The latest startups from the Wharton program that brought you Warby Parker
Slideshow The latest startups from the Wharton program that brought you Warby Parker “I had to pay my way through B school 100 percent with student loans,” recalled David Klein, cofounder of the online student-loan lender, who attended Wharton in 2011-12.
I knew there had to be a better way.” Founded in 2011, the firm has funded close to $1 billion in student loans and helped thousands of members with lower interest payments.
The lender, which competes with San Francisco-based SoFi, recently launched an employer platform called CommonBond for Business, which enables employers to contribute to employees’ student loan payments every month.
“One of my biggest learnings from my [Penn] Wharton Entrepreneurship experience was to just ‘go with it,’ ” Klein said.
“You won’t know if it works until you do.” The New York-based start-up is one of the latest high-flying ventures to take flight from Wharton, long known for finance and accounting.
The school’s Venture Initiation Program, established in 2001, now helps more than 50 student-founded companies annually across sectors from biotech to restaurants.
These included Warby Parker, the global eyewear fashion giant; BioBots, a Philadelphia-based start-up that allows users to print living tissues on a 3-D printer; And Petplan in Newtown Square, which provides medical insurance for pets.
Students have also started Bandar Foods which wants to bring Indian flavors to the wider world.
Klein and his cofounders surveyed the first-year class to learn that getting student loans was not a pleasant experience.
“Even if the students don’t succeed in building a successful business, we’re satisfied if they learn the essential skills it takes to thrive in this environment.” Part of this learning is realizing how to engage with customers early on to build a company that addresses a significant need, as Warby Parker and CommonBond did.
The Solution to Uber’s Culture Crisis Could be Hiring Veterans
Uber isn’t the only company to be exposed for their corporate culture kinks.
They’re taught to adopt a philosophy that equally embraces two crucial business priorities: mission accomplishment and troop welfare, something that the companies mentioned here seem to struggle with.
There’s a philosophy out there among many organizations that says, “We can train hard skills, but we hire for attitude and soft skills.” Soft skills being things like positive attitude, strong work ethic, resilience and mental toughness to name a few.
The problem with that philosophy is, anyone can have a good attitude when they want to get something from you, like a job for example.
Here are 8 soft skills that veterans bring to every company’s culture and why you should hire them into leadership positives to solve corporate culture problems.
It is the bonding together of team members and employees in such a way as to sustain their will and commitment to each other, the company, the task at hand, and the overall mission and values of the organization, despite obstacles, adversity and stress.
Veterans in leadership positions unconsciously do this so you don’t have to spend time and money training it.
Veterans generally are much better at withstanding burnout because they have been tested beyond what we would consider normal limits.
Dealing with difficult people.
Most people are rarely able to articulate the core values that dictate their actions, habits and behaviors, but without them, company cultures easily find themselves astray.
Retaining and nurturing talent in a startup
Retaining and nurturing talent in a startup.
Rewarding them and recognizing their efforts from time to time and developing them to take on larger roles can help change this mindset.
ESOPs ESOPsor Employee Stock Ownership Plans are the most effective way of retaining employees.
Such discussions are also an opportunity to identify the right people for larger roles and eventually groom them to succeed there.
Regular training and development It’s common to see employees worrying about their skills becoming redundant after some time.
This is a major reason for high performers to leave, so they can pursue further studies/professional courses.
If you are helping them fulfill their personal aspirations while simultaneously helping themgrow at work, you’re giving them no reason to quit.
If the work environment is conducive and you feel a sense of belonging, then there will be greater work satisfaction.
And today’s millennials are particular about being generally happy at work rather than simply chasing big bucks.
Conclusion There are simple ways to motivate your team and make them feel valued without having to spend a bomb.
4 Things You Should Know About Cashless Payments
Financial technology (fintech) has emerged as an interesting industry to watch, as more startups aim to become the next unicorn of financial services.
Making cash obsolete has been a trend since the introduction of debit and credit cards systems.
The majority preferred cards.
This makes the cashless payments arena an exciting sector to watch in fintech.
The peer-to-peer (P2P) payments company PayPal pioneered online money transfers between users, which served as alternatives to checks and money orders.
