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Airbnb

Airbnb – ‘Need to Succeed’ Story of Two Roommates.

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The rise of online services has eased down many things for people, from making payments online to buy food and getting new fashion clothes to booking hotels for vacations. Airbnb is a similar online service developed by two designers, Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia, struggling with finances. Airbnb is an online platform, where people are offered services like renting hotels, lodges, homestays, spare rooms in a house as well as various activities for vacations. The platform has been loved for its simplicity and flexible services and is operational in most tourist destinations across the world.

A Brief Introduction of Airbnb

Airbnb is a 12 years old company founded in San Francisco, California by two designers Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia. Being a millennial product, the service is available on both websites and mobile. The idea behind Airbnb is to make a profit with commissions. People use the Airbnb website or app to rent their property for few days for people who want a comfortable yet cheap stay during their vacations. People rent and book accommodation on Airbnb, and the latter charges a minimal fee from them.

Airbnb
Image Source: designindaba.com

As per 2019 records, around 6000 people are working for the company, and it made an annual revenue of $3.378 billion in 2020. The subsidiary companies of Airbnb include Luxury Retreats, International Inc., Tilt.com, Accomable, Aibiying, Trooly, Inc., Deco Software Inc., Trip4real Experiences, Airbnb UK Limited, and HotelTonight.

The Back story

Airbnb started as AirBed & Breakfast, when two roommates, Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia, rented their room with three air mattresses to earn some money in 2007. Nathan Blecharczyk dived in as the third founder of the company in February 2008 and held the position of Chief Technology Officer. To expand their business, the three built a website with the domain airbedandbreakfast.com. The website allowed people to book for quarters having air mattresses along with breakfast service for their stay.

The Industrial Design Conference during the summer of 2008 brought the first customers for the company as these customers were unable to find places to stay. The founders of the company then attended the training sessions at Y Combinator in January 2009 to understand better ‘how to run a startup’. Going to the training at Y Combinator also brought the founders their first big venture funding worth $20,000, which they used to market their website across America. In just two months after their training session, Airbnb had registered 10,000 users. Meanwhile, the name of the company was also changed to Airbnb. The company also moved from only renting the air mattresses to renting rooms, apartments, and even a whole house on their platform.

Airbnb got its next big investor the Sequoia Capital and raised $7.2 million in a Series A round in 2010. The next year, it became the winner of the “app” award. The company started to expand overseas, and in October 2011, it opened its first international office in London, followed by the establishment of offices in Paris, Milan, Moscow, Berlin, Barcelona, etc., in the next few years. In the following years, Airbnb established its European headquarters in Dublin. The company also entered Asia after it opened an office in Singapore in December 2012.

Airbnb
Image Source: adage.com

By 2013, the company had registered around 250,000 properties to its platform. Airbnb revamped the website, mobile app, and the logo of the company in 2014, to make bookings, even more, easier for people. Due to the simple and useful concept of Airbnb, it was growing too fast, raising billions of dollars from the biggest investors in the world, including Andreessen Horowitz, Google Capital, and Technology Crossover Ventures, etc. In 2016, the revenues generated by the company were 80% more than the previous year. The company announced two new features on the platform, Airbnb Plus, which listed the collection of best places service/rating wise, and Beyond by Airbnb, a service that offered luxury vacation rentals. As per the 2019 records, two million people had registered to Airbnb globally.

The CEO: Brian Joseph Chesky

Brian Joseph Chesky is one of the founders and the current CEO of Airbnb. He was born on 29 August 1981 in Niskayuna, New York, U.S. Chesky completed his high school education from Rhode Island School of Design and got a bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts in industrial design in 2004. Soon after he got his degree, he moved to San Francisco, where he founded Airbnb with his roommate Joe Gebbia as a result of ongoing financial issues.

Alienware

Alienware launches x15 R1 and x17 R1 gaming laptops with exceptional cooling technology.

