lunes, 23 de febrero de 2015

10 top startup hubs outside of Silicon Valley and the US (TechRepublic)



Silicon Valley is a hotbed for new tech companies, but there are other areas of innovation around the world. Here are ten of the top spots for startups around the world. 
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Everyone knows Silicon Valley as the geographic anchor for technological innovation. It has long been one of the go-to places for new companies to get their starts.
Outside of the Valley, the US has quite a few other startup hubs including New York, Boston, Austin, and the Research Triangle in North Carolina. However, there are plenty of strong startup scenes outside of the US that are responsible for many innovative companies.
Around the world, technological innovation is happening quickly, and it doesn't seem to be slowing. Here are 10 regions where startups are doing big things.

London, England

The UK's capital city may well be considered the capital of the European startup scene as well. With high-profile areas such asSilicon Roundabout, the startup scene in London has birthed companies such as Hailo, GoCardless, and TransferWise. Although some have criticized the startup scene in London, it continues to attract top talents and companies that are looking to fund startups.

Tel Aviv, Israel

Israel as a whole is quickly becoming the next technology powerhouse, and Tel Aviv has led the charge with startups. The country is known for its cybersecurity efforts, some of which caught the attention of Google. However, startups like Waze and Wix have jumped into the national spotlight and brought even more attention to the second most populous city in Israel.

Paris, France

Paris is known for being innovative, traditionally in both fashion and cuisine. Now, its innovative nature is showing in its startups as well. Part of Paris' success has to do with a supportive government. Recently, a $250 million startup fund was launched as part of "La FrenchTech." Additionally, the 42 school, funded by entrepreneur Xavier Niel, trains 1,000 new programmers each year for free.

Toronto, Canada

The past few years have seen hundreds of millions of dollars invested in Canadian startups; many of those are based in Toronto. WP Technology, Bionym, and Wattpad are some of the growing startups in the city. The presence of major tech companies, like Google, and major universities plays a key role in the health of the startup ecosystem.

São Paulo, Brazil

The center of the startup scene in Brazil is São Paulo, the most populous city in the country with nearly 12 million residents. 500 Startups has a presence in Brazil alongside local accelerators Wayra and StartupFarm. Risk is seen a little differently in Brazil, thus promises of equity aren't typically as accepted as traditional payment.

Berlin, Germany

With a thriving art scene, Berlin is a hip city in Germany that remains relatively affordable. Google has a major office in Berlin, and it helped establish a co-working space in the city as part of its Google for Entrepreneurs program. Plus, Berlin has relaxed visa rules meaning it is easier to import top talent for your startup. Online music startup SoundCloud was founded in Stockholm, but it got off the ground in Berlin.

Nairobi, Kenya

If you want to talk about startups in Kenya, or in Africa for that matter, you have to mention the budding tech scene in Nairobi, Kenya's capital. Tech centers like iHub and other accelerators are providing resources for entrepreneurs in the area. The scene hasn't truly exploded yet, but it is well on its way and initiatives by bigger companies like Microsoft are setting the foundation for even more innovation.

Bangalore, India

Many prominent VC firms, such as Accel, IDG Ventures, and Intel Capital have opened offices in India, recognizing the wealth of opportunity there. Bangalore leads the charge in many people's eyes for startups in the country and the UK Indian Business Council has recently made investments in furthering the development of new companies.

Singapore

An increase in both funding and exits means that Singapore is on the rise as one of the next top startup markets in Southeast Asia. Singapore hasn't produced many household names in technology companies, but many major investment firms have invested in Singapore companies.

Sydney, Australia

The startup scene in Sydney is driven by a zealous community of entrepreneurs. Co-working spaces such as Fishburners and incubators like Pushstart and Founders Institute are helping to grow the scene as well. Companies Canva and Atlassian have ties to Sydney and there are a plethora of up and comers as well.

viernes, 6 de febrero de 2015

Apple makes money, but Android makes markets (TechRepublic)

We rightly laud Apple for its ability to get us to pay a premium, but the world owes more to Google for making mobile computing a commodity. 
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Apple had a mind-blowingly amazing quarter. Good for them. But as much as we may want to cheer on the industry's most profitable vendor, the real focus should be on the user. Viewed through the lens of the end user, we should be hoping Google wins.
Apple, after all, builds software for the rich. Google? For the poor.
Thankfully, the mobile development ecosystem has demonstrated that it can get by without Apple's fat margins.

