Billtrust brings on new CFO, who talks about future equity event possibilities

Tom Paine

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Hamilton, NJ-based Billtrust, the provider of business-to-business and business-to-consumer billing and payment services, announced the hiring of a new CFO, Ed Jordan, late last month, although he actually started work there a couple of months prior to that.

Ed Jordan

Jordan told the Wall Street Journal that his 30 year background involves helping guide companies to the point that they can be taken public, sold to a larger entity, or in some cases both. Two companies he helped go public as CFO were ITXC Corporation and Dialogic Inc.

The twelve-year-old company is profitable, he told the Journal, and received a $25 million growth equity investment from Bain Capital Ventures this past November. Jordan also told the Journal that "he anticipates any future funding needs will come from private equity or in the public markets." Although he said that there is "no timetable on any future IPO, let alone a sale of the company," he did say that if Billtrust did go public it would benefit from the JOBS Act, which enables private companies to go through several steps of the filing process confidentially.

According to the Inc. 5000, on which it is ranked #2247, Billtrust had 2012 revenue of $44.5 million, up from $16.9 million in 2009. It has 159 employees, according to Inc. It was founded by CEO Flint Lane.

At the same time it announced Jordan's appointment, Billtrust also said Kirk Dauksavage had joined the company as its new Chief Revenue Officer.

Just yesterday, Billtrust announced it was integrating its invoice system with the Ariba Network. Ariba, an SAP company, operates a major network that electronically connects buyers and sellers for purchasing and billing.

Examples of Billtrust customers include Kraft Foods Group Inc., Whirlpool Corp. and Under Armour Inc.

Billtrust is ranked #8 on Philly Tech News' Young Companies to Watch.

Links 10/9/2013: Comcast, Twitter connect with new "See It" button

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Dell Boomi AtomSphere and Atom Technology Awarded U.S. Patent (Business Wire)

Through Twitter Partnership, Comcast Hopes to Encourage TV Viewing (New York Times)
Comcast Press Release



QlikTech Aims To Disrupt BI, Again (Information Week)


GE teams up with AT&T and Intel to conquer the industrial internet. Here’s its plan. (Gigaom)

Urban Outfitters Preps for Holidays With Mobile Investments (Ad Age)

IAB Study: Online Ad Revenue Continues Double-Digit Growth
Report shows explosive mobile growth (Ad Week)

Ogilvy & Mather N.Y. Wins Comcast Business account (Ad Week)

Comcast-Backed Cell Tower Firm Lands Financing, Buys Five Towers (Multichannel News)

In a room with no cell service, Verizon works on the future of mobile (PC World)


SAP's cloud and big data race against time (ZDNet)

IBM adds social 'learning' component to cloud portfolio (ZDNet)
Additions include Kenexa offering.

Got Issues? Talk to Watson (Human Resource Executive)

Google Alerts stream is back in my RSS reader again (without me having to do anything)

Tom Paine

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When Google shut down its Reader RSS service at the beginning of July, one of the things that disappeared along with it was the ability to send your Google Alerts directly to a feed reader. The only option you were given by Google Alerts was to send all of your alerts to email. While some people found workarounds to this, for most of us the result was painful at best. Sorting through a multitude of alerts on email is a terribly slow process.

A few weeks ago, Google reinstated the ability to direct your alerts to your feed reader. However, at the time there appeared to be no way to do this "in bulk"; instead it required tediously redirecting alerts from email back your feed reader one by one, if I understood correctly. I hadn't had time to do that given the large number of alerts that I have.

But today I noticed that the alert stream in my RSS reader appears to be back to its old self. When exactly this transformation occurred I don't know since I hadn't looked at that stream for a while. Anyway, Google giveth, they taketh away, and some times they giveth back again a little of what they took away.

Google Alerts are a very important part of what I try to cover since it helps me pick up articles and items somewhat off the beaten path that sometimes turn into the basis for important stories. Now, if I can only figure out why converting iGoogle to My Yahoo isn't working for me.

