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In Featured, Service Industries, Sustainability, Announcements, Foundries, Paris

SAP.iO Foundry Paris Launches Its New Program: Sustainability in the Service Industries

January 11, 2022 — SAP SE (NYSE: SAP) today launched a startup program focused on sustainability as part of the 7th edition of SAP.iO Foundry Paris. Eight international startups have been selected by a jury of SAP experts, partners, customers and investment funds to join the program.

SAP.iO Foundry Paris, SAP’s startup acceleration unit in France, has already supported more than 50 startups. In three years, SAP has achieved the goal set at the #ChooseFrance summit with the French government in 2018 to support the startup economy.

This new program focuses on four topics related to different issues concerning sustainability in the service industries:

  • Responsible design and production
  • Responsible sourcing
  • Resource recovery and re-use
  • Responsible consumption

Sébastien Gibier, Director of SAP.iO Foundry Paris, said: “SAP.iO has always been a great incubator for startups. This year, the focus on sustainability will allow scale-ups to amplify their impact. SAP France is delighted to continue this program focused on innovation. We are particularly pleased to have met our objectives set with the government.”

Over the next 12 weeks, startups will have access to one-on-one mentoring from SAP executives, exposure to SAP® technology and application programming interfaces (APIs), and opportunities to collaborate with SAP customers around the world.

The following startups are participating in the SAP.iO Foundry Paris program:

  • ACTRADIS assists companies in the compilation, verification and digitization of documents on a sharing platform.
  • bloXmove is a decentralized mobility blockchain platform that provides easy-to-integrate interfaces for verifying identities and credentials, smart contracts and revenue distribution.
  • Cozero offers a digital carbon action platform covering the end-to-end carbon management process of companies to optimize their environmental and economic footprint throughout the supply chain.
  • HESUS provides solutions for the transport and treatment of soil and construction waste, while reducing their environmental impact.
  • Leanpath provides a comprehensive food waste prevention platform – including measurement, discovery and automation tools – enabling partner customers to reduce food waste by 50% or more in more than 40 countries.
  • Liftango guides international organizations and cities in planning, launching and implementing shared mobility projects. It solves parking, congestion and zoning problems by improving the efficiency of transportation services through on-demand transportation technology.
  • Madaster offers a cloud platform that provides a single point of access to leverage real estate data to meet environmental, regulatory, health and financial ambitions throughout the lifecycle of the object.
  • TotalCtrl creates digital products in collaboration with restaurants, hotels, municipalities and individuals to eliminate manual processes, streamline food inventory management, easily generate monthly cost of goods sold and accounting reports.

About SAP.iO
SAP.iO delivers new partnerships and products for SAP by accelerating and scaling startup innovation as well as incubating employee businesses. SAP.iO brings together innovators from all regions, industries and sectors to transform the way businesses work. Since 2017, SAP.iO has helped 380+ external startups and internal ventures accelerate their growth while enabling thousands of SAP customers to access to innovation. For more information, visit http://sap.io/.

In HR & People Engagement, Awards, San Francisco

Crosschq Sweeps the Table and Named a Leader Overall in the G2 Reference Check Software Winter 2022 Report

Crosschq, pioneers of the Talent Intelligence Cloud powering a revolution in data-driven hiring and people analytics, announced it has been named a Leader in the G2 Reference Check Software Winter 2022 Report. Crosschq beat out all of its competitors in the Momentum category for Reference Check Software, the Relationship Reference Check Index and the Implementation Index. Additionally, Crosschq’s customers have ranked the company best for ease of use and quality of support.

“Crosschq provides bias-free, data-driven insights and predictive analytics to quantifiably improve Quality of Hire,” said Mike Fitzsimmons, CEO and Crosschq. “This is the second year in a row where we’ve led in the reference check category. These latest G2 scores validate our mission to help the world build diverse, winning teams, as well as our commitment to empowering strategic talent leaders to make objective, data-driven hiring decisions that support and optimize business outcomes.”

