11 Amsterdam-based startups you should know!

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5 April 2023

The New York startup scene is one of the most well-known in the world and is often referred to as the Silicon Valley of the East. The city is home to a wealth of talented entrepreneurs and invests in a variety of industries such as technology, healthcare, retail, real estate, and more.

Here are 11 startups from New York that you should know:

Peloton: Peloton is a fitness startup that offers interactive fitness classes via streaming video. Peloton has experienced tremendous growth in recent years and its products are now popular worldwide.

Oscar Health: Oscar Health is a digital healthcare company that offers health insurance through a user-friendly platform. The company has successfully expanded its market share in the United States in recent years.

WeWork: WeWork is a company that offers flexible workspaces. It has expanded rapidly in recent years and has offices in many countries around the world.

Compass: Compass is a real estate technology startup that offers a platform for buying and selling real estate. The company has revolutionized the real estate market in recent years by creating innovative technologies and facilitating transactions that were traditionally associated with high costs and inconvenience.

Harry’s: Harry’s is an online retailer of razor blades and grooming products for men. The company quickly made a name for itself by offering high-quality products at an affordable price.

Rent the Runway: Rent the Runway is an online rental service for designer clothing and accessories for women. The company quickly gained popularity through its innovative business strategy, which allows women to wear luxury clothing at affordable prices.

Warby Parker: Warby Parker is an eyewear company that has revolutionized the eyewear industry through its affordable prices and innovative online sales.

Blue Apron: Blue Apron is an online meal delivery service that delivers all the necessary ingredients for meals at home. The company has expanded rapidly in recent years and is now popular in many countries worldwide.

Glossier: Glossier is a cosmetic startup that offers skincare and makeup products for women. The company has gained rapid popularity in recent years by prioritizing user-friendliness and minimalist design.

Squarespace: Squarespace is a company that offers a platform for creating websites and e-commerce websites. The company quickly made a name for itself by offering a user-friendly platform and a wide selection of templates.

Zola: Zola is an incredibly intuitive platform that makes it easy for couples to create stylish and personalized wedding invitations and manage their gift registry. With Zola, couples can manage their guest list, collect RSVPs, and register gifts from a variety of vendors – all in one place. Zola also has an extensive collection of resources and tools to help couples plan their wedding, from creating a timeline to selecting wedding photographers. Overall, Zola has set a new standard for online wedding planning and is a fantastic resource for couples looking to take their wedding to the next level.

The New York startup scene is characterized by its diversity and innovation. The city is a melting pot of people from around the world who bring their ideas and talents to the city. The city also has a strong infrastructure, including some of the best universities and research institutions in the world, which serve as a breeding ground for innovation. Additionally, New York has a culture of risk-taking and entrepreneurship that enables people to take risks and realize new ideas. The combination of these factors makes the New York startup scene one of the most exciting and dynamic in the world.

Image by Susanne Weizhofer on Pixabay

The most important thing in any business is people

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31 March 2023

HypeFactory international innovative Influencer Marketing agency

Please introduce yourself and your startup HypeFactory to our readers?

I am Regina Tsvyrova, the Chief Operating Officer of HypeFactory. We are an international innovative Influencer Marketing agency, with a focus on developing technology in conjunction with creativity for the best possible campaign and collaboration performances. We have more than one hundred employees of different ethnicities, located on different continents and that speak multiple languages. Our team of international talent managers closely work with content creators and brands to deliver enhanced campaign results across platforms like Twitch, TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and more. HypeFactory focuses on the Tech industry, however, we provide a variety of influencer marketing services applicable to any vertical.

How did you get the idea of HypeFactory?

The idea of starting this agency came to me in a dream, much like how Mendeleev came up with the periodic table of elements. In reality, it came from experience gained through diverse networking and understanding the needs of the market we operate in. For example, we noticed that in some global regions, brands still don’t understand the power of Influencer Marketing. This inspired the idea of HypeFactory

Why did you decide to start with HypeFactory?

