Philly Tech People News 12/7/2015: NRG head with controversial agenda departs; Meredith Perry takes on uBeam critics







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Chris Bastian Named SCTE’s New CTO (Multichannel News)

Franklin Square hires Bassuk as MD and liquid alternative strategies head (Press Release)

UDel's new president: How he could change the university (Philadelphia Business Journal)

Meredith Perry Responds to uBeam's Critics (Fortune)
Perry started work on uBeam while a grad student at Penn.

David Crane Leaves NRG, Replaced by Mauricio Gutierrez (NY Times)


Google Taps VMware Founder to Chase Amazon in the Cloud (Re/code)

Lawrence Lenihan Leaves FirstMark Capital for Fashion Venture (Wall Street Journal: Venture Capital Dispatch)
FirstMark has been an active investor in the Philly area.




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Links 12/7: Streaming Video Now Accounts for 70 Percent of Broadband Usage; AT&T says it plans to expand its fiber internet service to 38 new cities







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Streaming Video Now Accounts for 70 Percent of Broadband Usage (Re/code)

Sling TV Boss Says Comcast Usage Caps Hurt Competition (Broadband Reports)

Verizon could explore Yahoo's Internet business, CFO says (Reuters)

AT&T expands its fiber internet service to 38 new cities (Engadget)



SAP NS2’s VC Arm Invests in ThreatConnect; Mark Testoni Comments (GovConWire)

Wall Street thinks Salesforce could fix one big flaw in its business by following Oracle (Business Insider)

Salesforce's Benioff ‘doesn’t believe in unicorn theory anymore’, cites market manipulation (New York Business Journal)

New Salesforce tool lets users have their way with external data (PCWorld)


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Salesforce catching up to SAP? Not so quickly, perhaps


Tom Paine



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With all the hype given to Salesforce, with which on substance I certainly to a degree buy in to, there's been much talk (led by Marc Benioff himself) about the inevitability of Salesforce 'catching up' to SAP one of these days. But in the past few months the stock market results haven't reflected a closing of the gap. Quite the opposite.

I looked at SAP (NYSE: SAP) and Salesforce (NYSE: CRM) share prices from the day Dreamforce ended (9/18) up through the close of business Friday,December 4. Of course, the other significant financial event during that period was its earnings report on November 18.

SAP reported preliminary results on October 12 that exceeded estimates, also offering a bouyant outlook for Q4.

Of course, Salesforce is growing at a much faster rate, but for SAP even the slightest upward blip could make a big difference. SAP also touts its cloud growrh, although cloud revenue still accounts for a relatively small percentage of
overall revevue, and it was cacquired mostly through pricey acquisitions and the payback on these remain to be determined.

Salesforce now has a market capitalization of $54.5 billion, up from $47.1 billion at the end of Dreamforce, versus $96.4 billion for SAP, up from $77.6 billion at the end of Dreamforce.





Salesforce SAP
9/18 $71.40 $64.96
12/4 $82.13 $78.98
% change 15 % 21.6 %




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phillytechnews bytes 12/6





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Comcast, Samsung, others invest in VR company Baobab Studios (Telecompaper)

Google Ventures Dials Down Seed Deals, Urges Mature Startups to Go Public (Wall Street Journal: Venture
Capital Dispatch)




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Links 12/4: Now Seattle wants a Comcast deal like Philly got








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Comcast, Philly Agree to 15-Year Franchise Deal (Multichannel News)


Seattle to Comcast: We want a contract deal like Philly got (Seattle Times)

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2016 now available worldwide (ZDNet)

U.S. appeals court hears challenge to net neutrality rules (Reuters)


With $42M Deal, Evariant Goes Big in Health Marketing, Analytics (Xconomy)
Pursuing a different segment of healthcare market than Veeva Systems, but potential collision points exist, initially in the area of data sources. For all I know, Veeva may already see this as additional opportunity for its data. In any event, I think Salesforce controls franchise boundaries for its verticals to some degree.

Qlik and Veeva Systems Partner to Offer Unprecedented Visibility into Customer Data for the Pharmaceutical Industry (Business
Wire)


at 2:32 PM 0 comments

Jacoby, First Round back new Philly adtech startup, Circulate


Tom Paine



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Ari Jacoby / Circulate
(LinkedIn)
Solve Media, the Philadelphia/New York adtech company which revolutionized the use of the CAPTCHA by turning it into valuable advertising real estste, was acquired recently by Somerville, NJ-based Adiant , price so far unknown. But Solve's founder, Ari Jacoby, one who's truly earned the "serial entrepreneur" designation, had already started another venture, Circulate. Its website states: "Founded in the City of Brotherly Love, Circulate now has offices in Philadelphia & NYC." Its received funding from First Round Capital (according to FRC 's website), which also backed Solve and Jacoby's previous venture, VoiceStar.

