StartupRealities

StartupRealities No 54 SnailPail  is a pet distributor that specialises in common but non-traditional pets such as snails, earthworms, beetles and butterflies. The company produces aquariums and other types of containers for these animals that maximise viewing opportunities, e.g. glass labyrinths for snails and worms. CEO QUOTE "SnailPail delivers an interesting glass container at your home, full of exotic animals... as pets go. But that's not the whole story. We also creates educational opportunities. For example, children who own snails love taking them out of their #snailquarium and racing them against one another on a sheet of paper. #SnailRacing is a creative and fun game and we make this type of creativity possible: our pets are relatively low-maintenance, multiple in number and easily replaceable," - said company founder and CEO Sanyl Pali. Garden snails crawling out of a snailquarium

StartupRealities No 53 TombSolar is a renewable energy producer that installs solar panels at cemeteries; while its sister company SolarTomb is a cemetery operator that sells burial plots covered by solar panels. TombSolar installs panels at cemeteries owned or operated by other companies, while SolarTomb owns and runs both the cemeteries and the solar installations. SolarTomb has a premium division that builds tombs and tombstones with a photovoltaic (PV) film cladding, so that individual graves can generate solar electricity even without a solar panel cover. CEO QUOTE "Turning the ashes of your grandparents into a diamond is meaningful but is already kind of old-fashioned. Why not have your grandparents generate energy instead? Even if grandma and grandpa weren't militant environmentalists, they probably wouldn't mind helping out to slow down global warming. Who would mind having a solar panel installed on their grave, for the sake of climate change?" - the fou...

StartupRealities No 52 CommunityEnergizer  is a communications company that helps neighbours engage in community/neighbourhood groups on social media. The company's activities are particularly relevant during the Covid-19 pandemic as the WhatsApp groups it creates for every street allow maintaining contact and engaging with vulnerable people during the 2020 coronavirus lockdown. CEO QUOTE "Social media networks emerged and thrived for more than a decade as virtual networks. You could keep in touch with friends across oceans and continents and keep within reach acquaintances that you only met once in real life. But social media never bothered to bring together people who share physical spaces, such as the neighbours in a street or a block. CommunityEnergizer has changed all this: now everybody knows that there is a group out there with the name of their street and all they need to do is join the group. We appoint responsible volunteers from the community as group administr...

StartupRealities No 51 FishButter is a dairy company that produces butter enriched with purified fish oil that helps compensate for the negative effects of saturated fat consumption. Fish oil contains Omega3 fatty acids (EPA and DHA) which help reduce the incidence of inflammation and cardiovascular disease . CEO QUOTE: "Butter is delicious but consuming too much of it can pose health risks even for healthy people with low levels of blood cholesterol. Many companies produce butter mixed with olive oil to mitigate these health risks. We go a step further and add purified fish oil to our butter. To mask the residual fish odour, we flavour our butter with garlic, pimento, curry and herbs - of your choosing," said company founder and CEO Finn Butler. Butter (Source: Wikipedia )

StartupRealities No 50 PlatformChase is a digital communications app that shows you which online platform you should use in order to have the smoothest communication with any given friend or contact. On a crowded smartphone screen there are a dozen social media and online communication apps and platforms to choose from. Most people have their preferred one or two platforms depending on the country they live in, their professional and personal networks, age and individual preferences: WhatsApp, WeChat, Messenger, Teams, Skype, iMessage, Instagram, Viber, FaceTime, Twitter, Linkedin, Hangouts, Zoom, plus several email platforms. PlatformChase assesses the frequency of use of all platforms by all contacts and guides the user towards the platform that a certain contact uses most often, in order to ensure that a sent messages will get read and will receive a response as quickly as possible. CEO QUOTE "We've all had this experience when a message notification flicks across your...

