Contributed by NJ Tech Meetup member, Gil Olsen.
You know the drill... at each NJ Tech Meetup, companies get 5 minutes and a brief Q+A to pitch whatever is most valuable to their mission... new users, new talent, an introduction to an investor for their next round, or, if they have their priorities straight, the coveted NJ Tech Audience Choice Award.
The Pitch Co. Intros. are meant to help give some context and set the stage to make the most of the time for you.
Let us know what you like, what you don't, and what makes you curious about upcoming companies in the comments.
First up....
Managing domain name issues is one of the worst parts of a digital life.
Anyone who has ever tried to create an entity and communicate it to the world knows that picking a domain is a challenge in it's own right.
Now, imagine some anonymous digital @SS Hole squatting on your domain. I used to think this was only a problem for huge companies trying to capture people funneling miss-typed traffic from domains like Gooogle.com, or for opportunistic land grabs like bindersfullofwomen.com. The Godaddies and Bluehosts of the world make money by up selling .net .co .org etc on top of the most desirable .com Top Level Domains (TLDs).
When ICANN realized that companies were deliberately dropping vowels and making up ridiculous sounding words in order to create something brandable.com that was not already taken, the process of opening up other TLDs moved along. Now, domains ending in .nyc, .apple, .law, .dentist, .porn, .store and even .sucks are up for grabs. Fast Company failed to pick up FastCompany.nyc, but wrote a piece on Taylor Swift buying up Taylorswift.porn.
Despite some protections on names with registered trademarks, the hassle is real. Squatters deliver malware, run phishing scams and more. Companies usually become aware of this issue when a customer complains that they were scammed.
David Mitnick and Howard GreenStein, the guys behind Domainskate.com have come up with a solution to this miserable problem. David was in finance, then spent a decade in IP law doing trademark licensing and prosecution. Fun fact about Howard, works with brands to create their online presence. Fun fact, he helped put himself through gradschool selling Siliconalley.com in the early 90's.
Identify, Evaluate, Monitor, Act.
Domain Skate has a system that scans all the TLD's and new registrations that can impact your brand. They Identify potential brand fraud, and evaluate the risk profile for your company. They watch any changes to threatening properties and automatically alert you when threats increase.
If that's the smoke detector to let you know there's a fire, they also help you put it out.
The supply you with domain registration info to your team if you have in house counsel, and if you don't they refer you to experienced third party legal partners.
Finnovation, Jersey style.
Drive Wealth offers a new type of investing platform. They've got 5 different products, scaling from consumer grade, to serious trading platform for financial service organizations.
The higher end, more complicated products are outside my scope of expertise, so I'm not going to waste your time by attempting to profile them.
The team page is stacked. Just about everyone on the profile has more industry experience than I have life experience, and their profile descriptions have almost as many numbers, dollar amounts and percentages in them as letters making words telling the story of exits, compounded growth stats and years between each. The team collects FINRA certs like kids used to collect baseball cards.
Most people are familiar with the financial service industry standard of somewhat complicated funding procedures (writing a check, wiring money, linking accounts with multi-day verifications etc), and per trade fees in the $5-$10 range, with only the option to purchase full shares of stocks. With digital platforms, these fees are borderline criminal.
Drive Wealth's consumer friendly product, Passport, gives easier access to investing in stocks. They make funding easier, allow investment of specific dollar amounts, and charge $.0125 cents per share as a commission. One notable differentiation from Loyal 3, another new type of trading platform, is that DriveWealth transactions occur at market price, as opposed to in bulk at the end of day trading price.
Woodies tries to sell you the idea that you will have a perfect shirt. What they should sell is the fact that if you shop with them, you will not bleed to death in the dressing room trying to un-pin mulitple dress shirts to try for the right fit.
How?
3D Modelling your body type and giving you your measurements.
You must click over to their website to play with the 3D models right now.
I'm no fashion guru, but they look nice nice shirts as well. Woodies also has set up local partnerships for scholarship funds near their manufacturing centers in SE Asia.
No pins, a few laughs, and some smarter kids? Sounds good to me.