Top 10 Beginnings and Beyond

TOP 10 BEGINNINGS AND BEYOND

STARTUP

Issue 01 Summer 2018

BUSINESS BOULEVARD Cover Story: A real life illustration of how the power of our attitude towards life determines how much we succeed in our life

EXCELLENCE CAUSEWAY An emerging technology finding patterns in data and solving the problems YOUNICK CORNER A fascinating story of friendship’s triumph over financial crisis

A motivational advice on saving entrepreneurial talents from burn out

OMNISCIENT VOYAGE NEWSMAKERS LOCALE DEFINITIVE DESTINATION

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EDITOR’S COMMENT

H

ey all social enthusiasts! Always looking for fantasies in real life to trigger the thought process and seek inspiration! To foster your aspirations, we bring you the “Top 10 Beginnings and Beyond”, as we fondly call our journal, which holds the inspirational journeys of companies that truly “started from the bottom” – and now find themselves more profitable and valuable than most companies.

Not much to our surprise, today we have companies that help us find solutions to become more profitable, backed up with decisive data analysis, like one of our feature – Emerge Analytics. Some of them quite perceptive about environment, like Thermondo, providing superior energy products offering state-of-the-art energy efficiency services using advancements in tech.

Ever wondered how a “thing” began by casting aside the fears of inability to make a dent in the tech universe with little computer prowess. Does anyone recall how Jack Ma created his niche in the ecommerce industry in 1995, the year when computers were pretty rare in China while emails and internet were non-existent? Find out an example in one of our stories describing how Nikolaus Sühr and Matthew Wardle entwined insurance and technology to create KASKO – providing InsurTech as a service. Or as we describe the journey of StatusToday, recognized as one of the best AI startups using machine learning to provide employee insights precisely. Not to forget companies like Pefin, which goes beyond boundaries to reap the AI technology by providing AI-powered financial advices.

We’re seeing more and more people enter the tech space because the definition of technology keeps growing with new breakthroughs being introduced.

Besides, we also have some of the best industry insights from some of the most sagacious minds – The Tyranny of Positivity in Entrepreneurship by Carine Dieudé; Who Cares About Corporate Culture? by Catherine Fla; You Need Paying Customers, Not Free POCs, to Survive Your Fund Raise by Darren Kaplan; Building Brands for Mind, Body, and Spirit by Adam Besvinick; Benefits & Pitfalls of a Startup Partnership by Jamin Brazil; and An Honest Guide to the San Francisco Startup Life by Nitesh Goel.

So, sit-back, read-on and dive into information and beyond!

Poonam Yadav

[editor@beyondexclamation.com]

Managing Editor POONAM [poonam@beyondexclamation.com]

Art Director VICTOR [design@beyondexclamation.com]

Graphic Artist NICK [nick@beyondexclamation.com]

Project Manager JENNIFER [jennifer@beyondexclamation.com]

Development Manager JUSTIN [info@beyondexclamation.com]

CONNECT!

Explore the opportunities with crowd-sourced data in our section where the Newsmaker interviews Steve Swasey to know more about the popular public transit guide – Moovit. The truth is, if you have a smartphone and access to the internet, anything is possible. One such pioneer reaping the power of internet is Applyboard, which is connecting the world with students of tomorrow. Everyone who ever did anything had to start with something. Most people don’t begin with a grand vision, but they start with an idea and an action. Don’t believe my words, read it yourself in the journey of our cover feature “BimBimBikes”. How Michel Willems created the first ever bike rental platform when his wife wished for a ride across the Golden Gate bridge!

Editor in Chief CHRISTINE

www.beyondexclamation.com BeyondExclamation @BeyondEx Beyond Exclamation beyondexclamation

$7.5 bn The staggering amount in which the tech giant, Microsoft has acquired Github, a leading software development platform where around 28 mn developers share and collaborate. The acquisition will issue 7.5 bn in Microsoft stock and is subjected to customary closing conditions along with the completion of regulatory review. The software giant expects the deal to close by the end of the calendar year. Will this deal give Microsoft, its M&A mojo or not? Only time will tell!

$2.25 bn The SoftBank Vision Fund, a major venture investment effort that was started by the Japanese tech giant in 2016 has invested in GM's Cruise Automation. GM bought Cruise Automation in 2016 for $1 bn to kickstart its self-driving efforts. The unit will get $900 mn when the transaction concludes and $1.35 bn when GM is ready to deploy its autonomous cars for commercial use. A jump-start perhaps!

$4 bn An impressive total that Block.one raised in ICO to finance its EOS project, which has also marked the largest ICO ever, even bigger than many IPOs on the stock market. With EOS – a blockchain-based, decentralized system that permits the development, hosting, and implementation of commercial-scale decentralized applications (dApps) on its platform – Block.one aims to increase the adaptation of blockchain technology. Also, company's flagship product is not even live yet.

Sounds like a great beginning!

$620 mn SenseTime, a Chinese AI facial recognition startup has raised $620 mn funding taking the total valuation of the firm to $4.5 bn, just one month after raising $600 mn in a Series C funding round. Maintaining its position as the world's most valuable AI company with a total funding of more than $1.6 bn to date, SenseTime is apparently leading the charge of the Chinese Government's mission to dominate the world of artificial intelligence.

Business Boulevard An inspiring journey of three brothers helping students around the globe An entrepreneur’s honest guide to the San Francisco startup life

20 26

Excellence Causeway

42 44 48

Omniscient Voyage

An emerging technology finding patterns in data and solving the problems A motivational advice on saving entrepreneurial talents from burn out

32 36

Younick Corner A guide to building brands for mind, body, and mind A feature that explains benefits and pitfalls of a startup partnership A fascinating story of friendship’s triumph over financial crisis

A real life illustration of how the power of our attitude towards life determines how much we succeed in our life A writeup for students on the reality of corporate culture A platform that understands employees and boosts their wellness as well as performance

10 54 56

Newsmakers Locale An encouraging conversation with the newsmaker explaining the journey of past, present and beyond

62

Definitive Destination An empowering platform helping you act like an insurtech startup would An entrepreneur’s advice on how to survive your fund raise

CONTENTS

A story of actively promoting the energy transition with easy-to-use and meaningful solutions

68 74 76

Rent a Bike – Anytime, Anywhere!

Michel Willems Co-founder & CEO

BimBimBikes

W

e have often heard the phrase: “It’s all in the mind,” but seldom do we try to understand its implication and importance. Everything that happens to us is directly or indirectly the resultant of our own thoughts, which if exhibited properly, can change everything in our lives. Our thoughts are magnetic and each of our thoughts are associated with frequency, and when they are sent out in the universe, they attract objects which are reflected back to us.

Consequently, our thoughts become things. John N. Mitchell said it best when he said, “Our attitude toward life determines life’s attitude towards us.”

The journey of Michel Willems, Cofounder & CEO of an online booking platform BimBimBikes, is a real-life illustration of how the power of our attitude determines how much we succeed in life. Unlike most of us, Michel never considered having a proper job a viable option. Being an entrepreneur has been just a thing for Michel since his childhood. The 6-yr old entrepreneur in him wanted to own a farm, and the 8-yr-old one wanted to be a sailor sailing to his destinies. At 12, Michel learned that sailors are instructed where to sail to, so he decided to be an entrepreneur instead, who lives on his business terms. Here’s the story of how and what he achieved.

A woman’s wish is the man’s command Once upon a time, in a big city called San Francisco, Michel and his wife wanted to rent bikes. They looked

online for renting points, but couldn’t find a site which summed up all rentals available in the city. For much of us nowadays, travelling is synonymous to online booking. The couple could reserve romantic apartments and restaurants with ease, through various online platforms available with honest reviews on the service. But when they wanted a romantic ride across the golden gate bridge, they were doomed to find none.

“How is this possible?” the man thought, “I must make it a reality, that anyone can rent a bike anywhere, anytime!”. You guessed it right, that’s how another venture for the destined entrepreneur started!

Putting aside the little tale, BimBimBikes is the first online platform for bike rental companies, connecting customers and rental points all around the world.

BimBimBikes now helps you to reserve rentalbikes online in 86 countries and over 1700 cities.

How a simple approach turned into a momentous business model?

One sure thing is to ‘Never Stop Improving’ in building your business acumen and professional career.

BimBimBikes goes beyond simple customer satisfaction metrics to provide a unique experience through their online bike-rental platform.

BimBimBikes has, more or less, the same business model as companies like Booking.com, Hotels.com or Expedia. Apart from services and support, the BimBimBikes bike rental platform is the company’s main product. Consumers reserve a bike through the website and pick it up at one of the bike rental partners.

BimBimBikes is credited with 15%

commission over the service.

However, most bike rental shops don’t pay anything unless they score a customer. However, some of them want some extra services. Bike rental companies pay just a tiny monthly fee to use that. BimBimBikes strives to constantly improve on their websites’ user-experience and provides additional top-notch services: · The first additional service created was a bike rental reservation plugin for the website of their partners. By copying and pasting, the partners can instantly have their own online booking system for their own customers. · Other shops want to manage their reservations, walk-in customer orders and inventory a bit more efficient. BimBimBikes found out that some bike rental management systems are quite expensive. So, the company created a cloud solution and a scanning system with NFC tags for the bikes.

The good thing is that although bike rental has been carried-out for ages, it’s still a bit of an underdeveloped niche. There are plenteous potentials for expansion and improvement.

That’s what led BimBimBikes to become a market leader within just 3 years. The competition with respect to online bike rental aggregators is low and the market is ripe!

The speed of success is the speed of ambitious, young and a creative team A business is nothing without the people who work behind the scenes.

It’s the team who helps the entrepreneur realize his big-dreams into goals. BimBimBikes is blessed to have a team of independent thinkers, boasting people that are authentic, people that share the company’s dream and agenda.

When Michel started BimBimBikes, he went door to door of bicycle rental shops to convince the owners to join his online booking platform. Once he

had ďŹ gured out the sales pitch, he handed the responsibility to an intern, who was tasked to partner with more bike rental shops across The Netherlands. Once that process was streamlined, Michel approached and recruited exchange students from university. He used their language skills to have them call bicycle rental shops in their home country and convince them to sign up to BimBimBikes, too.

