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SAP.iO In San Francisco, Funding Announcement, CRM & Customer Experience

FindMine Closes New Venture Round

FindMine, the leader in AI-powered dynamic content creation for brands, announced that it has closed a new venture capital funding round. Led by XSeed Capital and Underscore VC, this investment supplements a previous seed round and brings total capital investment in FindMine to $9.9 million.

Proceeds from the investment will be used to accelerate go-to-market activities and advance development of FindMine’s AI-powered content engine. Driven by predictive intelligence and merchant sales data, FindMine helps brands articulate their unique points of view to increase revenue and inventory performance across multiple sales channels – including e-commerce, email campaigns and targeted messaging, advertising and social media campaigns, and in-store applications such as kiosks, personal shopper programs and sales associates platforms.

By focusing on the content bottleneck, FindMine has created an entirely new category that addresses current shortcomings in the personalization and customer data platform (CDP) markets. The current personalization landscape has done a great job at carving out one-to-one communication channels with consumers based on their personal data. But it puts the onus on the brand to come up with content to share, resulting in the same small amount of assets being sent to every consumer/segment because marketing teams cannot create bespoke editorial content for every consumer. FindMine’s technology allows marketers to showcase unique, curated shoppable assets to every single segment and customer to improve top-line revenue with larger shopping carts and longer, more profitable customer lifecycles. Merchants use FindMine to improve bottom-line profitability and increase gross margins thanks to more effective inventory and logistics management.

“The current personalization process is broken, and one-to-one, persona-based marketing simply does not scale, because the industry forgot about one big piece of the equation: the content. We’re changing the game with AI-powered automation that can create visual, shoppable assets in milliseconds,” commented FindMine CEO Michelle Bacharach. “We’re excited about this investment because it means that we can continue to grow our platform’s ability to create highly-produced and differentiated editorial content out of thin air – empowering brands and retailers to maintain visibility with customers and other key audiences while driving both revenue and loyalty.”

Mentor Spaces Makes DEI Personal: SAP.iO Foundries Sustainability Spotlight

Chris Motley wasn’t set up to succeed. Born to an eighth grader on Chicago’s south side, the African-American boy was bright but given few advantages by society. Until, that is, a family friend mentioned to his mother the nonprofit A Better Chance, which aims to help gifted children of color get great educations. That was the break that led to opportunity. Before long, the teenaged Motley—a star student—found himself telling his story to donors at a Manhattan dinner at Cipriani that was presided over by 60 Minutes’ Ed Bradley.

“This guy approached me and said, ‘My boss and I are really interested in you working at our company,’” Motley recalls. “I said, ‘Well, what is your company?’” It was no less than Goldman Sachs. What followed was a series of big successes: a degree from Columbia, an MBA from Northwestern, and successful runs as a commodities trader and international businessman. But Motley’s latest venture may be his most challenging and rewarding: Giving other young people their own better chances.

In 2020 Motley launched a virtual mentorship platform, Mentor Spaces. Its aim: To give those traditionally shut out of top employment opportunities a way in, via meaningful conversations that build confidence and social capital. The startup also hopes thereby to help companies deliver on DEI promises. Corporations and universities are responding. UBS and T-Mobile as well as Howard University and Spelman College are among its founding members, and Motley estimates the average ROI for participating businesses is $1.5 million annually. The platform’s community includes young graduates as well as executives, HR professionals, and college administrators. Mentors and mentees are matched by interest, and interact via group sessions, one on one conversations, and threads where members are able to ask questions, advise each other and ultimately hire or get hired. A sample question company executives might receive: “What impresses you the most when you are hiring for your team?”

It’s not hard to see why Mentor Spaces appealed to SAP, whose sustainability mission includes achieving zero inequality in the workplace. It practices a “no boundaries” policy with its accelerator program SAP.iO. According to Kange Kaneene, vice president for SAP.iO Foundries in North and Latin America and the Caribbean, “that means we prioritize companies founded or led by people whose share of venture capital funding in the technology industry is proportionally less than their share of the population.” The accelerator offered Motley a spot in an SAP.iO cohort called “Future of Work,” in San Francisco.

