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In Berlin, Funding Announcement, CRM & Customer Experience

SegmentStream nabs $2.7M to enable marketing analytics without cookies

SegmentStream, a U.K.-based marketing analytics company is working to help enterprises thrive in a post-cookie era.

Third-party cookies have long enabled enterprises to track the online activity of their users to deliver personalized ads and then measure the success of those campaigns. The practice has been very effective, but internet giants have also been on a quest to end the software’s use over privacy concerns. Apple’s Safari and Mozilla’s Firefox already block cookies, while Google plans to discontinue them by 2023, which could upend the whole way of digital advertising.

“All existing marketing analytics and multitouch attribution tools – including Google Analytics, RockerBox, AttributionApp, Bizible, Datorama – analyze marketing performance using deterministic ways of stitching retrospective conversions with traffic sources, which doesn’t work in a new ‘post-cookie’ world due to intelligent tracking prevention, cross-browser/cross-device customer journeys, and other cookie-tracking limitations,” Constantine Yurevich, cofounder and CEO of SegmentStream, told Venturebeat.

As a result, he said, most website sessions (and therefore advertising clicks) do not receive any attributed value, which creates issues for marketers when evaluating the impact of their marketing channels and campaigns. Plus, the lack of information about the assigned value of each advertising click prevents smart bidding algorithms of popular ad platforms (such as Facebook Ads) from properly functioning.

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In Tel Aviv, Funding Announcement

Pecan AI raises $66 million in Series C funding round

Israeli analytics and data science startup “Pecan AI” announced Wednesday that they have raised $66 million in their latest Series C funding round. The funds will be used for research and development.

Pecan AI has raised over $100 million in VC funding in the last twelve months alone. Its Series C round was led by New York-based global private equity and venture capital firm Insight Partners, with participation from GV (formerly Google Ventures) and existing investors S-Capital, GGV Capital, Dell Technologies Capital, Mindset Ventures and Vintage Investment Partners.

“We believe that any company should be able to deploy AI-based predictive analytics, even without data science resources on staff,” said CEO and co-founder Zohar Bronfman. “This new funding will help us scale Pecan further to overcome the data science scarcity gap, enabling our customers to move beyond outdated data-mining techniques that offer little value in predicting future outcomes.”

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In New York, Portfolio News, CRM & Customer Experience

VNTANA Posts 500% Customer Growth In 2021

VNTANA, the industry leader in 3D eCommerce technology, reports a record year for customer, revenue, partnership and employee growth in 2021. The company saw a 500% expansion in customers and partners, confirming the continued industry adoption of 3D and Augmented Reality (AR) technology for brands and retailers in eCommerce.

VNTANA’s patented optimization algorithms allow brands to use their existing 3D designs to instantly create high-fidelity, fast-loading 3D assets that are automatically optimized for use across web, social media, advertising, game-engines and the metaverse. This is a game changer for brands across fashion, footwear, furniture, tools, sporting goods and more that are looking to optimize the consumer shopping experience.

“The rapid growth of VNTANA highlights the industry’s increasing need to innovate and adapt to meet the evolving requirements of the online consumer,” notes Ashley Crowder, co-founder and CEO of VNTANA. “3D and AR tech is a way for brands to engage with their partners, vendors and customers across multiple channels and provides opportunities for integrations into current eCommerce strategies. We’re excited about the potential for VNTANA to work alongside retailers to reap the benefits that this technology provides to the bottom line.”

To meet the needs of its customers, VNTANA’s staff also doubled in 2021 and will continue to grow through 2022, with plans to expand its sales, marketing, customer success and engineering teams. VNTANA’s 3D Scanning Partner Program is also projected to increase company partnerships in the coming year.

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In Berlin, New York, Munich, Sustainability

The Shift To A Circular Economy: How Tech Is Shaping The Future Of Sustainable Retail

Consumers are increasingly pushing for sustainable business practices in retail, driving businesses to reassess what they produce — and how. From ingredient upcycling to plastic alternatives to smart trash cans, we look at the technologies placing sustainability at the center of retail products and processes.

