Recycle Match

http://www.recyclematch.com/

RecycleMatch offers the first enterprise software platform to help large organizations

make more from your recycling,

accelerate zero waste efforts and

automate reporting and sustainability metrics.

RecycleMatch has a vision for the future of zero waste. A future where it’s not just about achieving zero landfill, but about ensuring the best and highest use for all materials your organization generates. Which translates into maximum economic returns as well as improved environmental efficiencies.

To achieve that vision, your organization needs better access to markets, not another broker. You need actionable, auditable data instead of an excel spreadsheet. What if you had real time information about the true market price for recyclable commodities, and improved access to the buyers or sellers that best fit your needs? What if you had up to date information about emerging solutions and technologies? Your organization could not only accelerate zero waste goals, but you could turn a cost center into a profit center.

Access to data makes it easier to know where you stand. Companies can measure their progress not only against their internally established goals, but they can start to see how they stack up. Benchmark against others in the same industry or geography using data that is based on common methodologies, even if each organization or each facility approaches things their own way.

RecycleMatch has proved that the concept of an online marketplace can work to 1) increase returns by 10-20% and achieve fair market value for commodity materials and 2) accelerate discovery of new solutions, buyers and technologies to achieve zero waste faster.

But we’ve also learned that the companies with the most materials wanted more. More control. More access. More bang for their buck. Their steady-stream of high-quality materials are the ‘carrots’ that make the market attractive to buyers. So we were happy to take their feedback and build the first Enterprise Software platform to help organizations maximize revenue generation, accelerate money-saving zero waste efforts, and automate reporting to be more accurate and actionable.

Our first publicly announced enterprise pilot customers, Shaw Industries and Progressive Waste, are true visionaries and have been helpful to building the future of zero waste. We hope you will join companies like Shaw Industries and Progressive Waste Solutions in striving not only for zero waste, but for the best and highest use of all of your byproducts.

7 qualities of uber productive people

Some people get more done than others--a lot more.

Sure, they work hard. And they work smart. But they possess other qualities that make a major impact on their performance.

They do the work in spite of disapproval or ridicule.

Work too hard, strive too hard, appear to be too ambitious, try to stand out from the crowd. It's a lot easier and much more comfortable to reel it in to ensure you fit in.

Pleasing the (average-performing) crowd is something remarkably productive people don't worry about. (They may think about it, but then they keep pushing on.)

They hear the criticism, they take the potshots, they endure the laughter or derision or even hostility--and they keep on measuring themselves and their efforts by their own standards.

And, in the process, they achieve what they want to achieve.

They see fear the same way other people view lunch.

One of my clients is an outstanding--and outstandingly successful--comic. Audiences love him. He's crazy good.

Yet he still has panic attacks before he walks onstage. He knows he'll melt down, sweat through his shirt, feel sick to his stomach, and all the rest. It's just the way he is.

So, just before he goes onstage, he takes a quick shower, puts on fresh clothes, drinks a bottle of water, jumps up and down and does a little shadowboxing, and out he goes.

He's still scared. He knows he'll always be scared. He accepts it as part of the process. Pre-show fear is like lunch: It's going to happen.

Anyone hoping to achieve great things gets nervous. Anyone trying to achieve great things gets scared.

Productive people aren't braver than others; they just find the strength to keep moving forward. They realize fear is paralyzing while action creates confidence and self-assurance.

They can still do their best on their worst day.

Norman Mailer said, "Being a real writer means being able to do the work on a bad day."

Remarkably successful people don't make excuses. They forge ahead, because they know establishing great habits takes considerable time and effort. They know how easy it is to instantly create a bad habit by giving in--even just this one time.

They see creativity as the result of effort, not inspiration.

Most people wait for an idea. Most people think creativity happens. They expect a divine muse will someday show them a new way, a new approach, a new concept.

And they wait and wait and wait.

Occasionally, great ideas do just come to people. Mostly, though, creativity is the result of effort: toiling, striving, refining, testing, experimenting... The work itself results in inspiration.

Remarkably productive people don't wait for ideas. They don't wait for inspiration. They know that big ideas most often come from people who do, not people who dream.

They see help as essential, not weakness.

Pretend you travel to an unfamiliar country, you know only a few words of the language, and you're lost and a little scared.

Would you ask for help? Of course. No one knows everything. No one is great at everything.

Productive people soldier on and hope effort will overcome a lack of knowledge or skill. And it does, but only to a point.

