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AURORA, Colo. (CBS4) Nineteen-year-old Katie Kingston suffered with back pain for seven years. When it caused her to walk with a limp, the teenager from Loveland consulted an orthopedic surgeon at Childrens Hospital Colorado.

He repaired her broken spine with the help of a robot. Now, Katie is walking tall and feeling terrific.

Hoping to start nursing school in January, Katie told CBS4 Health Specialist Kathy Walsh.

Katie is finally pain free after seven years of suffering that started at gymnastics.

I was at practice one day and fell off the vault on my back and just was in instant pain and couldnt get up for 30 minutes, Katie explained.

She said a doctor told her it was a sprain, but her back hurt on and off for years. She gave up athletics. Then a year ago, the pain got worse.

It just got to the point where I had really bad nerve pain down my right leg and started walking with a limp, said Katie.

Katies injury was more serious than a sprain.

Theres a stress fracture in her spine, said Dr. Mark Erickson, orthopedic surgeon at Childrens Hospital Colorado, who specializes in pediatric spine surgery.

He would realign the bones and add a graft. The doctor would get help from a robot.

Its a new frontier thats super exciting, said Dr. Erickson.

Using sophisticated software, doctors scan and plan in the operating room, then program the robotic arm where to drill to place screws in the spine.

With the robot, were able to do the surgeries that weve done for a long time, but now were able to do them with more precision, accuracy and safety, said Erickson.

As soon as I woke up from surgery, the nerve pain was gone, said Katie.

Katie has 2 rods and 4 screws in her back. Her surgery was Dr. Ericksons 100th robot-assisted pediatric spine surgery. It was Katies cure.

I feel like I can finally get on with life, said Katie.

Childrens Hospital Colorado is one of only three pediatric hospitals in the country with access to this robotic technology called Mazor X.

See the article here:
Teenager Is Pain Free Thanks To Robot-Assisted Spine Surgery - CBS Denver

Would you buy a car without driving it first? I'm sure it happens, but I can't imagine anyone who would do so by choice. Buying software is no different. Before they buy, most users want to experience the application to get a feel of what it can do and how easy it is to use. Software companies recognize this issue and often offer free trials to lure potential customers, but three software-as-a-service specialists have taken this concept even further.

Let's take a look at how this trio has mastered the art of capturing and keeping new customers and what that's meant for the growth of these companies and their stocks.

Atlassian (NASDAQ:TEAM) has a suite of five core software applications that support its mission to "unleash the power of every team." These applications were originally built to cater to software development teams, but have expanded their capabilities to apply to project teams of any kind.

In March, to help attract customers during the coronavirus pandemic, management opened up its flagship Jira and Confluence cloud-based tools for free trials, making all of the company's cloud applications available to small teams for free. This broad range of free applications offers numerous on-ramps to Atlassian's ecosystem and has been wildly successful in capturing and keeping new customers.

Image source: Getty Images.

In the second quarter, the company reported over 174,000 paying customers, up 13% from a year ago. A low double-digit customer growth number may seem underwhelming, but there are other factors at play that turned it into a 29% year-over-year top-line gain. Having an easy-to-use collaborative team-based tool attracts new users, but it also makes it attractive for customers to expand their usage over time. The graphic below from the company's 2019 investor presentation shows the multiplicative power of this land-and-expand model.

Image source: Atlassian 2019 investor day presentation.

Each color bar is a "cohort," or group of customers that joined in the same year. Each one of these cohorts has expanded their spending, which creates an accelerating effect for the overall bookings (an indicator of overall contract value). This natural adoption rate enables the company to have a resource-efficient customer acquisition model which allows it to spend almost 2.5 times more money on research and development (R&D) than on sales and marketing. The additional R&D investments improve the ecosystem and its ability to land and expand with new customers.

