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Preface: Matt Barrie is an award-winning entrepreneur, technologist and lecturer. He is the CEO of Freelancer.com, the world’s leading freelancing and crowdsourcing marketplace connecting over 17 million professionals worldwide. 

Why did you start Freelancer.com as opposed to a different company?

I had started several businesses in the past and was looking for the next big thing. The idea about Freelancer.com came about when I needed to get a data entry task completed for my mother’s retail business. I offered to pay $2 per row and I needed 1000 rows filled. It could have been an easy $2000 earned for a little kid that might want to do it. However, most people I asked found it boring. So I decided to look online, I googled the keywords ‘cheap data entry’ and found a website ‘GetAFreelancer.com’. It looked terrible, much like Craigslist.

I posted a job there and over night I ended up with 74 emails in my inbox from people all over the world wanting to do it for me in 3 days. I was blown away. 74 people wanted to do this job for $100 and yet I couldn’t find anyone to do it locally. This was the origins of the idea. The vision then developed into building a truly global marketplace for services, in contrast to eBay and Amazon as marketplaces for products. We then moved very quickly by acquiring competing websites and similar marketplaces all around the world.

Can seeing opportunity be learned? What are your suggestions to those looking for their first or next business?

Those looking to start a new business should always think about scalability, current trends and where the market is heading. Thinking about the future includes being aware of the principles like Moore’s law when you project your growth rate and progress. As Wayne Gretzky said, it is important to look ‘where the puck is going and not where the puck has been’.

Look for a business that isn’t necessarily straightforward. Think about what is taboo or super hard. You sometimes need to risk potentially looking like an idiot in order to be a hero.

Were there times you thought Freelancer might fail? What pulled you through those?

My experience with Freelancer.com has been a rollercoaster ride, especially in the early years before profitability. However, it does get easier. The earliest days are hard because of insufficient revenue and traffic. You are constantly constrained. You can’t visit any early stage company and not smell burning money.

Every company has its ups and downs, you just have to persevere and execute. We are now making more money each day and that comes from being a mission critical site, we are providing jobs for people in emerging markets across the world. For many, we are their only source of income. If we are not there for them, people may lose their living.

Has your own approach to business changed over the years? If so, how?

I use a lot more methodologies and practices to execute things faster. We constantly create small changes across the site, analyse the results and structure ourselves for maximum efficiency. At our heart, we are a product-focused and data-driven engineering company and we work within a meritocracy where initiative, innovation and most importantly execution are highly respected. We run the platform using smart algorithms and machine learning to make the product itself part of our overall process of continual improvement. The Product Manager of the product group is responsible for everything, from the code, to testing, T&Cs, and these product groups are dependent on each other.

One of the biggest challenges for any business is also finding the right people. You need to find people who are better than you and give them that job. If you don’t delegate, you will never build a big company. When you hire A-grade people, in turn they attract more A-grade people to want to work at the organisation, you don’t want Bs and Cs. So essentially I always look for someone who is an A-grade and is able to fit into our culture.

Talk to me about your toughest business experience…

There have been plenty of dark moments and failure. My last company sold to Intel but it wasn’t a huge exit. I have had so many learning experiences throughout the course of my career. Despite having a fantastic technology, when you are cash flow negative, or are in too early for the market, or have the wrong business model, it really is personally draining – the shit really does hit the fan.

If you are thinking about starting something, go and do it. It will be one of the most rewarding and challenging things you can do in your life. Just make sure you keep being focused, don’t become complacent and always look to be growing as a company. Sometimes being an entrepreneur is like crawling on broken glass.

What does the future look like to you?

The human labour market is the biggest opportunity for us. There are over 3 billion people on the Internet. If they can use a computer, do some sort of a job or get a better rate of pay, we can cater for them. The opportunity for Freelancer is massive. We have also just bought escrow.com, which has had $2.7 billion in transaction volume to date but we’re planning to take that business to a whole new level.

What is one thing you think most entrepreneurs don’t know but they should?

Just the simple fact that they can do it. Many people may think they can’t do something, that they should wait for the next year for something to happen, or they would need a VC to solve all their problems. In reality, you are the solution to (all) your problems.

The post Building the worlds largest freelance marketplace appeared first on The Startup Magazine.

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The mobile advertising economy has exploded, overtaking desktop and predicted to hit $100B in 2016. This is an industry that has traditionally favored the advertiser – as the buyer equipped with the budgets to dictate market trends.

