Business

Discussing Business, Life, and Everything in Between with Danny Tran

Published

4 years ago

June 12, 2020

We had the opportunity recently to sit down with young millionaire Danny Tran and he shared valuable insights entrepreneurs can learn from. Danny is the man behind Highstoke Media, a company that scaled past 7-figures in just 18 months. In this interview, he tells us about his journey and vision.

Can you tell us something about your company Highstoke Media and how you got here?

I came up with the idea for Highstoke Media at the lowest point in my life. At that moment, I had just about 14$ with me. From day one, I had sincere faith in the company and gave it my all to make it bigger and better than anything I’ve done in my life.

The idea behind Highstoke Media is simple, we help people. We help companies grow with us. Many companies have benefited from our help and we’ve helped them grow to a six-figure level. We’ve helped aspiring entrepreneurs to reach their business goals and every day, we help as many people as we can.

Was it difficult to create a company that grew past 7-figures in just 18 months?

To be honest, anything worthwhile in life is going to be difficult. Highstoke Media was created for struggling businesses and entrepreneurs but at the same time, we faced significant challenges in our own journey to the top. I believe, what is important is to remember why we wanted to do this. Even when things were tough, we didn’t give up. We always kept in mind our mission to maximize impact in the modern world of digital marketing and paid advertising. So in moments like when we’ve lost all of clients and faced severe competition, remembering our “why’s” always pushed us through.

Even when we did start doing well, we always kept trying to find a better winning formula. If you stop after finding the key, your growth stagnates. The business and industry are always evolving and you have to evolve with it.

Do you have any advice for the people trying to follow your footsteps?

As a young entrepreneur, you are bound to make many mistakes. One of them is being focused on too many things or on the wrong things. Shiny object syndrome is a real thing and can lead to the demise of your business. In addition to that, too many people try to sell products and not solutions. Your key to succeed in the market is to solve an actual problem and not just push out a product you think that will sell.

Also, with so many things prone to go wrong at any given time, you have to be patient. So many people dive into entrepreneurship or the world of business thinking it’s a get rich quick opportunity. Remember that all great things take time and for us, we didn’t finally reap the rewards of all of our efforts until after almost two years.

Is there anything that one should avoid doing with their ventures?

The number one thing is remaining stagnant. In the world of digital marketing and entrepreneurship, the industry is changing daily. Strategies and tactics that worked a few months ago will not last forever. Simply put, if your business stops innovating, it will stop growing and eventually decline.

The second is to be a copycat entrepreneur. I’m a huge advocate for taking frameworks and improving on existing things that work but if you can’t expect to get very far if you model someone’s business to the exact details. With so many new businesses being created daily, it’s crucial that you not only break into the market place by solving a valuable problem, but to also stand out from the millions of other businesses out there.

Being a young millionaire, what goals do you have for the future?

To be honest, it’s crazy to look back at everything we’ve accomplished so far. If you asked me 2 years ago, I wouldn’t have expected to have built a million dollar company from the ground up with $14 to my name. Now with an amazing team around the world, I hope to scale Highstoke Media even further and be a household name in our industry.

In addition to that, we hope to continually grow our impact in the digital space especially with young entrepreneurs. To date, we’ve coached and mentored thousands of aspiring entrepreneurs and hope to build a larger community to maximize the amount of impact we can have in this ever-evolving industry.

What values do you try to instill in your daily life to maintain success?

Achieving success is all about having the right mindset. Introspection is a very important aspect of what makes me myself. Being self-aware helps you think clearly and make better decisions. The key to making better decisions in life is to understand perspective. Everything that happens to you in life can be perceived in a good or a bad way. If you look at things negatively, you will never be able to get out of a stump.

Most importantly, I try to live every day of my life to the fullest. Having a tough background, it is easy to be obsessed with achieving it all but you have to learn to live your life to the fullest and enjoy every moment of it. After all, you only live once.