I was impressed by the AI that stands behind us, the speed of development, and the initial team itself. My intuition told me that such a mix of characteristics would inevitably lead to success. Those who work hand-in-hand with such technical capabilities, combined with excellent customer service, will become top of mind as the best influencer marketing agencies in the world. Not to mention, those who can meet the needs of the most demanding clients. The talent working alongside me at HypeFactory has what it takes to set the scene for how influencer marketing will be conducted in future. HypeFactory started as a result of dedicated industry professionals wanting to contribute to the dynamic uprise of the IM industry.

What is the vision behind HypeFactory?

Actually everything behind this was driven by love – love for the industry, clients, and continuous development. The global vision is to be at the forefront, testing new things first, creating trends, and ultimately becoming a standard-bearer for our company in our niche. We aim to become a one-stop-shop influencer marketing agency where any global brand or international product can come and get all the services related to working with opinion leaders – from communication platforms and large-scale ambassadorship to niche campaigns in all possible regional networks around the world.

How difficult was the start and which challenges you had to overcome?

The hardest step is always the first one. After that, I just had to do what I’m good at and passionate about. We faced many difficulties in the beginning, such as building a completely new international and efficient team and creating a technological ecosystem within the company.

Now we are at the stage where we are dealing with building a reputation and name in new markets and with new client categories. Asia is our focus for 2023, and we are also signing talents in the US and Europe for exclusive collaborations, thereby increasing the diversity of our client portfolio, expanding the profile of our classic client from gaming and IT products to working with FMCG.

Who is your target audience?

The beauty of our industry is that influencers as a sales channel are equally effective for international mobile games and for, say, mayonnaise from Bristol. Therefore, the target audience is incredibly broad, and we are ready to offer different tools depending on the client’s niche and their KPI.

What unites our clients is the amount of investment they allocate to the channel. Most of our clients are already playing big, and for them, Influencer Marketing is one of the three most important promotion channels alongside Facebook and Google, and they are willing to invest $500k or more per year in influencer partnerships.

What is the USP of HypeFactory?

24/7 Support for Global Engagement: Thanks to our international team, HypeFactory can work around the clock to launch data-driven influencer marketing campaigns across various time zones and geographic locations. Utilizing reliable social platforms, we engage international audiences for enhanced results. Our team is multi-versatile and won’t hesitate to collaborate with even 500 influencers at once, on a time crunch.

Leveraging The Power of AI: Our HypeDetect tool helps us to assess the quality, trustworthiness and performance of influencers. This assists us to better match talented personalities with the brands they’ll be representing. HypeDetect benchmarks channels and content creators based on 55 characteristics, complicated data, and makes use of the dynamics of audience development and comment authenticity. After analysis, the tool generates an Audience Quality Score and Channel Quality Score. Those superpower metrics won’t let fraud detection slip and help us make informed decisions for propper brand-influencer pairings.

Talent Management: Our Talent Management services make brand-influencer partnerships more coherent on all accounts. HypeFactory’s talent services assist marketers in establishing meaningful connections with influencers and their audiences.

Can you describe your typical workday?

My day is equally strategic and creative, sometimes turbulent – as with any business – but predominantly involves critical thinking activities. Usually, this involves Zoom meetings with the heads of different departments in our company, or with key clients, or with new promising partners. Sometimes it’s about exploring new possibilities, preparing presentations for founders, or describing new processes within the teams.

My main task is to ensure that the mechanism of our work runs like Swiss clockwork. Therefore, control and debugging. I am also the person who first understands how we can expand our service or where the market is heading. All new initiatives and directions are launched by me.

Where do you see yourself and HypeFactory in five years?

I hope we are still in hype with the turnovers and clients that we once only dreamed of. And that HypeFactory will be brought to a state where it will be a super-successful organism with truly large international recognition in narrow circles, where any competitive analysis of similar agencies will start with our name.

What 3 tips would you give to startup founders?

The most important thing in any business is people. You need to think about people and be the kind of leader that you would want for yourself someday. Set an example and don’t expect your team to be motivated if you’re not involved and proactive.

The second thing is expanding your networking. Even seemingly remote contacts can lead you to very important or even game-changing ideas or connections.

Thirdly, stay aware of your industry’s developments so that you are in the right place, at the right time, and with the right amount of luck to present your innovative industry contributions. The more you find yourself in different places at different times, the higher the chances of identifying the right moment to disrupt the market with new ideas.

