In a recently released report, CB Insights ranked the top 25 most successful startup accelerators based on their portfolio strength and performance, using the 2020 investment class as a basis. SAP.iO ranked #6 on their overall list and #1 out of the corporates on their list.
SAP’s Global Diversity & Inclusion Office has launched the 2022 Diversity and Inclusion Report. The report provides a transparent view of the progress made and highlights some of the key wins in the past year, such as pledging to support at least 200 startups founded or led by underrepresented entrepreneurs by 2023 and achieving the goal six months ahead of schedule!
This report outlines SAP’s ongoing efforts to foster a culture of inclusion and integrate diversity into our strategy. By sharing this information, we hope to provide colleagues with a transparent view of our D&I progress in 2022, and to inspire others. The Global Diversity and Inclusion Office invites everyone to join in co-creating a workplace where employees feel a sense of belonging, can share their unique perspectives, and are helping to make a better, more equitable world for all.
The Mom Project, the leading platform for moms to discover their economic potential, announced today an $80 million Series C funding round led by growth investment firm Leeds Illuminate. Additional participants include existing investors 7GC, Initialized Capital, OCA Ventures, Citi, High Alpha and Grotech Ventures alongside Silicon Valley Bank.
The Series C round represents the largest global investment ever made in female workforce technology.
“It’s long past time we stop underestimating and undervaluing mothers in the workforce,” said Stephanie Nieman, Managing Director at Leeds Illuminate. “We’re investing in The Mom Project because we believe the potential for continued growth within this business is extraordinary.”
The new funds will accelerate the company’s goal to connect moms on its platform with more than $1 billion in economic opportunity in the next two years through investments in product development, distribution and team growth.
“We’ve demonstrated to the market that betting on moms is good business,” said Allison Robinson, The Mom Project founder and CEO. “We’ve seen 20x growth over the last three years and are eager to leverage this momentum and the trust and equity we’ve earned with moms and our customers and partners to continue building and expanding the reach of category-defining solutions that reshape how work evolves to meet the needs of modern families.”
The investment comes at a crucial time for moms and their families, who were some of the hardest hit during the coronavirus pandemic. In 2020, 2.3 million women left the U.S. workforce—either through job loss or being forced to quit in order to care for their children—leading to the lowest levels of women in the labor force since the 1980s, prompting Vice President Kamala Harris to declare “a national emergency.”
The Mom Project has witnessed business leaders stepping up to the challenge, with companies identifying The Mom Project’s suite of hiring, upskilling and retention solutions as an effective way to solve pressing labor shortages while also addressing longer-term concerns around attrition, skill gaps and the need for greater diversity and empathy in the workplace.
Alexa Gorman, senior vice president and global head of SAP.iO Foundries and Intrapreneurship at SAP, was featured earlier this year by Handelsblatt, the German business newspaper, as one of the “100 female leaders moving Germany forward.”
After years working in business development and strategy roles, Gorman took on joint responsibility for SAP’s startup acceleration programs at the start of May, along with the intrapreneurship team that supports ambitious innovators within the company.
The SAP.iO Foundries program was created as a strategic business unit in 2017. “We saw a need to work more closely with startups in a curated way, as startup innovation was becoming increasingly important for our customers in their digital transformation journeys,” Gorman says. “With SAP.iO Foundries, we are offering them the innovative power of pre-selected startups whose solutions can integrate seamlessly with SAP solutions. And while most of the startups are at an early stage, we do a lot of due diligence to ensure that they will be long-term, viable partners of SAP.”
Gorman joined the team in 2017 and set up SAP.iO Foundry Berlin, the first of its kind in Europe. Located across 10 locations today, SAP.iO Foundries make up a global network of top-tier startup programs, including accelerators, that can enable startups to build and scale innovative software solutions that deliver value to SAP customers.
Over the past four years, Gorman and her team have been working with over 330 early-stage startups to bring them into the SAP ecosystem and make them the next generation of SAP partners.
“We encourage the startups to use or integrate with SAP technology and support them in doing so,” she explains. “In exchange, the startups expand their ability to scale more quickly through access to our customers and fast-track support to becoming an SAP partner. Thus, we can ensure that our customers have access to the latest and best startup innovation that increases the return on their investments in SAP.”
Imagine getting immersed in your next corporate training program the same way you’ve binged watched your favorite Netflix series. That’s the kind of engaging employee training experience that startup Hardskills has created.
Unlike traditional formats that rely on talking head lectures, Hardskills training programs are more akin to cinematic productions, featuring professional directors and actors who replicate real-world situations culturally aligned to global audiences. The objective is to serve up personalized content that builds someone’s human skills. As digital natives increasingly dominate the workforce, it turns out that skills such as being open to new ideas, critical thinking, and influencing people are prized just as much as technical know-how in the enterprise arena.