Today, with presence in over 86 countries, BimBimBikes has an international team consisting of interns from all over the globe. These ambitious, young and creative leaders of operations are proudly called as country managers. The team is led by their competent Operational Manager from Greece, Ioanna Dulellari. BimBimBikes is fortunate to be backed-up by web-developers from their parent web-development

agency, called H1. H1 is a wellestablished, Netherland-based, webdevelopment company started by Michel, soon after his graduation, along with his current business partner Harm Wolterink. Harm is a dear friend of Michel and the acting CFO of BimBimBikes.

The BimBim team demonstrates integrity, respect, and collaboration and their values are visible in every

aspect of the company’s processes. BimBimBikes provides an environment where performing positively is not only expected but encouraged, and through this the company makes sure that each of their employees are connected and share a common goal.

Your strength will come out of your vulnerabilities If one looks at the BimBim business ecosystem as the leisure bike rental sector, it is not much difficult to comprehend. Tourists want to rent a bike, bike rental companies provide those bicycles and BimBimbikes acts as a multisided platform to help them find each other. On the contrary, if one perceives their market as ‘Travel’, it is a way more complicated business ecosystem. Travel, as a whole, involves airlines, hotel chains, OTA’s (online travel agencies), GDS’s, tour operators and much more. While, BimBimBikes is dominant in just a little niche.

Bicycle rental would be a perfect and easy cross sell product for travel companies. Michel asserts, “I would not be surprised if a large travel company would contact us to acquire us.

With their volume and our extended network, it is not difficult to create extra value.”

However, BimBimBikes boasts an enormous network. Although just three years old, the company surpasses their nearest competition in terms of bike rental points by large numbers.

The company helps their rental partners with inventory management through their ‘bike rental management system’. It helps in managing their reservations, walk in rentals, and rental contracts.

BimBimBikes also plans to expand their offering to bike sharing companies. Because every available bike in the world should be BimBimable!

Always try something beyond – Grow, Invent and Evolve!

Dreaming is good, but doing is necessary. Just do it. The first version of your product doesn’t have to be perfect. You just have to start somewhere and test it. You have to find out if there is a real market of paying customers. Marketresearch just gives a tiny bit of information, the first paying customers way more!

The BimBim story is an inspiring endeavor with a resolute belief in the principle of continuous building, testing, analyzing and improving. Michel further adds an advice to budding entrepreneurs, “Never give up, but if it doesn’t work, don’t try to solve it the same way as you did before. Some people think perseverance is the same as stubbornness and unwillingness to change your plan. I think to really succeed you have to be honest to yourself and flexible. You should change your plan if it doesn’t work as expected. It makes it better.”

Worthy words from customers ‘Bringing my own road bike to Europe is not only expensive, it’s risky. You never now what they do my darling.’ – Dave (Houston) ‘I fell in love with the local bike rental guy ;-)’ – Karin (Den Bosch, The Netherlands) Testimonials from Bike rental partners ‘We use the bike rental management system for a couple of months now. It’s one of the best decisions I ever made.’ – Bert Hoving, A bikes (Amsterdam) “BimBimBikes sends so many customers, it really changed my life!” – Perry van Deursen, Bike Mobile.

Revolutionizing Education

I

nternet has turned our lives upside down with everyone and everything connected to each other. But the most it has helped in terms of convenience are students. From online courses being available from anywhere in the world to infinite data accessible at fingertips, Internet has certainly come a long way along with the students. On the other hand, online application systems throughout the universities have certainly eased burden from students mind. One of the greatest advantages of the online application systems is that students can submit their applications at their comfort. All that is required is access to a PC and web connectivity. Messy handwriting, absence of postal connectivity, delay in courier conveyance are unlikely to disturb the application process. This is an extraordinary advantage to applicants in rural regions applying for international universities.

However, when Martin Basiri wanted to apply for a university in Canada back in 2010, he was faced with difficulties and dilemma to do so. The reason being Internet’s advantages were still unfolding. Having travelled from Iran to Canada to explore higher education, Martin had completed his engineering degree at Shiraz University when he decided to complete his Masters at University of Waterloo in Canada. Despite receiving a scholarship offer, Martin faced many challenges including paperwork and academic grade conversion, securing admission and attaining a student visa. It took roughly one year before Martin was approved and enrolled into courses.

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Martin Basiri Co-founder & CEO ApplyBoard

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By the time, his twin brothers, Meti and Massi chose to pursue their international education, Martin was wellversed in the process, offering his guidance and expertise to make their application less challenging and more efficient.

Through their personal experiences, they learned the various difficulties that come with international students wanting to pursue studying abroad, igniting their business in 2015. Knowing that education is a right and not a privilege, Basiri brothers set out to make the best possible education accessible to students worldwide, regardless of their nationality or location and ApplyBoard was started.

Since 2015, the company has grown remarkably, and is thrilled to announce its partnership with hundreds of top North American colleges, universities and high schools, and assistance of thousands of students.

Accessible by anyone, from anywhere, at any time!

ApplyBoard chooses to work through an online platform because it is easily accessible by anyone, anywhere around the world, any time of the day. It is the ideal tool to help them work towards their mission, to make education available to all students in the world. With an online platform, ApplyBoard has the ability to provide top customer support and has a consistent online presence.

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When asked what made them take entrepreneurial plunge, they proudly says they took the initiative to start this business because of their passion to help others. Martin’s background in engineering and large interest in building things also encouraged the start of ApplyBoard. Before the company took off, they spent their time assisting other international students with their applications. The more students they helped, the more they realized just how many students there are who are looking to further their education in North America, but suffer from the obstacles, get defeated and don’t achieve their dreams. The Basiri brothers’ own experiences allowed them to take the entrepreneurial plunge and make a business out of their passion and daily activities. They wanted to find a solution to a problem that will make a difference in the world. They had hopes and dreams of making a positive impact, and continue to have these hopes and dreams.

Since the foundation, Martin has connected with many other professionals who have the same passion and who strive to make a difference in the world, building their strong, diverse team. ApplyBoard has helped thousands of students, making a direct impact on their lives, which encourages them to push for more. They have also learned a

needed to successfully attain a student visa.

The platform also acts as a secure space for students to keep their gathered information and makes the application process as seamless and efficient as possible. With a unique AI software to streamline the application process for international students, ApplyBoard offers an A to Z solution for what students need to study abroad.

It can take months for students to search through all the universities, colleges and high schools in North America and discover what program works best for you and what’s necessary to get there. Especially when students are reading in a language that is not their native tongue. ApplyBoard condenses this process to ridiculously 15 minutes and does the work for the students, allowing them to select what top institution is best for them.

lot more about the process, and what many North American schools requires in order to accept international students.

Seamless and efficient as possible!

When applying with ApplyBoard, students first begin by answering a set of questions based on a number of factors including academic background, desired course of study and financial situation. ApplyBoard’s online platform, lined with a unique algorithm, gathers this information and Matches the student with a list of schools and programs with a 95% acceptance rate, Ÿ Provides the student with all document requirements, Ÿ Generates a universal application the student can use to apply to multiple desired schools, and Ÿ Provides the necessary information Ÿ

There’s always a way to go beyond – do it!

ApplyBoard is a team with a passion for innovation, culture and teamwork, and strive for positive impact.

ApplyBoard not only cares about students, but also cares about the wellbeing of their employees. The company ensures the employees have access to all the best resources and are enjoying what they do. ApplyBoard also maintains an open workspace, and welcomes all ideas.

The founders believe every single student has a right to a good education and should not limit themselves from pursuing their goal of studying abroad.

At ApplyBoard, they want to make every student’s dream a reality by offering their expertise gained through personal experiences. To have the opportunity to study abroad and be immersed in a country’s unique culture, is one of the most enriching, exciting and interesting experiences, and should be available to any student

who wants to take part in it. Interacting with students from all over the world and assisting them in their process, communicating with them during their international experience and seeing them happy is what drives founders and employees of ApplyBoard every single day and encourages them to reach more students.

Accuracy is not celebrated. It’s expected.

ApplyBoard offers a 95% acceptance rate to students applying to schools through the platform. Students who choose to apply for international education through ApplyBoard have very positive experiences and quick feedback. The company is recognized for having fast and reliable service, providing students with guidance every step of the way. ApplyBoard’s staff is deemed as friendly and approachable individuals who truly care about building a relationship with international students. With ApplyBoard, students gets the confidence they need to pursue their experience abroad, and gets to know about every single detail, including expenses, with the goal of reducing stress. The challenges students face in the process of studying abroad is truly a concern to the ApplyBoard team, and its help is readily available. To students using its platform, ApplyBoard is number one and second to none.

ApplyBoard makes dreams come true.

Going further, ApplyBoard aims to expand into more countries, primarily Southeast Asia. The company plans to continue its growth, connect with more schools and help as many students as possible in the next 5 years. The founders wants to make a drastic difference in the lives of students.

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Nitesh Goel Founder & CEO Padlet

AN HONEST GUIDE TO THE SAN FRANCISCO STARTUP LIFE

S

tationed on the West Coast of the United States, flanked by the blue hues of the Pacific Ocean, is a city that’s home to some of the greatest companies in the world. 700 miles south of that is San Francisco. I moved to San Francisco two years ago to work for a startup called Padlet. I love it here. It’s like being in Hollywood, but with less-goodlooking people. You have the celebs, you have the scandals, you have the media frenzy. My friends back home are full of questions:

“Is it fun?”

“You think I should look for a job there?”

“How far is Vegas?”

So, here is my experience. I hope it brings the readers closer to our little valley where we are building the future. (Hint: About 145 different companies will be solving food transportation.)

My day begins with a 30 minute commute to work. I take the subway. The subway system in SF is called BART, short for Bay Area Rapid (Hahahahaa .. Hahahahaaa) Transit. I love BART because it is always full of surprises. E.g. yesterday, I was at the train station and bam! the train came on time.

Many drive to work. Driving in SF is like a theme park ride — the cars move bumper to bumper, the terrain is alpine, and the people around you have the temper of 10-year-olds.

Here is a pop-quiz — Which one’s an SF road and which one’s a roller-coaster?

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Pick the SF road. Original photos here and here.

