Erik Davis, Chief Product Officer of Sampler, a Foundry TLV startup, shares how Sampler found new opportunity in the recent crisis, and provides tips on how other startups can do the same.
A story of a conversation between an academic researcher, VC investor, CVC investor and an entrepreneur
2019 brought more female-founded unicorns than ever before, and more new female partners at VC firms. Despite this progress, VC remains one of the most gender-skewed industries in the US. Last year, approx. 87.8% of the VC funding was raised by all male founder teams. We also see an emerging evidence that the disruption caused by COVID-19 is bound to disproportionately affect women. As reported by Pitchbook, Q1 2020 already showed a decline in share of deals with startups founded by women.
Wait… but why?
I am a nerd. I studied Finance & Accounting, I studied Psychology, and then I got an MBA. I have always been fascinated by behavioral economics and academic research proving that we are irrational in a systematic way when making decisions under uncertainty. If you haven’t read yet — Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman is a good place to start. Yes, he is that psychologist who was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.
Now, why it matters in VC. Mixed gender or women-led startups are not performing worse than male-led — actually it’s quite the opposite. So isn’t it rational to invest in them? From behavioral economics, we know that decisions under uncertainty are influenced by the actual framing and context. Biases and heuristics come into play when it comes to VC investing — it is no different than thinking about weighing potential gains and losses under uncertainty. So what can we actually do to help scale investments in female founders if we can’t change how we’re all wired? Let’s look at it from three different perspectives represented by (#1) a researcher, (#2) two investors, and (#3) an entrepreneur.
When Shamir Rahim, founder and CEO of VersaFleet, transformed his bio-medical startup into an AI-powered transportation management system, he never imagined being at the epicenter (in a good way) of a supply chain revolution during a worldwide pandemic. As anyone desperately searching for toilet paper discovered earlier this year, the last mile is the crucial link in every supply chain.
“We wanted to provide our customers with a command center view of last mile product delivery with cost and time savings,” said Shamir Rahim, founder and CEO of VersaFleet. “As our customers slowly open up again, VersaFleet is providing greater agility so they can quickly adjust logistics for maximum efficiency, whether people are out sick or returning to work, quarantines are lifted or imposed again, and operational hours shift at any time.”
Huge time savings improve customer experience
Planners using VersaFleet’s SaaS-based cloud platform can dynamically schedule, dispatch, and track deliveries. Meantime, drivers send updates on completed deliveries in real-time using a mobile app. The algorithm also factors in data from orders connected through an ERP system like SAP S/4HANA.
“In a few clicks, planners can see which drivers are available, including their working hours and location preferences. They can select the most efficient route plan that uses the fewest vehicles traveling the least amount of distance for the highest number of items delivered,” said Rahim. “This reduces planning time from hours to minutes, saving valuable resources.”
Based in Singapore, VersaFleet serves customers primarily in Southeast Asia across many industries including consumer packaged goods, food manufacturing, white goods, casinos, and environmental services. One customer’s recent go-live actually coincided with the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown in Malaysia. It proved fortuitous for the global health and beauty retailer.
“Their implementation of VersaFleet couldn’t have come at a better time,” said Rahim. “Despite working remotely from their respective homes, the planners were able to work collaboratively in real time. They were able to restock high-demand items like toilet paper and sanitizing wipes up to five times a day, something they had never been able to do before.”
The company has slashed daily planning time by 90 percent, from up to four hours down to under 10 minutes. In addition, by digitalizing proof-of-delivery, the retailer sped up billing processes four-fold. Instead of waiting for drivers to return from their routes with paper-based records, finance immediately receives delivery confirmation for same day invoice processing. This kind of business agility cascades down to boost the customer’s experience.
“Companies can reduce stock-outs, which is so important in meeting people’s heightened demands, especially with fast-moving consumer goods,” said Rahim. “Several of our other customers have improved customer service levels by 50 percent.”
Watch interview with Sébastien Gibier on BFM Business (French TV Channel) as they discuss how HR Technology supports working from home.
Meet the SAP.iO HR Tech startups! Join us as we celebrate an incredible journey with the HR Tech startups from the SAP.iO Foundry Paris Spring 2020 cohort and a panel of thought leaders who are blazing new paths in the Future of Work.
