This is the last week of my summer internship at Currensee, so I thought I’d write down some reflections on the experience. I have to admit I had no idea what to expect when coming here way back on June 1st. I was hoping for a great first experience into the start-up world, more particularly into the world of internet software start-ups. What I got was just that: a fun, fulfilling, and interesting experience at this growing start-up.
I was a Product Management Intern for the summer, working for Shereen, the director of Product Management. In most companies, product management means owning all aspects of the product, tracking and prioritizing features and bugs, and generally working with engineering, marketing, and management to set a vision and direction for the product. At Currensee, all that is true. But because we are a start-up operating with a relatively small staff, there was so much more to do! Added in was helping to qualify and solidify business relationships for a major upcoming product launch, recruiting partners for our product marketplace (where we sell 3rd party products), doing random tasks at a frantic pace when the CEO or founder needed something, a whole lot of statistical data analysis, and just being ready to take on anything if it came up. Phew! And all that in just 10 weeks!
My main summer project was performing a detailed analysis of trader behavior. I really got to “geek out” on this one. Nothing but Excel pivot tables, correlation, regression, and just plain fun statistical analysis. We ended up with a ton of great information to help Forex traders become more profitable, and to help us at Currensee better understand our customers. And we even will be publishing the results in a white paper and releasing the information in forthcoming blog posts, so stay tuned.
On a personal note, it was great getting to know everyone here. Everyone gets along well, yet each person is totally unique in their own way. It is amazing how many personalities coexist within this little 20 person start-up. And, with six other interns this summer, it got pretty crowded in here! In the large cubicle area where I sat, there were up to 10 of us at any one time, sitting around any open desk space we could find. But we always were laughing and enjoying our time together.
I really am grateful for the experience here, and I have high hopes for what Currensee will become. The start-up world is challenging, fast-paced, and rewarding. It was a lot of fun, and also great to see my work appreciated.
Last but not least, the free snacks in the kitchen and frequent cupcake pickups from Lulu’s will be greatly missed!
Goodbye for now,
Luke
(p.s. I know it’s a picture of Lindsay on the bio. If you want to see me click here)
=====
Be sure to read the full risk disclosure before trading Forex. Please note that Forex trading involves significant risk of loss. It is not suitable for all investors and you should make sure you understand the risks involved before trading. Performance, strategies and charts shown are not necessarily predictive of any particular result. And, as always, past performance is no indication of future results.
Last week we featured two of our fantastic interns. This week we have two more bright-eyed bushy-tailed interns for you to get to know. Let me introduce you to Ariel and Luke.
First up is Ariel. No she doesn’t sing ballads from the Little Mermaid everyday in the office (though we wish she did), she is a 4th year undergraduate student at Northeastern. She studies Psychology and is passionate about working with adolescents who have behavioral issues. At Currensee, Ariel has been helping the Customer Support team analyze customer feedback received over the past months. She has then been coming up with a comprehensive rundown of the most requested future features in the Currensee platform. Ariel’s favorite thing about Currensee is the people! As an undergrad she enjoys seeing how the “office world” works. Being a psych major she most likely will never work in a true office setting since the hopes to open her own private practice. Ariel loves photography, watching House Hunters, and snowboarding. We will miss her when she goes back to school, but thankfully her Dad is our CEO so we know we’ll be seeing lots of her!
Second intern of the hour is Luke. Luke is a regular-old smarty pants (even his soon-to-be father-in-law thinks so). Luke is about to begin his second year in the MBA program at MIT. Luke descends from Minnesota but has spent most of his time living in San Francisco. When asked how he likes Boston he says “it’s a rad place!” At Currensee Luke is our product management intern. His biggest project has been extensive data analysis on member behavior, leading Luke to deem himself “master of Excel Pivot tables.” In addition to this, Luke has been learning a lot about the Agile development process and helping with the forthcoming launch of a new Currensee program. Luke is extremely interested in internet startups and hopes to one day be a part of the founding team of a successful one. One thing you may not know about Luke is that he is a fantastic artist. His work is truly outstanding and frame-worthy. On a lighter note his favorite show is Keeping up with the Kardashians. We are going to miss you Luke!