It’s no secret that industries in the retail sector are some of the most wasteful and polluting in the world. The fashion industry, for example, generates over 92M metric tons of waste every year. Meanwhile, global food waste totals around 1.6B metric tons.

Consumers are increasingly demanding change. Fifty-two percent of textile industry experts say consumers are driving the heightened focus on sustainability in fashion, which includes more transparent supply chains, alternative materials, and secondhand shopping. Similarly, 65% of consumers say they want food products that are sustainable, from alternative proteins to compostable packaging.

Regulatory agencies are also driving the shift to a circular economy focused on waste reduction. For example, the European Union is creating a strategy for sustainable textiles that aims to create products that are more durable, reusable, recyclable, and energy-efficient. It’s set to be adopted in early 2022. In the US, President Joe Biden signed an executive order in 2021 directing federal institutions to draft regulations that protect the consumer’s right to repair electronic devices and other tools. This could reduce electrical waste and lengthen product life cycles.

The shift to a circular economy will doubtlessly pose major challenges for retailers, but it’s also a massive opportunity — and new tech solutions are emerging all the time to make the transition easier. From resale platforms to regenerative farming to autonomous delivery vehicles, we examine how technology is shaping the future of sustainable retail.

White-label solutions in the rental space allow brands to easily set up their own renting operations. For instance, Paris-based Lizee allows brands to enter the circular economy by renting (or reselling) their inventory. The company, which has worked with the likes of Adidas and Decathlon, helps power all the logistics associated with resale or rental operations.

An innovative solution for single-use plastic packaging comes from Chile-based Algramo. Its circular platform allows users to purchase bottles for cleaning products, refill them in a store with a smart Algramo dispenser, and pay for the product using an app. In 2020, the company launched in the US by installing dispensers in vending machines around New York City.

On a global scale, manufacturers can resell deadstock fabrics on the online marketplace Queen of Raw. To date, the platform has supported 325,000 buyers and sellers around the world, boasting partnerships with brands such as H&M and LVMH.

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In Foundries, Global, Podcast

Alexa Gorman talks SAP’s open innovation strategy with Christoph Keese from hy – the Axel Springer Consulting Group

SAP is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, but half a century is a long time for any company, especially for a software company. How do you stay up to date? As SVP and Global Head of SAP.iO Foundries & Intrapreneurship at SAP, Alexa Gorman is responsible for addressing these questions.

In the hy Podcast, Alexa talks to about these challenges and how SAP.iO helps innovators inside and outside SAP scale while creating value for customers, startups, employees and SAP.

For our German-speaking friends: Access Podcast here…

In Foundries, Blog, Article, San Francisco, Featured, HR & People Engagement

Meet 4 SAP.iO startups working to make the Future of Work more diverse

SAP prides itself on making its customers and the world run at its best. In no other area is this more apparent than within its New Ventures and Technologies (NVT) organization, where teams across the company work together to bring new, innovative technologies into the company’s core portfolio. NVT has committed itself to developing teams and solutions that align with SAP’s overall goals – whether they are tied to the company’s business goals, sustainability goals, or more notably, its diversity and inclusion (D&I) goals.

One example of that commitment to diversity and equity is the SAP.iO No Boundaries initiative to accelerate more than 200 startups founded or led by women, people of color, LGBTQIA+ and others from underrepresented groups in tech by 2023. The program is the first comprehensive inclusive entrepreneurship initiative for underrepresented entrepreneurs in the business software industry. Each SAP.iO Foundry location follows a different theme within respective No Boundaries cohorts, with themes ranging from Professional Services to the Future of Work, and more.

The SAP.iO Foundry San Francisco’s Spring 2021 cohort was built around the topic of the Future of Work. Here are four startups from the most recent program that aren’t just founded by underrepresented entrepreneurs but have also dedicated themselves to increasing diversity and equity in the workplace.