“Our digital learning platform delivers the content, technology, administration, and metrics that provide personalized, interactive training for people to gain the behavioral and cognitive skills they need,” said Shoba Purushothaman, co-founder and COO at Hardskills. “With data-driven assessments, we deliver personalized coaching based on the skills graph of each employee.”
Paradox, the conversational recruiting software company helping global brands like Unilever and McDonald’s streamline the hiring process through automation with a human touch, announced its newest product, Experience Assistant, earned the top honor in HR Executive annual best HR technology solutions awards.
Experience Assistant was selected because it fundamentally transforms how candidates interact with a company — instantly turning any existing career site into a dynamic content-driven and hyper-personalized interaction on both mobile and desktop devices. While Paradox’s flagship recruiting assistant, Olivia, has built a reputation for helping global recruiting teams get work done, Experience Assistant focuses on the candidate.
“For years, the holy grail of candidate experience has been true 1:1 personalization at scale, but it’s been elusive at best,” said Aaron Matos, Paradox Founder and CEO. “We have a vision for the next-generation of consumer-grade recruiting software — and Experience Assistant builds on that vision. We don’t believe employers should be forced to overhaul their career site to create unique, dynamic experiences. Now, they don’t have to.”
Each year, HR Executive top product award recognizes the most innovative new technology solutions that are helping business leaders meet the critical HR needs of their organizations. The staff of HR Executive selects the Top HR Products each year after performing an extensive evaluation of the submissions with help from a panel of industry experts.
Vienna-based marketing analytics startup Adverity has raised $120 million in an equity funding round led by SoftBank Group Corp.’s Vision Fund 2, helping it to tap growing demand for consumer data. The startup sees an opportunity in allowing sellers to improve their marketing as Apple Inc. and Google make it harder for brands to track consumers, increasing the value of other sources of information.
“It’s a great opportunity for marketing teams to get ahead again because it’s leveling the field for everybody,” Chief Executive Officer and co-founder Alexander Igelsbock said in an interview.
Established in 2015, Adverity says it pulls in data from more than 500 sources to offer analysis and insights on a brand’s marketing efforts across platforms such as Amazon.com Inc. and ByteDance Ltd.’s TikTok.
Tell us about the professional journey that took you where you are today. What major lessons did you learn along the way?
In high school before I went to college, I did not know what to study, so my dad suggested computer science. He made that suggestion because in high school I would spend a lot of time at the house talking to my friends on AOL instant messenger and he assumed I had a love for computers. I don’t think he knew I was actually just chatting with friends. I had never heard of computer science before, so I was willing to enroll in the introductory computer science class during the first semester freshman year at university. What I liked about the class was it helped me lean into my creativity side. Back then we would literally start with a black screen and then type sophisticated text and generate a computer program. I loved how programming allowed us to create something from nothing. The course also helped me learn how to have a very structured way of thinking. In programming, one needs to consider all details for any computer program to be successful. After surviving the introductory class, I decided to major in computer science. To be honest it was an extremely challenging journey. First of all, my academic advisor literally told me he didn’t think computer science was a good fit for me. I remember being so angry he would make such a statement without even knowing me and that frustration fueled my motivation to graduate with a computer science degree. Each course was harder than the previous and sometimes I would work on computer programs for 12 hours straight. I think that is how I developed a work hard, play hard personality. Many weekends I would literally be at the library all day and then come back in the evening and take shots with my roommates before going out only to wake up in the morning and study some more.
Close to graduation I was interviewing for typical software engineering roles at companies like Microsoft, Merrill Lynch and Cerner. One day I saw a poster for a corporate presentation for Bain and Company serving free catering from Panera Bread. Back then most corporate presentations served pizza, so I was over the moon for an opportunity for Panera and registered for the presentation. Before then I had never heard of consulting. However, the presenter explained opportunities to work on distinct projects for several industries, travel and interact with external clients. I realized a consulting job was a better fit for my personality than the software engineering roles I was applying for. However, after such a challenging college experience with computer science I was not comfortable completely throwing away my computer science knowledge. Therefore, I targeted tech consulting firms and ending up at a supply chain tech consulting firm called Manhattan Associate in Atlanta.
I had never lived in a proper city before and I did not know anyone in Atlanta so I was extremely scared. However, I reached out to my network to introduce me to people they knew in Atlanta, signed up for networking events etc. and before I knew it Atlanta was my home. That was the first time I was truly independent financially and socially and it was an amazing feeling. I had to reinvent myself several more times in my career as I moved around to new places such as New York City, Chicago, Philadelphia and Singapore.
