StartupRealities

Startup No 172 - StartupRealities 2020 series SourceIdentifier is a corporate investigations company which uses artificial intelligence (AI) to research information sources up a chain of references until it reaches the earliest or original source. This is useful for identifying the sources of fake news or for tracing the ownership of shell companies up a chain of ownership to a physical person. CEO QUOTE "The Chinese have a saying: 饮水思源 (yǐn shuǐ sī yuán) - when you drink water, think about its source. We help companies and governments identify the sources of the water they drink, in the figurative sense." - said SourceIdentifier founder and CEO Souzanna Idensey . 1894 fake news illustration (image source: Wikipedia )

StartupRealities No 123 CorporateJour is a publishing house which helps major corporations launch and run peer-reviewed scientific journals in the field closest to the company's industry. For example, the Salesforce Journal of Digital Marketing and the Google Journal of Online Advertising are two of the company's existing or potential corporate journal projects. These scientific journals are different from a corporate magazine as they publish proper scientific research and the papers are reviewed by a board of editors. CEO QUOTE "A corporate magazine massages the ego of the CEO and the Board of a company. A corporate journal advances the scientific agenda of the industry by publishing relevant research, experiments, debates and conference proceedings. Our journals bring the future closer and sooner," said company founder and CEO Corazon Journaux. Peer review (image source: Wikipedia )

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 82 TrumpScientific is a research company that explores scientific and business ideas based on guidance from US President Donald Trump. The company is currently researching whether injecting disinfectant or exposure to UV light can have positive health effects on mice recovering from a viral infection (as suggested by Donald Trump in April 2020), in the hope that this can lead to human trials at the next stage. TrumpScientific does not have any insider connections to the US President and only uses ideas that the US President has broadcast to the public in his tweets or press conferences. CEO QUOTE "President Trump is much maligned by the mainstream media. However, many of his 'maverick' ideas contain seeds of divergent thinking that, if implemented, may lead to novel businesses or scientific discoveries. The fact that this has not yet happened does not discourage us. Moonshots take time and shooting at the moon is not for the faint-hearted," sa...

StartupRealities No 55 PunUnintended is a naming agency which tests possible company and product names with social media groups for punsters, pranksters and jokers. This avoids costly renaming mistakes down the line in case of inappropriately chosen names that have a negative association, or invoke an unpleasant rhyme or joke. CEO QUOTE "You all know the story of the Chevrolet Nova failure in Latin America: no one had bothered to check that No-Va meant No-Go in Spanish. This is why we exist: we make sure that no potential Georgie-Porgie or Peter-Peter-Pumpkin-Eater lurks in the name of your company or product. We test it to the extremes of creativity: if our punsters, pranksters and jokers cannot come up with a negative connotation, rhyme or joke, no one else can," - said PunUnintended founder and CEO Puja Untana. Chevrolet Nova - 1962 (Source: Wikipedia )

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 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 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 18 InvasiveWeeds Limited is a bioscience company that researches invasive species  and weeds to find useful substances, genes or other uses of invasive plants and animals that can be beneficial to the local economy, to science and to humanity. For example, the invasive species of Japanese knotweed has been found to contain high amounts of resveratrol, an active chemical compound found in grape skin. FINANCE The company is primarily financed by public funding, as its projects are ideal for winning research funding from the EU Horizon 2020 programme and the US National Science Foundation. It patents and licenses its scientific discoveries which contributes a smaller share of the company's revenue. SCIENCE POPULARISATION The company is an active contributor to the Wikipedia page: List of edible invasive species . For example, Kudzu (Japanese arrowroot, a legume species of climbing perennial vines) helps in controlling erosion and enhances the soil, as ...