Those with a death wish cycle to work. It is easy to spot a cyclist. If you see a guy with one side of his jeans rolled up to the shin, he is a moron; if you see a guy on a bicycle, he is a cyclist.

My office is in a neighbourhood called SoMa, short for South of Market.

Many startup offices are in SoMa. The name is a tribute to the returns that investors in these startups will see in the long run.

Why is coffee in SF so hot? Are people welding metal with it? The one time I asked a barista (phrased more politely, of course), I was reproached, “Good coffee needs to be brewed at 200°F for full flavor.”

SoMa is a vibrant area with a variety of establishments like Starbucks, local coffeeshops, grab-and-go coffee kiosks, and coffee trucks. It’s a shame I don’t drink coffee. It’s not that I don’t like the beverage. I just prefer not to consume anything at temperatures that would liquify my alimentary canal.

Odd! Good bread needs to be baked at 400°F but I don’t see any bakeries selling me searing dough bricks.

My company shares its office with two other companies — Buildzoom and Flexport. Judging from their names, Buildzoom manufactures high precision microscopes and Flexport

ships fluorine to dentists in China. We all have a common investor named YC. YC is the venture capital arm of the YMCA. They invest in a lot of companies every year, many that seem outrageous on paper. E.g. they invested in a company called Swapbox, which, I believe, is cloud storage for swingers.

Now, you must be thinking — “Isn’t it stupid to judge a company by its name?”No. It’s not. Most companies in the Bay Area have obvious names: Ÿ Ÿ

Evernote makes note taking apps Optimizely lets you optimize your

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Ÿ Ÿ

websites Google lets you google anything on the Internet

Our office, like most modern startup offices, has an open floor plan. In an open floor plan, desks are organised like tables in a college cafeteria. However, instead of food and noise, you have computers, food, and noise.

The noise mandates that you wear headphones while working. Be careful, though. Your choice of headphones reveals a lot about your character: Beats headphones: You are wasting your life’s earnings on fashion, hopelessly trying to look like a cool teenager. Ÿ Headphones that come with your phone: You value a simple life. Buddha smiles on you. Ÿ Giant noise cancelling headphones resembling electric shock equipment: You are Chuck Norris. Ÿ

Outside of Chobani, you’d be hard pressed to find a place that talks more about culture than Silicon Valley. We want to create an environment where employees are happy, motivated, healthy, and productive.

Since people are happiest in the company of friends and family, we make sure you have work-life balance. This means you can work-from-home; on weekends. Notable exception is Yahoo. They let you home-from-work by allowing you to bring your infant to the office.

Of course, we realize that not everyone has friends. So we let you bring your dog to work. Our office has a dog too.

His name is Moses. Unlimited vacation policy is another

An assorted collection of desks and chairs adorns our office.

People reflected on their lack of fitness and concluded that the blame lay squarely on their choice of furniture. So some people have standing desks — desks so high that you have to stand to use them (or as short folks like myself like to call them, any other desks).

Markets are chockablock with these desk+gym hybrids — standing desks, treadmill desks, cycling desks.

This is why I feel bullish about my swimming desk idea — a big water tank with an infinity pool and a computer bolted on one side. Noise cancelling scuba masks, snorkels, and fins come as standard equipment.

My favourite mutant furniture, however, is the “balancing ball chair”. This chair has an exercise ball in place of a seat cushion. Let me repeat that: in place of a seat cushion, this chair has, a giant ball. It’s a great way to lose weight (Pronounced: ˈdiɡnədē)

Moses in a train perk at most good companies. Travelling, after all, is an important part of the human experience. All we ask is that you don’t leave at a time when your presence is sacrosanct for the company. It can be hard to judge that at times so here is a handy table to help you decide when you can go on a vacation:He’s sensitive to sunlight..

Vacation guide for startup employees

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Balancing ball chair

Most startups provide lunch. Given the wide array of dietary preferences people have in SF, it’s a tricky proposition. It is fairly common to have someone who is a vegetarian, a vegan, on gluten-free, on paleo, and on juice detox in an office of 3 people.

Allow me to explain these diets: Vegetarians don’t eat meat. I like vegetarians. I take comfort in the fact that if I am stranded with them in the Atlantic, ethically, I am one step closer to eating them than they are to eating me. Ÿ Vegans don’t use anything that comes from animals — like milk, leather, meat, and Comcast. Ÿ Gluten-free people don’t eat glue, which is a stupid diet to be on because no rational person eats Ÿ

glue. Based on that logic, I am on a painten-free diet because I don’t eat paint. Ÿ People on paleo only eat foods available to paleolithic humans, like Mammoths and Megalodon sharks. Ÿ Juice detoxers eat other people’s neurons because they don’t shut up about being on juice detox.

Of course, we can’t talk about working in SF without actually talking about how we work.

First rule of working in Silicon Valley — keep your emails short. If the recipient finds them rude, he/she needs a lesson in productivity (and skin thickness augmentation). Here is a good email:

Ben: I have a startup too. We are contractors for Yelp.

[Pause] Together: Business model … yada yada yada Paul Graham … Series A … lorem ipsum Google sucks.

This, in itself, is not a problem; I enjoy these conversations. The problem is that they often render you incapable of any other forms of communication.

E.g.: Girlfriend’s dad: Great weather today.

Ben: Yeah. It’s beautiful.

[Pause] [Longer pause] Ben: So I see you use an iPhone.

Android sucks, huh?

Famous investor Marc Andreessen says: Software is eating the world.

That explains why software is so shitty.

Many things in the world — like Kanye, curling, and kale — are hard to digest.

Supposedly short email Ignore the novella length signature; the brevity rule doesn’t apply to it. Put anything there — legalese, a call to save trees, a motivational quote. Not many people know that Twitter started out as an email service for Silicon Valley professionals but didn’t catch on because it allowed way too many characters.

We don’t have meetings; meetings are to startups what kryptonite is to Spiderman — out of place. So we have all-hands, one-on-ones, stand-ups, and huddles. Same goes for calls — we don’t make phone-calls. We sync-up, touch-base, or simply, connect. Make sure you set up the right one, or you may give people the impression that you are wasting their vocabulary.

The most sacred psalm of the startupbible, though, is — “Do things that don’t scale.”

This is why our first hire was a lousy mountain climber.

One last thing — the startup life does not stop at work; it affects your personal life too. E.g., if you work at a startup in San Francisco, you are like the guy selling plastic souvenirs at the Eiffel tower. Everyone at the Eiffel tower is selling plastic souvenirs. So you find yourself having the same conversations with similar people.

Here is an example:

Still, technology is changing the way we live, the way we love, the way we work. And a lot of that technology is being built here in San Francisco.

If this sounds exciting, come on board; Padlet is hiring, and so are a bazillion other startups. If you don’t live here and can’t relocate, don’t worry; many startups hire remotely. (Reddit isn’t anymore, FYI.) If you are already a part of this world, why did you just waste 8 minutes?

Why aren’t you working? Stop procrastinating and go ship stuff!

Thanks to sy and Ryan Petersen.

Alex: I have a startup. We are Yelp for contractors.

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Convergent Thinkers

T

he future is uncertain and full of risk. Risk is in a way a chance that an adverse event will happen, but in another way risk is also an opportunity.

That’s where actuaries enter. Finding patterns in data to predict the future is part of the work that actuaries have always done. Today, the ability to use machine learning and artificial intelligence revolutionizes actuarial practice, as it allows risk to be assessed and managed at a much more granular level with higher levels of accuracy. This leads to improved decisions, better pricing and risk quantification, improvement of policyholder experience, and also facilitates the design of insurance products that were not previously possible.

Emerge is one such analytics firm that uses its proprietary machine-learning software to help organizations find the patterns in their data to solve the problems that they need to solve. Founded by the industry experts, Danny Saksenberg and Laurence Rau, Emerge has in no time emerged to be already working with some of the US’s, Europe’s and Africa’s top corporates including banks, insurance companies, lenders, medical companies, educational institutions and more.

The technology can ingest any data set to model any outcome in any industry.

Emerge uses machine learning, corporate data and end-to-end commercial and process expertise to find patterns in data that

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Daniel Saksenberg Co-founder Emerge

Laurence Rau Co-founder Emerge

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can create substantial pockets of value across the customer life cycle. For Banking and Financial Services this includes sales propensity, credit and underwriting risk assessment, fraud detection, collections process optimization, client service optimization and retention improvement. The analytics company does this by using its proprietary automated methodology to build accurate machine-learning models very quickly (in less than a day), that’s right!

Further, they work with partners to implement the models into their clients’ operational processes thereby ensuring an increase in profitability. The company’s solution is delivered through an API or batch process which they prefer to offer through the Microsoft Azure cloud environment, but they are also flexible in terms of using other technologies.

The beginning of implementing models into reality and beyond.

Emerge was actually conceived back in 2002 when Danny was working as an actuary at Deloitte in South Africa.

However, he couldn’t see himself doing valuations for the rest of his life. Therefore he decided to leave and started doing various analytics projects. The first project that came

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his way was a credit scorecard. Danny was not happy with the way credit was being done so he started researching and came across machine learning.

The next 10 years saw Danny researching the technology and experimenting with his own methods both for feature engineering and the actual machine learning algorithms.

Danny’s methods started getting more and more accurate.

He was building models across a range of industries including banking, healthcare and insurance. The challenge was that the models were not being implemented into operations and their true potential was not being reached.

During the same 10 years on the other side, Laurence was working in companies designing and implementing business processes. The bulk of this time was spent at Discovery which is the holding company for Vitality – the innovative insurance offering that is currently rolling out to new markets all across the world.

Finally the time came to make those methods reality. And with this aim, Danny approached Laurence to join him to ensure the models being built converted to operational

insurance market there. Emerge has been working with multiple European insurers since the end of the program, proving the value of its offering. In addition, Emerge has also achieved numerous milestones such as: December 2016 – Agreed a partnership with Deloitte Africa which has started to bear fruit and will next start expanding to other Deloitte territories. Ÿ March 2017 – Approved as a Microsoft co-sell ready Independent Software Vendor which means that Microsoft account executives can start selling Emerge’s offering. Ÿ April 2017 – Agreed a partnership with PwC in the UK to offer their solution to their clients in the UK. Ÿ May 2017 - Opened a branch in the US with a new Managing Director being appointed. Ÿ

solutions. This is an area Laurence believes the practice of AI has gone wrong in general – people are focusing on interesting problems at the expense of valuable problems. At Emerge, they make sure that their clients deal with problems that will make an appreciable improvement to their bottom lines.