For Motley, the program was valuable not only for the months-long, ahem, mentorship opportunity, but because it’s designed to create a longer-term partnership between SAP and Mentor Spaces. Kaneene explains: “We’re building an ecosystem of startups that extend the value of our solutions to drive sustainable impact.” How that looks in practice: Upon completion of the accelerator, each startup is integrated into an SAP solution best suited to it, so SAP clients can gain seamless access to the startup’s products or services. The Foundry experience wasn’t always easy, Motley says. “We do what they call Dolphin Tank, which is the nice version of Shark Tank. You have three minutes to pitch to huge SAP clients like PepsiCo, and everyone gives you feedback on what could have been improved. Ours was, ‘It’s great to know what you do. But what would be better is if you gave us a case study. Your whole pitch should be in the form of showing us what you did for a customer.” Today, he says, “That was tremendous feedback. Because our ratio of show versus tell was inverted, and now it’s not.”

Bidgely Wins 2022-2023 Future Ready Organization Award by India’s Economic Times

Bidgely has been named a winner of The Economic Times’ 2022-2023 Future Ready Organization Award. The Economic Times Future-Ready Organizations listing honors companies that have successfully implemented organizational processes that are more flexible, integrated, resilient and ultimately more human in order to thrive in today’s market. Future-Ready companies are identified as those that are mission-driven; operate on speed and simplicity; and have a proven ability to learn, innovate and foster valuable ideas.

“We are honored to be recognized by The Economic Times for our dedication to quality and innovation – not only for the solutions we offer to customers but also for our internal processes and programs,” said Abhay Gupta, CEO of Bidgely. “By thoughtfully creating a culture that supports employee empowerment and business strategies that are risk-proof, we are future ready.”

Bidgely was specifically recognized for its people-first culture, with an 85 percent employee retention over the last year, as well as a series of updated policies to financially and emotionally support the company’s extended workforce during the Covid-19 crisis. In the first half of 2022, Bidgely introduced its next-generation disaggregation technology, further enabling utilities and energy providers to itemize energy consumption usage down to the appliance level for a 360-degree view of their customers and grid load. Key components of Bidgely’s UtilityAI™ Platform feature solar and electric vehicle (EV) identification, personalized home energy reports, high bill projections and targeted recommendations for energy efficiency.

Meet Wisy, the Cloud Wars Startup and Innovator of 2022

The Innovation Path at Cloud Wars Expo featured cloud-native startups; judges selected a short-list of five top competitors, and a Cloud Wars Startup of the Year. The overall winner was Wisy.

Wisy is featured on Episode 22 of the Cloud Wars Horizon Minute — a video which features news and commentary hosted by Acceleration Economy analyst Tom Smith. Each episode provides insights into one or more Innovation Accelerators on the Cloud Wars Horizon. This is a special episode focused on the Innovation Path at Cloud Wars Expo and the winner, Wisy, which was profiled previously along with the other participants in the event.

Watch Episode Here…

SAP.iO In CRM & Customer Experience, San Francisco, Tel Aviv

Wisy Retail Intelligence App Headlines Cloud Wars Expo Innovation Stage

Cloud Wars Expo Day Three concluded with a flurry of quick-hit presentations from industry startups on the expo floor’s aptly-named Innovation Stage. An array of services, apps, and tools were presented to a panel of four Acceleration Economy experts, including Cloud Wars Founder Bob Evans. From on-demand spare parts to products designed to streamline and diversify hiring processes, the focus of each presentation aimed to solve one of today’s universal business challenges.

Each presenter was held under a hard cap of just three minutes to present their unique business solutions, with five — Cloudthread, Crosschq, Insite, Najaxa, and Specright — earning their way onto the judges’ designated “short list” and qualifying for $20,000 of additional marketing aid each from the Acceleration Economy platform.

How Landit Aims to Help Women and Diverse Groups Grow Their Careers

Landit is part of a profile series featuring startups participating in the Innovation Path at Cloud Wars Expo, that took place June 28-30 in San Francisco. several companies on the Cloud Wars Expo Innovation Path have developed software to automate and improve employee recruitment and retention. Landit has a system that’s unique for the level of focus it has taken: It’s designed to increase engagement, retention, and mobility for women and diverse talent populations.

According to Lisa Skeete Tatum, the company’s founder and CEO, these groups are underrepresented when it comes to career growth opportunities — specifically, access to those opportunities and the people who can make them available.

“So many organizations are focused on intake but equally, if not more, important is what happens once people get in the door,” Skeete Tatum says. “Do they stay? Thrive? Progress?”

Landit’s objective is to “democratize and drive performance and career success so that work is working for everyone,” she adds.