StartupRealities No 49 AppliedInPractice is a higher education institution with a unique pedagogy centred on the use of applied (real life) homework and projects. Students are not allowed to work on any assignment that does not have a direct practical application in real life: in business, government or industry. CEO QUOTE "Live projects have been around for quite some time but universities and business schools tend to mix such projects with other hypothetical assignments. AppliedInPractice stays away from such mixing: we have abolished hypothetism altogether. Any work done by our students is on practical projects, real-life consulting for existing companies or business plans for real startups. Our professors are not allowed to give students homework; it has to be #AppliedWork. Similarly, our MBA programme is called #AppliedMBA," said company founder and CEO Al Prats. "No one likes waste, yet schools and universities waste years of the life of their students on hy...

StartupRealities No 48 SolidMouthwash is a consumer products maker that has developed mouthwash in solid form and produces it in the form of pills (dragée). Unlike chewing gum, the mouthwash pill dissolves in the mouth and has to be spat out after 3-5 minutes. The company sells mouthwash pills in a set with absorbent pills that soak up the mouthwash in the mouth and can be spat out just like a spent chewing gum. CEO QUOTE "Oral hygiene is vital for overall health and using mouthwash after each meal reduces the incidence of tooth decay, plaque buildup and other gum problems. This is why we created SolidMouthwash: for busy professionals, especially men, who can't carry a bottle of mouthwash with them. Whereas most women carry a handbag and can put a small bottle of mouthwash in it, men usually don't carry such items. The convenience of a mouthwash pill and the accompanying absorbent pill makes oral health an achievable priority," said company founder and CEO Sol Mo...

StartupRealities No 47 BirdTagger is a producer of automated bird ringing equipment installed on bird feeders. The bird-tagger fastens a band or ring around a bird's leg while it is feeding or resting at a feeder, without the need for catching the wild bird. The company participates in large-scale scientific studies and some military research projects. TECHNOLOGY BirdTagger uses sets of dozens of tension springs installed on the rim of a bird feeder on which birds step while feeding. The activation mechanism resembles that of a mouse trap: the weight of the bird's leg on the rim releases a single spring, which wraps around the bird's leg and clasps tightly on both ends to form a sealed ring or band . The spring-based ring contains an RFID tag that responds to signals from transponders on the ground. The rim mechanism can sense when a bird already has an RFID ring installed and does not release a new spring on birds that have already been banded. The metal spring in the...

StartupRealities No 46 MembranePackaging is a next-generation TetraPak-type packaging manufacturer which has developed synthetic membrane packages for liquids and bulk products. The company's flexible membranes resemble balloons that provide optimal durability and volume-to-space ratio for packaging milk, orange juice, wine, flour, sugar and even construction materials such as sand and lime. When products are packaged into membranes, this leaves no empty space between individual items when loaded onto a truck/train/plane or when put inside a box delivered by Amazon or Alibaba. CEO QUOTE "MembranePackaging was inspired by the traditional plastic packages used in rural areas in emerging markets, where alcohol and flour are often sold in nylon bags. This is also how you bring your new goldfish from the pet shop to your home aquarium: in a plastic bag of water," said company founder and CEO Melvina Pecchio. "MembranePackaging has a B2B model of selling its packagi...

StartupRealities No 45 RangeExchange is a professional development company that exposes school-age students to a wide range of professions to help them make better-informed decisions about their future career options. The company's programme is an elective integrated into the school curriculum available in different formats to all K-12 ages. It includes visits to companies and institutions, meetings with professionals, discussions of the content and responsibilities of different jobs, and role play. CEO QUOTE "We help students identify which vocation best suits their interests, passion and talent. In a given year, the student can choose 10 professions they would like to explore and our professional development consultants add another 10 based on the student's profile. The programme's depth and detail progressively increase with the age of the students. The idea is that a student can choose to explore the same 10 professions year after year and will keep learning ...

