TPG has agreed to buy cable television providers RCN and Grande Communications for about $2.25 billion


Tom Paine



 Subscribe in a reader



Private-equity firm TPG has agreed to buy cable television providers RCN and Grande Communications for about $2.25 billion including debt, the Wall Street Journal reported Sunday night. The seller is Abry Partners.

RCN, a so-called 'overbuilder' that provides competitive cable services in some areas, serves parts of Delaware County and the Lehigh Valley. It began existence by acquiring a controlling interest in C-TEC of Wilkes-Barre, and Twin County Cable in Lehigh Valley in the 1990s.

An interesting aspect of the deal, which may be announced on Monday, is that Google Capital, Alphabet Inc.’s growth-equity investment fund, is taking a minority stake in the companies. Perhaps its trying to learn more about the cable business, as reports have indicated that Alphabet is reassessing expansion plans for Google Fiber.








The two separate deals were announced Monday.

RCN, based in Princeton, had more ambitious plans prior to the 2000-era tech bust, which resulted in a period of bankruptcy.

Grande Communications provides similar services in portions of Texas. RCN and Grande will be integrated after their acquisitions, though its unclear what that means.

According to SNL Kagan data, RCN has about 289,000 video subs, and Grande 88,000. The combined companies say they service over 640,000 residential and business customers. RCN would not provide subscription numbers for its Pennsylvania locations.

Princeton-based Patriot Media Consulting, which has managed the two companies for Abry, is part of the new ownership group and will continue in its management role.




Dentsu Aegis Network to acquire majority stake in Columbia, MD-based marketing agency Merkle, valued ~ $1.5 billion



Tom Paine



 Subscribe in a reader





In the late 1980s and early 90s, database marketing was one of the hot buzzwords, and a great deal of effort went in to trying to figure what it actually consisted of. Was it a product or a service? What did it look like? There wasn't really a model to build from.

The truth was that database marketing was a difficult, often rather messy business that typically involved crunching together data from different sources, when the data was not as good and the data crunching tools weren't nearly as good as today. And disk space was at an incredible premium, governing almost every operational consideration.



David Williams
In 1988, a small Maryland data processing shop named Merkle was acquired by a 25 year old entrepreneur named David Williams.

Williams built Merkle both organically and later through strategic acquisitions, adding proprietary tools such as a cross-device identity management system, a CRM-matching database for publishers, and a database known as the M1 audience platform.






All this led Japanese holding company Dentsu Aegis Network to acquire a majority stake in Columbia-based Merkle this past week in a transaction that values Merkle at about $1.5 billion. Dentsu Aegis replaced Technology Crossover Ventures (TCV) as Merkle's primary owner, although obviously its interest is more strategic than simply financial. Merkle had $436 million in revenue in 2015, up 14% over 2014.

Merkle was originally a direct marketing play, and though that still applies today it is known more for its ability to feed hungry CRM systems, both on the consumer and BtoB sides. The term it uses to describe what it does is 'performance marketing,' as well as a CRM Agency.

Merkle has more than 3,400 employees worldwide and over 65 employees in its Philadelphia (King of Prussia) office. The Philadelphia office is led by Dean McCarney, a Senior Director within Merkle’s Vertical Markets Group.

Naturally, in Philly Merkle has a bit of a Pharma bent, and in fact is a sponsor of Digital Pharma East 2016 to be held in Philadelphia in October.

Dentsu has 8100 employees in the Americas, headquartered out of New York.

Williams, by the way, began his career at Butcher & Singer, a Philadelphia-based investment bank, and holds a Bachelor of Science in business administration from Shippensburg University.












Sunday highlights: More on the reported Oracle MICROS breach; Hill International postpones annual meeting






Saturday Highlights: Where is the EMV card 10 months later?; Meet the low-profile VC firm that invested in tech’s last two billion-dollar sales






Accolade Raises More than $70 Million, Led by Andreessen Horowitz, to Transform Healthcare



Accolade Raises More than $70 Million, Led by Andreessen Horowitz, to Transform Healthcare

SEATTLE – August 11, 2016 – Accolade, Inc., an on-demand healthcare concierge for employers, health plans and health systems, announced it has raised more than $70 million in new Series E funding led by Andreessen Horowitz and with participation from Madrona Venture Group and others. Accolade will use the capital to expand its technology platform, R&D, and sales and marketing initiatives as it reinvents the healthcare experience for millions of Americans.

“Accolade is simply the best tool we’ve seen to help companies simultaneously improve both the quality and the cost of healthcare,” said Jeff Jordan, general partner of Andreessen Horowitz. “It’s delivering magical results—the service makes employees healthier and happier with their benefits, while at the same time driving big savings to employers and insurance companies. We are proud to be supporting Rajeev Singh and his team to build a big, important company.”

