Verified Expert Growth Marketing Agency: Ampush

Customers have described Ampush as the “McKinsey of growth marketing,” and in many ways, it’s apt. Ampush has a relentlessly quantitative, full-funnel approach to growth marketing, and they’ve built proprietary software to back it up. Co-founder and CEO Jesse Pujji explains why Ampush exclusively works with direct to consumer companies, and why they went from serving 100 companies in 2015 to forming deeper partnerships with less than 20 companies today.

On Ampush’s evolution

“From 2011 to 2015, we were one of a handful of companies that could do Facebook really well, although that’s all we did.  As a result, we ended up working with a ton of growth brands and Fortune 1000 brands, like Dollar Shave Club, Uber, Stitch Fix, and all of these direct to consumer brands and businesses.

By 2015, we realized, “what got us here won’t get us there,” and so we started to question how we would evolve our offering and our company. Just doing Facebook would be okay, it would be good, but it wouldn’t be great, and we always said, “We want to be really great.”

Advice to early-stage founders

“Amazing at testing, measuring and iterating. Very quality and long term focused.” Katia Beauchamp, NYC, Co-founder & CEO, Birchbox

“It’s important for a founder to understand the right metrics and what levers can be pulled because they’re going to need to understand it to keep growing their business. I typically recommend that one of the founders spend 50% of their time for 90 to 180 days with one or two contractors who really know the technicalities of Facebook and Google you don’t have to learn those if you’re a founder, but you do want to understand which copy is resonating, which creative, which audience, etc.  It takes a founders’ level of depth to crack the nut, and then Ampush can come in.”

Below, you’ll find the rest of the founder reviews, the full interview, and more details like pricing and fee structures. This profile is part of our ongoing series covering startup growth marketing agencies with whom founders love to work, based on this survey and our own research. The survey is open indefinitely, so please fill it out if you haven’t already.

---

Interview with Ampush CEO & Co-Founder Jesse Pujji

Yvonne Leow: Tell us about your journey. How did you find yourself working in growth?

Jesse Pujji: I was born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri. My dad was an immigrant so I learned early on how to also be a small business entrepreneur. I was always running a snow-shoveling business, a lemonade stand business, a DJ-ing company. We cornered the Indian DJ-ing market in St. Louis. It turns out there weren’t a lot of Indian DJs in Missouri!

from blogger-2 https://tcrn.ch/2WuXl7x
via IFTTT

Is your event strategy paying off? How to calculate your event ROI

US/China trade uncertainty adds to global smartphone growth woes

Analyst Canalys has updated its forecast of global smartphone shipments — saying it expects just 1.35 billion units to ship in 2019, a year-on-year decline of 3.1%.

This follows ongoing uncertainty around US-China trade talks and the presidential order signed by Trump last month barring US companies from using kit by Chinese device makers, including Huawei, on national security grounds — which led to reports that Google would withdraw supply of key Android services to Huawei.

“Due to the many uncertainties surrounding the US/China trade talks, the US Executive Order signed on 15 May and subsequent developments, Canalys has lowered its forecasts to reflect an uncertain future,” the analyst writes.

It says its forecast is based on the assumption that restrictions will be stringently applied to Huawei once a 90-day reprieve which was subsequently granted expires — the temporary licence run from May 20, 2019, through August 19, 2019 — making it difficult for the world’s second largest smartphone maker by sales to roll out new devices in the short term, especially outside China, even as it takes steps to mitigate the effect of component and service supply issues.

“Its overseas potential will be hampered for some time,” the analyst suggests. “The US and China may eventually reach a trade deal to alleviate the pressure on Huawei, but if and when this will happen is far from clear.”

“It is important to note that market uncertainty is clearly prompting vendors to accelerate certain strategies to minimize the short- and long-term impact in a challenging business environment, for example, shifting manufacturing to different countries to hedge against the risk of tariffs. But with recent US announcements on tariffs on goods from more countries, the industry will be dealing with turmoil for some time,” added Nicole Peng, Canalys VP, mobility, in a statement.

