Links 3/13/2014: ShopRunner jumps on Amazon Prime price increase; layoffs hit EBay's Magento

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Amazon raising Prime subscriptions by $20 to $99 a year (Engadget)

Amazon Rival ShopRunner Jumps on Prime Increase (Wall Street Journal: Digits)

ShopRunner Sprints Out of the Gates in 2014 with New Retailers and Tremendous Growth (Business Wire)


Layoffs Hit eBay’s Magento Division; Product Chief Exits (Re/code)
Magento reports up through King of Prussia-based EBay Enterprise.

Has Your Leadership Role Scaled With Your Company? (Inc)
Interview with Monetate CEO David Brussin.


Quintiq Shatters Records in 2013 (Quintiq Press Release)
Revenue reaches $100 million.

Qlik Doesn't Fear Tableau, Oracle In Data Analytics (Investor's Business Daily)


[Boomi competitor] MuleSoft raises $50M to connect every business app to every other business app (Venture Beat)


Oracle, SAP Threatened by Big Data Startups Lotame, DataStax, Etc., Says Cowen (Barron's: Tech Trader Daily)


Salesforce Just Disclosed A Really Odd Thing: It Doesn't Really Know Where Its Revenue Comes From (Business Insider)

Enterprise adolescent: Salesforce.com's struggles at 15 (The Register)

Charter Still Hanging Around Time Warner Cable
(New York Times: DealBook)



Fundable Acquires LaunchRock To Combine Crowdfunding And User Acquisition (TechCrunch)

The big deal: Alibaba leads $206 million round in ShopRunner

Tom Paine

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Alibaba has led a $206 million round in Amazon Prime competitor ShopRunner, which has offices in Conshohocken, San Francisco and New York, the Wall Street Journal reports. American Express also participated in the round, which values ShopRunner at $600 million. Reports in August had suggested the size of Alibaba's investment would be in the $70 to $75 million range.

As part of the transaction, the Journal says EBay, which had about a 30% stake in the venture, exited at a profit. This explains my confusion, as I reported last week, about EBay testing its own Amazon Prime competitor without ShopRunner's involvement. It may also reflect increasing competitive pressures globally between Alibaba and EBay.

A part of GSI Commerce founder Michael Rubin's Kynetic LLC holding company, ShopRunner's CEO is Scott Thompson, who briefly served as Yahoo CEO before being pushed out last year due to a resume discrepancy. Prior to that, he served as President of EBay's PayPal unit.

Alibaba also has a PayPal-like payment platform outside the US and there is a chance it could introduce it here. The Chinese internet giant is expected to file for an IPO in the US.

No word on whether EBay also exited its stake in Rue La La, another Kynetic holding.

A majority of ShopRunner employees listed on LinkedIn are based in the Philly area, although several of its senior executives are located in the Bay area.



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PayPal, along with EBay Enterprise, tests Amazon Prime competitor; ShopRunner says not involved

Tom Paine

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EBay's PayPal is testing (for a limited time for now, anyway) an Amazon Prime-like service offering two day shipping, in conjunction with King of Prussia-based EBay Enterprise. In fact, many (perhaps most) of the merchants shown as being involved in the trial peiod are EBay Enterprise customers.

My first thought upon hearing this was that Amazon Prime competitor ShopRunner, which is partially based in Conshohocken, must be involved. After all, EBay owns a considerable stake in ShopRunner (thought to be 30% before Alibaba's reported $70-75 million investment in August, which may have diluted that percentage) and ShopRunner's CEO is former PayPal Pesident Scott Thompson. And ShopRunner is part of GSI Commerce founder Michael Rubin's Kynetic LLC. Rubin, of course, sold GSI Commerce, recently rebranded as EBay Enterprise, to EBay two years ago. It would all make sense, wouldn't it? Why reinvent the wheel?

Except there is no connection as of now, according to ShopRunner. In response to my question on that issue, I received the following statement from ShopRunner chief strategy officer Fiona Dias, herself a former top executive at GSI Commerce:

"ShopRunner is not involved, but we are big fans of 2 day shipping. It’s a real driver of customer satisfaction and retailer sales. We believe it’s something that drives consumer preference and loyalty and, as such, think it should be an ongoing benefit that retailers provide their best customers.”