Remarkably productive people also ask for help. They know asking for help is a sign of strength--and the key to achieving more.

They start...

At times, you will lack motivation and self-discipline. At times, you'll be easily distracted. At times, you'll fear failure or success.

Procrastination is a part of what makes people human; it's not possible to completely overcome any of those shortcomings.

Wanting to put off a difficult task is normal. Avoiding a challenge is normal.

But think about a time you put off a task, finally got started, and then, once into it, thought, "I don't know why I kept putting this off--it's going really well. And it didn't turn out to be nearly as hard as I imagined."

It never is.

Highly productive people try not to think about the pain they'll feel in the beginning; they focus on how good they will feel once they're engaged and involved.

And they get started. And then they don't stop.

...And they finish.

Unless there's a really, really good reason not to finish--which, of course, there almost never is.

Read more: http://www.inc.com/jeff-haden/7-qualities-of-uber-productive-people.html#ixzz2LIFBdkoW

Student’s sleep solution would create big box kiosk for DIY diagnostics

A group of pharmacy students from the University of Cincinnati won $1,000 for their medication adherence app idea.

Students from universities around Cincinnati pitched ideas for everything from lip balm to liver enzymes at Friday’s Innov8 for Health Idea Expo in Cincinnati. Eight teams presented and four won $1,000 to move to the next step of building a business plan.
Here are the four winning teams. Solving the Sleep Puzzle – This was the best idea of the student group from Jordan Hildebrandt from the University of Cincinnati. She proposed an easier way to diagnosis sleep problems: kiosks in big box stores, a basic assessment and an at-home sleep test.
“The initial diagnostic will recommend products in the store or direct the person to the pharmacist,” Hildebrandt said. “The pharmacist would then administer an at-home sleep test in the form of a bracelet for the wrist.”
She would design the kiosk, the in-store diagnostic and the at-home test.
The Ultimate Lip Balm – Joseph Frith of Miami University pitched a over-the-counter product for an entirely different problem: sensitive lips. His SPF 50 lip balm is designed for people with sensitive skin due to chemo or acne treatments. Last summer he developed his own product and is currently on his second batch. He is working with Raining Rose in Cedar Rapids, IA, to produce the balm and with GA Communication Group in Chicago to market it. Frith is looking for funding to pay for UVA and UVB testing.
Below Zero – Apparently drunk people take up an extraordinary amount of ER resources. Jacob Howard of the college of Mount Saint Joseph has a solution: liver enzymes injected into the blood stream. This would speed up the processing of alcohol out of the body.
“This could be in pill form or in an IV,” he said. “The pill could be sold retail in WalMart or at a bar.”
While this sounds like a great idea, I must say that only a college student could deliver the line “So if they were going to drink and drive anyway…” with a straight face.
Pharmacy Compliance App – This HIPPA compliant app would include dose reminders, a health log and a real time connection with the pharmacy. If a patient delayed or dismissed too many doses, the pharmacist would get an alert. Scanning a QR code on the bottle would link a prescription to the app. A team from the pharmacy school at the University of Cincinnati pitched this idea.
One idea that didn’t win but is worth mentioning was an urban cooking school. A man who had been on Fox’s Master Chef proposed a cooking school in Cincinnati’s Over the Rhine neighborhood. The chef suggested three components to the program: classes, a cafe where diners could watch live demos, and a web site to reach a broader audience. The idea is the next needed step after solving the food desert problem.

7 Magical Marketing Lessons From Disney World | Influential Marketing Blog

 

Disney World isn’t just a magical place for families or kids.  It’s also pretty magical for marketers too.  The Disney Institute has been around for more than two decades teaching business people from any industry how to apply techniques that have been honed at Disney Parks over years and years.  Last week as I took a theme park adventure with my family through two of those Disney Parks (Magical Kingdom and Animal Adventure), the marketing was all around.  And, of course, I was taking photos of it.
So, here are just a few of the magical marketing lessons that stood out for me after spending just two days in Disney parks – and some thoughts on how you might apply them to pretty much any industry.

1. Brand Everything

At Disney, you can’t look in any direction without seeing branding all around.  In the park it works to surround you with the Disney experience at every moment … even when some parts of the park are under construction.  Not to mention the side benefit of Disney likely negotiating some discount on the construction work from Stanley in exchange for allowing them to put their brand on the signage seen by millions of park attendees.

