The end of Black Friday and Cyber Monday

How operations optimization will change the face of retail as we know it

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BoldIQ immortalized on U.S. Army 2nd Ranger Battalion memorial park at Joint Base Lewis-McChord

To remember our fallen heroes and pay tribute to the achievements and sacrifices of the men and families of 2nd Ranger Battalion, a memorial park was built in their honor.  Constructed of granite and stone, inscribed with the names of Rangers who died in combat and training, the memorial is landscaped into a reflective setting–a physical reminder of Ranger selfless service befitting those that made the ultimate sacrifice.

BoldIQ is proud to be part of this great heritage and tradition.

BoldIQ CEO shares vision and reality of optimized on-demand operations at Seattle Biz-Tech conference

Roei Ganzarski, president & CEO of BoldIQ shared with the audience of the 3rd annual Seattle Biz-Tech conference, what the convergence of Big Data, Fast Data, Dynamic Operations, and Internet of Things looks like. Ganzarski shared the vision and the reality of how real-time optimization software, like that offered by BoldIQ, is shaping today’s reality into tomorrow’s intelligent future. Home visits by nurses, driverless transportation, deliveries by drone, and repairs to your washing machine, all coordinated and scheduled efficiently by a centralized dynamic optimization system.

BoldIQ CEO discusses Big Data and Optimization at BigDataBellevue

The convergence of Big Data, Fast Data, Dynamic Operations, and Mobility, all around Real-Time Optimization, was the topic of discussion at BoldIQ CEO’s presentation at Big Data Bellevue.

In front of a ‘BigData-centric’ crowd, Roei Ganzarski presented a vision for a fully integrated, automated, and optimized future while sharing how current technologies and a pro-active design, will ensure such a future in fact comes to be.

BoldIQ featured in 425Business

Bellevue-based BoldIQ is committed to doing only what it is good at, which is helping companies optimize their resources. BoldIQ created a software platform that evaluates demand and its constraints, supply, and the environment surrounding a company, and produces a plan for the best use of resources to solve a problem.

The platform is most easily applied to transportation solutions, but the company also is looking at improving the efficiency of the healthcare and energy systems.

“These industries are purely on-demand,” said CEO Roei Ganzarski. “We want to help them make the best use of their resources to meet whatever demand-customer mission they have to do.”

The software accepts a series of inputs about resources available, such as the number of taxi cabs, airplanes, or hospital beds; the constraints, such as weather, traffic, available doctors, or road closures; and the demand, such as cargo, patients, or travelers, and provides a plan to achieve the optimum efficiency. As the variables change, the software modifies the plan.

It’s about “practice what you preach” for Ganzarski when it comes to optimizing BoldIQ’s own resources and people. It’s easy for young companies to get distracted by the array of problems in the marketplace and try to fix them all, but Ganzarski said that’s how some companies get into trouble.

“The ability and requirement of us to focus on what we are good at as a company, where can we add value for customers, and where will that combination provide the best return for us and the customers,” Ganzarski said. “That really drove us to focus on only a few key industries and turn down other potential business, which is hard to do but really important. Otherwise you spread your resources really thin and not do a good job, or as good of a job as you could, for your customers.”

BoldIQ’s mission of doing only what the company is good at is more than just a customer-facing initiative. The company translates that mission internally as well, where all 12 employees focus on product development. Ganzarski hires external firms to handle other tasks of running a company, such as finances, marketing, sales, legal, and human resources.

“It allows me as CEO to truly focus on our product, our service, and our customers, and not a bunch of other things,” Ganzarski said. “It allows me to pick the best of each industry to hire the service that I need.”

Being passionate about resource allocation comes naturally to Ganzarski, who said he’s sometimes accused of being too passionate. “The reason is because I don’t do things I’m not passionate about.”

The company was founded in Seattle, but when it needed more office space, Ganzarski moved the headquarters to Bellevue to accommodate its employees, most of whom live on the Eastside. Ganzarski puts a lot of effort into ensuring employees have a balance between their work and home lives.

“We provide phenomenal healthcare at no expense for the employee because what we don’t want is an employee sitting in front of their computer but focused on affording their children’s braces or the cost of an extra lab test,” Ganzarski said. “I want you to know that your family’s health is taken care of so when you’re at work you can focus on work.”

