StartupRealities

Startup No 198 - #StartupRealities 2020 series DecentralizedTutoring is a global online education company that supports university students enrolled in online programmes by organising local physical meetup study groups and project groups supervised by qualified tutors. The company works with a range of students enrolled in online courses delivered by Code Academy, Coursera, EdX, FutureLearn, Kadenze, Khan Academy, Skillshare, Udacity and Udemy. Online MBA programmes such as ThePowerMBA, Quantic MBA and AltMBA also have their community groups and team project groups supervised by the company. CEO QUOTE "Everything is moving online these days. Yet, human interaction remains most intimate and efficient in face-to-face format. Students appreciate both the support of our tutors and the physical venues where we organise group meetups in the neighbourhood of the student. Convenience, teamwork and intimacy are our keywords." - said DecentralizedTutoring founder and CEO Decima Tuton...

Startup No 196 - #StartupRealities 2020 series Applied Entrepreneurship Platform is a global university network which promotes the teaching of entrepreneurship to all university students, irrespective of their academic background and university major. The network is at the same time also a faculty platform for entrepreneurs who are interested in and good at teaching; and a membership platform for budding entrepreneurs and potential future startup founders.  South Korean TV series "Startup" (Image source:  Wikipedia ) The universities who are members of the network offer at least one Entrepreneurship course to every single bachelors and masters student and make it known to their students that they are expected to take one course, usually called Applied Entrepreneurship. CEO QUOTE "Clearly we don't believe that every single university student will become an entrepreneur. What we expect is that every single university student will develop an entrepreneurial mindset. We...

Startup No 176 - StartupRealities 2020 series HighestPlatform installs raised observation decks and platforms at the top of houses and buildings or at the highest place in gardens where legally possible. This allows the building owners to climb up the stairs to the platform to look at the sky or film the sunset. CEO QUOTE "Most people dream of being up high - unless you have vertigo, of course. We make this happen: we install platforms on rooftops; we build a balcony above the balcony; we put up platforms in the canopy of trees. And it is an amazing experience to be standing at the top of the world, your world, looking at the sky. We can even lend you a temporary mobile platform, just to try for yourself the feeling of being up there. It is a real treat!" - said HighestPlatform founder and CEO Higgins Platt. Mobile platform (image source: Wikipedia )

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 71 PlatformChase 2.0  is an advanced version of digital communications app PlatformChase which integrates with other social media platforms and allows sending urgent messages to a recipient using all social media channels on which the recipient is registered. This ensures that an urgent message will be seen on crowded smartphone screens that host dozens of social media and online communication apps and platforms. The most commonly used social media with which PlatformChase 2.0 integrates are: WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram, FaceTime, Teams, Skype, iMessage, WeChat, Viber, Twitter, Hangouts, Zoom and Linkedin. CEO QUOTE "Imagine your car breaks down on the motorway on a Saturday and you message for help. Can you wait for four hours until the intended recipient sees your message? With PlatformChase 2.0 the message will be seen in 10 minutes," said company founder and CEO Priti Chatel. Smartphone screen (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...

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...