Links 12/26: Driverless cars are coming fast, and Pennsylvania is scrambling to keep pace; Annenberg School's FactCheck.org will be one of Facebook's fact checker
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Cerner presses forward despite year of uncertainty (Kansas City Business Journal)
Drexel Condemns Professor's Tweet (Inside Higher Ed)
Facebook, Keep the Fact-Checkers in Their Place (Bloomberg)
The Annenberg School's FactCheck.org will be one of Facebook's fact checkers.
Pepperjam and Magento Meet Again As Performance Marketing And Ecommerce Merge (Ad Exchanger)
Gladstone Buys GSI Commerce Bldg in King of Prussia (CoStar)
Uber replaces “where to?” with “who to?”
(San Jose Mercury News via Denver Post)
Driverless cars are coming fast, and government is scrambling to keep pace (Philly.com)
Wynnewood-based tax software company raises $3.3M in private equity financing (Philadelphia Business Journal)
Apple's Search for Better iPhone Screens Leads to Japan's Rice Fields (Bloomberg)
Comcast cable expands in the Deal Island area (Delmarva Now)
Philly Tech People News 12/26: RevZilla co-founder Bucci to depart; New leadership joins Ben Franklin Tech's board;
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| Anthony Bucci / LinkedIn page |
2017 to bring new leadership to Ben Franklin Tech's board (Philadelphia Business Journal)
Bill McDermott is Named “Manager of the Year” in Germany (SAP News)
Qantas hires SAP exec as CIO (IT News)
For RevZilla co-founder, time to find another ride (Philly.com)
Second RevZilla exec to leave
(Philly.com)
The CFO.
Accenture has named senior managing director Kathleen O’Reilly to lead the company’s U.S. Northeast region
(Crain's)
O’Reilly will be based out of Philadelphia.
Philadelphia SEC head to leave agency at year's end (Philadelphia Business Journal)
Kay Carr named Main Line Health senior vice president and chief information officer
Picwell Names Matthew Sydney CEO
Rajant Appoints Geoff Smith Executive Vice President, Sales and Marketing to Drive Global Expansion
Banking Industry Vet Leaves BoA for Online Lender
1315 Capital Announces the Addition of Senior Investment Professional
Jornaya Appoints John Galvin as Chief Technology Officer
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Philly Tech People News 12/11: QVC promotes new blood; Comcast, Verizon name key strategy execs
Land of the Pi People: England’s Bold Attempt to Revive Its Tech Industry (Bloomberg)
How the Rockefellers’ VC Firm Picks Tech Startups (Knowledge@Wharton)
eMoney Advisor benefitting from Fidelity acquisition: CEO Ed O'Brien: We're growing and hiring
Tom Paine
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Subscribe in a readerI had a chance to talk with Ed O'Brien, CEO of Radnor-based eMoney Advisor, after it released an unofficial year-end report on Tuesday.
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| Ed O'Brien |
O'Brien had most recently served as senior vice president and head of platform technology for Fidelity Institutional, having a key role in launching WealthCentral, Fidelity's platform technology to support RIAs and family offices.
O'Brien has relocated and resides in Wayne.
Since the acquisition, a lot has happened in a relatively short time frame.
First, O'Brien made it clear that eMoney continues to be an independent, unique entity within Fidelity. Not autonomous; eMoney is definitely synching up with other parts of Fidelity on important initiatives. But clearly this has not been a "rip and replace" acquisition, in which the acquirer superimposes its own culture and people on the acquired company. Fidelity likes what it has in eMoney Advisor.
eMoney's core group remains distinctly local, more so than most other large local corporate employers. Among senior management, besides O'Brien the only other Fidelity person to come on is CFO Megan Murray, a Philadelphia area native and Villanova grad.
Secondly, O'Brien wanted to get the message out that eMoney is expanding rapidly and hiring. In 2016, almost 100 employees were hired, and approximately 100 additional employees are expected be hired by the end of 2017. That would put total employment in the 500 range, making eMoney an increasingly important tech and finance employer in the area. eMoney has a notable reputation for how closely it works with local universities in recruiting.
The talent pool represented by eMoney, Vanguard Group, SEI, Susquehanna and Lincoln, among others, should be a good pool for future Philly fintech ventures to arise from.
eMoney's role within Fidelity is to serve the financial advisor community, not the direct-to-consumer segment. But O'Brien points out that eMoney's 43,000 advisor clients serve over 1.7 million end users who can access its system online. And eMoney's clients collectively have over $2.5 trillion under management.
This October Fidelity press release seemed to lay out a roadmap for how Fidelity offerings will intersect with eMoney's.
A major step will be the launch of the Fidelity Automated Managed Platform (AMP), a planning-led digital advice solution co-developed with eMoney Advisor, early next year. This is Fidelity's first entry into the so-called Robo market, although Fidelity prefers the digital advice term.
See this eMoney blog post, which reflects its view on the role of robo advisors.
eMoney launched a deep integration with Fidelity in September. Single sign-on capabilities provide direct access between the eMoney Advisor Site and the Fidelity Wealthscape brokerage platform (formerly Streetscape and Wealth Central).
The deep integration "creates a complete end-to-end experience that taps the best of eMoney’s planning-led advisor and client tools and the excellence of Fidelity’s brokerage platforms." Advisors and end-clients of both Fidelity and eMoney can leverage eMoney’s tools to identify financial goals and put a plan in place, then through brokerage platform integration, execute those goals in their customer’s Fidelity brokerage accounts," the company told me.
Additional capabilities will be added in 2017.
The key takeaway is that the stuff eMoney is doing with Fidelity is a big deal. And there's a competitor up Route 30, among others, that they're after.