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In Paris, HR & People Engagement

London’s learning management system Looop acquired by 360Learning for $20 million

arisian collaborative learning platform 360Learning has acquired Looop for $20 million in a mix of cash and shares. 360Learning received a strong vote of confidence last October when it announced a $200 million investment round co-led by Sumeru, SoftBank, and Silver Lake Waterman, and M&A activities were specifically mentioned. The Looop acquisition marks a first for the company, with presumably more announcements in the future.

Having had a front-row seat to the damage that substandard learning and development programmes can have on business, staff morale, and productivity, in 2014 Ben Muzzell and Dan Gray set out to build a better mousetrap. Employing a series of automations, Looop is a learning management system that eschews the repetitive manual work from the process, resulting in an embedded process that allows teams to create resources with as much, or as little, content as desired, sourced from any input, and delivered when needed.

In doing so, that mousetrap has struck a chord, as Looop reports consistently achieving outstanding satisfaction ratings on eLearning platforms including Capterra (4.9/5), G2 (4.9/5), and eLearning Industry (97%), and has become the defacto L&D provider to companies including Klarna, Monzo, Cazoo, and ASOS. If the credentials don’t already speak for themselves, Looop reports an annual growth rate of 100%, all while being cash flow positive.

From 360Learning’s perspective, the acquisition couldn’t happen at a better time. As the effects of the pandemic continue to play out, companies around the globe are beginning to see the Great Resignation kicking into gear and are pumping huge amounts of capital into talent retention, least of which, learning and development programmes. How much capital? According to Market and Markets, over the next four years, corporate spending on L&D will surge from the $15.8 billion seen in 2021 to a robust $37.9 billion by 2026.

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In Blog, Global, Venture Studio

Did you catch all our latest SAP.iO Venture Studio highlights?

SAP.iO sign

October — December 2021 | Achievements & News from SAP.iO Venture Studio

SAP.iO Venture Studio drives a new era of organic growth at SAP. It empowers entrepreneurial teams inside SAP to turn innovative ideas into profitable businesses and invests in these new employee-led ventures who are focused on solving some of the biggest problems in enterprise business processes. SAP.iO Venture Studio helps start and scale new ventures by providing design, and development and sales support. Find out more on sap.io/studio.

Brilliant Hire by SAP

rilliant Hire by SAP intelligently matches candidates with a personalized shortlist of jobs on your careers page based on what really matters to them, using Artificial Intelligence (AI).

  • Brilliant Hire received follow-on funding! Discover what the successful validation of the venture’s three-year product roadmap means for solving customers’ challenges in recruiting.
  • Thanks to AI, Brilliant Hire by SAP is able to simplify the recruiting process as announced in SAP TechEd’s News Guide 2021. Read here how AI is at the center of recruitment processes by SAP SuccessFactors with Brilliant Hire by SAP as a major component.
  • Best-in-class organizations are increasing the use of AI throughout their recruiting process which is exactly what Brilliant Hire by SAP expected. Learn more about AI in the recruitment process and what the venture’s General Manager Jeanine LeFlore has to say on it on Forbes here.
  • As the venture continues its success story, they are now actively looking for Developers, Project Managers, Engineers, and Analysts. Find all open positions on SAP.iO.

More on this venture on https://www.brillianthire.io/

EverLoop by SAP

verLoop by SAP aims to empower every business on the planet to achieve zero waste by being a sustainability solution that connects stakeholders across the waste value chain to enable the circular economy, with transparency and traceability.

  • The venture, its business idea and product development were discussed in a feature in national newspaper Times of India: A big moment for EverLoop by SAP after two years of delivering their solution to the market and help customers managing their e-waste and achieve zero.
  • Join the team as a Developer UI and apply now on SAP.iO.

More on this venture on https://www.ever-loop.io/

Feather by SAP

eather by SAP is an end-to-end recommerce solution that support brands and retailers that want to accelerate the shift from linear to circular business by taking ownership over their recommerce activities. Facilitate the in-house business processes, capture data, engage with the shopper, and own the end-to-end product life cycle.

