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By Ivy Cohen | President and CEO, Ivy Cohen Corporate Communications Three characteristics that make undercover brands sought-after Exclusivity - A brand that's available only to a select group can become more desirable or more elite. Sometimes it may be expensive, though much of the time it's the fact that only a small niche group is targeted, which can make a brand more sought after. The alignment of a small clique with a brand can create a buzz with the general public. L

By Lauren Keyson and Sarah Grieco Rachel Atkins , founder of My Pageant Rental , created a safe and supportive online community for the pageant community. Users can buy, sell, rent and loan apparel such as evening gowns, cocktail dresses and stiletto heels. Over the years, friends would lend her gowns that were anywhere from $500 to $1,500 and she would lend hers to them. But as time went by, she noticed that when she lent to friends or friends of friends, some of her items

By Lauren Keyson and Sarah Grieco Marc Thalheim re-started his company Petstablished at the beginning of the year. His site is for anyone interested in adopting a pet -- they can view the pets page on a shelter’s site after receiving a code. Or, if they view the pet on our website, they can then click on the adopt button. From there, they fill out an adoption application, create a pet account and track all their pet’s information by using a password. But while the idea was

THE STARTUP ROADMAP : 10 profit principles get at the nub of how startups makes consistent profits and how they can help you build an enduring business that produces sustainable profits as well. 1. Build a Business Based on Your Distinctive Competence 2. Develop and Deliver a Superior Value Proposition 3. Don’t Start Up Until… 4. Take Charge of the Money and Control It 5. Create a Profit-Based Reward Structure 6. Recognize and Hire “Lightning in a Bottle” 7. Create Profit Ce

Disruptive Technologists in NYC Meetup Monday, January 25, 2016 6:15 PM to 8:30 PM Location - Microsoft 11 Times Square, 6th floor, corner of 41st & 8th Ave NYC RSVP: http://www.meetup.com/Disruptive-Technologists-in-NYC/events/227382211/ Price: $15.00 /per person Please Pay PayPal as you RSVP with your full name Since technology communities these days are dominated by men, women encounter different challenges that often lead them to leave the tech space. This disruptive ev

The fintech company eMoney Advisor was as at a recent Finovate Conference in NY to launch their newest product called EMX, the eMoney Experience. “We feel that there is a real need for financial advisors and what we want to do is to empower them,” explained Kyle Wharton, their SVP of Biz Dev. Their slogan is “For Advisors, By Advisors”. “We know that there is a lot of knowledge and expertise that financial human advisors can offer, and when they leverage the right technology,

Missed our Disruptive Tech Meet-Up on "The 10 Commandments of Startup Profits?" The event was about the 10 profit principles that get at the nub of how startups make consistent profits and how they can help you build an enduring business that produces sustainable profits as well, with panelists: 1. Ed “Skip” McLaughlin, Entrepreneur & Investor 2. Rohan Marley, Founder and Chairman, Marley Coffee 3. Amit Shah, Founder & CEO, AIT International Co-op 4.

By Alan Brody Last week, Steve Case, the legendary founder of AOL spoke at the NY Media conference about his investment group Revolution Growth, which is focused on 3rd Wave investments. He sees this as the next frontier for the digital revolution: transforming older, traditional and infrastructure industries. This is not sexy and it requires partners in disruption. Often, the required partners are those who would reflexively resist progress with all their might. Therefore c

Ed “Skip” McLaughlin speaks to business students at a seminar at the New York Institute of Technology about The 10 Commandments to Startup Profits. He gives a full roadmap to starting up a company and reveals the steps to profitability. To get a free synopsis of his upcoming book: The Purpose Is Profit, go to www.thepurposeisprofit.com. View here:

By Lauren Keyson and Sarah Grieco In the “Card Not Present” world ( Best Buy , Amazon etc.), if a fraud occurs on a payment transaction, the merchant is 100% liable for it. That’s where Vesta steps in. Since 1995 they have been in the payment space and are now almost 100% focused on payments that take place online. They process over $6 billion of transactions on behalf of their large clients and on behalf of other merchants in the high-risk online space. Their New York c

