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09 Jan 2018

Sticky Post By andrew Posted in Initial Coin Offering, News Permalink

What Your Startup Needs To Know About Launching an ICO

Sticky Post By andrew On January 9, 2018

Startups are always on the lookout for good opportunities. For many, this means raising money through an initial coin offering (ICO), as opposed to the more traditional venture capital route. In the simplest terms, an ICO is a fund-raising means in which a company releases its own digital currency in exchange, typically, for ethereum or bitcoin. The point is to attract investors looking for the next big cryptocurrency score.

With this trend picking up steam, your startup might be wise to investigate whether an ICO would be right for you.

Some considerations are in order One is that individual investors are growing tired of initial public offerings (IPOs). Sure, there’s plenty of opportunity to make money that way, but it’s nothing like the excitement surrounding a hyped-up ICO.

With hundreds of millions of dollars spent on ICOs over the past few months, there is no slowdown in sight. In fact, because more startups are considering the benefits of an ICO, don’t be surprised if 2018 is even bigger in this area than 2017 was (and that’s saying a lot).

Here is what your startup needs to know about ICOs.

1. They represent a different approach (so get in the right frame of mind).

In the past, raising funds was all about pitching your idea to venture capitalists. This opportunity still exists, but it’s no longer the only game in town.

As a different approach, wrap your head around the idea that an ICO could be the best way to obtain the cash you need to realize your goals. Maybe you’re the founder of a technology startup that develops super-cool iPhone apps. Once you realize that you need to raise funds, to hire new talent or kick-start your marketing efforts, you’ll realize that it’s time to consider your options.

VC firms and angel investors are worth a shot, of course, but an ICO may be you best strategy. However, I’m not here to tell you that it’s easy to succeed with an ICO, which can be every bit as challenging as securing venture capital; but you do have more control over the process.

Tip: A variety of tools, such as DropDeck, are available, to aggregate and rate funding opportunities, whether you’re an investor, ICO or SME. DropDeck, in particular, uses artificial intelligence to rate companies for investors choosing where to invest. “Everyone wants to fund promising companies,” DropDeck’s CEO Alon Vo said in a press release published on Bitcoin.com.

“DropDeck wants to remove the barriers that keep average funders away from the greatest opportunities,” Vo continued. “There are a lot of existing platforms for you to do that, but we want to build your favorite one.” The difference between DropDeck and its competitors, the CEO claimed, is that his company is using sophisticated algorithms and artificial intelligence to sort through the companies for you.

2. Competition is fierce.

Remember: There’s more to success with an ICO than meets the eye. You can’t assume that investors will flock to your ICO. Instead, your success (or failure) is directly tied to your marketing.

Still, some ICOs have been quite successful: The total amount of money raised via ICOs each month, according to a CNBC.com special report, is in excess of $100 million. This means two things: Individuals are willing to invest, and investors have options.

While this surge means that ICOs are receiving more media attention, it also means that competition for investor support will only increase. Companies that want to distinguish themselves among the saturated ICO playing field have to educate themselves on best practices and execute at a level that is as mature as that of companies vying for IPOs.

Matt McGraw is founder and CEO of Dispatch Labs, a blockchain protocol (blockchain being the technology that underlies cryptocurrencies); his company set to initiate its own ICO in early 2018. In a call to me, McGraw said he believes that professional execution will be the key to ICO success going forward.

“Going into 2018, we have larger enterprises jumping on the ICO train, so the market for mindshare is oversubscribed — at least in relation to the sophistication of ICO execution,” McGraw said. “Up to now, many ICO projects simply haven’t been very professionally executed. We see more sophisticated and professional ICO advisory firms, PR firms and financial firms as the key differentiator for a successful ICO going forward.”

I also recently chatted with Nadav Dakner, founder and CEO of InboundJunction, a marketing firm for startups and blockchain projects, for my podcast (In The Trenches with Andrew Medal). Dakner said he believes that because the competition is tough, and the market is getting extremely saturated, companies contemplating an ICO need a lot of budget to stand out; they also need to employ growth-hacking tactics and a lot of creativity.

“We have advised and helped the marketing and business development of many ICOs in 2017, and one thing we’ve noticed about projects that succeed is the integrated marketing approach,” Dakner said.

Because there are literally hundreds or even thousands of ICOs that launch every month, you will hear only of the good ones. A combination of PR, ICO listing websites, YouTube reviews and perhaps a TV interview or two is a good start, but not enough. A solid advisory team and some entrepreneurial background among your founders are the elements that will truly convey to investors a sense of trust that you can build a company.

Apart from that, there are no shortcuts. ICOs need to first grow a huge Telegram community (a social-chat tool that most crypto companies use to communicate) over several months, invest in a great-looking website and video and understand that there are no shortcuts.

The easy days of just putting out a white paper explaining your project’s technical aspects and the composition of your team are over. You must now establish a real use case for the token you intend to promote and the blockchain technology that will fuel it.

3. Communication is key.

No two companies or investors are the same, and an ICO is no exception. This is what makes effective communication just as important as your marketing strategy.

The way you communicate with investors is essential to your success. Have you outlined the details of your ICO, such as the technical information that investors are sure to mull over before making a final decision? How about your vision for the future, including where you see your company moving to in the next year?

“We communicate with hundreds of ICOs that want to list themselves on our website and community,” Alex Buelau CEO of CoinSchedule told me. “Based on what we see, teams that have a very clear and well-defined road map and a not-too-heavy marketing white paper do well. It’s also extremely important to have an attractive one pager Sure, you could fund-raise via VCs and angel investors. But how about an initial coin offering, instead, a strategy that is new and super-cool? and website, because people buy with their eyes.”

A clear marketing message puts you in a good light with investors. They want to see a clearly defined company strategy, and possibly a serious lock-up on token bonus for the founders, to create ithe sense that the company is in it for the long haul. Alternately, a cloudy message can lead to your business (and ICO) being overlooked, in favor of the (heavy) competition.