Twilio's (NYSE:TWLO) CEO and co-founder Jeff Lawson is a software developer. So it's no surprise that its growth strategy for its communications platform has been centered on reaching, educating, and empowering software developers. Its free trial subscription has all the capabilities of the paid version, providing developers full access to customer support and product documentation. With all of the platform's capability at their fingertips, developers can create fully functioning prototypes in a matter of hours, giving the business clear insights into what's possible. The company also provides developer community blogs and an educational online game called TwilioQuest that teaches developers how to use the platform in a fun and engaging way.

This strategy has been highly successful in driving growth. Last quarter, new customers grew 24% year over year, but like Atlassian, overall revenue grew even faster, at a 46% year-over-year rate driven by solid net dollar retention of 132%. Twilio also prioritizes R&D efforts and spends a significant 58% of revenue to continue to maintain its technical leadership position and make its platform even more useful for developers.

Shopify's (NYSE:SHOP) mission to "make commerce better for everyone" starts with a merchant-centric approach. Since it was founded in 2006, the platform to help small businesses start and run e-commerce stores has endeavored to make the on-ramp for new e-commerce entrepreneurs easier to navigate.

New customers start with a free trial and can move to a paid subscription for as little as $9 per month. This low-cost subscription plan enables sellers to set up "buy buttons" on existing websites and accept credit card payments, potentially providing hobby sellers all they may need to have a successful online business. But for those with loftier goals, Shopify has a set of higher-functioning subscription plans up to its premier feature-rich Shopify Plus service for high-volume sellers starting at $2,000 per month. In response to the coronavirus, management extended its free trial period to 90 days, which has enabled new customers to get some experience under their belts before having to pay subscription fees in these challenging times.

Shopify's ever-improving and easy-to-onboard platform and wide-ranging subscription offerings have proven to be an incredible recipe for growth. The platform now serves over 1 million merchants, who made a record $30 billion in product sales last quarter using its software. The company has become a $2 billion annual revenue run rate powerhouse on the back of an amazing five-year run of 46% compound annual growth rate in its monthly recurring revenue.

These three stocks have been marvelous investments for shareholders, trouncing the market over the last three years by huge margins.

SHOP data by YCharts

But this trio isn't done. Atlassian acquired two software businesses in the last year to expand to its ecosystem of applications giving it more ways to capture new customers. Twilio has earned HIPAA certifications for its key products enabling it to manage sensitive healthcare data and expand its use cases for developers. Shopify continues to innovate on its platform making it even more attractive for small businesses to sign on.

Look for these winners to keep on winning long into the future, giving shareholders the opportunity to continue to profit from these growth stocksfor many years to come.

More:
3 Software Stocks Share This 1 Key to Success - The Motley Fool

We like simulation software. Texas Instruments long offered TINA, but recently theyve joined with Cadence to make OrCAD PSpice available for free with some restrictions. Youve probably heard of PSpice its widely used in academia and industry, but is usually quite costly. You can see a promotional overview video below.

The program requires registration and an approval step to get a license key. The downloaded program has TI models along with other standard models. There seem to be few limits as long as you stick to the supplied library. According to the datasheet, there are no size or simulation complexity limitations in that case. If you want to use other models, you can, but thats where the limitations hit you:

There is no limitation of how many 3rd party models can be imported into the design. However, if 3rd party models are imported, a user will be able to plot a maximum of 3 signals at a time of their choice when any 3rd party model is imported from web.

We arent completely sure what from web means there, but presumably they just mean from other sources. In any event, you still get AC, DC, and transient analysis with plenty of options like worst-case timing analysis. Mixed signal designs are supported and there is a wealth of data plotting options, as you would expect.

This is a great opportunity to drive some serious software that is widely used in the industry. The only thing that bummed us out? It runs under Windows. We couldnt get it to work under Wine, but a Windows 10 VM handled it fine, although we really hate running a VM if we dont have to.

Still, the price is right and it is a great piece of software. We also liked the recent Micro-Cap 12 release, but we dont expect any updates for that. Of course, LTSpice is quite capable, too.