The Apple rich get richer

Apple is a luxury brand. While it caters to the lower-end of the "rich" demographic by offering last year's models at lower price points, Apple's primary focus has always been on delivering a premium experience to those that can afford its premium price tag.
In doing so, Apple has followed (and fed) an interesting, if troubling, shift in household income.
As The Wall Street Journal's Christopher Mims highlights, "Apple's and Xiaomi's successes reflect the world's growing income inequality." Apple supplies phones to the rich, while Xiaomi caters to the comparatively poor. Phones priced in the middle range have seen a "hollowing out" of demand, with the world split into "a luxury market and everyone else."
Apple, of course, dominates the luxury market and profits handsomely thereby:
"[J]ust as a growing class of global rich is creating a demand for the highest-end phones -- made by Apple -- so, too, is a growing middle class creating demand for [mostly Android] phones made by Xiaomi and its ilk....
"Predictably, distribution of profits between these two markets mirrors the distribution of wealth between the buyers of these goods."
All of which seems to mean that as happy as we may be that Apple makes a lot of money, we should be much more concerned with the Android market and its impact on the world.

Blessed are the poor, for they shall inherit Android

Fortunately, developers are rushing to Android to satisfy the needs of less affluent consumers.
AppFigures' analysis
By appFigures' analysis, in fact, more developers joined the Google Android ecosystem in 2014 than flocked to Apple and Amazon combined: 388,000 developers (Android), compared to Apple (282,000) and Amazon (48,000).
In turn, those developers have now made the Google Play Store (Google's app store) the richest ecosystem of apps, growing significantly faster than Apple's app market.
While the Google Play Store now has the most developers building the most apps, this doesn't make Android the most effective route to developer riches.
In fact, as VisionMobile analysis shows, iOS developers make a lot more money than their Android peers. (App Annie dataindicates that iOS generates 70% more annual app revenue than Android does.)
The obvious way to explain this disparity is simply to look at the relative markets for their apps: iOS developers are building apps for the rich, whereas many of the Android developers live in emerging markets and develop apps for those markets.
Digging into the data on app categories, it's perhaps not surprising that the fastest growth category for iOS is Business apps (followed by Lifestyle, with Games growth tapering off), while within the Android market, Games constitutes the fastest-growing category, with Business and Entertainment tying for a distant second place.

Google to the rescue

Google is at the heart of this swelling app market, but let's not rush to canonize the advertising giant. After all, Google isn't trying to feed the poor. It simply wants to sell ads to them and has calculated that the more people to whom it can give mobile internet access, the greater its ad market will be ($6.30 per user, per year, by some estimates).
There's nothing particularly noble in that.
But regardless of its motives, we should still laud the result: low-cost phones for less affluent consumers across the globe. That's something worth celebrating, and perhaps it's something we should lionize more than we do Apple's ability to convince rich people to pay up.

jueves, 5 de febrero de 2015

5 Enterprise startup trends to watch in 2015 (TechRepublic)

Startup markets tend to ebb and flow. Here are five trends to watch from enterprise startups this year. 
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Square's office in San Francisco.
 Image: Matthew Millman Photography
Despite conservative leanings when it comes to selecting new vendors, the enterprise is under pressure to innovate. Everyday, new startups come into being -- startups that could help a corporation leapfrog one of its competitors.
Going for what is "safe" is no longer an acceptable excuse to forgo a potential upper hand in business. However, this means taking a risk, which isn't the easiest thing to do when a company's reputation, not to mention money, is at stake.
So, how do you hedge your bets? While there is no surefire way to mitigate some of the assumed risk involved with employing a young technology vendor, you can watch the landscape in hopes of making better choices for your company.
Here are five trends you should watch in enterprise startups.

