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Turkey Mobile Payments: From Gold Coins to Carrier Billing
To facilitate trade between the east and the west in the 4th Century, Constantine the Great established the gold solidus as the standard of currency. This coin retained its status for about 1,000 years. In its most flourishing periods, the Byzantine state may have produced as many as several hundred thousand gold coins and a…
Create a Startup State: What American Politicians can learn from Lithuania, Estonia, and Finland
Short Summary: • Estonia, Lithuania, and Finland have created active startup communities and produced successful startups like Rovio, MySQL Supercell, and Skype. • American States — the same size as these countries — have been much less successful in creating startup companies and communities. • American state economic development officials can learn from these countries. A template exists to…
How the Warriors Used Business Development Tactics to Close Kevin Durant
How the Warriors Used Business Development Tactics to Close Kevin Durant Closing Deals as a Team is Powerful Did the Warriors land superstar Kevin Durant because of a last minute call by Jerry West, and chess-like player moves to make room in the salary cap? Contrary to popular reports, no. The Warriors spent years running…
Defining the Sales and Business Development Roles in a Startup
Many startups are lead by technology experts who have never run a sales and business development operation. Many of these executives cannot clearly explain the difference of the two functions. The result is they cannot structure the organization to get the most value out of each function.Lets clear this up, because while they are different,…
Israel: From Jaffa to Jerusalem
Traveling Through Israel:Jaffa to Jerusalem Visiting Israel is an exciting religious, cultural, and overall powerful experience Most Meaningful Experience: Meeting new friends and getting to know the Israel scene Most meaningful experience: The tour of Jerusalem showed me that people are very passionate about their beliefs but its possible to exist together. The city is…
Asian Mobile Game Developers Coming to the West in 2015
Over the past two years, the western Android and iOS app stores have been dominated by three major developers: King, Supercell, and Kabam. The next 10 best-selling game developers — a list that includes household names such as EA, Gameloft, Disney — then take the bulk of the remaining global mobile gaming revenues. Chinese and Japanese game makers know…
Part I: Six Reasons Startups Should Invest in Japan
Six Reasons Startups Should Invest in Japan Japan is an ideal place to open up offices and invest for the long-term. After Japan’s economic crash of the late 90’s, a fog settled over the land of the rising sun. Nearly two decades of deflation, a perceived lack of Japanese innovation, and a rapidly aging workforce…
Saudi Arabia — A Secret Mecca for Consumer Technology Companies
Saudi is a place startups should be investing — look at Uber’s success Consumer market is flourishing and technology services are in demand Doing business there is easier than one may presume Demand in Saudi Arabia for consumer software is shockingly high. But most people in Silicon Valley do not understand why nor how to capitalize on…
What I learned Taking German Colleagues to a Golden State Warriors Game
What I Learned Taking German Colleagues to a Basketball Game Sport can bridge the differences in working with different cultures Most Meaningful Experience: Everyone loves Stephen Curry The Warriors are in the middle of an amazing run, and I was lucky enough to host some of my German colleagues at against the Memphis Grizzlies last…
Learnings from RURU — Mobile Payments in Russia
Merchant adoption of NFC has been slow and those who have adopted it are unconvinced. Many experts think that just replicating the ecosystems of Korea and Japan will work in the west. Those familiar with Asian markets realize that consumer behavior and the payments ecosystems in those markets are far too different than they are…