Europe’s non-cash payment rate is rising, with credit cards accounting for the majority of transactions.
Those countries’ banks offer real-time online banking facilities, making fund transfers easier.
To cater to this market, Swedish Fintech company Trustly aligns its service with this mentality.
Thus, there are opportunities for fintech entrepreneurs to look for such trends in other markets.
Room for differing solutions in regional markets Despite the availability of online-payment providers, there remains room for services to offer differing solutions due to nuanced trends in regional markets.
Save Big on TurboTax, Get a Great Deal on an Inspiron 15 Laptop and More
Save Big on TurboTax, Get a Great Deal on an Inspiron 15 Laptop and More.
Welcome to TechBargains weekly deals where they find the best deals of the week to save you time and money.
Taxes are due in a few weeks and the prices only get more expensive as April closes in.
The Deluxe version is best for most situations.
The North Face Surge II 17″ Backpack for $65 after Coupon: TECH65 (Orig.
$140) This is one of the best deals we’ve seen on a proper The North Face Laptop backpack.
At $539 it is an aggressive price on a laptop that should have everything you want.
A powerful processor, a sharp full HD screen and even includes the Pro version of Windows.
For all these features we consider $650 to be a good price.
If you purchase them, we may get a small share of the revenue from the sale from our commerce partners.
How Technology is Infiltrating the Old-School Shipping Industry
How Technology is Infiltrating the Old-School Shipping Industry.
President Trump’s protectionist rhetoric may have some real benefits — especially if you’re a shipping and logistics company.
And Haven is benefitting.
More importantly, Tillman is keenly aware that the benefits of efficient shipping help more than his bottom line.
Keeping shipping costs down in turn keeps the price of goods down.
And, when he personally tried to ship a container to Singapore, he realized how arcane the industry was.
Thanks to our president, business is booming.
Around the world, the threat of tariffs and quotas abound, making commodity firms who trade metals nervous.
But, while Tillman and Haven are benefitting from the rhetoric right now, the company founder clearly is worried about the future.
In a world where nearly everything we eat, wear, or use daily comes from somewhere else (and probably arrives on a shipping container), the cost of freight matters.
3 Key Components to Standing Out as a Brand
This video is part of a series brought to you by Entrepreneur’s book division, Entrepreneur Press, the publisher of Jill Schiefelbein’s book Dynamic Communication: 27 Strategies to Grow, Lead, and Manage Your Business.
In this Dynamic Communication interview, author Jill Schiefelbein chats with Dorie Clark, author of Stand Out and Reinventing You, who gives a tip that can help you grow your business.
Perfect for entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, small businesses, managers, leaders, marketing teams, networkers and more.
Why is networking important in business, and what role does that play in developing ideas?
What role does your network play in building a brand?
Learn the answer to these questions and more in this video with Clar, a bestselling author and adjunct professor at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business.
You can access 12-plus hours of content — the full interviews for each of these 27 brilliant minds — by purchasing Dynamic Communication: 27 Strategies to Grow, Lead, & Manage Your Business and accessing the book’s bonus site.
Watch more videos from Jill on her YouTube channel and buy the book at Amazon.
Entrepreneur Network is a premium video network providing entertainment, education and inspiration from successful entrepreneurs and thought leaders.
We provide expertise and opportunities to accelerate brand growth and effectively monetize video and audio content distributed across all digital platforms for the business genre.
5 Deadly Email Prospecting Mistakes You’re Probably Making
The bad news is that you’re probably making at least one of these mistakes, yourself.
Writing too much Prospecting emails aren’t the place to educate your prospects about your product or service.
Instead, your only goal should be to elicit a response — and you can do that with just four-to-five sentences.
Sounding like a salesperson The most surefire way to have your email deleted right away is to sound like a stuffy salesperson.
Instead, write as if you’re simply talking to a friend.
Simply be yourself, and you’ll be much more likely to get a response.
The less you sound like a salesperson, the more sales you’ll close.
Forgetting to include a “hook” This one is simple: Never end a prospecting email with a statement.
A short question like, “Does this make sense in your world?” or “Where should I send this book?” will make it easy for your prospect to hit “reply” and type out a response.