Consulting taught me how to quickly get up to speed as I started new projects and ask the right questions to understand different management styles for each project manager I had to work with.
After a few years I wanted to try a new professional challenge, but I did not know what I wanted to do. I learned about leadership development rotational problems and figured those programs were good ways to quickly learn about different roles within a company to later decide which roles are the most interesting. After more research I understood most leadership development rotational programs recruit from full time MBA programs, so I decided to apply and ended up quitting my job and moved to NYC for school full time.
Deciding to go so business school was one of the best decisions I have ever made. I met the most interesting and diverse group of people I have ever known, I acquired essential business acumen and I went on 7 international trips that helped to broaden my perspective. I also learned to make my goals as specific as possible so that they are easy to achieve. For example, in my application I said I wanted to intern at Citibank between years 1 and 2, do a pro-bono consulting project for Alvin Ailey and join the leadership team for the Association for Hispanic and Black Business students. I am so proud to say I was able to accomplish all those goals.
Earlier this year, Adweek and SAP.iO debuted The Business of Marketing podcast, a new series where listeners learned from company leaders and innovators on how CMOs work collaboratively with their C-suite partners to drive business transformation.
Over the course of the first season, we sat down with 17 executives from across the marketing landscape and covered topics such as responding to a global pandemic and using data to scale your business featuring leaders from brands like Walmart, Unilever, Mastercard, Square, Rolling Stone and NBCUniversal.
Today, we are excited to announce the release date for Season 2 of The Business of Marketing and the initial lineup of guests.
Season 2 will kick off July 29 with guest Alexa Gorman, svp and global head of foundries and intrapreneurship at SAP.iO, sitting down with Adweek’s chief innovation officer and host of The Business of Marketing, Toby Daniels, for a conversation about how to drive business transformation through startup acceleration.
Provider of software and advisory services for post-subsidy renewable energy sales, Pexapark, has announced it has added a new pioneering feature which accounts for site- and technology-specific production to its renewable energy pricing system, PexaQuote.
PexaQuote currently supports developers and investors managing over 250 GW of global renewable energy investments as the industry pushes further into a subsidy-free future. The renewable energy PPA market is expected to exceed 10 GW this year, with over 5.5 GW already signed across 68 deals since the start of 2021. According to Pexapark’s ‘PPA Times’ report, this rapid growth is being driven by the entry of large corporate buyers, which are setting new records for volume of PPAs across Europe.
However, as the market is becoming more mature and offerings more structured, many renewable energy companies must now deal with increased analytics demands to master the complexity of PPAs, and thereby reduce structuring and execution losses amidst heavy competition for limited liquidity. Renewable energy companies have also continued to battle against opacity around price data in the market, limiting their ability to accurately value potential PPAs for new assets. Among others, site- and technology-specific characteristics are key price determinants when assessing the correct market value in any PPA transaction.
PexaQuote accounts for and adjusts prices in line with all relevant factors such as a given site’s local weather properties and production profile based on type of renewable energy technology in line with the chosen PPA structure.
VNTANA, the industry leader in 3D Content Management Software (CMS), announced the launch of VNTANA’s new 3D Digital Showroom, which allows brands to instantly and easily create secure, shareable 3D digital showrooms with their existing designs. The 3D Digital Showroom looks like a traditional line sheet with interactive 3D versions of products.
By using 3D versions of products, brands can showcase products even before samples have been produced saving thousands of dollars and providing a differentiated experience for their customers.
The VNTANA platform has patented algorithms to ensure 3D models load fast with the highest quality images. The platform generates a sharable link and QR code to make sharing easy. Each file holds metadata, so all product information, such as fabric and style number is tied to the 3D file. A 3D digital showroom can be created in minutes instead of weeks by following a simple set of steps.
DataRobot, the leader in enterprise AI, today announced the acquisition of Zepl, a cloud data science and analytics platform. The acquisition — unveiled today at DataRobot’s virtual conference, AI Experience Worldwide — will unlock new capabilities within DataRobot’s enterprise AI platform for the world’s most advanced data scientists.
“We have always known that to lead the AI market, we must embrace all creators of AI systems, from analysts and citizen data scientists who prefer using a GUI to advanced data scientists who love to code,” said Dan Wright, CEO of DataRobot. “Through the addition of Zepl, we now give advanced data scientists more flexibility to use our enterprise AI platform within their existing workflows, including the ability to use their own code. By incorporating Zepl into the DataRobot platform, we plan to further democratize data science across every enterprise and significantly accelerate our code-centric roadmap.”