Great things in business are always done by team and not an individual.

At Emerge, everyone is driven by one simple idea – “The solutions to the world’s biggest problems lie in data.”

Laurence believes to solve these problems, they need to find the valuable patterns that the data offers them. By extension this also means that the solutions to a business’s or an industry’s challenges also lie in data.

The Emerge team is primarily made up of three key functions: Regional leaders – A team of individuals in a particular geographical region building relationships with existing clients and partners. Ÿ R&D – A team working with data, and their proprietary machine learning software to continuously improve the accuracy and automation of what they do. Ÿ Engineering – A team that designs the way the company’s models work within operational processes and develops the software to make their use simple. This team then works with their clients to implement the models into reality. Ÿ

value. In 2012 Emerge Analytics was started in South Africa with the vision to solve the world’s biggest problems with data and machine learning.

While bootstrapping, the business was run part time until May 2015, when Laurence moved into the business full- time. In August 2016, a South African insurance client of Emerge’s suggested that they apply for Startupbootcamp Insurtech in London.

From 2500 startups scouted worldwide, Emerge was selected as one of 10 startups to join the program.

Laurence went to London for the duration of the program, while Danny stayed in South to run the South African operations.

As part of the Startupbootcamp program Emerge opened a new business in the UK to service the

Apart from continuing operations in US, UK, and South Africa, Emerge is currently also exploring new markets that include Singapore, China, Spain, Dubai, Israel and Rest of Africa.

Focusing more on providing value to customers rather than on the technology.

Laurence while speaking with us mentions that the business world very often doesn’t care about the technical solution to a problem but rather about the return on investment of the solution. Emerge focuses on providing value to their clients rather than on the technology that delivers the value.

Thus, although the team loves the technology they build – they really get excited about the ‘magic’ of AI, they focus their customer engagements on the value that the technology can offer.

How many extra sales were created, how much more fraud was detected, etc. By sticking to these benefits, Emerge helps make it easy for clients to stick with the company’s overall

Going forward, you will see Emerge growing its global reach both by setting up regional offices and through partnership, along with identifying and solving valuable problems in industries in which Emerge does not currently operate. This would of course be in addition to developing new solutions in the industries where Emerge already operates.

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The Tyranny of Positivity in Entrepreneurship How to save entrepreneurial talents from burn out — Carine DieudÊ Partner & Director of Strategy Altima Business Solutions

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hat do you need to start a business? Three simple things: know your product better than anyone, know your customer, and have a burning desire to succeed, said Dave Thomas, founder and chief executive officer of Wendy’s, the fast-food restaurant chain specializing in hamburgers. If you can dream it, you can achieve it. Think positive and work hard. The list of these bumper sticker wisdoms goes on and on. Lighten up. Smile. Who hasn’t heard or told themselves these well intended little words?

Being an entrepreneur for the past three decades, working with and advising entrepreneurs for more than thirteen years, I don’t buy this story of optimism over struggles. Entrepreneurship can be tough and overwhelming, made of uncertainty that our reptilian brain is programmed to avoid at all cost. Yet, we force ourselves to show a positive mask

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to the rest of the world when in fact, we harbor gut wrenching feelings and fears in between brief and fleeting moments of sheer joy.

The war for positivity continues to rage on entrepreneurship, claiming bright talents who get stuck in the valley of death and burn out, alone, before getting their chance to shine. Whether we decide to create a business because we want to change the world, have an itch to scratch or can do it better than the corporation we worked for, the statistics haven’t changed for decades: 9 out of 10 will fail.

Unlike hope, a genuine heartfelt emotion and strong motivator, positive thinking can be learned through practice and discipline. What if this forced positivity restricts our moves, preventing us from exercising our creativity and making the impact on our world, our companies, our families and ourselves that we dream of?

example, among Wall Street successful traders, not just a convenient Hollywood plot in the TV drama Billions, where emotions are treated like data that can be used to course correct and improve outcomes.

If we are not able to accept our own feelings, can we embrace the reality of our business endeavors and get to crucial clear-cut decisions to execute?

Upgrade your personal Operating System.

We often jump in to the deep end of entrepreneurship without much preparation or at least, as we usually discover much later, not as much as we should have had to avoid some sleepless nights. Living in times of selfobsession, cultivating our image on social media, we spent energy upgrading our hardware, i.e. our physical body and appearance.

Confront all facts, accurately.

What about our software? Do we expand ourselves by choice, by learning from others or when we have experienced enough pain? The latter tends to be the most powerful promoter, usually at our own expense, when our business, our finances, relationships or health fail.

Starting a business is an intense personal experience that creates a passionate bond between the founder(s) and the company. Building it from scratch demands that not only entrepreneurs surround themselves with the adequate skills and expertise but most importantly inspire them to excel.

It takes a lot of guts and resilience to deal with facts head on. When engaging with entrepreneurs, as a business strategist, advisor or mentor, my job is as much to dismantle what has been accepted by the team to flush out their ideas and get to the brutal facts about the industry, customer and business, as much as evaluating leaders’ self-awareness, which rules their ability to lead and execute. Davis says that research now shows that the cornerstone of resilience is the acceptance of all of our emotions, including the difficult ones, but more so, the accurate discernment of their nuances.

Inspiring others require us to have a deep understanding of our personal behaviors and beliefs as well as those needed to drive our growth strategies. The larger the gap between who we really are and who we need to be to fulfill our role, the greater the troubles. A great example of this law is The Five Temptations of a CEO, a book by Patrick Lencioni. First published in 1998, this short fable sounds so simplistic but is in fact so significant. It illustrates how the emotions we are trying to avoid influence our management style and results.

Harvard Psychologist Susan David explains her Ted Talk, The gift and power of emotional courage that being positive has become a new form of moral correctness, a rigid response that prevents us from developing the skills we actually need to deal with the world as it is.

If positive thinking is not the answer to support us from start to success, what to do instead?

Too touchy-feely for you? Think again! It creates what scientists call our brain’s readiness potential, allowing us, anxious entrepreneurs, back into a charted emotional space where we can successfully and consistently evaluate risk and make decisions in stressful and uncertain conditions. This is a very common practice, for

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His model highlights five common temptations and their effects ·

Choosing status over results: When you have arrived at the top, there is no way to go but down, which causes CEOs to make decisions

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Building Brands for Mind, Body, and Spirit

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he best brands imbue consumers with positive feelings and emotions that drive loyalty and are fundamentally trustworthy. This is true across fashion and apparel, travel and hospitality, technology, and myriad other categories, yet when it comes to health and wellness, very few brands, outside of some in fitness (think SoulCycle or Equinox), have emerged that cater to a consumer’s mind, body, and spirit. While some like LOLA, Hims, or Headspace have started to make a name for themselves, there is still a distinct void, and as an investor, it is up to me to determine whether this void is an opportunity for entrepreneurs or if it’s the status quo for a reason. Perhaps there aren’t meant to be brands in every category within consumer health and wellness, but my working hypothesis is there should be dramatically more than there are today.

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The headline macro trend is that there’s a growing importance being placed on overall health and wellbeing. There are numerous other thematic tailwinds like an increasing focus on the value of sleep, destigmatizing mental health challenges and removing it from a list of taboo talking points, the mainstream-ization of meditation and a variety of forms of alternative medicine, and numerous others.

Underpinning all of these trends is the mounting influence of Millennials and Gen Z as consumers who are willing to spend time and money on the above areas in a way previous generations weren’t (or weren’t able to due to lack of options). Moreover, when it comes to mental health specifically, these younger consumers have a desire to share and be open and vulnerable, and the internet and software can foster these connections. Below is a non-exhaustive list of products / services / spaces that fall in the

aforementioned realm and which I’m particularly interested in: Ÿ Ÿ Ÿ Ÿ Ÿ Ÿ Ÿ Ÿ Ÿ Ÿ Ÿ

About the Author Adam Besvinick blogs about entrepreneurship, consumer internet startups, and business development with some sports thrown in. Adam is a VC at a hedge fund in NYC where he focuses primarily on Series A - C investments. On the side, he invests as an angel in seed stage consumer-facing startups on AngelList. Prior to joining his current fund, Adam was a VC at Deep Fork Capital, where he led seed investments.

Before that, Adam was the first business hire at Wanelo, leading partnership efforts. He received an MBA from Harvard Business School, during which he worked part-time for Lowercase Capital, Gumroad, and a couple other early stage companies. He also used to co-lead By/Association, an angel investor group. Prior to entering business school, Adam was a telecom investment banker at Jefferies and graduated from Duke University in 2009.

Horoscopes / Zodiacs / Psychics / Tarot / Astrology / Crystals Mindfulness retreats / Meditation Holistic and Eastern medicine / Herbal remedies / Alternative medicine Acupuncture / Cupping Yoga Chiropractic Reproductive care / Fertility Skin care Psychiatry / Psychology Sleep therapy Rehabilitation

When it comes to the above list, I’m eager to see how founders are tackling these areas with a range of business models and approaches. For some, I’m particularly excited to see companies merge online and offline experiences and ones that foster community and togetherness. In others, I believe software can augment a brand and facilitate a daily or weekly interaction to help engender initial loyalty and build a veritable habit that grows over time. I think there is a real opportunity to create a lifestyle brand in a number of the categories above through a mixture of commerce (e.g. subscription, marketplaces) and content (e.g. social and UGC, subscription), and in others, I think B2B2C is the right go-to-market strategy instead of going straight to consumers.

All that is to stay, I am eager to connect with founders and investors who are thinking about the above categories and building and investing in solutions to improve consumer health and wellbeing. If you’re working on something in one of these areas or a related one, I’d love to learn more and see what I can do to be helpful or supportive and exchange ideas — just shoot me a note at adamkbesvinick at gmail.com.

