StartupRealities

StartupRealities No 105 TheFunMBA is a management education company which runs an Online MBA based exclusively on fun exercises, interesting content and viral videos. #TheFunMBA does not use any traditional lecturing, nor any traditional case studies. Instead, the focus is on experiential learning, current mini-cases, memorable stories and gripping visual content. CEO QUOTE "If young people nowadays spend their time on Netflix and TikTok, we should all be using content from Netflix and TikTok when teaching to them. The #TikTokMBA is another name that our students use for TheFunMBA programme and we all agree this is a compliment. There are so many metaphorical parallels that you can draw in education using Netflix memes, even when using extreme ones such as #ChicagoSunroof or #SquatCobbler. With material like this, teaching and learning will never be boring again," said company founder and CEO Fiona Mbembe. TikTok logo (image source: Wikipedia )

StartupRealities No 69 DrownOutContent is a public relations (PR) agency which uses automated content production to push down unwelcome content in online search results at a client's request. CEO QUOTE "The first 10 entries that come up on your screen when you run a Google search are all that matters. If something does not come up in the first page of 10 entries, it is as good as it doesn't exist. So our objective is to drown out unwelcome content, so that it does not appear among the top-10 entries," said DrownOutContent founder and CEO Drew Contado. Google Search logo (image source: Wikipedia )

StartupRealities No 64 ChoiceCommercials is an online advertisement agency which gives viewers a choice of one of 3 commercials to watch when ads are displayed during streaming of internet music and videos or playing online games. The service integrates smoothly with social media and online video platforms as it increases the attention viewers pay to commercials. The set of 3 commercials is a set of 3 very different videos, e.g. a 15-sec ocean scene, a 15-sec mountain scene and a 15-sec desert scene. Thus, the viewer has the option to pick with a single mouse click the commercial that fits most closely to their personal preferences, taste and mood. CEO QUOTE "I like to draw an analogy between the way YouTube commercials are displayed and force-feeding a goose: the goose has absolutely no control of what and how much it is fed. So given the chance, the goose will try to run away. ChoiceCommercials is involved in force-feeding to a much smaller extent as the online goose in th...

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 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...