News: Startups & Entrepreneurship

[Jenny]

Students open doors in Utah Entrepreneur Challenge

Three Utah County (USA) college teams took the top three spots at the 2018 Utah Entrepreneur Challenge on April 7 at the University of Utah.

#1: Portal Entryways, a student startup from BYU (Brigham Young University), took home the $40,000 grand prize and the first place title. The team created an improved solution to assist wheelchair users in opening doors. Their device attaches to existing automatic doors. The user then downloads an app, which opens the door if the user comes within a five-foot radius. The door remains open until the user has left the range of the device.
Watch here "How Portal is opening doors": https://www.portalentryways.com/

#2: ProLink, a product they describe as the LinkedIn of gaming.

#3: BayWatch Technologies, is camera and software solutions for auto insurance claims.

Read more at heraldextra.com

[Jenny]

This post is deleted!

[Jenny]

My Startup Idea: A weight loss plan inspired this founder

‘My weight loss plan inspired my startup’: Tushar Vashisht, founder, HealthifyMe
The idea: To build a health app with calorie counter for Indian food

When I downloaded a calorie counter app, I had to shift to a non-Indian diet since the app didn’t have recorded calorie values for Indian food items,” says Vashisht. So he created an Excel sheet and recorded the calories of Indian food items. That Excel sheet eventually became an idea for an app called HealthifyMe in 2012.
Read more at timesofindia

[Jenny]

Fintech sector increasingly attractive compared to traditional banking for IT professionals

Job vacancies in the UK Fintech sector increased 9% in the last 12 months, while the traditional UK banking sector advertised 3% less. In comparison, vacancies in the overall UK jobs market increased by 3%.

Of the jobs advertised in the fintech sector during this period, 25% were for software developers, and IT jobs didn’t even make the top five in traditional banking (4.7%), where accountants were most in demand (23%)…
Read more at computerweekly

[Jenny]

What is RegTech?
Regulation technology, or RegTech, is a branch of Fintech focusing on improving compliance and internal control systems. These solutions are designed to automate risk management processes, assist regulatory reporting, prevent fraud and enable organizations to stay informed of regulatory changes. The financial services industry was the first to adopt the technology, using it to screen thousands of transactions a day for money laundering, market manipulation, insider trading and third-party risk.
Read more at biglawbusiness.com

Here's how the regtech landscape is evolving to address increasing compliance needs

Read more at businessinsider

[Jenny]

Startups in India

One of India’s top 3 ‘most innovative startups’, this startup has helped 15k couples plan beautiful weddings
Startup: Fullonwedding
Founders: Khushbu Jagwani, Shalabh Jhalawad and Himanshu Jagwani
Year it was founded: 2016
Where it is based: Bengaluru
Sector: Wedtech
Problem it solves: Curates all vendors required for a quintessential Indian wedding and acts as a digital liaison/online platform between the wedding vendors and people planning weddings.

Read more at yourstory.com

Online grocery startups in Tier 2 cities in India thrive despite BigBasket and Grofers

In the US, InstaCart and Amazon-owned Whole Foods continue to rule the sector. But in India, since the market is in its early stages, the endgame of the tier two startups is yet to be seen.

Presently, the online grocery sector in India is ruled by BigBasket, Grofers, and Amazon, with a major of their revenue coming from tier one cities. But in India’s online grocery market worth $1 billion, tier two cities are not much behind in potential for online grocery’s growth. Already, BigBasket and Grofers are expanding outside the metro cities.

Startups are mushrooming in state capitals which are not Tier 1 cities, such as Flipfresh (Hubballi), ShopitDaily (Indore), PinkCityKirana (Jaipur), GharBaitheBazar (Lucknow), and Kada (Thiruvananthapuram).

Read more at yourstory.com

[Jenny]

SCOOTER WARS: 3 startups are raising hundreds of millions to speed up your commute — but they're annoying everyone in San Francisco

3 startups — Bird, Spin, and LimeBike — have raised a combined $225 million in venture capital funding and rolled out hundreds of vehicles. They are annoying everyone in San Francisco by taking up space on sidewalks.