2. Let Your Customers Be Lazy

In front of nearly every ride was stroller parking – and in Magic Kingdom, there were plenty of strollers because nearly every group had some small children.  There were areas set aside for stroller parking, and clear instructions for where to park your stroller … but people still managed to ignore them.  In most places, this might create chaos.  At Disney, they have a “stroller guy” whose entire job it was to pick up after lazy customers.  In the span of five minutes, I saw him organize strollers into lines, put errant sippy cups back into cup holders, and keep his little area of the park neat and organized.

3. Take The Dumb Money

Some of the rides and attractions at Disney were sponsored – including the “People Mover” train ride, which was randomly sponsored by Alamo car rental.  Instead of doing something smart and potentially even strategic, like sponsoring the tram that takes you back to your rental car (which might actually BE from Alamo) or even negotiating to have some special parking priveleges from Disney for customers who rent from Alamo – they decided to sponsor a random ride.  Disney, of course, took the money.  What’s the lesson?  If someone wants to give you dumb money – always say yes.

4. Offer Everyday Surprises

The FastPass system at Disney is a work of analytical art that is designed to keep people moving through attractions faster and in a more optimized way.  To use it, you just insert your own park ticket and the FastPass will give you a specific time to return to a ride in order to board it without a wait.  At several, you also got the unexpected surprise of a bonus ticket to a nearby (and usually less popular) ride.  Thanks to this bonus ticket, you had the chance to ride an extra ride in the same time and feel just a little better about your experience all day.

5. Don’t Prevent The Inevitable

Many of the rides take photos of you while you are on board.  Those photos are sold to riders after the ride – a classic amusement park upselling technique.  At Disney, they show you the images and put a person below those images just standing by to answer questions.  Of course, some people will just take a cell phone photo of their image instead of buying one.  Many places would put up big signs preventing that.  Disney, instead, puts a person there working under the photos to make it a little more socially awkward to take a photo of your photo … but they don’t outlaw it.  The result is that they probably still get a high percentage of people buying the photo who really want it, but they don’t need to have the typical corporate policy of outlawing the inevitable group of people who are happy with lower quality photo they take themselves.

6. Reassure Nervous Nellies

When I lived in Australia, we used to call a timid or always apprehensive person a “nervous nelly.”  We all know people like that.  They check a map constantly even when they are going the right way, and usually find a reason to worry about something.  Disney does a great job of making sure those people feel at ease, with plenty of places and people to answer questions.

7. Give Idiot-Proof Directions

People are generally dumb when it comes to finding their way around.  As a result, signs have to be super easy to navigate and offer simple ways to get from one place to another.  Disney does a great job keeping their signs easy to understand, having a generally logical layout for parks and lots of places to pick up copies of maps as you’re walking around their parks.

Bombfell - Subscription based clothing supply for men

the subscription clothing startup which aims to provide quality, fashionable clothing to men on a monthly basis. Since completing the 500 Startups accelerator last year, the company has moved to New York and seen six consecutive months of double-digit revenue growth. And now it’s raised a seed round to continue that momentum.

Bombfell lets men subscribe to a service that sends them a new shirt, pair of jeans, or other piece of fashionable, brand-name clothing at a discounted cost of just $69 a month. The startup works not only to find something that they might not have picked for themselves, but also something that will fit well, taking into account their measurements and the variable sizing of different brands.

It’s a value proposition that has resonated with consumers, as Bombfell has sent thousands of shipments every month. As a result, the company has seen double-digit revenue growth over the last six consecutive months. But the most surprising stat might be the company’s churn rate, which is below 3 percent.

To expand further and capture more of the market for lazy, unfashionable men, Bombfell has raised a seed round of $730,000. The funding comes from investors that include Great Oaks VC, Jeff Fluhr, 500 Startups, SOS Ventures, Romulus Capital, David Shen Ventures, Andrew Reis, Daniel Wallace, Diane Loviglio, Galen Ward, Gilman Tolle, Kavin Stewart, Sze-jun Tsai. In addition to the funding, the company has added Bobbi Brown Cosmetics co-founder Ken Landis and JamLegend co-founder Andrew Lee to its board of advisors.

Bombfell has also expanded the number of options available to subscribers. While it launched with a $69 a month subscription, it’s recently added new pricing tiers to allow its users to get more expensive items like sweaters and jackets. It now has a $129 per month option, which has more premium brands of clothing and increased variety. It also has a $199 a month tier which includes high-quality brands and outerwear items. The addition of new subscription tiers not only provides more flexibility to its users, but it will also increase revenues — and margins — associated with its monthly plans.