Links 10/8/2013: Amazon introduces service competing with PayPal

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Inquirer editor Marimow fired (Philadelphia Inquirer)

PACT Announces Featured Companies for the IMPACT 2013 Venture Summit (Business Wire)

Insurers Getting Faulty Data From U.S. Health Exchanges (Bloomberg)


Aereo’s Legal Battle Extends To Utah As Fox, Other Broadcasters File Suit (TechCrunch)

NBC's new boss faces challenges (AP via Philadelphia Inquirer)

Comcast Touts Multiscreen Video ‘VIPER’ (Multichannel News)

Jim Crane says Comcast carriage offers ‘didn’t make any sense’ (Houston Chronicle Blog: Ultimate Astros)


Why buy BlackBerry? What Cisco, SAP, and Google would gain/lose (VentureBeat)


Urban Outfitters adding 2,500 jobs in region (Philadelphia
Inquirer)

Amazon’s ‘Pay with Amazon’ Service Challenges PayPal For The Web’s Payment Business (TechCrunch)

Google Moving Staff From Search To Its Payments Business In A New Push For Google Wallet (Business Insider)

Microsoft Charges Into Enterprise Cloud Market (Information Week)

Links 10/7/2013: Urban Outfitters plans 2500 more PA jobs

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Autobytel Acquires Advanced Mobile to Provide Leading Mobile Capabilities to Automotive Manufacturers and Dealerships (Business Wire)
Advanced Mobile is based in King of Prussia.

Urban Outfitters expansion means 2,500 jobs in PA (Philadelphia Business Journal)


eBay Enterprise Launches Alliance Network to Drive Commerce (EBay Enterprise)

Verizon Picks AMD’s SeaMicro Servers to Create New Cloud (Wall Street Journal: Digits)

Judge rules for Amazon Web Services over IBM in CIA cloud case (Federal Computer Week)


Time Warner Cable Agrees to Acquire DukeNet for $600 Million (Bloomberg)

Comcast Recovers From Brief ‘X1’ Outage (Multichannel News)

Amazon recruits variety of apps for set-top box, report says
(CNET News)

Big Data, Faster Clinical Trials (Information Week)
Merck teams up with Israeli company.

Analysis: IT experts question architecture of Obamacare website (Reuters)


Wall Street skittish on growing threat to IBM's SaaS, cloud (ZDNet)

Clearvision to host Atlassian Summit review this Tuesday evening in Philly

Clearvision, a UK and Center City-based consulting and training firm specializing in Atlassian and other DevOps-type tools, is hosting a post-Atlassian Summit review gathering of the Philadelphia Atlassian User Group this Tuesday, October 8 at 6pm at The Café 2011, 2011 Walnut Street. In addition to free beer and food, you'll have the opportunity to learn more about Atlassian and what news came out of the summit, held last week in San Francisco.

You can find out more about Clearvision and the event and RSVP for it here.

Philly Tech People News 10/6/2013

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Morgan Lewis names woman as chair (Philadelphia Inquirer)

Telemundo head out at Comcast's NBCUniversal (Philadelphia Inquirer)

Comcast SportsNet Houston president resigns (Houston Chronicle Blog)


CFO Moves: New York Life Insurance, Heartland Payment Systems, St. Joe (Wall Street Journal: CFO Journal)

Andrew Damico Joins WizeHive as President (PR Web)

Elemica Optimizes Supply Chain Product Management Team Organization (Marketwire)

QVC’s Darcy Soper Joins Brownstein Group as Creative Director (Philly Ad Club News)

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.

