Kontakt.io Premiers: their Admin App for Android!

The long-awaited app is live! Our brand new Kontakt.io Admin App for Android enables you to easily update and manage your beacons—both iBeacons and Eddystones. Big kudos to our Android Development Team!

Download the app from the Google Play Store

Once you test it out, please feel free to give us your feedback! Drop us a line at kontakt@kontakt.iowith any suggestions or notes you’d like us to know.

Thank you for reading another one of my posts done just for you!  If you liked what you read please share it by using one of the buttons up top and check out other posts in this blog.  I don’t want you to miss out on future posts so please follow me on Twitter @Eurodude23.  If you haven’t done it already, please like my Facebook fan page by clicking here!  And if you like the content you have read, and are looking for a content writer for your team please go to www.contentfarm.org for details. See you next time!
This is a repost of a blog post that appeared on Kontakt.io. 

Wroclaw may be the First Polish city to implement rentable municipal Electric Vehicles

Paul Chen

These days you will see bike rental racks placed strategically throughout the city of popular tourism destinations. However, the municipality of Wroclaw, a city in southwestern Poland has thought about something even more disruptive.

They are in the process of exploring the idea of having electric vehicles for hire inside the city. While this idea may carry high risks as most rental bikes get damaged and are vandalized. Some bicycles don’t even get returned. However, the city is hoping that this solution will keep the city center free from traffic congestion as well as keeping the city free from automotive pollution.

This is seen as a viable and economical solution for urban residents to do most of their short distance travel.

How will it work

A car could be kept in a small garage and your smart device could be used to unlock the door. Or you could have a user account card with RFID chip, much like the Oyster card in the London transport system, which will unlock the door and verify your identity and take care of the payment and billing. The driver could be billed per unit of travel like per minute or per kilometer. I am sure you may have to put down a hefty deposit or have a more detailed screening process before you are granted an account.

So you will just unplug the vehicle from the charging station and get into the car, then off you go!

Wow! So when?

The project is still in the exploratory phase. Wroclaw administrations are searching for suitable partners who will implement the project. A tender should be announced shortly.

Thank you for reading another one of my posts done just for you!  If you liked what you read please share it by using one of the buttons up top and check out other posts in this blog.  I don’t want you to miss out on future posts so please follow me on Twitter @Eurodude23.  If you haven’t done it already, please like my Facebook fan page by clicking here!  And if you like the content you have read, and are looking for a content writer for your team please go to www.contentfarm.org for details. See you next time!

The case for Immigration as a catalyst for the Polish Startup Ecosystem

Paul Chen

With the drama that has been occurring on the waters of the Mediterranean, Europe has gotten into a soul searching session of whether to save these illegal immigrants or not. These immigrants don’t just come from North Africa, but many come from places as far as Syria where ISIS is slowly taking over more and more territory. Europe decided to allow some of the immigrants to take up refuge in their 20+ countries. Poland has been asked to take in a few hundred refugees. This caused some consternation among the politicians. There was a very controversial article written about how 'Poles don't want immigrants. They don't understand them, don't like them'. This is quite ironic, and almost absurd as the Poles themselves make up one of the biggest immigration groups in the last couple hundred years, starting from the Partition times. In WW2 even the Iranians took in a large number of Polish refugees.

To many Poles, immigrants are seen as a threat to the labor market. To many workers, people from places like Ukraine are analogous to how Americans see the Mexicans. This viewpoint doesn’t just happen in the lowly skilled, it is a view point of the highly skilled as well. Many so-called intellectuals are threatened by foreigners. There is a Polish parliamentary election coming up in October, 2015. Therefore, the politicians and political parties have to tread the immigration line very carefully. Many know that immigration is a necessary thing for the good of the Polish economy in the future, but they also know that much of the Polish public are against it, quite like the American demographics.

As for me, I have a personal case for having friendlier immigration policies in Poland. I arrived in Poland in 2010 and settling down in Poland was not exactly easy. The labor market is illogical and confusing is an understatement when it comes to the paperwork. I wrote a guide to immigration procedures earlier to make your lives easier.  As the result of uninformed immigration officials, I had to spend a night in airport jail in Stansted Airport in London. I also had to endure the mob scene on the Polish-Ukrainian border depicted in a recent Politico article . Despite some softening of their rules, I am still having some problems dealing with the immigration offices.

Currently, immigrants make up about 0.5 percent of the Polish population of about 40 million people. Like Germany, other EU countries, China, and the US, there is a silver tsunami that is about to hit our shores in the next 10-20 years. Furthermore, many of the younger generation are concentrating more on their careers than having families. This will create many problems in many areas of life. First, there will be a lot less workers for the labor market creating higher demands. Second, there will be a great need to care for these elderlies. Because of a smaller labor force, there will be less people paying taxes resulting in a deficit that will make the Greek one look Lilliputian. This is one place where increased immigration will alleviate the lack of supply.