As the industry matures new players continue to introducing advanced competing technologies, breaking the monopoly set by the advertising giants, with smart offerings that stand out in a busy ecosystem. As more and more developer look for ways to monetize their free apps, advertising solutions that favor the publisher are emerging.

One such player is Appodeal – programmatic ad mediators that are focused on driving increased revenues for app developers, through aggregating demand sources and  engaging them in real-time auction-based competition for every ad impression.

We spoke to CEO and Founder Pavel Golubev to find out exactly how developers are making this shift and how his technology is driving increased revenues for a quickly growing app developer community.

There is a lot of noise about the growth of mobile advertising – what does this mean for today’s consumers, and the developers you work with?

Every smartphone owner is affected by mobile advertising in some form, even if this is indirect. From the data you share by downloading apps to the search results you are given when looking for information – the consumer has entered into an exchange.

The industry is growing very rapidly, and has been for some time now, in parallel to mobile usage growth. Today more and more app developers are looking for a way to monetize their free apps. This can be achieved by adopting a freemium model, making some parts of the app only accessible to those that, driving users to make In-App purchases, or running advertisements.

In this busy space there are a number of ways to do this. Typically a developer will work with a number of advertising networks sending ad requests, the opportunity to serve an ad and analyzing the performance and revenues for each network across various data points. Specific audience segments might work better and so these need to be broken out – then when considering various ad formats, from exchanges and demand sources, that are integrated with different third parties – a developer may have to integrate a number of SDKs, or run multiple tags, potentially slowing the performance of the app and requiring app updates to be republished in the appstore with each new release. It can get very complex.

In the past developers, searching for optimum revenues have juggled this and have really been at the mercy of the top networks and exchanges. A move to programmatic selling and the automation of this process through mediators means this work is no longer required.

What has your personal experience been of this evolving industry?

My journey began in Carnage – literally, this was an in-browser game that gained popularity back when Perl was big. I joined in 2009, based in Moscow, as one of the first members in the startup, it was a world away from the corporate industry I had become familiar with. We didn’t wear ties, it was moving quickly and everyone was friendly, and driven. We had the freedom to be creative, this was a time when mobile was starting to get pretty big. It was through this role I met GameDev – the leading community for developers and began to learn more about the developers, and mobile in general.

I ended up in Silicon Valley, after developing backend solutions for Ruby on Rails. I was building a social network for mobile phones, whilst also building iPhone games that provided a steady source of income. Remembering the great success of Carnage I and my friend decided to focus entirely on mobile games.  

We released our first game in several weeks and over the next couple weeks we earned $18,000 out of it. I knew this was going to be a success. At first when the market was still young, it was relatively easy for us to build a decent game, release it and drive traffic to the app. We watched these games work their way up the appstore charts, and the revenues rise in tandem. At this time I have to say we were really focused on quantity over quality. It was when we switched this approach that things really got interesting.

We focused on making a really great game and the the various revenue models to gain profits. Trialling free apps with paid versions, we starting learning about in-app purchases and understanding our user data. We discovered the difference between LTV (life-time value – the amount that a user will spend) and ARPU (average revenue per user). We became familiar with the mobile jargon and abbreviations – the various payment metrics and how it all boils down to eCPM (effective cost per thousand views) – and we learnt how to retain users.

We created Alfa Production and as we continued to build and release new games with our experiences we could help others in their monetization strategy. We were able to use technology to make developers profitable solely from advertising revenue incomes. It was through advancing this technology that Appodeal was born in 2013. Through solving our own operational problems we had created a uniformed dashboard that removed all the manual work – a programmatic mediation solution.

Can you describe how your product enables efficient monetization for App Developers? For those not familiar with exchanges can you explain, what is programmatic and how does RTB work?

Programmatic ad mediation means using real-time auction-based approach to sell ad impressions. Traditional RTBs (or RTB exchanges) are built in favor of advertisers. Real-time bidding exchanges help advertisers buy ads in an automated way. Appodeal is a reverse RTB, designed to bring power back to publishers by engaging ad networks, DSPs, RTB marketplaces and direct campaigns in real-time auction-based competition for every ad impression.

Think of Appodeal as programmatic ad selling (mediation) rather than programmatic ad buying (traditional RTBs).

As I mentioned earlier, traditional RTBs are build in favor of advertisers but not everyone knows that RTBs use second price auctions to bring maximum ROI for advertisers. In simple terms, second price auction is when advertisers with winning bid is actually pay a cent above 2nd best price. For example, if ad network A made a bid of $10 for ad impressions and second best offer was only $2 from Ad network B. Ad Network A will only pay $2.01 for this auction. We believe it’s not fair from publisher’s perspective.