Thank you Regina Tsvyrava for the Interview

Statements of the author and the interviewee do not necessarily represent the editors and the publisher opinion again.

Know when to turn off for the day

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22 March 2023

Contractuali, a next-generation contract management platform that will transform your contracts into data-rich, digital assets

Please introduce yourself and your startup Contractuali to our readers!

Hello readers! My name is John, and I am the founder and managing director of Contractuali, a next-generation contract management platform that will transform your contracts into data-rich, digital assets. Contractuali makes it possible for businesses to unlock the data within their contracts and enable data-driven decision making.

Our SaaS platform not only offers draft, review, and eSignature capabilities, but also an intuitive data tagging and query system to facilitate the networking of data from source documents to various end use cases. Want to track and be reminded of renewal dates? Done. Want to track quantities on purchase orders? No problem. Want to keep track of specific wording in your contracts to stay compliant? Simple. With Contractuali, all your contract data is at your fingertips .

How did you get the idea of Contractuali ?

In my second year out of Georgetown University, I started working as a Risk Analyst for a commercial real estate company called Kimco Realty Corporation. One of the Risk team’s primary functions was to conduct due diligence on new acquisitions and generate return models. This involved processing the property in question’s lease documents, including pulling out key metrics — such as rent and leasable area — and identifying red flags — such as restrictive language or tenants in poor financial health.

Anyone who has done this will tell you that this is tedious work. It’s highly manual, time-consuming, and error prone — even when an abstraction service is used. I remember thinking to myself, “It’d really be great if I could just plug a source document into my return model and have all of the relevant data automatically import itself where needed.” That was and, to a certain extent, still is the core idea behind Contractuali.

Why did you decide to start with Contractuali ?

I started Contractuali because I love to solve problems. I experienced a pain point at Kimco, and it is extremely fulfilling to build a product that will alleviate that pain. My work at Kimco Realty Corporation was the starting point. I eventually stepped away from my role there to study software engineering and acquire the technical background needed to develop the idea behind Contractuali. For the better part of the years from mid-2016 to early-2022, I worked as a full stack engineer, picking up useful insights in design, UX-UI, and engineering. In the Fall of 2021, I finally felt ready to bring Contractuali to life.

What is the vision behind Contractuali ?

Our mission at Contractuali is to make contracts the data-rich, digital assets they always should have been. Let’s explore what we mean by that.

The standard contract data infrastructure to this day is to store contract documents in a company’s file system as PDFs. Meanwhile, the respective contract data is stored separately in a database. This disconnect necessitates time-consuming, recurring audits to ensure database data remains fresh.

Contractuali removes this disconnect and, in effect, makes a source contract document itself the database, thereby making contract data accessible, queryable, and networkable directly from source documents. This removes a huge source of friction and errors normally experienced when processing or monitoring contract terms and, in turn, enables companies to more effectively leverage their contracts to power data-driven decision-making.

How difficult was the start and which challenges you had to overcome?

The start actually was the easiest part, the trick has been to keep the momentum going through the first year. Coming from the US, my biggest challenge has been to build up a network here in Hamburg and Germany. I have a healthy network back in the States and am still building one on this side of the pond. Building the company and my local network simultaneously, inevitably resulted in some missteps that could have been avoided had I known certain connections earlier in the journey. Thankfully, I am starting to really integrate into the startup scene here in Hamburg over the past few months.

Another challenge that every founder runs into — and I’m no exception — is how to build a team with limited resources. The promise of future value through equity has historically been an effective tool to use, but times are tough, and equity currently has less pull than competitive pay in the here and now. It’s completely understandable, but it makes balancing the budget with the required experience an extremely important exercise — especially when hiring outside of your core area of expertise.

Who is your target audience?

We are initially targeting real estate companies that own and operate medium to large property portfolios. Real estate contracts are complex and long-lived — necessitating good contracting practices in order to be properly maintained and monitored. This is exactly the scenario in which Contractuali is useful.

We can also see ourselves serving customers in other industry verticals — particularly logistics, construction, and general financial service providers. In short, if a company is having trouble monitoring and managing their contracts and contract data at volume, we feel Contractuali can serve them well.

What is the USP of your startup?

