A startup or start-up is a company or project undertaken by an entrepreneur to seek, develop, and validate a scalable business model. While entrepreneurship includes all new businesses including self-employment and businesses that do not intend to go public, startups are new businesses that intend to grow large beyond the solo-founder. During the beginning, startups face high uncertainty and have high rates of failure, but a minority of them do go on to become successful and influential.
The software release life cycle is the process of developing, testing, and distributing a software product. It typically consists of several stages, such as pre-alpha, alpha, beta, and release candidate, before the final version, or "gold", is released to the public.
Kathryn A. Finney is an American author, researcher, investor, entrepreneur, and businesswoman. She is the founder of Genius Guild, a $20 million dollar venture fund & studio that invests in Black entrepreneurs building scalable businesses that serve Black communities and beyond. She is also founder and Board Chair of The Doonie Fund, a social platform that provides micro-investment to Black women entrepreneurs. Finney first made her mark as a tech entrepreneur when she sold “The Budget Fashionista” after running the site-turned-media company for 11 years.
Windows Speech Recognition (WSR) is speech recognition developed by Microsoft for Windows Vista that enables voice commands to control the desktop user interface, dictate text in electronic documents and email, navigate websites, perform keyboard shortcuts, and operate the mouse cursor. It supports custom macros to perform additional or supplementary tasks.
Xbox Avatars are avatars and characters that represent users of the Xbox network on the Xbox 360, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X and Series S video game consoles, Windows 10, and Windows 10 Mobile. Avatars originally debuted on the Xbox 360 as part of the "New Xbox Experience" system update released on November 19, 2008, updated on Xbox One with "New Xbox One Experience" Xbox One System Software on November 12, 2015, and reimagined with the release of the next generation character for Xbox One on October 11, 2018.
Figure Eight was a human-in-the-loop machine learning and artificial intelligence company based in San Francisco.
Lean startup is a methodology for developing businesses and products that aims to shorten product development cycles and rapidly discover if a proposed business model is viable; this is achieved by adopting a combination of business-hypothesis-driven experimentation, iterative product releases, and validated learning. Lean startup emphasizes customer feedback over intuition and flexibility over planning. This methodology enables recovery from failures more often than traditional ways of product development.
The Microsoft Store is a digital distribution platform operated by Microsoft. It was created as an app store for Windows 8 as the primary means of distributing Universal Windows Platform apps. With Windows 10 1803, Microsoft merged its other distribution platforms into Microsoft Store, making it a unified distribution point for apps, console games, and digital videos. Digital music was included until the end of 2017, and E-books were included until 2019.
Docker is a set of platform as a service (PaaS) products that use OS-level virtualization to deliver software in packages called containers. The service has both free and premium tiers. The software that hosts the containers is called Docker Engine. It was first released in 2013 and is developed by Docker, Inc.
Deque Systems is a digital accessibility company based in Herndon, Virginia with additional offices in Kavuri Hills Madhapur, Hyderabad India and Utrecht, The Netherlands.
Windows Insider is an open software testing program by Microsoft that allows users globally who own a valid license of Windows 11, Windows 10, or Windows Server to register for pre-release builds of the operating system previously only accessible to software developers.
Greenhouse Software is an American technology company headquartered in New York City that provides a recruiting software as a service. It was founded in 2012 by Daniel Chait and Jon Stross, two Class of 1995 graduates from the University of Michigan.
Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) is a feature of Microsoft Windows that allows developers to run a Linux environment without the need for a separate virtual machine or dual booting. There are two versions of WSL: WSL 1 and WSL 2. WSL is not available to all Windows 10 users by default. It can be installed either by joining the Windows Insider program or manually via Microsoft Store or Winget.
Paula Long is an American software engineer and entrepreneur. She was CEO and co-founder of DataGravity and in 2001, she co-founded EqualLogic, which was later sold to Dell.
Camille Fournier is known for being the former chief technology officer of Rent The Runway, former vice president of technology at Goldman Sachs, and author of The Manager's Path: A Guide for Tech Leaders Navigating Growth and Change. She is a managing director at JPMorgan Chase.
Mixer was an American video game live streaming platform. The service launched on January 5, 2016, as Beam, under the ownership of co-founders Matthew Salsamendi and James Boehm. The service placed an emphasis on interactivity, with low stream latency and a platform for allowing viewers to perform actions that can influence a stream.
Gabriel J. "Gabe" Aul, is the Vice President of Oculus at Meta. He was previously the Corporate Vice President (CVP) of Windows & Devices Group (WDG), Engineering Systems (1ES) team at Microsoft. He was appointed as VP on 31 July 2015, following the launch of Windows 10 on 29 July 2015. He led the Windows Insider Program until June 1, 2016, where he was succeeded by Dona Sarkar.
The Eve V is a 2-in-1 detachable personal computer manufactured by Finnish technology company Eve-Tech, released on December 4, 2017.
Windows 10 Mobile is a discontinued mobile operating system developed by Microsoft. It was released to manufacturing on November 20, 2015, and was made generally available on March 17, 2016. In October 2017, Microsoft announced that it would pause the active development of Windows 10 Mobile, and future development will be limited to maintenance releases and security patches. The last feature update is the Fall Creators Update. The last version of Windows 10 Mobile reached the end of life on January 14, 2020. Development for Windows 10 Mobile has completely ceased since then.
Clipchamp is an online video editing tool developed by Australian company Clipchamp Pty Ltd. and now by Microsoft. It is a non-linear editing software that allows users to import, edit, and export audiovisual material in an Internet browser window.
