Outsell for Startups

I've been dabbling around in a number of different verticals such as legal, science, and technology, but now it's time to jump into education. I interviewed Mike Shannon the co-founder and CEO of Packback and Dr. Brandon Chicotsky, a business faculty member at Johns Hopkins University. Packback is online learning community for college students to discuss high-level questions incorporating curiosity and AI to create an experiential learning experience that is worth keeping an eye on. After launching in April of 2014 upon airing on ABC's "Shark Tank" to a record 8.1M viewers nationwide, Packback has grown to serve over 130K students nationwide and is backed by $3M+ in venture funding from notable investors including Mark Cuban (Owner Dallas Mavs), Howard Tullman (CEO 1871), Mark Tebbe (Founder Answers.com), Hyde Park Angels, Jumpstart Ventures, and Listen Ventures.

Our discussion was fantastic and I felt many pieces were immensely valuable. As a result, we've created two episodes. The first focuses on the start of Packback, the problems it is solving, and where the company is headed in the next 1–5 years. Part two will focus on the future of education with a large amount of insight from Dr. Brandon Chicotsky on what we can be expecting, and where there are opportunities in the space. So without further ado, please enjoy part two of this two part series on Packback and the future of education.

I've been dabbling around in a number of different verticals such as legal, science, and technology, but now it's time to jump into education. I interviewed Mike Shannon the co-founder and CEO of Packback and Dr. Brandon Chicotsky, a business faculty member at Johns Hopkins University. Packback is online learning community for college students to discuss high-level questions incorporating curiosity and AI to create an experiential learning experience that is worth keeping an eye on. After launching in April of 2014 upon airing on ABC's "Shark Tank" to a record 8.1M viewers nationwide, Packback has grown to serve over 130K students nationwide and is backed by $3M+ in venture funding from notable investors including Mark Cuban (Owner Dallas Mavs), Howard Tullman (CEO 1871), Mark Tebbe (Founder Answers.com), Hyde Park Angels, Jumpstart Ventures, and Listen Ventures.

Our discussion was fantastic and I felt many pieces were immensely valuable. As a result, we've created two episodes. The first focuses on the start of Packback, the problems it is solving, and where the company is headed in the next 1–5 years. Part two will focus on the future of education with a large amount of insight from Dr. Brandon Chicotsky on what we can be expecting, and where there are opportunities in the space. So without further ado, please enjoy part one of this two part series on Packback and the future of education.

Data speaks volumes. Outsell discovered that just 6% of the top 350 companies in our industry are run by women, and only 22% of their C-suites are composed of women, and many of these positions are in marketing or HR. In this week's special edition interview, I asked Anthea Stratigos to sit down with me and discuss the ever lasting hot topic of diversity. I dug into the age-old questions of why and what companies can do to change these cultural dynamics. The result: an interview covering Anthea's professional journey, how companies are successfully handling diversity, and a view into the Outsell Women's Conference, a flagship event with an impressive panel creating a one day knowledge dump. I'm calling it an MBA in a day, with speakers such as Ann Korologos kicking the event off. Many thanks to Anthea for giving me the time, and I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did.

Tyler and I crossed paths originally to discuss potential partner opportunities. After seeing a demo of their product I insisted that Tyler shoud jump on the podcast with me as soon as possible. So I made my way to San Francisco, we jumped in a room at WeWork, and had a really wide-ranging conversation. This was a difficult interview to cut down just because we talked about so much. Everything from Tyler's past experience of doing product at Apple and product-managing the initial release of QuickTime to jumping into Tickr and what the problem Tyler solved was and how Tickr ramped so quickly now doubling their customer base every single quarter. We jump into how Tickr is taking data, breaking it out of its silos, harmonizing it and using A.I. to provide companies with a huge amount of insight not only of your companys performance but also insight on how your competitors and market peers are performing as well.

I wish we made two or three of these episodes and just combined them into a series. That being said, we were able to distill quite a bit and pack it into this episode. I really hope you enjoy this far-ranging and really really insightful conversation with Tyler Peppel, the founder and CEO of Tickr. Enjoy.