StartupRealities No 44 DiscussionEnergizer is a social media advertising company which uses artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms and bots to post comments with advertising links under online discussions which have become inactive. The company specialises in finding inactive discussions on social media sites and hashtags which have not been used for sometime, so that when a random reader chances upon or searches for such an #InactiveDiscussion or #hashtag, the company's posting will be the last and most visible contribution. CEO QUOTE "DiscussionEnergizer works with the thin "long tail" of social media users and readers of inactive discussions and this is exactly where our advantage lies. We rule the tail, or if you prefer we #WagTheTail. We never join the fray of a live argument or debate (e.g. the Covid-19 pandemic currently), as this is for the big guys. We are small but we rule our roost," said company founder and CEO Dixon Engert. The long tail ...

StartupRealities No 43 NorthKoreaWorks is a staffing agency which recruits young North Korean workers under contract with the North Korean government and places them in travel and hospitality jobs in the US and Europe. Part of the workers' salary is paid as tax to the North Korean government but workers are free to save the rest in their personal US/European bank account. CEO QUOTE "Airlines and hotels love employing North Korean staff: they are hard-working, dependable and very respectful to customers. By working with us, the young North Koreans also have a chance to see the world, which the remaining 99% of North Koreans can only dream of," said NorthKoreaWorks founder and CEO Kim Wonk. "We sometimes get accused of supporting an authoritarian regime but do you see anything wrong in giving young people a chance, vocational training, foreign language skills and an opportunity to open up their mind. Who knows who the next leader of North Korea may be. He or she...

StartupRealities No 42 99Lines is an education publisher which produces textbooks and online courses condensing any subject into 99 sentences. Most of the sentences are quotes and metaphors, rather than theoretical explanations, as a metaphor can pack in more content in fewer words. CEO QUOTE "There used to be a big market for series like 'Marketing for Dummies' or 'Coding for Beginners'. 99Lines is different: we don't aim at beginners; our content is appropriate for all levels. We bring out the essence in a subject matter which makes it relevant for professionals as well as beginners. If you are a marketing practitioner, you need 99Lines even if you already know well almost all of the 99 lines in your area. A true expert needs to be able to quote these lines and understand them thoroughly, not only recognise them and be aware of them," said company CEO and founder Nino Limes. "In a world where time is in short supply, our content and editorial...

StartupRealities No 41 MoveOverRails is a real estate developer which builds multi-storey shopping malls and residential housing on top of train depots and railway lines. The company utilises the free space above railway infrastructure in busy densely-populated cities. Its buildings create a virtual tunnel for trains running underneath, separated from the occupied space by solid sound insulation. CEO QUOTE "If you haven't been to Hong Kong, you should go visit. Their metro network, the MTR, is amazing. It is primarily financed by revenue from the real estate developments above underground stations. These multi-storey shopping malls and residential towers make the best use of space in the closest proximity to public transport. The MTR was the inspiration for MoveOverRails. Our buildings, in a similar fashion, are always above railway lines and train depots. We build as high as planning regulations in the area allow, so we are making a significant contribution to expanding ...

StartupRealities No 40 TeachersAct is an online education company which uses professional actors for recording and teaching online courses. Professors and pedagogy experts prepare the content and then guide the actors to deliver the content on camera. Students like the passion of the actors and the intensity of the experience, which makes even asynchronous (non-real-time) delivery as impactful as synchronous (live) delivery. CEO QUOTE: "How many movies can you remember in which the director was also the leading actor? Woody Allen, Kevin Costner, Clint Eastwood, Mel Gibson. That's about it. Why do directors need actors to perform on film? Because actors do a better job of acting than most directors. And the other way round: directors do a better job of directing than most actors. So why does the education world continue to insist that research professors should teach, not only in the classroom but nowadays also on camera? Why not give professors the #EducationDirector role...