Security

Joe Horowitz and his team at Icon Ventures initially made investments in security companies in 2006 and 2008, funding companies such as FireEye and Palo Alto Networks. At the time, the poor performance of incumbents led them to believe the market was ripe for disruption. While the market was exciting then, Horowitz been surprised by how it is taking off now.
"Security continues to be a very interesting category for investment," he said. "The bad guys are getting more sophisticated and now it's not just hackers in basements in Eastern Europe, but it's sovereign nations waging war against other nations from a cyber security perspective."
However, it's not just that threats have become more complicated. The rise of mobile in the workplace and the Internet of Things have created a host of new opportunities for cyber criminals.
"The proliferation of connected devices creates a huge security risk -- everything can be, and likely will be, hacked," said Arun Mathew, a principal at Accel Partners. "I expect to see more and more technology that helps protect the enterprise (or the consumer) in the face of growing mobile, desktop, data center and firewall threats."
While we saw quite a few unique security startups launch in 2014, Mathew said that the challenges posed by these new threats will prompt a new crop of startups to build preventative tools and technologies during the next decade.

Big Data

Big data has been around for quite some time, but it's safe to say that big data began to truly hit its stride in the last couple years. Building on that traction, it's set to explode in the next year or so.
Part of the initial problem with big data was finding a use case. As big data continues to evolve, though, Horowitz said that it is expanding in new ways and filling the need for specific industries.
"The evolution of big data is such that it's of interest, not as a horizontal platform today, as much as vertical applications," Horowitz said. "Big data for marketers, big data for life sciences."
Another key piece of the big data equation is data inputs. The sheer volume of computing endpoints in mobile devices and computer combining is intersecting with the heaps of data we are receiving from connected devices, and Mathew said that is where the opportunity is.
"The result is an explosion of data about consumer behaviors and technology applicability throughout the daily lives of millions of consumers," Mathew said. "I expect to see the rise of new technologies that can sift through and process this data, and provide actionable recommendations and analysis for consumers and enterprises alike."

Artificial Intelligence

As a concept, artificial intelligence has existed for a long time, but it hasn't been put clearly into practice until recently. Major tech companies like Google and Facebook made strategic investments in AI and deep learning to push the market forward in the past year.
For a long time, AI existed only in the deep recesses of university science departments and government research facilities. Now, some of that same technology is becoming available to consumers and the enterprise.
Eric Chin, a partner at Crosslink Capital, believes that software algorithms for AI technologies such as deep learning and self learning will be deployed more readily in both consumer and enterprise applications in the coming year.
"This tipping point started and in 2014 and is happening now," Chin said. "Hence, startups, tech companies, and enterprises for the first time have access to this resource to create innovative and breakthrough software apps and programs at unparalleled velocity."
According to Chin, data is the reason we are seeing AI move to center stage. Data storage costs less and is declining in price every month, and there are plenty of new database technologies and ways to store the data. Additionally, we have open source runtime environments for real time computing and other unique tools.

Mobile

The rise of mobility in the workforce is a big deal, and is something that will provide new opportunities for enterprise startups.
There is the opportunity for new mobile apps. But, there is also a need for new startups to deal with the changes to IT infrastructure and security that come along with it, Horowitz said. Also, new enterprise message options and company tools will also be needed along with mobile device management solutions (MDM).
"It's everything from how can business be done better, to how do you allow people to have their choice of mobile devices and have it work compatibly with the enterprise from a security point of view, and from the point of view of that ubiquity of enterprise applications that allow the workforce to be more effective," Horowitz said.

Financial

Changes to the way we approach finances has been as slow moving as the financial institutions themselves. However, the pace has quickened and, according to Mathew, it started with a new audience focus.
"For the first time, enterprises are catering to a younger demographic," Mathew said. "These millennials present very different purchase behaviors. More often than not, startups provide new and attractive solutions that provide more intuitive and engaging UI/UX."
While it's obvious that this will make the products look better and perform well, it will force enterprise financial companies to engage the consumer world and vice versa.
The consumer products will need the same security and reliable infrastructure as the enterprise products, but they will require those will experience working with enterprise applications.
"The outcome will be consumer or enterprise products that better enable an emerging class of consumers to track and improve their financial investments without having to talk to a specialist on the phone," Mathew said. "These are very different interests and habits than older users -- new innovation will democratize these technologies and use cases."