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Fidelity's eMoney Advisor growing, hiring in Radnor; Launching 'digital advice platform' in early 2017
Links 12/23: Amazon's Prime Air (for packages) using Lehigh Valley International; MLB uniform deal with Under Armour, Fanatics
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2017 to bring new leadership to Ben Franklin Tech's board (Philadelphia Business Journal)
Why is your pay-TV bill rising? 'Free' TV now socks consumers with billions in fees (Philly.com)
Judge denies Comcast’s bid to throw out $100M suit by Washington state AG (GeekWire)
Amazon starts flexing muscle in new space: air cargo (Reuters)
Lehigh Valley International Airport one of the main points of operation for its 'Prime Air'.
MLB announces uniform deal with Under Armour, Fanatics starting in 2020 (ESPN)
With revenue down, Drexel "withholds" merit raises. (Philly.com)
Links 12/22: Takeaways From This Year’s Philly New Tech Meetups; Death knell for net neutrality?
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Court upholds $25M state tax on Comcast's failed 1999 merger (Philly.com)
Denver’s newest cable TV service plans mid-January launch (Denver Post)
Cable Startup Layer3 TV Lands Deal to Air NFL Network and NFL RedZone (ChicagoInno)
FCC chairman Tom Wheeler’s departure is the death knell for net neutrality (Recode)
The Abakus Effect: SAP to Add Attribution to Hybris Marketing Cloud (ASUG News)
6 Takeaways From This Year’s Philly New Tech Meetups (Philadelphia Magazine)
Blue Apron Put IPO Plans on Hold to Focus on Financials (Bloomberg)
First Round Capital was an early stage investor.
Main Line fintech firm lands $1M investment from Western Union amid growing alliance
(Philadelphia Business Journal)
CB Insights’ Tech IPO Pipeline Report; 369 2017 prospects, but not one in Pennsylvania
Tom Paine
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| CB Insights |
CB Insights’ fifth annual Tech IPO Pipeline Report looks at the top 369 U.S. companies that CB Insight says might be poised for IPOs in the coming year. Though its doubtful most of them will.
Its top five are Qualtrics, Blue Apron (in First Round Capital's portfolio), Zuora, Okta, and Pluralsight. Today Bloomberg reported that Blue Apron is putting its plans on hold for a while.
Others of interest include Dell Boomi competitor MuleSoft, InsideSales.com, ContextMedia Health (with many area pharma clients), and cloud monitoring tool Datadog.
Of the 369 companies, four are based in New Jersey and none are in Pennsylvania.
This list is just a rough predictor, of course. There have only been 14 tech IPOs thus far in 2016, though its probably reasonable to expect more next year.
Links 12/21: Netflix vs. Comcast: The Coming Trump Debate; Uber self-driving auto registration pulled by CA DMV
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Tech Consulting Giants Were Big on Acquisitions in 2016
(Fortune)
At AWS, 'Enterprise Strategy' Consists Of Helping Migrations (Information Week)
Silicon Valley Is Trying to Reinvent Health Care, Starting in New Jersey (Bloomberg)
Clover Health is a test case, in 9 New Jersey counties.
Big Pharma Is Coming For Your Facebook And Twitter Feeds (BuzzFeed)
Netflix vs. Comcast: The Coming Trump Debate (Barron's Next)
Arris a ‘bright spot’ amid downer year for telecom vendors, Morgan Stanley analyst predicts (FierceCable)
Uber stops San Francisco self-driving pilot as DMV revoked registrations (TechCrunch)
Fidelity's eMoney Advisor growing, hiring in Radnor; Launching 'digital advice platform' in early 2017
Tom Paine
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Radnor-based eMoney Advisor said today that its revenue was up 31 percent YOY, and nearly 59 percent since its acquisition by Fidelity Investments in 2015.
The company also said it had added almost 100 employees this year, including new CEO Ed O'Brien, who joined from Fidelity in March. eMoney now has more than 400 employees.
“This year we returned to our roots with an innovative product strategy that broadens the availability and quality of advice delivered through advisors,” said O'Brien in a statement.
“At the same time, a steady flow of industry and regulatory factors influenced expectations for the experience of giving and receiving financial advice, and led even elite members of the industry to question if their current tools could keep them competitive. For many, the answer was what we have long known—an integrated and comprehensive wealth-planning platform will outperform a financial planning tool any day of the week. And our numbers reflect that,” O’Brien continued.
eMoney Advisor presumably must meet two goals: to keep their financial advisor clients happy, and to fulfill the corporate objectives Fidelity had in acquiring it.
But Michael Durbin, who served as eMoney's interim CEO before O' Brien took the spot and is now starting a new role as head of Fidelity Institutional Product, doesn't feel those goals are incongruous.
“What we like about eMoney is that it continues to be a separate technology company,” he told Investment News. “And we like that there's a lot of opportunity that's presented by eMoney.”
In 2016, among other upgrades to its flagship emX suite, eMoney Advisor redesigned its client portal (named best in the industry by WealthManagement.com), and introduced a new Advanced Analytics product, as well as the Fiduciary Framework initiative to strengthen compliance.
The varying technology needs of advisors led eMoney to refresh its product and pricing strategy and release an unbundled product offering with emX Select, as well as a new pricing model early in the year.
Early next year Fidelity is expected to introduce its Automated Managed Platform (AMP). Although Fidelity won't call it a robo advisor (using the term 'digital advice platform'), its the next closest thing, and eMoney Advisor had a major role in building it.
eMoney says it anticipates hiring 100 more employees in 2017, while at the same time striving to maintain "eMoney’s trademark corporate culture."
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