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Alienware has launched the brand new x15 and x17 of the x-series gaming laptops that are going to mark a new level of exceptional capability, design, quality, and performance. The company has always challenged itself to come up with something better and far more impressive every time with a new launch. With these new gaming laptops of the x-series, Alienware is presenting its thinnest 15” and 17” gaming laptops. The company has collaborated with Intel to help successfully design the thinnest form factor for such gaming laptops.

The newly launched laptops feature patent-pending cooling technologies, high-level performance components, and other designs so that one can play any latest games with minimal discrepancy. Alienware wanted to design something that will redefine the experience of mobile gaming and do more than just a thin laptop. With this massive breakthrough with x15 and x17, x15 became the world’s most powerful sub-16mm 15” gaming laptop.

Alienware Cryo-Tech Cooling Technology

Fast heating of a gaming laptop is an issue faced by every gamer and that’s why advancements in thermal technologies are requested. Alienware’s main focus was to expand these thermal limitations and in doing so they invented new engineering methods to resolve the issue. The Alienware Cryo-Tech cooling technology has been redefined by introducing Element 31[1]. It is an exclusive thermal interface material placed between the CPU and its elements. This will help in dispersing heat and prevent the spike in temperatures from affecting the performance of the laptop.

Alienware
Image Source: laptopmag.com

The x-series laptop offers HyperEfficient Voltage Regulation to extend high performance during long hours of gaming and more heat dissipation. Alienware has also designed an exclusive Quad Fan that blows air to the system, chassis, and internal hotspots to constantly cool the system. These new laptops are also featuring Smart Fan control technology which uses AI to enhance the application-based performance of each fan independently. With this newly cooling technology, gamers can enjoy a high-level gaming experience keeping their system cool and quiet. 

Sleek Design

The new x-series laptops are designed very intricately keeping in mind every single detail adding up to its classic appearance. These laptops are featuring Alienware Legend 2.0 design identity which comes with a Dark Core that first appeared in Alienware m15 R5/R6 gaming laptops. The main purpose of this improved design is to enable high performance with the thin form factor.

These laptops have a continuous series of bold stadium lighting, illuminating the rear hexagon venting system (Alienware Arena). The laptops are designed in a way that mainly focuses on maximizing thermal benefits which explain the venting system both on the top and base of these x-series laptops. The thinness of x15 is 15.9mm while that of x17 is 20.9mm.

High Performance

Both the x15 and x17 gaming laptops are powered by 11th Gen Intel Core H-series mobile processors and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 30 Series Laptop GPUs. The graphics power supported by x15 and x17 is 110W and 165W respectively. The laptops have Thermal Control Circuit Offset which will allow the user to set a temperature for the CPU and the system will assure that the CPU temperature remains within the range. There are five options for power states that the users can choose from, namely, Full speed, performance mode, balanced mode, battery saver, and quiet mode.

The keyboards are also redefined as x17 features the CHERRY MIX keyboard which has a 3.5mm ultra-low-profile design with German stainless steel mechanical components for a better experience. The laptops also have Windows Hello IR camera ensuring quick and safe login and DirectX Raytracing providing FHD 360 Hz speed to 4K-UHD HDR400. The gamers can also personalize the lighting zone from Alienware Command Center. The packaging material of the laptops is coming from recycled products as a part of Dell’s 2030 Moonshot Goals.

For both the models, limited config models are already available and for full config models, gamers have to wait till 15th June. The starting price of the laptops are 1,999.99 (x15) and $2,099.99 (x17). Along with these, the Alienware m15 R6 and Dell G15 systems are also made available at $1,299.99 and $949.99 respectively.

Keysight Technologies

Keysight Technologies – The Spun-off Electronics Division of HP, Making Big in the Industry.

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Keysight Technologies can be cited as the spun-off company of Hewlett-Packard, as it was one of the electronic test and measurement divisions of the latter before Keysight could be called an independent company. First, Keysight was a division at HP and then was taken over by Agilent Technologies (another division of HP).

