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Buzzsumo

BuzzSumo – Providing Insights Of Better Content Since 2013

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The power of appropriate content is immeasurable in the world of digital marketing. With online advertising taking the high ground, every content creator should know about SEO. Moreover, freelancers also have a chance of making a good amount of money through content marketing. The craze for creating content has recently gained popularity which led to the establishment of many new companies. If one does proper market research, he or she can find limitless websites providing content marketing research. But, the transparency of a business procedure, better content matters more than advertising about the company. In the case of any new start-up, digital marketing plays a very crucial role but the quality of the product is more important to the customers. Buzzsumo is a start-up founded in 2013 to provide content marketing research. The fact that its annual revenue summed up to $2.5 million after the first year proves it became a huge success. The founders of the company are James Blackwell and Henley Wing.

About the Founders

James Blackwell went to the University of Plymouth for acquiring his bachelor’s degree in business studies. He graduated in the year 2009 and joined Proper Digital Ltd. as a Full Stack Web Developer in 2011. He continued his job till the end of 2013 and then focused entirely on founding Buzzsumo.

Both James and Henley started working for the project in 2013 but the first product launch took place in 2014. Currently, he is the VP Product of Brandwatch.

Henley to date is well-known as the co-founder of Buzzsumo.

The Early Days

Initially, both James and Henley were creating the first version of Buzzsumo in their spare time. Both of them had a job so they weren’t fully focused on building a new business. But, at the end of 2013, they resigned from their jobs and decided to launch the company in 2014. So, they officially founded Buzzsumo in 2014 with no investors.

Steve Rayson provided some initial funding and that is how they launched their Buzzsumo Pro product in late 2014. But, the rate of success was surprising as no one saw it coming.

Lessons Learnt

After one year of the official launch of its first product, Buzzsumo entertained more than 2,000 paid subscribers and over 160,000 freemium subscribers. The once spare time product development turned out to be a profitable start-up with annual revenue of $2.5 million.

Things started getting more serious after this. And, now the team was exclusively focused on creating engaging content for the audience. They realized the right way of pursuing a product launch is making a great quality product then going for marketing.

Strategies for Growth

One of the prime rules for maintaining a proper growth rate of the company is setting small goals. When a company is launched the monthly recurring revenue is expected to be higher because one is starting from zero. But, to maintain the same growth is harder. So, Buzzsumo fixed its target to maintain a monthly growth rate of over 10%.

The challenge becomes more difficult when the existing subscribers leave the company. This problem can only be eradicated if one provides fresh content daily. So, Buzzsumo always focuses on creating fresh catchy blogs on a day-to-day basis and keep the customers engaged.

Have Patience

The bitter truth about running a business is it depends on your luck to some extent. No business with content research tools can expect such revenue within a year. But, Buzzsumo proved that it is possible when you deal with the business in the right way. Or maybe they just got lucky.

But, once a big goal has been reached, you have to be patient because the weekly traffic takes a much longer time to grow and rise steadily. It is harder to drive new customers than selling your products to existing customers. By 2016, the top contents of Buzzsumo received more than 30,000 views and 2,000 shares. Buzzsumo by this team comprised a team of seven members.

Partnership

Within a couple of years of its establishment, Buzzsumo came into a joint venture with many companies. Some of them include Moz, Buffer, Wordstream, Canva, Uberflip, etc. Steve Rayson also received advice from some great businessmen as he was from a business background. Some of the supporters were from Eden Ventures, Brandwatch, etc. Over the past three years, Buzzsumo has grown rapidly and the main reason behind it is a very flexible team.

Digital river

How Digital River helps Global Commerce Flow Smoother than Ever Before?

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Technology has had an impact on almost all spheres of our lives. While making it easier to do things, not even considered doable before, advancements in technology also lead to better commerce and economy. One of the most important fields in which technology has had a lasting impact is that of commerce. Technical solutions and online marketing have changed the way companies interact with their customers. Furthermore, since the entire world has moved into a digital stage, we see that almost all the major companies in the world have their own digital presence.

This helps them interact with their clients online and poach potential new customers. In this digital world, companies that offer tech-support in the field of commerce are greatly valued. Today, we will be taking a look at one of the largest global leaders in the field of commerce solutions- Digital River. This giant in the field of tech-solutions has been around for over 25 years and has helped some of the largest companies in the world with their commercial problems. Here’s a look at how Digital River helps companies manage their commercial applications effectively and efficiently.

