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In Foundries, Article, Inclusiveness, New York

The Eyes Have It: The Future Of Human-Machine Relations

Has this ever happened to you? Shopping for fresh vegetables at your local market when you notice that special someone across the aisle? And when your eyes lock, you know there is that kind of Mona Lisa smile directed at you behind the mask. You can’t help but feel the sparks fly and that something amazing is about to happen – just from a single look.

That’s what one company is planning to make happen in the workplace of the future. But with a twist! This kind of eye contact is all about making the daily work of employees more convenient, ergonomically-friendly, and even fun by controlling applications based on user intention – via eye tracking.

The future of human-machine interaction

Munich-based enterprise software company 4tiitoo is a leader in eye track interaction. Their mission – to make work more productive, healthy, and attractive to workers.

4tiitoo’s Natural User Interaction to all Applications software platform, or NUIA, revolutionizes the way people interact with devices by using machine learning to model eye control/tracking to predict user intention.

This kind of hands-free eye control provides increased efficiency and a better user experience for people (like me) glued to their workplace computer by reducing mouse-click interactions.

An escape from the perpetual mouse trap

This may be hard to believe, but the humble, ever-steadfast computer mouse is now over 50 years old. And let’s be honest. It has not evolved enough to address the enormously complex and rapidly evolving human-machine computing environments.

Think about it. 4tiitoo posits that an average user like you or I will make thousands of mouse clicks, maybe even tens of thousands, in a given work week and cover several kilometers a day of mouse movement.

With 20-30% a day spent on mouse interactions, user productivity is not what it could be. Plus, that little mouse is still not the healthiest of interfaces to use in terms of repetitive motion stress.

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In Foundries, Article, Portfolio News

SAP Startup Spotlight: Supervizor

Alban Clot, co-founder and Managing Director (Sales & Operations) of Supervizor, is a graduate of ESCP Europe. Alban began his career in the consulting industry. He held several positions until he became a partner within an independent consulting firm. He then co-founded Supervizor with Cyrille de Gastines and held the position of Director of Operations. Alban is now leading all business development, marketing and operations teams and is in charge of the international expansion of Supervizor. In this interview, he talks about what his company offers and what’s next for Supervizor.

E-3 Magazine: Why did you start Supervizor to begin with?

Alban Clot: Supervizor is a financial audit and internal control software for CFOs of mid-market and large companies. They usually need to get rid of accounting errors and comply with anti-fraud regulations but rely today on inefficient manual internal controls and outdated external audits that waste time and money. Supervizor is the first automatic financial anomaly detection software dedicated to corporate finance that leverages AI to analyze 100 percent of transactions and instantly highlight anomalies and frauds, remotely and on an ongoing basis. Supervizor was created in order to resolve a pain every company encounters. The technology is the result of more than 10 years of research. The goal is to respond to a problem that companies encounter during their audit process. Indeed, the need to bring auditors to the premises and the long and costly processes are difficult for many of them. Supervizor has created a remote and automated audit solution to facilitate the audit process. After several years of use, 100 percent of the accounts analyzed revealed significant anomalies.

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In Article, San Francisco, Network & Spend Management, Foundries, Press

SAP Startup Spotlight: RoadGoat

Kurosh Hashemi is the founder and CEO of RoadGoat. Prior to starting RoadGoat, Kurosh founded and led the Ultraviolet LED Lighting business at Philips Lighting, which was acquired by Apollo Management. Kurosh also has extensive expertise across the Internet of Things and location data. He earned his MBA at UC Berkeley, where he was a Haas Merit Scholar. In this interview, he will talk about why he founded RoadGoat, what his solution has to offer, and what’s next for the company.

E-3 Magazine: What exactly does RoadGoat offer?

Kurosh Hashemi: RoadGoat is a pocket travel guide. We provide user-generated data for over 4 million travel destinations – neighborhoods, towns, and cities. Travelers can use RoadGoat to figure out how safe a place is, whether an area is low-risk for COVID-19, if it is tagged for business travelers or foodies, and much more. We even provide a travel map for users that they can automatically update with all their social media accounts, business trip data, fitness trackers, Google Maps, and more. We initially started as a consumer app but we’ve now teamed up with Concur to deliver the same great experience for business travelers.