  • We have a new kid on the block at SAP.iO Venture Studio! Feather by SAP finalized naming and branding and has a sparkling new brand identity: Check out their website and follow on LinkedIn.
  • The official investment announcement introduced the venture and its product’s benefits for SAP customers.
  • As part of SAP’s venture arm SAP.iO, Feather by SAP was also discussed as one of SAP’s sustainability software solutions. Read more news here.
  • Do you want to shape the future of a new venture? Feather by SAP is looking for a Frontend Developer, Full Stack Developer, Data Scientist, UX Designer, and Product Owner and they have numerous fellowship positions available. Find all open positions here.

More on this venture on https://www.featherbysap.io/

GreenToken by SAP

reenToken by SAP is a supply chain solution that offers companies new levels of transparency through reliable, blockchain-based information. Gain visibility into where raw materials came from and produce products with knowledge about where and how the materials were produced, even in complex, non-batch supply chains.

  • The venture looks back at a successful year with an exciting feature in SAP’s CEO opening keynote at SAPPHIRE NOW 2021, and more outings and media mentions, including:
    • Numerous LinkedIn articles and posts with over 70,500 views in total
    • Inspiring external speaking engagements
    • Features in external media articles in 2021, including Frontier Enterprise and Crypto News BTC
  • Congratulations are in order! The venture was nominated for Hasso Plattner Founders’ Award 2022 and is among the last 9 finalists. Check out the nomination video and announcement of the finalists.
  • GreenToken by SAP can also track hydrogen across supply chains to help businesses determine whether it is truly green. Need more on how on GreenToken by SAP’s supply chain solution can contribute to reducing current logistics challenges for the fuel of the future? Read more on the Wall Street Journal.

More on this venture on https://www.green-token.io/

Paid Promptly by SAP

aid Promptly by SAP drives cash into your business faster by automating receivable processes. Deliver a seamless, personalized, customer experience through Paid Pronto’s automated communication solution, beginning when an invoice is first released until payment is received.

  • Paid Promptly by SAP automates receivables to drive cash into businesses faster and sets a focus on customer correspondence. Listen to SAP’s Chief Financial Officer Luka Mucic and get a first glimpse of the importance of their work in this video
  • The venture has a big influence on SAP’s cash collection. This video shows how SAP has optimized this process with Paid Promptly by SAP.
  • Interested in working at this venture? They are looking actively for a Senior Full Stack Engineer.

More on this venture on https://www.paidpromptly.io/

Source Agent by SAP

reat sourcing shouldn’t be a secret. Source Agent by SAP gives you the insights and strategies to address spend intelligently and wow your stakeholders. Identify sourcing opportunities by aligning your spend to current market intelligence. Receive a targeted sourcing strategy and supplier recommendations based on your data and requirements for each spend category. Quickly convert strategies and plans into eSourcing event prep and execution.

  • Want more entrepreneurial insights into founding and scaling a business? The ventures’ co-founder Travis Matter and Will Caseber talked about their personal journey with Source Agent by SAP and SAP.iO. Read about their experiences here.

More on this venture on https://www.sourceagent.io/

In Blog, Global, Venture Studio, Funding Announcement

Brilliant Hire by SAP Shines Bright in Venture Capital Round

By Jacqueline Prause, SAP Global Content Team

The future shines bright at Brilliant Hire by SAP, a dynamic startup that believes in giving job candidates the agency to bring their whole selves to the companies of their dreams. Fresh off a round of venture capital funding, the employee-led startup has been given an extended runway to execute on its ambitious product vision for the talent acquisition market.

The new round of Series A funding, awarded by principal investor SAP, comes as businesses are struggling to fill jobs left open as a result of the global phenomenon known as the Great Resignation. Hiring has never been more fast-paced and competitive, with recruiters bearing the brunt of the pressure to hire workers more efficiently and achieve new standards for quality of hire. To gain an edge in attracting qualified and diverse job candidates, businesses are increasingly integrating AI-powered solutions in their talent acquisition strategy.