A Look at Digital River

The company has over 25 years’ worth of industry experience, being a global partner to some of the world’s biggest corporations. They have during their long career in the field of e-commerce mastered the art of global commerce and economic stratification, specializing in brand valuation, image building, and customer service. Over the years, Digital River has helped global brands relate to their customers and build their brand loyalty, by formulating the right policies and strategies to deliver what their customers want from them.

Most of the world’s most famous software firms, electronics companies, and digital brands have utilized the executive prowess of Digital River sometime during their growth. The company makes use of a high-tech commerce cloud to store data and utilizes advanced tools to create personalized e-commerce solutions for its clients. Furthermore, it also formulates strategies regarding online sales, management of stores and even helps with processing payments. On the whole, the company provides services related to almost every field in e-commerce management, making them the true complete package. They also help companies with regards to disturbance handling, taxes, compliance, billing, and even fraud detection.

About Adam Coyle

In 2018, Digital River announced that Adam Coyle will succeed David Dobson as the Chief Executive Officer of the company. Coyle has been in the field of commerce-solutions for the past two decades or so and has been a valuable member of the company since early 2015. He began as an executive as Siris Capital, which is an investment partner of Digital River.

He began his term as Chief Operating Officer in 2018, before transferring to the role of CEO to oversee company strategy and policymaking. Before joining Siris, Adam worked as VP at Vantiv, prior to which he worked as the President of National Processing, which is a Vantiv subsidiary. He was also a partner at Advent International and began his career at First Data Corporation. He has also served as the director of establishments such as FirstBank, NYCE and the First Financial Bank.

Success and Growth

The company headquarters is in Minneapolis, and they have offices all across the US, Europe, South America, and even Asia. Founded in 1994 by Joel A. Ronning, Digital Rivers has come a long way to become one of the world’s largest e-commerce solution providers. One of the major strategies that Ronning wanted to inculcate in his business is accountability and responsibility.

The firm has a great understanding of the ever-changing e-commerce environment and does its part to stay updated and relevant with regards to new technologies. Furthermore, the company has over sixty patents to its name, and its annual transactions go over $3 billion regularly. Another important thing about Digital River is its outstanding employee and customer satisfaction, with most employees having stayed with the company for more than 2 decades.

Over the years, the company has grown and acquired other heavy-weights in the field of e-commerce such as CCNow, eSellerate, Fatfoogoo, and Journey Education Marketing. These valuable assets have helped Digital River build a hugely popular and respected business model that is truly unique from its competitors. The growth has been so phenomenal that the company processed over $30 billion through online transactions in the year 2013.

Ronning stepped down from the post of CEO in 2012 and was succeeded by Dave Dobson, who in turn, handed over the reins to Coyle in 2018. Some of their biggest clients include Lenovo, Media INC, Microsoft, Avast, Samsung, Kaspersky, and Adobe. Their annual income amounts to an impressive 400 million USD! With over two decades’ worth of experience in the field of e-commerce, it is safe to say that this giant is here to stay!

Bluetooth

How Jaap Haartsen Changed the World Sends and Receives Files With Bluetooth

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The world around us has changed so much due to advancements in science and technology. Almost every sphere of our lives has been touched by technology in some way or the other. It has made it possible for us to do things that were impossible or unimaginable in the past. One of the major fields in which technology has had a massive impact is in communication and data transfer. We have all used Bluetooth at some point of time to share and transfer files. It has been our savior whenever we had to share a song or an image and didn’t have cellular data to help us. But how many know about how Bluetooth came to be. Since being invented, Bluetooth has come a long way, from being something primarily used by businesspeople to share things on their mobile phones to a universally loved and adopted platform to share and transfer data. So, here’s a look at the story behind Bluetooth and how the technology became what it is.

About the Inventor

Jaap Haartsen led the development team that designed and created the Bluetooth in 1994. At the time, he was working at Ericsson, while now he serves as an expert at wireless communication at Plantronics. Jacobus Cornelis Haartsen, generally called Jaap by his colleagues was born in 1963 in Hague, Netherlands. The Dutchman got his electrical engineering degree from Delft University in 1986.

After graduation, he worked for short stints in both Siemens and Philips before eventually going back to pursue his higher studies. He got his Ph.D. from Delft with honors in 1990, after publishing a thesis on acoustic wave detection. He joined Ericsson a year later, and worked in the US for two years, before shifting to their base in Sweden in 1993. It was while he was at the Mobile division in Lund that he developed the idea for the Bluetooth. After 1997, he worked for Ericsson in their Emmen plant, eventually quitting and taking up a part-time teaching job at the University of Twente.