And while you’re at it, check out this free ebook, 25 Tips to Crush Your Sales Goal.
Top 7 Chatbot Monetization Strategies You Need to Know
Chatbots are new and hot but how do you get them to make money for your company?
Understanding user psychology.
A user will generate income for you only if you offer something that is of tangible value.
The user will not want anything short of a great answer that will make him want to go further.
BooS (Bots as a service) The future belongs to B2B bots that will empower entrepreneurs and companies to increase their productivity and handle difficult tasks, thereby replicating the business models of most B2B software.
To that end, make your offering absolutely clear to the visitor and also tell them how they can get it.
Native content is basically a model wherein brands pay money to get media firms to distribute their content directly into their own channels.
The process is as follows: You create the lead generation to chatbot è; the chatbot validates lead generation, leads are passed on to the firm; the company pays commission to the chatbot.
If you have created a product that you are unable to monetize right away, consider joining hands with companies or entities that could leverage your chatbot marketing strategy and make money.
We can, therefore, conclude that monetizing chatbots is not only possible but also necessary in today’s competitive times.
Paul who? He’s a Silicon Valley standout who came home to help Philly start-ups
He’s a Silicon Valley standout who came home to help Philly start-ups.
A fast talker with a high-pitched voice who launched a business selling computer games while still a student at North Penn High School, Martino said he returned to the East Coast from the start-up heartland, Silicon Valley, in 2010 not just because he missed late-night hoagies from Wawa, but to start a family. “I’m still a passionate entrepreneur, and I’m just going to happen to innovate on this thing called venture capital.” “The venture industry itself has never really innovated.
This is probably the first innovative venture fund I’ve seen,” said Jim Lim, a managing partner in Greenspring Associates, a fund based in Maryland and Silicon Valley that was one of Bullpen’s first institutional investors.
Those are the $1 million to $2 million investments Bullpen Capital makes.
Martino launched Bullpen, partly inspired, he said, by First Round Capital, which he considers “probably the most innovative thing that happened in venture capital in the history of the asset class.” ” That has a great deal to do with opportunity, said Martino: About 25 percent of Bullpen’s portfolio — currently $160 million to $180 million in assets under management — is East Coast companies.
“The idea that you can’t get your 10-, 20-, 50-person company going in Philadelphia, get to $10 million in revenue, you absolutely can do that.” But after that, “there is a raw-talent issue with the kinds of people you need to hire to scale your company,” Martino said.
I don’t view that as a problem, but I don’t view it as solvable, either.” With the $85 million raised this year — after rounds of $25 million in 2010-11 and $35 million in 2014 — Bullpen will be able to hire support staff and, consequently, do more for the companies it invests in, Martino said.
5 Ways Millennials Have Changed the Way We Buy
5 Ways Millennials Have Changed the Way We Buy.
Our aim is to provide millennials a greater diversity of experiences — so they are constantly discovering new opportunities at our venues.” 2.
They must effectively market the story of their product as much (or more) than they market specific product features.” Davidson highlights the success of brands such as Naja, whose premium lingerie is crafted by working mothers without husbands in emerging nations such as Venezuela.
We strive to create events in the places where young folks like to be, we interact with the influencers that they respect and we try to inspire their peers to share our story.
One of the greatest trends I witness every day is the removal of middlemen; rather, the increasing prevalence of direct relationships between consumers and brands.
Communities are being developed online where millennials interact with their products like never before.” 5.
“But today, after considering the team, we are increasingly attentive as to whether a company will anticipate consumers’ needs and thus be able to make decisions for them.
Then, you hit the market with one product — a solution that’s directly on point.” Millennials have changed the rules of commerce.
Online startups are directly interacting with consumers who trust virtual communities like no generation before.
Forward-thinking companies are creating more individualized and fulfilling next-generation experiences for employees and customers — online, and across the globe.
How to make your startup future-ready
The meetup mainly focused on how startups can overcome some of these problems.
Speaking at the event, Shehzad Karkhanawala, Senior Marketing Manager at global SD-WAN company Aryaka, said, “The best approach for a company to succeed and scale is to create something that’s valuable to the end customer.
If you’re lucky enough to find them, hire them.” He added, “As we scaled, we found that we need people with definite skill sets.
