NEWS

2-5-2016

Our Top-10 Startups that can save your company millions of dollars in expenses

When companies think of startups, they tend to think about an M&A of a startup to help bolster their revenue or add a new product line. But there are many startups out there that can help companies save tremendous amounts of money by doing some of the ordinary, mundane work for substantial savings. Every business has expenses. These expenses are listed under "cost of doing business" and they include expenses for marketing, legal, HR, operations, IT, and so forth. For some large companies, these expenses can add up to billions of dollars annually. There are startups out there that can help companies chip away at these expenses by improving productivity, reducing inefficiencies, or by streamlining processes. The amazing this is that the cost for using these startups is almost nothing. In many cases, companies can reduce the expense by 90%. Here are our current list of top-10 startups that help you save money:

1. A startup that replaces your current email client with a new email client. Sounds positively 1990s, but productivity loss due to answering emails is tremendous. This startup will reduce that loss, garnering your company increased productivity. For every dollar spent with this startup, you can reap $70 of productive work.

2. Is your campus recruiting process still stuck in the 1980s? IZE has a startup that revolutionizes on-campus recruiting, saving the company time and allowing the company to more quickly send out employment offers to the top-qualified candidates sooner than competitor companies.

3. Energy usage at companies, especially tech companies, is enormous. Every server, laptop and desktop machine burns through a huge amount of electrical power. Here's a startup that can "recycle" some of that energy loss from every computing device to chop your energy use in this area by 10-20%.

4. If your business requires sending cargo across the ocean, how would you like to reduce the freight charges by up to 50%? A startup has created a marketplace for unused space in cargo containers. Jump on it to save shipping costs!

5. So your company requires constant training of your employees due to new regulations or other reasons. Here's a startup that can help you transmit that information more easily and cheaply.

6. Getting valuable feedback from customers has always been the most difficult aspect of running a business. Feedback allows a company to move in the direction that customers want. Two wonderful startups have creative ways to extract that feedback. Use them to make your company more responsive to its customers.

7. Can you anticipate when your customers are near your retail store? A startup has created a mobile app that can sense a prospective customer's proximity to your store and dynamically offer coupons or other incentives to come in.

8. How well does your website present your business? Can it be improved to get prospects to buy or linger longer on the site? General A/B testing does this, but there's a startup that can help give your site quantitative data on how well small and big changes will affect the user's experience.

9. Digital advertising is the big play: it is now possible to measure every touch, tap, scroll. But what do you do with this information? Two startups deal specifically with the analytics for digital advertising, and another startup does just data science to extract useful, actionable data for marketing.

10. Your physical space may not be optimally used to generate revenue. If you're generating, say, $50/sqft per day, would you like to see if you can allocate some portion to generate 2 to 5 times that? A startup allows other symbiotic businesses to rent your space for short-term periods at 2-5 times what you normally earn. Their presence brings customers to buy your goods while their rent payments exceeds what you would normally earn.

11-21-2015

Supervising the start of the third industrial revolution

The first industrial revolution was marked by the introduction of powered machines. The second industrial revolution was defined by the vast increase in the development and use of steel and ever more energy production and consumption. Whereas the first industrial revolution used steam to power looms and other simple devices, the second industrial revolution used electricity to power computers and interior lighting and hundred-car locomotives.

We are now at the advent of the third industrial revolution. This revolution is the consequence of so much technology taking over the roles that used to be performed by humans. Robots and computers are now capable of flipping burgers and filing complex tax returns. Data science can out-perform humans in medicine, law, and finance. So what is left for humans to do? Humans have one unique skill that no technology has: humans can do the creatively unexpected things with technology. While technology built cars, human creativity builds demolition derbies and drag races.

The youths of today – the millennials – are realizing that there will be no career paths available with existing companies. They have decided to set out on their own paths through startups. All around the world, startups are developing innovative, unexpected gems that no technology can ever create. Existing companies can leverage this by tapping into the creative energies of the next generation of entrepreneurs. IZE Innovation Group is at the forefront, identifying these startups. IZE Innovation Group is this industrial revolution's "startup hunter" for companies.

10-25-2015

IZE Innovation Group partners with local tech incubator groups across the globe

Since inception, partners in the IZE Innovation Group have reached out to startup incubator groups in five continents: North America, South America, Europe, Africa and Asia. Leading the outreach is the IZE headquarter partnerships with several co-working and incubator spaces in San Francisco, California. Partnerships have been established in Boston, Massachusetts and New York New York.

In South America, partnerships have been established in the capital cities of Chile, Brazil and Peru. The IZE Innovation Group has established a beachhead in Paris, France; Oslo, Norway; Madrid, Spain; and Berlin, Germany. Our African partnerships have occurred in Ghana and Kenya. Our Asian connections are in Shanghai, China and Mumbai, India.

Look for more connections in the upcoming months as IZE Innovation Group moves into the Middle East, and Australia/New Zealand.