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In Foundries, Article, Portfolio News

Predictive Trendspotting 2021: How To Genetically Sequence The Lifecycle Of A Trend

Hindsight may be 20/20, but with AI-fueled technology you just might be able to see into the future before anyone else. NWO is a U.S.-based startup piloting a predictive trends platform designed to capture the fast-changing voice of the consumer.

“We’re genetically sequencing the lifecycle of trends as they’re created and evolving. You can select any topic in world and immediately have a full report documenting how saturated a trend is in the minds of consumers globally, and by region,” said Sourav Goswami, co-founder of NWO. “It’s like talking to a human expert who can tell you when, where, and why a trend is growing, declining, or about to reach an inflection point with impact on your business.”

Among the recent early signals Goswami held up as proof of NWO’s prescience were reports predicting the resurgence of Bitcoin, the financial impact of locust swarm movements on sugar and cotton futures, and notably in the fall of 2020, a firestorm of online and offline behaviors around guns and tactical weaponry that constituted an “electoral powder keg” months before an angry mob stormed the U.S. Capitol.

The startup is working with beta customers in product innovation, marketing, and supply chain management at companies in the United States and Europe, and has plans to move into Asia and the Middle East. While initially targeting consumer brands, Goswami said NWO’s offering cuts across any industry, such as logistics and supply chain companies.

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In Foundries, Video, Portfolio News, Consumer Industries

Blank Canvas: Fashion Forward Featuring EON

From footwear to jeans to high fashion, the industry is making positive environmental changes due to pressure from passionate consumers who are demanding change. With profiles of companies such as Allbirds, Adidas, Levi’s, and Gucci, plus interviews with supermodel Karlie Kloss and CEO Natasha Franck, the show takes an in-depth look at how the fashion business is changing.

Watch here…

In Venture Studio

SavingsNow! and Recycletronics Join SAP.iO Venture Studio

avingsNow! and Recycletronics have joined the SAP.iO Venture Studio with goals of scaling and growing business for SAP and its customers. As part of the New Ventures and Technologies organization, the SAP.iO Venture Studio takes an employee-driven approach to innovation by bringing it in-house with an intrapreneurship program.

The two new employee-created ventures have received €1-2 million in funding from SAP through the company’s grassroots Scouting & Acceleration program.

“Entrepreneurs at SAP are in a unique position to shape the future of enterprise software,” said Ram Jambunathan, head of SAP.iO Venture Studio. “SAP’s distinctive understanding of business processes enables ventures like Recycletronics and Savings Now! to leverage data and technology to explore, experiment, and transform how business is done.”

The intrapreneurship program operates as an accelerator that supports entrepreneurial employees by creating an environment that fosters a culture of exploration and innovation. Employees selected for the program can build out and validate their ideas through working with real end users and assigned mentors from across SAP expertise in the challenges faced by SAP and its customers. From these interactions, the teams can then accelerate their idea into a venture with proven market demand.

To better understand today’s business landscape and how their proposed solutions fit within it, teams run through two phases. During the validation phase, teams join an eight-week self-paced program with virtual lectures covering topics from testing assumptions to analyzing markets and building a first version of their product. During the acceleration phase, some get the opportunity to further develop and test their product and to win early-stage customers. They receive feedback from mentors from inside and outside of SAP, including a committee of senior leaders from across SAP, along with founders and investors.

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In Supply Chain Management, Foundries, Press, San Francisco, Funding Announcement

Verusen raises $8 million to reconcile supply chain data using AI

Atlanta, Georgia-based Verusen, a startup leveraging AI to build a connected supply chain, today raised $8 million in a series A round co-led by Forte Ventures and Flyover Capital. The company says it will put the funds toward R&D as it expands the size of its workforce.

A recent PricewaterhouseCoopers report anticipated that companies would have to address the implications of their supply chains in regions affected by the coronavirus. For instance, they might have to secure future air transportation as supply and capacity become available or buy ahead to procure much-needed inventory and raw materials.

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In Foundries, Blog

STARTUPS, ACCELERATORS, AND CORPORATES: HOW ARE THEY CREATING VALUE TOGETHER?

Large corporates are looking to innovate from the inside out with accelerators, incubators, and other startup programs. Corporates are trying to tie in new developments that startups can ideate and test at a much quicker pace than a vast, cumbersome enterprise with 1000s of employees in multiple locations all over the world. But are these collaborations good for startups? And do the different programs, in turn, also have successes and great collaborations with various startups? 

In the panel “ Accelerator and Startups” at AsiaBerlin Summit last year, we spoke about the various types of programs on offer (from corporate programs to privately initiated ones to those for specific topics only or those bound to a certain time frame) and which pitfalls to avoid in order to make the collaboration a success for both sides.