That shift from generalists to specialists needs to happen.” He went on to explain how it is important for startups to market their product to target customers such that the latter can actually visualise their product.
Speaking to the audience, he said, “We want to work with you, so that we can create synergy and do something different.” He urged people to understand what IoT can do for their startup.
The Experience Zone demonstrated solutions that will help startups overcome these problems, enabling them to take their growth story forward.
At the end of the day, every startup runs because they’re solving a customer problem.
The main takeaway from the discussion was that startups have to be passionate about the problem they’re solving.
Some startups end up creating a problem even when there isn’t one.
The discussion concluded on the note that running a startup is more than just about being your own boss or the money.
Presidio IPO Fails To Ignite Investor Interest, Opens Below Range
Technology unicorn Presidio (PSDO) began its first day of trading Friday by debuting below its offer price, showing subdued investor reaction following the more splashy initial public offering of Snapchat operator Snap (SNAP).
Late Thursday, Presidio raised $233 million, pricing 16.7 million shares at 14 each and the low end of its estimated range of 14-to-16.
Presidio stock opened at 13.50 on the stock market today and climbed to 14, back to the initial offering price.
Presidio specializes in digital infrastructure, cloud computing and security solutions, with about 7,000 business and government customers.
Presidio came to market with a valuation of about $1.3 billion, making it the first tech unicorn to go public since the much-larger Snap did last week.
You can also read this Investor’s Corner on how should you handle Snap’s market debut to maximize your chances for success with IPOs.
Snap held its initial public offering on March 1, giving the company a market valuation of $24 billion.
Shares priced at 17, the high end of its estimated range, and popped 44% on the first day of trading to close at 24.48.
The following day Snap hit a record high of 29.44 but has been on a downward slide since, with the stock currently trading near 23, up fractionally.
In other IPOs this past week, women’s apparel provider J. Jill (JILL) priced 11.7 million shares at $13, below its estimated range of 14 to 16.
Why Your Customers Deserve Personalized Responses on Social Media
Why Your Customers Deserve Personalized Responses on Social Media.
Social media, in fact, represents an important opportunity for brands to engage with their customers on a deeper level and provide an outstanding user experience by delivering personalized social responses.
Here are several reasons why a social media strategy is a smart move.
Specifically they worry that if they engage closely with too many customers who are looking for a refund, they will end up bleeding revenue uncontrollably.
Social media creates endless opportunities to personally acknowledge and address customer issues quickly.
The key to succeeding with this strategy is to always keep your promises; if you tell a customer you’re going to follow up on an issue later, you absolutely have to do that.
The best customer service responses through social media indicate that first, the brand is listening intently, and, second, responding.
Many times, customers will reach out to a brand using their preferred social channel for a quick answer to a product-related question.
The problem is, contemporary customers are too savvy to be fooled into thinking that an automated reply was actually written for them; and the lack of a personalized response only sends the message that your company has more important things to worry about than their satisfaction.
When it comes to repeat customers, social media interactions offer an extended opportunity to create a memorable experience.
The Future Of Native Advertising for Brands and Publishers
The Future Of Native Advertising for Brands and Publishers.
As a case in point, about 90 percent of Daily Beast’s ad revenue is attributed to native advertising.
Feed-based advertising is the most efficient means of native advertising.
This also means that practically every marketing endeavor can be benchmarked against feed-based ads of Facebook and Twitter.
While some critics of native advertising assert that brands can benefit from consumers reading an informative article about them without figuring out that it’s actually sponsored, clear labeling goes a long way in reinforcing credibility in the minds of readers.
Clear labeling removes ambivalence on the part of consumers because legitimate brands should want to display their logos atop native ads if they shape up well and deliver a potentially monetization-inducing experience.
In the near future, native ads might end up resembling traditional forms of advertising such as TV commercials, where the brand remains the focal point of the ‘bigger picture’ (yes, story).
Mobile Messaging – Opportunities Galore Traditional platforms of digital advertising have not had a lot of success on mobile phones, which have emerged as the go-to source for news/content reading.
It is here that native advertising can really strike gold.