SAP is stepping up to address this need on behalf of customers that run SAP SuccessFactors Recruiting with an infusion of venture funding for Brilliant Hire by SAP, an employee-led startup in the SAP.iO Venture Studio, an innovation hub that helps employees start up and scale with SAP. As an organically innovated solution, Brilliant Hire by SAP brings customers the advantage that it integrates with and is developed in parallel to SAP SuccessFactors.

Delivering the Candidate-First Experience

With the successful validation of Brilliant Hire’s three-year product roadmap, Jeanine LeFlore, General Manager, Brilliant Hire by SAP, says the team is already building out the solution with new features to address some of the toughest challenges in recruiting. For many recruiters, providing an amazing candidate experience is now top of the agenda.

“The industry is at a crucial juncture right now,” LeFlore says. “Delivering a powerful candidate-first experience is paramount to the success of any company in the talent acquisition landscape today. At Brilliant Hire, we put the candidate at the core of everything we do, and this in turn is what drives the highest value for our customers.”

LeFlore sees the next stage of development as a golden opportunity to leverage the momentum Brilliant Hire generated in 2021. The team plans to build out its vision for an intelligent data platform that enables recruiters to develop authentic relationships with both active and passive candidates, while using data to create personalized journeys for candidates. She says, “We are seeing tremendous traction in the recruiting space with our smart job matching AI/ML- powered technology, and we’ve just scratched the surface. With this new round of funding, we will double down on building the most compelling candidate-first experiences that connect recruiters with both active and passive candidates — to meet them in their environment, rather than making candidates have to search.”

Attracting More Qualified and Diverse Talent

For companies seeking to hire more qualified and diverse talent, Brilliant Hire by SAP helps increase the visitor-to-applicant ratio on careers sites and empowers diverse candidates to apply for roles best fit to their qualifications. In an example of how SAP runs SAP, the global software company runs Brilliant Hire on its career page, which is a vital hub for the one million-plus members of its talent communities.

“With Brilliant Hire by SAP, we are able to leverage AI to elevate the candidate experience and help candidates find the SAP job that is best fit to their skills,” says Elke Manjet, Global Head of Talent Attraction, SAP, and Member of the Executive Board of Advisors for Brilliant Hire. “We are seeing strong results from our use of Brilliant Hire’s smart job matching feature, both in terms of KPIs and qualitative feedback from candidates. Candidates really like that they can immediately see if they are a strong match for an open position or if they qualify for other positions they had not considered — so that the best-fit jobs find the candidates and not the other way around. We want people to have an amazing experience along their SAP journey from the start, and we do that by presenting the very best of SAP technology and innovation.”

Brilliant Hire by SAP offers a pilot of smart job matching for SAP SuccessFactors customers on SAP Store with self-sign-up for customers in the U.S., Germany, and India. The team recently presented smart job matching during its Be Brilliant! webinar series, available for on-demand viewing here.

What is Series A funding for an intrapreneurial venture?

The SAP.iO Venture Studio supports employee-led ventures from small, entrepreneurial teams. Although these ventures are housed within SAP, they experience all the same growth opportunities and challenges that are typical for startups, including technology innovation, market fit and funding.

“Series A funding for an intrapreneurial venture is not unlike funding for an external startup,” says Ram Jambunathan, senior vice president and general manager, SAP.iO Venture Studio. “Our approach is to ‘build fast and learn things.’ Investments are made based on achieving aggressive milestones aligned to product development and business execution. Each venture in the Venture Studio has an executive board that holds it accountable to meeting milestones. What makes the Venture Studio such an exciting opportunity for SAP employees is that we empower employees to drive and own the progress and success of their venture. The Venture Studio provides an incubator environment that offers these ventures runway to develop transformational solutions that will ‘future-proof’ SAP and its customers.”

From Pilot to Venture — The Story of Brilliant Hire by SAP

The story of Brilliant Hire by SAP began with a passion for creative problem-solving, when a small team of developers at SAP Labs India pitched the winning solution at an SAP internal hackathon in 2016. It was the start of a remarkable entrepreneurial journey for the team and their pilot project.