How does your solution work?

Hashemi: At the heart of our technology is a database of over 4 million travel destinations. Our users contribute meaningful insights about each of these destinations and we supplement this guidance with some more data-driven insights such as information about COVID-19, safety, when to go, budgetary ratings, and more. All that customers need to join RoadGoat is a WIFI-enabled device, as it is a completely free platform.

Why did you start RoadGoat to begin with?

Hashemi: We started RoadGoat because we felt that there was a lack of information about travel destinations. While sites like TripAdvisor, Google, and Yelp give great context about local businesses, no one is providing context about neighborhoods or towns – that’s where we come in. We help you understand if a destination is good for business travelers, nightlife, foodies, and more. Is it safe? What’s the COVID-19 situation? Is it LGBTQ+-friendly? Our users rate, rank, and tag destinations to help guide each other.

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In Foundries, Press, Article

Where are they now? Revisiting the Hot 25 Startups for 2020

It’s difficult, if not impossible, to fully convey what a strange and difficult year this has been for the travel industry. While the stress of COVID-19 has permeated every sector and role, it seems particularly challenging for startups and their founders – many that ended 2019 with great momentum as part of an industry that was in the midst of record growth.

The good news is there are many travel startups that are finding ways to not just survive but in fact thrive through this extraordinary year, whether by reconfiguring budgets, pivoting their products, developing partnerships, identifying new opportunities or a combination of all four.

On Monday next week we will release our selection of the Hot 25 Startups for 2021. In preparation for that, we have checked in with the companies that made the cut one year ago – our Hot 25 for 2020. We asked them to answer two questions: 

  • Despite the challenges created by the COVID-19 pandemic, what have been a few highlights of 2020 for your company (any partnerships, funding, change in strategy, pivots, etc.)
  • What are your priorities for 2021?

We heard from almost all 25.

Bacarai

  • Highlights: In the spring, we completed the SAP Concur Accelerator, which paved the way for Bacarai to be exposed to the broader business travel market. 
  • Priorities: With demand for student travel at a near standstill, we’ve turned our focus to building out more features in our platform. We don’t expect much to change in the first half of 2021 and are really looking towards the spring of 2022 for group travel to bounce back (pending a vaccine).

Hotailors

  • Highlights: We have taken advantage of the downturn in business travel and used this lull to develop our market offer, our technology, strategic framework and human capital. Just before the world went into lockdown, we were invited to join a three-month SAP.iO Foundry San Francisco acceleration program, which we completed successfully. We built an integration between our tool – which services business travel for extended workforce – with SAP Concur and SAP Fieldglass. We’ve also created new solutions to align with the new reality, such as strengthening the “duty of care” aspect of our technology. We have also been developing an AI module, which will allow a user to find a hotel that fits their preferences a lot quicker and more precisely. Our innovation has had interest from Oracle, and we will be further developing the idea using their Cloud solution. We also raised $3 million, which has given us financial security during the pandemic and has allowed us to focus on developing our innovation and technology.
  • Priorities: Our solution is part of the digital transformation in business travel – and ironically, it’s easier to introduce it when business travel isn’t taking place. We have strengthened our sales team and prepared a three-pillar sales strategy, which we are already implementing. First, our analysis shows that small- and medium-sized companies will start traveling again quicker than corporations, therefore, we have channelled our sales efforts in this direction. We are also reaching out to companies and sectors whose employees need physical meetings and hence travel right now – for example production plants and shipowners. Second, we have created an offer for TMCs that is an annual revenue share (when these customers start travelling again), which will allow TMCs to focus their energies on their core business, while their business clients in turn will gain access to the newest travel technology that will increase their safety and reduce their travel spend. The third pillar that we have been developing is channel sales, in cooperation with our strategic partners, such as SAP, EY and Oracle. We already see traction on all abovementioned fronts, which shows we have been making the right decisions. To be able to scale our business faster and take full advantage of the current situation – and with commitment from one of our strategic partners – we are looking at running an A round in 2021.