Over the next 2-3 years, the native advertising industry is expected to clean up the gray area surrounding branded content through the cohesive participation of brands, publishers, and social media.
Vodacom Tanzania Begins IPO as MD Sees Acquisitions, Mergers
Vodacom Group Ltd.’s Tanzanian unit will begin an initial public offering on Thursday, the first in a series of listings expected on the domestic exchange that may spur mergers and acquisitions, Managing Director Ian Ferrao said.
The company plans to raise 476 billion shillings ($213 million) in an offering of 560 million shares at 850 shillings each, according to a prospectus issued to brokers on Tuesday and confirmed by Ferrao.
Tanzania in June enacted a law requiring phone companies to sell at least 25 percent of their businesses to the public to boost local ownership.
The industry has more than quadrupled its subscriber base over the past decade to more than 40 million users, according to the industry regulator.
By going public, transparency will improve as companies will be required to publish their financial statements, Ferrao said in an interview.
The listings “will hopefully open up those opportunities by seeing where the pressure points are and where the opportunities are,” he said by phone.
“And hopefully open up the conversation for fair-value transactions, which may end up resulting in consolidation.” Growth Scope There’s scope for growth in Tanzania, where the industry regulator estimates mobile penetration at 80 percent of the population, said Ferrao.
Vodacom Tanzania’s market share is about 31 percent, the country’s biggest, according to Ferrao.
“There is subscriber growth left in the market,” Ferrao said.
“Data will continue to accelerate as more customers continue to adopt data services and get connected to the internet.” The company plans to introduce new products using its mobile-money M-Pesa product, including merchant payment platforms, and data offerings such as a partnership with Lusaka, Zambia-based pan-African pay-TV company Kwese TV to distribute content through Vodacom.
3 Ways to Make Your Organization More Open and Connected
3 Ways to Make Your Organization More Open and Connected.
It sometimes seems like “business as usual” is still making it difficult for people to really feel like they are collaborating and communicating to get things done.
By taking the following three concepts into account, any entrepreneur can make his or her organization more open and connected in a tangible way that gets results.
Inclusion: Listen to everyone Diversity awareness is on the rise, not only because we have put a human face to it, but also because diverse teams that collaborate closely are proven to be more innovative in the workplace.
Besides bonding over victories, nothing builds trust and connection among teams quite like people feeling that their own unique voices are being heard in a consistent and successful way.
Another good example is Johnson & Johnson, a global organization with employees all over the world, who realized that they needed culturally relevant and appropriate content for distance learning and training that would make sense to each specific region of the world in which they do business in order for their employees to truly feel connected.
More transparency, by simplifying communications and the flow of information, can make your organization more open and connected because people will feel like they have all of the information they need, at all points in time, to make the right decisions for the company.
At Vidyo, we’ve found that visually connecting face-to-face (often several times per day) is a transparent way to reduce miscommunications and thoroughly flesh out the details at hand.
Communicating and collaborating with a higher degree of sustainability, inclusion and transparency can make your organization more open and connected.
It’s true that social media can over-simplifiy our communications, and that open floor plans aren’t all that seamless — if you are looking to create a more open and connected company, think outside the box and try to bake these three ideas into the foundation of your culture.
Embrace Your Employees’ Differences to Become a Stronger Business Leader
Embrace Your Employees’ Differences to Become a Stronger Business Leader.
But too many leaders today don’t create workplaces that value diversity of thought.
We see this in the demands Millennials are making on the companies they’re willing to work for — and the kinds of companies they’re creating.
Nurturing shared corporate values to support and protect long-term success requires vigilance and constant attention from leadership at all levels.
It takes great leadership to keep these corporate cultures on the right path and continuously improving.
That’s how we create high-performance environments that enable the full potential in the people our leadership and businesses touch.
Effective corporate cultures support high-performance through both diversity of thought and likemindedness in approach, style and attitude.
They apply the six characteristics of the innovation mentality to break free from templates and create organizations led by those personal brands and their value propositions, not job titles or descriptions.
Invest in the development and advancement of others.
Our goal as leaders is to convert the melting pot of differences into a mosaic that fuels strategies for growth, innovation and opportunity to maximize the full potential of people, brands and businesses.