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Life

How a Shark Tank Pitch Led Zoobean’s Founders in an Unexpected Direction

Every entrepreneur wonders: “Will my startup sink or swim?” When Felix Brandon and his wife Jordan Lloyd Bookey launched Zoobean, a startup focused on children’s reading, they found themselves swimming in rough waters early on. A few months after launch, the founders were invited to pitch their business on the TV show Shark Tank. What felt like a sinking moment turned into more than a lifeline for the fledgling business — it entirely transformed their business model. In the year that followed the Shark Tank episode, Zoobean went from a consumer subscription service to an enterprise reading program platform loved…

An Iconic Fundraising Tradition Returns with a 21st Century Twist

The Xplenty (Integrate.io) platform allows organizations to integrate, process, and prepare data for analytics in the cloud. Xplenty is also available as a Heroku Add-on. Abe Dearmer is the company's COO. Often, innovation sparks innovation in unforeseen ways. In the early 1950’s, television brought the world an entirely new experience that not only changed people’s daily lives, but also created a unique platform for national culture. One of the most beloved and enduring traditions that emerged on this new national stage was the telethon. A combination of “television” and “marathon,” a telethon is a broadcast fundraising event that lasts for…

Coding at the Speed of a Pandemic: How Kilterset Delivered Apps That Test the Test Kits

The need for speed takes on a new meaning in the face of a pandemic. With millions of lives at stake, everyone in the healthcare ecosystem, from medical facilities to laboratories to equipment manufacturers, races to do their part to help curb the spread. With the coronavirus, the world put widespread diagnostic testing at the core of its pandemic response playbook. However, testing is only effective if the test results are accurate — a false negative could not only endanger the individual, but also their entire community. Third-party quality assurance providers play a vital role in testing the tests. They…

Celebrating 25 Years of JavaScript

JavaScript turns 25 years old today. While it’s made an impact on my career as a developer, it has also impacted many developers like me and users around the world. To commemorate our favorite language, we’ve collected 25 landmark events that have shaped the path of what the JavaScript ecosystem looks like today. 1995 1) JavaScript is created In 1995, Brendan Eich, a developer at Netscape, known for their Netscape browser, was tasked with building a client-side scripting language that paired well with Java. While it may not be the language that you know and love today, JavaScript was written…

When Serendipity Strikes: How One Engineer Turned His First Coding Gig into a Decade-Plus Career

For many of us, changing jobs seems like the best way to grow professionally or advance our careers. Not so for Edd Morgan, Senior Director of Engineering at BiggerPockets. During his first year in college, he became the startup’s first employee. Twelve years later, Edd reflects on his unusually stable career path and how he’s helped to grow the company into a thriving business with two million users. It all started with a part-time job In 2008, Edd began studying computer science at the University of Bournemouth in the U.K. Like many college students, he needed to find a way…

A Pandemic Tale: How a Simple Algorithm Brought a Business Back from Lockdown

Sometimes, innovation is born in the midst of a crisis. Unexpected challenges and a sense of urgency force companies to look for new ways of keeping the business going, even as the odds stack up against them. This was the case for one of our biggest customers Matalan, a major fashion and homeware retailer in the U.K. The company operates 230 brick and mortar stores across the country, and 30 international franchise stores within Europe and the Middle East. It also maintains a thriving online channel that runs on the SHIFT platform. When the global coronavirus pandemic hit, the U.K.…

How to Transform a Heavy Industry, One Sensor at a Time

Moving shipping containers is heavy work. Moving a traditional industry into the digital age is a different kind of heavy job. Software development agency GNAR took on the challenge and built an ops management platform for RMS Intermodal, one of the largest rail yard operators in the U.S. Their IoT solution gave RMS a data-driven view of their operations for the first time, resulting in a whole new definition of “efficiency” for the company. Serendipity manifests a new idea It all started at a wedding. GNAR Founder Brandon Stewart found himself chatting with Adam Gray, the son of RMS Intermodal’s…

How a Live Tutoring Platform Helps the Working World Get Ahead

In today's global economy, English proficiency unlocks opportunity. People all over the world are motivated to improve their English skills in order to make a better life for themselves and their families. Cambly is a language education platform that helps millions of learners advance their careers by connecting them with English-speaking tutors from a similar professional background. For many language learners, speaking is often the hardest skill to improve in a classroom setting. Conversation time is limited, and students tend to practice with each other rather than with a teacher. Some students may not have a fluent speaker available in…

Black Lives Matter: Our Thoughts, Actions, and Resources

It is never easy to know how to react, communicate, or at times, even feel, during something as heartbreaking and real as the struggles that our fellow humans face through no fault of their own. As Herokai, we stand in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement and want to share some of our thoughts on the struggle, as well as some actions and resources that we find helpful. We will be keeping this post updated and would love to include your voice. Please send us any thoughts that you’d like to share at: feedback@heroku.com. “Many, if not all, of…

Electric’s Advice During Uncertain Times: Invest in Your Culture

Some say that the only constant in life is change. That may be true, but often what’s more important than the change itself is how we react. We all go through life trying to manage change (albeit with varying degrees of success), so we can better cope with it, learn from it, and adapt. Like individuals, organizations can learn the same “life skill,” so that change is not only less disruptive, but it also becomes a measure of organizational health that can lead to success. Sometimes, it takes a pandemic Times of sudden change, like during the COVID-19 crisis, are…

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