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Acquia

Dries Buytaert and Tom Erickson journey to set up Acquia

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Acquia enabled the Drupal-open source platform, on which one can build, run, as well, optimize sites. It is a software service firm set up by Dries Buytaert and J. Batson. The founder established the platform considering providing enterprise products, and services. Also, to provide technical support especially to Drupal. Currently, Michael Sullivan is serving as the CEO of the firm. Acquia, set up in 2007 has marked the name as the fastest-growing private tech firm of North America by 2013. As well, it was among the DELOITTE’s fastest 500 in 2014.

About Acquia

It is one of the leading software firms that enabled the best Drupal platform. In 2007, Dries set up the firm with his partner. Currently, it is providing miscellaneous software service. Also, it is helping some of the world’s leading brands succeed, including Twitter, Mercedes Benz, Warner Music Group, and Stanford University. More than 4,000 organizations are using Acquia’s solutions for content, community, and commerce.

Glimpse to founders Life- Dries Buytaert

He attended Ghent University, Belgium to study computer science. Earlier, Dries worked as Linux-WLAN FAQ maintainer from 1999 to 2000. Presently, he is a well-known software programmer, who is recognized as one of the lead developers of the Drupal content administration platform.

The Backstory of Acquia Foundation

As a well-experienced software programmer, he always wanted to develop a feasible platform for Drupal. With his partner Jay Batson, the idea came into reality after setting up Acquia in December 2007. A software company that enabled products and services as well, technical support for Drupal. As Red hat is important for Linux similarly, Acquia is for Drupal. In a short duration, the firm assists to re-launch Whitehouse.gov on Drupal in 2009.

Dries Buytaert’s other contributions

Apart from being a co-founder, he served as a CTO of the company. In 2008, he launched a service called Mollom. It is especially for stopping website spams. So that sites can keep clean as well, content quality will maintain high. Nowadays, this service is a spam filter as well, a CAPTCHA server.

Awards and Recognition

BusinessWeek selected him as a Young Entrepreneurs of Tech in 2008. Also, Dries named as one of the top 35 innovators under the age of 35, worldwide by MIT Technology Review TR35.

Tom Erickson- Former CEO

He is a founding director of the company, who worked with co-founders to develop the company’s open-source commercialization model. Also, he assisted to recruit the early team members during 2008. In 2009, he joined Acquia as CEO. Before that, he served as a Chief product officer, managing the sale of Tele Atlas to TomTom. During his tenure as a CEO, he guided the firm to exponential growth depends on the fanatical commitment to the customers. At Acquia, he leads the unique blending of open source, enterprise software, and digital agency.

Personal life

He attended the University of Wisconsin, Madison for studying electrical and computer engineering. After that, he began a career in the technical field. Tom worked in many countries including England, Australia, and France, where he spent almost 14 years of his career. Apart from Acquia, he also was the Systinet’s CEO.

Michael Sullivan- Present CEO

He succeeded T. Erickson and became the Chief Executive Officer of a firm in 2017. Also, he is SVP and General Manager, SaaS and Information Management at Micro Focus. Michael also worked as a VP & General Manager, HP Software, Autonomy Protect at HP Autonomy. Furthermore, he is the founder and former President of Steelpoint technologies Inc. Sullivan attended Bentley University for his graduation. Currently, he is serving at Acquia. Under his guidance, the company continues the miscellaneous software products and services on the Drupal platform.

Awards and Recognition of Acquia

In 2012, Acquia was ranked 8 on the Inc. 500 list, 1st software company and 8th company in Boston. Also, Inc. Magazine named it in a 500 fastest-growing private companies list. It also names as fastest-growing private tech firm of North America by 2013. As well, it was among the DELOITTE’s fastest 500 in 2014. Apart from that, it has famous at the industry level after Gartner Magic Quadrant honored it as a Leader for Web Content Administration in 2014. Further, also honored as a Strong Performer in 2015 in Web Content Management.

99designs

99designs – Hire The Best Designers For Your Business

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Designing is a very crucial part of any business. With digital marketing becoming the ruler of the empire, one needs to hire top-class designers for the company. It varies from company to company whether they want to hire a designing team or hire freelancers. But, with freelancers, things get easier and faster. You hire them, assign a job, set a deadline and the job is done. When it comes to freelancers, many websites provide the service of hiring freelancers. Websites like Fiverr, Freelancers.com are ruling the market for a very long time. But, they tend to cover most of the categories needed for business operation. For example, content writers, graphic designers, software developers, web designers, etc. 99designs is a platform that is solely created for connecting graphic designers to the clients. Matt Mickiewicz and Mark Harbottle founded the company in 2008. The company’s headquarters are based in Melbourne, Australia.

