StartupRealities

StartupRealities No 146 CounterAdvert is an advertising and media buying agency which specialises in helping advertising-platforms post their own commercials on rival platforms. For example, if Google wanted to advertise Google keyword search to B2B businesses on Facebook, it could target individual small business owners on Facebook with paid ads promoting Google advertisement. CEO QUOTES "Do you remember the famous case when Boeing bought 17 Airbus planes in 1999. They didn't do it out of charity. There was commercial logic behind you. In a similar way, we help one platform use the advantages of a competitor platform openly and legally by paying the latter for ads of the former's products and services. There is usually sound commercial logic behind such a move as different platforms have developed preferential access to different target audiences and distinct communities. All this comes with a second-order effect, however: these stories enter the news and become ne...

StartupRealities No 99 SponsorGodfather is an advertising and public relations firm which links up corporations with expectant parents who would like to name their child after the corporation in return for an annual sponsorship fee. The options are giving the child a middle name which is the company's exact name, or giving the child a first name which is similar to the company's name. The sponsored children and their parents are free to legally stop using the company name and change the child's name at any time, upon which the sponsorship payments get terminated. CEO QUOTE "You know the phrase 'give a dog a bad name.' Well, our firm does exactly the opposite: we give a child a good corporate name. Some parents are concerned that their child may get bullied by other children if they have a name like CocaCola Smith or Amazon Jones. On the other hand, the corporate name creates a community: the Amazons of Chicago, the Amazons of New York, etc., so it is a gre...

StartupRealities No 91 PondMapper is a geographical information systems company that catalogues and maps artificial ponds in urban environments. The company asks for a $5 dollar donation to include each garden pond in its database and on its maps. The information is used by biologists exploring aquatic and amphibian habitats, while pond photos are shared on the website and on Instagram. Each pond owner has a dedicated page on the PondMapper website where they upload current photos of their pond. CEO QUOTE "People with garden ponds really care about their ponds and are proud of their ponds. We help create a community of pond lovers, but we also give a scientific and research purpose to this community. Exploring biodiversity and species migration is a central part of what we do," said PondMapper founder and CEO Pony Mascarpone. Garden pond in California (image source: Wikipedia )

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...