The company came into being in 2014 and has made its separate identity in the world of electronics. Keysight Technologies, after getting separated from Hewlett-Packard, continued to manufacture and supply the electronics test and measurement equipment and added software development to one of its specializations.

About the Company

Though Keysight is a seven years old company, still with the experience of being a part of two big names Hewlett-Packard and Agilent Technologies, it was able to make its mark in the industry quite smoothly. Today the company has its own several divisions, including PathWave Design and PathWave Test oscilloscopes, etc., and over 14000 people are working for the company. Other than America, Keysight Technologies is operational in countries like UK and Australia. As of 2019, the company made an annual revenue worth US$4.3 billion.

A Brief History Keysight Technologies

The founders of Hewlett-Packard, Dave Packard, and Bill Hewlett, who were also good friends from their graduation from Stanford University, founding HP from a garage in Palo Alto, California, in 1939, today known as the Silicon Valley. The two started the company after they discovered their passion for innovation while camping in the Colorado mountains.

If we look at the beginning of HP, it started as an oscillator and electronic measurement manufacturing company. As time went by, HP excelled in its field and also added many other divisions, like the manufacturing of computers and printers, to its business. In 1999, the company separated its test and measurement components business and the computer-printer manufacturing business. The former went under the control of Agilent Technologies, the Medical Products and Instrument Group formed by HP.

Keysight Technologies
Image Source: keysight.com

For about fifteen years, Agilent handled the operations of Keysight Technologies, but on November 1, 2014, Keysight officially became a separate electronic measurement company through the spinning off of Agilent Technologies. Since then, the company has only stepped towards success. It also made some major acquisitions in the past seven years, which include Anite PLC (2015), Electroservices Enterprises UK Ltd (2015), Ixia (2017), Thales Calibration Services (2018), Eggplant (2020), and Quantum Benchmark (2021).

Keysight Technologies has established its headquarter in Santa Rosa, California, U.S., and trades on the New York Stock Exchange as KEYS.

Products by Keysight Technologies

Keysight Technologies, being a part of HP in the past, have similar values attached to its work. The major fields Keysight is focussing today include 5G, automotive, Internet of Things, network security, etc. and manufactures software and hardware products for benchtop, modular, and field instruments. Oscilloscopes, in-circuit testers, logic analyzers, signal generators, vector network analyzers, atomic force microscopes (AFM), automated optical inspection, automated X-ray inspection (5DX), power supplies, tunable lasers, optical power meters, wavelength-meters, optical modulation analyzers, etc. are the major products manufactured and shipped by Keysight Technologies.

The CEO: Ronald S. Nersesian

Ronald S. Nersesian is the president and the CEO of Keysight Technologies. Nersesian has got a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Lehigh University and has completed an MBA from NYU Stern School of Business.

Nersesian started his career with Computer Sciences Corporation as a systems engineer for satellite communications systems in 1982. After working for two years at the company, he joined Hewlett-Packard in 1984 and continued to work at the company till 1996, when he joined LeCroy Corporation. In 2002 Nersesian joined Agilent Technologies as the vice president and general manager of the Design Validation Division of the company. Till 2014, he managed various roles at Agilent Technologies, like the executive vice president and COO of the company. In 2014, Nersesian was appointed as the chairman, president, and CEO of Keysight Technologies.

Thermo Fisher Scientific

Thermo Fisher Scientific – An Approach to Excel the Healthcare Industry Via Technology

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The internet and IT technology boom has helped people bring innovation to various industries. Whether it is for defense, corporate, or healthcare, every other field is trying to get their hands-on advanced technologies to make things simpler for the employees of their industry as well as the end-user of their products. Thermo Fisher Scientific is one such company that has been working towards the advancement of the healthcare industry so to ease out things for the health workers and provide better options for its customers.