“The inspiration for Brilliant Hire came from our own hiring experience,” says Hemant Shetty, co-founder, Brilliant Hire by SAP. He recalls his astonishment as he was interviewing many candidates to scale the team. “There was a 90 percent rejection rate in the first round of interviews. We realized that finding the right candidate is like finding a needle in a haystack.”

The experience gave the team insight into the pitfalls of the hiring process and opened the way for the launch of Brilliant Hire by SAP, which found seed funding after a successful pitch to the SAP Innovation Center Network (ICN) in 2017. “Hiring is time consuming and it includes human unconscious bias. At Brilliant Hire, we wanted to solve this and create experiences for recruiters as well as candidates,” Shetty says.

In 2018, the team joined the SAP.io Venture Studio to begin working full time on Brilliant Hire by SAP as an independent venture. Brilliant Hire has grown from a three-person pilot to a dynamic team of twenty passionate experts spread across India and the U.S., who bring a diverse range of experience to solving challenges in recruiting. With its third round of funding, Brilliant Hire by SAP shines a bright light on the possibilities for AI to elevate the candidate experience in talent acquisition.

“We believe in creating a world where a candidate’s dream job finds them,” says Swetha PB, co-founder, Brilliant Hire by SAP. “We’ve focused on building an intelligent and inclusive platform that provides companies the ability to build authentic relationships with candidates they want to hire and candidates to own their successes.”

The future of talent looks bright indeed at Brilliant Hire by SAP!

About Brilliant Hire by SAP

Brilliant Hire by SAP is a dynamic startup in the HR Tech space with teams in San Francisco and Bangalore. It offers an AI-powered application that integrates with SAP SuccessFactors to deliver a more personalized and inclusive candidate experience on companies’ careers sites, and streamline processes for recruiters. Brilliant Hire by SAP is a venture within the SAP.iO Venture Studio.

Find out more on www.brillianthire.io

About SAP.iO Venture Studio

SAP.iO Venture Studio drives a new era of organic growth at SAP. It invests in new ventures founded by small, entrepreneurial teams inside of SAP who are focused on building the future of enterprise business processes. SAP.iO Venture Studio provides design, development, and sales support to help these ventures launch.

Find out more on www.sap.io/studio

In Business Technology Platform, Paris

Maven leads £5.5 million funding round for transport tech platform Liftango

Liftango’s carpool platform helps larger employers and academic institutions to internally match drivers and passengers in real-time to minimise their carbon footprint, reduce parking congestion and create a convenient shared transport experience to and from offices or campuses.

The new investment should help the business take advantage of commercial opportunities in the transport sector, by recruiting several key sales and marketing staff as it looks to scale its operations in Europe and across North America.

Martin McLaren, investment director at Maven, said: “We are seeing a notable shift towards DRT solutions as organisations across the world seek to address parking, congestion, zoning and environmental issues attributed to transport.

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In San Francisco, Network & Spend Management

Travel startup snags an inside round to fuel product additions

With an industry upended by the Covid-19 pandemic, travel startup TripGrid has spent the last nearly two years working closely with its users and signing on big customers. Based on that work, the startup secured another $1.6 million from existing investors to capitalize on an even bigger opportunity.

TripGrid created workflow automation software designed for large group travel. Think project and production-based users like entertainment, sports and media companies that have internal travel coordinators and must move lots of people. These are projects and trips that are core to customers’ business and therefore are expected to recover. And they have to some degree as the pandemic has evolved.

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In Tokyo, Supply Chain Management

LiLz uses computer vision to read gauges and dials where humans prefer not to tread

No one wants to be the maintenance worker who has to hike through half a mile of damp hallways just to check the pressure gauge on a valve somewhere. LiLz makes it possible to keep an eye on such inconvenient physical interfaces remotely with a clever and practical application of machine learning.