The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the retail industry in ways no one could have imagined. A vast majority of retailers have needed to close doors, leaving many unemployed or furloughed while sales stalled. As the country begins to reopen, the retail industry is looking to stabilize and welcome shoppers back safely. It is imperative the industry keep guests and employees safe and technology can aid in this journey with transparency of crucial occupancy and shopper density metrics to help guide safer experiences in physical stores.
RetailNext, with support from a consortium of private enterprise companies, retailers, and property owners, has created ShopSafe – a not-for-profit enterprise focused on getting American retail businesses open again with infrastructure to deliver real-time occupancy data for shoppers to better understand precautionary measures in place. This free framework delivers transparency to crucial occupancy metrics to help guide safer experiences in physical stores
Hasura is an open-source engine that can connect to PostgreSQL databases and microservices across hybrid- and multi-cloud environments and then automatically build a GraphQL API backend for them, making it easier for developers to then build their own data-driven applications on top of this unified API . For a while now, the San Francisco-based startup has offered a paid version (Hasura Pro) with enterprise-ready reliability and security tools, in addition to its free open-source version. Today, the company launched Hasura Cloud, which takes the existing Pro version, adds a number of cloud-specific features like dynamic caching, auto-scaling and consumption-based pricing, and brings those together in a fully managed service.
Odoxa et SAP ont interrogés les français sur leurs qualités de vie en télétravail
Les enseignements clés du sondage :
Les Français attendent que les entreprises réfléchissent à la « qualité de vie en télétravail »
- Qualité de vie au travail des télétravailleurs: 93% des Français attendent une meilleure réflexion des entreprises.
- 96% d’entre eux pensent qu’il est important de travailler sur l’équilibre vie privé/ vie professionnelle ; 89% sur le lien entre collègues et 88% sur les risques de burn-out et de surmenage
- En dehors d’un mail organisationnel (51%), les entreprises ont utilisé peu d’outils pour améliorer la vie au travail des télétravailleurs
- Equilibre vie pro/vie perso (96%), lien social (89%), risques de burn-out (88%), formation (80%) et management à distance (80%) : toutes les dimensions de la réflexion sont importantes aux yeux des Français.
Verusen, an innovator in artificial intelligence, materials inventory and data management technology, announced today that it has been named to the Supply & Demand Chain Executive’s SDCE 100 for 2020. The prestigious list spotlights successful and innovative projects that deliver bottom-line value to small, medium and large enterprises across the range of supply chain functions. These projects can serve as a map for supply chain executives looking for new opportunities to drive improvement in their own operations.
Verusen’s successful work with a Fortune 500 pulp and paper manufacturer with more than 60 North American facilities exemplifies the impact its AI-based intelligent technology platform can quickly make. The manufacturer set an aggressive initiative to reduce working capital by $5 million, obtain enterprise inventory visibility and rebalance inventory through a virtual maintenance, repair and operating (MRO) inventory network.
With Verusen’s cloud platform, the team laid the appropriate data foundation by structuring its material master (MM) data in weeks instead of a year. AI ultimately cleansed the MRO data, allowing the company to begin a “self-cleansing” data strategy as well as an internal “buy-from-self-first” inventory optimization strategy. Additionally, the AI delivered optimized insights on where inventory could be reduced as well as how to avoid creating excess. In less than 100 days, Verusen’s AI platform produced more than $20 million in verified savings.
Dresden, Germany-based Wandelbots — a startup dedicated to making it easier for non-programmers to “teach” industrial robots how to do specific tasks — has raised a $30 million Series B funding round led by 83North, with participation from Next47 and Microsoft’s M12 venture funding arm.
Wandelbots will use the funding to help it speed the market debut of its TracePen, a hand-held, code-free device that allows human operators to quickly and easily demonstrate desired behavior for industrial robots to mimic. Programming robots to perform specific tasks typically requires massive amounts of code, as well as programmers with very specific, in-demand skill sets to accomplish. Wandelbots wants to make it as easy as simply showing a robot what it is you want it to do — and then showing it a different set of behaviors should you need to reprogram it to accomplish a new task or fill in for a different part of the assembly line.