Jet-Set Offset

  • Highlights: The global pandemic highlighted the climate effects of travel, as we witnessed firsthand the drastic reductions in emissions and short-term environmental benefits when air travel halted. This has increased consumer awareness about carbon emissions from flying, and as we return to flying, Jet-Set Offset is making it easy for travelers to be climate positive. At the start of 2020, we participated in the SAP.iO Foundry San Francisco B2B travel technology accelerator, with six other early-stage enterprise startups. This led to Jet-Set Offset becoming an SAP Concur partner, and building the first enterprise carbon offset option for SAP Concur customers. Jet-Set Offset is now powering the technology and marketing behind The Good Traveler — a sustainable travel brand started by San Diego Airport Authority and now used by over 20 of the most climate-aligned airports in the country. We’re looking forward to forming even more industry partnerships as we work toward a decarbonized future for aviation. We’ve also developed a partnership with Bluesource, the leading developer of offset projects throughout North America.
  • Priorities: In 2021, our top priority is the official launch of our green flight booking technology. We’ve spent the last several months building a decision support tool for point of booking that provides eco-conscious travelers with the opportunity to book a flight based on carbon emissions — not just price and schedule. Because carbon emissions can vary by up to 20% per flight route, this technology will provide consumers with even more data to inform their travel decisions and support our growing community of sustainable travelers and businesses. The technology also offers even more opportunity for new and exciting partnerships within the aviation industry. We’re also looking forward to growing our roster of climate-focused nonprofit partners to provide even more choices to our Jet-Set Offset users, welcoming new enterprise customers as employees begin to travel again, and fundraising to accelerate our growth and develop new technologies.

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In Foundries, Article, Portfolio News

SAP Startup Spotlight: Recotap

Recotap is an account-based marketing and advertising platform. It offers B2B marketers a better way to run personalized and multi-channel ABM campaigns. Using Recotap, marketers can make data-driven decisions to improve marketing and advertising performance and deliver better marketing ROI. In this interview, we will take a look at how Recotap works, how it is connected to SAP, and what’s next for the company.

How does Recotap work?

We offer a fully integrated and automated ABM platform that customers can use to manage their end-to-end ABM workflows. Recotap’s Identify module can help teams to quickly build the account list, which is usually a very time-consuming process. All Recotap-identified accounts come pre-loaded with purchase intent to design effective campaigns. Using our core advertising solution, marketers can precisely target their audience on social media
and major ad networks and engage them with personalized ads. They can also increase ad performance and website engagement using our smart pages module that dynamically alters web content based on the visitor profile. Lastly, Recotap can track and measure the audience interactions across ads, emails, and website activity to build an engagement score that acts as an indicator of account readiness for sales activation.

What are the customer-side requirements? Do they need special technology to use your service?

Recotap is a plug-and-play platform; if the customer has an account list, Recotap can import the data from their CRM systems. We offer out-of-the-box integration with major CRM systems, including Hubspot and Salesforce. If customers need help in building their account list, they can use the Identify module for it. They can also upload their creatives and content into Recotap and use them in advertisements.

Why did you start Recotap to begin with?

As a company, we are passionate about enabling marketing teams with relevant tools, data, and AI capabilities that can bring a significant difference to their daily job. We had a first-hand experience from our previous startups on how handicapped marketers’ roles can become in the absence of proper tools and processes, and that they often have to resort to guesswork. We want to eliminate guesswork and light up the path to success.