More:
22 thoughts on TI And Cadence Make PSpice Free - Hackaday

For the 18th consecutive year, E/Step Software Inc. in West Valley is offering a free class exploring the APL computer programming language throughout the school year.

High school and college students can learn APL or the most concise and powerful programming tool available today, according to a news release from the local company virtually to start. The program is expected to transition from the Zoom video conferencing platform to in-person learning at the companys headquarters in West Valley later in the school year.

The course, which meets each Monday night from 6:45 to 9 p.m. beginning Sept. 28, is geared toward students who are taking or have taken calculus or statistics. Students are expected to spend roughly four hours a week on exercises outside of course hours.

The workshop is aimed at improving math comprehension and software development skills. To register, call E/Step Software at 509-853-5000.

Original post:
Free computer programming language course to kick off for 18th consecutive year - Yakima Herald-Republic

Whoever said you cant make money playing video games clearly hasnt taken a look at Unity Softwares stock price.

On its first official day of trading, the company rose more than 31%, opening at $75 per share before closing the day at $68.35. Unitys share price gains came after last nights pricing of the companys stock at $52 per share, well above the range of $44 to $48 which was itself an upward revision of the companys initial target.

Games like Pokmon GO and Iron Man VR rely on the companys software, as do untold numbers of other mobile gaming applications that use the companys toolkit for support. The companys customers range from small gaming publishers to large gaming giants like Electronic Arts, Niantic, Ubisoft and Tencent.

Unitys IPO comes on the heels of other well-received debuts, including Sumo Logic, Snowflake and JFrog .

TechCrunch caught up with Unitys CFO, Kim Jabal, after-hours today to dig in a bit on the transaction.

According to Jabal, hosting her companys roadshow over Zoom had some advantages, as her team didnt have to focus on tackling a single geography per day, allowing Unity to optimize its time based on who the company wanted to meet, instead, of say, whomever was free in Boston or Chicago on a particular Tuesday morning.

Jabals comments arent the first that TechCrunch has heard regarding roadshows going well in a digital format instead of as an in-person presentation. If the old-school roadshow survives, well be surprised, though private jet companies will miss the business.

Talking about the transaction itself, Jabal stressed the connection between her companys employees, value and their access to that same value. Unitys IPO was unique in that existing and former employees were able to trade 15% of their vested holdings in the company on day one, excluding current executive officers and directors, per SEC filings.

That act does not seemed to have dampened enthusiasm for the companys shares, and could have helped boost early float, allowing for the two sides of the supply and demand curves to more quickly meet close to the companys real value, instead of a scarcity-driven, more artificial figure.

Regarding Unitys IPO pricing, Jabal discussed what she called a very data-driven process. The result of that process was an IPO price that came in above its raised range, and still rose during its first days trading, but less than 50%. Thats about as good an outcome as you can hope for in an IPO.

One final thing for the SaaS nerds out there. Unitys dollar-based net expansion rate went from very good to outstanding in 2020, or in the words of the S-1/A:

Our dollar-based net expansion rate, which measures expansion in existing customers revenue over a trailing 12-month period, grew from 124% as of December 31, 2018 to 133% as of December 31, 2019, and from 129% as of June 30, 2019 to 142% as of June 30, 2020, demonstrating the power of this strategy.

We had to ask. And the answer, per Jabal, was a combination of the companys platform strength and how customers tend to use more of Unitys services over time, which she described as growing with their customers. And the second key element was 2020s unique dynamics that gave Unity a tailwind thanks to increased usage, particularly in gaming.

Looking at our own gaming levels in 2020 compared to 2019, that checks out.

This post closes the book on this weeks IPO class. Tired yet? Dont be. Palantir is up next, and then Asana .

Go here to read the rest:
Unity Software has strong opening, gaining 31% after pricing above its raised range - TechCrunch