices. But worry not. There are numerous mobile apps and online platforms that are helping people learn new languages. One such platform is Busuu, one of the world’s largest social networks for language learning, founded by Bernhard Niesner and Adrian Hilti as their MBA project, and today, over 90 million people are registered to the platform.

Bernhard Niesner was born and brought up in Vienna. After completing his school education, he joined the Vienna University of Economics and Business to get a graduate degree in business. On completing his graduate degree in 2003, he moved to Madrid to work with Roland Berger as a consultant. After working for a 9 to 5 job for two years, Niesner realised that he does not want to get stuck into a 9 to 5 job, but wanted to start a business of his own. He left the job and to enhance his business skills, he joined the IE Business School in Madrid and took an MBA for his post-graduation.

While at the business school, Bernhard met his future partner and co-founder of Busuu, Adrian Hilti, at a seminar. The two were sitting together and shared friendly vibes. Hilti was also a student at the business school. But before that, he had been worked with companies like Shockfish and Arthur D Little.

busuu founders
Image Source: ie.edu

The two became friends and collaborated for their MBA project. For the project, they decided to build a language learning platform that would ease out the process of learning for different types of people by letting them interact with each other. Though the project could not make through the Bootcamp, the two kept working on the same. By the time, they had realised that their idea may transform as a great project. Since they were studying in an international university, they got the opportunity to test their project on people from different culture and backgrounds. They also had the accessibility to the computer labs, as well, so they get to work on the project full time, even they were studying.

In 2007, eventually, they get to rent their own office in Madrid, and their project became their first startup. While their friends and colleagues were applying for jobs in big MNCs, the two remained focussed on their project and stayed in Madrid to grow it. The two officially launched their startup naming it Busuu in 2008 (named after the endangered language from Cameroon), a free version of an online language learning platform.

The two being business students knew that their startup needs more promotions. So they connected with a few bloggers and ran some ad campaigns as well. In fact, one of their video ads even won the Silver Lion award in the International Advertising Festival in Cannes.

In 2009, the company launched the premium version of the service, and the next year, the company introduced its first mobile app. The same year, the company even launched a short course to encourage the usage of Busuu language.

In 2012, the company hosted its Series A round of funding and raised 3.5 million euros. This helped the company expand to the international markets and add new features to the platform. In the same year, Busuu shifted its headquarters to London from Madrid. In 2014, the company partnered with London-based educational company Pearson, offering gSET certificate in English on Busuu. After another partnership with McGraw-Hill Education in 2015, the company started providing the users with the McGraw-Hill Education certificates for completing a course in English, Spanish, French, German, Italian and Portuguese. The company also received a €6 million investment form the company.

Busuu then introduced educational courses for organisations, colleges and universities in 2016, which gave the learners the access to the Busuu premium service, and the platform acted as a Learning Management System. In 2017, Busuu partnered with Google, adding voice-activated lessons in Spanish to Google Home. It even built a VR app for Oculus Gear and Oculus Go to help people learn Spanish.

Busuu and its co-founders, since its inception, has won over 19 awards, including Best Language App by the German Association for Consumer Studies, the Bloomberg Innovator award, and was selected as ‘best of 2015’ apps by Google Play.

grab

Grab : One of the Biggest Startups in South-east Asia

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“The youth of today is the future of tomorrow”, probably one of the famous quotes, you will find written almost everywhere. It is expected of the young generation to build a better tomorrow by eradicating today’s problem, be it a social, or an economical cause. The success of Grab narrates the story of a start-up based in Malaysia, which improved both the social environment of the city and made taxi booking much economical plus convenient.

The community of taxi drivers in Malaysia didn’t have a good reputation, as at times the customers were overcharged, the security of women was a big question, and the economic condition of the drivers was unsatisfactory. Anthony took the crisis of his city into a note and together, with Hooi Ling, started a business plan to launch a ride service.

Both the founders of Grab, Anthony Tan and Hooi Ling Tan graduated from Harvard Business School, and that is how they met each other. Grab was founded as GrabTaxi in June 2012, and after a couple of years, the headquarters shifted from Malaysia to Singapore. Today, Grab provides more than just a taxi service and has customers around eight countries.

Anthony Tan

Grab founders
Image Source: yourstory.com

Anthony pursued his Bachelor’s degree in economics followed by completing his MBA from Harvard Business School. Anthony belonged to a financially dominant family of Malaysia. His father ran a family an automobile business named Tan Chang Motors. After coming back from Harvard, Anthony joined his family business as head of marketing. But, after being a spectator of the degrading condition of transportation companies in Malaysia, he came up with the idea of opening his own start-up like the ones dominating in the U.S. Especially, when he found his friends and family complaining about it, he decided that he had to do something. He contacted Hooi Ling Tan, his classmate from Harvard, who chalked down a business plan.