The same thought process is applied to vacation time, which is unlimited for BoldIQ employees.

“An employee should not be concerned about taking a vacation day to attend their child’s recital or school play,” Ganzarski said. “If you’re doing your job, go home when you need to. If you want to flex hours to get the job done, do that.”

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BoldIQ CEO to speak at Seattle Biz-Tech Summit on October 24th, 2015

Roei Ganzarski, President & CEO of BoldIQ, will speak at the 3rd annual Seattle Biz-Tech Summit on the topic of the convergence of Mobility and the Internet of Things. His focus will be around the mobile workforce, transportation, and real-time time decision making.

About Seattle Biz-Tech Summit

Seattle Biz-Tech Summit is the premier international business and technology conference hosting influential executives, investors, developers, entrepreneurs, and industry leaders to highlight and promote the benefits of business exchanges, technology collaboration, and global innovation between the United States and China.

The third annual Seattle Biz-Tech Summit will mirror the theme, “Entrepreneurship, Global Investment, and Technology Innovations.” Sessions for 2015 will continue to focus on cutting-edge technology topics in Cyber Security, Mobile Development, IoT, Digital Marketing and E-commerce and more. New to this year is the Seattle Startup Challenge, this dynamic pitch contest will emphasize the importance of continual growth among the startup community in the Pacific Northwest by connecting participants to investors from Seattle, Silicon Valley, and China.

Seattle Biz-Tech Summit is dedicated to helping grow technology and business relationships throughout the world. Join us as we showcase the value in Seattle’s unique ecosystem through expanding the platform for discovering new business connections, partnership possibilities, and investment opportunities.

Goto the Seattle Biz-Tech web site

BoldIQ featured in the Puget Sound Business Journal cover story by Steven Goldsmith

Seattle’s miserable traffic has an upside. It’s spurring local entrepreneurs to try to reinvent the way you commute.

Seattle’s stuck in traffic. It’s turning to software to break free.

Heeding that S.O.S., investors are pouring millions of dollars into the business sector known as smart mobility — tech firms that share cars and rides, deliver meals and connect roads, transit and parking — all en route to the coming landscape of self-driving cars and aerial drones.

Kirkland-based Inrix, Seattle’s Pavia Systems, Bellevue transportation firm BoldIQ and even Seattle’s Pronto Cycles are all working — in very different ways — to unclog crowded streets both here and elsewhere.

If these and other companies are successful, the region’s tech entrepreneurs could develop a reputation for creating technology that solves one of the most maddening, time-consuming and money-losing propositions — sitting in traffic. The financial opportunities for these companies are huge.

A recent Texas A&M Transportation Institute study found that traffic congestion caused drivers to waste more than 3 billion gallons of fuel and kept travelers stuck in their cars for nearly 7 billion extra hours. The total nationwide price tag is $160 billion. Commercial truckers lose more than $30 billion annually.

In the Puget Sound region, drivers spend 63 extra hours a year stuck in traffic — the seventh-worst in the United States.

Stamping out gridlock

BoldIQ CEO Roei Ganzarski called the Seattle area one of the nation’s top five hotbeds for smart mobility.

“This region has a beautiful mix of really bad gridlock, a very quickly growing population and a tremendously active entrepreneurial community,” he said.Those entrepreneurs increasingly also team up with old-school public agencies that run buses, paint parking spaces and build roads.

Such public-private mashups occur at Pavia Systems, whose app makes state highway inspectors more efficient, and Inrix, which just got hired by the government of Denmark to monitor that entire nation’s traffic in real time.

“Governments are saying, ‘We have to tap the benefits of the private sector,’” said Chris DeVore, partner at seed-stage investment firm Founders’ Co-op and director of Techstars Seattle.

DeVore noticed the most applications ever last year for funding from companies partnering with government agencies, including transportation tech.

Estimates vary on the financial potential of smart mobility, as do definitions of what the sector encompasses — whether to count food delivery apps, for instance. It’s hard to find a tech company that doesn’t have some transportation play in its garage, especially if it wants to work with industry leaders Google and Apple — both of which are getting ready to build their own “connected” cars.