The upshot? If your startup has hopes of raising funds without following the “same old” traditional path, an initial coin offering is an idea to consider. This is a new way of funding a company, with many entrepreneurs taking notice. This year, 2018, is set up to be the year of cryptocurrency and ICOs, so now’s the time to learn as much as you can.

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05 Jan 2018

Sticky Post By andrew Posted in News, Search Permalink

Why Google May Not Always Be King of the Mountain

Sticky Post By andrew On January 5, 2018

The highest point for any tech company isn’t when it launches its first product, or closes a big round of funding. It’s the moment when the company name makes that magical transition from noun to verb.

Think about when “Have you heard of Uber?” became “I’m Ubering home.”
Or, when “Look it up on Google” became “Google it.” That is true success.

It’s easy to assume that companies that have completed the transition from noun to verb are untouchable — that they will never be toppled from their position of market dominance. But this isn’t always the case. Uber’s market share has shrunk by nearly 20 percent since 2014 — a fall that can be attributed more to corporate scandals and declining public opinion than any flaw in its product.

Companies that enjoy near-monopolistic power over their market become vulnerable when their reputation begins to decline. This is precisely why the search engine market is poised for disruption. Google — which today enjoys a cool 75 percent share of the search engine market — has seen its reputation shaken over the past year by a series of issues. And this should not be a surprise: Search is not a solved problem; there’s still plenty of room for innovation and disruption.

Here are three reasons why the search industry is ripe for disruption.

Filter bubbles

Filter bubbles are the byproduct of social algorithms utilized by Google and most other search platforms. When a user enters a term into a search engine, the engine’s algorithms take into account what they know about that user’s preferences and interests based on his or her online activity. The algorithms then prioritize search results that are tailored to that particular user’s preferences.

The result? Conservatives are fed conservative content, liberals are fed liberal content, millennials are fed millennial content and, in general, everyone lives in a personalized bubble where his or her own ideas and prejudices are continually reinforced and never challenged.

The term “filter bubble” was coined back in 2011 by Eli Pariser, chief executive of Upworthy and board president of MoveOn.org. “Even if you’re logged out,” said Pariser in his now-famous TED Talk, “there are 57 signals that Google looks at — everything from what kind of computer you’re on to what kind of browser you’re using, to where you’re located — that it uses to personally tailor your query results.”

Moreover, the relevance of these “filter bubbles” has increased over the past 12 months as their dangers have begun to manifest more seriously in public life. Leading figures like Bill Gates and Angela Merkel have spoken up about the problem, which has been blamed for increasing political polarization and for harming civic conversation in democratic countries.

Sanjay Arora, founder and CEO of Million Short, a customizable search engine, believes, however, that filter bubbles can be popped if people are given more options and control over how they search for information online.

“Why do we let a tiny number of companies control the information that we access on the internet?” Arora asked during a phone interview we had when I was prepping for my new podcast (In The Trenches with Andrew Medal). “The world,” Arora said, “needs more search engine options.”

Rather than feeding results from opaque algorithms, Million Short allows users to tailor its search results, he pointed out. This happens through a variety of custom filters, and through the option the viewer has to actually filter out the top 100 to 1,000,000 sites on the internet.

The results can be eye-opening for the user, Arora claimed, noting: “Every day, we get feedback from users telling us how Million Short allows them to discover content online that they couldn’t find with traditional search engines.”

Fake news

“Fake news” was one of the highest-profile social issues of 2017. Malicious groups, including political extremists and Russian hackers, used the internet’s biggest platforms to circulate untrue stories in order to stoked partisan conflict and influence national elections.

Google’s search algorithms carry much of the blame for the widespread circulation of those stories. At various points last year, Google actually displayed a neo-Nazi Holocaust denial website at the top of its search results, promoted fake news tweets that mischaracterized the Texas church shooter as a Muslim extremist and suggested that President Obama was planning a communist coup de’etat.

The real problem is that Google’s algorithms are vulnerable: They can be taken advantage of by fake news propagators. “I think the reason fake news ranks is the same reason why it shows up in Google’s autocomplete,” said Joost De Valk, founder of Yoast. “They’ve been taking more and more user signals into their algorithm.

“If something resonates with users, it’s more likely to get clicks,” De Valk continued, “Google is quick to promote you to number one . . . Nothing in their algorithm checks facts.”

Of course, this isn’t an easy problem to solve. Even if algorithms get better at separating fact from fiction, the humans that design those algorithms bring their own biases into the equation. Are we comfortable giving one company the authority to make decisions about what news is worthy of distribution? “They’re really skating on this ice,” said Michael Bertini, a search strategist at marketing agency iQuanti, “They’re controlling what users see. If Google is controlling what they deem to be fake news, I think that’s bias.”

So, who’s out there working on this? Any company that can solve this puzzle is certain to create a serious buzz, considering that the issue of fake news continues to be a hot topic for 2018.

Data security concerns

Fake news isn’t the only issue: As digital platforms like Google become increasingly ubiquitous and sophisticated, concerns about data security and privacy are also on the rise.

Google has been criticized for the various ways that it tracks and stores information about online behavior. And the search giant hasn’t exactly been apologetic about this practice. Its former CEO Eric Schmidt once said, “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place. If you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines — including Google — do retain this information for some time.”

Other search platforms disagree: They’ve rejected the inevitability of user data tracking. Duck Duck Go, for example, built its entire platform around the idea that search engines shouldn’t track or store user data. This principled stance has won Duck Duck Go a loyal following and the seventh largest market share in search.

So, these are some of the reasons why search is far from a solved problem. They’re why the number of players in the space — Quora, Million Short, Duck Duck Go and the revamped Ask.com, to name a few — is increasing.

There are still serious challenges that need to be solved, and bold entrepreneurs are out there trying to solve them, taking advantage of opportunties for innovation that Google seems unable or unwilling to pursue.

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29 Dec 2017

Sticky Post By andrew Posted in News, Personal Branding Permalink

5 Reasons Personal Branding is Non-Negotiable for 2018

Sticky Post By andrew On December 29, 2017

Why is everyone all of a sudden trying to become LinkedIn-famous? Is anyone else tired (like me) of reading about all of the branding “hacks” out there? After all, there’s a lot more to achieving great personal branding than tricking algorithms.