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In Munich, COVID-19, Foundries, Article

With a SAP collaboration and a round A underway, Pico comes out punching from Covid-19 crisis

The Israeli startup is currently working with over 60 sports teams globally from some of the biggest leagues in the world and was selected to take part in SAP’s first-ever fan experience–focused startup accelerator program.

t is no secret that there are many tech companies that benefited from Covid-19. For Haifa-based startup Pico, which has created a technology to turn engaged, anonymous sports and entertainment fans into identifiable customer profiles to support business objectives, the pandemic has not only been good for business but has helped validate what the company has been preaching for years.”Covid-19 accelerated our growth tremendously. In the last two years we were running around with our sales pitch that you have to know who your digital fans are because most of your fans are online and not at your stadium and you don’t have data about them and need to start building this database. Now it isn’t us doing the pitch, it is the teams and the leagues doing it,” Pico CEO Asaf Nevo told CTech. “Everyone in the industry now says we have to understand who these people are. They suddenly realize there is a void, sometimes of tens of millions of fans, that they are spending tens of millions of dollars a year to engage with, but have no idea who they are. In these rough times when we don’t know when people will be back at stadiums, we have to understand who they are, start monetizing them, and begin to look at digital engagement as a new revenue stream.”Pico is currently working with over 60 sports teams globally from some of the biggest leagues in the world, including the NBA’s Los Angeles Clippers, German football Bundesliga clubs Werder Bremen and Borussia Dortmund and several NHL teams.

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In Foundries, Article, New York

How these partnerships allow businesses to address global challenges

The challenges of 2020 have led many companies to expand their opportunities by partnering with other businesses, including a competitor. Several pharmaceutical giants, for example, forged partnerships to work on vaccines for the disease, while major corporations continued to come together to use their size and scale to reduce carbon emissions.

Global enterprise software company SAP has spent the year forging partnerships to address these global issues, too. Here are examples of the challenges these businesses faced and how they are being addressed.

Queen of Raw

The Queen of Raw marketplace buys and sells sustainable textiles and deadstock, which is surplus fabrics from a production run. With the aid of an unused inventory app that leverages enterprise resource planning system SAP/4HANA, they can automate the tracking and sending of unused textiles.

Using a digital supply chain, unused materials are connected with brands and buyers who didn’t have access to them before. Queen of Raw has rescued over 500 tons of unused textiles and fabrics in its marketplace since the app launched, which use over 1 billion gallons of water in the production process.

The wasted opportunity of these unused deadstock fabrics became more pronounced as Covid-19 shut down textile factories globally, according to SAP. To meet demand, more buyers turned to deadstock fabrics for their supply. The number of Queen of Raw users increased by 40% from March to July, and 80% more transactions were made on Queen of Raw from the first quarter to the second quarter.

SAP started working with Queen of Raw via the SAP.iO Foundry, which helps innovators build products. The partnership accelerated the startup on its mission for a more sustainable and efficient textiles supply chain. As Covid-19 continues impacting various industries, a shift in consumer consumption is allowing Queen of Raw to ensure a more sustainable marketplace.

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In Article, Paris, Foundries

La qualité de vie au travail, une opportunité grandissante pour les startups françaises ?

On ne vous apprend rien : la qualité de vie au travail, ou QVT, est devenue en quelques années un enjeu central pour les entreprises du monde entier. Alliée de la performance et de la marque employeur, elle est scrutée de près par les directions des ressources humaines pour attirer et retenir des collaborateur·rice·s talentueux. Les startups françaises sont de plus en plus nombreuses à proposer des solutions au service du bien-être de leurs salarié·e·s.

Lire la suite…

In Article, Inclusiveness

Venture capital funding bias: Why VC business-as-usual must change

Business as usual. For some, this is a welcome relief. On the contrary, for many underrepresented founders, when VCs utter that phrase, it’s not always welcome news. Venture capital funding bias is a very real, and very big problem in tech.

Quite candidly, as a first-generation immigrant and woman working with startups for over a decade, it’s very hard to overlook the fact that in 2020 women and people of color continue to be in the large minority when it comes to receiving VC (venture capital) funding and support.

This must change.

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In Foundries, Article, COVID-19

COVID-19 Is Transforming How We Shop For Food

t’s no surprise that grocery stores have done particularly well during the pandemic. Everyone needs to eat and stock up on dry goods. What is surprising is the way the pandemic is changing our buying habits.

People are spending less time in stores, but when they do go, they buy more. There is less human contact as people shop more online and have goods delivered. And supermarkets have become more transactional with less focus on merchandising as people want to get in and out quickly.