Gapsquare (Acquired by XpertHR)

Founded in 2015 by Dr. Zara Nanu and Ion Suruceanu, Gapsquare is building a world where work is inclusive, pay meets value, and diverse talent thrives. Through its SaaS platform, Gapsquare offers insights into salary equity for gender, race and/or disability, inbuilt consultancy, and data-driven recommendations for change. By focusing on these key areas, companies will be able to compete in today’s job market and adequately address the concerns of employees and prospective hires.

With Gapsquare’s fair pay analysis, companies can approach pay equity with a clear understanding of root causes of issues and help focus their resources to implement sustainable change. Not only that, but the startup also utilizes the data on its platform to support organizations with pay gap reporting legislation and equal pay audit work.

Gapsquare integrates with SAP SuccessFactors so customers can analyze their people and pay data to better understand inequity in their organizations. According to Nanu, understanding pain points and actioning sustainable change helps users build more flexible, engaged, and happy workforces.

HumanlyHR Inc

Based in Seattle, Humanly was founded in 2019 by Prem Kumar and Andrew Gardner and aims to create more equitable and efficient job interviews through conversational analytics.  The startup automates job candidate interactions and provides hiring teams with voice analytics to not only make interviews more efficient but also less biased.

Today’s hiring teams handle a high volume of applicants per role, where they have to sift through hundreds of applications and resumes. Such an influx means a lot of qualified candidates may not be engaged with at all – falling into what the Humanly team calls the “black hole” at the top of the hiring funnel. Humanly works to solve the issue by using data to ask the right candidate the right question, thus replacing the need for large teams of recruiting coordinators. Not only that, but Humanly automates top-of-funnel hiring tasks and provides interview analytics to hiring teams so that they can focus on improving areas of the hiring process that should remain human-driven and empathetic.

In addition to interview analytics and insights, Humanly also automates note-taking for interviews, screening and scheduling for high applicant volume roles, re-engagement of silver medalist candidates, reference checks, and two-way applicant tracking system integrations.

Humanly integrates with the SAP SuccessFactors Recruiting Module so that all candidate conversations and associated efficiency and equity analytics are synced into candidate records in SuccessFactors, including adding interviews analytics, adding new candidate records, updating, and moving screened candidates to the right place in the SF Recruiting Module and attaching interview notes.  

Mentor Spaces

For many employees of color, corporate allyship and career mentorship may be a feat easier said than done. Mentor Spaces is working to solve this challenge through its community-driven membership for Black and Latinx professionals.

Founded in 2017 by Chris Motley the startup works to help companies scale D&I efforts while advancing the careers of underrepresented talent by encouraging mentorship among community members. In doing so, diverse talent acquisition and retention are streamlined within companies.

One charge that Mentor Spaces wants to take on is bridging the gap between siloed HR teams and employee networks, or Employee Resource Groups (ERGs). The startup posits that ERG members want to support HR teams but are unable to due to lack of bandwidth and visibility into the hiring process. Partnering with Mentor Spaces enables both HR and ERGs to connect, and in doing so they can build diverse talent pipeline, improve retention, and enhance corporate culture.

Mentor Spaces’ platform has a plethora of features, including native mobile apps that facilitate mentorship conversations. Not only that, but they have launched community partnerships with national nonprofit organizations and Historically Black Colleges and Universities to provide direct access to the largest pool of underrepresented professionals that Mentor Spaces helps cultivate on behalf of its clients.

The Mom Project

Called the “career destination for moms,” The Mom Project provides companies with consistent, scalable access to the most comprehensive community of highly skilled gender and ethnically diverse moms (but they also include dads and allies) in the United States.

According to founder Allison Robinson, The Mom Project was built with moms in mind, and has become a two-sided marketplace and community that connects companies with highly skilled and professionally relevant talent. This marketplace facilitates all work types, ranging from short-term staffing needs to customized talent programs and is now comprised of more than 500,000 professionals with strong backgrounds in the core suite of business functions including: marketing, sales, finance, technology, legal, and HR.

