Why is the world’s biggest advertiser, Procter & Gamble, changing its Facebook ad strategy? Although it’s not cutting back on advertising with Facebook, it plans to buy highly targeted Facebook ads less often. Targeting to super-specific audiences was expensive but didn’t result in a big difference to its business, P&G CMO Marc Pritchard told The Wall Street Journal. The company, whose massive portfolio of household brands includes Tide and Crest, had experimented with Facebook’s most sophisticated targeting tools, which allow advertisers to reach a narrowly defined audience. Read More>>
Monthly Archives: August 2016
Going Part-time with Your Startup
Adidas will open a new robot-staffed shoe factory in Atlanta in 2017
Your next Adidas runners might be made in America – by a robot. The shoemaker revealed more details about its coming ‘Speedfactory,’ which it previously announced would be coming to the U.S. in 2017. The factory will call Atlanta home, and feature 74,000 square feet of robot shoemaking capability, with full operational status target for the end of next year. The factory has an output capacity of 50,000 pairs of shoes per year, which is only a small slice of its overall annual shoe shipments. But the Atlanta facility will be Adidas’ second Speedfactory, joining the original in its home territory of Germany. Humans will benefit, too: The company says that it will create about 160 jobs for people overseeing the factory, too. Read More>>
Technology Startups Target In-Home Care Market for Elderly
Decades of medical breakthroughs have improved the quality and length of life, but technology has done little to help people care for older relatives. Several startups aim to ease the burden of these families by using technology to automate caregiver-family matches, post customer feedback, create schedules and make payments more convenient.Read More>>
Sierra Nevada Corp. prepares for next round of Dream Chaser tests
Sierra Nevada Corp. (SNC) said its Dream Chaser vehicle is ready for a second round of test flights in California as it presses ahead with development of a version of that vehicle to transport cargo to the International Space Station. SNC said an engineering test article of the lifting body vehicle, having completed modifications at the company’s Louisville, Colorado, facility, is ready to ship to NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in California for a series of tests, including at least one glide flight scheduled for late this year. The tests build upon an earlier series the company carried out using the same vehicle in 2013. That test was a milestone in a Commercial Crew Development 2 agreement that the company had with NASA. Read More>>
The Truth about VC’s and How They Don’t Make Money
A meeting with a well-known startup investor started and the talk somehow pivoted from seed-seeking startup into talking about the macro view of venture capital and how it doesn’t actually make sense. Or maybe it does make sense? Guess depends on your point of view. “95% of them aren’t profitable.” Clarification as to what that actually means: 95% of VC’s aren’t actually earning enough ROI to justify the risk their investors (LP’s) are taking. Following is the attempt to reconstruct the arguments leading to this hard-to-grasp realization of an industry so often idealized from the outside. Read More>>
Disrupting the Disruptors: Startup Accelerators Feel Pressure to Evolve
A decade ago, eager entrepreneurs with little business acuity and in need of funding turned to startup accelerators for help. From the outside, these programs had an air of exclusivity with the source code to build successful businesses. Now that image seems passé. New models are emerging on how to create ventures and scale them, hence the pressure on startup accelerators. Read More>>
Cybersecurity startup PhishMe raises $42.5 million to help employees spot phishing attacks
PhishMe, a cyber security startup that helps companies thwart phishing attacks among other targeted malware, has closed a $42.5 million series C round led by existing investor Paladin Capital Group, with participation from Bessemer Venture Partners. Founded in 2011, Virginia-based PhishMe provides the tools to engage employees across an organization so that they can recognize malicious phishing emails. Part of this involves conditioning them into being able to spot rogue emails, but it also lets them easily report questionable emails to the appropriate security teams internally. Read More>>
Four Alternative Types Of Accelerator That Startups Overlook
As startup accelerators multiply, some argue that they do a better job of serving their own interests than those of the businesses they’re supposed to help launch. Traditionally, accelerators tend to see money as the driving force behind startups’ success, and make cash their top focus. Talent and technology become secondary priorities. In reality, though, those two things are more often what leads to success for accelerators and startups alike—then the money follows. Traditional cash-focused accelerators may be the most well-known, but there are other options to consider. Read More>>
IBM’s $2 Billion Man Is Amassing a Cybersecurity Startup Empire
After selling his last company to IBM for $2 billion, Lance Crosby is now the one doing the acquiring. StackPath, a cybersecurity firm he founded last year, has already raised $180 million and bought at least four startups. The strategy is unusual for a company just starting out. Read More>>
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