Programmatic mediation also differs from traditional mediation in which publishers have to set up and manage waterfalls. As a result — it is much easier to manage your monetization strategy and human factor is minimized.

How exactly does of all this mean a shift in power to the app developer?

Appodeal was created by app developers looking for better ways to monetize their own products. We are also  funded by the app developer community – a few large mobile app publishers invested in Appodeal’s $3.1M seed fund. These publishers use Appodeal and  discovered the higher revenues that can achieved through our programmatic mediation technology.

We believe that the mobile ad industry is unfairly built in favor of advertisers. Essentially, almost every solution on the marketplace takes advertiser’s side when negotiating ad pricing.  We provide publishers with tools to gain leverage and negotiating power with new technology. Rather than hunting out the revenue and letting the buyer make all of the decisions Appodeal reverses this. Demand sources now bid the highest prices for the best ad spots and developers can easily reap these rewards of this, focusing their energies in building more apps for better gaming experiences – in turn hooking these up to Appodeal and funding a cycle of innovation and growth.

The post Mobile ad mediation gives advertising power to app developers appeared first on The Startup Magazine.

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Surviving 35 years in business is an impressive feat. In fact in the recent economic climate, celebrating ANY length of time should be celebrated! Paul Fletcher, MD of FN Worldwide talks to us about how he went from ‘falling into’ his business into growing it to one that operates on a global scale.

“I didn’t have a work permit”

I was working in Germany in 1983 as an electrical engineer and was about to take advantage of a job opportunity in America, but I didn’t have a work permit. Obtaining one is a lengthy process so rather than carry one what I was currently doing and just wait until it happened, I decide to invest the money that I had in a business opportunity that arose – I think it’s important to grab any opportunity’s that present themselves.

“Spend as much time as you can with employees”

It’s so important that you truly gauge their attitude and values. When running a busy company, it’s easy to hire someone on their credentials and qualifications but fail to learn about who they are and what motivates them. We have a big focus on communication within FN Worldwide; if staff are kept in the loop they feel valued and a relationship is built on mutual trust. I’m not saying we haven’t been burnt – we have been more than once but when you find those great members of staff they stay for a long time, it’s worth taking the time to seek them out.

I would say that 51% of our success is purely down to our staff, they are the face of the company. Reputation has aided us in building this business and our employees are expected to maintain that reputation every single time and establish a personal connection with the clients.

“There is a downside to the digital explosion”

When it comes down to it – you are at the mercy of disgruntled customers. We have a big emphasis on our online presence because it’s so prevalent in today’s world; but along with understanding the value of using online platforms to promote your business we have learnt from experience to be pro-active in preventing and locating any bad press/reviews.

“I have a lot of self-belief”

I lead this company, I have to believe that I have the ability do it. I also have an enormous amount of belief in the people that we employ.

To have survived 35 years in business I have to be honest and say that sheer luck and risk taking has largely come into it. ALWAYS take the risk, in the business world its unavoidable and you have to be willing to accept that and have the self confidence that you are making the right decision. If the risk pays off, then great but if not then you will have learnt a crucial lesson that you can take forward – either way you have been successful in the long term.

“I’m still working on a work/life balance”

After 35 years, I’m still trying to figure it out; I’m lucky to have such a patient wife and family.

With the changes in culture and rise of the digital world, I have found it harder to switch off because it’s so easy to be contactable 24 hours a day. In the transportation industry there are more obstacles arising all the time – the responsibilities are multiplying every day, the threat of unknowingly transporting migrants is a huge weight on everyone shoulders right now and we simply cannot afford to be complacent in any area of the business. It’s all about adapting and evolving.

“I don’t have a defined vision of success”

I would describe it as health, happiness and lots of love – but these things rarely come in unison! I find it difficult to consider myself as successful when the circumstances are constantly changing.

When I first began I didn’t have a defined vision of success, I know many would say that was a wrong move but to me, it means that I’ve never felt as if I’ve failed. I’m proud of all that FN has achieved and we will continue to push forward and grow in a number of ways, but I’m not ready to define myself as ‘successful’.

“I’m my greatest inspiration in business!”

Many of the entrepreneurs that are considered ‘inspirations’ were only starting out when I began. I took advantage of a chance business opportunity as turned it into a profitable business. I’m not afraid to say that I’m extremely proud of the hard work I have put in and the skills that I have honest over the years.