About the Founders

Born in Poland, Matt moved to Germany at a very young age. He was very much interested in developing websites and designing them as well. Matt created his first website, SitePoint at the age of fourteen and after a couple of years, he met Mark Harbottle. When he was in high school, he managed both attending classes and his advertising business.

Matt met his business partner only at the age of sixteen and established 99designs as an independent company in 2008. In 2011, Matt came in the list of 30 Under 30 Entrepreneur by Forbes and INC. He attends seminars and conferences around the world as an important speaker.

Mark Harbottle has plenty of experience in the entrepreneurial world. He co-founded 99designs in 2008 and presently invests in many companies. He has co-founded other companies as well which includes Flippa.com, Learnable.com, and SitePoint (parent company of 99designs and later spun off). He is the Founding Investor at Elto.com, Hired Inc., Influx Inc, and Assembly Payments.

How did it start?

Matt created SitePoint when he was in high school. But, then he didn’t know it would take a bigger shape in the future. Initially, the people at SitePoint competed with each other regarding who could create the best design. But, with a little entrepreneurial idea, the journey of 99designs started. They decided to design the logo and get a cash prize for the winner in return. And, finally, 99designs spun off from SitePoint.com.

Success and Growth

After Matt and Mark established the company in 2008, they found that most of their clients and designers are from the United States. So, they opened an office in San Francisco. Currently, the U.S. headquarters are situated in Oakland, California. The company grew fast and by the next four years, 99designs had more than 175,000 designers from 192 countries. In 2009, the company became one of Australia’s top innovations.

In 2011, 99designs raised $35 million from Accel Partners for carrying out global expansion. By this time, the company had around 100,000 designers and hosted more than 75,000 projects. In 2012, 99designs acquired a European company, 12designer which later became the European headquarters of the company. In 2013, the company acquired LogoChef, one of Brazil’s leading designing company. This year the company also expanded its business to Latin America and the Netherlands providing Dutch version of it.

In 2015, the company raised another $10 million. Though the company mainly conducted competitions and see whose logo wins, after a few years, they decided otherwise. From 2016, the company allowed the clients to directly choose and hire designers from the registered designers. At the end of 2018, the company’s annual revenue summed up to $60 million.

In 2018, the company also announced that the total earnings of the designers crossed $250 million by the end of the year.

Why in demand?

The platform has turned out to be advantageous for both the clients and the designers. In 99designs, the clients are provided with the best designer as they are given the liberty of choice. On the other hand, the designers also don’t need to interact with every other client asking for the project. If you are a designer you only design your project. 99designs does the rest of the job. Through the span of twelve years, it has become successful in establishing trust among the company and clients.

Fast company

Fast Company – Spreading Business News Around The Globe

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We have become so engrossed in our daily life that somehow we have to make time for everything. Our world is lucky enough that the era of digitalization has already made our life easier. In recent days, the habit of the newspaper is eventually changing to swiping news in our smartphones. Digital magazines are also available these days for enriching us with news and entertainment.

Speaking of magazines, many people have the habit of carrying one and reading whenever they get spare time. It is very important to follow up with current affairs especially technology and business. Fast Company is one such American business magazine that publishes both hard copies and available online for us. It is a monthly magazine that brings us the news from all over the world.

Bill Taylor and Alan Webber founded the company in 1995 and since then it has become more than just news provider. The domain of the content of Fast Company’s magazine is exclusively about the topics that we should be aware of. It includes technology, innovations, and people that are bringing a change to our world, nourishing creativity, etc.

About the Founders

Bill Taylor went to Princeton University, Woodrow Wilson School to acquire his bachelor’s degree. He graduated in 1982 and in 1985 he went to MIT Sloan School of Management for acquiring his MBA. Bill’s career life started with Harvard Business Review. He joined it in 1987 as Associate Editor. In 1993, he started working on the project of Fast Company Magazine and officially released it in 1995. Currently, he is the author of Simply Brilliant which he joined in 2011.