Outsell for Startups Analyst Q&A: Will Jan of Outsell Inc.

This interview is a little bit different than the ones we’ve done in the past. Usually, I go out and I find really interesting companies and we talk about all kinds of cool things like AI, Blockchain, Neural Networking, so on and so forth. Today, I turn internal to Outsell Inc., and interviewed one of our analysts and I’m really excited to share this discussion with Will Jan. Will is a VP and lead analyst here at Outsell, and covers Outsell’s research program in the credit, financial, governance, risk & compliance (GRC), and tax & accounting segments. His research includes competitive analysis, innovations (fintech, insurtech, regtech, and risktech), and disruptions in these areas to aid in opportunity-discovery. Will also leads Outsell’s coverage in blockchain, where he collaborates with the analyst team to uncover segment-specific opportunities. He provides guidance to vendors, and their investors and users, by bridging the supply-and-demand gap: How best to enhance information, data, and technology adoption. His guidance is amazing, he has supported a huge number of our clients, and what he’s writing about has been fascinating.

In this discussion, Will and I spend a significant amount of time discussing blockchain, and how companies large and small are handling the adoption. We also dive into key topics and trends that he’s noticing, what are the top startups on his radar, which large companies are handling blockchain successfully, and much much more.

So, without further ado, the man that has Chinese buffets as his power meal, and is a proud owner of the Star Wars Hexology… Will Jan.

In the past I have gone out interviewing founders and CEOs to discuss the growth of their companies, why they’re disruptive, where the company is going in one to five years, so on and so forth. This has been really exciting, but many of the companies that I’ve been covering and a lot of the companies that Outsell’s analyst team have been sourcing have blockchain technology, AI technology, and pieces of technology that are sometimes a little confusing. I myself don’t like to admit that there are many pieces of this technology that I still don’t understand. Maksim Izmaylov (Max) the founder of Winding Tree came to my rescue to finally clear the air around everything related to block chain. Turns out, they’re not blocks on a chain…

Max is a hacker, serial entrepreneur, Y Combinator alumni, and is focused on tackling blockchain for the travel industry. Max and I dig into what blockchain is, why it is so useful, and what the implications are. We also touch on Max’s background, why he fell into the travel industry, and really do our best to uncover how blockchain is being used in travel, and where Winding Tree’s going.

You’ll notice me jump in throughout the discussion for clarity. This conversation was very eye opening and I hope you find it as useful as I have.

I interviewed Erik Matlick, the founder and CEO of Bombora. Erik already has had a number of successful startup companies, and believes Bombora is going to be his largest yet.

Bombora is a leading provider of B2B demographic, firmographic, and intent data. So how does this all work? Let’s say I’m a company, and I am researching heavily around A.I. and machine learning because my company is interest is in adopting that technology. Now, anybody that is selling to my company would find that information very, very useful. That’s what Bombora provides. It enables sales and marketing teams to have a holistic view of what a company is interested in, so they can provide a more valuable, more direct solution.

I was actually really curious about the name Bombora, so I looked it up and Bombora is an Australian aboriginal word that means a wave that forms over a submerged offshore reef or rock. The name is fitting given that Bombora uses surge data. If you go to Bombora’s website, it’s covered with surfing, and they actually also support the Surfrider Foundation.

I had a fantastic conversation with Erik. We dive into his background, the companies that he’s founded, what he’s trying to accomplish with Bombora, and even diving in to what makes a successful founder and a successful company. I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did.

“The pace at which inventors and engineers are creating is much faster than it’s ever been. To be able to keep up with that and to adequately address the IP needs of organizations,” according to ClearAccessIP founder and CEO Nicole Shanahan, “you really need to connect the two in a way that is seamless.”

How fast are we talking? How much cash is at play? Well, Nicole told us $400 billion is spent annually acquiring IP, and that there are roughly 32 billion concepts out there.

I had the pleasure of interviewing Nicole on the latest episode of Outsell for Startups. She’s a talented individual with a background as a legal technology founder, a consultant attorney, a resident fellow at the Codex Stanford Center for Legal Informatics, and she’s doing a lot in the not just in the world of legal, but also in IP, AI, and neural networks, which just makes for an all-around interesting conversation.