A Brief Introduction

Thermo Fisher Scientific is an American Laboratory equipment company, which is the result of a merger between Thermo Electron and Fisher Scientific, the former being a leading provider of instruments and analytical services and the latter one of the well-known biotechnology companies of America. The company works in the field of manufacturing scientific instrumentation, reagents, and supplying consumables. Other than that, the company also provides software services to healthcare, life science, and laboratories in academies, etc. The company also ships products to some of the government departments and other industries.

The Founding of Thermo Fisher Scientific

Though the company is a resultant company of a merger and was established in 2006, its history dates back to over a hundred years from now. George N. Hatsopoulos and Peter M Nomikos founded Thermo Electron (one of the merged companies) in 1956. The company started as the supplier of analytical and laboratory equipment. On the other hand, Fisher Scientific was founded by Chester G. Fisher in 1902. The company sold the laboratory equipment, chemicals, supplies as well as provided services in healthcare, scientific research, safety, and education.

After ruling their respective industries, in 2006, Thermo Electron and Fisher Scientific decided to merge and unify their operation. This way, the company became a single company. The merger was a stock-for-stock exchange tax-free partnership between the two companies. After combining their operations, the company had 30,000 employees, and the annual revenue for the two as one company was recorded to be US$9 billion.

Thermo Fisher Scientific
Image Source: thermofisher.com

Currently, Thermo Fisher Scientific is dealing in the products like Analytical/other equipment and instruments, laboratory reagents and consumables, science software, and services for research, discovery, analysis, and manufacturing. Though the companies have combined their operations, Thermo Fisher Scientific manufactures and supplies the products with brand names Thermo Scientific and Fisher Scientific. Other than these two, the company also ships products under the brand names like Chromacol, Nalgene, Cellomics, Pierce Protein Research, and Fermentas. Despite being a major dominant in the American market, Thermo Fisher Scientific has also expanded into Europe and some Asian countries, including China.

Acquisitions by the Company

Thermo Electron and Fisher Scientific already had about 15 companies acquired under their name before the merger. And after the merger, in just fifteen years, Thermo Fisher Scientific made approximately 50 acquisitions. The major acquisitions by Thermo Fisher Scientific include Phadia (2011), autoimmune (2011), Life Technologies Corporation (2013), Advanced Scientifics (2015), Alfa Aesar(2015), Affymetrix (2016), FEI Company (2016), Finesse Solutions, Inc. (2017), Patheon (2017), Brammer Bio (2019), Qiagen (2020), Henogen SA (2021) and PPD, Inc. (2021), etc.

Thermo Fisher Scientific Today

It hasn’t been long since Thermo Fisher Scientific started to work as an individual company. But despite that, it has reached new heights and has made its separate identity other than its parent companies. Today, it is counted among the Fortune 500 companies and has been making annual revenues of more than $20 billion. Today the company is serving worldwide, and over 70000 people are working for it. The company is public and trades on NYSE as TMO. The company headquarters is established in Waltham, Massachusetts, U.S., and has its various offices in different parts of the world.

The CEO at Thermo Fisher Scientific

Marc N. Casper is the CEO and the president at Thermo Fisher Scientific. He has been serving as the CEO of the company since 2009, and other than that, he is a member of the boards of trustees of Brigham & Women’s Hospital, Wesleyan University, as well as the board of U.S. Bancorp.

Casper completed his Bachelor’s degree in Economics from Wesleyan University and an MBA degree from Harvard Business School. In 1997, he became the president at Dade Behring. In the year 2000, he joined Kendro Laboratory Products as the CEO and the president of the company and worked for one year. Casper joined the Life Sciences sector of Thermo Electron in 2001 as the president.

CACI International

CACI International Inc. – One Stop Destination for IT and Simulations Software Services.

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CACI International Inc. is an American information technology company that mainly works for the US federal government as 95% of the company contracts are from the federal government. The company headquarters is in Arlington, Virginia. Though it mainly works to provide IT services to the intelligence and the defense department of the government, it operates in different countries to offer custom software and IT services to its customers overseas.