And,make no mistake: Achieving great personal branding is important. In fact, when it comes to being a truly innovative entrepreneur or industry professional, having a personalized online footprint is essential to your business strategy.

Research has confirmed this. Kredible found that 52 percent of vendors it surveyed said they’d lost business because of information customers found, or didn’t find, online, about them.

That’s alarming, because entrepreneurs and startup founders can’t afford to have potential customers stumbling upon the wrong information; and no information at all can be just as problematic. The same goes for job-seekers surfing the web to check out a prospective employer. According to a Jobvite survey of recruiters, 95 percent of those polled viewed a competitive personal brand as an essential differentiator for attracting the best applicants in today’s workplace.

I’ve found this to be true:My personal brand has afforded me unlimited opportunities, from earning me big business deals and partnerships, to reasons to travel, to everything in between.

So, make 2018 your own year for upping your game:Here’s a list of reasons why entrepreneurs, solopreneurs (and everyone else) should focus on personal branding in the new year:

1. Image is everything.

If you believe the old axiom that you need to put your best foot forward, a more modern version would be that you have to put your best face forward. While numerous HR-driven applications are pushing for photos and names to be removed from the hiring or sourcing process, to lower the possibillity of racial and gender bias, people use photos and visual branding for positive reasons, too.

That’s because there is a good deal that professionals can glean from your visual brand online. As Claire Bahn, CEO of Online Profile Pros, a profile photo provider, shared with me about my own personal brand, “Experts estimate it takes less than one-tenth of a second for someone to make an impression of you from your photo. They don’t bother reading your profile or digging deeper if their initial impression is negative.”

2. Personal banding is content you control.

Let’s face it. A lot of us have some sort of content out there — whether it be photos or an angry Facebook rant — that we might not be comfortable with potential employers, business partners or dates seeing when they Google our names.

Previously, I was the target of an online slander campaign, and I had to deal with negative press about my background. So much of the online world is outside of our control; so it’s important to flood the web with as much positive content as possible. That’s why having an active personal branding strategy is a crucial part of controlling your image online. I learned that if I wasn’t writing my own story, somebody else would, and it wouldn’t be the story I want to share.

The more content you put online, the more that effort will help your good content rise above any negative content that may be out there.

Beyond that, when people search for you or topics related to your work, and they find high-quality content, they’re much more likely to turn to you as an expert over a competitor. A Bahn explained, “It’s always a plus when someone finds content that demonstrates your expertise, interests and capabilities. If someone finds a blog, pulse post, etc. that shows you’re an effective communicator, they’re much more likely to look into you further.”

The same goes for applicants. An HR rep comparing two candidates is more likely to select the one that has lots of high-quality content online, beyond whatever he or she has shared on a resume.

3. Make yours a profile-centric world.

As Bahn put it, “People used to have one or two online profiles, but these days the average is closer to nine, if you include dating profiles.There’s just a lot more for people to research about you these days.”

With so many social profiles, it’s important to carefully select and manage which ones people will see. LinkedIn’s recent acquisition by Microsoft is just another sign that the professional world is recognizing the importance of social profiles.

4. Influencer marketing gives way to sponsored content.

A trend that rose out of the popularity of content platforms like YouTube and Instagram, influencer marketing, has created an influx of brands using popular accounts to push their product. As such, every platform has been bombarded by “influencers” trying to subtly market products without making those efforts look like ads.

Consumer tolerance for this behavior is slipping, however, and platforms like Instagram and even the U.S. government, are considering how to control these subtle ads that cut into brands’ advertising revenue while dodging FTC regulations.

What’s likely to emerge as a result is a push for more open and honest content marketing on these platforms. If you are an entrepreneur trying to get your product or service in front of consumers, you’re probably better off creating authentic and honest sponsored content that also gives you back-end data into ad performance. Relying on an “influencer” to casually mention how much he or she likes your product is dicey, at best.

5. Realize that building a brand takes time.

Whether or not you’ve considered managing your personal brand, the fact is, it’s not something you can do overnight. Sure you can brush up your LinkedIn profile, delete those embarrassing pictures from Instagram or make some of your profiles private, but that’s only a small part of the overall branding process.

Effective personal branding can help build new relationships, and get you noticed for a job, or by a new customer. It can help you build community, establish your authority and ultimately make you more money.

Putting in the effort to develop a strong online presence, along with a series of consistently branded social profiles, will help you develop a digital footprint that tells people all the right things when they’re considering working with you.

As you kick off planning for 2018 growth, think about clearly defining what you bring to the table as a professional, and what your business offers consumers. Then double-down on spreading that message in the right places online.

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21 Dec 2017

Sticky Post By andrew Posted in Mobile Apps, News Permalink

Today’s Shortage in Code Development Presents Entrepreneurs With a Massive Opportunity

Sticky Post By andrew On December 21, 2017

Mobile apps are essentially a digital gateway drug: While one app is not addictive on its own, each one can be habit-forming and lead to the use of other addictive apps. What starts as a tween love for Candy Crush quickly turns to an obsession, with Instagram “likes” five years later. Even former Facebook vice president of user growth Chamath Palihapitiya has expressed a sense of guilt about what mobile apps like social media have done to society.

“The short-term, dopamine-driven feedback loops we’ve created are destroying how society works,” Palihapitiya recently said in a speech at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

While Palihapitiya’s remarks may signal the start of a trend toward social media and app-use criticism, mobile shows no signs of slowing. Cisco’s annual report on mobile traffic growth reported that by 2020, more people will have a cell phone than electricity. Not to mention that mobile apps will be a $188 billion global market.

From an enterprise perspective, Gartner predicts that by the end of this year, the demand for mobile-app development expertise will grow up to five times greater than most organizations’ internal IT departments can currently serve. So, if you’ve got a business, now, more than ever, it’s important for you to also have in place a solid mobile app strategy.