As I have complained about the level of service of Polish businesses many times before. One of the reason is that the Polish market isn’t competitive enough. As a result, many of the big box businesses see no incentive to raise their bar. Consequently, their service and product remain appalling. With more immigrants setting up shop, there will be more competition on the market, and the struggle will hopefully improve the level of services and products. This will also create more jobs. And, oh yeah, also more people to pay taxes, wink wink.

One of the reason that Silicon Valley is so innovative is because of their acceptance and welcoming attitude towards immigrants. In Silicon Valley, more than 50% of startups are founded by immigrants and and more than 70% of engineers are also immigrants. Companies like Google, Yahoo, and YouTube have immigrant founders. Uber is founded by a descendant of immigrants. Matt Ridley in his famous TED talk, says “through history, the engine of human progress and prosperity has been, and is, ‘ideas having sex with each other’."

Poland is a very homogeneous society. In many view, it is a good thing, but as a society that wishes to grow and thrive, being homogeneous is a bad thing. In biology, you need a great amount of diversity in an ecosystem for it to be sustainable. That is why you don’t want to breed with your cousin. No matter how hot she is.

They say the best way to succeed is, if you are stupid, to surround yourself with smart people, but if you are already smart, surround yourself with smart people who disagree with you. As a result of the Yom Kippur War, Israel instituted the Tenth Man Rule. When nine people agree on something, it’s the tenth man’s responsibility to disagree no matter how improbable the idea. Immigration brings in the 10th man. You get professionals with different points of view that will add value to the ecosystem.

I can go on and on about how immigration can help keep the already thriving Polish economy and startup ecosystem sustainable and even rise to the next level. I am not saying however, take everyone in. You don’t want people who will cause problems to society but you want skilled people who will contribute. In a country who is constantly complaining ‘why are we not like the West’ and in a startup ecosystem that is dying for a domestic unicorn like sex for a 40 year old virgin, immigration might just be the catalyst shortcut you are looking for.

I recommend the following to further my case for more immigrant friendly policies in Poland.

5 REASONS FOR WHICH POLAND WILL NOT CATCH UP WITH THE WEST IN THIS CENTURY (Polish)

Polish labor market needs skilled immigrants (Polish)

Get the Facts: Five Ways Immigrants Make Cities More Economically Competitive (English)

Thank you for reading another one of my posts done just for you!  If you liked what you read please share it by using one of the buttons up top and check out other posts in this blog.  I don’t want you to miss out on future posts so please follow me on Twitter @Eurodude23.  If you haven’t done it already, please like my Facebook fan page by clicking here!  And if you like the content you have read, and are looking for a content writer for your team please go to www.contentfarm.org for details. See you next time!

The five hottest Polish Fintech Startups

Paul Chen

Fintech (financial technology) is one of the leading categories of start-ups. Fintech covers a wide range of products and services, including: cybersecurity, big data, payments, crowdfunding, Bitcoin and P2P lending. Most start-ups are working to disrupt the banking sector. These are the five Polish fintech start-ups to watch

The Polish fintech ecosystem is still quite young. However, there have already been some interesting developments. Along with Transferwise, Azimo has been named a fintech start-up to watch. Zencard was one of 12 startups from the V4 region to participate in the Visegrad Startups competition in Silicon Valley. More information about them and others below.

Atsora: app for efficient management

Atsora provides strategic management and entrepreneurial tools for financial institutions, as well as small and medium-sized enterprises. Their flagship product is Momentum, a piece of software that is placed between the Small & medium-sized enterprises and the bank. It is an integrated online and mobile application used for planning business models that monitors cash flow and growth based on financial data. Users can easily share selected information with the bank in order to get tailor-made offers and real-time support.

The SME receives a complimentary set of functionality helping with cash flow, business model planning, cost optimization and client profitability management. Everything seamlessly integrates with bank accounts, providing a real-time view on business. The bank in turn gets better insight and can deliver the products exactly as needed. They support all the phases of the SME life cycle in order to improve cross selling and proactively manage retention.

Atsora are marketing themselves directly to a variety of businesses (B2B) by going through financial institutions, other fintech companies and platforms. Recently, they participated in the 2015 edition of Fintech Innovation Labs in London. This will allow them to connect with some of the top fintech experts in their global expansion ambitions.

Azimo: Affordable money transfers for everybody

Azimo allows migrant workers to make fast, simple low cost money transfers to their family members in over one hundred countries. They operate online and help customers save 85 percent of what they’d pay a high street bank or an online money transfer company. Based in London and Krakow, they are aiming to disrupt the industry dominated by legacy players Western Union and Moneygram. Their value proposition is the fact that they offer their services on mobile and to a population often overlooked by the tech sector - migrant workers. 

