February 2012
4 posts
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Start-up Launch Series #3: ticklemybrain → where...
Tara Nehme completed her undergraduate degree in Finance at the American University of Beirut in 2009. She had lived in Canada for nine years prior to making the move to Lebanon for university. Post graduation, she was employed as a Forensic Services Consultant at PricewaterhouseCoopers in Dubai. She worked at PwC for almost two years before quitting her job and heading to back to Beirut to...
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The Execution Quarterly Reunion
The Execution Quarterly Reunion took place yesterday in the Lounge at Seeqnce space in Hamra.
It was a casual gathering where over 30 people came. All attendees were former participants at The Execution. The teams represented last night were: The Dream Matchers, The Penguins, Saafer, Red Drops in Lebanon, Smart Code, Custom Dreams, and Global Team (Kolaz).
Everyone had a chance to catch up on...
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Social Media Partnership: The Power Of Innovative...
In our last blog post we provided some social media stats, emphasizing the importance of social platforms and the tools you can use to capitalize on the same. In addition to this we would like to add another concept that has been attracting a lot of attention lately. And that is social media partnership.
In today’s article we answer to 3 questions related to social media partnership: WHAT is...
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5 Social Media Tools Worth Exploring
The world went and got all social. People at all ages are using Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, or YouTube. Below you can take a look at some social media statistics you need to know:
Facebook
- More than 800 active million active users with more than 200 million added in 2011 (2012).
- 56% of consumers said they are more likely to recommend a brand to a friend after becoming a fan...
January 2012
6 posts
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3 Key Start Up Lessons To Remember
Last year was quite dynamic, with lots of exciting happenings on the global startup scene. There were a lot of hot startups: some of them are still impressive success stories, while others ended up as epic failures. Nevertheless they all, in one way or another, marked 2011. Now we are at the beginning of 2012 ready for new challenges, new stories, and new lessons to be learned.
In today’s...
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7 Useful Tools For Freelance Web Designers
Being a freelancer sounds very cool… You have 100% freedom in deciding what projects you will work on, the way you will organize those projects as well as the tools you will choose to work with. Not even mentioning that you decide whether you will work from home, office, cafes, park or any other place you like. Awesome right? Well yes and no. Both, yes and no, are because of one reason: 100%...
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Building A Mobile App? Here Are 5 Tips For You!
If mobile apps used to be luxury, now they became necessity. They became a great tool for companies to strengthen their online presence as well as to build a more engaging customer community.
In today’s article we give 5 tips that could be of a great help when developing and designing your mobile app. Let’s take a look at them:
1. Do smaller releases quickly: Smaller but quick iterations are...
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Interview With Muhammad Tabsh From Kol 3a Zaw2ak,...
In November 2011, Seeqnce organized Lebanon’s first Internet startup competition called The Execution. It was a month - long startup competition at which Kol 3a Zaw2ak was the winner. Last week Kol 3a Zaw2ak moved in to Seeqnce. We are all very excited about it and we wanted to share this amazing experience with you. For that reason, yesterday we conducted an interview with Muhammad Tabsh,...
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Interview With Cynthia Bu Jawdeh, Founder Of...
Nutrition comes to Seeqnce! Next week Cynthia Bu Jawdeh, founder of Strawberry Blu will take the stage to talk about the story and vision of her “healthy” online startup. Strawberry Blu acts as a specialized online Q&A platform, where questions on nutrition, health, dieting and cooking are answered by qualified experts within 72 hours. Strawberry Blu’s vision is to create...
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7 Tech Trends For 2012
Group buying, geolocation apps, tablets, mobile payment, crowdfunding, mobile photo sharing, and cloud based productivity apps were some of the trends that marked 2011. There were definitely lots of exciting technology innovations to follow. Let’s see what’s ahead in 2012:
1. Micro -payment economy
There are more and more sites out there helping you sell everything you could imagine and...
December 2011
5 posts
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Pin-Pay Does Team Building Via Viral Video...
With their vision of empowering mobile phones by providing financial services to mobile users and setting the standards for mobile payments, and their state-of-the-art platform to provide this type of service, Pin-Pay organized last week an Apprentice Competition for their employees.
Ms. Hilda Abla, HR manager at Pin-Pay, came up with the idea of the competition after she saw some communication...
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5 Online IDEs To Start Coding In The Cloud
Today it seems as everything is moving “to the cloud”, starting from software applications and data storage to tools used to create the same. Thus, programmers were not left out of the cloud revolution meaning there are quite some alternatives offering to programmers online Integrated Development Environments (IDEs) where they can write, run and share their code.
Let’s see 5 great IDEs that let...
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LeWeb 2011: Interview With Karim Helal, The...