I’ve had some failures, both in business and in my personal life but they have led me to learn valuable lessons that I am grateful for. The failures are just as important as the successes because you never stop learning; focusing on personal development is imperative as the goal posts are continually moving in the business world.

“I find giving advice really difficult”

There is no ‘one size fits all’ approach to business. The one thing I would say is always take the risk; a lack of confidence can be more damaging that not taking advantage of an opportunity.

When you stop believing that you CAN succeed, it’s time to call it a day.

The post The Secret of Surviving 35 Years in Business? appeared first on The Startup Magazine.

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The mobile advertising economy has exploded, overtaking desktop and predicted to hit $100B in 2016. This is an industry that has traditionally favored the advertiser – as the buyer equipped with the budgets to dictate market trends.

As the industry matures new players continue to introducing advanced competing technologies, breaking the monopoly set by the advertising giants, with smart offerings that stand out in a busy ecosystem. As more and more developer look for ways to monetize their free apps, advertising solutions that favor the publisher are emerging.

One such player is Appodeal – programmatic ad mediators that are focused on driving increased revenues for app developers, through aggregating demand sources and  engaging them in real-time auction-based competition for every ad impression.

We spoke to CEO and Founder Pavel Golubev to find out exactly how developers are making this shift and how his technology is driving increased revenues for a quickly growing app developer community.

There is a lot of noise about the growth of mobile advertising – what does this mean for today’s consumers, and the developers you work with?

Every smartphone owner is affected by mobile advertising in some form, even if this is indirect. From the data you share by downloading apps to the search results you are given when looking for information – the consumer has entered into an exchange.

The industry is growing very rapidly, and has been for some time now, in parallel to mobile usage growth. Today more and more app developers are looking for a way to monetize their free apps. This can be achieved by adopting a freemium model, making some parts of the app only accessible to those that, driving users to make In-App purchases, or running advertisements.

In this busy space there are a number of ways to do this. Typically a developer will work with a number of advertising networks sending ad requests, the opportunity to serve an ad and analyzing the performance and revenues for each network across various data points. Specific audience segments might work better and so these need to be broken out – then when considering various ad formats, from exchanges and demand sources, that are integrated with different 3rd parties – a developer may have to integrate a number of SDKs, or run multiple tags, potentially slowing the performance of the app and requiring app updates to be republished in the appstore with each new release. It can get very complex.

In the past developers, searching for optimum revenues have juggled this and have really been at the mercy of the top networks and exchanges. A move to programmatic selling and the automation of this process through mediators means this work is no longer required.

What has your personal experience been of this evolving industry?

My journey began in Carnage – literally, this was an in-browser game that gained popularity back when Perl was big. I joined in 2009, based in Moscow, as one of the first members in the startup, it was a world away from the corporate industry I had become familiar with. We didn’t wear ties, it was moving quickly and everyone was friendly, and driven. We had the freedom to be creative, this was a time when mobile was starting to get pretty big. It was through this role I met GameDev – the leading community for developers and began to learn more about the developers, and mobile in general.

I ended up in Silicon Valley, after developing backend solutions for Ruby on Rails. I was building a social network for mobile phones, whilst also building iPhone games that provided a steady source of income. Remembering the great success of Carnage I and my friend decided to focus entirely on mobile games.  

We released our first game in several weeks and over the next couple weeks we earned $18,000 out of it. I knew this was going to be a success. At first when the market was still young, it was relatively easy for us to build a decent game, release it and drive traffic to the app. We watched these games work their way up the appstore charts, and the revenues rise in tandem. At this time I have to say we were really focused on quantity over quality. It was when we switched this approach that things really got interesting.

We focused on making a really great game and the the various revenue models to gain profits. Trialling free apps with paid versions, we starting learning about in-app purchases and understanding our user data. We discovered the difference between LTV (life-time value – the amount that a user will spend) and ARPU (average revenue per user). We became familiar with the mobile jargon and abbreviations – the various payment metrics and how it all boils down to eCPM (effective cost per thousand views) – and we learnt how to retain users.

We created Alfa Production and as we continued to build and release new games with our experiences we could help others in their monetization strategy. We were able to use technology to make developers profitable solely from advertising revenue incomes. It was through advancing this technology that Appodeal was born in 2013. Through solving our own operational problems we had created a uniformed dashboard that removed all the manual work – a programmatic mediation solution.

Can you describe how your product enables efficient monetization for App Developers? For those not familiar with exchanges can you explain, what is programmatic and how does RTB work?

