Just an FYI, but under the blurbs about the founders, a little bit of proof reading would go a long way to ensuring legitimacy: "...other large corporates in..."
I understand typos, but when it is for someone who wants to run a service which would have very high visibility for a companies image, they really aren't acceptable.
Ah! "Corporates" is a term that's often used within European professional service firms and is a holdover from my Dutch corporate banking days. Thanks for the advice, I'll change!
This is great. Now if only I could use an app to make sure that a piece of produce labeled as organic was truly organic.
The higher prices associated with organic produce seem like they could be a big temptation for bait-and-switchers. I know there are stringent certifications, but the incentive is there.
Main takeaway: humans work best but even an organization like NPR can't use them fully. Very interesting to me as a founder of a social media-as-a-service startup that solves this problem. [1]
-As long as humans still respond to storytelling -- something we've been doing for as long as we've been around -- branding will have a role.
-Nothing is more central to a brand than having a good product that people want. No amount of storytelling can replace this.
-$30K to spend on a consultant at this point in the startups life seems silly. It might have been better to just get all your employees together and engaged in brainstorming with some kind of framework to guide you, like this one [1].
-A/B testing and branding should work together. The most important thing you can test is your offer, the basic way you convey yourself to your clients and prospects. Focus on optimizing the copy first, not the color of the buttons.[2]
A great way to do this is by listening to how your existing customers describe their problem, your product and how the two relate. Use their words.
Not a fortuneteller but my guess is they're giving up way too early. One of the few mass-market, non-tech companies that actually had a shot in wearables.
With the iPhone having the M7 built-in is there any need for the Nike FuelBand? I find data from the M7 to be quite accurate. Seems like they can just create the software and let Apple (and eventually Android device makers) build the hardware.
The iPhone's still a heavy, bulky, expensive and fragile thing to take with you to the gym or out running, as are other smartphones. The screen is also not easy to interact with while you're exercising seriously. However, smartwatches or smartglasses with 5s-level-or-better motion sensing and the capacity to run apps independently of a smartphone do have to the potential to make dedicated fitness trackers mostly obsolete, though expense and fragility will still be concerns.
I use a Garmin Forerunner. Before I used an iPhone. Not only is the Forerunner a far more accurate GPS and has better battery life, it's also far more convenient to 'carry' during running, since it's a simple and compact watch. Also, it's easy to monitor your stats at any moment, in contrast to iPhone arm bands.
In the end smart watches will probably eat this market. But the iPhone is certainly not a substitute.
But you can't always have your phone with you. It's not effective for the same use-case when you've handed it to someone else to use the phone or when you're out playing soccer (well some people might keep their phone on them on the field but I don't).
Here is a great interview with him in The Paris Review [1]. I love when he says,
"It always amuses me that the biggest praise for my work comes for the imagination, while the truth is that there’s not a single line in all my work that does not have a basis in reality. The problem is that Caribbean reality resembles the wildest imagination."
I know the Caribbean very well and could not agree more.
That's a great analogy and highlights what might be a core issue for Twitter: what it wants to be (an social network with lots of two-sided interaction) vs. what its users perceive it to be (a newswire).
Why it's cool: gives marketing resources to small businesses who lack the time or expertise