LeWeb 2011 conference, the biggest tech conference in Europe, took place on December 7,8 and 9th this year in Paris, France. Founded in 2008 by Loic Le Meur, Founder and CEO of Seesmic.com, the conference has become #1 tech event in Europe, attracting the best and brightest people in the tech world, from Google’s Eric Schmidt to Spotify founder Daniel Ek to Instagram’s Kevin...
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Interview With Sara And Dina, Founders Of...
Sara
Graduating with an MA in Global Management meanwhile working for the fashion house Kara Ross NY in London helped a lot in terms of thinking about complexities in management and understating the fashion industry, how they think, how they operate, how important the brands’ heritage is and the opportunity to building a network of top fashion crowd. My experiences abroad and initially as...
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7 Mobile App And Website Design Inspiration...
Design inspiration often comes from checking out what others have created. Seeing others’ creations, learning from them and applying the same to your mobile app or mobile website design could be very helpful to every designer or developer. For that reason, we are presenting 7 galleries that might serve as a great source of inspiration for mobile app or website design. Let’s take a look:
1....
November 2011
14 posts
27 tags
7 Useful Tools To Check Cross - Browser...
Whether you are experienced web programmer or you are in the beginning of the journey, you have most probably had experience with the cross – browser compatibility issues. Testing whatever you create in as many browsers as possible is crucial to turning out a great and professional product.
The old-school way to test code required access to a bunch of different computers, different...
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5 Tech Logo Design Tips
Logo design is a pretty sophisticated and complex process. Usually the most difficult thing is to design the logo concept. Reflecting your company’s identity in a simple but eye catchy logo that sends a strong message could be quite challenging. Once you figure this out, it’s time for execution. Here we present 5 tips you might find useful while designing your logo. Let’s take a look:
1....
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5 Tips For Fundraising Success
“By far the biggest influence on investors’ opinions of a startup is the opinion of other investors. There are very, very few who simply decide for themselves” - Paul Graham
Previously we wrote about 3 key things you might want to think about before asking for funds:
Choose The Right Funding For Your Startup
Revenue Based Financing (RBF): A Hybrid Of Bank Debt And Venture...
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The Execution - Training Phase Day 4
On the fourth day of Training, the teams of The Execution were told to come in comfortable clothing and no heels. Why? Because it was game time!
From trying to build the biggest unbroken ring using a sheet of paper, to falling into each other’s arms, to the “ankle” game, teams had a real blast.
Moreover, teams got the chance to practice their 90-second pitch, and went through a crash course in...
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The Execution - Training Phase Day 3
On the third day of the Training Phase, teams got a taste of how to build a brand image, craft compelling messages and use the right marketing channels. With Jimmy Ghazal of Quantum and Marc Dfouni of Eastline Marketing leading the talks, the teams had front row seats into the minds of some of the best in the business. Let’s see their thoughts on the evening.
Red Drops In Lebanon
So...
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3 Key Responsive Web Design Elements
Responsive Web Design is an approach of building a website that responds to user’s behavior and actions based on screen size, platform and orientation. The main goal is to provide the best user experience possible in terms of navigability and readability. There are 3 key elements in responsive design:
1. Flexible Layouts
What does this mean? It means that as the browser width...
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The Execution – Training Phase Day 2
On the second day of the Training Phase of The Execution, participants went through an innovative (and highly entertaining) User Interface and Rapid Prototyping workshop, given by Penguin Cube. (You can check out what it looked like here). In addition, Samer Karam of Seeqnce introduced the concept of the Minimum Viable Product. Finally, the evening was concluded with a legal overview of the...
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The Execution - Training Phase Day 1
The Training Phase: Workshop1 of The Execution took place yesterday at Seeqnce. It was amazing, fully packed and full of energy (check out our Facebook photo album to see what it looked like through Seeqnce lens). The Workshop is the first workshop of The Execution, covering startup business and legal fundamentals. There were 11 awesome teams, highly motivated and eager to learn. Let’s go through...
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5 Great Templates To Promote Your App Online
Maintaining a strong online web presence to promote your app is essential. Making a custom landing page could help you increase search engine traffic or paid advertising, thus eventually could drive your sales. Let’s take a look at 5 great templates you could use to promote your app.
1. Fone
Fone is a theme made by Gyro to showcase an app or multiple apps. Fone is built to be a one page...
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Think, Design & Code: Do It All, Win It All
What is one of the biggest problems with teams composed of designers who can’t code and coders who can’t design? – Gap between the knowledge of the designer and the coder, meaning that often designers don’t know what technically is possible, while coders don’t know what makes a good design. Wouldn’t it be more effective if these two have some overlapping knowledge, thus will have more time to...