Contractuali is more than simply a signature provider and document repository. As mentioned earlier, by eliminating the gap between source documents and data storage, we not only make it far more efficient to leverage and analyze contract data, but also set the stage for automated reporting and fulfillment. We want to make access to your data as easy as possible. To that end, we are working on interfaces for a variety of programs to automatically export the data to. So you can stay in your preferred software environment while having instant access to contract data.

Can you describe your typical workday ?

I am not one of those founders who get up at 4:30 and crush an hour or two at the gym before work. I value my sleep too much. Nonetheless, I’m online by 8:30 and spend the morning until about 10 checking in with the team and taking care of smaller to-dos. 10-12 is reserved for dedicated work or meetings.

Around noon, I prepare lunch, and if I’m on dog duty, take the puppy for a longer walk. 13-17:30 is another stretch of dedicated work/meeting time broken up by a short coffee break around 15:00. By 17:30, I aim to have achieved the bulk of the work for the day, but I will take care of some lighter items or do some “back burner”-thinking until around 21:00. I’m actually answering this question during that point in the day.

Where do you see yourself and your startup Contractuali in five years?

Startup survival is far from guaranteed, but I am confident Contractuali will be alive and thriving. More specifically, I see Contractuali being a profitable, up-and-coming player in the European contract management market and a great member of the Hamburg and broader German ecosystem — working with both companies and local governments to improve their contract workflows and contract data infrastructure.

What 3 tips would you give to founders?

Know when to “turn off for the day”. This doesn’t mean don’t work late if you are still in a productive state of mind. What it means is to realize when you are fatigued to the point of being distracted and no longer producing good work. Take a walk, sleep, or if it’s the weekend, go and enjoy the time with your friends and family. Let yourself recharge.

If you don’t already have them, find a good corporate lawyer, tax advisor, and accountant. When factoring the costs that can arise from mistakes in these areas, these professionals are absolutely worth the fees they charge.

Don’t play house. Know, within the context of your company, when and why you should be conducting a certain activity, especially if you are paying for it with more than your own time. Make sure it makes sense within the context of where your business is at a certain point in time. Don’t just do something because that’s what other companies are doing or because you think that’s what a company should be doing at X stage in its life.

That being said, if there’s one activity you should really do before anything else, it is to develop a mockup and use it to build up a waiting list for your service before you even start engineering. You will either get confirmation that the idea and envisioned execution hold water — which investors love to see — or you will save yourself a lot of time and money by finding out the market doesn’t exist to support the product.

Thank you John Pressman for the Interview

Statements of the author and the interviewee do not necessarily represent the editors and the publisher opinion again.

What to Know About VA Loans for an Investment Property

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16 March 2023

Let’s start by clearing up the misunderstanding that has been perpetuated by online scammers. VA loans are “Not” supposed to be used for investment properties. The VA loan scheme was set up to help people who are in the military and/or who were in the military. It works under the idea that people in the military are at a disadvantage in the housing market because of their profession.

They perhaps don’t have the time to build a credit rating, save for a deposit, and especially to buy a house at the right time (since they may be overseas at the right time). The VA loan system is supposed to redress the balance, not to give people in the military an advantage to make money from investments. Nevertheless, if you are prepared to play by the rules, you can use your VA loan to help you build wealth strategically over the long term.

There Are Two Ways to Build Wealth

You can build wealth by buying a house and letting it out until the mortgage is paid off, and then hopefully, the house will have grown in value so that you make a profit. The second method is to use the VA loan to buy a fixer-upper house, and then use the VA loan to both buy the house and pay for certain (most) repairs. You then live in the house for a year or two and sell it. This is the classic flip-it-for-a-profit method.

Letting The Property Out to Tenants

The first is to buy the house, live in the house for as long as the VA lender says you should, and then move out and have tenants pay you rent. The VA lender is going to insist that you keep your house as your primary residence for a year or two. After that point, you can sell it, rent it out, etc.

Under normal circumstances, there is no guarantee that letting out your house will draw a profit. After all, letting a building comes with several risks that may result in big losses. Plus, while you are in another building paying rent, you are not making a very big net gain. This is even worse if your house isn’t gaining in value, if the tenants are causing problems, and if there are legal problems, squatters, insurance problems and so forth.