It expects other smartphone makers to seek to capitalize on short term opportunities created by the uncertainty hitting the Chinese tech giant, and predicts that South Korea’s Samsung will benefit the most — “thanks to its aggressive device strategy and its ability to quickly ramp up production”.

By 2020, it expects the market to have settled a little — with active contingency plans to be in place in major mobile supply chains and channels to “mitigate Huawei’s decline”, as well as gear up for 5G device rollouts.

Canalys takes the view that 5G and other hardware innovations will be positive drivers for consumer demand — expecting smartphone shipments to return to soft growth globally in 2020, rising 3.4% to 1.39BN, albeit with some subtle regional variations that it says will allow some to recover faster than others.

from blogger-2 https://tcrn.ch/2WE8Ush
via IFTTT

NYC’s contactless subway turnstiles open today with Apple, Google, Samsung and Fitbit Pay support

After weeks of sporting “Coming Soon” screens, the New York City MTA’s OMNY pilot finally launched today. The system augments the city’s MetroCard swipes with new contactless screens that work with contactless prepaid credit and debit cards and a variety of different smart devices.

We’ve highlighted the latter already. For starters, the system will work with Apple, Google, Samsung and Fitbit Pay, which means it will be open to a large range of smartphones and wearables.

Contactless cards are those with NFC chips sporting a four-bar wave symbol that are already available from a number of big banks and credit card companies. Per the MTA’s site, the list of partners includes Chase, Visa, Mastercard and American Express, which should cover a majority of card holders, one way or another.

That’s a big no for Diners Club, Japan Credit Bureau and China UnionPay. Also, PIN-protected cards don’t currently work, nor do gift cards and non-reloadable cards. Another important restriction in all of this is the fact that the system is currently limited to single-ride. That means the large number of New Yorkers who currently use daily, weekly and monthly passes to save on the ever-increasing ride prices are SOL for now.

Ride plans will be coming before 2021. The MTA says it also plans to have the system implemented in all subway stations and buses before then. For now it’s currently limited to the 4, 5, 6 line between Grand Central Station in Manhattan and Brooklyn’s Atlantic Avenue-Barclays Center, as well as Staten Island buses.

Having demoed the system recently, I attest that it works well on both the iPhone and Apple Watch. It remains to be seen, however, how much of a logjam this technology will create in its first weeks and months. Ultimately, however, it should go a ways toward speeding things up as riders no longer have to fumble for their MetroCard and deal with aging swipe readers.

from blogger-2 https://tcrn.ch/2Wzb3W5
via IFTTT

Two years after Essential’s launch, still no Home hub or second phone

This morning’s Moto Z4 news was good cause to go back and reassess the state of the modular phone. Three years after the line launched, the concept hasn’t exactly ignited the market — in fact, there are really just a handful of scattered competitors to show for it. Essential is among the most prominent, with the PH-1’s clever two-pin connector.

By sheer coincidence, it turns out today is the two-year anniversary of the company’s debut. Founder Andy Rubin took to the stage at Code 2017 with big ideas and two products. One, the PH-1, has come and gone, launching a couple of months late in August 2017 before being discontinued late last year. The other, the Essential Home hub, never appeared at all.

The day the products were announced, then COO Niccolo de Masi (who appears to have since moved on to Honeywell spin-off Resideo), spoke of the company’s 10-year plan. It was an acknowledgement that it had a tough road ahead, as it planned to take on big names like Apple and Samsung. But the company certainly had the money. A $300 million raise helped the startup achieve unicorn status not long after taking the stage at the conference.

But the intervening two years have been plagued with bad news. In spite of positive reviews, the company reportedly only shipped 88,000 phones in 2017. The PH-1 got a massive price drop and its first modular accessory, a 360 camera, was discounted to $19, down from $250.

Last May, rumors surfaced that the company had gone up for sale and its follow-up phone had been canceled. And in October, it laid off nearly a third of its staff. Founder Andy Rubin has been laying low in the meantime. That same month, The New York Times published an explosive story about a $90 million Google payoff in the wake of sexual misconduct claims, causing him to take leave from Essential.