The company develops SaaS software and offers personalized career coaching services. It offers both to corporate customers and individuals.

Landit is part of the sap.io startup accelerator program. It has $19 million in venture capital funding and was launched in 2015. Landit is headquartered in New York; the company does not disclose its number of employees.

Constructor Introduces Quizzes to Increase Personalization for Online Retailers

Constructor, the company building revenue-driving on-site search and discovery solutions, today introduced Constructor Quizzes, a new offering that provides e-commerce retailers with the capability to ask customers questions while they shop online.

Online brands and marketplaces lose $18B annually in cart abandonment. E-retailer websites are set up with a one-size-fits-all approach that guesses and suggests instead of asking shoppers questions like a sales associate would in-store. The Constructor Quizzes on-site questionnaire enables retailers to collect detailed information about customers like their lifestyle activities, shopping preferences, and health and wellness goals to guide search and discovery results across their e-commerce site. As a result, online retailers can drive more conversions and revenue, build stronger relationships, and reduce time to purchase.

“Customers are stuck in analysis paralysis, which hinders their decision-making process during checkout, and retailers have a big part to play in this,” explained Eli Finkelshteyn, CEO and founder of Constructor. “Constructor Quizzes directly applies customer feedback to create individualized experiences for shoppers, narrowing options to only show them the best suited items and driving greater revenue as a result.”

Retailers leveraging Constructor Quizzes can customize the questions they ask customers and the type of data they collect through the solution. Then, leveraging AI and machine learning through the rest of Constructor’s holistic search and discovery platform, answers to the questionnaire create a highly specific, personalized shopping experience that is unique to each customer. Retailers deliver the most personalized results leading to stronger on-site shopping experiences that drive site conversions.

The CEO of Gapsquare, Dr Zara Nanu, receives MBE

Dr Zara Nanu, CEO and Co-Founder of Gapsquare, part of XpertHR, has been awarded an MBE in the Queen’s Jubilee Birthday Honours list for services to tackling global workplace inequalities and promoting fairness and inclusion.

Zara’s commitment to ensuring diversity and inclusion began in her native Moldova. It was here that she worked to bring an end to exploitative people trafficking rings which forced women into sweatshops. It’s with this same determination that Zara has sought to bring equality to the workplace by founding Gapsquare in 2016; harnessing data and AI technology to help organisations put a stop to biases and prejudicial practices preventing equality.

Gapsquare provides business leaders with actionable insights about their company’s existing pay gaps through their flagship software FairPay® Pro. The organisation has helped over 80 organisations across the UK create fairer workplaces, including working with Wieden + Kennedy, Condé Nast and Accenture.

Zara is taking Gapsquare’s mission to end pay inequality global, working with business leaders to get pay equity on the agenda and implementing the pay technology in the United States.

A leading voice in the campaign for positive change and action, Zara is Chair of the Women in Business Task Group and a member of the Global Future Council on Equity and Social Justice at the World Economic Forum. She has also been recently appointed to the Shinkwin Commission focusing on diversity and inclusion in the workplace.

Zara Nanu, CEO and Co-founder at Gapsquare, from XpertHR, comments: “From my work in Moldova to using technology to tackle inequality with Gapsquare, I have been focused on creating a better world of work, one that has fairness at its core and is not held back by patriarchal structures. It is an honour to have this work recognised and I am incredibly grateful for the nomination. It’s heartening to see this work, and the values it represents, placed firmly on the national agenda.

“But our work is by no means complete, the impact of the pandemic means that the time it will take to close the global gender gap has increased by a generation from 99.5 years to 135.6 years. That is why I am focused on change at a global level, bringing Gapsquare to the US, and continuing to work with our leaders in the UK to deliver meaningful change for a fairer and more inclusive future of work.

Automated Coaching Platform Cloverleaf Raises $9M in Series A funding to help organizations retain and grow teams

Cloverleaf, an automated coaching technology designed to bring out the best in workers and teams, has closed $9M in Series A funding. The round was led by Origin Ventures with the participation of ScOp Ventures, Mucker Capital, Queen City Angels, Airwing Ventures, 1809 and the JobsOhio Growth Capital Fund.

“Since we debuted in 2018 we’ve seen tremendous positive feedback from teams that use Cloverleaf – over 94 percent of our users reported improved performance,” says CEO Darrin Murriner. “With this new round of funding we can continue to build on that momentum and scale up on both our offerings and functionality, which will help grow our userbase and create more diverse and well-rounded coaching products for current and prospective Cloverleaf users.”