By Lauren Keyson and Sarah Grieco Max Stoller , founder of the Red/Green App, was a NY Tech Meetup Hack of the Month. The app allows a user to send a note to a contact saying “Hey, I’m in the city, want to meet?” It took him six months to create, and he acknowledged that his life is better with it. MS: I’m seeing people I haven’t seen in five months or people I honestly wouldn’t have had dinner with through a text message. I find myself meeting people I certainly wouldn’t

By Frances McLaughlin Although it seems that the world is constantly filled with dissension, I think there are two things on which we all can agree: 1. The world has problems. 2. The world is changing. Who do you think is the best candidate for taking on the crucial responsibility of facing and solving these challenges? I’m not talking about the 2016 Presidential Election. I’m talking about starting new businesses. Who has what it takes to tackle the challenges of entrepren

By Ed McLaughlin and Wyn Lydecker In the startup world, failure can be viewed as valuable feedback. As Bill Gates said, “It’s fine to celebrate success, but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure.” Gates, of course, is the richest man in the world, topping the Forbes Annual Ranking list 16 times in the past 21 years. But before launching Microsoft, he and Paul Allen were co-owners of a failed business called Traf-O-Data , a computerized machine for process

By Lauren Keyson and Barbara Gesteira Blippar is an app that turns a smart phone into a magic lens. It gives users whole new, interactive views on the physical world around them using Augmented Reality (AR) and Image-Recognition technologies. For marketers this means a new way to attract, retain and engage with consumers through an immersive experience. Blippar plans to include new visual search capabilities in its app, which will allow users to perform a search for informa

We would like to THANK YOU for playing a huge role in last Tuesday's "The 10 Commandments of Startup Profits" Disruptive Tech Meet-up. Last Tuesday's event turned out to be a huge success with around 140 people showing up and sharing/learning more about Startups and how to be a successful entrepreneur. Again, Disruptive Technologists is very thankful for your contribution and would love to work with you again on making better and improved Disruptive Meet-ups. For more infor

By Lauren Keyson and Barbara Gesteira Crowdfunding in real estate is allowing individuals to invest in real estate assets that in the past were only open to family offices, hedge funds and institutional investors FundingPost ran its regular summer real estate conference a bit differently this year. It was not only focused on real state crowdfunding, but there was also a Regulation A workshop and a mastermind class. The event was made up of family offices, real estate entrep

By Lauren Keyson and Barbara Gesteira FundingPost & the Soho Loft’s Real Estate Investing & Crowdfunding Conference was not a standard real estate event. It was more an opportunity to meet and chat directly with real estate investors, real estate technology Investors, and real estate crowdfunders. We talked with David Drake, founder and Chairman of LDJ Capital in NYC and founder of The Soho Loft (TSL) Media Group, who has been involved in realty, among other industries. He g

Johanna Smith Ramani , Senior Innovation Director at Doorways to Dreams Fund says that Millennials are very mission-purpose driven, and so for them careers are less about the profit or what the boss wants and more about what is meaningful for them or has value. “That’s what motivates their career decisions, it's what motivates the brands they choose and how they interact when thinking about financial service spaces. It's what motivates the banks they want to go to. “If you

By Keesjan Engelen , CEO at Titoma , IoT Devices Q1 of 2015 saw a record 128 electronic projects raise at least $100K each on Kickstarter and Indiegogo . Reaching $100K is often considered a successful campaign, and many think that the founders can take this money to a factory and just get the stuff made. The 4 out of 5 hardware campaigns that don’t manage to ship in time show that most teams still underestimate the DFM (Design For Manufacturing) process. A number of factor

By Lauren Keyson and Bárbara Gesteira Josh Flowers is the CFO of Card.com , a personalized mobile alternative to the average person to replace their checking account. The reason their slogan is “CARD.com is the prepaid card that’s fun to use” is because every card is personalized with thousands of images like the Three Stooges and The Walking Dead. Josh Flowers : We provide an account in the cloud that is indirectly FDIC insured to the money you save, where you can receive