He later became the Chief Technology Officer at Tonalite BV, which was a small company specializing in wireless wearables. In 2012, Plantronics acquired Tonalite, prompting Haartsen to become a part of their team. In 2015, he became a part of the National Inventors Hall of Fame for his contribution to the field of radio and wireless communication.

Jaap and Wireless Communication

Jaap always had an interest in the field of wireless communication, and now has been active in this field for over three decades. In 1994, he began developing a system that would later grow and evolve to become the Bluetooth technology we now enjoy. He began by taking up a project related to indoor wireless systems and tried to find ways to enable short-range radio connections.

After developing Bluetooth, he was also instrumental in setting up the Bluetooth Special Interest group, better known as the BSIG in 1998. He then, went on to serve as their Chairman till 2000, helping with standardizing the Bluetooth interface. He also played an important part in helping to obtain all the required approvals regarding the world-wide usage of Bluetooth technology.

Concept of Bluetooth

The idea for a short-range radio tech began in 1989, as per the suggestion of Ericsson’s CTO Nils Rydbeck. Haartsen’s goal was to create a device that could support both digital and visual data while being digital and wireless.

The team went with a chip that could integrate all these types of technologies and not pull to much space or battery power. Also, “Bluetooth comes from an anglicized version of the name of the Danish King Harald Blåtand, who played an important role in uniting Denmark and Norway. The logo too consists of a Viking inscription, called the bind rune, that brings together the king’s initials.

After developing the Bluetooth technology, IBM’s Adalio Sanchez approached Rybeck to talk about integrating the new technology with their existing technology in 1997. This resulted in the Bluetooth becoming a part of the ThinkPad notebook and Ericsson phone. However, since neither of these players was market leaders in their respective segments, they decided that it would do the technology well to make it open-source, so as to maximize the access to the market. Hence, with that aim in mind, in 1998, SIG came out with IBM, Ericsson, Nokia, Intel and Toshiba on board.

A year later, the first consumer device with Bluetooth integrated into came out, and even won an award at COMDEX. Ericsson then launched the first Bluetooth phone through the T36 and the T39 came out in 2001. Similarly, IBM launched the ThinkPad A30 in 2001, making it the world’s first notebook that came with Bluetooth.

Since then, Bluetooth has grown to become a gold standard in wireless data transfer, finding its way into almost every phone manufactured nowadays. With Apple recently stating that it was going to do away with the traditional headphone jack, the future of Bluetooth looks more interesting than ever before!

Tanium

Father-Son Duo Orion And David Hindawi That Set Up Endpoint Security Firm Tanium!

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Orion Hindawi and David Hindawi, a father-son duo recognized that IT management issues and increasing cybercrimes could not be solved by technology alone. Thus, the duo took the next step and set up a company called Tanium. In 2007, Orion Hindawi set up Tanium with his father in partnership. Presently, Tanium stands out differently than the other competitors McAfee, Symantec, etc. Because the company uses a novel approach to cybersecurity that is unique.

All this achieved under the guidance of father-son duo. However, Orion is playing a crucial role in exploring the business of the company. Currently, he leads product strategy and development of the Tanium platform. Also, responsible for all customer-facing technical operations as well as management functions.

Tanium’s co-founder and CEO- Orion Hindawi

American businessman Orion Hindawi is the present CEO of the Tanium. Earlier, he worked at VP technology for more than 8 years. Orion is a technology executive with deep technical experience in enterprise management software. Let’s see the details of personal as well as the professional life of Orion Hindawi.

Personal Life

He was born in 1980 in an Iraqi Jewish family. However, he spent most of his childhood in Berkeley, California. As his father David Hindawi was shifted to California from Israel to earn a Ph. D. at UC Berkeley. Following father’s path, he also admitted to the same college. But he dropped out before graduation to help his father at work.

Career achievements of Orion Hindawi

Before setting up Tanium, Orion co-founded another security management platform called BigFix. He served more than 17 years in the firm where he led the development of endpoint security and management platform. This firm later on acquired by IBM in 2010. Also, he had a great contribution to what the Tanium is today. As well, he works with Tanium costumers daily so that the Tanium platform would find out new approaches for solving the significant challenges of securing and managing large enterprise environments. Presently, he is one of the board of directors at Tanium. In 2016, he succeeded his father and became the new CEO of the company.