Hooi Ling Tan

Unlike Anthony, who after Harvard joined his family business straightway, Hooi Ling had a better taste of the corporate world. Since she was a mechanical engineer graduate, she worked as an equipment engineer in Eli Lilly before going to Harvard. She was also a business analyst at McKinsey and Company and worked there for a couple of years.

After graduating from Harvard, Hooi Ling again joined McKinsey and Company as an associate and later, switched to salesforce.com as a senior director of pricing intelligence and monetization. She worked there till 2015, a couple of years even after co-founding Grab.

The Hurdles

Initially, when both Anthony and Hooi Ling stepped into the outer world and started pursuing the taxi companies, they received several rejections. The concept was new to them, and nobody was really that enthusiastic. So, they needed to approach drivers, and the common crowd, individually, to make them understand how they could be benefited. Both of them also took feedback from the citizens of Malaysia if they would like to bring a change to networking.

Finally, after several rejections, one taxi company with thirty taxis was willing to give it a shot. They even received a sum of $25,000 from Harvard Business School to start the business and the mobile app. Finally, the company was launched in 2012, and in the first couple of years, Anthony learned a lot from his mistakes and implemented better strategies.

The Flaws

In the beginning, the capital for Grab was funded by the Tan family, and it continued for quite a long time until chaos was created. After the funding round in April 2014, the company was confused about the total fundraised, which created a lot of fuss followed by some unnecessary expenditure. Things turned upside down, resulting in no salary for the drivers for one month.

Anthony realized it was high time to buckle up and manage the finance. He brought some discipline to the company by bringing some professional investors in the house and not relying fully on the Tan family.

The Right Decisions

Since Anthony focused on the betterment of social relations between a driver and the customer, especially, on the security of the women, every driver was interviewed personally. He said that though this process was time-consuming, he couldn’t compromise with it.

Today, Grab serves customers in more than 168 cities, across 8 countries. Apart from GrabTaxi, services, like GrabFood, GrabPay, GrabBike, has also been released. By 2017, the company completed one billion rides and 68 million downloads.

The company also started investing in R&D, as he is focused more on hiring smart people who can contribute more to the business than spending millions on advertising. Anthony truly is a person to admire with great passion to ameliorate the condition of our society.

inDriver

inDriver : Saying No to the Dictatorship of the Centralised Taxi Service

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How many times the petrol or diesel price hiked, and your cab driver charged you twice the money? How many times were you forced to pay almost triple the money to a taxi driver due to an unstoppable rain? At these moments, we don’t really feel like living in a free world anymore, do we? Drivers manipulating us in the situations when our hands are tied up, and we possibly cannot do anything but pay, as we cannot pause our daily lives because prices are hiked.

But, what if anyone creates an entirely new system for us, through which we would pay the optimal price to the driver? Well, to be frank, that needs a lot of thinking and desk work. But, can you imagine a start-up based on this idea coming out from one of the coldest parts of the world, which is often considered as a drawback and not an advantage?

inDriver, a private company for transportation emerged out from Siberia, one of the coldest parts of the world seven years ago. The start-up was created as the need of the hour, which now serves 32 million customers over 26 different countries.

inDriver
Image Source: mashable.com

How inDriver started?

Yakutsk is one of the coldest city of Eastern Siberia, having records for unimaginable low temperature during the winter season. And, in 2012’s New Year’s Eve, the temperature in Yakutsk dropped to -45 degrees. Taking advantage of the situation, the local taxi drivers started charging double the price to go anywhere around the city. But we all know desperate time calls for desperate measures.

In response to this acute crisis, the people of Yakutsk made a group of social networks, called “independent drivers”. The customers were supposed to post where they wanted to go, along with the fare they are willing to give, and they were contacted by the drivers. This received a huge response, and in just six months, 50,000 customers joined the group.

After a year, inDriver application was founded by Arsen Tomsky based on the group’s free peer-to-peer model. It was launched on 24th June 2013, with establishing the headquarters in Siberia, which now has been shifted to New York. Tomsky studied programming (Riga Aviation Institute) and applied mathematics (Yakutsk State University) and founded three more start-ups other than inDriver. Undoubtedly, Tomsky’s programming skill led to the development of this application, but had it not been for the people of Yakutsk, inDriver wouldn’t have even existed.

Why inDriver is better?

The unique strategy of inDriver is that there is no fixed rate for a fixed tour. Unlike other driver apps around the world, inDriver doesn’t fix the rate for your tour. Isn’t that phenomenal? I mean, how many apps do you find that let you suggest a price for yourself. The commission rate for the drivers of inDriver is also comparatively lower to Uber and Lyft. One might think the app is not quite beneficial for the service providers, which is absolutely a wrong idea, because the price isn’t forced on any local drivers. Once the customer suggests a price, it is shared with the nearby drivers, and it is up to them to accept or deny it.