Chris Kosek, a graphic designer, described the scooters as "a cool idea with flawed execution" on Twitter.
Read more at businessinsider

[Jenny]

Block Show Europe 2018 will be in Berlin on May 28 – 29

Blockchain community: Blockchain startups, investors, founders, C-level executives, lawyers, developers.
The goal of Block Show Europe 2018 is to bring together the global Blockchain community, as well as to demonstrate multiple new cases for implementation and enhancement of the Blockchain technology.
80 speakers from 50 countries; 150 exhibitors…
Read more at blockshoweurope.com

[Jenny]

Germany needs this - "Realtime Queue Management", in both public and private sectors.

Tired of waiting long hours at the doctor’s?
This queue management platform promises to end the hassle
Sminq provides real-time availability information at doctors' clinics to help users avoid waiting in a queue.
Read more at: economictimes.indiatimes.com

EasyQueue
“With EasyQueue, an individual can order food with minimal clicks. The vendor accepts the order and notifies the user when his order is ready. The user can then go and pick up the food, avoiding long queues and follow-up.”
Read more at yourstory.com

[Jenny]

Here are the 12 startups in Techstars NYC’s Winter 2018 class

The ideas range from cryptocurrency to kitchen sanitation to gene sequencing. Among the 12 startups, I personally found these three are quite interesting!

• PathSpot has built a device that can scan restaurant employees’ hands and detect the pathogens that can cause food-borne illness. If an employee fails the scan, they’re asked to wash their hands and then try again...

• The Clear Cut offers a concierge service for consumers to design their own diamond engagement rings...

• Vertoe helps you store your luggage by leaving it at nearby businesses. If you’re checking out of an Airbnb, or if you’re heading to a concert or sporting event where you can’t bring a large suitcase, you can open up Vertoe, find a nearby location and pay $5.95 per item per day...
  Read more at techrunch

[Jenny]

Six trends for travel startups to consider

1. Seamless travel
2. Micro social networks
3. The wow effect
4. Fair trade
5. Social - incorporating gamification, digital badges and peer support within teams.
6. Techno a gogo - tools and platforms that benefit from the introduction of AI and blockchain.

Among the 15 startups joined the Welcome City Lab (in Paris, France), three of them are quite interesting.

• Allons Bon Train is a platform (French) which lets travelers benefit from up to 60% discount on their train tickets by grouping them with other travelers when more than 10 people are interested in the same trip.

• Bagshare is an internet platform that lets independent travelers discover the material needs of small NGOs abroad and to take advantage of their journeys to deliver relevant donations to their destination.

• Realcast –Stop watching, start touching, is developing technology and interactive content in XR (Extended Reality). Its product, In Situ eXPerience offers an interactive & immersive experience through different wireless devices (HoloLens or smartphone) to bring history alive for visitors in different environments.

Read more at phocuswire.com

[Jenny]

Why Do Startups Fail and How to Avoid it
Top 3 reasons are what I call, "Tripple M": Market, Money, & Manpower.

Infographic: The 20 Most Common Reasons Startups Fail and How to Avoid Them

Read more at cbinsights.com & entrepreneur.com

Why Most Startups Fail? (and How You Can Avoid It?)

1. Starting a business for the wrong reason
2. Poor management
3. Inadequate funds (lack a proper understanding of their cash flow)
4. Location is important (better close to where your customers are situated)
5. Inappropriate business planning
6. Overexpansion
7. No website or digital presence
8. One more important factor, you, the owner. (Do you have passion, hard work, determination and a positive outlook?)
   Read more at business.com

7 Reasons Startups Fail--and How to Avoid Them

1. Failure to find unsolved customer pain
2. Reluctance to get feedback on prototypes
3. No passion for the market
4. Lack of skills needed to win
5. Ignoring cash burn
6. Inability to raise capital
7. Weak team, poor leadership
   Read more at inc.com

Top Biggest Startup Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

1. Build a product that nobody wants -> Validate ideas with real users.
2. Spend too much time on MVP -> Fake it before you make it.
3. Didn’t spend enough time on culture since day one -> Care about your employees.
4. Focus too much on competition -> Focus on product / Market Fit
5. Didn’t learn from data -> Track analytics since the first version, …
6. Didn’t communicate -> Set goal and communicate, …
7. Focus on wrong things -> Don’t rely on vanity metrics, …
   Read more at: techstartups.com

4 Best Practices to Avoid Startup Failure

1. Maximize your resources
2. Leverage your network
3. Build a learning culture
4. Have an MVP (Minimum Viable Product)
   Read more at entrepreneur.com