=====
Be sure to read the full risk disclosure before trading Forex. Please note that Forex trading involves significant risk of loss. It is not suitable for all investors and you should make sure you understand the risks involved before trading. Performance, strategies and charts shown are not necessarily predictive of any particular result. And, as always, past performance is no indication of future results.
Currensee world headquarters in Boston’s North End can be a crazy place. We eat too many cannolis, indulge in red velvet cupcakes, dress like our engineers, laugh a lot and tend to get a little nutty. Especially on Fridays. One Friday a few weeks back, after the sugar high set in, we were sitting around the table throwing out ideas for new ways to communicate who we are to the world of Forex traders. Sure, anyone can throw up a video on YouTube with 2 minutes of blah blah about the company, but where’s the fun in that? Next thing you know, our friend and social media guy, David Ginsburg, is wearing a white blazer, we’re tossing out crazy funny banter and a star was born. Meet Irving Shmeckelstein, trader by day and lover by night. He lives a glamorous life in his mother’s basement – hey, who are we to judge, it can happen to the best of us. Above all, Iriving is searching for a way to make Forex trading work for him. He’s heard about Currensee but has a lot of questions. Lucky for you, he was not too afraid to ask.
PS: Huge props to Mr. David Ginsburg (aka Irving Shmeckelstein), who really went the extra mile, scratch that, MARATHON for us.
Join Currensee Director of Product Shereen Shermak for the straight dope about Currensee. She will explain a few common topics and then we’ll open it up for Q&A and discussion.
What is this Leaderboard everybody’s talking about and how can I get on it?
If you’ve been on the fence about joining Currensee or if you’ve been a member for a while and just have some questions, this informal and informational session is just the ticket.
Sign up here. Throughout the webinar we will be live tweeting via the #currensee hash tag.
=====
Be sure to read the full risk disclosure before trading Forex. Please note that Forex trading involves significant risk of loss. It is not suitable for all investors and you should make sure you understand the risks involved before trading. Performance, strategies and charts shown are not necessarily predictive of any particular result. And, as always, past performance is no indication of future results.
The gang here at Currensee has decided to start a weekly post called “How can I help?” What is “How can I help?” all about? Well, it’s about our members! It’s a weekly post touching on a topic our members are asking the support team about. It’s our goal to help you understand Currensee and get the most value out of the platform. We encourage our users to ask questions, be inquisitive, and be honest about what does or doesn’t make sense to them.
I’m Marcie Smith – the first words out of my mouth are always “how can I help?” And now I leave you with this week’s topic: My trades aren’t showing, HELP!
So you say your trades aren’t posting correctly. Not a problem. Let’s figure this out together.
First, are you trading MT4? Yes? Awesome.
Second, is it installed on all computers that you’re trading on? Yes? Also good news.
Here’s the deal. Remember when you installed the Currensee Bridge/EA? Remember when you installed it on one of your charts? Here comes the question, is that chart running?
Did you answer, no? (it’s OK you can admit it) Here’s the thing, if the chart is running your data will be sent to Currensee, but if it’s not running we won’t get the data and you’ll end up out of sync.
We know that sharing your trades or at least seeing your trades in your positions table and your profile performance is important to you, but the key to that is making sure that the secure universal bridge is running. Other questions about the EA? Let us know, we’re happy to help.
Questions about anything else? Email us at support@currensee.com and we’ll be sure to answer promptly or even feature your question in next week’s “This week in support” post. Happy Trading!
=====
Be sure to read the full risk disclosure before trading Forex. Please note that Forex trading involves significant risk of loss. It is not suitable for all investors and you should make sure you understand the risks involved before trading. Performance, strategies and charts shown are not necessarily predictive of any particular result. And, as always, past performance is no indication of future results.
