Numero Uno Web Solutions, a Toronto-based SEO and Internet Marketing Company, Passes the Milestone of 1,000 Facebook …

Dec 18, 2012 // by jswima1 // Blog // No Comments

Numero Uno Web Solutions (NumeroUnoWeb.com), a fast-growing global SEO and Internet marketing firm that caters to small and mid-size business-to-consumer companies, is pleased to announce that it has reached a key social media landmark by achieving over 1,000 “likes” by customers, fans, and Numero Uno Web Solution enthusiasts on the company’s Facebook page.New York, NY;Washington, DC;Los Angeles …

Chicago is a great product — it needs a great marketing campaign

Nov 6, 2012 // by jswima1 // Blog // No Comments

By Michael Alter

As the country goes, so goes Chicago. That’s what the general economic picture for small businesses has looked like this year. We’ve had some promising signs and are starting to make some crucial steps, but essentially our hiring numbers have been right in line with the rest of the nation. The mayor has moved jobs into the city, which is great, but many of them have come from the surrounding suburbs that are already part of the Chicago metro area.

According to our SurePayroll Small Business Scorecard, year-over-year hiring is down 1.5 percent nationally, and Chicago’s hiring is down 1.3 percent. October told a similar story, with the nation’s small-business hiring down 0.1 percent and Chicago’s being flat.

We need to do better, and we’ve shown our intentions to do so with the mayor’s latest budget, which would greatly reduce the red tape small businesses have to cut through. Another plus: innovative organizations like 1871 acting as a bastion for startups.

Not to mention that we’re a world-class city to begin with.

So why aren’t we outpacing the rest of the country? Part of the reason is that a great product can’t really flourish unless it has great marketing behind it. You have to get your message out there. Apple’s products are innovative and unique, but their advertising and marketing are just as good.

This will take time, no doubt, but Chicago needs to ask itself, what is our marketing plan? How are we going to tell entrepreneurs in New York and California that this is the best city for your business?

Just bringing people from the suburbs to the city is a zero-sum game. You’re just rearranging the furniture. I’d call for an aggressive plan that aims to attract people from out of state and even from around the globe.

World Business Chicago is one such organization that aims to connect us with the rest of the world. Let’s turbocharge its efforts with funding to show that we’re different than we were a few years ago, and perhaps better in some ways than other business hubs.

Sure, New York is known as the center of the financial world and Silicon Valley is the home base of the technology field. But they’re also places where living and real estate expenses are through the roof.

The Chicago area is a place where you can raise a family, have a home and run a successful business. We know this. But we have to make sure the rest of the world does, too.

Michael Alter is president and CEO of SurePayroll, a small-business payroll-services company based in Glenview. The company collects information on small-business hiring based on its nationwide database of SurePayroll software users; Mr. Alter comments on trendlines in the data each month here on Crain’s blog for Chicago entrepreneurs.

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Location Based Services to Take in over $4 Billion This Year

Nov 2, 2012 // by jswima1 // Blog // No Comments

Local Business Review Site 5StarControl proclaims their opinion on a new study which states that revenue for location based marketers and mobile services will surpass $4 billion in 2012.New York, NY (PRWEB) November 02, 2012 5StarControl has disclosed secrets about a new report from business analysts Visiongain, which states that revenue from location-based services will reach new heights this …

How the Venmo deal helps Braintree unlock the ‘digital wallet’

Aug 21, 2012 // by jswima1 // Blog // No Comments

By Steve Hendershot

Braintree, a Chicago-based company that processes online payments for merchants including Uber and LivingSocial, acquired New York City-based social-payments startup Venmo for $26.2 million last week. Venmo’s product is geared toward consumers; it enables friends to make payments to one another. Braintree’s business, in contrast, has focused on enabling merchants to handle payments from consumers, and Braintree’s brand is mostly invisible to the consumers whose transactions it handles.

The Venmo acquisition signals a shift in that strategy: Braintree is aiming to build a more comprehensive mobile-payments infrastructure, including a digital wallet — a concept that has thus far failed to take root with consumers despite efforts from Google Inc. and others.

Bryan Johnson, Braintree’s founder and chairman, outlines the Venmo deal for Silicon City and describes Braintree’s vision for the future of mobile commerce.