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In Foundries, Press, Portfolio News

SetSail nabs $26M Series A to rethink sales compensation

SetSail wants to upend the way sales people get compensated by paying them throughout the sales cycle, rather than a single commission after the sale closes. Today, the startup announced a $26 million Series A.

Insight Partners led the round with participation from existing investors Wing Venture Capital, Team8 and Operator Collective. Today’s investment brings the total raised to $37 million, according to the company.

SetSail connects to your CRM, email, calendar and other systems that have signals about the progress of a particular sale, and then using machine learning looks at points in the sales cycle where it would make sense to reward the sales person for the progress they are making.

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In Portfolio News, Foundries, Press

SilverCloud Health Collaborates with Mental Health Leaders to Pioneer a Path Forward for Digital Mental Health Treatment

SilverCloud Health, a leading digital mental health platform, together with a group of international mental health stakeholders, announced that the American Psychiatric Association’s Psychiatric Services journalhas published the findings of an expert group aimed at increasing the adoption of digital mental health treatments (DMHTs) within the U.S. healthcare system.

The paper, “Banbury Forum Consensus Statement on the Path Forward for Digital Mental Health Treatment,” was authored by The Banbury Forum for Digital Mental Health Treatment, a group of over 20 international stakeholders including SilverCloud Health and representing healthcare organizations, insurers, employers, patients, researchers, policymakers, digital mental health companies, and the investment community. The Banbury Forum was formed in 2019 to review the current state of evidence and identify the primary challenges to adoption of DMHTs in the U.S. healthcare system, including in response to the challenges COVID-19 presents. The resulting paper identifies the core challenges, as well as opportunities, and provides recommendations to facilitate the successful and sustainable implementation of effective digital mental health interventions in the American healthcare system.

“Through years of rigorous trialing, digital mental health treatments have consistently proven to be effective interventions while also solving the issue of access that many face, yet there is a noticeable gap in adoption, reimbursement and regulation of these treatments within the U.S. healthcare system,” said Banbury Forum member and co-author Derek Richards, Ph.D., Chief Science Officer at SilverCloud Health and Research Fellow at the School of Psychology, Trinity College Dublin.

The paper reports that more than 100 randomized controlled trials demonstrate the effectiveness of DMHTs, and determined DMHTs can effectively overcome access and provider shortage issues that are an inherent part of the U.S. system. Each year, roughly 20% of Americans experience a diagnosable mental health condition, but many don’t receive treatment due to barriers to care, such as stigma and a shortage of mental health providers. For every 100,000 Americans, there are only 30 psychologists and 15.6 psychiatrists, and nearly 120 million Americans reside in designated health professional shortage areas – areas in which the ratio of mental health professionals to residents is smaller than 1 per 30,000 people. The integration of DMHTs into care pathways could improve the efficiency of mental health services and would extend effective treatment to the millions of Americans who are currently unable to access treatment.

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In Foundries, Press, Berlin, Energy & Natural Resources

For the First Time, Vegetation Risk to the Entire US Electrical Transmission Grid Has Been Analyzed With Satellite Data

For the first time in history, vegetation encroachment risk to the entire publicly available U.S. transmission grid has been analyzed from space by the Berlin-based startup LiveEO.

The goal of this large-scale analysis was to demonstrate LiveEO’s market-leading analytic capabilities to a North American audience. In total, over 15,000 public satellite images were used to evaluate risk to 574,000 miles of electricity lines. (Details about the analysis can be found at www.live-eo.com/us-power-transmission-grid-analysis).

The analysis covers the detection of vegetation along the transmission grid, as well as the identification of grid segments that are exposed at dangerously close distances. These are some of the biggest challenges and operational cost factors for utility companies in maintaining their assets. Proven by studies vegetation is one of the main challenges for utilities globally, causing up to 56% of externally triggered power interruptions. In the United States alone, approximately US$ 6 billion is spent on vegetation management by utility companies annually.

“The scale combined with the detail of the analysis represents a milestone in satellite data analytics for utility companies and proves that satellite data represents a viable alternative for vegetation management to Lidar or foot patrols.” says LiveEO’s Co-Founder Daniel Seidel. “Additionally, these insights can be made actionable directly via our tool set of mobile and web apps, and API integrations to improve workforce efficiency in the field and to realize OPEX saving” adds LiveEO’s other Co-Founder Sven Przywarra.