The variety of services offered by CACI International Inc. includes manufacturing of technology systems, custom software development, integration and operations, simulation, and development of the proprietary database as well as software products.

The Back Story CACI International

Herb Karr and Harry Markowitz left their well-paying job at RAND Corporation to establish CACI in 1962. The company was founded on July 17 of the same year, and the main focus of the company was to sell the SIMSCRIPT simulation programming language. SIMSCRIPT is the first simulation programming language, which the two founders had developed at RAND Corporation.

CACI International
Image Source: politico.com

The optimized planning of starting the company brought $34,000 in revenue to the founders in its first year of operations. In 1963, the company bagged a contract from the government to develop an inventory control simulation for the Navy’s Ships Parts Control Center in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania. In the first five years, the company released a compiler to translate the SIMSCRIPT programs named Simscript 1.5 and also started to work on information processing systems, QUICK QWERY being their first such proprietary product.

The Growth and Expansion

CACI started with the name California Analysis Center, Inc. and was later changed to Consolidated Analysis Center, Incorporated in 1967. The next year, just in six years of its inception, CACI went public and topped the revenues by $1 million.

For the ten years of its beginning, CACI was offering its services to various departments of the state government like from management of vehicle registration to licensing and wheeled-vehicle revenue support and from false emergency alarm billing systems to housing registration systems. And in 1974, the company put its first step forward to expand in other countries as well. CACI established its first headquarter in Europe, i.e., in The Hague. The other European offices were set up in the major cities in Europe, like London, Dublin, Milan, and Bermuda.  This expansion brought the company $1 million of revenues within three years. By the end of the decade, CACI had won contracts from the US Defence and the Department of Justice. 

In the 80s, CACI started to expand its operations and entered into the field of IT. During these years, it made revenues worth $100 million annually. In 1988, CACI developed and marketed optical imaging systems for records management as its proprietary product.

CACI International
Image Source: wikimedia.org

The beginning of the 90s made CACI experiment with the emerging networking technology. During the same time, the company made some of the major acquisitions, including American Legal Systems Corp., some shares of the government-owned SofTech, Pinpoint Analysis Ltd. and Miracle Products Ltd., etc. These years brought the company around $200 to $250 million annual revenues. The expansion into the IT sector made CACI start projects in partnership with names like AT&T, IBM, Lockheed Martin, Microsoft, Oracle, Sun Microsystems, and Unisys, etc. By this time, the company had started to deal in computer hardware, software, and database products.

Beginning with the year 2000, CACI made some major investments and acquisitions. In 2002, it also moved from the NASDAQ to the Big Board on the New York Stock Exchange. Till now, the company had opened around 90 offices in the US and Europe. In 2004, the revenues of the company touched the $1 billion mark, and it became a Unicorn company. The average annual revenue for the company has been around $5.7 billion for the past few years, and approximately 23,000 employees are working for the company around the world. The company has been constant in the Fortune 1000 Largest Companies list for many years.

The CEO: John Mengucci

John Mengucci has been serving CACI as the President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) since July 2019. He is known for his leadership skills as he has been working at some prominent positions at various big-name companies. Mengucci has a bachelor’s degree in Mathematics and Science from Clarkson University, which he completed in 1984. After he completed the bachelor’s degree, he started to work as a software engineer at Babcock & Wilcox in 1984 and then, joined Syracuse University in 1992 to pursue an MBA degree.

In June 2006, Mengucci became the president of the IS&GS-Defense department at Lockheed Martin, and in 2010, he was appointed as the president of the Global Solutions-Civil department of the same company. He then left the company to join CACI in 2012.

Leidos

Leidos – The Largest IT Service Provider in the Defense Sector.

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Leidos is a global leader that provides cutting-edge technology solutions to customers in demanding situations. The main sectors that Leidos offers efficient solutions to are aviation, defense, information technology, and healthcare. Leidos provides a wide range of both hardware and software solutions from automatic equipment identification technology to security instruments and many more.