The Japanese (specifically Okinawan) startup has been around for a little while — in fact our colleagues at TC JP have written them up. But despite the seemingly obvious value of its service, it hasn’t quite hit the big time yet. LiLz participated in CES as part of the country’s trade group, along with a bunch more companies listed here.

LiLz’s device looks a bit like a chubby tablet without a screen. It’s essentially a camera, light and processing and communications chips packed in with a big battery — enough power to last up to three years.

You mount the device so it can see the gauge or dial in question. After confirming picture and signal, you configure it in the app to interpret what it’s pointed at; it can read circular, semicircular and linear gauges, digital and rolling or analog digit displays, or things like colored warning lights.

Once it’s set up, it’ll send readings live or at intervals to a central dashboard, or make them available via API so they can be queried or recorded elsewhere. The data goes out via LTE or Bluetooth.

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In San Francisco, Funding Announcement, HR & People Engagement

‘Paradox’ startup company becomes unicorn with ‘Olivia’ investment

Paradox, the startup that developed Olivia – a digital recruiter that communicates with job applicants, completed a $200 million round of funding at a value of $1.5 billion and has become a unicorn, due to the company’s investment in the digital recruiter.
Olivia, Paradox’s core product, is a virtual personal assistant that joins human recruitment teams and helps them automate all recruitment processes. For example, the software checks and screens the suitability of a resume for relevant jobs, carries out automatic interview scheduling, reminds the candidate to fill out forms and provides information that would be accessible to recruitment teams and other candidates. It can also send job offers automatically to possible candidates.
Over the past year, Olivia has conducted 30 million job interviews for hundreds of companies in some 50 countries and has independently scheduled 3.1 million interviews. Paradox began operating in Israel in early 2021 after acquiring the startup Spetz, whose workers integrated with the company.
In Bangalore, ERP & Finance

Augmented Reality Boosts Online Shopping Sales up to 200%

For shoppers who’ve yearned for an immersive, personalized experience that’s open 24/7, mobile augmented reality (AR) technology is the real-time deal of the next era. Bangalore-based startup Adloid is leading the charge with a platform that turns two-dimensional search and discovery into a full-fledged 3D experience, whether someone is in the market for automobiles or bikes, household furniture, consumer electronics, or personal lifestyle products.

“Our AR platform gives consumers and companies personalized virtual shopping and training experiences, expanding the horizon of what AR can do for any brand or company,” said Kanav Singla, founder and CEO of Adloid. “We’re making the benefits of this technology more accessible and contextual to create an immersive experience for customers or employees on an e-commerce Website or within applications, directly from someone’s mobile device.”

Unlike earlier AR tech that relied on clunky headsets with varied compatibility, Adloid’s AR platform runs on any smartphone, allowing customers to experience products at scale, in context. Once the online shopper logs in through their phone, the device’s camera scans their real-world surroundings and virtually mirrors the retailer’s or manufacturer’s product.

“People can see how a new sofa or chair would fit into their home or apartment with a click of their smartphone,” said Singla. “Consumers can virtually try on jewelry, makeup, and other products. Remote workers can see if that laptop, screen, and desk configuration will fit in their home office. It’s as if the actual products are in front of you.”

He added that manufacturers were interested in using the AR platform within training modules for industrial machinery service technicians, providing them with hands-on learning in a virtual setting.

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In New York, Portfolio News, ERP & Finance

Digimarc Corporation Completes Acquisition of EVRYTHNG Ltd.

Digimarc Corporation (Nasdaq: DMRC), creator of Digimarc watermarks that are driving the next generation of digital identification and detection-based solutions, announced today it has successfully completed its previously announced acquisition of the Product Cloud company EVRYTHNG Ltd, based in London, UK.

As EVRYTHNG becomes part of Digimarc, it enables a complete solution set for customers, combining the best form of identification with the best cloud platform for gaining and managing the intelligence unlocked by that identification of objects.