More where this came from This story is published in Noteworthy, where thousands come every day to learn about the people & ideas shaping the products we love.

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Benefits & Pitfalls of a Startup Partnership

About the Author Jamin Brazil serves as Managing Partner of Vine Partners, responsible for all aspects of the organization. Jamin is a seasoned chief executive with a background in leading high growth organizations from inception to exit. Previously, Jamin was the CEO of FocusVision. His passion and energy to deliver fanatical global customer support is coupled by his desire to help leading brands find answers to important customer insight questions. He’s served many of the world’s top brands including Twitter, P&G, LinkedIn, Wells Fargo, AT&T and Eli Lilly. In 2000, Jamin founded Decipher, a survey platform used by all large research agencies and many of the fortune 100. Under his leadership, Decipher experienced year over year growth of high double digits.

Additionally, Jamin drove the integration of several strategic acquisitions. His leadership balanced the need for infrastructure, automation and creative collaboration resulting in consistent top and bottom line growth. Prior to founding Decipher, Jamin worked at Macro Consulting in Palo Alto.

A native of Fresno, California, Jamin holds a B.A. from Fresno Pacific University and an MBA from Fresno State.

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ntrepreneurs across the globe are people trying to achieve their dreams while daily facing destructive market forces. These startup heroes all must make a critical decision, should I form a partnership or do it solo?

MARKET RESEARCH MASTERS PROGRAM ADVISORY BOARD, Merrill Dubrow, at 8:00 a.m. spent an hour with me prior to our board meeting discussing what’s next.

“You know what I keep coming back to? Your partnership with Jayme. I mean, the fact that you two worked so closely…for 2 decades…and created, Decipher, a leading market research survey tool. That is cool.

However, the fact that you still are friends, that is crazy. Very rarely do partnerships go that way. This is really interesting.”

Overall, 70% of partnerships fail. So, why do people try them? Because a partnership significantly increases the probability of success.

Photo Caption: (Jayme Plunkett & Jamin Brazil at their Startup’s multipurpose board, work and play table, April 2000. Erwin was remote. :)) The good news is that if you structure your partnership correctly you can dramatically improve your odds of success. In fact, a report released by ASAP claims that only 20% of partnerships that have basic structure fail.

This is a 3-part blog post on… Ÿ

Partnership multiples your Grit (your ability to keep going)

Increased visibility into market, customers and employees Ÿ The 3 keys to partnership success Ÿ

Part 1 of 3: Grit Everyone knows that business is hard. Elon Musk did a great job framing it, “Running a startup is like staring in the abyss while chewing glass.”

Musk explains that the “abyss” is the lack of visibility on what is in front of us and the “chewing glass” is the 90% of the work that the founder must do is focused on the stuff that isn’t working.

Put another way, two significant factors that impact entrepreneurial success are: Lack of visibility due to blind spots, and Ÿ Showing up day after day, week after week, month after month and year after year even though most the work fully sucks. Ÿ

In April of 2000 I decided to quit my job in Palo Alto and start Decipher.

The first critical question I had to answer was if I needed a business partner. As with most things, it didn’t take me long to answer. After working very closely with Jayme Plunkett for 4 years I was 100% confident we had a better chance of achieving Decipher’s full potential if we did it together. The good news is that I was right. Let me give you an example…

In 2003, we had our first Japanese survey. This was a big problem as we didn’t speak Japanese, there was no Google translate equivalent, we only had 24 hours to turn the project

around, and we had gotten the green light on the project just prior to boarding a flight from San Francisco to Chicago. Upon landing, our first order of business was to take our cabby on a book store tour as we hunted for an English to Japanese dictionary.

Once we acquired our prey, we spent the next 12 hours in our shared hotel room (we at least had double beds) and started cracking the code.

Around 2am, Jayme got the last of the survey working, QAed and sent to the customer who was completely delighted! To celebrate, Jayme began jumping from bed to bed chanting, “I know Japanese! I know Japanese!”

If either of us would have done that work alone it would have been a TERRIBLE experience. But together, we made it fun! And when the alarm went off 3 hours later we were still laughing, albeit blurry eyed.

Benefits to Partnership Success: Increased accountability means you get stuff done that you likely would have postponed or not done at all Ÿ Co-experiencing means you have an emotional safety valve that shuts down the negative spiral that can happen with our internal dialogue Ÿ Differed risk means there is a Plan B if, God forbid, something prevents you from showing up. Ÿ

Follow up post will be on building the 3-legged stool of a successful partnership.

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Triumph over Crisis

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he average cost of a one-time standard financial plan is typically around $2,000 to $5,000 for a human advisor. These plans are static and so, are obsolete almost as soon as you receive them. That doesn’t work in our ever-changing lives. To receive quarterly updates from a human advisor costs even more in fees, and even that is not frequent enough to be relevant. Your life changes minute to minute. Enters Pefin – the world’s first Artificial Intelligence (AI) financial advisor, providing intelligent, unbiased and personalized financial planning and advice. Pefin’s mission is to look after the financial best interests of users in a way that embraces the unique individuality of their lives.

The crisis showed way to become the world’s first and best.

During the financial crisis, Ramya Joseph, observed how Wall Street continued to remain profitable, yet didn’t give back or help the average person. She increasingly felt like her life on Wall Street didn’t give her a sense of purpose. Ramya’s family also went through their own financial rough patch, when her father was laid off from his job in 2011. Wanting to allay her father’s concerns about an early retirement, Ramya used the tools of her trade to assure her father that he would retire comfortably.

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Catherine Flax CEO Pefin

Ramya Joseph Founder Pefin

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However, she was left with two burning questions – What does the average person do in this situation and who really helps them? She knew she was capable of crafting the solution, leveraging Artificial Intelligence (AI), which she studied at Columbia University, alongside her financial expertise. Thus, Pefin was born, which stood for Personal Financial Intelligence. The platform, today, offers Longterm Financial Planning services, including a complete Financial Plan, Financial Advice, including savings and debt management strategies, Investment Advice and Portfolio Management Services and Real-time monitoring, updates, and curated financial literacy content for each user.

Advising with a thorough financial plan for each user!

Pefin takes into account each user’s current financial situation and future plans, incorporating their financial behavior to offer comprehensive advice. Individuals and families connect financial information such as their checking accounts, credit card accounts, debt, investments, and retirement plans to the platform. An interactive chat experience helps users plan for life events that matter to them – from kids, to college, to a new home, to changing jobs, all the way through retirement. Pefin’s AI uses this

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information to craft a thorough financial plan for each user, showing the user if their plans are affordable. It provides advice on how they can save to achieve their plans, when they should repay debt, whether investing is appropriate and if it is, how they should invest. Over time, Pefin learns from the user’s unique spending behavior and personal preferences and automatically adapts, updating the user’s financial plans and advice based on their actual behavior.

Pefin’s AI is capable of making 80-year financial projections and keeping up with 2-5 million data points per user, 24/7, including changing rules, markets, and lives to provide accurate, real-time advice. Unlike other services, Pefin does not insist users to invest through its platform, but if chosen, it tailors each portfolio to help users achieve their plans. In today’s data-driven environment, security is a natural concern, and Pefin utilizes military-grade encryption and multi-factor authentication, all geared towards securing users’ personal and financial data.

It’s not the destination, but the journey that matters!

The fascinating journey of Pefin is the story of a friendship’s triumph between Catherine Flax and Ramya

Ramya mentored by Catherine, helping clients trade multi-billion dollar portfolios for Goldman Sachs. ·

Joseph, two successful women, each in their own right, coming together to take over two male dominated industries – first Wall Street and then technology startups. Together, they have created something that will help millions of families across the country to sustain their financials, lead millennials to be financially wise and enable retirees to retire in peace – all without the ‘business as usual’ policies of Wall Street.

Ramya and Catherine met almost 20 years ago when Catherine was a single mom, juggling a busy career on Wall Street and Ramya was an undergraduate student, who loved visiting NYC where her boyfriend (and now husband) lived. Through the years, their friendship blossomed and their careers skyrocketed, with Catherine as one of the most senior influential women on Wall Street and

Ramya left her job at Goldman Sachs and over the next 5 years, set out to build the world’s first AI Financial Advisory platform. She recycled her savings from her Wall Street days into the venture, with support from her husband, friends and family. Complex calculations, covering every aspect of their financial life, their kids, their plans to buy a home, their plans for their kids’ college, their retirement, how they earn, how they spend, how they save, with taxes, inflation and all the complexity of government rules and regulations - all had to be thought of and built from scratch. Every decision, every idea started with a blank sheet of paper and was brought to life, one day at a time. Supporting her through it all was Catherine, who also left her incredibly successful Wall Street career and advised Pefin for more than two years, helping the company grow and spread its wings.

So it was no surprise when she was also Ramya’s dream CEO. Catherine took over as CEO of Pefin in September 2017.

Providing advice that is in your best interest.

Being a fiduciary means always providing advice that is in your best interest. Pefin’s advice is based on the information a user shares with the company about their life, and plans and is curated by its AI technology to offer more detail than even a human advisor could provide. When it comes to implementing this advice, Pefin put users’ best interests above theirs. Pefin is different because it will: ·

·

Tell you the truth about whether it makes more sense for you to save or pay down debt rather than invest.

Give you the option to invest through it, if investing is

appropriate, but also be okay with you taking the advice and investing elsewhere.

Manage your investments under $5000 for free, so you don’t end up paying more in fees than you’ll make through investing.

Pefin provides a greater level of detail than a human advisor could possibly achieve. Using AI technology, Pefin creates a comprehensive analysis of your life. This is a much more in-depth analysis than the old school software used by human advisors.

Today, people of all ages and demographics are becoming more at ease with digital interfaces.

Convenience, accuracy and tailored solutions are what people are primarily looking for today. Pefin has clients ranging from people in their early 20’s all the way into retirement – because Pefin is about helping people across a complete life journey to achieve what matters most to them.

The best way to predict the future is to create it.

As with most things in life, the proof is in the pudding. Pefin’s users believe in the advice because they can experience that there are actionable steps and insights provided that make sense and provide solutions. While it is interesting that AI is the technology underlying Pefin, it is not the ultimate benefit. Affordable, fiduciary, unbiased, world class financial planning and advice is the point.

