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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Philly to get a giant new ecommerce/retail tech stock, of sorts: QVC Group

Tom Paine

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Liberty Interactive Corp announced today plans to split itself into two separate tracking stocks, one for West Chester-based QVC and another for its other ecommerce holdings.

QVC Group, which will begin trading next year, will also include Liberty Interactive's 38% stake in HSN Inc. (formerly Home Shopping Network). The possibility of Liberty Interactive buying the rest of HSN and merging it with QVC has often been discussed by Liberty management and others.

Liberty Interactive Chairman John C. Malone has been a long-time fan of tracking stocks and frequently creates new ones as he sees the need arise. Tracking stocks can provide investor focus on a particular sector, financial flexibility, and possible tax advantages. Tracking stocks track the performance of a particular unit of a corporation without giving the holder a claim on the underlying assets of the unit or parent company. Liberty Interactive was already traded through a tracking stock, Liberty Interactive Group (LINTA).

This move reflects the parent company's previously stated desire to increase the strategic
focus on and visibility of QVC as a distinct entity. It also may open the door to other strategic transactions, including perhaps a deal with HSN.

But QVC has not really been a growing business for some time ($2 billion revenue in Q2 2013 vs. $1.8 billion in Q2 2010) , in spite of expansion into Italy and China. While broadcast remains an essential platform for it, QVC sees itself increasingly as an ecommerce company, with website orders now accounting for 42% of revenue, and two-thirds of that coming via mobile.

Liberty Interactive (NASDAQ: LINTA) currently has a market capitalization of $12.8 billion. HSN Inc.'s market capitalization is $2.77 billion, which would put the value of LINTA's 38% stake at about $1 billion (which should already be reflected in LINTA's market cap).

Links 10/10/2013: Ailibaba leads reported $206 million financing in Kynetic's ShopRunner

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Alibaba leads $206M financing in Amazon rival ShopRunner (CNET News)
This explains alot.

QVC Group To Be Launched as New Tracking Stock of Liberty Interactive Corporation (PR Newswire)

Liberty Media Buys 5.2% Stake of Its Own Shares From Comcast
(Bloomberg)

Malone: No reason Xfinity or Hulu can't be syndicated (FierceCable)



Comcast, NBCU Connect With Twitter (Multichannel News)

Comcast: Twitter Just The Start For ‘See It’ Button (Multichannel News)



As deadline nears, many New Yorkers still can't get Verizon's fiber internet (The Verge)
Got an update on FiOS progress in Philly, Verizon?

U.S. cable companies home in on security (Reuters)

2 PHILLY INQUIRER OWNERS SUE COMPANY, PUBLISHER (AP)



BlackBerry Is Said to Warm to Idea of a Breakup (Bloomberg)
SAP's possible interests discussed.

How Jeff Bezos Crushed Diapers.com So Amazon Could Buy Diapers.com
(AllThingsD)

Makerspace 3rd Ward unexpectedly closes (Newsworks)

Is Crowdfunding Coming to New Jersey? (NJ.com)

Workday ‘Steals Show,’ At HR Tech Conference, Adoption Could ‘Skyrocket’: Piper Jaffray (Barron's:
Tech Trader Daily)




Two-tier ERP destined to become just one tier in time (ZDNet)

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.