Programmatic ad mediation means using real-time auction-based approach to sell ad impressions. Traditional RTBs (or RTB exchanges) are built in favor of advertisers. Real-time bidding exchanges help advertisers buy ads in an automated way. Appodeal is a reverse RTB, designed to bring power back to publishers by engaging ad networks, DSPs, RTB marketplaces and direct campaigns in real-time auction-based competition for every ad impression.

Think of Appodeal as programmatic ad selling (mediation) rather than programmatic ad buying (traditional RTBs).

As I mentioned earlier, traditional RTBs are build in favor of advertisers but not everyone knows that RTBs use second price auctions to bring maximum ROI for advertisers. In simple terms, second price auction is when advertisers with winning bid is actually pay a cent above 2nd best price. For example, if ad network A made a bid of $10 for ad impressions and second best offer was only $2 from Ad network B. Ad Network A will only pay $2.01 for this auction. We believe it’s not fair from publisher’s perspective.

Programmatic mediation also differs from traditional mediation in which publishers have to set up and manage waterfalls. As a result — it is much easier to manage your monetization strategy and human factor is minimized.

How exactly does of all this mean a shift in power to the app developer?

Appodeal was created by app developers looking for better ways to monetize their own products. We are also  funded by the app developer community – a few large mobile app publishers invested in Appodeal’s $3.1M seed fund. These publishers use Appodeal and  discovered the higher revenues that can achieved through our programmatic mediation technology.

We believe that the mobile ad industry is unfairly built in favor of advertisers. Essentially, almost every solution on the marketplace takes advertiser’s side when negotiating ad pricing.  We provide publishers with tools to gain leverage and negotiating power with new technology. Rather than hunting out the revenue and letting the buyer make all of the decisions Appodeal reverses this. Demand sources now bid the highest prices for the best ad spots and developers can easily reap these rewards of this, focusing their energies in building more apps for better gaming experiences – in turn hooking these up to Appodeal and funding a cycle of innovation and growth.

The post Mobile ad mediation gives advertising power to app developers appeared first on The Startup Magazine.

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Humans are visual creatures, with 40% of people claiming they respond better to visual information than plain text*. For this reason, the design of your website and effective use of imagery is extremely important in engaging your customers and prompting them to make an enquiry or purchase. Creare have put together a few tips on how to utilise imagery to add extra value to your website.

With the rise of image central social networks like Instagram and Pinterest, we have learned to process information extremely quickly through visual cues, forming impressions within seconds. In order to make your message understood, it is therefore essential to accompany this with related imagery to ensure an almost instant understanding of what is being communicated.

We have identified some tips to ensure your images enhance – not hinder – your website:

Choose eye catching images

It is essential to ensure the images used on your site reflect your company values, look professional and effectively frame your content.

Imagery should relate to your offering, but doesn’t have to be literal. For example, if you sell fire safety equipment, a static image of a fire extinguisher might not be as engaging as an image of a fire being extinguished. Consider how to best catch the eye of the consumer as soon as they land on your site.

Consistency is key – just as you should replicate your company’s tone of voice across all communication through the website and social media, the style of imagery you use should also be consistent to affirm your brand identity and build trust in your customers.

The Jaguar website is a great example of this – they only use high quality lifestyle shots of the cars on their homepage, enhanced in post-production to look as if they are moving, to infer the speed of the vehicles. They haven’t confused the message by including product shots of the cars on white backgrounds, or any imagery containing people – it’s all about the cars and it’s consistent.

While you may not have the budget or resource to produce images of this high a quality, it is important to consider how all of the images on your site complement one another and represent your brand.

Use images to sell

If you are selling products on your site, it is essential that you provide as much imagery as possible to give consumers the best possible sense of how the product looks. Mix lifestyle shots in with product shots where appropriate, i.e. if you’re selling a piece of furniture, show the product on it’s own but also include it in a decorated room to give an impression of how it can enhance this space, or if you are selling clothing show this on a model styled with other items to show how it fits a real person rather than just shots on mannequins. Victoria Plum offer a range of product images including shots of the furniture in use:

With the absence of the ability to touch and feel the product, give customers the opportunity to see the product from every angle where possible – 360 photography can enable you to let consumers rotate the product to see every angle.

People buy for emotional reasons, so consider how you can appeal to users’ emotions when selling your products – especially if they are high value purchases. For example, holiday companies often include smiling couples or families in their photographs, appealing to consumers’ emotional attachments to the loved ones they will be taking the holiday with.

Be selective with stock photography

Stock photography can be extremely hit or miss – it can be utilised by companies who do not have the budget or resource to take photos in-house, but it can often be misused when cliché or inconsistent imagery is used.