On the other hand, this method may work if you are on long tours overseas because for half a year you are having your mortgage paid while saving on rent from where you live. Also, there are many occasions where the VA lender allows you to take long military tours and still call your house your primary residence. Under those circumstances, you will have to strike a deal with the tenants about your mail, census data, and so forth. It would be more like they are house guests than tenants.

On a similar note, after living in the house for however long you have to, you may want to move into your spouse’s house. In those cases, you are still paying rent while the tenant pays your mortgage, but the net losses and net gains may be a little more favorable.

Buying a Fixer Upper

The VA loan company is not going to let you buy a burnt-out house for a few grand and then have you fix it up. When you buy your fixer-upper, it has to be a house that stands a good chance of maintaining its value.

Yet, there are several guidelines that say you can buy pretty shoddy houses with the idea of fixing them up yourself. There are even VA loan variants where they will cover the cost of your house and then the costs of quoted repairs. This is especially true if the repairs are on the roof, insulation, and any security or energy efficiency problems that the structure has.

Take care of the bigger things with your VA loan money, and as you live in the house, you fix it up with your own money. When the living period is over and you are able to move houses, sell, etc., you then wait for the right time and sell your house for a tasty profit. The goal is to walk away with a net gain, though doing so may take a little longer than you first expect. As you know, it takes a while for property prices to rise after you have fixed up your house, especially if the rest of the neighborhood isn’t doing too well.

What Can You Afford?

The VA loan system seems to favor cheaper houses. If you are able to pay off your VA loan faster, then you will stand a better chance of building wealth over the long term. When you look for a house, make sure you can afford the payments. Use a VA Loan Calculator like WhatsMyPayment and make sure you have plenty of money left over after you have made your payments. Do not make the mistake of falling into further debt after you have your loan because you want to protect your credit rating.

You can take out more VA loans after you have paid off your first loan, after which you can use VA loans as a quicker way to grab investment bargains when you see them. At that point, you will have experience with the VA loan system, and your credit rating will probably entitle you to a better interest rate.

Image by Mediamodifier on Pixabay

Author: Ivan Smirnov

Statements of the author and the interviewee do not necessarily represent the editors and the publisher opinion again.

Be passionate about your mission

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13 March 2023

FreshtoHome vertically integrated e-commerce company in the Fish and Meat

Please introduce yourself and your startup FreshtoHome to our readers!

I am Shan Kadavil, a serial entrepreneur, and a multi-functional leader who has jump-started many of the popular technology companies and start-ups in the United States and India.

My startup, FreshtoHome, is the largest vertically integrated e-commerce company in the Fish and Meat branded D2C space in the world delivering over 2 million orders a month across 3 million customers in 160+ cities in India and all of UAE.

In my previous role, as the India Founder & Country Manager, my work has been instrumental in building the first and largest Studio outside the US for Zynga (NASDAQ: ZNGA), a leader in social gaming and maker of popular titles such as Farmville, CityVille, Draw Something, Words with Friends and Mafia Wars. During my tenure, Zynga India had witnessed a rocket speed growth owning and launching a number of titles that are the largest at Zynga.

Prior to Zynga, I ran Product at Support.com (NASDAQ: SPRT), a California based company considered as the market leader in the Support automation domain as their Vice President of Products. I have served in senior management and advisory roles across a number of the leading companies in the world.

At FreshtoHome, we are on a mission to enable access to chemical-free & antibiotic residue-free fresh fish and meat to meat lovers across the world. We are re-inventing the food supply chain from scratch by disintermediating the middlemen through the Freshtohome platform vendors and providing higher value to our stakeholders – farmers, fishers, and customers.

Freshtohome is now the largest such venture in the world and is funded by reputed investors across the world including the US Government.

How did you get the idea of Freshtohome?

About a decade ago, my co-founder Mathew Joseph, had started a venture called SeatoHome, an online fish delivery platform from the coastal region of Kerala in India. Hundreds of miles away, in Bangalore, I was a customer of SeatoHome and one day when my fresh fish delivery stopped, I learnt that SeatoHome was shut down as Mathew couldn’t scale the business.

As a meat lover and an angel investor, I was aware of the potential of the D2C branded food segment, and I decided to take the leap. With a broader vision to expand our business into other categories, especially the fresh food category, we decided to call it FreshtoHome, and launched the app in 2015 in Bangalore, the famously known Silicon Valley of India.