So, how, exactly, do you implement that app strategy?

Entrepreneurs often struggle to develop apps because they lack the in-house teams necessary to do so. Even if a company has a development team on hand, those teams rarely have the resources and tool kits needed to develop apps that meet their end goal. And without the proper tools, the stages from conception to development can take a long time.

Of course, time means increased costs, and potentially a competitor making it to market sooner. Even when developers finally have a minimum viable product (MVP), that product has to go through countless layers of administrative approvals and feedback, which can delay the process even further.

App development doesn’t have to be so complicated, however. With the right approach, companies can develop apps at a faster rate, and resolve issues before they become serious problems.

Here are a few steps every entrepreneur can take to upgrade his or her strategy for facilitating app development:

1. Reduce the amount of code.

Most entrepreneurs these days are familiar with coding at its most basic level, but cursory knowledge does little when it comes to building and launching a mobile app. Not to mention, the code that these apps are built on is often more complicated than it needs to be. This is because companies try to develop their own proprietary code, rather than rely on tried and true methods that can help simplify the process.

I recently spoke with Anders Lassen, CEO of Fuse, who explained, “People work incredibly inefficiently today, and we simply can’t afford that when demand for enterprise apps outstrips supply by six-to-one.

“Simplifying the code that makes an app run is one of the best ways to ensure its continued performance and speedy development,” Lassen continued. He recommended using development tool kits based on simplified code, rather than wasting time trying to develop proprietary solutions.

2. Use visual interfaces.

For people looking for a more user-friendly app-development experience, here’s a tip: Visual-development interfaces make for a much simpler design process. With this method, developers, instead of burying their noses in code all day, select options from a visual interface that looks a lot like the apps they’re used to using on a day-to-day basis.

“Having a consistent look, behavior and brand-identity across their different platforms and apps is important, and that’s only achievable through focused collaboration between designers, developers and stakeholders,” Lassen said. “My experience is that being able to do this on a single, unified platform is key, as it eliminates friction and frustration for everyone involved.

“Overall, it makes zero sense to invest in an expensive prototype that you then ask someone to look at, interpret and then re-implement in a native language.”

3. Employ full app-lifecycle support.

Make no mistake: Low-code development platforms don’t focus solely on the initial building phase. Instead, these options support the entire app-delivery lifecycle, from design, to build, to deployment and iteration.

Iteration is probably the most important factor in app development, because of the feverish speed at which consumer demands change. Being able to integrate user feedback into your application without the help of outside developers or an IT team means your app updates get to market faster and can be seamlessly updated throughout the app lifecycle.

Entrepreneurs cannot afford to be held back by apps that don’t serve their business’s and customers’ needs.That’s why they need better support throughout the entire lifecycle of their app. Jason Bloomberg, an analyst at Intellyx, recently reported that business leaders “can be even more successful with their digital transformations if they do away with hand-coding altogether, adopting Low-Code/No-Code across their organizations instead.”

Integrate analytics

Once your app is deployed, and users start installing it, you’ve only just begun the process of maintaining a successful app. Efficient iteration is impossible without being able to analyze behavior, predict trends and quickly integrate user feedback. Analytics provides insight on how people navigate through the app once they leave it, where they upgrade and how they behave in terms of dozens of other behavioral patterns.

With these details, entrepreneurs can analyze and compare campaigns, adjusting their resource allocation in response. Popular tools for integrating analytics and tracking into app development include Google, Firebase and Flurry.

No matter what industry you’re in, the landscape is likely changing rapidly, as people move from obsession-riddled social media apps to zero-friction utility apps. In order to stay competitive, entrepreneurs need to explore all app platform options before prematurely investing in expensive developers, designers, and IT teams.

So, what path will your app journey take?

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15 Dec 2017

Sticky Post By andrew Posted in Gaming, News Permalink

How User Behavior Is Scoring Points in the Gaming Industry and Could Score You Points Too

Sticky Post By andrew On December 15, 2017

If you think the gaming industry is represented by the somewhat pathetic image of a 35-year-old male playing Age of Empires in his mother’s basement, you are sorely mistaken, because gaming is so much more than that.

In fact, this $78.61 billion industry is a poster child for modern engineering, typically adopting new technologies before other sectors do and showing itself to be one of today’s most successful industries when it comes to understanding its customers (who, yes, are typically 35-year-old men).

Indeed, gaming is a technology powerhouse constantly investing in more and more powerful machines and infrastructure. That investment has created a global ecosystem of gamers and communities responsible for generating for this sector more earnings than either movies or music.

So, what does the future hold for gaming? “Strong growth will continue as more online casinos open in China and other Asian countries,” predicts NewZoo, an online games market research group. “Established markets have reached maturity and have less room for revenue growth, [meaning that] new markets will open up and increase access to gaming activities.”

Today’s gaming industry, in short, is still managing to grow those margins by getting smart with data. And while big data in gaming has been around for years, only recently have AI-powered SaaS platforms been able to achieve user-focused behavioral analysis.

The next phase of gaming software advancements, then, will likely rely heavily on integrating behavioral analytics to understand gamers’ tendencies and preferences. Games empowered with that kind of information can be calibrated in real time to hold user attention, increase purchases and grow the bottom line, all of which are tactics I’ve covered on my podcast.

Behavioral analytics

The goal of behavioral analytics is to identify what behaviors cause what actions. What steps did the user take before he or she made an in-app purchase? Was there a point in the game that turned the user off or caused a loss in interest? How long will a user play without winning before he or she quits?

This type of path analysis, attached to a time frame, is allowing game marketers to create better user experiences.

Reated: 3 Growth Strategies for Mobile Gaming

“Today’s current measure of KPIs in gaming are only the headlines about your players,” Dan Schoenbaum, CEO of Cooladata, a behavioral analytics platform for online gaming, said on my podcast. “The people who manage games today already need to leverage behavioral analytics. They experience a large number of players who play on free, so the ability to convert them to a paying player is huge. If you understand user behavior, you can drive up retention, which is absolutely crucial.”