If you’ve ever filed a patent or managed IP, you know it’s very painful, very time intensive, and costs a lot of money. The ClearAccessIP platform can manage all of your company’s patent filings and all of its internal IP, and it can also handle the deal flow for that IP (licensing out that patent to another company). In the past, this has been very complicated, but ClearAccessIP has made this process incredibly simple — from beer umbrellas to neural networks.

I had a great conversation with Nicole and I hope you all enjoy it as well.

The government affairs market is attracting a lot of investment at the moment, as major changes to the current global political landscape is increasing the need for insight and analysis about legislation, government contracts, and regulation. All companies need to know what is coming down the road before it is too late to communicate to law makers how this might impact their business. However, hiring lobbyists to monitor and lobby government is generally the preserve of well funded corporations and organized industries.

I interviewed Alex Wirth, one of the co-founders and CEO of Quorum Analytics, an integrated public affairs platform. They’ve supported companies including Wal-Mart, GM, Lyft, and over 1000 public affairs professionals across the fortune 500, trade associations, nonprofits, advocacy firms, so on and so forth.

Quorum is seizing on the current trend to improve and automate some of the tasks carried out by white-collar workers by using data analytics. Outsell is witnessing this across industry sectors, from lawyers to scientific researchers. Quorum has the potential to enable ordinary company executives to carry out professional DIY lobbying by providing them with all the data, information and workflows tools at their fingertips. This could potentially help to democratize the lobbying industry, which has acquired a negative public image.

In the U.S. alone, $3.15 Billion was spent on lobbying government in 2016, presenting Quorum with a large addressable market to grow its business. Quorum opening an office in Brussels is also a timely move. New EU laws, plus recent regulatory actions from the European Commission, is making many US tech companies realise that their global business can be damaged by the regulatory framework in Brussels. For example, the GDPR is likely to influence privacy regulations and practices around the world, not just within the EU.

Quorum has bootstrapped its business and funded growth from subscription revenue. This has allowed the company to test the market, and avoid over spending on unnecessary things. It is now in a better position to know exactly where it needs to invest, and has a stronger negotiating hand to raise funds to achieve its ambition to become the Bloomberg terminal for government affairs within five years.

In 2016, AI companies managed $5 billion in funding across 658 deals. That’s a 62% increase from 2015. That’s a lot of benjamins, pounds, bitcoin, or whatever currency you’re throwing at this space.

Investment comes from its promise. Already, powerful AI applications are letting companies move at a much more efficient pace. That said, AI is still very new, and the talent pool that understands how to utilize it is limited. There are even fewer who understand how to deploy the logic of neural networking, cognitive science, and computational linguistics. One company that’s figured out how to harness that talent is Yewno.

I interviewed Ruth Pickering, the co-founder and chief business development and strategy officer. Her experience spans from media technology and telecommunications to AI, where prior to Yewno, she served as managing director of BT Wholesale, was one of the Global Telecoms Business top forty-under-forty in 2010, and then was shortlisted for woman of the year in technology in 2011. Yewno is helping people uncover the undiscovered through its new inference engine, which introduces an entirely new approach to knowledge discovery. It essentially mimics the human brain and the Yewno inference engine incorporates machine learning, cognitive science, neural networking, and computational linguistics into a highly visual solution to enhance discovery and human understanding. So for example let’s say you're a researcher for a biomedical company working on cancer research. You have to navigate through thousands, if not millions of pieces of data and content to find the research that you need to do any kind of experimentation or even make progress with your own research. Utilizing traditional search can make this quite complicated, but what if you had the power of AI and neural networking to actually help you identify the resources and relevant connections at an accelerated rate and as result, develop a cure faster.

Yewno has done an amazing job in terms of getting out there, becoming known, causing buzz, and as a result we believe the company is on acquisition lists for a number of publishers. 2018 could be a bit of a tricky year as the company needs to cement its position and differentiation in an effort not to become overwhelmed as AI gets bigger and more openly developed and accessed.