Circulate describes itsef as "The World's First Data Supply Side Platform (DSSPP)". "Circulate helps publishers (Web and App), networks and SDK providers maximize their first-party data monetization strategies with one simple integration, on a privacy friendly basis. Circulate advances the science of targeting and media attribution by enabling industry partners to utilize match Data as a Service." Examples given include website onboarding and cross-device targeting. I don't pretend to completely understand all of this.

Circulate has been operating in an early startup stage for a while, snd Jacoby has been CEO since the middle of last year, aacording to his LinkedIn profile. Most of the founding team members came from Solve Media.

I reached out to Circulate for more information but have yet to receive a response.


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Links 12/3: Who will pay what for Yahoo's web business? Uber Is Raising Another Couple Billion, At A $62.5 Billion Valuation








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Who’s Willing to Pay Up for Yahoo’s Web Business? (Barron's Tech Trader Daily)

Analyst Sounds Warning on Altice/Cablevision Deal (Light Reading)
Hate to disagree with the esteemed Mr. Moffett, who I'm sure knows more about these issues than I, but I have a hard time sseing the argument for how removing the Dolans from ownership would be against the public interest. For example, no one would argue againt
removing control of the Knicks from Dolan control.

Uber Is Raising Another Couple Billion, At A $62.5 Billion Valuation (TechCrunch)

What are Oracle and SAP's vision of the future of enterprise apps? (ZDNet)

NetSuite Marketing Execs to Depart (The Information)
CEO Zach Nelson prefers to be his own marketing guy, even to the point of writing his own copy on occasion.

Verizon, the final Frontier: Landlines, TV, ISP biz to explore strange new worlds (The Register)

Veeva Systems Introduces Medical CRM to Improve Key Opinion Leader Engagement and Ensure Lasting Relationships (Business Wire)


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Links 12/2: Another Pulblicis reorg; Arris-Pace merger passes DOJ review








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Publicis Groupe Reorganizes in Effort to Move Away From 'Silos' (Ad Age)
Seems like Publicis has done alot of reorgs, but l guess it would say its a natural evolution as it sorts through and incorporates its newer digital proporties.
Still not sure what became of Rosetta, though, which is not mentioned in the announcement. Guess its been swallowed up.
Agency Spy described some of the changes at Rosetta this past summer.

Buyout Firms Could Slice Dell's Debt to Get EMC Deal Done (Fortune)

Arris: DoJ Wraps Up Probe of Pace Deal (Multichannel News)

Why You Should Stop Calling ADP a Payroll Vendor (Fortune)

Impact Radius Acquires eBay Enterprise Attribution Unit ClearSaleing, As Unbundling Continues (Ad Exchanger)

Violin Memory Reports Disappointing Quarter, Is Exploring 'Strategic Alternatives' (CRN)
Was once conisidered a key potential supplier for SAP Hana apps (in-memory relies on flash memory), but things have not gone smoothly.

Evariant raises $42.3M to support expansion of engineering, sales teams (Med City News)
Like Veeva Systems, also a Salesforce partner, but seems focused on different niche within healthcare.

Edison Partners Invests $8M in Clearpool Group (Globe Newswire)


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Advertising; A small request for decency




Tom Paine



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I've been amazed at the idiocy of much of the advertising aimed at traders. They sound as if they were written by Donald Trump's ad team.

One in particular that struck me as over the top was running on Bloomberg TV; I couldn't identify the advertiser, which is an important measure of an ad's effectiveness. I'll try to ID it later.

The ad starts with a woman saying to a male companion: "Did you hear about the huge earthquake in Asia"? Rather than following that remark with a discussion of how many were affected, or how they might make a donation or do something else that might be helpful, the woman goes on to say something like: "This creates some tremendous opportunities. [My broker's] system is up when all the others are down. I've got some hedge fund trades to make."

No doubt people do trade on natural disasters. And though this behavior may appear at times selfish from a micro point of view, it serves a useful economic purpose from a macro point of view. But the nature of the ad is so crass so to make it a complete turnoff.

UPDATE 12/4: Ad is by Interactive Brokers, Inc. Still looking for exact copy on Youtube.

Update 12/7: This is the exact same ad as the earthquake ad, except the opening pretext changed. Now its "Did you hear? Russia shot down a NATO plane"?






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Links 12/1: FIS completes SunGard acquisition; FirstMark Capital co-founder leaves for Fashion Venture








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Unicorn Volatility: Fidelity Marks Up Shares of Dropbox and Snapchat (Fortune)

Adobe is telling people to stop using Flash (The Verge)
Are they offering compensation for all the lost time spent trying to load Flash plugins?

Lawrence Lenihan Leaves FirstMark Capital for Fashion Venture (Wall Street Journal: Venture Capital Dispatch)

FIS completes SunGard acquisition, creating banking and capital markets technology giant (FierceFinanceIT)

City still to reach a franchise deal with Comcast (Philadelpia Inquirer)


iPipeline Launches Bank and Broker-Dealer Technology Advancement Program with Four Seasons Financial Group to Simplify and Streamline Life and Annuity Processing (Business Wire)


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