Links 3/1: Accolade opens "co-HQ" in Seattle, pulls in nearly $39M from investors



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Concur founders open Accolade HQ in Seattle, plan to grow team exponentially (Puget Sound Business Journal)
Says it will be co-headquarters with Berwyn, but I wonder how long.


Workday says it's displacing Oracle software, as it hits first-ever $1 billion annual sales (Business Insider)
I wonder why they emphasize Oracle?

Veeva Announces Fourth Quarter and Fiscal Year 2016 Results
(Business Wire)


T-Mobile Sale On Back Burner Until Auction, Presidential Election (Investor's Business Daily)

Charter CEO Expects Time Warner Cable Deal to Close After California Decision in May (Hollywood Reporter)

AT&T will start selling you cable TV over the Internet (CNN Money)


Philadelphia health tech firm sets up Charlestown innovation lab (Boston Business Journal)

E-Learning Platform - Zoomi - Delivers Real-Time Adaptive Content to Help Corporations Increase Learning Comprehension and Improve Outcomes (PR Newswire)



Philadelphia's IntegriChain gets investment from Accel-KKR
Buys out all outside investors


Tom Paine



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IntegriChain, which moved its headquarters and most of its employees from Princeton to Center City Philadelphia about a year ago, announced this morning that 100% of its outside investor pool was bought out by ACCEL/KKR, a PE tech fund co-managed by the giant VC and PE firms behind it. The founders will retain their stakes in the company.

"The investment will help IntegriChain to deepen its solutions and services for the life sciences industry, " the company says. The amount of the investment was not disclosed. IntegriChain says it is profitable and expects to remain so.


IntegriChain is a player in the huge market for pharmaceutical data and related cloud software, but in a specific niche requiring deep domain expertise. It tracks the pipeline at each level in the distribution chain for ethical (prescription) pharmaceuticals, and provides that channel visibility to its major customers, who are large life sciences companies. IntegriChain says it "delivers solutions that improve life sciences suppliers’ management of their channel relationships, inventories, and orders across a vast network of retailers, ecommerce, and distributors.” It was founded in 2006 by CEO Kevin Leininger and Executive Vice President Joshua Halpern.


Joshua Halpern /
IntegriChain website.


Halpern, who co-founded the company a few years out of Princeton University after helping build another startup, said in a phone interview with Philly Tech News that none of the major pharma information providers in the area, such as IMS Health, Veeva Systems,  or Health Market Science, are  are competitors in IntegriChain's niche.

I found a few elsewhere,  such as ValueCentric, which is based near Buffalo. Philly's Revitas has a similar focus on the channel, though I don't think its product does the same things as IntegriChain.

The size of the market and IntegriChain's revenue share are not known. IntegriChain has about 75 employees, and most have either migrated to or have been hired to work in Philadelphia.

Past investors included the NJTC Venture Fund (Series A, 2006, $2 million) Milestone Venture Partners & Cross Atlantic Partners, not to be confused with Radnor's Cross Atlantic Capital Partners (Series B, 2009), and Redwood Pharma Ventures LLC (Series C, 2011). IntegriChain also received a $6 million line of credit from SaaS Capital in late 2015.

IntegriChain runs a hybrid cloud using Amazon Web Services in combination
with its internal private cloud. It also uses TIBCO Spotfire, a competitor to Qlik Technologies and Tableau, as its business intelligence analytics and visualization engine, with considerable custom logic its built in. "As a suite of informed applications and analytics built on top of aggregated channel inventory and point-of-sale (POS) data, IntegriChain provides customer operations, national accounts, and finance teams with a collaborative, agile, and mobile alternative to ERP and homegrown systems," the company said in its release.



IntegriChain website



Its become a visible participant in the Philly Tech community, as you can see on its LinkedIn page.

Accel-KKR is a technology-focused investment firm with $4.0 billion in capital commitments to its current funds. The firm also tends to focus on middle-market, vertical opportunities such as IntegriChain.



SevOne layoffs: "This was a company-wide activity and not limited to a specific department or office"


Tom Paine



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The Wilmington News Journal reported that SevOne was cutting its rapidly growing workforce by less than 10%.

The News Journal cited a source as saying the cuts involved around two dozen employees. SevOne employed 525 as of late 2015, the publication said.

The company issued a statement, but the reasons aren't clear. And it seems contrary to the expectations stated by SevOne management until recently.

Update 3/1: This statement by SevOne in response to my email inquiry perhaps says a little more than I've seen:


"The reprioritization impacted less than 10% of the SevOne workforce. This was a company-wide activity and not limited to a specific department or office. SevOne will continue to hire and expect to have to internal growth in headcount throughout 2016."

SevOne is backed by about $200 million in venture capital led by Bain Capital Ventures. CEO Jack Sweeny said late last year that the company, which officially moved its headquarters from Delaware to Boston in the Fall, anticipated 2015 revenue of over $100 million. It said at the time it expected to hire 200 more employees in 2016.