alexvomwald

It works for any country with Google Maps, so China won't work but besides that, you can get the data in many countries. Some countries are not that active in reviews in Google so data might be more limited, but I've done similar stuff in the past for Mexico and Brazil and it worked great.

In this case, I wanted to map out all companies within an industry for which I am building a solution (a voice and chatbot agent to automate all front-desk tasks).

This meant getting a list of companies and estimating their size to see which ones are the best to target first (e.g., multiple locations, consistent revenue).

I also wanted to get an overview of which software all these companies are using since the solution I am building has to integrate with their existing solutions. So besides knowing the big players in the market, this helped me to map out (for the most part) which companies are using which systems) to then narrow down on which ones make sense the most to integrate first based on their market penetration and availability of APIs.

Then I'm scraping the data from the actual booking site (which uses one of the identified software), to get their menu of treatments, descriptions, prices, and durations. With this, I'm building demos that create a simple showcase of how the agent could look to help them automate their phone calls, chat messages, and social media interaction.

The thing missing would be the integration with their booking systems and some additional personalization of their agent, but I'm planning on using these demos to make the pitch feel more real easy, in an efficient. way.

So it helps in any case where you want to get a more detailed overview of an industry (relying on google maps data) and if you're trying to identify which booking, ordering, etc. software they're using.

TLDR: it is all about what you make with the data.

Definitely. Data won't create the opportunity if you don't know what to do with the data or it won't answer the right questions if don't know what to ask. I think generally the accessibility to gather, process, and make decisions with data has just become so low and it's almost a given to do such analyses.

At the same time, many "business" people I talk to, don't know how to do these analyses. And many technical people, while they could easily do such analyses, don't think of data from that business perspective. |

Damn. This is the coolest thing which likely has no real use that I've seen lately.

Many players out there fighting fiercely to get more customers, every-time making it easier to get financing, which might not necessarily be the best on the long run or in the best interest of consumers.

There has been multiple analysts and news outlets writing about this.

When 33% of users from BNPL services claim that a reason to do it is that their credit cards are already max, I see this as a potential issue.

Also as someone that has been testing & doing research on this field, it is amazing how the services differ between Europe/US and Latam (probably Africa too but I didn't dig into this one yet).

BNPL services in Latam charge quite high interest to the consumers. I'm a bit worried when I get ads to pay for sneakers over the course of 3 months and they would end up costing around 30% more, which means many people actually purchase such items in such way.

What are your guys thoughts? While easier access to credit can be quite helpful, it does seem like there might be some potential issues in the industry, particularly in these days.

Here is a video of Icon's CEO (the company building this community with Lennar) explaining more about the company https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63uhYWkictE

It's a bit long but worth watching if you're interested in this technology.

Damn. Never thought about this one. I'm sure they thought about it and have a solution but... No one likes issues with wifi...

One of the ideas/products I liked the most was the multiple-cards in one (meaning that you can store multiple credit card accounts or even debit cards, into one plastic, this way you only carry one).

There was a company called Coin doing this in the US but they shut down. https://www.macrumors.com/2017/02/01/coin-shutdown-services-...

A company called Curve is doing this in Europe and seems to be doing quite well. (~$200M valuation). Unfortunately, it is not available in the US.

While many people might say that you don't need plastic if you have your phone and use Apple pay, maybe I am old school, but I still would love to have just one plastic (or metal since nowadays that's the cool thing) carrying all my cards.

This will be the first...

They didn't disclose but I am guessing average compared to market. They're not cheap but they seem to be good quality. ps - median price of a home in Austin is $624,000

There has been a lot of discussion about 3D-printed homes over the last 3 years with multiple companies getting funding.

One of the biggest home builders in the US announced a 100 home community in Austin and homes are expected to be available for sale soon.

What are your guys thoughts? Do you think a 3D-printed home would be a good investment?

Idle time means idle money. Think about how you would react if you were hiring someone and that someone had "idle" time while you're paying him. If you have investors, they expect you to do something good with your time that ultimately multiplies their money. If you don't have investors, you are your own investor (your time is your cost of opportunity) and you probably also want to make your time worth.

I've been in that situation and even while it doesn't feel ideal (just the fact of having idle time feels weird and wrong), I think its the best time to learn new things relevant for your business. There will always be something helpful to learn that can be useful for your business, so just try to prioritize on what would be the most useful in the short term. There is indeed many times idle time, but it is only idle if you keep it that way.

The easiest learning comes from reading. Keep up to date with industry trends, read about marketing strategies, read about cases of successful and failed companies similar to yours.

Learn to fulfill positions that are yet non-existent on your company. If you are a small startup and you have no one doing marketing, pr or something else, use your time to learn about it and do it yourself.

just my thoughts from someone similar