Crain’s: What was the motivation for the purchase?Bryan Johnson: We bought them because 20 percent of commerce is happening on a mobile device now, but the conversion rates are awful — it’s something like 75 percent worse than on a desktop. Yet, a year from now, 50 percent of commerce will originate on a mobile device. So there’s a tremendous need to fix mobile commerce, to eliminate the friction, and that need will increase as the usage of mobile devices for commerce increases. So that’s the first problem, to minimize friction in mobile commerce so that (mobile commerce) becomes viable.

The holy grail of payments really falls into four categories. The first category is on the merchant acquiring side. A business (like Braintree) needs to have connections to merchants that they provide with credit-card processing services. The second piece is a digital wallet which allows consumers to store payment information, that makes transactions simple, and that opens up the opportunity down the road for things like rewards and offers. The third category is a payment method that exists outside of the (credit-card) networks. For example, merchants can accept PayPal as a form of payment and it operates on the (Automated Clearinghouse Network), so you don’t pay the interchange fees to (credit-card companies), and merchants get 2 percent of their costs eliminated compared to (credit-card transactions). The fourth category is peer-to-peer money transfer to allow the ecosystem to build.

Well, with the acquisition of Venmo, we now have a digital wallet, we have the ability to solve digital commerce, we have a payment method and we have peer-to-peer payments. We have everything we need to become the PayPal of next decade.

Venmo is geared toward consumers, while Braintree has thus far focused on merchant services. How will everything fit together?

We have focused on the merchant-acquiring portion. Our customers consist of many of the fastest-growing and most reputable merchants in the world: Angry Birds, LivingSocial, Fab.com, Uber. All these guys want to increase mobile commerce and reduce the friction involved with mobile commerce. Venmo gives us the ability to do that. Venmo also gives us the ability to offer merchatns an alternative payment method. We could go to Uber and say, ‘You could accept Venmo as a form of payment instead of a Visa card.’ It gives us another arrow in the quiver to offer value to them.

Then with the peer-to-peer payments, that fuels the ecosystem and drives usage among people. The key is to build both sides of that market, both the merchants who accept the digital wallet and payment method, and then consumers who use them. Peer-to-peer payments enable that adoption to happen faster because it increases the utility for people to use it.

Is Square a competitor?

We’re not trying to make Venmo a Square-like competitor. Square lives in a ‘credit card is present’ world. We live in “card not present.” Venmo has a digital wallet that could contain credit cards, but it also gives us the option to fund transactions with bank accounts and ACH transfers. So it would be an alternative to credit cards.

Is the digital wallet ready? How will you drive adoption of the digital wallet?

The wallet is done today. With Venmo, you can transfer money between friends, but you can also load up all your payment info, your credit-card and bank account info, and all that is already done.

We’ll be working on (driving wallet adoption), trying to combine all the different value propositions. There’a a value proposition for the merchant in that there’s a reduction of friction in mobile commerce with digital-wallet transactions. An easy-to-use digital wallet reduces friction on mobile commerce for consumers, too. Then there’s the alternative payment method. So there’s all kinds of incentives on both sides.

So many companies have tried and failed in pursuing this path because they have to build out the two-sided network (of merchants and consumers) and that’s really hard to do. But we already have the merchant network built out. We process 10 percent of all mobile commerce volume in the U.S. today, and our customers skew very heavily toward innovators and early adopters because of our merchants. We have 30 million credit cards on file. We have those early adopters in mobile commerce, and if we can solve the problem for them and for merchants, we start creating this virtuous ecosystem. From there, we’ll have a fantastic platform to move forward and expand out to others.

What about rollout? What will you do to Venmo’s product, and when?

The core will stay intact. The name will stay intact and the core product will stay intact. We’ll just add more things. One of the first things we’ll do is allow our merchants to accept Venmo as a form of payment. We’ll also march out a couple of product enhancements in the next three months.

Does that mean Venmo will be your brand on the consumer side?

Yes. This is our entrance into the consumer side of payments.

You’re planning to keep the Venmo team in New York. Are you concerned about that from a management perspective?

Any adjustment in the way teams work and get stuff done will require some recalibration, but we think this will actually be better for us because we’ll have a broader presence to recruit talented developers, and New York is a great [market for hiring software engineers]. So we think this will help us out more than we’ll be [negatively affected] by the adjustments necessary as we reconfigure the teams.

“Silicon City” is a weekly report on Chicago tech news and newsmakers written by Crain’s contributor Steve Hendershot.

Share your ideas and news tips on the local tech startup scene with Steve via email: stevehendershot@gmail.com. Check out Steve’s blog here. And follow him on Twitter: @stevehendershot.