StartupRealities No 39 LearnFromMovies is a ratings company that evaluates the educational and learning content of films. The company's assessors rate the number of educational topics and depth of explanations contained in a movie, and also to what degree a movie may nudge the viewer to explore topics further. CEO QUOTE "The inspiration to create LearnFromMovies came from listening to actor Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter) talk on BBC radio about how much he had learned from watching The Simpsons. If Homer Simpson can teach Harry Potter anything, surely a good movie can teach your kids a lot too," said company founder and CEO Leo Mowett. "Why can't every movie be a Sesame Street? Or at least Aladdin's Cave?" - asked Mowett metaphorically. Michelle Obama and Big Bird in Sesame Street, 2013 (Source: Wikipedia )

StartupRealities No 38 OceanAdopt is an environmental marketing company that offers individuals and corporations to adopt a plot in the ocean and emails them a satellite photo of their adopted plot once a year. The standard plot offered to individuals is 3x3 metres (i.e. 9 square metres in total) and the standard plot offered to corporations is 1x1 kilometres (i.e. 1.0 square kilometre, equalling 111,111 smaller individual plots). The three-metre dimensions and plots were chosen to coincide with unique identification of plots of the same size on the what3words.com website, where each 3-metre-side square is allocated a unique 3-word combination to denote its location (instead of geographical coordinates). CEO QUOTE "We cannot give you the sky because the sky would be difficult to photograph from above. But we can give you the sea. And we do. Each of our customers adopts a unique piece of the ocean," said company founder and CEO Ossian Elevson. "The photo we email t...

StartupRealities No 37 AutismActivism is a recruitment and placement agency that places autistic people to work remotely in technical roles at startup companies. People on the autistic spectrum are often very quantitative but have challenges in personal communication, so remote work suits their lifestyle and best utilises their potential. CEO QUOTE "Giving autistic people technical roles at startups is a great win-win solution. Autistic people are an underutilised resource in society. They often have superb computer programming, mathematical and computational skills which are wasted if the person is not employed in a relevant role. On the other hand, startups around the world face a talent shortage exactly in these areas. We bring the two together and ... Voila!" said AutismActivism founder and CEO Antoine Acton. Autism awareness ribbon (Source: Wikipedia )

StartupRealities No 36 FrameIt is a do-it-yourself framing automation company that allows customers to frame for their wall artworks or maps of any size. Customers bring their selected work of art to a walk-in or drive-through store, select the desired type and shape of frame and front cover, and an automated framing machine assembles a frame around the artwork in less than a minute. CEO QUOTE "Our motto is #YouNameItYouFrameIt because the customer is in the driving seat. We simply facilitate the process," said company founder and CEO Fran Ito. "Artwork framing is so expensive on the high street that our customers simply can't believe what an amazing deal they are getting with FrameIt," enthused Ito. Neo-Baroque picture frame (Source: Wikipedia )

StartupRealities No 35 EasyIslet is a travel equipment manufacturer which produces durable tents, inflatable jetties and dinghies, and desalination water filters that are required for visiting uninhabited islands. The company also has a growing services platform for the global community of explorers: a Uber-type platform that provides ancillary services such as tour guides, pirate protection, and courses in rare languages. CEO QUOTE "The world is full of tiny desert islands and islets and many of these places have never been visited by a human: not because they are so far away but because they are often too insignificant for a major explorer," said company founder and CEO Ezra Ellis. "And this is where your unique opportunity lies to make a difference and leave your mark: to be an explorer, even if at a smaller scale. Our superbly adapted EasyIslet equipment will help you achieve your goal and our global community of like-minded people will support you along the w...

StartupRealities No 34 TestAtRest is a drive-thru medical testing company which uses robots to take samples from customers at specially-designed drive-through stations. Customers don't need to leave their car to give a sample, e.g. a mouth swab. Instead, a robotic arm in a disposable sanitary cover leans over through the car window and customers are merely required to follow the verbal instructions of the robot. CEO QUOTE "The idea for TestAtRest came out of necessity during the Covid-19 (coronavirus) epidemic in early 2020," said company founder and CEO Tess Rosso. "But even in normal times it saves a lot of time for nurses and other medical practitioners who would be more needed for other activities that require their human expertise. A robot would actually be more reliable for this type of task as it is unlikely to mix up sample labels, which unfortunately sometimes happens with human staff," noted Rosso. Atlas robot (Source: Wikipedia )