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The Future Of Television: 5 Trends To Watch Out
“I believe the company that understands the balance between consumers, advertisers, content providers and ISPs will win, if they create the right balance and business model” - Mitchell Berman
There is quite a buzz in the tech world about the future of television. As there are more and more Internet, web and mobile trends evolving, television trends are reshaping and taking different direction...
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ADSL Packages - Comparison Chart - Lebanon ISPs -... →
Sodetel stands out by providing the cheapest entry points for 4 Mbps & 8 Mbps connections.
This chart does not take QoS into consideration!
QoS matters much more than spend and quota.
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3 Things Great VCs Do
“These VC’s would return to their firms with steel in their eyes. They’d be relentless about accountability from board meeting to board meeting with laser like focus on the one or two issues that matter” -Steve Blank.
In our previous posts we were mostly focused on entrepreneurs, writing about what it takes to be an entrepreneur, what kills a startup, what makes Silicon Valley...
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5 Mistakes That Kill Startups
Making something that users don’t want, or making something they want but not being able to to sell it are probably the two most dangerous mistakes an entrepreneur could make. But what about other mistakes that might not seem so obvious while being totally obsessed with your startup idea? Mistakes like delaying of a product launch, trying to develop the perfect product, or focusing on a small,...
October 2011
9 posts
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Interview with Maxime Chaya, Co-Founder of...
Maxime Chaya, is Lebanon’s foremost sportsman and climber. In 2006, he was the first person from his country to hoist its flag atop Everest, and he did so en route to ascending the highest mountain on every continent – the Seven Summits – while also skiing to the North and South Poles. Having experienced a multi-cultural education in Lebanon, France, Greece and Canada due to his...
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The Execution Startup Competition: Interview With...
Do you have crazy ideas and wonder if they make sense?
Do you want to be the founder of an innovative new company?
Do you ever wonder if you have what it takes? If you are strong, smart and disciplined enough?
Do you ask yourself: I want to achieve great things, but don’t know where to start?
If YES then today we are going to help you learn more about the best way to achieve all...
Seeqnce Tech Ninjas Series Episode 1: Intro to...
On October 6 2011, Seeqnce hosted a full house of developers, entrepreneurs and startup fans to watch Costa Nicolaou (@cnicolaou) give a talk about Ruby on Rails. As a master of Rails (we call his kind Ninjas), Costa took the audience through the MVC fundamentals of the platform, dived straight into code examples and gave real-world examples of why RoR is such an appealing framework to...
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Revenue Based Financing (RBF): A Hybrid Of Bank...
“The RBF structure can be a great option for profitable companies looking for a straightforward way to raise funding without dilution, change of control, or a personal guarantee” – Andy Sack
A few months back we wrote an article, “Choose the Right Funding for Your Startup”, in which we talk about available funding options at each startup stage. You can also check Fred Wilson’s blog post,...
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Interview with Karim Helal, the Founder and CEO of...
Karim Helal is a successful serial entrepreneur, having founded and managed a wide range of startups, ranging from Import/Exports to online web applications. Following a peaceful childhood in the UAE, Karim spent the next 15 years in Canada, first earning a Bachelor in Electrical Engineering from Polytechnique, then working as a Project Manager for Ericsson Canada and then returning to school...
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Interview with Haytham Elkhoja and Bahij...
Bahij Demachkie is co-founder and general manager of Mizalla.com. He graduated with a Computer Science degree from the Lebanese American University in 2003. Bahij got the idea of a shareable e-commerce platform for local businesses during the summer of 2009 and started working on a business plan soon after. The goal was to be able to cover all types of merchandise; hence the project was called...
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Interview with Karim Safieddine, the CEO of...
Karim is a French-Lebanese entrepreneur who has been in the Entertainment and Media industry for more than 7 years now. After graduating from the Sorbonne with an MA in international Law degree (while running his first venture: A short program and viral video production house), he moved to the UK where he obtained a Masters in Management and Film Business, which allowed him to get his first...
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Teach your customers first, and sell them second! ...
Back in the good old days when we wanted to buy something most of us went to a few stores, asked for recommendations, maybe exchanged some opinions with other buyers and friends and based on that information we made a purchase. Today, many of us make the purchase from their homes. For many products, you don’t even need to physically go to a store in order to buy them and you don’t rely so...
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Interview with Constantine Nicolaou, an Awesome...
As we already announced, on Thursday, October 6 at 7pm, the Tech Ninjas Series #1: Introducing Ruby on Rails event will take place at Seeqnce Community Space, in Hamra, Beirut. What’s cool about this is that one awesome coder will share his knowledge with DOZENS of hackers! That awesome coder is Constantine Nicolaou, a Ruby on Rails developer based in Beirut, Lebanon. Costa will introduce the...