The Cloverleaf team, led by co-founders CEO Darrin Murriner and COO Kirsten Moorefield, is on a mission to help companies develop and retain staff and teams by unleashing their best work. By leveraging respected psychology data from behavioral assessments such as DISC and Enneagram, Cloverleaf helps coach team members through communication and collaboration tools they use every day, including Google Workplace, Microsoft 365, Slack, and Microsoft Teams.

Major organizations like Monster Energy, HP Enterprise and Kroger have turned to Cloverleaf to scale coaching and maximize employee talent. The platform also helps workplace consultants and coaches access unique insights to the way people and teams work, and helps sustain and scale their practice.

“At the heart of Cloverleaf’s mission is to provide managers and teams with tools to help them develop team cohesion, efficiency and understanding,” says COO Kirsten Moorefield. “Cloverleaf is designed with every aspect of the employee life cycle in mind – from hiring to mid-career and even at the end of an employment arrangement. We’ve found that with just one minute of engagement daily, the platform allows everyone to discover their unique talents and skills, and then allows for managers to leverage those skills in ways that are mutually beneficial for employees and team leaders.”

Sounding Board Wins 2022 HR Tech Award For Talent Development

Leader Development Platform Named Best Innovative or Emerging Tech Solution by Lighthouse Research & Advisory

Sounding Board, Inc., the first Leader Development Platform designed to bridge the leadership gap,shared that it has been named Best Innovative or Emerging Tech Solution for Talent Development by the Lighthouse Research & Advisory HR Tech Awards.

The annual program seeks to help buyers and employers learn about the best companies in the industry for technology selection purposes. An independent judging panel reviewed each submission and selected winners in six categories: Core HR/Workforce, Employee Experience, Talent Acquisition, Talent Development, Talent Management and Total Rewards and Employee Wellbeing.

Supply Chain Innovator Verusen Scores Three Awards

Verusen, the global supply chain intelligence innovator, today announced it has received three awards recognizing its leadership, accelerated growth, and positive impact on the supply chain industry.

Verusen was recognized as an Atlanta Business Chronicle’s Pacesetter, one of the city’s fastest-growing private companies. The company was ranked #16 overall and #2 in the Manufacturing / Supply Chain category. To qualify for the Atlanta Business Chronicle’s Pacesetter list, companies headquartered in greater Atlanta had to have over $1 million in 2021 revenue and over 50% 2-year growth in sales.

Verusen was honored for the third year in a row as a Technology Association of Georgia (TAG) Top 40 Innovative Technology Companies in Georgia for its contribution to innovation and economic growth within the state of Georgia’s technology sector.

Paul Noble, Verusen Founder and CEO, was named a Deeds, not Words Leadership Award nominee at the 2022 Supply Chain & Procurement Awards. This distinction goes to individuals who exemplify vision, inspiration, coordination, perseverance, and empathy.

“From our inception, our purpose has been to revolutionize the supply chain industry. It’s an honor to be recognized as we continue to scale and reinvent how business gets done,” said Paul Noble, Founder and CEO of Verusen. Every day, we continue to prove our value with our innovative AI platform, diverse and inclusive workplace culture, and approach to sustainability.”

Verusen leverages deep learning, artificial intelligence (AI), data harmonization, and decision support to help global brands control risk, attain supply chain resiliency, and improve economies for their operations. Verusen raised $25 million in Series B funding earlier this year after the company raised $8 million in its Series A round in the previous year.

Mathison Raises $25 Million in Series A Funding

Mathison, a NYC-based provider of an end-to-end Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) hiring and retention platform, closed its $25m Series A funding.

The round was led by F-Prime Capital, with participation from Bain Capital Ventures, SemperVirens, ANIMO Ventures, GTM Fund, Gaingels and JP Morgan.

The company intends to use the funds to continue to build out its data and analytics capabilities, scale its go-to-market team and increase its collective impact with employers. As part of the round, John Lin of F-Prime Capital joined the board.

Led by Dave Walsh, CEO, and Arthur Woods, Mathison provides a DEI Operating System to give employers a single place to manage their:

DEI measurement, benchmarking and reporting
Diversity sourcing to expand the hiring pipeline
DEI training and tools to shift behavior and reduce bias

Designed to integrate into employers’ existing systems, the platform features DEI tools that can be implemented into every employee’s daily workflow and a comprehensive dashboard of DEI metrics for leaders.The solution has made a measurable collective impact, sourcing over 50,000 underrepresented candidates for employers, supporting the development of hundreds of new equitable talent policies across over 30 industries, and engaging more than 10,000 employees in DEI training to date.