Going beyond, Pefin looks forward to continue to expand the areas of advice, to completely surround an individual and enable them to manage all aspects of their financial life on the platform.

Pefin will also continue to expand geographically to bring world class, affordable, fiduciary financial planning and advice to the world.

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Who Cares About Corporate Culture?

Catherine Flax CEO Pefin

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y youngest son is going through the high school admissions process in New York City. For those who don’t live here, think about going through the college admissions process- but your child is 4 years younger, parents also get interviewed, and instead of one SAT to take, each school or school type can, and often does, have their own exam.

So, it is a pain ☺.

I wrote here about how that process got me thinking about how institutions -including schools- are all over the map when it comes to their tech awareness. But there is another, potentially even more important difference among schools that my son and I were discussing as we were going to a recent school tour. That is the difference of culture. I told him that my experience has been that schools, like employers, each have a personality. On paper they can look great and tick all the boxes, but it is only when you get in there and start meeting the people and understanding the organizational personality, can

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you really tell if the place is for you. It is the culture that ultimately drives whether you want to spend every day of the next few years at a school- or a job- once the necessary table stakes are met.

It took me a while to understand this. When I was applying for my first job in New York, I was being courted by one investment bank, but I figured while I was interviewing I should look at others. So I pursued a similar opening at an equally prestigious firm. During the interview process at the bank where I ultimately accepted a job, I was impressed by: How consistent the messaging was from one employee to another about what it was like to work there Ÿ How much they all seemed to like it there Ÿ How much they all seemed to like each other Ÿ How genuinely interested they were in trying to see not only if I was a good fit for them, but also if they were a good fit for me

Ÿ

Ÿ

How clearly they were able to articulate the values of the company — and seem to genuinely believe it

In contrast, the interview with the other investment bank- although very similar in duration, number of people I met, actual job I was interviewing for etc, was notably different in Ÿ

Ÿ Ÿ Ÿ

Ÿ

It seemed that with every person I spoke with, they were describing an entirely different company They all seemed miserable They actually said nasty things about the other interviewers They seemed more interested in showing me how smart they were than in seeing whether we could be a match There were no company values mentioned

It was an easy decision to choose working for the first bank, where I happily worked for about 6 years.

During my tenure there, the CEO quit and a new person came in. The company changed dramatically. That was my first inkling that company culture starts at the top, or perhaps more often is the case “a fish rots from the head”.

As the CEO, and I spend a lot of time thinking about how to create the right culture both for today, and for the future of our business. Here are a few things that are key: Ÿ

Be transparent — creating a culture where people can be themselves and also are spoken to with honesty. No one is perfect but when people feel they can’t be honest about mistakes, that is

when they try to sugar coat, or cover up, rather than ‘fessing up and looking for ways to improve.

As always it is essential that this openness starts at the top. Ÿ Make an impact — we all spend a lot of time at work, and we want that time to matter. Really matter.

Working on projects that make the people who are working on them want to jump out of bed every morning to get back to it is the goal- and ultimately that also make our user’s lives better is what it is all about. We only get one shot at this life, and we want it to be meaningful for everyone who works at Pefin. Work isn’t the whole deal but it is a big part of life. We do this by really listening to people — our clientswhich are the whole reason we are in business, but also listening to each other. Giving people a forum for new ideas, or expressing concerns. All of this is important and it is also where the innovation happens. Ÿ Move quickly- Always being what Jeff Bezos calls a “Day One” company- moving with

urgency to solve problems and figure things out is a huge part of who we are. Complacency equals squandering an opportunity, and there is no room for that.

Pefin’s core values reflect all of these points — and although we aren’t perfect at making this happen, we really, really try and we really care about the lives of the people we impact, whether employees, customers, partners, vendors — everyone. Why? Because with every decision any of us make, we have the potential to make the world a little better, or a little worse.

So why not decide to make the world as good as we can? It all starts with our employees — so the “perks” of working at Pefin are designed to honestly create the very best work environment to live these values every day. See more about that here — and as we grow perhaps it is time for you to join the Pefin team?

For more on how the culture of Pefin was shaped from the beginning, check out this podcast with Pefin founder, Ramya Joseph. You will be glad you did!

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Understand your Employees

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or modern day organizations, artificial intelligence and its subset, machine learning, isn’t about sci-fi and a sparkling, automated future. Rather, AIbased innovation is an apparatus to be utilized today to build a better tomorrow. In the specific case of employee analytics, organizations are on the cusp of having the capacity to leverage AI to refine, even redefine, a large number of its primary functions. Basically, artificial intelligence is a broad-based label to advancements that use algorithmic processing to change immense measures of information into actionable insights. Such technologies have just progressed toward becoming backbones in modern society through specific uses like Amazon Alexa, IBM Watson, and Google’s Predictive Engine. Organizations and enterprises have such elevated desires for AI, truth be told, that total expenditures in the technology are anticipated to ascend to $47 billion by 2020.

Today, AI teams up with big data so as to give metrics and forecasts that organizations can use to amplify efficiency and

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Mircea Danila Dumitrescu Co-founder & CTO StatusToday

Ankur Modi Co-founder & CEO StatusToday

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effectiveness across almost any segment of operations.

Concerning employee analytics, AI can be a valuable disruptor in a wide assortment of uses. The latest artificial intelligence has to the ability to provide useful data-driven insights in the form of employee analytics.

These platform speak to the fate of work, encouraging trust amongst manager and employee by creating transparency in the workplace. Objective data has the ability to give managers unprejudiced data about their team, enabling them to effectively assess performance, direct endeavors to enhance commitment, align people with fitting roles and opportunities, and create teams based on aptitudes, similarities and difference.

Understanding how AI could become employee’s ally, Ankur Modi and Mircea Danila Dumitrescu founded StatusToday to transform the workplace. Being the world’s first employee insights platform that helps companies boost employee wellness and transform workplace productivity, StatusToday’s analytics platform

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creates a continuous data driven feedback loop between managers and employees. The system analyzes metadata to compare companies, and creates actionable insights.

You can understand how your employee behavior compares to others in your industry, their email responsiveness or if they are overworked outside office hours. StatusToday eliminates the need for endless surveys, inefficient meetings and expensive consultancies.

A productive workplace is a successful workplace.

The two founders met at Entrepreneur First (EF4) and were part of the first cohort of non-graduates. They believed that most companies and managers do not understand their employees. Therefore, StatusToday initially set out to use AI for cyber security, specifically by analyzing a company’s internal online comms and other network activities to find rogue employees or human lapses in security. However, the company has

technology will change the world. It is not technology, but people who change the world. “When I left Microsoft to found StatusToday, I wanted to focus on using AI on an operational basis — to focus on people rather than a gimmick. This is reflected in what we do — we aren’t here to build technology for the sake of it. The mission of the company is to change the way you work,” Ankur asserted.

since widened its offering, which launched in beta in 2017, to be a more comprehensive employee insights service powered by AI. StatusToday, today, plugs into various online company tools, such as those from Microsoft or Google.

The platform then uses meta-data pulled in from these systems and artificial intelligence to analyze employee actions, thus empowering companies to attain better visibility of how their workforce is working and to make developments accordingly.

It’s not about being first. It’s about being the best.

AI and machine learning companies, by-and-large, naively believe that

The $78B HR Tech and Consultancy market is growing at over 10% annually. Over the last century, consulting firms have offered workplace transformation as a core service. The workplace transformation has brought a disruptive value-added differentiating element in a vastly competitive market where novel needs have emerged: mobility, self-care, social media, seamless experience across multiple devices and global collaboration. However, these services are subjective, expensive, not repeatable, and moreover take months. Contrary to these, StatusToday gives managers actionable recommendations without spending millions or burning countless hours analyzing feedback.

Till date, StatusToday has analyzed 350 million actions from 175,000 employees. That’s pretty big numbers, aren’t they?

The true entrepreneur is a doer.

Not a dreamer.

When asked to give advice to the young entrepreneurs, Ankur replied, “When you get a chance to lead a business whose mission you believe in, you can’t just get tired and stop.

You have to keep going at all costs—

it doesn’t matter how old you are, or what else you have going on in life.

If you have a real opportunity to transform an industry and embody a vision for the future, but choose not to do it, then there is something fundamentally broken about your claim to be an entrepreneur.”

Going ahead, StatusToday’s focus over the next 12 months is to scale up the operations to onboard more SME and large enterprise users and effectively position itself as an employee analytics market leader.

Meet the pioneers Ankur Modi is the Co-Founder and CEO of StatusToday. He is an expert in big data with a unique specialization in Psychology from Oxford University. Prior to StatusToday, Ankur was Project Manager and Software Engineer at Microsoft, leading international efforts behind MS Office, Office 365 and Dynamics for projects now used by over 100 million people worldwide. He is also an Expert Adviser on AI to the Westminster Parliament has been awarded with Fellowship of the Royal Society of Arts and Commerce.

Mircea Danila Dumitrescu is the CoFounder and CTO of StatusToday.

Before StatusToday, Mircea established himself as a highly technical enterprise architect and adviser. He led innovations focused on system security and IT scale such as at Just-Eat and Kurt Geiger for millions of users. Mircea is an established technical leader in large scale cloud infrastructure. Awarded Fellowship of the Royal Society of Arts and Commerce.

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Steve Swasey VP Head of Global Communications

Moovit

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In Conversation with the Newsmaker

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What seeded the vision to develop such an app, especially the idea of crowdsourcing? Can you give us a little background on it and where it stands today? Brief us about the marvelous journey of Moovit.

living in his hometown of Tel Aviv Israel when he realized there was no accurate information for public transit available on our smartphone or on the Internet.

And he literally mapped all of the public transit stops in Tel Aviv. He then developed a software program to put that on an application. Together with Nir Erez, who is the CEO and co-founder, and Yaron Evron, the third co-founder, they they got investors and created the company to build an app for transit riders around the world. The company started in Israel in 2012 and grew very quickly to include other cities. The first city that Moovit was launched in 2013 after Tel Aviv was Madrid, Spain. Today, Moovit is available in more than 2,200 cities around the world in 80 countries and in 44 languages. Moovit has more than 170 million registered users, and it is by far the largest and most downloaded transit app in the world. Moovit has more than five million bus lines mapped on its app.