Saturday morning headlines: Comcast X1 outage; SAP among those discussing BlackBerry bid (report)

Comcast's new X1 cable boxes are apparently suffering a nationwide outage (Engadget)

Exclusive: Cisco, Google, SAP discussing BlackBerry bids - sources (Reuters)

Database Company MongoDB Raises $150M to Chip Away at Oracle
(Wall Street Journal: Digits)


How MongoDB raised $150M in warp speed to challenge IBM, Oracle, and SAP (VentureBeat)

Exclusive: With IPO elusive, Avaya explored sale to Oracle this year - sources (Reuters)


N.J. on track in race to let casinos offer online gambling (Newark Star-Ledger)

Links 10/4/2013: Comcast's Philadelphia market antitrust case lingers on

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Her business helps clients use cloud computing smartly (Philadelphia Daily News)
Khushboo Shah of Cloudamize.


Procurian in Accenture: The Profitable Son Returns (Spend Matters)
More insights into Procurian's history and rise to success.

How Pa. startups are getting $75M more in state funding (Newsworks)

Bentley Extends SACS’ Leadership in Engineering Software for Offshore Structures with Acquisition of MOSES
(Business Wire)

Case on Comcast cable customers won't go away (Philadelphia Inquirer)

Comcast Expands CBS Deal for VOD, Online Streaming Rights (Variety)

Lockheed to furlough 3,000 workers due to U.S. shutdown (Reuters)



Oracle’s Ellison Forgoes Payout to End Pillar Buyout Suit (Bloomberg)

Violin Memory is winning flash-supply race – Quadragon™ rivals (The Register)

Sparta Systems and Veeva Systems to Deliver End-to-End Quality Solution (Marketwire)


Reliance Globalcom Partners with Philadelphia Technology Park to Provide Expanded Global Network Connectivity (Business Wire)

Philly Tech News Three big deals: Veeva prices IPO; Accenture buys Procurian; Comcast buys Universal City tower

Tom Paine

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California-based Veeva Systems, which has a significant presence in the Philadelphia area, indicated its pricing range for its planned IPO in a regulatory filing.

The company and existing shareholders are offering 13 million shares at $12 to $14 each, which could raise as much as $183 million. At the midpoint of that range, Veeva would be valued at about $1.6 billion. The price range and number of shares is not final and can be adjusted as the offering date approaches. No word on when it might be scheduled yet.

Veeva is a SaaS life sciences vendor that started with CRM, but appears to be taking broader aim at the large vertical market, with Oracle its primary competitor. It has offices in Radnor and Fort Washington. I've written about the planned offering here and also here.



Accenture, already a leading force in the third-party procurement space, today announced plans to acquire another leader, King of Prussia-based Procurian, for $375 million.

Procurian, mostly owned by Wayne-based ICG, was considered by many to be best-of-breed among procurement outsourcing vendors. Founded in 1999 as ICG Commerce near the height of the VerticalNet bubble (ICG was also an investor in that company), it changed its name to Procurian in early 2012. I'm not an expert on its history, but my recollection is that it struggled for a while before honing in on a strategy that clicked. ICG gradually bought out most other investors, including Cross Atlantic Capital Partners.

Spend Matters, an authoritative website covering the procurement industry, provides more insight into the deal and says it establishes a benchmark price for top companies in that sector of about 3x revenue, which presumably would put Procurian's revenue at roughly $125 million.

In its own statement, ICG said it expected to realize approximately $324 million from the transaction and that it (ICG) will emerge "as a high-growth, pure-play cloud computing company, with market-leading positions in the public sector, compliance and insurance markets."

Procurian has approximately 780 employees and all are expected to join Accenture, the acquiring company says.

Universal City Plaza (Wikipedia)

Does Comcast have an edifice complex, or does it simply prefer buying to leasing? Comcast is buying the 35 story Universal City Plaza, the tallest building in the Valley, for a reported $420 million. NBCU is already the majority tenant there, but according to one source the building is almost 30% vacant. Earlier this year Comcast purchased a big part of 30 Rock, and there has also been seemingly well-grounded speculation that it is looking at building one or more additional towers in Center City.