During a discussion about the new era of grocery retail sponsored by SAP as part of the The Retail Summit, experts from a home delivery food kit business and an unmanned grocery retailer shared insights and new developments.

Corona cohorts

Robert Grieg-Gran, Co-Founder of Mindful Chef, UK’s highest rated home-delivered recipe box, recounted how the team sat down to make some strategic decisions at the start of the pandemic. Before Covid-19, the company was delivering 12,000 fresh food boxes a week, each containing 5 or 6 meals. When the crisis hit, people stopped eating out, and cooking at home was the only option. Panic buying emptied supermarket shelves, supply chains were disrupted, and competitors were closing their doors. Suddenly, Mindful Chef was delivering 35,000 boxes per week. 

“We asked ourselves, what could we do differently, so people could access fresh food when they need it most,” Grieg-Gran explained. The team was determined to keep their doors open throughout. This meant dropping the menu, increasing the supply chain lead time, and making lots of last-minute substitutions.

“Was the service amazing? No. Was the supply chain perfect? No. But we thought it was important for our customers to get something, rather than us to just shut our doors,” says the chef from Devon. “We added new packing staff, expanded our relationships with our warehouse and delivery partners to scale the business, and maintained ownership of our end-to-end fulfillment process.”

The strategy paid off. People who signed up in March have become repeat customers. “We call them our Corona Cohorts,” says Grieg-Gran with a grin. “They come back because they know they’ll get what they want. After all, food is still a very intimate thing. You’re going to put it inside your body, so you need to trust the people you buy it from.”

Technology and data analytics play a key role in the business. Mindful Chef’s customers expect the team to curate options, so they don’t have to think about what to cook. Data science makes it possible to give each customer the best recommendation because they won’t see menu options they don’t like. The company uses machine learning models to figure out what customers like based on their purchasing histories.

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In Article, Berlin, New York, Foundries

Startups Are Re-Defining Cybersecurity As A Driver For Growth

Imagine a world where businesses execute strategies without worrying about securing data. Now imagine a world where fast paced cybersecurity capabilities enable trusted data to become a source for growth. Guess what? Both are possible today.

A lot of ink has been spilled over data protection and now that National Cybersecurity Awareness Month is here, it’s high time we underscore the importance of secure data becoming a growth driver.

According to a 2020 Accenture report, on average, it makes sense for organizations to look beyond their four walls to protect their ecosystems since cybersecurity programs actively protect only 60 percent of an organization’s business ecosystem. Considering 40 percent of breaches come via this route, organizations don’t have the luxury of being too complacent. This may be why 2019 saw $10 billion in privacy and security company investments at an all-time high, according to Crunchbase. Let’s take a closer look at what’s driving this.

Addressing security gaps

While enterprises are overburdened with privacy laws (GDPR and CCPA), complex attacks, and increasingly sophisticated attackers, means cybersecurity startups are more proactively addressing the need for data protection. This is accomplished by providing best of breed point solutions to address security gaps not easily addressed by slower incumbent security solutions offering broader suites of often poorly integrated features. In the process, they are also helping manage enterprise IT complexities, minimize risk, comply with new regulations and allow for more nimble business processes that can expand opportunities beyond traditional industry boundaries and drive revenue growth, including the pursuit of new digital business models.

Speaking of new business models, enterprises are either already operating on-prem or considering how they can move to the cloud. By aligning with cybersecurity startups, enterprises can focus more on what they are good at while also gaining the agility to align and refine strategic planning to make a more secure transformation to the cloud.

How to thwart evolving threats

Let’s face it. Technology and the threats that often keep IT departments and executives alike up at night are both consistently evolving. As a result, cybersecurity startups often times have more laser-focus when it comes to attracting top talent to tap next-generation technologies (AI, machine learning, blockchain, etc.) to solve specific security problems which can be complimentary to existing security solutions. Thus, startups can help enterprises securely scale, be more relevant in the market and be more responsive when it comes to vulnerabilities/threats tapping the latest innovation.