Steve: Well, I can go from the very beginning. Roy Bick is one of the co-founders of Moovit. He was

Since Roy was able to map his city, he convinced Nir that they should try to recruit local editors in

oovit is the world’s leading public transit data and analytics company, which has witnessed a fascinating journey from inception in 2013 to having 170 million users in just over five years. Moovit is surely an example of how an out-of-the-box idea, if executed correctly, can contribute its share in making the world a better place.

Beyond Exclamation recently had the pleasure to be “In Conversation” with Steve Swasey, VP Head of Global Communications at Moovit, in which, he took us on the journey of Moovit and beyond.

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communities to map their cities. At first, Nir didn’t think it would work, doubting people would spend their time doing that. But when we opened invitations to people in local communities to map their cities, people responded very well.

More than 1 million people have shown interest and have gone through an online screening process. From this, Moovit has more than 350,000 local editors around the world. We call them “Mooviters.” They are helping put their local transit lines in their cities on the map. And these are in many areas that would not have any transit app coverage at all. So, these local editors are local heroes.

They’re super local patriots and their input gives Moovit hyper local accuracy that no other app or other mapping service has.

It’s quite fascinating, and looking at the numbers, we would like to congratulate the whole team of Moovit it on its way to success.

So, the next question is how was the founders’ life before and after Moovit? What change did the company bring in the founders’ personal and professional life?

Steve: Moovit was Nir’s third startup and he was not looking for another startup. He was happy as an investor, and he wasn’t too interested in joining another company if it was not a big idea that would grow. It had to be scalable. In Moovit, he could see very clearly that there was a huge addressable global market. Nir saw

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this as a big growth opportunity.

Roy was previously in the military so this was his first job. Between the two of them, Nir was a very experienced entrepreneur who previously founded and grew two companies. And Roy was the young entrepreneur who had the great idea and the great energy. Between them, with Yaron, they brought together the technology, investors, and the management, and created Moovit.

It sure is like they say the complementary skill sets of the founders bring success. We would you like to know what auxiliary services does Moovit provide, like there’s trip planning, bike sharing, and what else?

Steve: We give users all of the options for what we call intermodal transit. In a major city, there are many different transit lines. There’s not one just one bus line; there’s a bus line, subways, ferries and commuter lines. So, we give all of their data, their timelines and arrival information in one single app. This includes bike-share and ride share in many cities.

So, how does Moovit handle this data? Are there data issues involved?Then there’s a lot of data coming in —how does the app handle the reports?

Steve: We gather the data for the app in three ways. One is we use open source data. There is open data in the U.S. and other parts of

the world, where transit operators publish their data in the open environment. When there’s open data, we gather that. When there is no other data, we partner with the transit agencies for them to share their data, so we can put it on our app. And the third way is we have our users providing their commute information by using the app. We know how many people are riding the train at what time in the morning or in the evening. And the beauty of this is all of the user data Moovit collects is anonymous. We do not know if you’re male or female. We do not know where you live. We do not know how much money you make. We do not know your phone number. All we know is

you’re using the Moovit app to get from point A to point B. And, there are no privacy issues or any concerns with any personal identifiable information. If your GPS is on, Moovit is tracking your movements but no personal identifiable information. This gives Moovit the world’s largest repository of transit data. No other company has more transit data than Moovit, because we track the users’ movement. And we have these 350,000 local editors giving us real time information and real time updates in the app. We have crowdsourced information from our super users as well as the everyday users who are just giving us data by using the app.

Absolutely Steve, the numbers say it all. Also, we would like to know about the moment when the team realized that the hard work has been finally paid off?

We are sure there must be numerous stories like that.

Steve: The first million users.

When we started, it was a small app that was piloted in Israel and then went to Spain. We generated 1 million users very quickly. That became 10 million users. When I joined the company in November of 2016, we all celebrated 50 million users. Then, twelve months later, we celebrated 100 million users. And today in June of 2018, we have more than 170 million users. So, each one of those

incremental gains of users is a validation that Moovit is a world class company, which is doing good for people. Another great milestone is when cities recognized the power of Moovit, to partner with them. A very good example is the city of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil that made Moovit the official Transit App for the 2016 Olympic Games. We were able to go in and prove that we can give the city of Rio better information about transit for the massive influx of athletes, fans, visitors, media and officials coming to the Olympics. And so Moovit became the official transit app for the city of Rio during the Olympic Games. We have since been the official transit app for

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more than 100 venues, activities, games and matches like the top football club in Rome, AS Roma and numerous others. So, each time we generate another world-class partnership, we know that we have something unique or something very special. The third validation is the quality of investors who have participated in Moovit fundraising. Sequoia is one of the preeminent venture capital firms in Silicon Valley.

Sequoia led Moovit’s Series B and they’ve participated in each one of the subsequent rounds.

Intel Capital led Moovit’s $50 million series D earlier this year in February. Also, Intel Capital provided a strategic opportunity by enabling Moovit to partner with Intel’s Mobileye, which Intel Corp. had acquired a year earlier. Mobileye is another major transit company based in Israel that has cameras mounted on vehicles to give transit they give traffic information.

So if you look at it from the user growth, or from the partnership growth, or from the financial investor’s point of view, Moovit has had positive proof points all along the way.

Final question, with the introduction of new technologies like AI breakthroughs and disruptions in the industry, how does Moovit plan its upcoming years?

Steve: The beauty of technology is that it advances and gets bigger, stronger, and faster every day.

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Moovit’s opportunity is to continue to improve its application and improve the quality of data that it generates and then turn that data back to the communities it serves. That’s what Moovit is doing now. Moovit is licensing the data to municipalities, cities and transit organizations for them to improve their systems and that’s how Moovit makes money.

The app is free without any subscription or downloading fee and without any advertising in the app. We provide a terrific benefit to consumers with the most comprehensive transit data in the app and that’s free to consumers. What we provide to municipalities, transit agencies and others for a fee is the data and the analysis of the data. And, so we have very smart people who are taking this treasure trove of data and converting it to analytics systems and processes that municipalities, cities and transit agencies can use to improve their systems. Again for the benefit of the community. So any way you look at it, Moovit is providing a great benefit to cities and people in cities who depend on cities transit.

Molding a Vision “

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t was back in the summer of 2014, when my sister had this idea about a localized Tinder application, as she thought it to be great if we knew who was single whilst sitting in a bar.�

As strange as it might sound, the above instance was the beginning of an evolving idea that morphed into building one of the largest product and distribution platform for insurers globally!

For Nikolaus Suehr, the CEO and Co-founder of KASKO, building his own business and being an entrepreneur was always his default idea. Both his parents are self-employed and his father founded a leading a specialist insurance agency for classic cars in Germany, Switzerland and Austria, making his career choice all but normal. The specialization of his family in the insurance industry was one of the driving factors behind his inclination towards the same. Following his education in Insurance and Risk Management, Nikolaus decided to work for a large insurance broker and even had a

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Nikolaus Suehr CEO & Co-founder KASKO

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stint in the family business. Owing to his lack of interest for cars, Nikolaus decided to shift gears and after 2,5 years in strategy consulting for banks and insurers he started something of his own, eventually forming KASKO in the process. But his journey towards the same was one filled with interesting turn of events and a constantly evolving idea.

The evolving idea After the initial thought of creating a localized Tinder application, it molded into another idea. It was to provide an event application that would make recommendations based on the match of other people going to the event using Facebook data. Following this, Nikolaus reached out to some of his friends and eventuality joined hands with Matt.

However, due to the complexities involved with the implementation or creation of such an event app, both Matt and Nikolaus decided to try something smaller at

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first; primarily to see how they gel as a team. This prompted the inception of Quotes of Glory, an application that curated “stupid” quotes from celebrities.

The app failed to take off, causing them to think “beyond” a simple quote based app.

“Matt told me that we should probably think bigger than a quote app and he asked me if there wasn’t anything one could do about insurance.”

Together, they formed Kasko Drive, which provided short-term car insurance services. They won a few startup competitions, shifted to Berlin and then to London and finally pivoted away from Kasko Drive. “During this time we pivoted from Kasko Drive because the customer acquisition costs would have killed us and decided to provide spot and niche insurances as a digital intermediary connecting insurers and digital marketplaces,” recalls Nikolaus. Yet KASKO failed to make money in the market but change was imminent.

always important to create a workplace where we would like to work in. To us that was working with motivated, smart and fun people.

Personally, I don’t need to work with friends, although I ended up doing just that. Most people at KASKO I consider to be my closest friends. But I need to work with people I respect.

And respect comes from curiosity and drive. That’s what we are looking for.”

of where the market is moving and can provide valuable insights into how to position yourself as an insurer in this brave new world,” mentions Nikolaus.

At KASKO, everything is transparent. Everyone knows how much everyone is earning or even how much the organization is earning. Nikolaus and Matt have created a workplace where people are willing to work in. For KASKO, it is the level of trust and respect amongst the workers that has made the company what it is known as today.

2. KASKO thinks long-term. The company has a vision to build a global distribution platform for insurance not to bill insurers excessively due to lack of alternatives.

Delivering solutions that matter “Then, one of our customers, namely Philipp Marty who is product manager at Baloise Switzerland asked us if we could just create digital products for them to be sold via their website because they didn’t have the capacity to do it themselves due to a massive backlog of IT issues.” In the beginning of 2017, KASKO pivoted away from the intermediation model to the service model and it has never looked back ever since.

A workplace where people are willing to work Speaking about work culture, Nikolaus asserts, “Personally, I don’t like the term culture, it’s so overused.

To my co-founder Matt and I, it was

KASKO helps insurers via its “InsurTech as a Service.” It enables insurers to follow product and distribution opportunities time- and cost-effectively by being 90% cheaper and faster than existing solutions.

KASKO does that by having built a digital MGA with all customer facing processes alongside the insurance customer journey including quote, offer, bind, pay, manage and claim that it rents out to insurers, and offer plug and play integration options for the distribution partners.

“Moreover, as we are discussing new business models, new products and distribution plays with insurtechs and insurers alike, we are at the forefront

The Three Reasons of Success 1. KASKO under-promises and overdelivers. When things go wrong, the company speaks up and takes ownership for its part of the mistake and then fixes the same.