Every aspect of The Mom Project has been designed on the core insight that juggling work and family is hard. With that in mind, the team wanted to make them feel supported throughout every step in the journey. Thus, The Mom Project’s platform isn’t a job posting platform, but one that actively supports moms throughout the entire application process. Profile and resume crafting, job search programs, covering childcare so candidates can prepare for interviews, and community generated support are only a handful of the platform’s features.

The Mom Project’s API complements SAP SuccessFactors Recruiting by shortening the hiring process and allowing organizations to have one system of record for talent process that consider high-skilled moms with the willingness to return to work.

About SAP.iO
To learn more about how SAP.iO is helping innovators start up and scale with SAP, please visit https://sap.io/.

In New York, Funding Announcement, Supply Chain Management

Inspectorio Raises $50 Million To Help Brands Ensure Quality In Their Supply Chain

Brilliant Hire’s Smart Job Matching

Supply chain is a web that spans so wide that many large corporations can’t easily track the entire life cycle for each of its products — let alone capture enough data to ensure that everything is being done to standards and protocol. Carlos Moncayo knows the system all too well as the former founder and CEO of ASIAM Inspector, a company that supports brands and retailers with sourcing operations in Asia, he did everything from inspections to auditing to sourcing. This gave Moncayo deep insight on the many layers of the supply chain and it wasn’t pretty. He noticed a lot of issues surrounding visibility. After 10 years with the company, he was surprised they hadn’t gotten any better.

“We thought with supply chain management and production chain management, the only way to solve [the issues] was to approach it from moving offline relations to online relations and helping companies make sense of the data coming out of that,” he tells Forbes. But at the time, no one was trying to tackle that, so the former founders of ASIAM decided to try it themselves. They launched Inspectorio in 2016 to help companies and brands move their supply chain online and have better visibility and data surrounding quality and sustainability. Since Inspectorio launched its first product in 2017, the company has expanded its product offerings and more than 7,000 customers including Target and Kohl’s have signed on.

The Minneapolis-based startup raises a $50 million Series B round led by Insight Partners with participation from Techstar Ventures, Matchstick Ventures and strategic backers including Flexport, among others, as originally reported in Midas Touch newsletter. Ryan Hinkle, a managing director at Insight, says the firm has been building a relationship with Inspectorio since the beginning of the startup’s life. While the investment could have been sparked by the company’s progress — Hinkle points to the startup’s 93% revenue growth in 2021 — for him it was a bit more personal. His family used to own a clothing store and he remembers helping unwrap shirts and using a measuring tape to ensure the sleeves were the same length and that the size labels matched when he was a kid. Both of which would fall under the quality control assurances Inspectorio looks to provide further down the supply chain.

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In Berlin, Munich, Portfolio News

Robert Heinecke, the CEO of Breeze Technologies, selected as a European Climate Pact Ambassador by the European Commission

Robert Heinecke is an entrepreneur, futurist thinker and smart city expert.

He is the CEO of Breeze Technologies, a German industry leader in air quality sensors, data and analytics, which he founded in 2015.

Robert regularly speaks and publishes on the topic of smart and sustainable cities, air quality and climate action. Congratulations!

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In Foundries, New York, Supply Chain Management

Blockchain Helps Luxury Retailers Prove Provenance And Sustainability Claims

Diamonds and girls have been best friends for centuries, but that friendship has long come at a high cost for the communities involved in the excavation and processing of these highly coveted gems. Thanks to shifts in consumer behavior, however, sustainability considerations are now on par with price and design for consumers when purchasing diamonds, according to new research published by De Beers Group.

And it is high time. The mine-to-market journey contains a myriad of social and environmental impacts at every step of the way. From soil erosion, deforestation, and the destruction of ecosystems to the appalling working conditions, low wages, and child labor rampant in the industry, there is certainly a dark side to the way people have acquired their sparkling stones. The upside is that the industry creates high levels of employment and makes up a significant part of the GDPs of the countries that produce them.