Having more openness toward outside innovation in today’s volatile global economy should further validate the breadth of opportunity for cybersecurity innovation. Why? There is clearly a need for simple and effective ways to create, enforce, and monitor our security policies/controls across multi-cloud and even hybrid environments. Ideally, this functionality can help businesses aggregate vast amounts of data more quickly, remain more agile and avoid downtime which can hurt operations, reputation and revenue.

Make no mistake. We need to move the typical thought process on security away from the notion that cyberthreats are only an external issue. In fact, it’s quite the opposite case and yet another reason cybersecurity innovation must continue to evolve.

Verizon’s 2019 Insider Threat Report found that 57% of database breaches include insider threats and the majority, 61%, of those employees are not in leadership positions when they compromise customer data. This only strengthens the idea that making sure your digital operations are secure, scalable, compliant and interoperable is crucial not just your IT department but to compliance officers as well as those in sustainability, procurement, finance and strategy alike. Thus, collaborating with security startups is more important than ever in a world being forced to increasingly operate remotely due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

I would be remiss not to mention that data is increasingly valuable, and the backbone to AI, so tapping next-generation cybersecurity technologies is no longer a nice have. It’s a requirement to secure data and leverage it for growth opportunities. At least it should be for the modern enterprise that will witness over 500 billion connected things by 2030.

Impact of data and analytics

Due to the advancement of the internet of things, data is being used like never before in human history. The ability to safeguard data privacy, create new intelligent applications for IoT and also use data to predict next generation applications opens the door for startups to help manage complexities in IoT systems, especially as cloud computing moves closer and closer to edge computing.

This is why SAP.iO Foundry Berlin just kicked off its Data & Analytics cohort and why SAP.iO is proud to accelerate cybersecurity innovation through companies such as BigID, a SAP.iO Fund portfolio company focused on helping organizations know their data for privacy, protection and perspective. We have also recently welcomed LISNR, a startup focused on contactless authentication using ultrasonic sound verification, to our SAP.iO Foundry New York Fall Cohort.

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In Foundries, Article, Portfolio News, Technologies

SAP Startup Spotlight: ARpalus

SAP invests in a lot of promising startups, and it’s sometimes hard to keep track of all of them. E-3 Magazine has selected the most interesting companies to showcase in our SAP Startup Spotlight Series. In this article, we will take a look at ARpalus.

E-3 Magazine talked to ARpalus about what its solution has to offer, how it relates to existing SAP systems, and what’s next for the company.

What exactly does ARpalus offer?

ARpalus helps CPG companies and retailers optimize their in-store operations and product availability using real-time computer-vision on tablets and smartphones to monitor store availability issues such as missing products or out of stock planogram compliance. Let’s assume, for example, that a retail chain with 200 stores generates annual revenue of US$5 billion, and at any given time, there is a 5 percent out of stock (OoS). If this chain’s assortment is 40,000 SKUs, 5 percent means 2,000 SKUs that are constantly missing from the shelves. Let’s assume that this OoS problem leads to a 2 percent loss of sale; this translates to a huge loss of US$100M in potential revenues. At ARpalus, we believe that the unique combination of computer vision and augmented reality is key to a more efficient and automated retail space. Perfect retail execution eliminates manual or semi-manual methods that are commonly used today among CPGs and retailers. At first, we help our customers get visibility regarding the daily stores’ operations by the granularity of a shelf, category, SKU, store, or geographical location. This helps us better understand the trends inside the organization and to then generate recommendations. In a later stage, we generate recommendations directly to employees’ devices, based on data from nearby stores – all in real time.

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In Article, Portfolio News

Joanna Riley of Censia Named as Top 10 Most Influential Women in Technology by Analytics Insights

Analytics Insight has announced ‘The 10 Most Influential Women in Technology 2020’ in its October magazine issue. The issue is the fifth volume focusing on cutting-edge solutions.

The magazine issue recognizes ten trailblazing women who have revamped the technology landscape and brought a formidable change into the society using disruptive offerings and solutions.