The first to feature full Facebook integration, excellent for KYC (Know Your Client) purposes and convenient for users of the uber-social network to send money to one another, Azimo is also the cheapest – charging on average 2 percent instead of the 9.5 percent which is the industry standard.

Last month they finished their fund raising round B of $20 million at a $100 million valuation. The round of investment was lead by Frog Capital and MCI Management.

PricePanorama: Sort out your prices

Managing an online shop is difficult when you are isolated from the market. If you do not investigate the market environment, you cannot know if your offer is competitive. This is particularly important because pricing policy is one of the cornerstones for a competitive advantage in Polish e-commerce. There are many methods to check the prices of products from competitors, the most popular of which is of course to visit the store and check out the prices of products that interest us. However, keeping track of the prices in every store in the sector it would be really time consuming.

PricePanorama is a system of monitoring and analyzing the prices and availability of products on the internet using a SaaS model. Their main goal is to give you the opportunity to build a consistent pricing policy and to find markets abroad where you can start your business through competitive pricing and cost structure.

They already monitor many of the markets in Poland and are expanding to the Czech Republic, Russia, Ukraine, Turkey and Vietnam. They are looking to be ubiquitous in the e-commerce sphere and provide companies information about pricing and the availability of products from online stores.

VoicePin: Identify yourself with voice 

VoicePin is providing the least invasive way to verify your identity - through your voice. They are the first company of its kind in Europe, and their service has been accredited by international biometric organizations.

Your voice is as unique as your fingerprint. Like snowflakes, no two voices are 100 percent identical, even with twins. To utilize this, VoicePin takes advantage of something that is already in your phone, the microphone. Most smartphone mics are sensitive enough to take advantage of this technology. This means implementing the service into your offering is cost-effective.  

The value in voice verification is that it is language independent. This means implementation across international borders is streamlined, and I can use the same English phrase to identify myself no matter where I go. With VoicePin’s proprietary software, it can differentiate the intonation and the unique intangible characteristics of the user’s voice from others even if the user has laryngitis. The system requires a person to actually talk into the microphone, which means you cannot record another person’s voice and play it back.  

VoicePin has already been implemented in some major banks and businesses in Poland, such as ING Bank and Tauron Energy. The applications can range from identification verification for e-banking and m-commerce to verifying permission to enter a house and even some IoT applications involving voice commands. This August, VoicePin will officially launch in New York City at the SpeechTek conference. With 20 years under its belt, SpeechTEK has become a must-attend event for anyone who wants to learn about deploying speech technology for business applications. Attendees will have a chance to test out their technology.

ZenCard: Make your clients stay

After being selected for Google’s Campus Exchange programme, and picking up a prize at the latest V4 Startups competition in Silicon Valley, ZenCard is flying high. They recently raised two million euro in funding. They are a real-time loyalty redemption platform that allows retailers to develop targeted offers based on customer purchase behavior profiles. They turn existing payment cards into universal loyalty & rewards cards. ZenCard is an omni-channel solution that solves one of the biggest problems of modern businesses – how to make people come back. How to turn one-time shoppers into regulars?

Their unique features include integration with payment terminals by removing all of the barriers for people to sign up to the loyalty and rewards program, therefore increasing the number of involved customers threefold compared to typical plastic card/app based systems. Their system works the same way on both e-commerce and in physical retail stores, and they also support non-monetary rewards, not only discounts.

Even though the Polish fintech space is quite young, it has already gained some accolades internationally. With the rising popularity of the fintech sector, we can expect more from these and other up and coming Polish fintech start-ups.

Thank you for reading another one of my posts done just for you!  If you liked what you read please share it by using one of the buttons up top and check out other posts in this blog.  I don’t want you to miss out on future posts so please follow me on Twitter @Eurodude23.  If you haven’t done it already, please like my Facebook fan page by clicking here!  See you next time!

This is a repost with permission from an article that originally appeared on web.gov.pl. 

Who will walk away from TechCrunch Meetup in Krakow a Winner?

Paul Chen

Last night at the foot of the majestic Wawel Castle in the Metaforma Cafe, TechCrunch held their third night of pitching and networking on their tour of Poland. The tour was headed by John Biggs, the East Coast Editor and organized and hosted by Ralph Talmont, the head organizer of TedxWarsaw. We here at KSUP were proud to be one of the official partners of the event along with Estimote, Innovation Nest, and NCBR.

We had some inspirational keynote speeches. Ela Zielinska of Get Smarter told the crowd that they just have to try whatever you want to do. She added:  statistics may say that only 10% of startups will succeed but math says 50%. Piotr Wilam talked about seed funding and other ways to raise funds. It includes crowdfunding like Kickstarter and Syndicate Investors like the ones from AngelList. He has announced an AngelList Investor Syndicate is in the process of forming in Krakow. Wilam also advises that win or lose, you should try to learn from the process  and to keep your investors in the loop of your progress.