Why did you decide to start with Freshtohome?

At FreshtoHome, we do not sell fish and meat that we wouldn’t feed our own children. Before we set up FreshtoHome, samples collected from multiple harbors revealed that fish auctioned in these regions contained harmful chemicals like formalin, ammonia, among many others in order to increase the shelf life of the produce. For customers living far off the coasts, there was zero accessibility to chemical-free fish. With FreshtoHome, we have built a brand that champions a healthy lifestyle, and makes chemical-free food affordable.

What is the vision behind Freshtohome?

We have been steadfast about our vision to make chemical-free and preservative-free meat affordable and accessible to millions of meat lovers. With AI and IoT-driven solutions, we have a robust supply chain management that does not depend on middlemen, who often claim about 30-40% margins. When we say we are making chemical-free food affordable, we mean that we are able to pass on the benefits to our stakeholders – fishers, customers and investors. We will strive to make choosing preservative-food affordable for the next million.

How difficult was the start and which challenges you had to overcome?

Today, we work with over 4,000 fishers across India and more than 5,000 are people employed with us directly and indirectly. During the nascent stage of our journey, convincing fishers to make an unconventional bid – bidding electronically with us was a major challenge. We had to build technology that was user-friendly for the farmers and fishers, to be able to access the IoT-based e-auction app. At later stages, fostering new consumption habits in consumers was a challenge as people’s traditional choices of buying meat from wet markets had to be driven towards online buying. The Covid paved the way for this, and since then we have scaled rapidly as many first time buyers are now our repeat customers.

Who is your target audience?

Meat lovers across all age brackets from 6-60 and across all regions, who choose chemical-free fish and meat with every purchase.

What is the USP of your startup?

Direct sourcing from over 4,000 fishers and livestock farmers is the key USP of FreshtoHome. Further, we strongly believe technology-led solutions are long term and will sustain growth. We have integrated AI and IoT driven tech infrastructure to ensure there is zero dependency on middlemen to drive the business forward. Through AI, we predict procurement volumes, and with IoT based auctions, we are disintegrating intermediaries, thus ensuring margins are not hit. End-to-end temperature-controlled supply chain has been vital to retaining the freshness of our products.

Can you describe your typical workday ?

I wake up at 6 AM every day, and set aside some ‘me time’ including time for meditation, prayers and exercise. I consider this my magic hour because there’s a lot of silence around at this hour and I get ample time to engineer my thoughts, actions and plans towards my targets. A lot of reflection, contemplation, and self-absorption also happens during these hours. I enjoy good food and it often lifts up my mood. So, I usually start my day with a wholesome breakfast with my family. Following this, mornings start with meetings.

Where do you see yourself and your startup Freshtohome in five years?

Our goal is guided by our mission to make preservative-food affordable for the next million.

What 3 tips would you give to founders?

Be passionate about your mission, focus on the journey, and don’t take your eyes off unit economics.

Thank you Shan Kadavil for the Interview

Statements of the author and the interviewee do not necessarily represent the editors and the publisher opinion again.

Be bold, adapt and persevere

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6 March 2023

Balloonary AI-powered tool to create, launch and manage digital ads

Please introduce yourself and your startup Balloonary to our readers!

Balloonary is an easy-to-use AI-powered tool to create, launch and manage digital ads across Google, Facebook and Instagram in a matter of minutes. The brainchild of founders, Brice Dondelinger, Bob Krier, Dylan Thompson, and Marc Donis.

How did you get the idea of Balloonary?

Before starting Balloonary, we launched Spoticle, a trusted travel guides app for the tourism industry. When Covid hit, things changed dramatically and as tourism came to a complete halt, we brainstormed our next project, creating a tool that helped people test their business ideas before launching. While testing this idea, we realised that where users really needed the help was with digital advertising, and that many small businesses are missing out on the benefits that online advertising can bring.

We sought to simplify the process and make it more affordable, seeking to help brands drive new customers to their website to give them the edge, as well as be seen by more people. This soon turned into Balloonary, and our main aim is to make the process of creating, launching, and analysing online ad campaigns fast and simple giving business owners the confidence to really explore and benefit from the world of online ads.