StartupRealities No 33 DarkShirtCollar is a garment producer which makes shirts with dark collars in order to minimise the need for washing and ironing. This extends the useful life of the shirt and reduces the environmental impact of clothing. The company's shirts come in all colours but the part of the collar facing the neck is always in a dark colour. CEO QUOTES "DarkShirtCollar shirts have a longer life because they need to be washed less frequently and can be worn longer between washes. The collar rubs against the back of the neck and is virtually the only part of the shirt that can appear dirty after one day of wearing, if we exclude accidents like squirting ketchup on the front of the shirt, of course. The collar is also a very visible part of the shirt so it makes sense to be coloured in a darker colour and to be made of a more wear-resistant material," company founder and CEO Dora Shirito said. "Our shirts are all about sustainability. The same shirt ...

StartupRealities No 32 ModernMovieMaker is a film modernisation company which converts old movies with expired copyright into modern productions. The company typically uses a narrator woven into the storyline. The narrator scenes are shot in a way and style that resembles the original movie, creating an artistic continuum. Narrator scenes allow cutting out superfluous original scenes and speeding up the pace of the movie to suit modern audiences. COPYRIGHT ModernMovieMaker works with two lists of movies which are indisputably in the public domain: 1) All motion pictures  made and shown in the USA before 1925 are now free of copyright, as the 75-year copyright (extended by a further 20 years) has now expired. 2) Movies whose copyright has not been renewed in accordance with past intellectual property statutes. CEO QUOTE "The narrator is everything in our productions: a guide, a pace-setter and a pace-maker," said company founder and CEO Mo Mokin. "We make sure...

StartupRealities No 31 PolychromeHome is a real estate developer that builds minimalist sustainable houses packed with facilities which minimise space requirements. The sustainability principles it abides by require that the maximum living space is 20 square metres  (215 square feet) for a single person or 80 sq m for a family of four. The company paints its houses in bright colours to make them stand out and attract attention to the feasibility of living sustainably without sacrificing comfort or convenience. ECONOMIES OF SPACE PolychromeHome has five main ways of economising space: 1) All attics are fully functional bedrooms and offices. 2) Staircases are foldable and attached to the wall, which creates space in the hallway / living room. 3) Beds can be folded into cupboards against the wall, Japanese-style. 4) Storage cupboards line the ceiling corners of all rooms. 5) Insulation panels are attached to the outside walls, which creates more volume within the house. CE...

StartupRealities No 30 CollarHoller is a manufacturer of electric collars for dogs and pets which keep the animals within a specified perimeter around the house. In the basic version, the collar inflicts a mild electric shock when the dog tries to move beyond a specified radius of its home, e.g. 50 metres. In the more advanced version, the collar is equipped with a GPS device, so the perimeter of territory where the dog is allowed to roam freely can be set virtually on a map. CEO QUOTE "CollarHoller creates a virtual fence which gives pet owners peace of mind and allows dogs the freedom to run outdoors from dawn to dusk," said company founder and CEO Colin Halls. "The rechargeable collar battery alerts the owner before the battery is fully drained, but it also alert the dog with two special electric and ultrasound signals (which are inaudible to humans). The dog is usually trained to run back to the base station and touch the collar to a contactless charging pad t...

StartupRealities No 29 CookieSmookie is a producer of health foods that contain active substances integrated into attractive snack recipes such a cookies or smoothies. All CookieSmookie recipes are based on the latest scientific research and the active substances are added at the end of the preparation process in case high temperature or other processing may reduce the beneficial health effect of the active substance. SCIENCE Recent research on curcumin  (the active substance in turmeric / curry powder); nobiletin  (contained in oranges and tangerines); and lycopene (found in tomatoes) warrants consuming these substances in both natural form and as synthesised (extracted) ingredients. Lycopene is particularly remarkable: unlike other substances that are negatively impacted by heating, lycopene achieves even higher bioavailability if it undergoes cooking. This makes it an easy ingredient for cookie recipes. CEO QUOTE "We don't sell snake oils. For example, the health b...