Transportation mashups

In 11 funding rounds, San Francisco ride-sharing colossus Uber has raised nearly $7 billion.

To grab its dominant market role, Uber has had to persuade municipalities to unlock decades of regulations protecting taxis and limousines from competition. Seattle was one of 51 jurisdictions, at last count, to allow ride-share companies after Mayor Ed Murray negotiated a compromise that offered some concessions to taxis.

Kaleb Miller, who worked at the pioneering Car-Share Portland in the 1990s, now serves as Seattle general manager for the largest car-share service in the world, Boston-based Zipcar. He’s part of an industry that’s grown by 41 percent every year since 2010.

Zipcar works with public transit agencies to make it easier for residents to get around without clogging the streets with a personal vehicle.

About 60 percent of Zipcar’s customers have a transit pass, and a quarter of users ditched their personal vehicles after joining.

It’s an example of how public and private players increasingly drive parallel routes.

A typical industry “hybrid” is Ted Trepanier, director of product management at Kirkland’s Inrix. Before joining the firm, he spent a quarter-century at the Washington state Department of Transportation.

To unclog traffic, Trepanier said, the public and private sectors will need still deeper interaction.

Though not a household name like Uber, Inrix draws on serious resources. The traffic data firm has more than 300 employees and was valued at $550 million in its most recent funding round, led by Porsche.

The company provides back end data for more than 400 customers in 42 countries.

A smaller-scale success story in public-private collaboration is Pavia, whose software relays real-time information on potholes and other road and bridge repair needs.

The startup recently pulled in $3 million from investors and landed deals with the Washington state Department of Transportation and other agencies. Bridge and road inspectors use Pavia’s app to log problems and compose reports using the cloud.

Uphill climb

Where is all this leading? Possibly to a world where taking a single mode of transportation is an outmoded idea.

Demi Allen, general manager of Seattle’s Pronto Cycles — a nonprofit that runs the region’s biccycle-sharing system — paints a future in which a commuter, using a single prepaid card, will hop on a bike share to a park-and-ride, pop on light rail and then use Zipcar to travel from the transit stop to work.

But how is a mere human to sort through all those options? At Bellevue’s BoldIQ, “dynamic-optimization” software is already saving delivery services 30 percent to 60 percent in costs by using artificial intelligence to sidestep ever-changing traffic clogs and recalculate routes as new orders arrive.

BoldIQ has helped trucking companies make routes more efficient and cut down on fuel usage.

Ganzarski’s 12-employee company is on track to triple in revenue this year, after already tripling last year.

That doesn’t mean anyone thinks gridlock will vanish at the click of an app.

In fact, Ganzarski believes that popular ride-share services such as Uber and Lyft actually worsen traffic congestion by sending squadrons of driver-only cars trolling around for the occasional passenger. A better way, he said, would be to arm taxicab companies with sophisticated technology to deploy cabs at utmost efficiency.

Howard Jennings, manager of Arlington, Virginia-based transportation demand management company Mobility Labs, also sees an obstacle-laden route to clearing America’s highways, especially because any road that’s traffic-free never stays that way for long.

A few years ago, Jenkins’ organization began inviting young transportation entrepreneurs to monthly meetups. The group now has 900 members.

“There’s private sector innovation just busting out,” Jenkins said.

Seattle, with its narrow-waisted geography, belated start at mass transit, rapid job growth and fifth-most-congested streets in the country, has a tougher hill to climb.

But experts say the region has one thing in its favor: a bevy of tech entrepreneurs.

Thus, when Metro General Manager Kevin Desmond looks at updating the prepaid ORCA (One Regional Card For All) transit pass in the next half-dozen years, he says he may rely on tech companies to lead the way.

“We don’t have the creative expertise to create new applications,” Desmond said. “That’s where the private sector comes in.”

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Meet Mike, a senior developer at BoldIQ…and a geek

GeekWire’s Monica Nickelsburg featured our very own Mike Christensen in Geek of the Week:

Mike Christensen is a life-long software engineer — a career that began remarkably early. While most of his kindergarten peers were mastering their ABCs and 123s, he was programing his first computer to count to 10.