Because Bombfell wants its users to stick around, it also needs to provide a high-quality experience. That means doing a good job of making sure users get clothes that they’ll wear — and those that fit. “Our return rate is at the low end of the e-commerce average,” co-founder Bernie Yoo told me by phone. “That’s the crux of what we do… If that’s high, then the business doesn’t work.”

At the same time, the increase in the number of subscribers means bigger orders, and hence, better discounts from vendors. While it’s doing thousands of shipments each month, the predictable nature of the e-commerce subscription model means that the company has a limited amount of inventory, because it can do a pretty good job of predicting monthly shipment demand.

Bombfell moved to New York recently, to be closer to its suppliers. The company was founded by a group of execs with a background in fashion and technology, with experience at Saks Fifth Avenue, MTV, Microsoft, Theory, Morgan Stanley, Jones, Lolapps, Sean John, and Goldman Sachs.

Upcounsel- disrupting legal advice industry

make the bar low for anyone to call up an attorney and get legal advice without any strings attached. This is why we made consultations up to 60 minutes only $99. No gimmicks - just a great attorney for a whole hour.
UpCounsel's marketplace brings you multiple competitive quotes to get your legal work done. Select your attorney based on skill, reviews and their offer. You get the right attorney that best suites your needs.

Two new medical startup

California startup simplifying how doctors return after-hours calls raises $1.2M

San Francisco-based Ringadoc, which aims to provide doctors an easy way to return patient calls that come after hours, announced Tuesday that it has raised $1.2 million in a seed round from Founder’s Fund FF Angel.
Ringadoc Exchange is an answering service that notifies doctors through their smartphones when a patient calls after hours and leaves a message. The doctors then have the freedom to call back or use the service to a send voice mail to the patient addressing his or her concerns.
The service is meant to replace the third-party answering services that physicians’ offices use to route calls to the on-call doctor and other technology that simply routes the call to the on-call doctor’s mobile phone without any ability for them to screen the calls and triage them.
“Traditionally, doctors have relied on 1970s-era technology to handle their after-hours calls. In an instant, connected world where technology quickly delivers whatever you want — from taxis, to books, to groceries — patients now expect the same thing of doctors,” said Jordan Michaels, Ringadoc’s CEO and co-founder, in a news release. “We’re showing doctors that adapting to the world of on-demand access actually makes their lives easier.”
Currently, Ringadoc covers 500,000 patients in more than 20 states. Doctors who download the app from the App Store or Google Play can then set up their profile on Ringadoc Exchange. After the first three months, when the service is free, doctors would need to pay $50 per month to keep using it.
One of the early investors in Ringadoc is Practice Fusion founder and CEO Ryan Howard.

Swapping the ER for an e-visit: “Modern-day house call” startup gets $3 million investment

More than 136 million Americans visit an emergency room each year, but fewer than 13 percent of them are admitted to the hospital. In fact, a company called Stat Health Services estimates that two of three ER visits are for minor medical conditions that could be treated via telemedicine.
Aimed at relieving crowded ERs, saving time and reducing the cost of emergency care, Stat Health Services created a virtual ER portal where patients can go for on-demand attention from a doctor without leaving their home.
The company, founded by emergency physicians, appears to have just landed a $3 million investment as disclosed in a recent U.S. Securities and Exchange filing.

Stat Health Services’ customers are employers and insurance carriers who offer its e-visit service, STAT DOCTORS, to people as a supplement to a health or wellness plan. The company and its network of medical groups provide members with 24/7 access to board-certified emergency physicians. Patients can use a webcam, a cellphone or a landline to connect with a physician instead of visiting the ER or an urgent care clinic for common, minor medical issues like respiratory infections, colds, pink eye, sports injuries and rashes. Prescriptions are sent electronically to the patient’s pharmacy of choice.
More healthcare providers are starting to offer e-visits, and more health plans are covering them too. But there are also other, third-party telemedicine companies including Teladoc and virtuwell by HealthPartners that offer generalized e-visits. The telehealth market as a whole is expected to double by 2016.
Aside from the new equity investment, STAT DOCTORS also won $250,000 from the Arizona Innovation Challenge last fall. Formed in 2009, it’s based in Scottsdale, Arizona. Clients that the company has made public include the Arizona Small Business Association and Scottsdale Healthcare.