Joanna Riley is the CEO and Co-Founder of Censia. Prior to founding Censia, Joanna was the Co-founder and CEO of 1-Page, a SaaS solutions provider in the Talent Acquisition sector. In 2014 she led 1-Page to a successful IPO and onto the S&P/ASX 300 by 2016.

Censia is an SAP Endorsed App and available on SAP App Center

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In Foundries, Press, Article, San Francisco, Portfolio News

SAP Kicks Off SAP.iO Foundry San Francisco for “Future of Work” Startups

SAP SE (NYSE: SAP) earlier last week kicked off its virtual accelerator program focused on human resources (HR) technology and the future of work, at SAP.iO Foundry San Francisco. The program is offered in conjunction with SAP SuccessFactors solutions, providing world-leading cloud-based, people-focused HR technology.

Over the next 12 weeks, SAP will accelerate six early-stage HR technology startups that are focused on recruiting, talent and team management, well-being and collaborative learning for human resources.

The selected startups will have access to curated mentorship from SAP executives, exposure to SAP technology and application programming interfaces (APIs), and opportunities to collaborate with SAP customers. The program will culminate at the SAP.iO Cohort Demo Day in December 2020.

“With digital transformation changing the way people work in real time, and a much greater number of employees performing their jobs remotely, we see a trend with our customers to embrace new technologies to ensure employees have the necessary tools to succeed and remain attractive for their employers,” SAP SuccessFactors President Jill Popelka said. “We are looking forward to working with these companies to provide our customers with their innovations as part of the SAP SuccessFactors ecosystem.”

With five out of six startups founded or led by underrepresented entrepreneurs, SAP.iO continues to follow its 2019 SAP.iO No Boundaries initiative and fulfil its commitment to accelerate more than 200 startups around the world.

The SAP.iO Foundry San Francisco program includes the following startups:

  • Cloverleaf uses behavioral tools to provide ongoing insights into team effectiveness and provide customized, contextually relevant coaching to improve performance.
  • Crosschq has pioneered Human Intelligence Hiring, the next essential cloud software category, which includes reference checking and robust talent analytics to help build diverse teams.
  • Cuéntame is the first online mental health platform for Spanish-speaking employees. Cuéntame provides employees access to digital content, meditations and video therapy with certified psychologists, promoting daily mental health care and emotional well-being.
  • Knockri is an AI skills–based assessment tool that reduces bias and scientifically shortlists top-performing candidates to interview.
  • Landit is a personalized career pathing technology that increases the success and engagement of women and diverse groups in the workplace. The platform offers a turnkey solution to enable companies to attract, develop and retain their talent.
  • Mathison is a diversity talent marketplace that uses AI to help employers find candidates for their most important roles. It centralizes the talent network of hundreds of organizations serving underrepresented communities.
In Foundries, Article

How Startups Can Turn Innovation Into Strategic Value

Even though the term innovation remains a buzzword du jour, it can also unequivocally change lives in a split second. Case in point: The world pivoting to digital strategies sooner than planned due to COVID-19. Digital innovation is now influencing the employee and customer experience faster than ever before. But to remain resilient and agile during volatile times, B2B companies are leaning on the startup community to take innovation to the next level.

Working with entrepreneurs beyond the four walls of your business brings a different flavor of technology to the table which helps B2B sectors digitize. And that’s a real value driver for those considering how training employees, implementing internal policies, retaining talent, ensuring well-being, and creating successful customer experiences can more strategically optimize results throughout an employee’s workforce journey and the entire customer lifecycle.

Sure, building third-party application programming interfaces (APIs) on top of existing inventions has been around for 20 years. But the global volatility emerging from COVID-19 has shown corporate leaders their businesses need to be more nimble to create collaborative and inclusive work environments while also delivering optimal outcomes and experiences for customers.

Clearly, employees and consumers alike want real improvements to keep up with the accelerated pace of change the digital economy is mercilessly creating. This is likely why the use of third-party APIs from startups is on the rise. B2B companies simply can’t afford to overlook the power of startups to not only attract top talent and keep them, but also improve digital commerce experience capabilities. Startup innovation must be seen as a value driver and strategic engine of B2B growth.

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