Optimization for retention

Game-developers don’t just want someone to download or play their game once; they want the game played again, and again, and again. Long-term engagement creates loyalty, and that is the best way to gain a competitive edge.

To achieve long-term engagement, analytics and tools must be in place to measure player engagement over a period of days, weeks or other time period; they must also be accessible and easy to understand.

Schoenbaum recommends looking at user behavior through the lens of product optimization: “Following user paths, combined with specific time frames, allows game managers to glean new insights for different players, optimize their path and increase conversion rates,” Schoenbaum told me.

Predicting, to be proactive

At this point, gaming companies’ data warehouses and customer databases contain a wealth of data. Not only is that data valuable for analyzing past user behavior, but it’s valuable for game marketers, to shine a light on consumer patterns. Insights like these indicate who will purchase again, how much they’ll spend and the churn rate for those customers overall.

A recent illustration of the future of predictive analytics comes from the partnership between Zodiac, a cloud-based software platform provider, and Tophouse Media, a digital media company. A match-up like theirs aims to bring predictive analytics to game marketers so they can better understand their customers and fine-tune their planning and forecasting.

Moves like this across the industry also allow gaming operators to be more accurate and precise in their marketing strategies, while reducing spend and maximizing return.

Identifying issues

Another intriguing aspect of predictive analytics is its capability to predict abuse or addiction — related to gaming in terms of the problem of gambling addiction. Understanding customers with this problem, in fact, is one of the top uses for today’s analytics activity.

A leading money-gaming company in Europe, Pentaho, is an example: It’s using big data and predictive analytics to create a “360-view of customers, which, among other things, helps to identify those customers who show signs of gambling addiction.”

As our world becomes increasingly more digital, identifying technology will play a significant role in moderating game mechanics.

Leveraging data to stay ahead

Online games must have a unique user experience, but they also need back-end support to iterate quickly and cater to individual users.

“Gaming is a hyper-competitive industry, and those who succeed are implementing unique identification capabilities, people-based approaches, and proactive behavioral campaigns,” Schoenbaum said.

In sum, deploying analytics has transformed most brands and entire industries into tech companies. This billion dollar industry is expected to generate 2,857 petabytes of data per month in 2018. So, game marketers that take the time to understand that 35-year-old man in his mom’s basement will actually cross the threshold into a lucrative online gaming platform.

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11 Dec 2017

Sticky Post By andrew Posted in Cryptocurrency, News Permalink

10 Incredible Uses for Cryptocurrency and Blockchain You Probably Haven’t Thought of

Sticky Post By andrew On December 11, 2017

Now, more than ever before is a time to be thinking about cryptocurrencies. Over the past few years, cryptocurrency has grown exponentially because of its attractiveness to people looking to use this alternative money. Bitcoin, the best known of the new cryptocurrencies, is one of those words surrounded by automatic buzz, in part because everyone’s so excited about its potential.

And it’s no surprise that cryptocurrencies are exciting, overall. Because they’re decentralized (no banks!), anonymous and electric, they’ve got the potential to change the world as we know it.

Interestingly, that change will extend beyond the finance sector: Cryptocurrency, it turns out, has a huge number of uses, many of which will surprise you. Just take a look at these ten:

1. Wealth management

Wealth management is one of the most exciting ways cryptocurrency can be used. That’s why companies such as SwissBorg — a company that’s created its own tokens for investment solutions — are giving investors some great opportunities to manage their wealth without boundaries or restrictions. According to the SwissBorg website, “Whether you are an individual, a DAO [decentralized autonomous organization] or a financial expert, SwissBorg is a democratic ecosystem where you can manage a portfolio of crypto assets.”

2. Digital publishing engagement

Digital publishers and advertisers are scrambling to find ways to increase their relevancy with one another. Today, traditional banner ads that have almost nothing to do with an article are simply ineffective with users. To fix the irrelevance problem, SolidOpinion has introduced a new type of pay-per-article advertising where advertisers can pay for valuable ad real estate just above a relevant article that a target audience member is consuming on a publishing site.

This technology utilizes a proprietary form of cryptocurrency, Engagement Token, to fuel engagement; both publishers and audience members can earn tokens by commenting and publishing original content, and advertisers buy tokens to select their ad placements among relevant articles.

A great cryptocurrency is the ability to take advantage of its trackability. So with advertising, this technology makes sense: SolidOpinion, for example, has created its own digital currency (engagement tokens) that track engagement and the viral spread of information, which gets online advertisers the information they need and the capability to use it efficiently.

3. Ethical business practices

Cryptocurrency can also be used to encourage ethical business practices. Because blockchain makes it possible to track every transaction with complete transparency, businesses with a record of human rights abuses — the fishing industry, for instance, — will (hopefully) take on more ethical business practices.

4. Battling electoral fraud

Another ethical application of cryptocurrency will be its ability to help battle electoral fraud. Santiago Siri is the co-founder of Democracy Earth, a non-profit that’s designing an app to combine voting with blockchain technology. Siri says that with cryptocurrency, electoral fraud — or any other kind of corruption involving money — will no longer be possible.

“The blockchain is incorruptible; no one can modify or subvert how the votes are stored, and that’s vital for democracy,” Siri has said.

5. De-corrupting charities

Additionally, cryptocurrency can be used to avoid corruption in charitable organizations. Because of its ability to keep companies accountable, blockchain can eliminate many problems occurring with charities, such as fund leaks. That’s why the World Food Programme (WFP) is using blockchain to securely distribute cash assistance to the hungry.

6. Going green

If you’re an environmentalist, you’ll be happy to hear that cryptocurrency can be used to make the world greener, too. For example, there’s the Brooklyn Microgrid. With this system, people who already have solar panels are able to sell environmental credits through a phone app, to residents who don’t have direct access — which means using less carbon-based power and more solar-based energy.

7.Travel

As Bitcoin becomes accepted by more and more retailers, people are going to have the chance to use them for a huge number of transactions. Travel transactions are just one category. The website cheapair.com, a travel agency where you can purchase flights, hotels, car rentals and cruises, has been accepting Bitcoin since 2013.