September 2011
8 posts
23 tags
3 Things You Should Know About Crowdsourcing
Crowdsourcing: more heads are better than one… This is the logic behind crowdsourcing. You might agree or disagree with this statement but it is a fact that in the last few years crowdsourcing became a very popular topic among bloggers. Moreover it became a widely used practice in modern business. So let’s see 3 things you should know about it.
1. What is it? – Crowd + Sourcing = Crowdsourcing....
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Social Media Optimization (SMO): Onsite, Profile...
“Sharing your best content when none of your followers are online to see it is just as useless as throwing spam to a crowd of followers” – Mitch Monsen
Social media optimization is great for at least 2 things: one is the increased Google interest in taking into account social signs as ranking factors (this is at least what Mitch Monsen, CEO/Head Consultant at WhiteFireSEO, claims), and...
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5 Technologies That Will Shape the Web and Mobile...
The web and mobile space continue to evolve in every corner of our lives. On one hand existing technologies are enhanced, getting more powerful and on the other hand new technologies are rapidly emerging. Today we are going to present 5 technologies we believe are relevant for the future of web and mobile world. Let’s take a look at them.
1. Future payments technology: A few days ago,...
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Interview with Mackram Raydan, the Founder of...
As we reminded you in our last blog post, Seeqnce is hosting its first session of the Naked Startup Series presentations, featuring cuevox.com and its founder Mackram Raydan.
Mackram Raydan is a 27 year old engineer at heart whose passion lies in bringing ideas to life, and in dissecting problems and understanding them. After majoring in computer engineering at the American...
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Fear of failure: You cannot avoid it but you can...
Seeqnce is hosting its first session of the Naked Startup Series presentations, featuring cuevox.com and its founder Mackram Raydan. Since the theme of the series is about openly acknowledging the inevitable setbacks that entrepreneurs face, Seeqnce’s Editor In Chief writes below about the fear of failure. Stay tuned for an interview with Mackram Raydan himself!
“If you’re not jumping on...
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Interview With Lebnan Nader, a Birdy Nam Nam Team...
“It’s really overwhelming to be on the top charts and to have thousands and thousands of downloads so I advise everyone that can develop a game to go ahead and start directly right away” – Lebnan Nader
A few weeks ago, a huge buzz about one great Lebanese game was created. ArabCrunch, TheNextWeb and MobileEntertainment were some of the media who spread the buzz around. So what actually...
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Interview With Bjoern Lasse Herrmann, Founder of...
“Accelerators are essential and are probably in the future one of the core pieces of any startup ecosystem to support entrepreneurs in their growth” - Bjoern Lasse Herrmann.
A few months ago we wrote about one great project, Startup Genome Project, which revealed some interesting insights on what makes the Silicon Valley startups successful. One week ago, the same team launched the first...
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Customer Choice: The more you give the less you...
Today’s article is about a very common mistake startups make and that is giving customers too many choices. Refereeing to KISSmetrics recent blog post, Neuromarketing blog post, or Think Consulting Group blog post, we can conclude that many choices paralyze customer’s decision making process, or as some say it leads to a bran freeze. This eventually leads to a negative outcome – no customer...
August 2011
10 posts
24 tags
Do You Have What It Takes To Be An Entrepreneur
“When it’s in your blood, it’s in your blood. I guess it’s kind of like crack (not that I know from experience). It’s addicting. I know this sounds superficial. If you’ve taken the roller coaster ride that is a startup - you know what I’m talking about” – Mark Suster.
We wrote many articles suggesting different tips to entrepreneurs with the main goal of spreading the knowledge and...
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5 Tips on Social Media and SEO
Many bloggers emphasize the interdependent relationship between social media and SEO. As Lee Odden, the CEO of TopRank Online Marketing, points out “search has become increasingly social with the incorporation content from social sources (video, blogs, images) into standard search results ala Universal search in 2007 followed by potential toolbar data and information captured while logged in”....
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5 Trends in Gaming 2011
Mobile gaming is a one of the hottest topics this year. In fact it has taken off in the past few years and it grows at a fast pace going hand in hand with the continued growth of Smartphone sales, tablet sales, mobile Internet subscribers and app downloads. Thus we can predict a bright future for this industry. For that reason we decided to share 5 trends relevant for mobile game developers....
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5 Trends In Mobile App Design
In our last article, we wrote about 5 web design trends in 2011 that might be of a great help to web designers when developing their web app. In today’s article we will talk about 5 trends relevant to mobile app designers. Let’s take a look at them.
1. Hands - free apps: Speech tech will be mobile tech: with driving laws regarding mobile phones becoming stricter every year, you might want to...