Alan Webber completed his schooling from DeMun School at Clayton followed by St. Louis Country Day School. He graduated with a bachelor’s degree in English from Amherst College. After graduating, he went to Harvard Business School as an employee and later joined The Oregon Times. Alan also gained experience in the political career while he served as a policy advisor to the mayor of Portland.

Apart from his career in the political background, he is well-known as the co-founder of Fast Company. In 1999, he became Adweek’s Editor of the Year.

The Idea

Bill Taylor spotted the opportunity from the perspective of technology. When they decided to establish the company, the internet just started decentralizing the entire idea of computing. Gigantic developments were taking place in the world of telecommunication and networking. On the other hand, Webber looked at it to showcase in front of the population that how the world is changing. Connecting everything from politics to business, from the government to globalization, they co-founded Fast Company.

The Beginning

Economy, politics, and the internal affairs of the government are the foundation of a nation. While Bill Taylor excelled in the sphere of advocacy work and managing business, Webber was a busy curving niche in the political dimension. This made them the perfect duo as the founding member of the Fast Company. A magazine published by a politically and economically experienced team. They worked together for a long time and known each other well.

They started working for it in 1993. Initially, they were able to raise $550,000 from eleven investors. The fund was raised for investing in a prototype. This took almost a year but they took the risk.

Further Story

After a couple of years it started publishing, the company launched an online social network, “Company of Friends”. By 2003, it attracted more than 40,000 members from 120 different cities. In 2000, the company was sold for $550 million and after that, the dot com bubble affected it hugely. But, it eventually started recovering under the leadership of John A. Byrne.

In 2005, Mansueto Ventures bought both Fast Company and Inc magazine for $35 million. Since then the company continues its operations under Mansueto.

Future Aspects

When Fast Company started publishing it only had a handful of competitors. But, after the dot com bust, the recovery was questionable. Fast Company though known as one of the leading American magazines is not the best advertising platform. But, it has a reputation for publishing quality content valuable to the readers. So, the company is looking forward to engaging customers with its content.

Currently, Stephanie Mehta is the Editor of Fast Company and the magazine is published eight times a year.

Verbling

Verbling: More Than A Language Learning Platform, Helping To Break Different Culture’s Stereotypes

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There are many online learning platforms are available, some of them are paid while some of the platforms do not cost a penny. But Verbling stands different from each of them because of its unique platform. On the Verbling platform, one can trade the linguistic skills of the language they know with others who know the language you want to learn through video chat. In fact, this all is free! This amazing idea behind setting up the platform makes it unique. It is set up by Fred Wulff, Jake Jolis, and Mikael Bernstein. After several struggles and lots of hard work they finally designed the platform as per their ideas.

As a matter of fact, the Verbling founders spent two days to decide the perfect name for their platform. In end, they come up with the name Verbling, the combination of two words Verbal and Linguistic. Presently, Verbling enables the best online learning platform that pairs learners with language tutors via video chat, for free.

About Verbling

It is an online language learning platform, known for allowing individuals to connect with language teachers through video chat. The company aims to address the problem of the language barrier, which is one of the biggest problems in international business. Yes, emails, video conference, and chat obviously made it easier to communicate over long distances. But still, not all international colleagues understand each other’s language. Here, Verbling plays an important role. Initially, only six English-Spanish exchanges were available on the platform. However, the founder’s keen dedication enabled other languages on the Verbling platform.

The Backstory of Foundation

In 2011, Jake Jolis, Fred Wulff, and M. Bernstein set up the online language learning platform known as Verbling. Initially, it started as a Verbling Friends, a simple video chat platform for people who are eager to learn new languages. For that, they design a video chat platform where users can learn each other’s language through chat. However, in a short duration, Verbling raised 1-million-dollar funding and shifted the headquarter to San Francisco. Thereafter, the company added nine more languages and finally launched online Verbling classes in 2013.

Exploration of Verbling

The firm raised series A funding of 2.7 Million dollars in 2015 so that expanding technology to more platforms. Other than that, Verbling offered free lessons in Swedish during the Syrian Civil War to help Syrian refugees. In 2016, Verbling took a new step and launched a platform for the corporate world to help their employees in learning new languages. For that, the company tied up with Inditex and Volkswagen Group. Thereafter, it launched iOS and Android apps in 2017, on this platform more than 2000 teachers are there to help in learning new languages. Moreover, 60 languages are available on the Verbling virtual language learning platform.

How does it work?

