YOU CAN COUNT on the Sunday Business Post to profile start-up success stories, especially those with an Irish origin.
Dick O'Brien delivers a story about John and Patrick Collison in their new payments processing venture called Stripe. The start-up offers merchants an alternative method of handling payments online, without the hassle of opening a merchant account in a bank. Stripe takes 2.9 per cent of every transaction and levies a 30 cent fee for every sale. Payment processing firms are expensive to run, so the Collisons will need to raise more venture capital once tens of thousands of customers are signed up for the programme.
News about Tyres and Start-ups
There's more news below the break, with much of it coming from the 15/16 FT Weekend, the best issue since the summer break.
Selling to SMEs.
In the Financial Times, Mike Souton points out how every online network, Open Coffee group, chamber of commerce or business organisation has a "go-to" person for useful and free advice. Those are the people that a supplier needs to influence.
Relationships Matter.
Penny Power, founder of Ecademy, tells the Financial Times that Twitter is powerful because it provides a reach that previously would have only been available to companies with big marketing departments. "Large companies cannot understand why they are spending millions of points on Facebook and twitter and not seeing any uptick in sales. Small companies have an advantage because they can still create a relationship with their customer online."
Children and Screens.
Jennifer O'Connell writes about the educational power of television and Maija Palmer reveals what several publishers think about creating apps for childrem. HarperCollins says it will have nearly 30 apps available for children before Christmas, and that's welcome news for our four year old.
Cool Tech: BMW Dynamic Light Spot System.
BMW's Dynamic Light Spot system uses an infrared camera which generates images that show warm objects as bright shapes. When the camera identifies a person in the road, one of two powerful LED lights flares into action. The second is on standby in case another person enters the scene up to 97 metres away.
Three Economic Trends Headed Down.
In the FT, Alison Smith points to five "company clues to the economy's prospects" and to me it appears that downward trends are obvious in statistics shown for media spend, retail sales and automobile production. These suggest a sluggish start to 2012 in Europe.
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