Earlier today our VP of Marketing Michelle Heath wrote a nice post about the Old Spice guy. As promised we have created our own rebuttal to his Orli video. Enjoy!
=====
Be sure to read the full risk disclosure before trading Forex. Please note that Forex trading involves significant risk of loss. It is not suitable for all investors and you should make sure you understand the risks involved before trading. Performance, strategies and charts shown are not necessarily predictive of any particular result. And, as always, past performance is no indication of future results.
If you haven’t heard about the Old Spice video campaigns you must be either living under a rock or rendered speechless by Isaiah Mustafa’s six-pack, towel wearing bod. Some say he’s a god. I say the campaign is brilliant (and happen to concur with the god-like references). Weiden + Kennedy, P&G’s ad agency, pulled together one of the most integrated and truly buzz worthy social media campaigns of 2010. Their timeliness, randomness, and honest-to-goodness humor has put Old Spice on the map in terms of social media. Instead of us gushing about it, feel free to read the great articles by Mashable and Fast Company. But of course our $0.02 anyway.
As I thought about what worked so well in this campaign, I kept thinking about the 4Ps of marketing and how, in this new social media world, we need a new P. Sure, every successful marketing mix has something to do with product, price, placement and promotion. But what they don’t teach you is what we learned this week about a healthy dash of social media and a heaping helping of a hot guy in a towel.
As marketers, we spend most of our time cooking up clever ways to share our brand with the people we think are most interested – a.k.a. our target audience. Whether it’s chocolates, cars, ShamWows or Forex – there’s a buyer for what we’re selling. They just don’t know it yet.
Brands have to work harder than ever to earn our attention. We’ve all heard the urban legend of the viral video that refused to produce the golden YouTube views and its silent death at the hands of its maker. Tragic. We’ve all seen the Facebook pages that vie for us to like them only to disappoint us and the Twitter streams that offer nothing of value in 140 characters or less. Sigh.
The great thing about the Old Spice campaign is that it took something that’s been around for decades (my grandpa wore it for years) and made it new by starting with fans and followers. It is what every good campaign should do – start with the people and let them build it. It’s something they don’t teach you in school but something I admire in practice. IMHO, People should be the 5th P. Think about it. Social media is all about People. It’s about engaging People in conversations, creating new ideas, forming and sharing opinions and connecting. These are People who may or may not like your brand. But, they know other People. And when they see and hear cool stuff in action, they tell them.
Hats off to W+K for focusing on the People and to Old Spice taking a risk and putting a hot guy in a towel (seriously, thank you.) As a social network, we here at Currensee are empowered by great examples like this one and, because we are a little goofy and love social media, we decided to ask (and by ask I mean, make) one of our interns, appropriately named Orli, respond to one of the commercials. Watch the original commercial here. Our response will be posted momentarily. Happy trading, social media lovers.
=====
Be sure to read the full risk disclosure before trading Forex. Please note that Forex trading involves significant risk of loss. It is not suitable for all investors and you should make sure you understand the risks involved before trading. Performance, strategies and charts shown are not necessarily predictive of any particular result. And, as always, past performance is no indication of future results.
Tomorrow, Currensee and FXCM present a live Forex Market Analysis session with FXCM Senior Technical Strategist Jamie Saettele.
Sign up here. Webinar starts Thursday July 8, 2010 at 5:30PM EST
In this informational session, Saettele will use live charts to analyze the market and identify technical trading opportunities while taking questions from the webinar audience. Attendees will learn:
What Jamie is trading now and what opportunities he sees in the weeks ahead
How to pinpoint entries and exits with channeling and Fibonacci techniques
The optimal time of the day and week to establish and exit a position
The webinar is free and suitable for traders from beginner to professional. At the end of the session there will be time for audience Q&A with Jamie and all attendees will get a special offer from the Currensee Marketplace and FXCM. Please join us for this engaging webinar on Thursday July 8 at 5:30pm ET, and feel free to invite your friends too! Also, get involved on Twitter by asking questions to @currensee.