Counterfeiters are flooding markets with fake masks, coronavirus test kits, PPE worn by frontline workers, medicine and medical equipment used for healing patients afflicted with COVID-19.
Last week, the European Anti-Fraud Office announced that they had already identified 340 companies trading in counterfeit products linked to the COVID-19 pandemic. The large majority of these fake goods are ineffective if not downright dangerous, and deceive both patients and doctors who trust that they are using genuine and effective treatments. This reduces the likelihood of patient recovery, and generally disrupts efforts to stop or slow the spread of the virus.
That counterfeiters have quickly seized on this new market opportunity shouldn’t come as a surprise. Whether a luxury handbag or watch, a medication or a bottle of wine, anything with a brand name attached to it will be counterfeited. The exterior or packaging of many counterfeits look identical to the genuine products, while the product itself is usually malfunctioning, made with inferior components, or at the very least does not adhere to proper manufacturing practices. The only challenge for counterfeiters is to insert their imitations into legitimate distribution channels without getting caught. For this reason, counterfeiters love opaque, long and complex supply chains that leave many opportunities for distributing the fakes wide open.
Justin Picard Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer, Scantrust
Counterfeiters are flooding markets with fake masks, coronavirus test kits, PPE worn by frontline workers, medicine and medical equipment used for healing patients afflicted with COVID-19.
Last week, the European Anti-Fraud Office announced that they had already identified 340 companies trading in counterfeit products linked to the COVID-19 pandemic. The large majority of these fake goods are ineffective if not downright dangerous, and deceive both patients and doctors who trust that they are using genuine and effective treatments. This reduces the likelihood of patient recovery, and generally disrupts efforts to stop or slow the spread of the virus.
That counterfeiters have quickly seized on this new market opportunity shouldn’t come as a surprise. Whether a luxury handbag or watch, a medication or a bottle of wine, anything with a brand name attached to it will be counterfeited. The exterior or packaging of many counterfeits look identical to the genuine products, while the product itself is usually malfunctioning, made with inferior components, or at the very least does not adhere to proper manufacturing practices. The only challenge for counterfeiters is to insert their imitations into legitimate distribution channels without getting caught. For this reason, counterfeiters love opaque, long and complex supply chains that leave many opportunities for distributing the fakes wide open.
Traceability systems bring that much-needed transparency to supply chains. They rely on serialized, unique identifiers embedded in barcodes or radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags placed on product packaging during manufacturing. As goods move through supply chains, products – as well as the cases or pallets which contain them – are scanned for inspections or to add traceability data. Every new scan generates additional data points, building up the traceability history of the product. When products reach the store shelves, consumers can scan the product identifier to verify a product’s provenance, expiry date, or any other information associated with it. All these scans culminate in creating the traceability and transparency of supply chains.
The utility company of the future will be an energy bank, enabling customers to cash-in on unused electric capacity by making it available to other customers who need it. Utilities will be the intermediary facilitating the transaction and reducing energy waste in the process.
So believes SaLisa Berrien, a Bethlehem native, 1987 Allen High School graduate, former PPL Corp. engineer and now an entrepreneur who launched a startup called COI Energy Services in early 2016.
Based at the University of South Florida’s Tampa Bay Technology Incubator, COI Energy offers software that helps utility companies take full advantage of smart grids, or electrical supply networks that can react to patterns and changes in energy usage.
This past week, Berrien submitted patent paperwork for the COI Energy Optimizer. Her signature technology is a digital portal that makes it easy for commercial customers to communicate with their utility, and allows utilities to better manage demand response, renewable energy and energy efficiency programs.
She calls it the “Uber of Energy.”
COI’s first 16 months have been equal parts exhilarating and scary for Berrien, a successful mechanical engineer and businesswoman who has spent her entire career in the energy sector. New challenges have included keeping her perfectionism in check, knowing when to seek financing and determining the trustworthiness of potential partners.
As CEO, Berrien has has embraced those challenges and says she’s surrounded herself with people who share a vision of Tampa as the next big technology hub. She lives in Tampa, but until April owned a home in Upper Macungie and still returns to the Lehigh Valley regularly.
