Empowering Small Businesses: Smarter in the City Startup Pulse 24/7

| Andy Jacques, Co-founder & COO, Pulse 24/7

Have you heard? Boston is the tech hub you never knew existed. With plenty of startups, organizations, and corporations embracing tech in the Boston area, we’re always ready to celebrate innovation around us. That’s why we’re happy to support Smarter in the City, the first high-tech startup accelerator in Dudley Square, Roxbury. Smarter in the City’s accelerator program adds fresh voices to Boston’s tech ecosystem, one startup at a time through a five-month program that provides stipends, workspace, a mentorship program, and other resources to help local startups make an impact. We’re excited to bring Smarter in the City’s cohort to our blog as we spotlight the current companies working to drive innovation in Boston and beyond.

— Aimee Sprung, Civic Engagement Manager, Microsoft New England

“30 Minutes until doors open, what will we do?” We still cringe at the thought of that day. It was 5:30pm Paris time on July 7, 2012 and Reaz and I were banging hammers to nails helping a Parisian staging vendor we hired finish the set and runway in order for doors to open on time. This was just one of many crazy instances where us two friends and business partners had to literally roll up our sleeves, pivot, and navigate through the unexpected that comes with hiring a small business service provider. It was numerous stories like this that inspired us to launch our new mission to help service providers manage their operations effectively by leveraging technology and mentorship. Pulse 24/7 is a new startup that empowers small business service providers with their own branded app that automates scheduling, payments, and marketing all from the palm of their hand.

Throughout the past 10 years, Reaz and I founded a boutique consulting firm called (SYNERGY) for luxury consumer goods brands in Boston and grew it internationally to cities like London and Paris. It was this work that led us to employ more than 1,000 service providers and small business owners. During these years we had a front row seat to the evolution of the new on-demand mobile economy and how small businesses were falling behind. While at the same time millennial consumers were demanding a quick, seamless, and transparent experience when dealing with their service providers with just a few swipes. Pulse 24/7 was born to address this urgent need in a fast growing market.

Today’s current freelancer and entrepreneurial surge is the Industrial Revolution of our time and according to many recent forecasts from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and Forbes predict that 50% of the American workforce will be freelancers and entrepreneurs by 2020. However at the same time, large high tech companies like Uber have invested millions of dollars into simple and integrated technologies that have been cannibalizing small business owners in the US and beyond. Entrepreneurs find it difficult to invest in their own technology and as a result becoming 1099 freelancers for these large disruptors. That was until now! Pulse 24/7 is boldly giving that same technology to small businesses for as low as $9.99 per month. And with our consulting background we understand that technology is not the only solution.

Therefore through our proprietary machine learning capabilities, Pulse 24/7 also monitors the business and intelligently provides in app advice to keep these service providers engaged & growing. Our mission is to help the backbone of the US economy thrive which has always been small business. Now with several partnerships with national organizations since our launch last year, we would not be able to impact so many businesses in such a short period of time without the continuous support of Smarter in the City and Microsoft Corporation. If you know talented entrepreneurs offering an incredible service in your area, we would love to help them win in today’s new on-demand mobile economy!

Brand innovator and marketing strategist, Andy Jacques has been Awarded by the Massachusetts House of Representatives while just a teenager as Boston’s youngest creative visionary making an impact in his industry. Since then, through consulting he has been praised for his proven ability to transform businesses, brands, and creative blueprints from inception to definitive successes as the COO of SYNERGY Consulting helping many brands launch and accelerate in 4 different countries. Currently in his latest role as Co-founder of Pulse 24/7, Andy’s marketing savvy combined with his passion for innovation fuels his new mission to democratize technology in favor of small businesses everywhere.

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