8. Education

More and more, schools are accepting cryptocurrencies as a form of payment. According to Futurism.com, universities in Switzerland, Germany, Cyprus and the United States have started to accept Bitcoin as payment. This form of payment will surely grow as this currency becomes more and more popular.

9. Fund-raising

Many startups are now using cryptocurrencies in order to fund their ideas, services and products. Instead of using traditional VC funding, or using fund-raising websites such as IndieGoGo or Kickstarter, startup leaders are looking to cryptocurrency as a way to raise money for what they need. Because it’s easy to track and obtain money this way, it’s revolutionizing the entire fund-raising process.

10. Augmented reality

I saved the best for last as I have a slight bias because of my company Blendar, which rewards users for viewing AR experiences with cryptocurrency. Thanks to the Pokemon Go craze and companies like Candy Lab, which have paved the way for location-based AR, a whole new breed of startups has evolved. Location-based augmented reality experiences will be the future of experiential marketing.

And here, Fluffr.io, is another company to keep your eyes open for, as it has partnered with Blendar and Candy Lab to drive revolutionary in-person experiences, using a social currency based on the blockchain.

As you can see, there are plenty of ways that cryptocurrency is changing every single aspect of our lives. As cryptocurrencies gain popularity in the business world and in our daily lives, more and more uses will come about, revolutionizing the world as we know it.

Do you use cryptocurrency in your business or everyday life? What are the pros and cons?

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28 Nov 2017

Sticky Post By andrew Posted in Marketing Strategies, News Permalink

From Marketers to Button Pushers and Back Again

Sticky Post By andrew On November 28, 2017

Is technology actually helping, or are we just blind to the prison we’ve built around ourselves?

One minute, you’re a smart, capable professional about to close a deal, and the next, your phone has connected to a bluetooth speaker in your locked car and your would-be client can’t hear you.

Clearly, a lot of technologies are still maturing: We’ve figured out how to empower marketers to launch highly customized email marketing campaigns to thousands of contacts, for example, but we still require human help with the actual launch.

Specifically, we need someone to populate our Excel files, convert them into .csv files, upload and label them, push a bunch of buttons on the settings page, test the email four times and then schedule its release — only to find out that we’ve miscalculated the time difference, meaning all our customers will be sound asleep when that email arrives at 3 .m.

Marketing wasn’t always this way. Marketers used to spend their time designing ads, writing copy, studying demographic segments and planning events. Those were things they went to school to learn. But, with the advent of technology and all of its cool tricks, marketers have gone from being experts in the art of influence to stressed-out button pushers.

There is even an entirely new lingua franca that we all need to know. What happened?!

Samuel Scott, writing for TechCrunch, put it this way: “Imagine that it is the year 1996,” he suggested. “What did traditional marketing departments think about? The four Ps. The promotion mix. Communications strategies. SWOT analyses. The five forces. Building brands. Then, by 2006, what did digital marketing teams think about? High Google rankings and more website traffic. Getting Facebook ‘likes’ and Twitter followers. Keyword density. Building links.”

In other words, by 2006, we’d lost track of the “why” and started focusing on the “how.”

Moving from driver-assisted mode to self-driving mode.

Thankfully, there might be light at the end of the button-pushing tunnel. According to numerous industry experts, the advent of artificial intelligence technologies and the increasing sophistication of behavioral analytics are trends that are taking marketing technology from driver-assisted mode to self-driving mode. This transition effectively liberates marketers from the menial aspects of launching and monitoring campaigns.

As Vijay Chittoor, a marketing thought leader and the founder and CEO of Blueshift wrote: “‘Marketing Automation 1.0’ was all about reacting to simple ‘events’ in a user’s journey with a brand, with simple rules set up by marketers.

“However, with the advent of AI,” Chittoor added, “we are now starting to experience ‘Marketing Automation 2.0,’ which enables brands to connect with customers like never before, based on increasingly complex profile analyses and triggers.”

In short, we’ve moved beyond rule-based campaigns to campaigns that leverage technology to focus on user behavior, intent and specific moments. And that progress not only removes marketers from button-pushing, it does so out of necessity. In order to achieve the highest potential from AI, we need to give it the freedom to operate independently — launching campaigns targeted at single users, identifying the right moment to create a touchpoint based on volumes of data analysis, etc.

Increased marketing automation will pay dividends for consumers, too, who are more likely to see relevant ads and feel as though brands care about their interests. Along with this automation will come the possibility of returning button-pushing marketers back to the role creatives again. Chittoor said he sees the future this way: “AI will transform marketing in three ways,” he said. “It will make the experience more personal, and less robotic. It will enable marketers to operate with automated insights instead of manual rules. And it will empower brands to spend more time on strategy and less on operations.”

The lesson for executives, then, is clear: If your team is still manually designing campaigns and trying to create robotic-trigger points, it is time to give them the gift of automation. Your creative team needs to be invested in the strategy behind the message, not the means by which the message gets out.

In the marketing realm, this switch is happening rapidly: It’s the early adopters who are earning — and will continue to earn — back dividends.

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24 Nov 2017

Sticky Post By andrew Posted in Net Promoter Score, News Permalink

Here’s What You Need to Know About Your Company’s ‘Net Promoter Score’

Sticky Post By andrew On November 24, 2017

NPS . . . No, it’s not some acronym for an entrepreneurial disease. Instead, it means “net promoter score.” And it’s an important measure that emerges when you ask your customers the most important question of all. Can you figure out what that would be?

You probably can because, believe it or not, there is actually broad consensus within the business community about what that question should be: Fred Reichheld, the Bain & Co. executive who created the NPS concept, has said that 66 percent of Fortune 1000 company promoters ask this question. And they say that the response they get is crucial to understanding the health of their business.

Esentially, it comes down to this: “Would you recommend our product or service to a friend?”

By answering this question with a “yes” or “no” or providing a number, 1 to 10, on a sliding scale, customers indicate whether they would promote your business to other people. In a nutshell, that is how you know whether your company is on track to grow or shrink. Responses to that question create that net promoter scale, or NPS.