Mathison works with a wide range of employers of all sizes including companies like Sonos, TripAdvisor, 23andMe, HelloFresh, Bowery Farms, Bristol Myers Squibb and non-profits from Sundance Film to The World Economic Forum.

Hotailors rebrands to WorkTrips, bags €23M investment

Travel Manager, the owner of corporate booking tool Hotailors, has landed €23 million in fresh funding. The investment in the Poland-based company has come from DC24 ASI, a previous investor in Hotailors. The funding will go toward rebranding Hotailors to WorkTrips.com as well as boosting its presence in existing markets and extending the platform to new markets such as the U.S. as well as the Middle East and North Africa.

Filip Bloch, co-founder and CEO of Hotailors, says: “We managed to survive the most difficult pandemic period for the industry. It was a time of major redundancies and restructuring among agents specializing in business travel. We used this time to expand our sales team, develop our technology and IT department and strengthen our visibility.

Supply Chain Innovator Verusen Partners with Daivergent to Create Jobs in AI for People on the Autism Spectrum

While Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the supply chain marketplace is expected to reach $16.7B globally by 2027, human augmentation remains a critical component to success. This is why global supply chain innovator Verusen, and public benefit corporation for persons with autism and neurodiversity Daivergent, today unveiled their formal partnership to create innovative career opportunities in data and AI for neurodiverse workers.

As part of this partnership, Verusen is tapping a number of Daivergent’s candidates as data experts to assist with machine learning processes and further its mission of revolutionizing the way supply chains work. Employees trained by Daivergent tackle the seemingly impossible challenges of further developing AI and machine learning, specifically as they correlate to solving supply chain issues. Daivergent annotators provide significant value to Verusen by sharing annotations and training data for new and exploratory AI tasks, which improve outcomes.

Verusen Founder and CEO Paul Noble and Daivergent Co-Founder and CEO Byran Dai met through SAP.iO Foundries, SAP’s startup innovation program. They formed a special connection as both business leaders have family members on the autism spectrum.

“We are excited to announce our partnership with Daivergent and Byran, who leads an exceptional talent pool,” said Paul Noble, founder and CEO, Verusen. “Our partnership underscores the tremendous value this high potential but underutilized talent population provides and dispels the common misconception that AI takes jobs away. Daivergent trained Verusen employees are helping us solve the complex challenges the supply chain industry faces through the sophisticated use of existing data, and it’s a massive task. The result is a win-win partnership that underscores our commitment to ensuring and recognizing the value that diversity, equity, and inclusion bring to our company.”

Getting Into the Right Mindset: Pointers from Paradox to set you up for a successful journey with SAP

SAP.iO Foundry San Francisco graduate Paradox knows a thing or two about navigating the big, blue, bureaucratic ship that is SAP. From the get-go, Paradox considered SAP a strategic partner and came ready to commit to the path early on. From being the only digital recruiting assistant on SAP Store to use AI/ML to becoming an endorsed app in 2021(and a unicorn at that!), Paradox’s grit and mindset have helped them get a handle on the ins and outs of partnering with SAP, despite the various challenges. We sat down with Sylvia Miller, Paradox’s SVP of Alliances and Partnerships to discuss the mindset needed to optimize SAP as a channel partner.

On your mark, get set, learn!

One of the ways to make the most of your partnership with SAP? Come with a “ready-to-learn” attitude; consider yourself a student in the front row of SAP University! Sylvia emphasized the importance of asking questions, and being in a constant learning mode.

Some questions you should work to answer as an SAP Partner:

How does the SAP ecosystem function overall?
What are the general expectations of such a large enterprise? (from security and compliance to deadlines).
Who are the key stakeholders that I must align with, and how do I reach them?
What are the biggest needs and challenges of our mutual clients?
What tangible tips and nuggets can SAP.iO’s curated mentorship provide to me?
How can our startup organization and solution leverage SAP’s technology and open integration platform?

If you can’t answer these questions throughout your partnership journey, you will likely have a lot of difficulty in navigating a fruitful path forward. Once you do have the answers, there will be plethora of action items and follow ups for you to get to work on.