The Tanium foundation Backstory

The vision of the founders behind the Tanium establishment was to empower the largest organizations of the world to manage and secure their networks. Tanium is a resultant of this idea that solves the biggest security issues of the firms. Especially, focusing on the IT sector. With this vision, Orion and David Hindawi established Tanium in 2007. In a short duration, the company managed to provide a new way to manage and secure the networks against cyber threats. Today, it has a team of smartest people with the deepest expertise in the market. In fact, the duo spent almost five years to develop a cybersecurity platform so that the technology would scale across the largest global networks.

About Tanium

It is American system management and endpoint security firm. It headquartered at Emeryville in California. However, the firm managed to understand the security issues the IT industry faced and enable the best cybersecurity solution. Tanium uses advance technology along with a deep understanding of the processes and people. Thus, enabling the best service to keep the client’s most precious data secure.

Under Orion and his father’s guidance, several largest and most respected firms in the world re-platformed endpoint security as well as management with Tanium. Includes, AutoNation, Barclays, GoDaddy, Whirlpool, Sutter Health as well as U. S. Navy.

Bottom Line

The firm Orion and his father David Hindawi established in 2007 raised 120 million dollars in funding in the past. However, the company successfully raised many fundings that valued Tanium at 3.5 billion dollars firm. In return, the father-son duo became a billionaire. Presently, it is one of the leading endpoint security companies that ensures the client’s sensitive data security.

Presently, 1,000+ experts worked at Tanium to make its platform more advanced. The company is unstoppable and consistently working to transform IT management. Also, aims to solve unsolvable problems of IT management and cybersecurity.

Revolar

Jacqueline Ros Assures Personal Safety With Revolar

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No matter how much our world is marching towards a more civilized environment, some social issues always pull us back. It is a matter of fact that crimes related to assaults are increasing day by day. For example, India is well-known for its rich IT sector skills and at the same time accused of brutal assaults. And, these harassments mostly take place in case of women.

Not only in India, but in the entire world women are not safe. If a few try to ensure their safety, a thousand does it otherwise. In this scenario, we need to step up instead of sloganeering and protesting. Jacqueline Ros, an entrepreneur came up with a product called Revolar to ensure personal safety, especially for women.

She founded this Denver-based start-up in 2013 and served as the CEO of the company. This personal safety device gained a lot of popularity. An idea turned into a big project only because she had the passion to bring a change.

About the Founder

Jacqueline went to the University of Florida to acquire her bachelor’s degree in International Studies & Spanish. She graduated in the year 2012 and the next moment she is the founder of a successful start-up.

While pursuing her degree she worked as an intern (Trained Legal Representative) at Guardian Ad Litem. In 2014, she was a part of the Candidate Support Team of Leadership for Educational Equity. She was also a Content & Transformative Series Facilitator at Teach for America and Board Treasurer at AXL Academy.

Jacqueline Ros
Image Source – Google

She performed her role as the CEO of Revolar until May 2018. After that, she became the Regional Director (America) of Techstars.

Why Revolar

The safety of women is a very crucial factor for the social upbringing of any nation. Jacqueline promised herself to create something for the safety of women when her sister was attacked twice. Jacqueline said that while her sister was only seventeen she became the victim of two assaults. And, she decided to develop a safety device which will be easy to carry and affordable as well.

The Beginning

Jacqueline just graduated from college when she thought of creating Revolar. She is a graduate student who is not from a very influential family background. So, she tried her best to pitch about her product and participated in start-up programs. She participated in a Kickstarter campaign, two start-up accelerators, and also a university pitch contest.

The idea of Revolar was very assuring and seemed like a need of the hour. So, she received a funding of $156,000 from the state of Colorado and a huge amount of $3 million from one of the start-up accelerators. The funding was led by a Denver Venture Capitalist firm.

Advantages of Revolar

In the initial days, Revolar helped to send location information to once contacts in case of emergency. Once the device is connected with the Revolar app it would immediately send location details to every contact saved in the app. So, just with the click of a button the safety level upgrades.

The device was very simple and minimalistic as Jacqueline wanted something that any woman can handle. Because it is the right of every woman to live freely without having the fear of such dreadful assaults.

Currently, the company is trying to introduce new features cost-effectively. Every step is taken to make the Revolar part of sustainable business and to make the world a better place.

Bad Days

In late 2017, Revolar all of a sudden went out of business for a month. This was caused due to the ineffective supply chain and production unit. The company didn’t have any other option so they filed bankruptcy saying the company is unable to repay its debt.