All the while, however, the company has firmly denied claims that it’s going away. I spoke to a rep at the company recently who said things are in the works, without revealing any specifics. There have been a ton of patent filings that appear to point to some future handset. It announced a new mod for the PH-1 in June and even acquired a company in December. Hell, earlier this month, it issued a new security patch, holding to its promise of monthly updates — a hell of a lot more than many more successful smartphone makers have offered.

That’s part of what makes the Essential story so frustrating. The PH-1 was a novel device, among the first to go with a camera notch display. Its $699 price (later reduced to $499) also predated Samsung/Apple/Google’s move into budget flagships. But even with a unicorn valuation, hardware is hard. And Essential may have entered the market at the worst possible time, as smartphone sales were beginning to flag for the first time ever.

Two years after launch, it’s hard to shake the feeling that Essential’s time may have come and gone. For now, however, the company appears to simply be biding its time before announcing what comes next.

from blogger-2 https://tcrn.ch/2HLBnnS
via IFTTT

Flipboard hacks prompt password resets for millions of users

Social sharing site and news aggregator Flipboard has reset millions of user passwords after hackers gained access to its systems several times over a nine-month period

The company confirmed in a notice Tuesday that the hacks took place between June 2, 2018 and March 23, 2019 and a second time on April 21-22, 2019, but the intrusions were only detected a day later on April 23.

Hackers stole usernames, email addresses, passwords and account tokens for third-party services. According to the notice, “not all” Flipboard users’ account data were involved in the breaches but the company declined to say how many users were affected.

Flipboard has about 150 million monthly users.

“We’re still identifying the accounts involved and as a precaution, we reset all users’ passwords and replaced or deleted all digital tokens,” the notice read.

Although the passwords were unreadable, Flipboard said passwords prior to March 14, 2012 were scrambled using the older, weak hashing SHA-1 algorithm.. Any passwords changed after are scrambled using a much stronger algorithm that makes it far more difficult to reveal in a usable format.

The hacks also exposed account tokens, which gives Flipboard access to data from accounts on other services, like Facebook, Google, and Samsung.

“We have not found any evidence the unauthorized person accessed third-party account(s) connected to users’ Flipboard accounts,” said the statement. “As a precaution, we have replaced or deleted all digital tokens.”

Flipboard becomes the latest tech giant to be hit by hackers in recent months. Developer platform Stack Overflow earlier this month confirmed a breach involved some user data. Canva, one of the biggest sites on the internet, was also hacked. Last week, the Australia-based company admitted close to 140 million users had data stolen following the breach.

Read more:

• After breach, Stack Overflow says some user data exposed
• An unsecured SMS spam operation doxxed its owners
• Samsung spilled SmartThings app source code and secret keys
• Security lapse exposed a Chinese smart city surveillance system
• A leaky database of SMS text messages exposed password resets and two-factor codes
• Chipotle customers are saying their accounts have been hacked

from blogger-2 https://tcrn.ch/2VWzaJW
via IFTTT

Best Buy cancels Samsung Galaxy Fold preorders

Samsung is taking its time bringing the Galaxy Fold back to market. And frankly, that’s probably for the best. The Note debacle from a few years back was an important lesson about what happens when you rush a product back to market. That one resulted in a second recall — PR nightmae upon PR nightmare.

With a release date still very much in limbo, Best Buy has sent notes to those who pre-ordered the Fold. Spotted by The Verge, the letter has since been posted to Best Buy’s support forum. It cites “a plethora of unforeseen hiccups,” (fair enought) adding, “Because we put our customers first and want to ensure they are taken care of in the best possible manner, Best Buy has decided to cancel all current pre-orders for the Samsung Galaxy Fold.

The letter goes on to assure customers that the big box retailer is “working closely with Samsung” to help deliver the product to customers. At the moment, however, their guess on the timeframe is as good as ours.

Recent reports have suggested that an announcement was imminent, with the company having solved design flaws that had reviewers peeling off screens and getting debris jammed in the holes of the folding mechanism. More recent reports gave the product a June 13 release date, but that too appears to have been scrubbed for the time being.

from blogger-2 https://tcrn.ch/2JyllQg
via IFTTT