3. KASKO is one of the most experienced teams in the market worldwide, when it comes to pushing new products to the market fast no other company has delivered that much in such a short time.

The above three reasons are the primal drivers of growth for the company.

Envision a future of success Over the next few years, we will see the emergence of the KASKO platform to radically reduce transaction costs and enable insurers to create tailored products for customers. “Currently, we are preparing our Series A to finish our digital insurer even faster including self-service onboarding and creating and management of insurance products whilst getting more and more insurers and distribution partners onto our platform,” Nikolaus concludes.

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You Need Paying Customers, Not Free POCs, to Survive Your Fund Raise About the Alchemist Accelerator Alchemist is a venture-backed initiative focused on accelerating the development of seed-stage ventures that monetize from enterprises (not consumers). The accelerator’s primary screening criteria is on teams, with primacy placed on having distinctive technical co-founders. Our backers include many of the top corporate and VC funds in the Valley — including Khosla Ventures, DFJ, Cisco, and Salesforce, among others. CB Insights has rated Alchemist the top program based on median funding rates of its grads (YC was #2), and Alchemist is perennially in the top of various Accelerator rankings. The accelerator seeds around 75 enterprise-monetizing ventures/year.

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irst-time entrepreneurs that are building an enterprise SaaS company and trying to raise money without having paying customers will typically find it difficult to raise capital. As an Alchemist Accelerator CEO mentor, I help founders understand this point as early as possible. If you want to survive, meaning close your Angel or Series A round to live another day, you must prove that customers will pay for a solution to the problem you are solving. That is table stakes in Silicon Valley.

Early Stage, SaaS, Enterprise Sales is Really, Really Difficult.

You don’t have brand recognition, customer references, case studies, engaging slides, or a fully functional product.

And most technical co-founders do not have sales experience and would prefer to spend their time coding versus updating salesforce or talking to people.

Capital comes in two primary forms: paying customers and venture term sheets. Non-paying “proofs of concept” (POCs) are not customers. The Valley VC deal flow is massive so POCs with no path to revenue from small logos (companies with under 400 employees) will get a response that sounds like “come back in six months.” That is a major problem when you have only 90 days of cash and no salespeople.

Founders need to clearly understand their prospects’ buying and decision-making processes. Everyone knows your product is in beta, but you shouldn’t be giving it away for free. Founders need to know their worth and show the value of their products. It’s important to explain to early prospects that free trials equate to no funding to hire engineers to

scale the product. Even worse, they lead away from a path to raise money.

Be honest with your first 10 potential customers. Let them know that you need a financial commitment from them and that they need to be a reference for potential investors.

Listen carefully to their feedback when you make that ask.

Do they have a budget to pilot new technologies? What are the barriers to your deal getting signed in the current quarter? Are they in the midst of a reorganization? Did a new boss just arrive? The signal will be high on your first call as to whether or not this lead has real potential. If a prospect tells you his or her company’s security assessment will take six months and the purchasing process another three months, believe that person and say thank you, don’t forecast them and then move to the next deal.

Your First 10 Logos Matter Many founders sell into small businesses (20–400 employees) because they think the process will be easier.

Logos matter and the first customers you attract are important. VCs call these lighthouse customers. They represent early market validation and big budgets. If investors have never heard of the logos on your traction slide, there’s little excitement to listen to your pitch.

Similarly, if your first four customers are due to your friends or family network, investors will be skeptical of your ability to cold call and introduce your new product/service in a compelling way outside of your immediate contacts. Remember VCs backchannel before they cut checks. They call their networks of lighthouse executives to get a sense of market needs.

Have A Path to Scale Early Customers Investors will be interested in your traction. They know that your first few deals will be priced below market to get the relationship started. But you need to show them a path — how you are going to grow early customers from five-figure deals to six-figure deals. (In effect, showing now that you won your first deal to prove your value with one business line, how you will get the rest of the business.)

Great founders set this path to scale at the earliest stage of deal. They do this by value setting at the beginning of the relationship.

So take the time to build a solid pipeline of customers not POCs. It’s easier to raise money when you have paying customers. Founders selling early-stage enterprise SaaS solutions should think in these terms: every $50K SaaS sales order should equal $300K in funding. If what you are selling has value, people will pay for it.

About Darren Kaplan Darren Kaplan is the Co-founder and founding CEO of hiQ Labs (www.hiqlabs.com), a data science company, informed by public data sources, applied to human capital to make work better. Mr. Kaplan is an Alchemist Accelerator mentor, working with Augmented Reality, Cyber Security, and HR enterprise SaaS startups.

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Disrupting Energy Sector

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ears of poor regulation and lack of security controls had left the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant hazardously ill-equipped, when an earthquake and resulting tsunami had hit in March 2011. Fukushima’s aftermath incorporated hundreds of square miles of dreadful land, thousands of relocated people, and billions of dollars of financial misfortune—positioning it close to Chernobyl as one of the world’s worst nuclear disasters. That nuclear accident led Chancellor Angela Merkel to declare a new era in the energy sector.

To the world, Germany was pulling itself away from nuclear energy; but to some, it was something that needed individual contribution. Those few included Philipp Pausder, Florian Tetzlaff and Kristofer Fichtner who founded Thermondo. Based on the premise that “the energy transition can only work with tangible solutions,” Thermondo started developing solutions that would increase efficiency, expand decentralized energy supply and switch to environmental friendly technology.

Six years later, Thermondo is the premier single- and two-family house heating installer and has already enabled more than 10,000 homeowners to have lower carbon emissions. Thermondo uses

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Philipp Pausder Co-founder & MD Thermondo

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only efficient heating technologies such as condensing, solar thermal and fuel cell heating. By simplifying the process of retrofitting heating systems, Thermondo enables house owners to easily switch to more efficient solutions and make their contribution to the “Energiewende” by reducing co2 emissions.

Satisfied customers are the pillars of the best business strategy.

Thermondo believes through its focus on the usage of intelligent software and radical focus on customer needs, the full potential of the huge energy market can be realized much more efficiently. For the same, the company has created a seamless online-to-offline customer experience, which is scalable both in Sales and in its Operations. They have successfully integrated the best out of two worlds, which were believed incompatible by many – Efficient, software-driven processes and craftsmanship of the highest quality. This translates into clear customer benefits and means that the customers get their solutions from Thermondo, and not products.

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Thermondo offers a complete care-free service package, including individual consultation as well as free fix price offers along with competent installation by Thermondoemployed heating installers, 24h emergency service and annual maintenance. In order to lower the financial burden of their customers, they have become the first heating installer to offer consultation on subsidy schemes and financing options. The company is now securing federal subsidies for more than two thirds of its customers.

In 2016, Thermondo introduced its flagship heat lease product Thermondo365, a full-service managed heat solution for homeowners that has no up-front costs.

Thermondo365 is available at 69 EUR per month, one which covers all costs for 2-10 years managed service including maintenance and all associated service costs.

With T365, Thermondo effectively develops the market from selling hardware and installation to selling managed hardware and ultimately managed heat.

accuracy. Notably, the software enables colleagues with little prior heating expertise to effectively consult the company’s clients on complex heating solution packages. Simply put, Thermondo is able to scale its sales much more than the competition thereby contributing to increasing the market for heating exchanges in Germany. While the firm does offer onsite consultation visits, it’s the algorithm that allows them to plan and execute heating exchanges without such visits. This helps reduce costs both for Thermondo and for the customers.

Manfred, the core of Thermondo’s innovation At the core of Thermondo’s innovation is its algorithm called ‘Manfred’ – the digital heating installer. Manfred enables quick yet precise planning of heating exchanges. The customers provide Thermondo with up to 200 individual data points that feed the algorithm’s calculation to configure the ideal heating system, define a bill of quantity and precisely plan the installation process. Thermondo then uses Manfred to generate fix-price offers for its customers at the click of a button; normally it could take around 2-4 weeks until you get a quote estimate i.e. there’s still a financial risk from your local installer. The planning process is sped up significantly at the same time as increasing planning

Manfred also automatically produces the bill of quantities for each accepted quote. This process can take its competitors several weeks as they search through hard copy catalogues.

Again it’s the software that allows Thermondo to scale much more than the competition and contribute to the alleviation of capacity maximization in the heating market. Thermondo’s installation vans are equipped with levels of mounting materials like screws. When these materials are consumed, the installers scan them using the tablet app specifically designed for the installers. The app also serves as a central information hub for when the installers and service technicians are on tour.

Homeowners’ best friend in a decentralized energy world Some companies have now started to follow and adopt online business models, but Thermondo is still ahead of its game, while rigorously designing the process optimizations with the customers’ needs in mind.

Additionally, Thermondo’s platform will allow them to offer adjacent services like gas, PV solar, battery storage, etc. As such, the company is

well-positioned to become the ‘homeowners’ best friend’ in a decentralized energy world.

Thermondo is beginning its vision with the exchange of outdated heating systems and will develop the company further to becoming the gatekeeper in the connected energy world by pushing distributed and smart energy solutions to homeowner nationwide.

Going ahead, Thermondo’s main goal is to increase the rate of energyefficiency improvements by digitizing the services. This makes the team feel proud to be the first mover in this field and is pleased to see that more companies are joining Thermondo on its mission to increase the energy efficiency in German households.

Thermondo is also adding capacity to an underserved market helping thousands of homeowners save energy.

A serial entrepreneur leading from the front Philipp Pausder is the Co-Founder and MD of Thermondo. Prior to Thermondo, Philipp founded Clean Venture, a boutique M&A advisory firm for distributed energy deals. Clean Venture advised on deals across 4 continents with a total value greater than $1 billion. Before starting his own firm, Philipp worked for Applied Value, a Stockholm-based strategy and investment firm. Philipp was recognized as “Global Champion of Sustainable Innovation 2007” by Thunderbird University, USA for his development of business models for emerging markets. Philipp started his career as a global marketing manager at adidas AG launching innovation concepts to a global market place. He holds an MBA in Finance with highest distinction from IE Business School, Madrid and an MA in Business and Mass Communication from FU Berlin.

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