Accolade improves the healthcare experience for consumers by applying a proprietary engagement and influence model that guides them through the healthcare system in a deeply personalized manner. This unique model blends personalized service with clinical support and consumer engagement technologies to uncover inefficient healthcare utilization and its substantial impact on healthcare costs and outcomes. Accolade’s multi-modal approach is built from the ground up to combine human touch, science and technology, which leads to market-leading consumer engagement levels, extraordinarily high consumer satisfaction scores and cost savings ranging from 5-15 percent.

“We’re leading a movement to reinvent healthcare to better serve and support employers, health plans, health systems and the hundreds of millions of people in their networks,” said Rajeev Singh, Accolade CEO. “To bend the cost curve in healthcare while significantly raising consumer satisfaction, you need a deeply personalized model for the consumer that blends human touch with clinical expertise and state of the art engagement technology. Andreessen Horowitz and Madrona, two of the top investors in the world, have studied the space and come to the same conclusions we have about the market need and the advantages of our approach."

The Accolade model is powered by a data science strategy that combines deep datasets culled from hundreds of sources, along with personal insights gleaned from unique relationships between Accolade Health Assistants® and the individuals and families they support. Accolade’s relationship-based approach, mobile offerings, analytics tools and clinical models present a data-centric view of the whole person, not just one condition, to create a level of personalization and engagement that is not seen elsewhere in healthcare.

“Technology, through big data, analytics and machine learning, is changing healthcare -- how it is delivered and how patients find the right providers and treatment. It’s a complicated problem, but with a team led by Rajeev Singh, the company has the ability to blend cutting edge technology with a human touch to improve how tens of thousands of employees and health plan subscribers receive their healthcare,” said Matt McIlwain, managing director, Madrona Venture Group.

Including the current financing, Accolade has raised more than $90 million in its Series E round, which began in July 2015 with $22.5 million invested by a subsidiary of Independence Health Group and McKesson Ventures. As part of this investment, Accolade will add Jeff Jordan, Andreessen Horowitz general partner and former CEO of OpenTable, to its board of directors.

About Accolade
Accolade is an on-demand healthcare concierge for employers, health plans and health systems. Accolade’s team of compassionate, trusted professionals is supported by breakthrough science and technologies to guide people through the healthcare system in a deeply personalized manner. Accolade customers experience industry-leading engagement levels, satisfaction scores unseen in health care, better health outcomes, and cost savings of 5-15 percent. Accolade has been recognized as one of the nation’s 25 most promising companies by Forbes magazine, the fastest-growing private healthcare company by Inc. 500 and a Top Workplace for five consecutive years.
We're Boldly Reinventing Healthcare
We're Boldly Reinventing Healthcare
As an on-demand healthcare concierge that's focused on employers, health plans and health systems, we're taking on the enormous task of reinventing healthcare.
WATCH VIDEO



Link 8/12: SAP ditches annual reviews; has Wal-Mart "just flushed $3 billion down the drain"?






Links 8/11: Accolade adds $70M to Series E round to expand healthcare navigation






Links 8/10 : Comcast, NewSpring, Revolution Growth help fund Mass. customer service software firm;






Phiily Tech People News 8/9/2016: Lubert elected PSU board chair; Dow Chemical Names Melanie Kalmar CIO





Subscribe to Philly Tech People News by Email


Ira Lubert / LLR Website

Despite criticism over Sandusky payouts, Lubert elected PSU board chair (Philly.com)

Dow Chemical Names Melanie Kalmar CIO (Wall Street Journal)



SAP SuccessFactors Appoints Kerry Sain as Chief Revenue Officer

Thank You, SAP
(Sameer Patel / Enterprise Irregulars)
Patel is leaving as SVP for Enterprise Social and Collaborative Software in SAP's cloud business unit.


OCIO Hirtle Callaghan Names New CEO (Chief Investment Officer)

What Vanguard's hire of a sizzling Wall Streeter reveals about Bill McNabb's determination to avoid the whiff of stale passivity (RIABiz)

Google’s self-driving car CTO Chris Urmson departs (The Verge)
Urmson had joined Google from Carnegie Mellon.

PEI-Genesis Names Peter Austin Vice President of Product Management, Marketing & Training

Ecolane Welcomes Ryan Larsen Back to Drive Results as Senior Vice President




Links 8/9: Cerner to add 250 jobs in Malvern; WSJ on Lehigh Valley warehouse economy






Today's links 8/8: Walmart Agrees to Acquire Jet.com; Dentsu acquires marketing agency Merkle in a $1 billion+ deal