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In Foundries, Tel Aviv, Energy & Natural Resources

Democratizing Solar Plant Management With Raycatch

We chatted with Raycatch’s Chairman and Co-Founder, Mike Goldstein! Raycatch’s AI-driven digital asset management system automates and optimizes solar photovoltaic plants. In this episode of energenius, Mike shares how Raycatch’s software helps PV plant owners democratize operations and efficiently manage their assets, talks about the latest trends in the solar industry, and discusses how merging SAP and Raycatch’s capabilities will help clients with solar assets in their portfolios leverage their insights and reduce operational costs.

Customer Success

“Today, solar project owners and operators look with their own eyes on screens and graphs in order to analyze data and detect issues, which is very laborious, intensive and time consuming. Using Raycatch, without installing any new sensors or hardware, customers simply rely on existing data to quickly get clear insights and better prioritize their focus.”

Standing Out from the Competition

“While the cost of building solar assets is going down, operational costs such as hiring and renting as well as labor-based logistic costs are not. Raycatch democratizes this process and makes it financially sustainable with a software that helps operators and managers better manage their assets, automatically detect issues, and improve decision-making.”

Working with SAP

“Being focused on a specific vertical niche allows us to be the experts, so once our software and capabilities are merged with SAP capabilities, our joint clients with solar asset portfolios can enjoy the full solution A-Z; they can get software support in ERP and management, plus the deep, thorough, and sophisticated automatic diagnostics tool through Raycatch.”

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In Tel Aviv, Energy & Natural Resources, Foundries, Article

Pexapark is Changing the Game in the Renewable PPA World

We sat down with Pexapark’s Co-Founder and CEO, Michael Waldner! Pexapark provides the operating system for post-subsidy renewable energy sales. In this episode of energenius, Michael shares the latest trends in the PPA landscape, talks about the company values driving Pexapark to success, and discusses how Pexapark will help SAP’s utilities customers more efficiently manage their PPA contracts.

Customer Success

“Transitioning from subsidised to post subsidised markets opens up new risks. Companies now need to access new capabilities for energy risk management. We helped a large company and major investor in renewable energy with 2,000 MW installed capacity across different European markets. First we educated them on these new risks, structured and closed PPA agreements for them and followed up with our software solutions to help transform their organization to build up their risk management capabilities.”

Standing Out from the Competition

“The big difference is you no longer need to rely on an RFQ methodology where the price can become out of date by the time you are able to close. With our product, you can stay up-to-date every day with what the price should be for PPAs. You can follow pricing during your negotiations and spot deviations in pricing methodologies You get the same market pricing intelligence as utilities.”

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In Foundries, Article, Tel Aviv

NET2GRID is Drastically Increasing Customer Engagement and Improving Energy Consumption Behaviors

We chatted with NET2GRID’s Founder and CEO, Bert Lutje Berenbroek! NET2GRID delivers a platform for utilities to gain powerful energy insights and run value-added services using machine learning algorithms on smart meter data. In this episode, Bert shares how NET2GRID has helped utilities see a 3,000% increase in engagement levels with their prosumers, discusses NET2GRID’s holistic model of the AMI service leading up to real-time hardware for premium insights and value add services, and talks about how NET2GRID’s cost-efficient and real-time data aggregation helps SAP utilities customers spotlight their prosumers, EV owners and gain greater consumer insights in order to enrich customer profiles for targeted marketing purposes.

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In Foundries, Tel Aviv

Putting the Prosumer in the Center of the Energy Transition With OXYGEN TECHNOLOGIES

We sat down with OXYGEN TECHNOLOGIES’ Co-Founder and CTO, Florian Kaiser! OXYGEN TECHNOLOGIES provides digital value-added services to private and commercial “prosumers” with an operating system to monitor and control distributed energy devices. In this of episode of energenius, Florian shares how OXYGEN TECHNOLOGIES’ solution, ELEMENTS, allows energy service providers to control decentralized energy systems on one platform, discusses how SAP and OXYGEN TECHNOLOGIES both put the prosumer at the center of the energy transition, and shares how OXYGEN TECHNOLOGIES evolved from a student project to a full-fledged startup in the utilities industry.

Customer Success

“The energy provider of today is changing to a future energy service provider. It is about selling added value services to their prosumer customers. We offer a solution where energy providers can change their business model for the future.”

Standing Out from the Competition

“We developed an Android for energy; a middleware where we speak to all of the energy devices in the building, we connect them to a control box of ours, and then we enable any application to run on top of that and make use of the millions of distributed energy devices.”

Working With SAP

“SAP and OXYGEN TECHNOLOGIES both see the prosumer in the middle, and we both know that the future energy supply will be focused around those prosumers and added-value services. We can connect our ELEMENTS platform to SAP and exchange information and sell those added-value services, and it seamlessly integrates into the SAP system that utilities already have today.”

