Existing traditional banking processes, interfaces, and underwriting methods don’t adequately help startup companies control their finances. Traditional banking infrastructure is too rigid. It doesn’t scale easily enough to meet the needs of startup companies that are likely to see adoption at unexpected intervals. Tribal Credit exists to bridge the gap between what traditional financial services offer and what startups and SMBs actually need. Currently Tribal Credit has more than 2K customers worldwide. Their business started in the U.S. in 2016, but over the past few years they’ve expanded to new regions. As business grew beyond borders, their infrastructure started to reveal limitations with scale.

Cassie McAllister

September 7, 2022

The details in this post are based on The Netflix Tech Blog post titled “Towards a Reliable Device Management Platform”. The Media & Entertainment (M&E) industry is extremely profitable – it has raked in billions of dollars each year for the last several years. The U.S. M&E industry is the largest in the world, valued at $660 billion (of the $2 trillion global market) despite seeing a 7.3% year-on-year decline in 2020 due to the pandemic. While the pandemic accelerated existing trends (i.e. the streaming subscription model), it halted others (i.e. box office sales). Many M&E companies had to pivot their business model to stay competitive. For example, we saw several studios release first-run movies directly to streaming services, which allowed them to expand to an even larger audience. The M&E industry is on the rebound from 2020, and major players are figuring out new ways to build relationships with customers that last years, not weeks. One thing that’s been clear is the importance of creating an agile business model that allows you to iterate on new ideas and quickly adapt to market changes driven by customer demands.

Cassie McAllister

August 18, 2022

It’s a bit of a race, isn’t it? You have to get your MVP out the door quickly and you need to use the right technology to get you across the finish line. We’ve talked about building with the right tech stack from the start to ensure you can scale, and preventing yourself from building up too much tech debt. Now we are going to assume you made the right choice and are using CockroachDB (yes, we are biased).

Cassie McAllister

April 21, 2022

Mythical Games, currently valued at $1.25 billion, is one of the top 5 blockchain gaming startups. The four year-old company is part of a relatively niche industry with tremendous potential for growth – blockchain (or crypto) gaming presents opportunities for innovation in areas such as player ownership and player-led economies at scale. Today, the Mythical Platform is offered as-a-service to developers and publishers, allowing them to build or integrate blockchain-based play-to-earn economies into their games. This approach makes blockchain more accessible, and allows players to become stakeholders in their favorite games.

Cassie McAllister

January 28, 2022

The gaming industry is all about delivering a great end-user experience which means building relationships with players that last years, not days. They can do this by instilling predictability, reliability, and creating a strong brand by giving players what they want: a new and better gaming experience each time. However, the success of a new game or platform is often unpredictable. A game can become successful overnight and the amount of concurrent players can surge within a few hours causing slowdowns or the inability to login. Or the game may never reach a certain level of popularity that it needed to see a ROI.

Cassie McAllister

December 3, 2021

Early stage capital is one of the many financial services sectors experiencing digital disruption. Up and coming startup founders are increasingly turning to online equity crowdfunding platforms instead of pursuing traditional early-stage capital raising methods. In recent years, equity crowdfunding was established as a reliable and popular mechanism for startups and SMEs to raise capital. However, building an affordable, easy-to-use online platform for companies (and investors) to use is not an easy feat. There are many challenges associated with adhering to data regulations, reaching customers in different regions, and scaling to accommodate growth.

Cassie McAllister

April 15, 2021

he thought of developing a solution for “epidemic management” was not what Quarano engineers had in mind this time last year. In fact, Quarano’s story started just a few months ago at a government-sponsored hackathon in Germany. At the hackathon, over 40,000+ participants were asked to build applications and services to help manage and decrease the spread of COVID-19.

Cassie McAllister

February 23, 2021

It’s 2021 and the in-store shopping experience is still on pause with many stores shutting their doors forever. Online shopping is no longer the future of retail, but the new reality of retail. On average, ecommerce sales grew 32.4% year-over-year with some retailers (Best Buy, Target) seeing over 100% growth. 2020 forced retailers to rethink the way they do business and the way they reach their customers. Smaller businesses were forced to take their sales online, while larger businesses needed to find new, creative ways to stay ahead of the growing ecommerce competition. Organizations that have the bandwidth and the money to build data-intensive applications are changing the customer experience. They offer extremely personalized applications and doubled down on targeted advertising. With so much competition online, if you don’t innovate your business to meet the status-quo, you will struggle to survive. Looking ahead, how will this new “digital shopping experience” affect your bottom line? Will you acquire as many customers this year without the physical experience? Will you be able to expand your online services to new audiences? In the era of COVID-19, to reach your revenue goals it’s important to have the ability to scale your business and reach new customers regardless of where they are located. In this post, we will cover three strategies retailers can take to ensure they meet their revenue goals this year.

Cassie McAllister

January 25, 2021