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Bridging the gap: The rise of tech designed for low-income Americans

Aug23
by on August 23, 2014 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Around the Web, Insider, Profiles and Interviews

Biden, VA Senators Attend Virginia Rally One Day Before Election Day

One of the pieces of advice I hear regularly for startup founders looking for a business idea is to find a problem they’re experiencing and set out to solve it. It’s excellent advice – some of the best companies have been built on that premise – but it also has an enormous blindspot. If tech entrepreneurs come from similar economic backgrounds and demographics, then the solutions they come up with will cater primarily to the needs of their peers. Take an app like Uber. When it first launched, it made on-demand car service more affordable. Its pricing, however, still meant…

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Startup founders in Southeast Asia, it’s time to step up

Aug23
by on August 23, 2014 at 10:00 am
Posted In: Around the Web, Asia, Entrepreneur

southeast asia

Dropifi is looking to streamline customer feedback. The Ghanian startup built a widget to replace contact forms and provide businesses with the kind of customer insights most consumers fail to fill out on websites. The company was founded in 2011. Less than two years later, it became the first startup from Africa to receive funding from 500 Startups. As of 2013, Dropifi had over 6,000 paying customers in 30 countries worldwide. The service solves a universal problem for companies but it happens that it was built in Ghana, where the internet penetration rate is just 40 percent. The Dropifi story got me thinking about…

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