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In Foundries, Press, Portfolio News

Cloverleaf Secures Series A Investment

Cloverleaf today announced that it has secured a Series A investment from ScOp Venture Capital to help the company accelerate support for large enterprise clients, expand its geographic reach and continue the push towards product-led growth. The company, which uses data to help companies build high-performing teams and scale professional and leadership coaching to their entire workforce, recently passed half a million users.

Cloverleaf is based out of their office in Covington KY and has received previous funding from Queen City Angels, Stout Street Capital, Connetic Ventures, KSTC, Mucker Capital and Airwing VC; all of which continued their investment in this Series A funding.

“The current challenges that COVID has brought to the workplace has led employers to look to technology solutions like Cloverleaf to help employees collaborate effectively while they are working remote,” said Kevin O’Connor, Managing Partner at ScOp Venture Capital. “We are excited to be investing in this concept at this pivotal moment of how work gets done.”

Among Cloverleaf’s capabilities is the ability to apply data analytics to commonly used personality and strength-based assessments to help companies identify career development and promotion opportunities, and create teams that will work well together.

Cloverleaf’s team building and micro-coaching software was inspired by the co-founders own work experience, which they now use to target markets where teams are most critical to the success of businesses such as software development, sales, consulting and human resources.

“Our co-founders met years ago working together as an awesome team,“ Kirsten Moorefield, Co-founder said. “We enjoyed coming to work and enjoyed the people we worked with, which led to incredible results. We recognized that not everyone has that experience so we created a technology that can help replicate our experience. At our core, we believe everyone is wired to accomplish excellent, meaningful work, and our best work happens when we’re on a team that plays to our strengths and differences. Our incredible group of investors believe in this mission and is now helping us achieve that vision.”

This round of funding will help accomplish that vision by continuing to expand the community of leadership, business and executive coaches. Cloverleaf expects to quadruple the number of coaches using the platform in 2021.

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In Article, Tel Aviv, Foundries

Using IoT to Uncover Inefficiencies in the Utilities Industry With Lemonbeat

We sat down with Lemonbeat’s Co-Founder and CEO, Oliver van der Mond! Lemonbeat offers a scalable end-to-end Internet of Things–enabling solution, building a seamless experience journey from device to cloud. In this episode of energenius, Oliver shares how Lemonbeat helps utilities smarten and scale their infrastructure with IoT, talks about how energy inefficiencies identified by Lemonbeat can help clients save 20–30% in energy-use, and discusses how Lemonbeat’s ability to smartly gather data in the field complements SAP’s existing data management services for utilities.

Customer Success

“With the example of managing a smart boiler room in one’s home, Lemonbeat can help you easily save 20–30% of the primary energy, whether it be gas, oil, etc., without the loss of any convenience.”

Standing Out from the Competition

“We have built Lemonbeat in a way that it can really grow from a very small system to a very large system in a seamless way. IoT makes it possible to uncover inefficiencies. But to uncover them, you need to make those solutions cost-efficient and scalable. With Lemonbeat, you can uncover the inefficiencies and remotely adjust them.”

Working With SAP

“What we are offering is quite complementary to what SAP is offering. It’s a very good fit- we have almost no overlap, so technically speaking, there is an interface where we are meeting. We are taking care of whatever happens in the field so that we get the data, and SAP can take care of what is actually done with the data.”

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In Foundries, Article, Tel Aviv

How Future Grid is Helping to Create a More Sustainable Reality

We sat down (on Zoom) with Future Grid’s Co-Founder & CEO, Chris Law! Future Grid enables the renewable grid of the future to deliver safe and reliable electricity. In this episode of energenius, Chris shares about the direct impact Future Grid makes on customer safety as well as its bigger-picture impact on a sustainable future, talks about how Future Grid enriches SAP data to help utilities customers turn smart meter data into improved asset management and grid reliability, and discussed Future Grid’s evolution from a small consulting business to a leading software company.

Customer Success

“One client had incidents on their network where customers were shocked and injured by faults with electricity in their homes. They worked with Future Grid to improve reliability and safety for customers, proactively detecting these incidents using smart meter data, often before the customer was aware that the issue was happening.”

Standing Out from the Competition

“We realized that there is a lot of talk about the customer generating their own electricity, but there was little acknowledgement or understanding of the adverse impact it was having on the energy ecosystem, particularly in terms of polls and wires. Future Grid uses data so that utilities can install more renewable energy into the grid and manage these new technologies and ecosystem players in a sustainable way.”

Working With SAP

“What SAP does for our customers is help specifically with asset management and ERP. Future Grid is using a new kind of data to enrich that, so utilities can better manage the renewable transition and its safety. The outputs of what we produce goes into SAP systems, so we can leverage solutions to create better outcomes for customers on a global scale.”

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