Start-up or Sit-down

Whenever I think of start-up companies, two things come to mind:

1. What do they offer that makes them stand out from the crowd? I mean, in today’s Information Age we are bombarded with new and innovative ideas all. the. time. So.. what makes this company any different?
2. What is their story? I think that it is becoming more and more common for people to connect to a brand and become loyal to them. Take Apple for example. People all over the world have become Apple’s most loyal customers, and if you even mention an Android product you will be shunned from the conversation or looked at in a pitiful way. But why is it that these creative tech companies have become so mainstream? This is an idea that I tried to figure out when reading the Inc. piece that highlighted some of the new and note-worthy start-up companies.

The questions I thought about when analyzing these companies were: Does the idea have a good value proposition? Who is the market/ Target Audience? Do the founders seem to know the customer? Is there an original secret sauce?

After doing some research and reading more detailed into the start-ups mentioned in the article, I found two that really stood out. The first one was Smart Staffing. They talked about how it is essentially Uber for Nurses, and how it solves the problem of scheduling in-home health care. Smart Staffing condenses all of this to help staffing companies save money and create better matches between patients and providers. This is a perfect example of offering a service that makes them stand out from the crowd. They are also doing something that provides good to other people, so it was the perfect start-up for me to want to learn more about. As for the “story” aspect of this new company, I looked at their website and saw that the upper-level management team all have families and children. They saw a gap in the market that they were a part of and decided to create a solution that would not only benefit them.. but thousands of others as well.

The second company that I really found to be innovative and unique was Sweetbud. This start-up was founded at the University of California, Irvine, and is aimed at making a coffee cup lid (and smartphone app) that uses an electrical current to shock your taste buds into thinking you’re tasting something sweet. In terms of having a “secret sauce”, this company really checks that box. It takes a societal problem of rising Diabetes and Heart Disease rates and provides a solution that would give the same effect of drinking something sweet, without the detrimental health problems that it causes. This is so important for a new company because they took a new approach to the traditional business model. Instead of offering sugar-free alternatives (which still contain hidden sugars and aren’t that much better for you than their original counterpart), they listened to their audience and created a lid (and app) that would prevent them from drinking the sugary drinks. Therefore, they stood out from the crowd and have established irreplaceable value.