Since the business is based on a P2P model, decentralization plays a very important part of its success. The popularity of inDriver has spread in huge cities as well as small towns.

Growth of the company

Only after a year of inDriver’s launch, it made its first entry on the foreign lands of Astana, Kazakhstan in December 2014. Initially, when the app started functioning, it only dealt with intracity tours. But from July 2014, intercity tours were also available on the same application itself.

In February 2017, the app completed its 100 million rides while the number of registered users hiked to 5 million. The funding of $5 million that inDriver received in 2017 from LETA Capital followed by $10 million from the same in 2018 was invested to expand the business USA and Canada. In the financial year of 2017-2018, the total turnover of the company exceeded $300 million followed by the launch of the application in the markets of Central and South America.

Recently, inDriver expanded its service to South Africa, Indonesia, Costa Rica, Bolivia and even India. Currently, there are 32 million registered users of the app that have crossed 300 million rides so far.

xerox

Joseph C. Wilson : The Founder of Xerox Who Brought an Innovation in the Printing Industry

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The great inventions in the sector of printing and photocopy have made our lives much easier. Think about a world where we needed to pay a few dollars just for one colour print, absolutely not affordable right? Given that photocopy is essential in every sector starting from an educational institution to a corporate company and even a hospital, it had to be made pocket-friendly. And, with the inventions made by Xerox Corporation, especially Joseph C. Wilson the industry of photocopying will not be dealt with casualties at least for the next century.

Xerox Corporation, a multinational conglomerate pioneering in the world of the printing industry was founded more than a century ago in 1906. The company then was established as The Haloid Photographic Company, and the three masterminds behind this mammoth transforming setup were Joseph C. Wilson, Chester Carlson, and Jeff Leonard. Let’s have a detailed look into the life of Wilson, and his inventions, and how it led to founding Xerox.

Life of Wilson

Born in 1909 to J.R. Wilson and Kate Wilson, Wilson spent his childhood in Rochester. During his early childhood, Wilson grew a love for literature in his heart. He completed his high school from West High School, Rochester and pursued economics in the University of Rochester. Later, he went to Harvard to complete his MBA. After getting his business degree, he joined Haloid and became the head of the company.

History of Xerox Corporation

Xerox founder
Image Source: Xerox Twitter

Xerox was founded on 18 April 1906 as Haloid. During this time, Carlson worked independently on his innovation that revolved around printing images. He was a very promising physicist, and Wilson after taking over the company from his father showed keen interest to work with Carlson’s product. And all of these happened during the time of the Second World War, which added up mostly to the sale of photographic papers for government work. Though the photographic papers were in demand, Wilson had strong competitors, too. So, he needed to come up with an excellent idea at the earliest hour to save Haloid from dissolving.

Wilson wanted to launch a new product called Xerox 914, which had Carlson’s technology incorporated in it. It took Carlson almost two decades to perfect the technology, and finally, it was released in 1959. The product brought a revolution in the industry, resulting in $60 million revenue of Xerox at the end of 1961, which escalated to $500 million by 1965. The technology that was used in the product was Electro-photography, and Wilson gave it a new term called “xerography’.

That is how Haloid came into the spotlight, and its most important goal was to make photocopying easier and cheaper for the world.

Wilson’s Idea Flooded the Company with Profits

A year after the launch of 914, Wilson Center for Research and Technology was established in Webster, New York, and the following years, the company was enlisted on the New York Stock Exchange as Xerox (XRX). In this year, the company’s earnings grew to 151%.

In 1969, another invention followed. It was a laser printer, Xerox 9700 and brought billions of dollars of business to the company. Once the company settled on firm grounds, it made multiple acquisitions, including University Microfilms International, Scientific Data Systems, Electro-Optical Systems, etc. Even after Wilson’s death in the early 1970s, the company is still embarking with new technologies, acquiring gigantic businesses and making great innovations. In 1970, Xerox Palo Alto Research Center was developed, and it started developing modern technologies like graphical user interface and laser printing.

With the advent of a new decade, a new century and a millennium, Xerox started the year 2000 with a big acquisition of Tektronix colour printing for $925 million. This was followed by further acquisitions of companies like XMPie (software provider) and Newfield IT.

Currently, Xerox Corporation is a major part of the IT industry with its headquarters based in Norwalk, Connecticut, New York. The products of Xerox include printers, scanners, projectors and other office equipment. With John Visentin as the Vice Chairman and the 10th CEO of the company, around 35,000 people are working together to find more efficient equipment for the near future. Today, Xerox has become a significant brand name both in research and development and marketing.