Then came the Pitch-off! 

The panel of judges included:

Jakub Krzych - Founder of Estimote

John Biggs - East Coast Editor of TechCrunch

Wojcheich Olszenka - Investing Manager of Giza Polish Ventures

Elizabeta Zielinska - Operator of Get Smarter

Piotr Wilam - Managing Director of Innovation Nest

The participants were:

Husarion - They use electronic, software and cloud to make powerful robots in easy way and developer of Robocore. Robocore is the operating unit of a robot that you can build yourself. They brought along a dog feeding robot that you can operate remotely. Despite some hiccups, they finally got the robot to “pee” at the end of the night.

Riftcat - They want to become the Steam of VR games by building a marketplace for VR game developers. They say that their platform is hardware independent.

Curie.me - They offer a seat cusion with built in sensors with a dedicated app that will help you with your sitting posture. Bad sitting postures can often lead to certain health related problems later in life.

The Other Dude - A mobile app allowing people to exchange contact info with one swipe without typing or searching. Users decide what info to exchange - private and business.

VoicePin.com - They use voice biometrics to help you verify your identity. Applications can include e-banking, m-commerce, and IoT.

QuakQuak.co.uk - They support every independent producer and director by providing a professionally recognised broadcasting platform that generates high viewing figures and pays you the highest ad-share revenue.

The runner up was Husarion with Robocore and their dog feeding robot. I think they tried to do too much with their pitch. I saw a telepresence device that they had in earlier events, they should have gone with that one. They got tickets to a TechCrunch Disrupt anywhere in the world.

The winner of the night was VoicePin.com with their voice biometric technology. They walked away with a table at a TechCrunch Disrupt anywhere in the world.

Thank you for reading another one of my posts done just for you!  If you liked what you read please share it by using one of the buttons up top and check out other posts in this blog.  I don’t want you to miss out on future posts so please follow me on Twitter @Eurodude23.  If you haven’t done it already, please like my Facebook fan page by clicking here!  See you next time!

ContentFarm will help your Startup Go Global

Paul Chen

When a startup launches, their first landing page will likely be in their native language. However, when they want to go global, they will likely choose English as their international language of choice. In a previous blog post, I advised against this. It is my opinion that your startup’s landing page should be in English from day one.

Some of the English I’ve seen on the landing pages of startups who say that they want to go international are God awful. It felt like they took their native content and just used Google Translate. If a customer or investor comes to your landing page and sees that, they are going to know something about your startup. Before you publish anything, you should employ a wonderfully communicative native speaker who understands technology and business.

ContentFarm is looking to solve this issue. They are offering content editing and proofreading services so you sound good to a native speaking customer. They will take what you have created and fine tune the language so it will sound natural with the right mix of technical language and colloquialisms. Businesses often miss this step. As a result, the content ends up sounding dry, textbook-ish, and a drag to read. With ContentFarm’s help, the language of your landing page will be easily digestible.  

Many businesses would agree that content and inbound marketing are essential parts of a firm’s business development. You want to deliver the right content at the right time to establish your brand’s authority and credibility in the sector. Having good content will also help bring readers and possible customers back to your website repeatedly. Furthermore, having a good amount of content on your page will improve your SEO and in turn helping your brand establish a strong online presence.

There are many ways to do it. You may crowd-source your content the way Brainly does it. However, for their business model it is the right fit for them. You can try to do it in-house where you hire an army of community managers to respond to inquiries and write posts about the latest development and use cases of your product like Estimote. Third option is to write your own and if English isn’t your native language just get a translator. Well, you know how I feel about that. There are many fine translators out there, but they often miss the mark on the natural flow of the language. The fourth option is to hire a freelancer. There are many fine freelance writers out there, however, in many markets especially in Poland, there aren’t many who understand startups and technology.

ContentFarm will solve that problem as well. They have a wonderful writer familiar to you who understands the startup business and technology. If you had been curious enough to click to the link before your got to this point, you will have noticed that I am that professional. I am pitching my services to startups and even some SMEs to help their business go global. Along with the previously mentioned services, I also offer consultation and act as an interpreter if you have entered a startup competition and they want to do a conference call with you. I have helped a local startup get into the final round of a major startup festival in San Francisco. I do all this with a reasonable rate. This Thursday, I will be at the TechCrunch meetup in Krakow. If you can’t make it, you can contact me in all the usual places. How can I help your business build bridges?

Thank you for reading another one of my posts done just for you!  If you liked what you read please share it by using one of the buttons up top and check out other posts in this blog.  I don’t want you to miss out on future posts so please follow me on Twitter @Eurodude23.  If you haven’t done it already, please like my Facebook fan page by clicking here!  See you next time!