StartupRealities No 28 Repair&Spare is a producer of brightly coloured adhesives that can be used to glue together any broken item for household use. The company dyes its glue in bright colours in order to make the repaired object stand out: a demonstration of the owner's environmental responsibility and adherence to the principle of waste minimisation (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle). Repair is a crucial part of Reuse in waste hierarchy . CEO QUOTE "Repair&Spare was inspired by the Japanese practice of Kintsukuroi (金繕い, or "golden repair"): the art of repairing broken pottery with a gold-dusted lacquer adhesive that makes the repaired part stand out," company founder and CEO Remiko Sapori said. The Japanese art of golden repair Kintsukuroi (Source: Wikipedia )

StartupRealities No 27 CodeDecoding is a computer programming school that teaches coding in parallel with teaching a foreign language to the same group of students. The school's dual-track pedagogy is based on recent groundbreaking research by the University of Washington which demonstrates that, contrary to popular perception, the aptitude for learning a foreign language is a stronger predictor for learning programming than mathematical numeracy. The study shows that more than 70% of the variability in how quickly people learn to code in Python can be explained with their aptitude for foreign language learning, while only a small percentage of the variability can be explained with math skills. CEO QUOTE "The University of Washington research is pretty overwhelming. Programming languages seem to operate just like any other human language. Stringing together symbols following rules creates the building blocks for both computer and natural languages," CodeDecoding fou...

StartupRealities No 26 TeamStream is a virtual team-forming platform that groups together people to carry out group activities online, under the supervision of an avatar as a virtual team leader. The platform brings together people with common interests, e.g. patients who need to do physiotherapy exercises, and who would benefit from the peer support of a group and the pace-setting done for a whole team. An avatar performs the role of team leader in order to minimise the potential for interpersonal conflict among virtual team members. Teams are optimised to include people with similar level of skill or expertise in a given area, e.g. a painting club for beginners or a Nitzsche book club for philosophy graduates. CEO SAYS "TeamStream helps a million armies do a million things entirely online. Most people couldn't even get started without the pace-setting of our virtual avatars and the peer support of the group," company founder and CEO Tina Strong said in an interview...

StartupRealities No 25 NameExclaim is a branding company that has developed an AI algorithm for product naming and company naming. The algorithm generates unique, novel and suitable names that always have two key elements: 1) CamelCasing of two meaningful words that describe or relate to the new product or company; 2) A rhyme or another type of assonance between the two words. CEO QUOTES "NameExclaim makes everybody's life so much easier. The algorithm would never suggest a name that is not unique," company founder and CEO Nona Anon said. "If a combination of words has already been registered as a website, Twitter account, company name or trademark anywhere in the world, the AI will simply hide it from the final shortlist of suggestions and save us the temptation. However, new names that have been mentioned online or in social media as hashtags are acceptable as long as no one has a claim on that name," Anon added. "Occasionally the algorithm go...

StartupRealities No 24 CreativePatchwork Limited is a copywriting agency that parcels out creative projects via its online freelancing platform among groups of authors, creative writing students, professors and practitioners. The CreativePatchwork platform resembles freelancing sites such as Upwork or Fiverr but is dedicated only to creative projects and ads (commercials), which helps focus and attract in large numbers both project owners (assigners) and creative professionals. The company uses two different approaches for allocating jobs. 1) COMPETITIONS: Competitions offer a prize for a single winner. Competing creative professionals are more often men. (Research shows that males feel more incentivised by projects of a competitive nature.) 2) GROUP PROJECTS Group projects allow groups of up to 5 professionals to be formed to carry out a given task. The platform allocates an additional coffee budget for each group project (reimbursed as expenses), which makes physical meetu...