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Momchil Kyurkchiev, originally from Bulgaria, is the CEO and cofounder of Leanplum, a marketing cloud built for the mobile era, with offices in San Francisco, New York, London, and Bulgaria. They’ve raised $46M in funding from top-tier VCs like Canaan Partners, Kleiner Perkins, and Shasta Ventures, and won VentureBeat’s GrowthBeat Innovation Showdown. Momchil has used his life experiences to help prepare for startup life. Momchil shares how being an immigrant has helped him launch a startup....

A perfect example is how men’s fashion site JackThreads is revolutionizing online clothing shopping with a program called tryouts, which allows you to have clothes shipped to you where you can try them on for free before buying them. This isn’t the first time online shopping has become more effective or personal. Here are several ways online shopping has improved: It’s Becoming More Like Shopping in Person As for JackThreads, online retailers and ecommerce platforms are evolving to become more like shopping at brick and mortar establishments and in some ways are even better....

The Importance of Preventative Healthcare Take MediSafe, for example. Its founder, Bob Shor, began the company after his father accidentally injected himself with an overdose of insulin. MediSafe provides an app that helps patients avoid such errors by allowing them to track the exact dosages of their prescriptions, as well as the times of the day at which patients take them. For elderly patients and harried executives too busy to track their own use of prescription medicines, this company is a lifesaver....

Over the long term, real estate values are expected to rise in tandem with the upsurge in the middle class population and the corresponding increase in demand for flats, villas, office buildings, and retail establishments. This principle bodes well for property investors. But as anyone who has conducted real estate transactions in India can describe, the experience can be harrowing. The purchasing process often includes red tape, heavy time demands, and legal uncertainty....

It’s important, they agreed, to use the right tools and sharpen management strategies to ensure success in a distributed environment. Matt Zwiebel, member success manager for Galvanize in Denver, learned from his boss that you have to put in the time to get to know people who don’t sit near you every day. “He really works his ass off” to dig deeper and make connections with people who work in other cities, said Zwiebel....

Take a look below for a few sure-fire ways to improve your startup’s online reputation. Put Quality First So many novices believe that the way to improve your reputation is to follow a secret formula; that companies are handed down a magical water cooler that can turn bad ideas into lucrative products and annoying employees into golden eggs. That’s not the case at all. The best way to improve your online reputation is to follow through on your promises....

At first glance, Pokémon Go may seem like an app only lovers of the franchise would understand. However, Pokémon Go relies on physical locations as in-game PokéStops and gyms, including local businesses, landmarks, and public spaces. Local businesses around the nation have started to offer discounts and host special events specifically for Pokémon trainers: and their results have been astounding. With the right techniques, you have the opportunity as well to attract new customers by embracing the lifestyle of a Pokémon trainer....

Unfortunately, that’s easier said than done. So many great markets are over-saturated these days. But, that doesn’t mean there isn’t room for a new kid on the block. Here are a few tips on how to both pick and succeed in an over-saturated market: Picking A Target Market One of the quickest ways to identify an area where your business can solve very real problems is to be the cure....

Nowadays, we have “traditional” virtual assistants (VA) that are actually people with awesome people skills that help businesses tackle all kinds of errands ranging from mundane tasks such as schedules, appointments, meetings and conferences all the way to more complicated matters such as customer support, marketing assistants and business advisors. Furthermore, technological advancement has started to scratch the surface of artificial intelligence (AI) enabling the possibility of AI virtual assistants....

I’m a perfectly rational human being, so I’m well-aware that what I’m seeing isn’t at all an accurate portrayal of how people will actually interact with the game in real life. I mean, sure, while augmented reality and virtual reality have made significant strides in recent years, we’re not yet at a stage where AR/VR Pokémon models hang around the real world whenever we want them to. But outside of the magnificent trailer, the mere availability of a Pokémon game for the smartphone is something that geeks everywhere have wanted for years....

Apper allows anyone to generate their own content-driven mobile app in mere minutes with no programming or coding knowledge required. Their platform supports multiple operating systems, running cleanly on iOS, Android, and Windows Phone 8. The team built out Apper as a lean, scalable, secure, and robust cloud service environment. What that means for users is: you can create your own applications by combining lists, menus, maps, feeds, images, videos, and links through the UI....

Converged Infrastructure The Netflix cloud migration stands as another example of converged infrastructure, an operational model which more and more companies are turning to as a way of minimizing disruption while storing, processing, and analyzing massive amounts of data on a daily basis. How much data are we talking about here? Sandvine’s most recent Global Internet Phenomena Report credits real-time entertainment streaming for 70 percent of North American downstream traffic in the peak hours....

The app lets users share tasks on their Complete feed and help each other accomplish goals via motivation, resources, and connections. That is, we all have a lot of things we want to get done, but Complete helps push people to actually complete those tasks. Let’s say, for example, you want to get and stay in shape, a task that’s challenging for anybody. People in your network on the Complete platform can help motivate you towards that success....

It’s not that they’re impossible to understand, it’s just that there are enough nuances and subtleties to sink the Titanic. Sure, there’s a website called Know Before you Fly that details some of the regulations in your area, but even so there’s a lot that’s left out (side bar: don’t misunderstand me here, Know Before you Fly is still an amazing resource). I recently wrote about four women who were pioneering the future of the drone industry, and not long after it was published one of the women in the article, Lisa Ellman – law partner at Hogan Lovells, reached out to me with a golden opportunity....

With COVID-19 cases on the decline, many businesses around the world are calling for employees to return to work. Even President Joe Biden called for employers to start transitioning teams back into the office. However, studies show that the majority of workers are adamant about staying home and not returning to their commutes. Fortunately, Lyft got the memo and has just announced that all its employees will have the “fully flexible option” to choose how they will work for the foreseeable future....

According to an announcement on Monday, Lyft plans to add a multiple stops feature to their popular ride sharing app. The new feature will allow riders to add a destination to their ride at no extra cost other than the added time and mileage of the extra stop. And whether it’s for running errands, carpooling, or taking a trip around the city, this addition to Lyft will go a long way in making transportation easier than ever....

The process is simple: just share your personal HangPay link with someone. When they click on it, you’ll get a notification. Open up the Hangout, choose a price, and start talking. If they reject the fee, you can negotiate. Here’s what you see when someone starts to initiate a paid call: HangPay uses Google Wallet for transactions, and they take a 4 percent fee. During the beta test, they’ve seen accountants, nutritionists, language tutors, and lawyers hanging out and getting paid....

Budke co-founded Film This with Trey Long to engage the loyal customers and amateur videographers in the world. They work directly with brands to create engaging video challenges and incentives for fans who want to submit and post personally created videos to social media pages. That inspiration drove Film This to establish a twofold model. First, brands achieve mass publicity without having to spend beaucoup bucks on a marketing strategy....

Beginning at 7:00pm on Saturday, March 9th, we’re thrilled to be showcasing 27 (updated) 29 of the hottest startups from around the world as part of Tech Cocktail’s SXSW Startup Celebration sponsored by CEA and .CO. Attendees will have the chance to interact face to face with the startups, enjoy an open bar, mingle with a few thousand of their closest SXSW friends, and some other surprises along the way (hint: ninjas)....

We’re only a few days into the show and we’ve already seen Mercedes, Honda, and Toyota show off concept cars designed to make our minds run wild about the future of driving. Even Sony — yes, the PlayStation company — has seen fit to create a concept car for the show. So, let’s take a look at each of the manufacturers’ offerings and see which ones (if any) might make it onto your driveway in years to come....