Tackling these issues requires crystal clear insight into the value chain. Tools and services from Everledger, for example, enable independent retailers to easily reference the origin, human rights, and environmental performance of their diamond listings from the world’s leading producers. The global digital transparency company based in the UK uses blockchain to track goods from raw materials to the end consumer and beyond – making it ideal for retailers implementing circular business models.

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In Singapore, Funding Announcement, Supply Chain Management

Smart IoT tracking startup Tag-n-Trac launches with $10M in new funding

“Internet of things” tracking startup Tag-n-Trac Inc. today launched out of stealth with $10 million in new funding.

Dell Technologies led the Series A round, with Merck Global Innovation Fund and Aerosafe Global also participating. Including the new funding, Tag-n-Trac has raised $11.8 million to date, according to data from Crunchbase.

Founded in 2020, Tag-n-Trac was founded with the goal of modernizing the entire logistics lifecycle. The company offers a full-stack IoT solution that integrates multiple modes of hardware, software and data technology to build smarter solutions that solve complex problems. The founding team consists of senior executives with engineering leadership experience in WiFi, Bluetooth, sensors and positioning technologies.

Tag-n-Trac says its platform offers complete, real-time visibility into the entire global supply chain ecosystem. The company’s technology combines low-cost “printable” hardware sensors and a sensor-agnostic software-asa-serivce platform to help shippers, logistics providers and manufacturers track goods’ location, status and condition from manufacturing to shipping to delivery.

The Tag-n-Trac platform, powered by wireless Bluetooth and cellular smart label technologies, grants a complete end-to-end view to help efficiently address production obstacles such as temperature excursions, tamper detection and potential diversions. Usable in various verticals, Tag-n-Trac works with supply chain partners, including multi-modal third-party logistics, enterprise resource planning, business intelligence software providers, and packaging and labeling manufacturers.

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In HR & People Engagement, Paris

Radancy Announces Acquisition of Firstbird – A Global Leader in SAAS Based Employee Referral Programs

Radancy, the global talent technology leader, is pleased to announce its plans to acquire Firstbird, a global leader in SaaS based employee referral programs. Based in Vienna, Austria, Firstbird offers a comprehensive software solution to digitize and streamline the employee referral process. The acquisition of Firstbird is expected to close in the first quarter of 2022, subject to the satisfaction of customary closing conditions, including certain regulatory approvals.

This strategic acquisition combines Firstbird’s innovative referral technology with Radancy’s unified talent acquisition platform. Together, they will provide global clients with enhanced touchpoints along the entire candidate journey, connecting people to careers and companies with qualified candidates to solve their most critical talent acquisition challenges.

“From the first meeting I knew Firstbird checked every box for us. The people, the technology and the opportunity to expand Radancy’s reach within the DACH market made this a perfect match,” said Michelle Abbey, President and CEO of Radancy. “I’m excited to integrate their technology into our global unified platform and continue to transform talent acquisition for our customers.”

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In Tel Aviv, Funding Announcement, CRM & Customer Experience

Jebbit Raises $70 Million Strategic Growth Investment From Vista Equity Partners

Jebbit, provider of the world’s leading zero-party data platform, has received a $70 million strategic growth investment from Vista Equity Partners, the leading global investment firm focused exclusively on enterprise software, data and technology-enabled businesses. The growth capital will help the company scale across all departments to further accelerate its mission to help brands deliver personalized digital experiences that collect data that is willingly and intentionally shared by a consumer (“zero-party data”).

Jebbit’s no-code platform enables companies to build beautiful interactive product and personality quizzes, lookbooks, trivia, lead generation forms and more that gather zero-party and first-party data. Jebbit experiences help brands drive higher engagement, lead capture and conversion while maintaining data privacy and security. In a world where cookies and ID’s will no longer be a reality, Jebbit’s solutions empower companies of all sizes to gain deep customer insights that fuel engagement and increase sales. Jebbit’s easy-to-launch, no code quizzes offer seamless integration and scalability, making them ideal for small- and medium-sized business as well as large global enterprises, across a wide range of industries, including consumer packaged goods, retail and commerce, travel and hospitality, and financial services.