About Jamie Saettele:
Jamie Saettele is an active trader, Senior Technical Strategist at Forex Capital Markets LLC in New York and author of Sentiment in the Forex Market (Wiley Trading). His technical strategy focuses on sentiment indicators and Elliott wave and is published at DailyFX.com. He has contributed to Technical Analysis of Stocks and Commodities magazine, SFO magazine, Futures magazine, and Investopedia.com.
=====
Be sure to read the full risk disclosure before trading Forex. Please note that Forex trading involves significant risk of loss. It is not suitable for all investors and you should make sure you understand the risks involved before trading. Performance, strategies and charts shown are not necessarily predictive of any particular result. And, as always, past performance is no indication of future results.
Our Marketing department has been naughty. Very naughty.
I asked them to ‘get creative’ on how to tell the message about Currensee and the benefits of trading together. The result? Let’s just say there’s a bundle of creativity in what they came up with.
Introducing our new video, Currensee.com: Forex Trading, It’s a Beautiful Thing.
Here at Currensee, we are changing the Forex game and our video shows the fun and innovative side of this exciting market we love. Some people say “It’s not work if you’re having fun.” We say “It’s only fun if you love what you do.”
I hope you have as much fun watching the video as we had producing it.
Happy viewing. :)
======
Be sure to read the full risk disclosure before trading Forex. Please note that Forex trading involves significant risk of loss. It is not suitable for all investors and you should make sure you understand the risks involved before trading. Performance, strategies and charts shown are not necessarily predictive of any particular result. And, as always, past performance is no indication of future results.
Today, we released an exciting new version of the Currensee platform. We have two very important new features that will add significantly more dynamic content and also continued to make significant performance improvements to the Currensee platform.
New Economic Calendar by Econoday First, we introduced our new economic calendar powered by Econoday, one of the world’s leading data and analysis providers. The new calendar contains rich supporting analysis and charts on many major events. The calendar also includes the ability to open real-time discussions and post ideas and comments about how these events will affect trading strategies.
Customizable RSS feature Second, we added a customizable RSS feature to the platform. Our members told us they want to have one place to view the content they read each day to help them make their trading decisions. We say…ask and you shall receive. Want to see all the Twitter feeds on the EUR/USD, or the latest quotes on the S&P or the NASDAQ? In addition to a set of default feeds, members can simply add the feeds they want to their dashboard. We’re happy to feature RSS feeds from some of our own members, such as John Forman, noted Thomson Reuters analyst and Trading Essentials blogger, and Jerry Furst, FxStreet blogger, noted educator and founder of the Investors Education Network (IEN). We are also providing news content from CNN, Financial Times, Thomson Reuters and additional analysis and commentary from Mataf, FxStreet, Forex Factory and new partner, Traders Laboratory.
The Word is Spreading about Currensee – Thank You! To those of you out there actively posting in forums and letting other traders know about what we’re doing, we can’t thank you enough. Your excitement around what we’re doing is catching-on. We are also starting to get our name out there this summer as we release an exciting video campaign, participate in the August Forex & Options Expo in Las Vegas (we’ll be in booth 302 – hope to see you there), and gear up for a fall launch.
Thanks for your time, energy and passion in helping us build the Currensee community.
Happy trading,
Dave
======
Be sure to read the full risk disclosure before trading Forex. Please note that Forex trading involves significant risk of loss. It is not suitable for all investors and you should make sure you understand the risks involved before trading. Performance, strategies and charts shown are not necessarily predictive of any particular result. And, as always, past performance is no indication of future results.
Currensee is the first social network for forex traders. We bring Forex traders from around the world together to make trading decisions in real time using live trading data.
Entries (RSS)