But, luckily this wasn’t the end. Two investors, namely, Empowerment Capital and Volante Capital Advisors were impressed by the aim of Revolar. They didn’t want a project with such a good cause to shut down and hence decided to fund them. All this happened within one month and Revolar was again back in business.

The New Business

Once Revolar was back in business it also decided to launch new products with some added features. First of all, the price of the product was cut by $40 and the launch of a new device took place. Apart from showing the location, the contact would receive a message about the person reaching the destination safely or not. Another feature added in the app is step counting.

She received a funding of $2 million for her new product. But, currently, she is not playing her role in Revolar anymore. Brian Thomas has taken her position and after he joined the company the reported revenue of Revolar is around $2 billion.

juniper networks

Juniper Network’s Founder Says India Is Its Largest Development Site

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India has always excelled when it comes down to the engineering sector. Technical engineers especially those working in the IT sector have mostly emerged from India. The telecommunication industry has developed in the past few decades rapidly. From selling networking products to software, many companies have made a future in this sector. American immigrant, Pradeep Sindhu is the founder of one such company excelling on the grounds of networking. The name of the company is Juniper Networks and Pradeep founded the company in February 1996. A twenty-four years old company founded by an ex-IITian has become a billion-dollar enterprise.

The company is currently based in Sunnyvale, California, United States. Juniper is a world-famous company in the sector of networking hardware. The main products of the company are routers, network management software and providing network security as well.

About the Founder

Pradeep Sindhu is an American businessman who was born in India. Apart from founding Juniper, he has also founded Fungible, a company based on data center technology.

Born into an Indian family, Pradeep pursued his undergraduate degree from India. He acquired his bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from IIT Kanpur. Pradeep fled to Hawaii in 1976 and completed his master’s in the same from the University of Hawaii. Later, he completed his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University.

Pradeep gained a very rich knowledge of telecommunication engineering and computer science before founding his companies. His professional world started growing from Xerox PARC where he worked for eleven years. He worked for designing many integrated circuits and multiprocessors. Pradeep is also well-known for making major contributions to designing high-tech microprocessors of Sun Microsystems.

After his years of studies and working in computer labs he decided to found his own company, Juniper Networks. So, in 1996, along with Dennis Ferguson and Bjorn Liencres, he established the company in California.

Early Story

Pradeep got the idea of founding his company while he was on a vacation in 1995. He wanted to switch the conventional circuit switching to packet switching. Pradeep, after his years of experience, thought that it would be better for transferring data. This is because after one fixed data packet is transmitted through a channel it will then be fully available for another one. Well, he might have got the idea from energy packets in quantum physics.

Success and Growth

Pradeep started the company with a seed funding of $2million. But, within the first year of its operation, the company raised another $12 million. In 1997, the company received $8 million in venture funding. This year the company received an additional $40 million in a funding round which witnessed the presence of companies like Nortel, 3Com, etc. Other investors of Juniper include Qwest and AT&T.

Within four years, the company’s annual revenue summed up to $3.8 million. M40 router was the only product of the company and only one product was sold to more than fifty telecommunication companies. The company also came into a joint partnership with Alcatel and Ericsson to expand itself in foreign markets.

The company gradually expanded in Asian countries like Japan, India, etc. This helped Juniper increase its market share from 6% in 1998 to more than 20% in 2000. Juniper filed its first IPO in April 1999 and by July 1999 its valuation became $7 billion. The growth of the company was jaw-dropping and it became the “latest darling of the Wall Street”.

The company’s sell decreased during the time of dot-com bust but again after 2004, it was back on track. In 2005, the company’s annual revenue surpassed $2 billion.

The Indian Market

Juniper has its development sites in Boston, Silicon Valley, Canada, and India. Among all these centers, Pradeep says the best R&D is carried out in India. India is a very crucial market for Juniper Networks but the most important scope for development as well. According to Pradeep Sindhu, the development site was founded in India to solve the level of complexity that cannot be done in the U.S.

When a company is handling a networking issue, it has different layers of complexity. And, the engineers in India can solve every layer from scratch. Pradeep also said that he loves hiring fresh talents from the Indian schools who are brimming with talent and enthusiasm. In 2018, the total employees of Juniper were 9,000 among which 2,600 belonged to Indian offices.

He is truly proud of the Indian market from both the aspect of market growth and solving critical missions. Pradeep wants to keep investing in the Indian market for the betterment of the company.