If you need to use stock images, take some time to browse the resources available – there are a wealth of websites offering free and paid images, of varying quality. Sites such as Stocksnap contain free images supplied by photographers, which are much more creative than some of the other platforms providing generic images. Shutterstock is a great resource for paid imagery, with packages available to save you money when buying in bulk.

Consider using iconography or illustrations instead of photography if you are struggling to find good images. Some companies, such as SEO specialists Moz have produced an illustrated mascot, and use attractive iconography across the site which consistently communicates their brand values:

Add team and company photos

Including images of the team can give your brand a face and personality online. Browsing online is in the most part an impersonal experience, so help your customers to connect with you by showing images of the people who own and work at the company. People buy from people, so this is an effective way to convey your company’s culture. Images of the office can also help to attract customers and potential new employees, by giving a sense of the environment you work in. This enhances the legitimacy of the business, and can be much more engaging on your ‘Contact Us’ or ‘About Us’ page than a generic stock image of a call centre worker.

Studies have shown that on average, over half of users spend less than 15 seconds on a website*. This gives you an extremely short window through which to communicate your message; follow these tips to ensure your imagery helps you to convert visitors into customers.

Source: http://ift.tt/1ORiBdU

*Sources:
http://ift.tt/RAqZht
http://ift.tt/1m3g54q
http://ift.tt/L6jF7W

Image sources:
http://ift.tt/1ORiBuq
http://ift.tt/1PNrqSX
http://ift.tt/1PNrrGE
https://moz.com/

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Gift-giving rituals are an embedded part of American culture, from Christmas to weddings, to graduations and birthdays. According to Forbes, there are three main reasons why gift giving is a meaningful process – it can confirm a new identity (think baby showers), strengthen the bonds with those around you, and provide direction for someone in your community. In other words, gift-giving has the power to transcend the mere transfer of resources and become a powerful tool to transform those around you.

Many companies routinely give gifts to their employees, clients, and partners. Professionals are increasingly looking for solutions that communicate a more personalized sentiment, through a timely and cost effective manner.

We caught up with Sara Rodell, Founder and CEO of Loop & Tie, a personalized gift-giving service targeted at large companies, to hear her thoughts on gift-giving and the solution that she aims to provide.

What major trends have you seen in the evolution of gift-giving in the last 10 years?

The biggest trends in gifting are new ways to source gifts, from e-commerce to crowd-funding purchases and major upgrades on the experience of building and sharing wedding registries the accessibility of gifts has increased.

What are the challenges faced by companies who want to give gifts in the corporate setting?

I would say there are three major challenges. The first is that there is a high risk of being considered a jerk, even though your intentions are good. If you send wine to a non-drinker or gourmet nuts to someone whose kid has a nut allergy, your gift is not well received. The second challenge is that gifting is a time consuming process and people in the corporate world are busy. So we resort to generic gifts that are more symbolic than useful to the client, or it just keeps falling to the bottom of the to-do list because we don’t know what to buy. The third major challenge is that when sending gifts to many clients at once, logistics are a nightmare. Senders have to coordinate shipping, verify addresses, pick something applicable for a group, and then follow up to make sure the gift was received.

What is Loop & Tie and how does it attempt to enhance the gift-giving experience for business professionals?

Loop & Tie is a simplified, personalized gift-giving service. The majority of our customers are large businesses. We have tailored our service to the needs of those businesses so that they can send out many gifts at once, yet still have those gifts be personalized and match the needs of each recipient. We do this through our gift collections, where recipients can choose the gift they desire out of a variety of options, from gourmet spice racks to portable solar panels, as well as through the personalized online cards that the sender can customize with photos, videos, messages, and logos. This allows companies to send their colleagues, clients, friends, and families gifts all at the same time with the knowledge that those gifts will be well received.

How did you come up with the idea behind Loop & Tie?

I was working in institutional equity sales for a number of years for UBS. Every year, my firm would send out gifts to their clients. This process was time-consuming and onerous because many of our clients had special preferences. We couldn’t just send a bottle of wine to everyone because not everyone drank alcohol. There was no one-size-fits all gift that could be sent, and so the entire process was one giant headache. This problem was transparent to anyone who observed, and I decided that there had to be a better solution to giving gifts on the corporate level.

How has Loop & Tie been able to compete with larger e-commerce platforms?