“I think we’re building something great here, and I want to be part of the story,” she said.
Contrairement à ce que l’on peut penser, la montée en compétences n’est pas qu’une affaire individuelle. Organisée à l’échelle de l’entreprise, elle permet aux employeurs de garantir la performance de leurs équipes et de motiver leurs troupes.
You cannot turn on the news without hearing how much this global pandemic is changing lives. Our personal and business lives are starting to either compete against each other or blend together in our day as many are forced to work remotely. To address the global issues we are confronted by today, SAP has launched SAP Purpose Network Live, a virtual platform that provides a space for collaboration and support of relief efforts for COVID-19. It will feature weekly engaging sessions related to our everchanging environment and profile many SAP.iO startups.
Episode 2 of Innovative Solutions from SAP.iO Startups Help Businesses Succeed Amid COVID-19, features Disco CRO Justin Vandehey, and Rachel Renock, Co-Founder and CEO of Wethos. The team talks about a shifting paradigm in what it is employees are looking for in a career. Moving from a paycheck being the most valued indicator or reward and fulfillment to a culture where people are increasingly more interested in fulfillment, finding a purpose to what they do in their careers. As of late, this might mean looking at how they work in a different way.
Rachel Renock and her team at Wethos are transforming the world of creative marketing by enabling teams of highly skilled freelancers to connect to form creative marketing teams remotely using the Wethos platform. In this model the free lancers have the opportunity to tackle bigger projects, earn more money, and participate in the work that they choose. There has been a powershift of people looking toward flexibility and freedom to help them scope work, delegate, and distribute work amongst their team.
The platform allows freelancers to discover and connect with each other and then share opportunities for work with one another. This has offered freelancers more independence, access to a larger network and more opportunities to work on growth. As people increasingly value job purpose, they start to define for themselves what growth looks like for them: Money related? Learning more? Meeting new people? Do I want to work less and live more? Wethos has created a place where freelancers can work on projects they are passionate about and puts more money in their pocket instead of the inflated agency overhead. On the flip side, the end customer gets more bang for their buck at the same level expertise they would find in an agency.
Renock has some great tips for success based on her own experience working with a global remote team, maybe most importantly she says there has to be a mutual trust. As we move into a more remote workplace be respectful of the change in schedule– trust your people to do their work when they can do it. And secondly, make sure to have an operating infrastructure. Documentation is valuable to set expectations and then the putting the supporting tools in place to help operate smoothly. Understand how you want to manage your team.
Disco’s CRO Justin Vandehey has seen for himself the shift from paycheck to purpose and the benefits of culture-aligned collaboration. He and the owners created the company when they saw that people who work in a remote environment wanted more connection, there was a new need to build relationships in a digital environment. Seeing for firsthand that some people were leaving jobs to work locally so they could have that direct human interaction.
Disco is a culture platform that runs on top of tools already used to communicate daily at work. They addressed the question of how we can meet those employees where they are already engaging with others to feel more connected. Disco is a real-time recognition platform that integrates into the employee workflow to tie moments that matter to core company values. By being in the employee workflow like Slack and Microsoft Teams, Disco socializes, celebrates, and scales culture and employee engagement. Disco was the first app to launch on Slack and its collaborative messaging helped companied connect and build stronger relationships through this platform.
The company helps businesses build new cultural rituals in the digital era of work that is anchored in their values and make it fun at the same time and Vandehey give us a glimpse of how in this episode. Organizations are having to think more about digital innovations, but also digital cultures. Disco recognizes the this is a tough time for companies, and they are excited to help them help employee in this changing time by offering an extended 30-day free trial and reducing our ongoing license fees by 50% after the trial period for all SAP SuccessFactors customers for the next 3 months.
At SAP, our purpose is to help the world run better. Now more than ever, we know we need to find solutions together. In that spirit, SAP.iO is incredibly privileged to collaborate with an ecosystem of B2B startup partners such as Disco and Wethos who are supporting global companies during this pandemic. We are proud to navigate the new reality with solutions from our over 60 SAP.iO startups who have released specific COVID-19 related offers. These offers and the latest COVID-SAP.iO news can be found at SAP.iO/covid-19.