Zepl was founded by the creators of Apache Zeppelin, an open source notebook for data and analytics that has been downloaded more than 500,000 times by data scientists from some of the biggest brands in the world. Zepl provides a self-service data science notebook solution for advanced data scientists to do exploratory, code-centric work in Python, R, and Scala with enterprise-ready features such as collaboration, versioning, and security.
DataRobot will incorporate Zepl as a cloud-native, self-service notebook in its enterprise AI platform to drive productivity, efficiency, and collaboration for multiple personas. This will unlock additional flexibility for data scientists who prefer to code by allowing them to write their own tasks and custom models extending the out-of-the-box capabilities provided by DataRobot. With the integration of Zepl, business analysts will be able to build models using the power of DataRobot’s automation and then collaborate with their advanced data science colleagues for additional customization if desired, all on the same platform. It will also provide a more transparent view of the code behind DataRobot blueprints, further enhancing trust and explainability within the platform.
NEW YORK, NY (May 4, 2021) — Fast Company’s 2021 World Changing Ideas Awards were announced today from a pool of more than 4,000 entries, honoring the businesses, policies, projects, and concepts that are actively engaged and deeply committed to pursuing innovation for the good of society and the planet.
Timeshifter, the creator of the world’s first technology platform for circadian timing, received an honorable mention. Timeshifter enables people to proactively “shift” their circadian clock quickly or “shift” the timing of an activity to the optimal circadian time. This gives Timeshifter the unique and patent pending ability to solve several universal and multi-billion-dollar problems.
Timeshifter has already solved jet lag with an app it launched in 2018 — now the most-downloaded and highest-rated jet lag app in the world. Later in 2021, Timeshifter will launch a new app to help shift workers optimize their sleep, alertness, health, and quality of life. At least 20% of the global labor force are shift workers, changing to a new schedule soon after they adapted to the previous one, or never adapting at all. Timeshifter has also begun strategic work in the field of peak performance and chronotherapeutics that aims to treat illnesses according to circadian rhythms.
Our circadian clock controls almost every biological system in our bodies — from our sleep-wake cycle and mood and performance patterns to our metabolic, immune, and reproductive systems, and even many of our genes: By including Timeshifter as an honoree, Fast Company highlights the growing consensus that circadian science is the new frontier in human performance and personalized medicine.
ClearMetal, the leading SaaS platform for international freight visibility, dynamic transport planning and customer experience, today announced it has been recognized by Gartner as one of the four vendors in the 2021 Gartner “International Visibility Business Process Context: ‘Magic Quadrant for Real-Time Transportation Visibility Platforms’” report.1
According to this Gartner report, “While many real-time transportation visibility platforms (RTTVPs) have expanded capabilities beyond core domestic road transport and now include pieces of, or all, international visibility as well, this research is focused on internationally focused vendors that are not included in the Magic Quadrant for Real-Time Transportation Visibility Platforms.”1
“ClearMetal is excited to be named one of the four solution providers recognized in the International Visibility Business Process Context of Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for RTTVPs. We believe this recognition validates ClearMetal’s position as a leader in door-to-door international freight visibility. The world’s largest shippers trust the quality and accuracy of our data and rely on our platform to provide insights about their freight in real time,” said Adam Compain, CEO of ClearMetal. “We congratulate E2open, TransVoyant and Infor for being named alongside ClearMetal in the International Visibility Business Process Context of Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for RTTVPs, as well as the over-the-road vendors featured in the Magic Quadrant.”
Goodr, a Black-owned and Atlanta-based sustainable waste management platform, has just announced that they’ve exceeded their own expectations.
In a press release announcement, it was revealed that the company raised $1.5 million in their recent Bridge to Series A funding round, which exceeded their initial goal by $500,000. Capital One Ventures were joined in this round by Backstage Capital, Unreasonable Ventures, and the Laurene Powell Jobs-helmed Emerson Collective.
“It is an extremely exciting time here at Goodr,” CEO Jasmine Crowe said in the press release announcement. “We are expanding our team, our market reach, and solving two critical problems at the same time. I welcome our new investors as part of the team as we continue to strive towards ending hunger.”
The company has already announced that they are on the hunt for a Lead Engineer, and are actively filling roles for other key executive positions. The supplemental funds will also allow them to improve their product and service offerings, increase marketing initiatives, and activate new markets.
The concept of Goodr doesn’t just cut down on food waste. Rather, it helps businesses save money on taxes, feed more people, and reduce food waste by rerouting surplus food from cafeterias and restaurants to people in need. Their food distribution services include grocery delivery, popup grocery stores, and food delivery to support food insecure communities around the United States. The company’s philosophy is simple: food insecurity is not an issue of scarcity, but of logistics.