Of course, another issue here could be that EBay may see Alibaba as a competitor, at least in parts of the world. China-based Alibaba, which is moving towards a huge US IPO, has a payment service named Alipay that competes with PayPal in some countries.

More on this as it develops.

Daily Links 3/13/2013: Monetete adds COO, CFO

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Monetate Rounds Out Leadership Team to Further Drive Company's Growth and Market Momentum
Additions of John Healy, chief operating officer, and David Stetson, chief financial officer, will help SaaS firm respond to the rising enterprise demand for its personalization technology (PR Newswire)

Why Amazon Prime Could Soon Cost You Next to Nothing (Wired Business)

Comcast will stream on demand shows from HBO, Showtime, and 28 others during free trial week for subscribers (The Verge)

Invidi Strikes Comcast Deal To Extend Addressable TV To 60 Million

Read more: http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/195744/invidi-strikes-comcast-deal-to-extend-addressable.html#ixzz2NSDGBKVY">Invidi Strikes Comcast Deal To Extend Addressable TV To 60 Million (MediaPost: Media Daily News)

SAP Opens Singapore-Based Co-Innovation Lab (TechCrunch)

Oracle to acquire cloud management software biz Nimbula (VentureBeat)

Oracle Buys Nimbula For Cloud OS Software, Not OpenStack (TechCrunch)

The Drexel 40 Under 40 (Drexel Magazine)
Some fairly well known names and other interesting people.

ThingWorx Continues to Improve on Developer Efficiency with Version 4.0 (ThingWorx Blog)



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Daily Links 4/12/2012: Two local PE firms team up to buy Minnesota Ed Tech firm

Poptent Launches World’s Largest Video Production House for Major Brands and Agencies (Business Wire)
A company spokesperson tells me by email that Poptent Productions will be primarily run out of Poptent's San Clemente, CA office (where David Mann and Jon Seidman are based), with support from a number of employees in the Philly-area office as well.

Open Table's rival to launch here (Philadelphia Inquirer)

Wilmington News Journal cans newly hired reporter after he posts self-written press release on blog sites (JimRomenesko.com)

Microsoft Inks Its Biggest Cloud Deal Yet: 7.5M Students And Teachers In India (TechCrunch)

Amazon Job Descriptions Hint at More Perks Coming to Prime (All Things D)
Comments by Mike Golden, president of Conshohocken-based ShopRunner.

Will Service Providers Steal ADT's Customers? (Light Reading Cable)
Comcast wants to be a big player.


Alarm Capital Alliance Partners with Norwest Venture Partners
Alarm Capital Alliance Eyes Major Growth Opportunities in the $43 Billion Security Alarm Industry (PR Newswire)
Alarm Capital Alliance is based in Media. The amount invested by Norwest Venture Partners, or the exact nature of its partnership with ACA, were not disclosed.

Boathouse, Renovus Capital Strike Secondary Deal for Atomic Learning (PE Hub)
Boathouse Capital and Renovus Capital Partners are both located outside of Philadelphia. Atomic Learning, based in Minnesota, provides tech tools and training to teachers. Boathouse and Renovus invested $19.0 million of subordinated debt and equity alongside Atomic Learning’s management.

SAP Says Hana Tests Well On Performance, Scalability (Josh Greenbaum/Information Week)

Making Sense of "Multi-tenancy" Claims (Brian Sommer/ZDNet Blogs)

EMC unveils preconfigured private cloud for partners (Computerworld)

RES Software Signs $3.5 Million Deal with Fortune 20 Company (Business Wire)
RES Software is based in Plymouth Meeting.

Leslie Moonves on Why Broadcast Trumps Cable, What He Said to Steve Burke (Q&A) (Hollywood Reporter)

Philadelphia Councilman Thinks Verizon May Be Foot-Dragging On FiOS Construction (CBS Philly)

TWC Bundles Up With Verizon Wireless In Five Markets
Regulators Have Yet to Approve MSOs' Spectrum and Co-Marketing Deals With Wireless Operator (Multichannel News)

InterDigital and LiveCast Successfully Integrate Video Optimization into Broadcast-Focused LTE Live Video Solution (Business Wire)



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