A major strength of the larger e-commerce platforms is that they are able to offer the lowest prices. For a company the size of ours, it is hard to compete with these prices. Our strategy instead has been to curate high quality gift collections, design a gift catalogue that creates a fantastic shopping experience, and to share the stories of the makers behind the gifts. On top of this, our service differs from the bigger e-commerce platforms in that gift recipients can choose what they want, so our customer’s don’t have to spend any time trying to pick out specific gifts for their recipients.

What have been the most popular gift categories of this holiday season?

Tech and socks! People seem to love the various portable chargers, bluetooth speakers and headphones we have on the site. And the sock of the month club is popular for both women and men. Since we have such a large catalog, preferences are pretty well distributed across all of our products so there’s no single category or gift that supersedes the others in popularity.

How have advances in technology affected the way we give to one another?
Our collective idea of “personal” has changed, and so our gift giving practices must reflect that. Fifteen years ago if you had something special or private to say to someone, you called them, you wrote a letter, or you visited them. With new ways to connect across text and video, personal messages are delivered via, Snapchat, email, FaceTime, text, etc. Each of these options are socially accepted as a means to have deeply personal connections. Letters, visits, and calls are still very personal, but the options of ways we can have personal connections have expanded. When we talk about making something “personal” what we typically mean is making something memorable and feel special and designed for that individual. Interactive gifting allows us to include photos, video, music and our own style in a way that is deeply personal for gifter and recipient.

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e-Commerce sales this holiday season hit $80 billion, up 13.9% from last year. This huge growth reflects a global trend that is set to continue throughout 2016. In 2015, retail products and services purchased on the internet will account for $1.671 trillion – by 2019 this is expected to more than double – with eMarketer projecting $3.578 trillion.

As this industry continues to grow there is no failsafe solution to guarantee online shoppers will actually receive their goods. The giant that is UPS has starting the motions to incorporate smart technology in the delivery chain, but as the world’s largest delivery company makes slow changes, it appears the startups have gotten in there first.

uCella’s smart technology and hardware installed outside the customer’s house and controlled directly from the app aims to solve this problem, making the e-Commerce experience a smooth process, with guaranteed results.

“E-Commerce is an outstanding tool for shopping, but in many cases there are failures in the last stage of the transaction, the delivery of the product to the consumer, leaving both the retailer and the consumer disappointed,” says Shuai Jiang, CEO and co-founder of uCella.

We spoke with Shuai Jiang about the growth of e-Commerce and how his product aims to redefine the delivery service industry.

Shuai, what are some of the problems faced in the package delivery industry?

Traditionally, package delivery services are effective, but by no means have they been able to guarantee that packages will be delivered to their intended destination. Much of this comes down to the sheer volume that the package delivery services face on a daily basis, which leaves countless chances for error. However, the major reason is that most carrier services use outdated technologies that do not effectively manage the parcels they are delivering.

The result is that many packages get lost in transit or encounter significant delays. This unfortunately has left many consumers disappointed, and perhaps even a little mistrustful of purchasing products online in the first place. With advances in cloud and app development technologies, we can now avoid many of the issues that have until now been faced by package delivery services.

How does uCella aim to solve these issues faced by traditional package delivery services?

We provide our customers with secure, weather-resistant containers that are high-quality and expandable. These containers are embedded with smart technology and Wi-Fi that is synced with the customer’s email account. When a carrier delivers a package they must scan the tracking number barcode of the package to unlock the uCella container. This action unlocks the container and allows them to safely store the package inside and then close it, which then safely locks the container until the customer comes to collect it.

When the package is delivered successfully, the consumer is notified that their package is delivered through the uCella app, which also provides customers with the ability to check retailer return policies, consult customer support networks, and schedule pickups for returning the package.

The whole system is designed to optimize package delivery so that customers can receive, return, track, and manage parcels without any hassle. The technology behind uCella is secure and efficient, thus ensuring that no packages will ever be lost, stolen, or missed.

How did you come up with the idea behind uCella?

My co-founder and I developed the idea behind uCella while studying in the MBA program at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business. I had originally conceived of the idea when my son was born and my wife and I started doing the majority of our shopping online. Shopping online was so easy, but often I was left feeling frustrated about the delivery system by which my purchases were sent to me.

When I spoke with my friends about this, I discovered that they encounter the same issues. I began thinking about all the advances we have had in technology (think Google self-driving cars) and I came to the conclusion that there must be a better way to have packages delivered. This was the launching point for the idea behind uCella.

What are your plans for the future development of uCella?