When he was 18, Christensen began working for Microsoft as a software engineer. After his 11-year tenure there, he began pursuing his passion for machine learning.

“I spent three years trying to teach a computer how to understand recipes; what they taste like, if they’re sweet or spicy, would you make them for breakfast or dessert, what ingredients you’d need to buy, etc.,” he said. “This involved natural language parsing and artificial intelligence.”

That startup, KitchenPC, didn’t find the right fit in the consumer market, and Christensen decided instead to open-source all the technology behind the project. He now works for data solution startup BoldIQ. He balances his highly technical work life with CrossFit, hiking, and travel.

“I love nature, and I love helping elephants. (I’ve adopted about 20!) I’ve hiked everywhere from the Pacific Northwest, California, Arizona, Alaska, Hawaii, Peru and Hong Kong,” he said. “I have a hiking bucket list a mile long.”

Meet our Geek of the Week, and continue reading for his answers to our questionnaire.

What do you do, and why do you do it? “I’m currently a Senior Software Engineer at BoldIQ. We optimize things – in other words, we take your problem, look at all your data, take into consideration all your constraints and then use software to figure out the optimal solution. In aviation, we can find optimal crew schedules that eliminate unnecessary flights. In ground transportation, we can figure out what order you should pick up and drop off packages. We can continually optimize these scenarios as conditions change or new data comes in.

I do this because it lets me explore so many different and fascinating industries. I also think as businesses scale, a lot of unnecessary waste is created. This waste can have an adverse effect on the environment. Plus, when the engineer in me sees something that’s inefficient, I can’t help but want to fix it.”

What’s the single most important thing people should know about your field? “Data is messy! So many problems could be solved in an elegant and straight forward manner, if only the data was clean, accurate and organized. A lot of the problems I face involve teaching a computer how to interpret what a human probably meant, and not look at things as either a zero or a one. Most frustrations people have with computers or technology can be traced back to different ways of thinking. As technology truly integrates with our daily lives, I think this will be the number one problem to solve.”

Where do you find your inspiration? “I’m a UI geek. I’m always checking out futuristic user interfaces in movies, and I’ve been known to try to emulate them in my own products.”

What’s the one piece of technology you couldn’t live without, and why? “My smart phone. I have no idea how I got through 30 years of my life without one.”

What’s your workspace like, and why does it work for you? “Lots and lots of monitors. Both at work and at home. I also keep my desk immaculate and free of clutter. I work best without distractions.”

Your best tip or trick for managing everyday work and life. (Help us out, we need it.) “Find hobbies that balance out the technical aspects of your job. My love of hiking helps prevent my life from becoming too one sided. Getting in touch with nature allows me to see the earth as a whole.”

Mac, Windows or Linux? “As more applications move into the cloud or become web based, I see less and less distinction. I use all three.”

Kirk, Picard, or Janeway? “Picard. I believe Voyager would have been a single episode under Picard’s crew. Ok, maybe a season finale cliff hanger.”

Transporter, Time Machine or Cloak of Invisibility? “Transporter for sure! I think of all the places I could travel to, mountains I could climb, and restaurants I could dine at. Plus, I’ve already had a Cloak of Invisibility; I call it my high school years.”

If someone gave me $1 million to launch a startup, I would: “Investigate the viability of using unmanned aircraft to stop poaching and protect endangered wildlife.”

I once waited in line for: “I tried to get Mariners postseason tickets in 2001. The media was there, pretty much making fun of everyone crazy enough to stand in line. I never did get tickets.”

Your role models: “Bill Gates – one of the smartest men alive, and he created an entire industry. There’s a lot of billionaires that just want to see how rich they can get. Gates is devoting his life to eradicating disease, eliminating third world poverty and improving education. He’s using his geek skills to accomplish all of that.

And, Nathan Myhrvold. Sure, the patent system is screwed up and this guy takes full advantage of it. However, he’s a polymath of da Vinci caliber. He not only started Microsoft Research, he’s been everything from a paleontologist to a world class barbecue champion. He’s searched the skies for extraterrestrial signs of life, created lasers that can zap mosquitoes and researched geoengineering techniques to end global warming.”