Leidos was formerly known as Science Application International Cooperation (SAIC) which is currently headquartered in Reston, Virginia, US. J. Robert Beyster founded the company in 1969 which now operates in four main divisions, namely, Civil, Health, Advanced Solutions, Defence & Intelligence. Roger Krone is the current CEO of the company and the company has approximately 32,000 employees.

The Establishment of Leidos

In 1969, Robert J. Beyster founded the company as Science Applications Incorporated (SAI) in San Diego, California. Before founding the company, Beyster was a scientist for Westinghouse Atomic Power Division and Los Alamos National Laboratory. In 1957, Beyster became the Chairman of the Accelerator Physics Department of General Atomics and later he sold stocks received from here to raise the money for his new company.

From the beginning of the entrepreneurial journey, Beyster’s company focused on projects for the US government. Initially, SAI focused on nuclear power and weapons effects study programs but soon the company was renamed as Science Applications International Cooperation (SAIC) and it eventually expanded its area of interest. The company worked on radiation therapy, assistance to the development of the cruise missile, post-accident cleanups in nuclear stations, design and evaluation of Stars & Stripes 87, design of the first luggage inspection machine, etc.

Leidos
Image Source: twitter.com

Beyster developed SAIC as an employee-owned company which helped in attracting many dedicated and highly motivated employees. This is the biggest reason that SAIC grew and expanded so fast in many sectors. Beyster retired in 2003 and in 2009 the headquarters of the company was shifted to Tysons Corner in Virginia. In 2012, the company had to pay a large sum of money to the City of New York for overbilling the city for seven long years.

The Founding Story of Leidos

In 2012, the company decided to split up into two independent trading companies thus forming a $4billion per year and $7billion per year publicly traded entities. The former focused on government services, systems engineering, technical assistance, financial analysis, and program office support. The $7billion company became an IT business specializing in national security, health, and the engineering sector. After the companies were split into two different businesses they were able to pursue more fields which created a conflict of interest as a whole.

In 2013, it was decided that the smaller company will continue with the name SAIC while the bigger company changed its name to Leidos and moved its headquarters to Reston. Leidos was the true successor of SAIC though it didn’t retain the name. So, the company retained SAIC’s pre-2013 stock price and corporate filing history. In 2016, Leidos announced one of the biggest deals in the defense sector as it merged with Lockheed Martin’s Information Systems & Global Solutions. This doubled the size of Leidos making it a leader in the global defense industry. In 2019, the company ranked 311 on the Fortune 500 list and its annual revenue summed up to $18.569 billion.

Subsidiaries and Structure of the Company

Leidos has multiple subsidiaries in a diverse market which helped it become successful in a short period. Some of the subsidiaries of the company are Systems Made Simple (SMS), QTC Management, Leidos Engineering, Leidos Health, CloudShield Technologies, Reveal, Dynetics, Leidos Biomedical Research, etc. In 2018, the company again shifted its headquarters to Reston, Virginia, and the new building was completed last year.

As mentioned earlier, the company is divided into four main sectors. The Civil Division deals with the aviation system, security transportation measures, IT infrastructure, and efficient energy. The Health division is responsible for optimizing healthcare companies, securing medical data, and providing better solutions for data entry. Leidos’ Advanced Solutions Division focuses mainly on data analysis, integrating advanced defense systems, etc. The Defense & Intelligence Division works on providing air service systems, geospatial analysis, cybersecurity, intelligence analysis, etc.

About J. Robert Beyster

Beyster was from Detroit, Michigan, and went to the University of Michigan. He served in the US Navy during World War II which might be one of the reasons why he focused on governmental projects when he started his own business. Apart from founding SAIC, he started the Foundation for Enterprise Development in 1986. In 2004, this foundation established Beyster Institute which is dedicated to training and education on entrepreneurial grounds. He passed away on 22nd December 2014 in his home.