Our immediate next step is to rollout uCella in several neighborhoods around the San Francisco bay area. By creating a dense install base, we will be able to build close partnerships with delivery companies on a regional level. We also aim to continue to develop the technology behind uCella, so that can continue to provide our customers with the most up-to-date, quality service available.

How easy is it for delivery services to understand the uCella features? Have you experienced issues in introducing this technology as a third party?

When we were working on the initial design, we talked to many delivery drivers to make sure it is easy for them to operate in 3 simple steps. During our field test, we placed a small sticker above our device to give drivers instructions on how to operate. They had no problem following them and after a couple deliveries, they were able to perform the procedure without any guidance. We provide these stickers with every uCella device.

Many people aren’t aware that delivery drivers hate leaving packages by your doorstep because they are liable for missing packages. uCella helps the drivers to deliver packages with confidence, and be more efficient at the same time.

Who do you see benefiting the most from this technology?

uCella will benefit online shoppers and delivery companies, as well as e-commerce companies.

For online shoppers, uCella will become their post purchase concierge helping them receive, return, track and manage all of their online orders. By utilizing uCella as their delivery end point, delivery companies will significantly reduce multiple delivery attempts, eliminate package misplacement, and decrease the risk of package thefts.

These last mile process improvements translate to huge dollar savings and much higher customer satisfaction. In addition, uCella’s visual proof of delivery gives retailers peace of mind knowing that the packages find their homes safe and sound. Overall, by solving the long-standing pain points for major stakeholders in the last mile delivery process, uCella aims to transform the U.S. e-commerce experience.

What are your focus markets – and how to do plan to grow as online sales rocket?

We are focusing on frequent online shoppers who live in single family houses, town-homes and apartments with private entrances around suburban areas. Based on data provided by U.S. census and leading e-commerce companies, there are around 38 million consumers in the U.S. that fit these profiles – a huge market. As online shopping becomes an everyday activity, our target market will grow dramatically in the next couple years.

Why do you think that industry leaders such as UPS have yet to provide such as solution?

In a recent USPS technology report, ‘The Internet of Postal Things’ the concept of smart mailbox was brought up as a way to improve delivery efficiencies. But implementing such solutions as a carrier is very challenging because of exclusivity issues. Since most of the e-retailers do not give consumers the option of picking carriers, consumers would not be able to take full advantage of the device and it is unlikely that they would install multiple package boxes on their front porch.
uCella stands for universal cell – we are the single platform that aims to connect all players in the e-commerce chain, making a perfectly reliable shopping experience for all.

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No matter the size or scope of your business, there are always ways to streamline it. The New Year provides a useful starting point if you want your business to start running more efficiently, so here are a few tips to help you do so.

Use the Cloud

The business world has been revolutionised by digital technology, and the latest advances can be used by even the smallest businesses to streamline their processes. Probably the most useful advance is cloud computing. Essentially, instead of forcing businesses to hold their data in physical on-site servers, all data can instead be synced online.

The best part of this from a business point of view is that you can have all of your data accessible from anywhere in the world that happens to benefit from a connection to the internet. Your accountant can access your accounts and your workers can manage and contribute to projects from home. If you haven’t embraced the cloud already, it’s time to do so.

Outsource Where You Can

Outsourcing has always been important for businesses, but it’s become increasingly vital in the modern world. First and foremost, outsourcing allows businesses to hand off some of their workload to someone else. This might cost money, but it means that you will be able to spend your time doing what you do best, not worrying over the tasks that you aren’t suited to.

Secondly, outsourcing provides the assistance of experts. You might be able to build a website for your business or foster a presence on important sites, but you’re never going to be as good at either task than someone who has made doing so into their career.

Look to the Past

Business owners all across the country are having a good hard look at 2016, attempting to divine what will help make them stand out in the New Year. However, it’s just as important to take a look at your past, so go over the details of your business in 2015.

Try to identify areas where you hoped to make greater leaps; perhaps you need to find a way to get more visitors to your website? You should also ask your employees whether there are any areas which they are unsatisfied with; let them know that you’re looking for ways to streamline the business so that they’ll feel comfortable pointing out any problems.

Talk to Your Professional Network

Researching ways to streamline your business is sure to turn up plenty of ideas, but, in the end, nothing can beat asking some contacts in the same industry for recommendations. They will be able to shed light on new practices that could make you more efficient, provide a referral to someone who can, or help you avoid that latest trend you’ve been interested in (which would not actually achieve the result you’re hoping for).

Even a minor correction to the way that your business is run can result in hundreds of hours saved over the course of the coming year, so make sure you take the time to streamline your processes to the greatest extent possible.

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