First of all, the person who wants to learn a language on Verbling platform, he/she needs to sign up. After that, a video chat will be aligned with the person who knows the language of the learner. Basically, the whole set up is work on allowing a person to learn your language for five to ten minutes and thereafter, the same service is provided to the other person on the chat. The best part about Verbling, one can share cultures to help to break stereotypes associated with it.

Founders in Limelight

Fred Wulff

A former software engineer at Google, Fred Wulff shared great contributions in the formation of Verbling. Before that, he worked for many other companies like Hillary for America, Causes, and Dropbox, where he served in the Engineering field. Fred has experienced in App Engine, focusing on MapReduce support, distributed systems work, API design, and operational work, etc. He also established Rodeo in 2012.

Wulff attended Stanford University for studying bachelor’s and masters in computer science. During his study, he also did an internship at Google, Mobile Evolution, and Texas State University.

Verbling CEO and Co-founder-Jake Jolis

He is present CEO at Verbling. Jake is known for helping early-stage founders reach their next milestone. He has an optimistic view of determining whether a start-up achieves greatness or taps out pre-maturely. Previously, he was one of the partners at Matrix Partners. Also, he served as a Dray Alliance and Smartcat’s board member. Coming to his education, he studied at Stanford University.

Bottom Line

No one can have thought that the languages can be traded until Verbling made it possible. The dedication and new idea of founders set a brand-new example for entrepreneurs. In fact, the founders also showed the world that you need not have an office to run your business. Because they are working on their platform from the place they are living in. No such offices are there for the company. Today, many learners find a Verbling easy and fun platform to learn the new language.

coursera

Coursera Is Taking Massive Open Online Courses To New Heights

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Have you ever realized that after the advent of online education, millions of students have been benefited? Extra knowledge has become a pre-requisite for landing either a lucrative job or making it into one of the finest institutions around the globe. But, everyone can’t pay for extra courses when basic education seems far-fetched. Especially in a developing country like India, e-learning is the need of the hour. Because most of the population belongs to middle-class society and they need the privilege to acquire proper education. Learning the crucial need to educate the world, especially the young minds in an affordable way, MOOCs are needed. In 2012, two professors from Stanford University, Daphne Koller and Andrew Ng founded Coursera. Coursera has become one of the largest and successful websites for MOOCs. And, this platform mainly focusses on making people learn about the emerging demanding topics like AI and ML.

About the Founders of Coursera

Daphne Koller’s research area is mainly based on the application of artificial intelligence in biomedical sciences. She is an Israeli-American professor in the department of computer science. In 1985, she graduated from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem at the age of seventeen and received her master’s degree at the age of eighteen. Daphne went to Stanford to acquire her Ph.D.

She received the ACM-Infosys Foundation Award in 2008 which came with a cash prize of $150,000. In 2012, she along with another Standard professor, Andrew Ng, co-founded Coursera. She served as the co-CEO of the company and later as the President. Daphne left the company in 2016 and joined Calico as the Chief Computing Officer. Later, she left Calico to start her company, Insitro, a drug discovery start-up. Daphne is also the recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship.

Image Source: Google

Apart from being one of the most famous and successful computer scientists, Andrew is also an investor, writer, and businessman. His parents were immigrants from Hong Kong and thus he grew up in London. He went to Carnegie Mellon University and acquired his bachelor’s in three subjects in 1997. He majored in computer science, economics, and statistics. Later, he went to the Massachusetts Institute of technology and acquired his master’s degree in 1998.

Andrew joined Stanford University in 2002 and co-founded Coursera in 2012. He is also the co-founder of Google Brain and the former Vice President and Chief Scientist at Baidu. He was listed in Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in 2012. Andrew has also founded AI Fund that financially backs the AI-based start-ups.

The Beginning

Both Andrew and Daphne were inspired by the online courses of Stanford in the fall of 2011. They were driven by the idea of how an online learning platform is advantageous to millions of students out there who cannot afford to take coaching classes. Moreover, through this platform people can learn from the best professors in the world.

When they founded the website, Stanford, Princeton, the University of Michigan and the University of Pennsylvania joined their hands to contribute. It included many specialization courses as well. The content of Coursera eventually became very elaborate.

Growth, Funding, and Investors

The first funding that Coursera raised was an amount of $16 million. It was led by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Buyers and New Enterprise Associates. The series B funding took place in 2013 where Coursera raised $63 million from World Bank Group. The amount of funding raised shows how fast it was gaining popularity. In the next round of funding, the start-up raised around $60 million from EDB Investment. After a few more rounds of funding, Coursera’s valuation crossed $1 billion at the end of 2019.