“This acquisition is transformative to our business,” explains Digimarc CEO Riley McCormack. “EVRYTHNG’s market-leading product cloud offering provides Digimarc entrée into a potentially enormous market at the cusp of inflection, powers up our ability to sell robust, fully-integrated solutions that no one else can offer, and provides future cross-selling opportunities by providing more on-ramps to our dual platforms. In addition to adding 65 talented and passionate individuals to our team, we can leverage the complementarity of our geographic presence, expanding our ability to serve our increasingly-global customer base while also increasing our ability to attract and retain the best talent world-wide.”

EVRYTHNG is the market leader and pioneered the Product Cloud category, linking every product item to its Active Digital Identity™ on the web and joining-up product data across the value chain for visibility, validation, real time intelligence and connection with people.

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In Tel Aviv, HR & People Engagement

Offering Bespoke One-On-One Mentoring To Employees Helps Retain Workers

What keeps CEOs up at night is worrying about how to attract, recruit and retain workers. The job market is so challenging that Apple is awarding bonuses up to $180,000 to keep software engineers from being poached by rivals like Meta, Amazon and Google. Deskless people who work in warehouses, fulfillment centers, restaurants, bars and department stores are being offered sign-on bonuses, wage increases, flexible schedules and free college tuition.

Innovative startups are seeking out new creative ways to help businesses mentor, upskill, cross-train and help employees succeed, so that the odds will increase that people will stick around. GrowthSpace, an Israeli-based tech company, offers a clever way to help CEOs fight attrition by offering personalized learning and development programs (L&D), driven by an artificial intelligence data-driven platform.

The startup connects workers with an appropriate mentor. The employee will have one-on-one, personalized programs that match each employee’s challenge with the right expert, coach or mentor. In addition to specifically tailored advice and guidance, based on the employee’s needs, managers receive feedback simultaneously that measures progress to ensure the plan is efficient and effective.

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In Funding Announcement

On a Mission to Build the Next Generation of HR and Recruiting Software through Conversational AI, Paradox Raises $200M Series C

Paradox, the conversational recruiting platform built to give every recruiter, hiring manager, and talent professional an assistant to get work done, announced a $200M Series C investment. The round was led by Stripes, Sapphire, and Thoma Bravo, and included participation from Workday Ventures, Willoughby Capital, Twilio Ventures, Blue Cloud Ventures, Geodesic, Principia Growth, DLA Piper Venture Fund and current investor Brighton Park Capital.

Paradox’s vision is embodied by Olivia — the conversational AI assistant helping companies like Unilever, Nestle, McDonald’s, CVS Health, and General Motors automate tasks like candidate screening, interview scheduling, onboarding, and more through smart, simple, mobile-first experiences. In just five years, Olivia has helped 500+ global clients save millions of hours of manual work — freeing their teams up to spend time with people, not software.

“When we created Paradox, we saw a future where software became invisible — driven by conversations that untether people from their desktop through an assistant who gets work done for them. That vision is now taking hold in some of the biggest companies in the world and we couldn’t be prouder of that accomplishment,” said Paradox founder and CEO, Aaron Matos.

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In Foundries, Awards

Sounding Board, Inc. Named Bronze Winner in the 2021 Brandon Hall Group Excellence in Technology Awards

Sounding Board, Inc, the first customizable leadership coaching platform that combines technology and coaching to drive measurable business impact, was recognized with a coveted Brandon Hall Group bronze award for tech excellence in the Best Advance in Online Coaching Tools category. Sounding Board’s award was announced earlier this month on the heels of the company’s recent news of its Series B fund.

“It is exciting to see the industry recognize the breadth and depth of our solution at Sounding Board – 54% of companies plan to increase their use of internal and external coaching to deliver coaching and Sounding Board will be the technology platform to enable that at scale,” Christine Tao, Co-founder & CEO of Sounding Board.

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In Funding Announcement

Gtmhub’s $120 Million Series C Financing

Gtmhub, an objectives and key results (OKR) platform, announced its $120 million Series C financing led by Index Ventures. The company’s OKR management software is designed to help fast-growing companies combine goal management and data integration to support human decision-making. The new capital will be put toward hiring and product expansion.

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