If you’ve heard of NPS, but aren’t too familiar with it, it’s been around since 2003, as a management tool used to gauge customer loyalty. Typically, customers receive an email asking for their participation in a one-question survey. More spam in my inbox? they think. No thank you. Considering that the average email inbox receives 121 emails per day, it’s no wonder that the average survey response rate is just over 3 percent.

Despite that small percentage, NPS can be a great baseline for evaluation. And, when it’s executed correctly — such as through an “in-app” questionnaire — it can be so much more valuable than an anonymous query. In other words, we have just begun to scratch the surface of extracting value from this data point.

What entrepreneurs need to know about NPS.

Tracking your company’s NPS does not automatically change anything in your company. Instead, you have to make it important. There has to be a company culture aligned with customer feedback on that question.

If it is important to you and to your team that customers refer your business, then the NPS will mean something. The data can come alive, rallying people in disparate departments to achieve the same goal: an outstanding customer experience.

“Business leaders should use NPS as a rallying cry for customer loyalty,” Todd Olson, an expert on the future of NPS and CEO of Pendo, told me. “NPS provides an opportunity to align an entire company with customer success. Having clients who won’t recommend you will ultimately be an anchor [weighing down] your business.

“Don’t stop at your employees,” Olson advised. “Hold yourself accountable. Share the number with your board and make it a topic, at that level. Ultimately, great companies have high loyalty.”

What product managers need to know about NPS.

Product managers are on the front lines of creating loyal, happy customers. In order to tweak and refine whatever it is that they offer, product managers can meet customer expectations by using tools to make their NPS metrics tangible. That means understanding who their customers are who had positive experiences and who the customers are who had negative ones.

From there, product managers can work backward to figure out what went right or wrong in their customers’ journey. This process results in specific insights that inform specific actions to improve the NPS.

“Product managers need to own NPS,” said Olson. “Of course, NPS by itself isn’t enough to have an impact; product teams need to combine NPS with other data to understand the ‘why’ and ‘how.’ Then, product managers need to prioritize the engineering work that will address the key concerns learned by measuring it.”

NPS as a tool, then, is most effective when product managers make it their own and constantly seek out ways to make the data it produces more rich and meaningful.

How to put NPS into context.

“I have some reservations about using only the net promoter score, which is intended as a predictor of customer loyalty,” analyst Roy Atkinson has explained. “It requires us to remove ‘passives’ [people who don’t take the NPS survey] — and I believe that these are the very people we should be talking to, to find out why we were not quite good enough.Their feedback can be very valuable.”

Atkinson is right in asserting that it can be misleading to gauge customer satisfaction based on a single number that represents only a small portion of a company’s customers. Olson, meanwhile, emphasized that NPS should be measured with a customer satisfaction score (CSAT), an overall satisfaction score (OSAT), a (customer) effort score and a customer lifetime value. These scores, together with NPS, provide a more holistic understanding of the customer experience.

CSAT = Customer satisfaction score

OSAT = Overall satisfaction score

Effort score = Ease of use

Customer lifetime value = total value of customers

By triangulating this metric within other related data points, a product manager will be able to see his or her company’s customer experience for what it is: integral to the growth of the company. From that point, it won’t take long to see fluctuations in NPS cascading into other categories, for better or for worse.

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15 Nov 2017

Sticky Post By andrew Posted in Blockchain, News Permalink

How Blockchain Is Creating a New Future for Digital Marketing

Sticky Post By andrew On November 15, 2017

Advertising today is a multi-billion-dollar industry. And, according to market research company Forrester, digital marketing expenditures in the United States are on pace to reach levels near $120 billion by 2021. No wonder: Every day, companies like Google, Facebook and Amazon collect information about consumers nonstrop.

However, nearly 50 percent of all ad traffic is being generated by bots. Brands are paying huge amounts of money to reach potential customers. But this doesn’t give them any guarantee that those ads will increase sales.

What’s intriguing is that this scenario could well change once businesses have the ability to target individual customers directly.

Already, a number of technological advancements, like blockchain and smart contracts, are innovating the digital marketing industry to do just that.

I’m bullish on blockchain as an underlying technology that’s going to spur disruption in more ways than we can think or dream. That’s partly why I’m building an augmented reality platform that integrates cryptocurrency and rewards users for viewing augmented reality (AR) experiences. But, mine is just one simple use case.

What’s yours? Let’s look at how your business could utilize these innovations to more effectively market itself.

Direct-to-consumer digital marketing

Blockchain, the revolutionary technology that has recently taken the advertising industry by storm, allows information to be stored and distributed, but not to be changed or copied.

Because blockchain is a decentralized system, data stored this way has a high level of security. This technology is going to disrupt and overhaul the online advertising industry because it will negate the need for middle men. Currently, businesses run Google or Facebook ads, and both platforms make money off these ads. But blockchain companies, like BitClave, are focusing on search-data privacy, giving users full control over their data.

BitClave’s search engine uses Ethereum blockchain technology and eliminates the need for ad service people, creating a direct connection between consumers and businesses. This is the hallmark of blockchain technology: It eliminates the need for middle men in all transactions.

When users perform a search, they can select the amount of data they want to be released to advertisers. Then, unlike what happens with other digital marketing services, users can be compensated for their data. So, instead of an intermediary selling your data to advertisers, you’re selling it to them directly — yourself.

Cross-promotional B2B contracts

Smart contracts assist in helping you exchange money, shares or anything of value in a conflict-free and transparent manner and letting you avoid additional players, like lawyers. These computer programmed contracts operate on blockchain technology that facilitates, verifies and executes the terms of an irrevocable contract that can only be replaced by a brand new contract.

These contracts will make B2B cross-promotional marketing much more efficient, especially in the age of influencers and bloggers, who use platforms such as Instagram and YouTube to cultivate personal brands.

Digital marketing with this group of influencers can be fruitful but has its challenges since there is no third party regulating the terms of the agreement and each individual determines his or her own costs.