Business

Revolutionizing Single-Cell RNA-seq With Automated Cell Counters: Insights From Logos Biosystems

Published

1 day ago

September 19, 2024

Rosario Farell

Despite its relative newness, single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) has become an essential component of modern biological research.

It can be used to characterize abnormal cell populations, discover and analyze rare cell cellular map networks, and discover subtle yet notable heterogeneities.

scRNA-seq has come a long way since its origins in next-generation sequencers from the late 1990s. While traditional sequencing methods measure a bulk of a cell population to determine its “average genome,” scRNA-seq is significantly more precise. It locates and extracts genomes from individual cells, using each cell to tell part of the genetic story of a greater whole.

Although single-cell sequencing provides valuable information, the process has several drawbacks depending on the method used.

For example, Laser Capture Microdissection (LCM) uses a laser to isolate target cells from a complete solid tissue sample located on a microscope slide. This approach is quick, reliable, and also usable on intact tissues, but it requires the user to identify target cells through visual inspection of their morphology. Cells can also be damaged in the process.

Other methods, like Magnetic-Activated Cell Sorting (MACS) or Fluorescence-Activated Cell Sorting (FACS), come with positives and negatives. Regardless of the approach, advancements in single-cell sequencing technology require significant time and investment, making access to newer and more efficient technologies a barrier to progress.

Overcoming Obstacles With Technological Advancement

When manually counting cells in scRNA-seq analysis, adequately going through each cell can take a huge amount of time and resources. This process also has a high margin of error, sometimes making it difficult to justify the effort.

Moreover, when cell counts are inaccurate for scRNA-seq analysis, overall data quality becomes less reliable, making the research outcomes less reliable and further exacerbating the original issues of time and cost.

With so much time and capital going toward this research, the data it produces should be worthwhile. However, the quality of the data ultimately relies on the quality of the sample before processing, which is where Logos Biosystems and their LUNA-FX7 Automated Cell Counter come in.

Enhancing Research Capabilities

Logos Biosystems is a leader in automated cell counting technology and scRNA-seq analysis and is known for developing the award-winning LUNA Cell Counter family.

Founded in 2008, the company has lived up to its motto of “seeing beyond the cell” by working to improve human health through imaging solutions that help researchers gather quality data in a timely fashion.

Their LUNA series of cell counters specializes in improving research accuracy and efficiency by allowing scientists to spend less time dealing with the monotony of cell counting and more time making valuable observations and implementing solutions.

The LUNA-FX7 Automated Cell Counter gives precise and reliable cell counts. It improves the quality of scRNA-seq analysis and takes less time than other automated counters.

This device has many invaluable features, such as increased size for sample throughput, an expanded cell concentration range, built-in QC software, validation slides for fluorescence, and brightfield to allow for daily QC monitoring and reporting.

Making Research Matter

Incorporating an automated cell counter like the LUNA-FX7 more broadly in scRNA-seq would improve research outcomes and accelerate scientific discoveries. Having machines take care of menial tasks frees up time for scientists and researchers to use their critical and creative thinking skills to push progress in their respective fields forward in ways machines couldn’t do alone.

Applications for automated cell counting technology are almost limitless, including research into developmental studies, immunology, oncology, neurobiology, diabetes, microbiology, and much more. Being able to quickly and precisely profile, identify, classify, and discover rare or new cell types from across the human body allows greater insight into these disciplines and what they can do for human health and growth.

The exciting future of single-cell RNA sequencing lies in the seamless integration of these automated technologies. As they become more widely adopted, they will pave the way for more innovative discoveries that could shape the understanding of biology and medicine. With technologies like Logos Biosystems’ LUNA-FX7, the question of whether the scientific community can see transformative discoveries is now mute as it continues to work to enhance precision and efficiency in cell evaluation, which is vital for scRNA-seq experiments to be successful to not only advance science but also improve human health and well-being on a global scale.