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In Funding Announcement, CRM & Customer Experience

Collaboration platform CloudApp raises $9.3M to enhance workplace productivity

Visual work communication tool CloudApp has raised $9.3 million in Series A funding led by Grayhawk Capital and Nordic Eye. The round also includes previous investors Kickstart Fund, Cervin Ventures, New Ground Ventures, Bloomberg Beta and new entrants Peninsula Ventures & Forward VC. It also features CloudApp customers Peter Kazanjy, the CRO of Atrium, and Derek Andersen, the CEO of Startup Grind and Bevy.

Founded in 2015, CloudApp aims to help teams share information faster through instantly shareable videos, gifs and screenshots. The tool is an all-in-one screen recording software that captures and embeds HD video, marked-up images and more into workflows. Every file users create is securely stored in the cloud, and accessible via CloudApp’s native Mac and Windows Apps, or shareable on the web through secure password-protected links.

The goal of the company is to help teams avoid having to schedule extra calls or emails and instead communicate their message through simple shareable videos. CloudApp sees itself as a visual voicemail that can be read at any time without disrupting workflows. The tool supports dozens of integrations, including Slack, Atlassian, Trello, Zendesk and Asana. Since its launch, CloudApp has garnered more than four million total users. Notable CloudApp clients include Adobe, Uber, Zendesk and Salesforce.

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In Funding Announcement, Business Technology Platform

BigID Announces Splunk Ventures Investment to Extend Data Management Innovation

BigID, the leading data intelligence platform that enables organizations to know their enterprise data and take action for privacy, security, and governance, today announced Splunk Ventures is investing in BigID’s next phase of growth and innovative technology development.

Splunk Ventures is the corporate venture capital arm of Splunk Inc., the data platform leader for security and observability, and is dedicated to investing in organizations that expand and enhance the value of business data to drive outcomes. BigID is an innovator in data intelligence, with an ML-powered enterprise platform that reimagines data management for data discovery, privacy, security, and governance. BigID helps customers proactively manage and protect their data, reduce risk, and get more value from their data.

Data drives the world, and as digital transformation and cloud initiatives continue to accelerate, BigID’s modern approach to data management is purpose built to address the challenges of today’s data landscape. With BigID, customers can make better decisions with their data, achieve compliance, scale with evolving data privacy and protection landscape, and ultimately reimagine how they manage their data.

“Now more than ever, organizations need clearcut ways to harness their data to drive innovation while also remaining compliant and secure,” said Varoon Bhagat, vice president of Corporate Development for Splunk. “Our investment in BigID is the latest example of our commitment to transform data into business value and remove the barrier between data and action.”

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In Berlin, Funding Announcement, Business Technology Platform

Wandelbots raises another $84 million to teach robots without code

Dresden, Germany-based Wandelbots has raised a healthy sum in the years since it appeared on our Disrupt Berlin stage, way back in 2017. The following year, the no-code robotic software firm raised $6.8 million, followed by another $30 million in June 2020, as excitement around automation continued to build as COVID slowed manufacturing to a crawl.

Today the firm returns with a healthy $84 million Series C, putting its funding well north of $100 million to date. This latest round was led by Insight Partners and featured a slate of existing investors, including 83North, Microsoft, Next47, Paua, Atlantic Labs and EQT.

Wandelbots’ mission is a deceptively simple one, and something a number of firms are pushing to solve in the space. Can a robotic software layer lower the barrier of entry for deploying robotics in a factory setting? Specifically, how can a firm deploy a robotic army without the need for a lot of outside help, significant sums of money and/or robotic coding know-how? The company’s solution involves a “Trace Pen,” which an instructor uses to mimic a motion and train the robot in the process. The motion can then be fine-tuned on the software without coding.

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