To date, Coursera has established a relationship with 200 partners across twenty-nine countries. Apart from college and other educational institutions, Coursera has also come into partnership with many government agencies.

Strategies and Business Model

Within one year of its product going public, Coursera made an annual revenue of $1 million. Students from all over the world signed up for the courses especially because of the valid certificate provided after the completion. After a couple of years, Coursera decided to provide financial aid to the students who cannot pay the course fee.

After this, more students started enrolling and learning new skills. The students were highly benefited as the certificates were only given after passing the assignments with 80% gradation. This is one of the best features of Coursera that they are genuinely interested in educating people and not just making money.

Currently, Coursera has 47 million users around the world. The company has 450 employees and the headquarters is situated in California.

WebEngage

Marketing Is Getting More Realistic With Avlesh Singh’s WebEngage

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Most companies jump into establishing a business before having much idea about internal operations. There are start-ups founded by brilliant minds and excellent team efforts, achieving great success. But, those are the only companies we tend to know about. In the business world, many new start-ups are coming up every day but dissolving due to a lack of strategic moves.WebEngage is a very important sector for every business to expand and reach out to people. Most of the companies are indeed more interested in making a profit. But, a few understand that customers are the prime key to that. WebEngage is a marketing company that is focused mainly on personalized marketing experience for its customers. Alves Singh and Ankit Utreja founded the company in 2010. And, currently, it is one of the top 25 software companies in India.

About the Founders

Avlesh Singh went to the Indian Institute of Technology (Indian School of Mines), Dhanbad. He graduated in 2005 with a bachelor’s degree in Mineral Engineering.

Avlesh started his career with burrp! where he worked as the Principal Engineer and Search Architect. He worked there for more than three years and joined InfoMedia18 Ltd. Avlesh left the company earlier in 2010 and co-founded WebEngage. Currently, he is the Chief Executive Officer of the company.

Before WebEngage, Ankit Utreja has fourteen years of experience in the field of tech stacks. He is extremely skilled at managing the database system. Currently, he is the Chief Technology Officer of WebEngage.

Early Days

When Avlesh and Ankit developed the company, its main focus was on making more engagement between companies and their customers. They emerged as a company providing an on-site survey and a feedback tool. But, once they started engaging customers, Ankit wanted to create more of a high-tech environment for the company. With the assistant of Ankit and the tech team, WebEngage became a full-stack mobile-first marketing automation platform.

Since then they believe in making marketing more personalized. The user should feel genuine engagement with the company and become more comfortable. WebEngage thus came up as an opportunity for digital companies to improve user engagement.

Growth and Success

WebEngage has been listed in the Winter 2020 Grid Report for Marketing Automation & Push Notification and the High Performer Category. The tool of WebEngage is also very easy to set up which attracts more customers around the globe. Due to this reason, WebEngage received an Implementation Index of 7.96 out of 10. This rate is higher than companies like Oracle and Adobe.

In 2018, the company helped more than 300 digital enterprises to make their user engagement better. Currently, the company is trying its best to help all the B2C companies make more annual revenue. Instead of landing new customers, WebEngage lets the companies reconnect with the existing customers and make a better relationship.

Investors

The major investors of the company are IndiaQuotient, Blume Ventures, Social Capital, Capital Group, and Indian Angel Fund. And, the recent investors are Social Capital and BlackSoil. The Angel round of WebEngage took place in October 2011 and the company raised $100,000. The next funding round took place in August 2012 where they raised $500,000 followed by $1.3 million in 2016. Till now, WebEngage has raised a total amount of $2.1 million from six funding rounds.

Application of AI and ML

Since WebEngage is an initiative to improve user engagement, the application of AI and ML is quite mandatory. The application of AI is needed here mainly to categorize the requirements of the customers based on business requirements, user action, demographic data, etc. It also checks the suitability of the content across different types of user groups.

Accusations

The company was making remarkable success. But, in 2017 one of the former female colleagues of the company accused Avlesh Singh of sexual assault. It spread all over social media like a wildfire. The investigation continued for a long time and they concluded about the relationship is consensual. But, after she came up with the same accusation once again, investigation presumed.

Later, all the charges were removed from him. But, the news affected the growth of the company to some point. Though, the action didn’t lead to something bigger like striking his name off the company. But, the company still suffered some loss.