Greatest Game in History “Tetris. It’s a deceptively simple game with an absolutely fascinating history.”

Best Gadget Ever: “TiVo/ DVR has changed the way we watch TV. Time slots have very little meaning anymore. I’m also really loving the Amazon Echo (I now own two). It’s the first device that’s actually made me feel a real human interaction with a computer.”

First Computer: “TI-99/4A. Though I was never cool enough to have the ‘Extended BASIC’ add-on.”

Current Phone: “Nexus 6. I find the Android platform much more open and configurable. I can get things working exactly the way I want, though sometimes it takes a bit of work. The Nexus doesn’t have a lot of the ‘bloatware’ associated with manufacturers like Samsung and HTC.”

Favorite App: “GPS Navigation, such as Google Maps. It’s gotten to the point where it works so well and is so seamless, we forget how much awesome stuff is going on behind the scenes.”

Favorite Cause: “David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust. They rescue orphaned elephants and help combat poaching in Africa.”

Most important technology of 2015 “The Cloud. We’re now finally seeing devices as a commodity, and real innovation happening on the back end.”

Most important technology of 2017: “Mining an asteroid would be pretty cool. I think this will be key to eventually building large objects in outer space. Another technology I’m interested in is self-driving cars, which I think will come in several stages. Eventually, I don’t think there will be a need for everyone (or even most people) to own a car. There will be a network of cars, some owned by companies such as Uber and some owned by private individuals. You’ll be able to lease time on that network for your transportation needs. After your car drops you off at your favorite restaurant, it will drive around tending to other passengers and then pick you up when you’re done. Things like parking will be a thing of the past, and only an exact number of cars will need to exist to meet demand. Concepts such as ‘rush hour’ will also be made obsolete, as this network can be optimized intelligently. In fact, BoldIQ has some real potential to make this a reality.”

Final words of advice for your fellow geeks: “Connect what you are truly passionate about to what you are good at. Don’t focus on what jobs will make the most money, or your career will turn boring.”

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BoldIQ CEO to speak at Big Data Bellevue on October 21st, 2015

Big Data Bellevue will take place at Inome headquarters in Bellevue, WA. On the third Wednesday of each month, an industry leader in Big Data gives a presentation followed by a lively discussion on big data technology and its impact on business world.

For more detals and to register, goto: http://www.meetup.com/Big-Data-Bellevue-BDB/events/219852693/

Three Signs Your Big Data is Going to Waste

Big data is everywhere. Entire companies have sprung up saying they can produce it, mine it, slice it, dice it, present it, sell it, and even make predictions based on it. And just about every company is examining how they can leverage their data to reduce costs, increase productivity and produce new revenue. Companies are spending a lot of time, effort, and resources to find that holy grail of data.

Even though data mining and analytical tools have the ability to potentially predict some sort of future, these are no more than diamonds in the rough. Data pros know they are worth something to their operation (potentially a lot), but most people don’t know what to do to turn that data into action. It’s rare to find an organization that is not wasting the true potential of big data. How do you know if your company is wasting this diamond mine?

Here are three signs:

• Your data can’t answer the questions, “What do I do now?” “Which of my resources do I deploy for what demand to get the most out of my operations from a customer service and profitability perspective?” Predictive analytics focus on a potential future. But what about the right now? When you turn data into action through optimal decision-making, this data becomes much more valuable and productive

• You can’t react to disruptions in real-time. Operations should be able to adapt in real-time to produce the best possible outcomes given changes and disruptions that occur. When something breaks down in your resource chain, or when new demand comes in, the data at your disposal should turn actionable and provide you with updated operational plans.

• You rely on human intuition vs using data to make intelligent, informed, and integrated decisions. Even with the best big data and predictive analytics systems, many companies are still using intuition to make their final operational decisions. This is very limiting and does not maximize the value of the data available. Our human minds can only retain and analyze so much information at once, and do so in a consistent, scalable, and repeatable manner.

If your data is not working for you in real-time, all the time, dynamically generating the most optimal decision for your operation at any point in time, regardless of changes and disruptions, then it’s time to rethink your data strategy.