Business Week, with market researcher YouNoodle, announced 50 best tech start-up companies in June, 50 new companies driven by entrepreneurs with venture capital that promise to:
· Speed up how industries crunch massive amounts of data for market research, advertising and new product development (Cloudera cloud computing);
· Make e-books and documents available quickly to all (Scribd);
· Change our transportation world (Project Better Place’s build out of electric car charging stations worldwide, now receiving tax incentives in Israel, Denmark and Hawaii USA);
· Clean Tech ventures that cultivate alternative energy sources (Bloom Energy’s fuel cells) or that slash energy used by buildings, businesses and computer networks. These new niche companies gained 54% more in venture capital investments in 2008 … and benefit now from government stimulus money earmarked for Energy Efficiency;
· Saving the best for last – a number of start-up tech tools that help companies:
o Build sales and service customers by showing work-in-progress …
o Build collaborative work groups among inside employees, outside vendors/clients and far-flung project workers …
o Architect Do-It-Yourself Web 2.0 and Social Networks …
o Promise lower costs and higher productivity — Ditch email overload; Toss Email Attachment anchors that weigh down projects; Leap time zones among company workers AND customers with a single web bound.
View the Slideshow of Top 50 Tech Start-Ups selected by Business Week from the U.S., China, U.K., India, Israel, and Russia.
Here are Business Tech Tools. From the Top 50 Tech Start-Ups named by Business Week, plus current industry news, these low-cost easy tools help wholesalers, distributors, resellers and Internet merchandise retailers take the next step in workplace collaboration and efficient project management. These business tools “pull the plug” on company email overload … missed phone calls … and updated specs, price quotes, reports that nobody read. Or, worse, that got lost in the wires.
Turning Email In-Boxes Inside-Out
PROBLEM: Your sales rep road warrior is traveling between industry trade shows after meeting up with a potential chain store buyer, who already requested an online quote and was already promised a one-time-only price break on a truckload of liquidation electronics. Where’s the email trail?
SOLUTION: Xobni – inbox spelled backwards – wants to reboot corporate email. Xobni software works with Microsoft Outlook to (a) help your staff find all the above buyer’s message requests and your sales staff’s attachments (Quotes, Spec Sheets, Liquidation Merchandise Resale Policies) … fast. And (b) organize all online contacts by the people involved. Xobni has received venture capital from Cisco Systems (networking, routers) and Research in Motion (developers of the BlackBerry smart phone/handheld computer).
Going Disk-less for Data Storage
PROBLEM: You got video of your exhibit space on opening day of a major trade show. Or you saved a copy of a live video news stream showing your company receiving a philanthropy award for providing clothing and shoes to communities hit by natural disasters. How do you distribute this video news to staff? Where do you store it for future web site and company PR use?
SOLUTION: Fusion-io has developed a device that lets computers store information on flash memory chips, which is faster, lighter and draws far less power than a computer disk drive. (This is similar to the Flash cards used in digital cameras and iPods to store large image and program files in a portable storage device.) Tech start-up Fusion-io’s new flash memory device is already in use in some Dell, Hewlett-Packard and IBM products; it received investment from Dell, LightSpeed Venture Partners and human capital, when Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak became Fusion-io’s chief scientist.
Create a Secure Customer Service Workspace That Bypasses Email
PROBLEM: You manage teams across six time zones and need to close on a client project ASAP. But your team’s proposed co-op advertising – with a massive spreadsheet on media plans and returns on marketing investment – won’t get past email attachment file limits. (Too big.) Worse, you know a competitor is about to pitch this same client.
SOLUTION: 
Huddle.net combines online collaboration, a project portal (easy group editing, approvals and task assignments), document sharing and live conferencing … without dumping anything into emails or releasing any proprietary info through a public network like twitter. Over-limit graphic attachments that get cut off and “I never received / read / saw that memo” become obsolete.
Huddle’s easy-to-use and expandable work group collaboration features got it named one of 50 promising technology start-ups (2007, England) by Business Week, with the potential of “becoming the next Google” as useful tech tool.
Examples of Huddle users –
* Boots pharmacy chain throughout the United Kingdom uses secure, multiple workspaces in Huddle to share training and customer service feedback among its widely scattered retail stores, corporate HQ and sales staff;
* Marketing Matters and Raspberry Frog (corporate logo, web design, ad agencies) use Huddle online collaboration as a client service portal.
(a) Existing clients, and potential clients given access to secure workspaces on Huddle, can view the new handout brochure (even if the graphic designer’s file tips over a gigabyte).
(b) Clients watch how their late-breaking News Release Video is being edited and revised or rewritten and re-dubbed, as it works through the agency’s post-production team.
(c) Through Huddle’s group document management -– co-editing, automatic versioning, audit trails and approval workflow -– every person on the team, inside or outside, knows who and exactly when project specs changed or who signed off on the trade show theme.
(d) Huddle lets these customer-driven agencies brand their controlled-access workspaces as customer service portals with customized dashboards, home pages, emails and online access page addresses (URL).
* Open Bracket combines Huddle’s group collaboration features with the time saving option to sync home, work, partners and prospects … by adding Huddle to Linked-In profiles.
The Huddle app for LinkedIn has given me the chance to really start sharing stuff with other professionals in my field – not just direct colleagues, but anyone and everyone who I come into contact with and want to share work and ideas with. I can take some work I’ve been doing on a project, and share it with both the technology experts and the management types all on the same workspace, all through LinkedIn. (Open Bracket, October 2008)
* Visibility and No More Hidden Arts – The need for instant collaboration across time zones was business-as-usual for a company that manages super-yacht marinas around the world. The yacht marina company is a web design client of agency Marketing Matters, noted above. But, with their client almost unreachable at marinas tucked away around the globe, becoming Huddle workspace users was the way to demo exact web designs to the South Pacific or the Caribbean. And, no one ever had to dig through long email trails for requests, marina images, proposed designs, changes or approved copy. All work is conducted online.
Overall I reckon we’ve cut email traffic by 50% across the company by comparison to other companies not collaborating properly. No longer am I party to massive CC emails with peoples’ comments on a presentation. They all get posted centrally. No longer do I get email feedback on an idea, 50% of it duplicated and the rest I have to pick through and put together. I use whiteboards – did I mention I LOVE WHITEBOARDS! (Charlie, Commercial Team Manager at Huddle)
Build Your Own Social Networks
PROBLEM: Every savvy and survivor wholesaler/reseller needs to use the power of social media for marketing, product buzz, brand protection, customer response and crisis management. Where to start?
SOLUTION: Do-It-Yourself Web 2.0 business tech tool – Ning – made Business Week’s list of 50 promising start-ups. Co-founded by Marc Andreesen (who launched Netscape back in the 1990s), Ning is free software that lets users build their own social networks … totaling 1 Million built to date. Ning raised over $100 Million in investment capital; not bad for a free business tech tool. At least for now.
For a backgrounder with resources on social media use by wholesalers and business bloggers, see Top Ten Wholesale Blog’s Wholesalers Have Friends, Too.