Why did you decide to start with Balloonary?

Balloonary was a natural continuation of uswanting to keep working together as a team even though we had to pivot away from the idea that initially brought us together.

What is the vision behind Balloonary?

Helping side hustlers, solopreneurs and micro businesses conquer the world of online ads to supercharge the earning potential of their small business.

Balloonary gives small businesses the power to stand out and get noticed by the right audience by giving them the expertise and tools that larger companies use for sales success.

How difficult was the start and which challenges you had to overcome?

Working on your startup is a rollercoaster ride and there is really a process to it. You have to identify the pain of potential customers, define a value proposition, then build out the solution, go to market, get feedback, fix bugs and so on and there really are challenges around every corner, while the market is constantly shifting. Your are in startup mode and you try to win one battle at the time, especially in the beginning when you are bootstrapped.

Who is your target audience?

Side hustlers, solopreneurs, micro businesses and micro agencies

What is the USP of your startup?

Our main USP is that no design or marketing skills are needed, simply enter a business URL and Balloonary’s AI will analyse the website and create high quality ads, launching campaigns in less than 10 minutes, on Facebook, Instagram, and Google. We are really 5x times easier and 10x faster than going via the ad platforms directly.

Can you describe your typical workday ?

Monday to Friday 9am to 5 pm does not exist. Balloonary supports 26 languages and we operate worldwide. The typical day starts with checking what happened while the office lights were off. We then usually have a quick team chat and set priorities for the day. We all have quite varied backgrounds and skill sets which are totally different but complement one another. Being 4 co-founders, we have split responsibilities and everyone goes after his milestones and deadlines and reaches out when we need to bounce ideas off each other.

There is a lot of hands-on, but working with several services providers, there is also a lot of coordinating and follow-ups to do. And somewhere in between we try to eat, drink more water, fail at exercising and cater to the needs of family life.

Where do you see yourself and your startup Balloonary in five years?

We see exciting new developments in online and digital marketing and we believe in the power of AI to assist business owners conquer those new channels with ease to grow their businesses.

Balloonary will be the go-to platform to give business owners access to custom and professional agency-level ads at a fraction of the cost and time.

What 3 tips would you give to founders?

Be bold, adapt and persevere

Thank you Brice Dondelinger, Bob Krier, Dylan Thompson, and Marc Donis for the Interview

Statements of the author and the interviewee do not necessarily represent the editors and the publisher opinion again.

Workplace Safety: How to Keep Your Warehouse Workers Safe

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16 February 2023

No matter what type of business you are running, ensuring the safety of your employees should be your top priority. This is especially true if you have a large business warehouse with a lot of workers operating within this space.

Making sure your workers are safe will not only make them satisfied and focused on their jobs, but it will also ensure your business operations don’t experience any downtime due to unforeseen circumstances, such as a workplace injury that could have been easily avoided.

That being said, here are some workplace essentials that will help keep your employees safe.

Install safety bumpers

First, bear in mind that workplace accidents can happen anywhere there are work activities, equipment and structures, and even in places you least expect. For instance, to avoid having your workers pinned or hurt by heavy automated warehouse doors, or running equipment, you should consider using protective bumpers or buffers – for example, safety bumpers made in Germany. These bumpers are equipped with contact-sensitive detectors made to immediately stop the machine they’re attached to if they sense closeness or contact with a person’s body. This way, you can avoid accidents and ensure all your employees are safe from injuries.

Proper lighting

The next thing that requires undivided attention is warehouse lighting. Since warehouse facilities normally don’t get a lot of – or any – natural light, it’s essential to ensure that every nook and cranny of your warehouse is properly illuminated. Poor lighting is one of the main culprits behind workplace accidents and injuries, especially in warehouses, storages facilities and hangars.

Therefore, you should install enough sources of strong overhead light and even consider adding some additional lighting sources in areas that may still remain shaded. If your warehouse is filled with tall shelving units, you can even install lighting sources on every other shelf. To ensure you have enough lighting without spending too much on your energy bill, you should opt for LED or CFL lighting solutions.