Smart contracts can automatically enforce obligations from all parties involved, to ensure that payments are made only after the terms are met. For example, if a blogger never publishes an article or social media post about a brand, the smart contract that’s in place won’t release the blogger’s payment. Each contractual milestone has to be met in order for the next step of the process to take place.

“Digital marketing fuels the engine of global ecommerce today, and as such, it should rely on the most advanced and secure backbone, rather than the security risk-prone technologies of yesterday,” Roger Haenni, cofounder of the blockchain-based data storage company Datum,, told Forbes last month.

Blockchain allows for a “new class” of services with smart-contract technology. This technology helps businesses focus on commerce and protect themselves, Haenni said.

Transparency in contracts and with consumers

Companies can use blockchain to show consumers whom they are selling their data to. And, since this information cannot be changed or copied, companies that use this technology to store their data can rest assured that their information will not be tampered with.

The transparent nature of blockchain data can also make consumers feel at ease because companies cannot manipulate their data. This tells consumers that the data and information they are viewing is factual and accurate. And that is something consumers want.

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10 Nov 2017

Sticky Post By andrew Posted in Crowdsourcing, News Permalink

The New World of Innovation-as-a-Service

Sticky Post By andrew On November 10, 2017

Technological disruption is shattering all those truisms we’ve held on to for so long: Social media has cast new meaning on the phrase, “A stranger is just a friend you’ve never met.”

The explosion in cryptocurrencies has made expressions like “Another day, another dollar” somewhat antiquated.

And if you’ve been holding any Bitcoin of late, the last few weeks have been a deluge of cyber wealth.

But here is a truism that seems impervious to all this technological disruption: “You can’t capture lightning in a bottle.” We generally understand this to mean that genius can’t be shackled and turned into a process. Brilliant ideas will happen on their own, not pulled from the mind under duress.

Yet there is a growing community of entrepreneurs and academics who think that genius can be distilled into a process. What if lightning could be captured in a bottle? What if the exasperating pursuit of breakthrough ideas and technologies could be distilled into the push of a button or an act as simple as scrolling through an app like Instagram?

Of course I am oversimplifying this a touch, but the concept is one that is actually attainable, according to technology transfer expert Clifford Gross whom I caught up with the other day on the phone.

Innovation is driving companies to look outside their interrnal R&D teams, said Gross, who is the founder and CEO of Tekcapital, a University IP company. “There is only so much creative production that can be demanded from a finite number of people,” he said. “In the end, companies will find that the vast majority of innovation taking place in their industry is occurring outside of their own four walls, however advanced their innovation system.”

Acknowledging that most of the innovation happening in the world is taking place outside of the confines of your company will not be particularly meaningful for that company unless you have some way to harness it. Now, thanks to technology, you do.

Crowdsourcing, the process of relying on large, unstructured groups of people to create a single, structured outcome, is being applied to numerous tasks with great success. From Kickstarter to Mechanical Turk, we’re seeing the power of harnessing groups of minds to accomplish big things. Now, businesses are working to harness the crowd to expedite innovation.

Recently, for example, General Electric launched GE Fuse, an open-innovation platform that seeks the input of engineers all over the world to solve technical challenges.

“The ultimate goal is to accelerate product and technology development,” Amelia Gandara, community leader at Fuse, told Forbes. “This is truly a community of curious minds eager to apply their technical skills to a project that challenges them as engineers, scientists and problem-solvers.”

By leveraging the resources of the crowd, the amount of brain power being applied to any given problem can be exponentially increased. In the case of GE, the problem itself is determined by the company, at which point the crowd begins to work on it. But for many entrepreneurs who do not have the resources or funds to organize their own “crowd,” it is better to see what good ideas the crowd already has.

To do that, entrepreneurs need to find ways to gather, collate, and disseminate breakthroughs.

“Of the 15,000 research institutions in the world, about 4,000 produce 80 percent of the world’s new university IP,” Gross explained. “By leveraging a search algorithm that surfaces new research coming out of these institutions, it is possible to disseminate the biggest technological advances in the world in near-real time.

“The ability to capture new innovations from the university knowledge pool and make them accessible to the corporate world is essentially ‘innovation-as-a-service.’”

Innovation? It’s always been an arms race. Since the time before Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla battled over the right to take electric-current technology to market, entrepreneurs have been scrambling to stay ahead. In the 20th century, companies spent billions of dollars on sophisticated R&D departments.

More recently, acquisitions have become a central part of staying ahead. Capturing innovation from the crowd is now streamlined enough to become a part of any company’s survival kit. But because there is no finish line in the race to get ahead, we can expect innovation-as-a-service to continue evolving.

Manesh Nair, writing for Entrepreneur, explained it this way: “Ninety-five percent of startups fail within their first year due to lack of any new ideas,” he wrote. “So, clearly, every startup needs to make innovation a part of its DNA, if it wants to get ahead of competitors and retain that position.”

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I'm The Blog

1. They represent a different approach (so get in the right frame of mind).

2. Competition is fierce.

3. Communication is key.

Filter bubbles

Fake news

Data security concerns

1. Image is everything.

2. Personal banding is content you control.

3. Make yours a profile-centric world.

4. Influencer marketing gives way to sponsored content.

5. Realize that building a brand takes time.

So, how, exactly, do you implement that app strategy?

1. Reduce the amount of code.

2. Use visual interfaces.

3. Employ full app-lifecycle support.

Integrate analytics

Behavioral analytics

Optimization for retention

Predicting, to be proactive

Identifying issues

Leveraging data to stay ahead

1. Wealth management

2. Digital publishing engagement

3. Ethical business practices

4. Battling electoral fraud

5. De-corrupting charities

6. Going green

7.Travel

8. Education

9. Fund-raising

10. Augmented reality

Moving from driver-assisted mode to self-driving mode.

What entrepreneurs need to know about NPS.

What product managers need to know about NPS.

How to put NPS into context.

Direct-to-consumer digital marketing

Cross-promotional B2B contracts

Transparency in contracts and with consumers

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