Proper safety gear and continuous training

You also need to make sure all your warehouse employees are provided with the necessary safety gear and equipment that will protect them in case something goes wrong. Personal protective clothing (PPE) is essential, particularly hard hats and reflective vests. Aside from the clothing and equipment itself, you also need to ensure that all of your employees receive proper workplace safety training. But keep in mind that the training sessions should not be rushed and all your employees need to abide by safety protocols at all times.

Keep the warehouse clean and organized

Finally, make sure you insist on keeping your warehouse clean and neatly organized. A warehouse space full of jumbled-up packages is neither easy to navigate nor does it provide a safe working environment. Moreover, any accidental spills can easily create situations that could result in serious consequences. Therefore, you need to ensure that your warehouse stays neatly organized and clean as much as possible, so that all of your employees can have a great environment to work in.

Author Bazoom

Statements of the author and the interviewee do not necessarily represent the editors and the publisher opinion again.

Success comes from all the small steps that are taken

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13 February 2023

Whoppah, the digital secondhand marketplace for interior design and art, launches in Germany

Why don’t you briefly introduce your startup Whoppah to the readers?

Whoppah is one of the largest online marketplaces for secondhand design furniture and art in Europe. Our platform offers a wide selection of curated design classics, high-quality furniture and second-hand art. What it means. Every piece of art or furniture is checked by our team before it can be offered on Whoppah. Our curators check the authenticity, quality and condition of the pieces. In addition, we place special emphasis on secure buying and selling processes and smooth in-house logistics to make using Whoppah as easy as possible for buyers and sellers.

Why did you decide to start a company and what is the vision behind it?

We founded Whoppah in 2019 out of a personal desire: We were looking in vain for a platform that exclusively traded designer furniture pieces. The founding idea came about after we realized that you often have to search long and in vain on the usual online marketplaces.

With Whoppah, we want to promote the circular economy and encourage a change in consumer thinking. We believe that secondhand should be easily accessible to all and ideally become the new norm. The most environmentally friendly product remains the one that does not need to be produced. Our wish is that consumers will consider secondhand products as their first choice in the future.

From idea to launch what have been the biggest challenges so far and how have you financed?

Fortunately, we have a great team at Whoppah that ensures we can offer a very intuitive and innovative technology. However, getting there is often not easy, because great teams don’t fall from the sky – they have to bring the right skills and fit the brand to do so. Then there is the question of market fit for a product like Whoppah. We are continuously adapting to current market conditions.

We finance our startup together with other entrepreneurs with experience in interior design, technology, e-commerce and finance. All investors are convinced of our vision and stand behind us 100 percent. The fact that this expertise and passion is paying off is shown by our first sales figures, of which we are very proud. In 2021, revenue (GMV) was EUR 6 million, and the following year it increased by 316 percent to EUR 20 million. For 2023, we expect sales of 50 million euros.

Who is Whoppah’s target audience?

Whoppah is aimed at all art connoisseurs and design lovers, but also at consumers who don’t want to sacrifice a certain luxury on a smaller budget.

Style-conscious people with a sustainable lifestyle will also find exactly what they are looking for.

How does Whoppah work? What are the advantages? What sets you apart from other providers?

Whoppah fills a niche that has remained empty until now: an online marketplace that precisely targets lovers of design. Whoppah convinces both with its ease of use via website and app, as well as with fair prices. The buyer protection also ensures a secure purchase transaction, and the in-house logistics ensure smooth processes, even for private customers.

Whoppah, where are you headed? Where do you see yourself in five years?

We want to be the largest second-hand marketplace for design and art in Europe. Whoppah’s goal in Germany is 1000 registrations per day. While talks are already underway with more investors, expansion into Italy and France is already on our agenda.

In conclusion: What 3 tips would you give to aspiring founders?

We recommend setting high goals right away. That motivates even more. These goals should be clearly defined so that the team behind the brand knows what it is working for.

Nevertheless, the following applies: Never give up. There is no one tip that will bring instant success. Success comes from all the small steps that are taken. Every single step brings you a little bit closer to your goal.

Copyright Picture: whoppah

More information you will find here

Thank you Evelien Remmelts and Thomas Bunnik for the Interview

Statements of the author and the interviewee do not necessarily represent the editors and the publisher opinion again.

Common cause: Maximilian Günther is official partner and PR ambassador of Racemates

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3 February 2023