Super Bowl Ads: Bai Brands, 84 Lumber, Kraft Heinz

Tom Paine

Follow @phillytechnews

 Subscribe in a reader
Subscribe to Philadelphia Tech News by Email



Not many Philly-related Super Bowl spots this year, but there are these:

Princeton-based Bai Brands LLC, its $1.7 billion acquisition by Dr Pepper Snapple (NYSE: DPS) just completed, is running an ad featuring Justin Timberlake, and, Timberlake says, a guest. Could it be Fallon?

This is a teaser for the ad:



This is the Bai ad, featuring Chistopher Walken with Timberlake:




Eighty Four, PA-based 84 Lumber's initial ad was rejected by Fox because it showed a Mexican mother and daughter, who appear to be on their way to the United States, running into what seems to be a large border wall. 84 Lumber had to edit that out.


This is part 1 of the ad that will run today. The full original version can be seen online at halftime.





84 Lumber website crashes after commercial about immigration (USA Today)




Kraft Heinz's ad is on the faux campaign its been running to make post-Super Bowl Mondays holidays. I assume that would apply to all its hourly employees, and would be a paid day off?

This is not the ad, but a promo spot for the campaign.







Honda's 'Yearbook' ad shows Tina Fey when she was in high school in Upper Darby.

Sunday highlights: At CMU, computers best top poker pros; Survival questions swirl over HHGregg

Follow @phillytechnews

 Subscribe in a reader
Subscribe to Philadelphia Tech News by Email




How computers were finally able to best poker pros (Washington Post)
At Carnegie-Mellon.

Trump’s F.C.C. Pick Quickly Targets Net Neutrality Rules (NY Times)

Former Time Warner Cable, Arris Execs Lead Petrichor Networks (Multichannel News)

Survival questions swirl over HHGregg (Indianapolis Business Journal)


uBeam shows off futuristic wireless charging tech in its first public demo (The Verge)
uBeam is headed by Penn grad Meredith Perry.


Wharton MBA Beats Out Harvard, And Stanford On Poets & Quaints List (Nibletz)

Keys to ascending the consumer-internet throne (TechCrunch)

Nextdoor to acquire “assets” of UK local social network Streetlife (TechCrunch)

The Super Bowl live streams crashed for both Comcast and Fox Sports (The Verge)

Nestle moving US Headquarters to Northern Virginia; Was Philly area considered?

Tom Paine

Follow @phillytechnews

 Subscribe in a reader
Subscribe to Philadelphia Tech News by Email

Source: Nestle USA

Nestle USA is moving its headquarters from Glendale, CA to Arlington, VA, just a stone's throw away from DC, it announced last week.

Nestle will move into the region's tallest building, which has been vacant since it was completed in late 2013, bringing 750 jobs with it. Its been in the LA area since Nestle acquired Carnation in the early 1980's. Nestle is reportedly receiving more than $16 million in state and county subsidies.

In the U.S., Nestle product sales topped $26 billion in 2015, and it employs 51,000.

I lived in Northern Virginia for a long time and never heard of any chocolate being made there, though chocolate is now only one segment among many for Nestle. Mars Inc. moved its headquarters to nearby McLean, VA, some years ago, though I don't think it has any significant operations there.

But the DC area is hardly a consumer products hotbed, so for that reason I found the move a bit odd. The talent pool just isn't there, along with the types of agencies and support services a company like Nestle needs, though I imagine some of its there due to Mars. Being closer by plane to Nestle headquarters in Switzerland may have been another reason for moving, as well as proximity to DC and the FDA.

Nestle also intends to move its corporate IT function, with about 300 jobs, to St. Louis where its Purina pet food unit is based.

But my question is whether the Philadelphia area was even considered, and if so, why wasn't it chosen? The Washington Post reported that Nestle considered 20 locations across the country but by October had narrowed its search to Rosslyn (in Arlington) and Atlanta.

The Philly area would have provided Nestle with more of a consumer products, food marketing and pharma ecosystem, closer access to the multitude of agencies and marketing services firms in New York and New Jersey, and proximity to some of its operations as well. Nestle has been for some time positioning its nutritional businesses closer to the life sciences.

Nestle has divisions and plants all over the US, but more are concentrated in the East. Near Allentown, its has a huge bottling plant for Nestle Waters employing 475 (Nestle's philosophy is to build huge plants and let the marketing guys figure out how to pay for them), some pet food operations, and a distribution hub. In New Jersey, The Nestle Institute of Health Sciences and Nestle Nutrition Corporation are located in Florham Park. And the plan is for Nestle Health Sciences to open a large R&D center in Bridgewater sometime this year.

Also, the Philly area provides a sense of community for Swiss and German executives, or so I've been told, given SAP and the life sciences and chemical companies that have a presence in the area.

There is also the issue of whether Nestle would want to buy Hershey's or Mars. These companies know each other like kissing cousins, and Nestle would like to strengthen its position in the US chocolate market, where it is fourth. But Hershey's is so intertwined with the Trust and its troubles that it is difficult to unravel the two, as the Inquirer's Bob Fernandez has observed in his coverage of Hershey's. Nestle did make a joint bid for Hershey's in 2002, which was surpassed by the Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company (now owned by Mars); the latter was rebuffed, as was Mondelez International's bid last year.

Mars is privately held, and very closely so (perhaps more secretive than the nearby CIA headquarters), but the passing last summer of one of its heirs and a former executive, Forrest E. Mars Jr, led to some speculation that it could be more open to a sale. Mars Chocolate North America is based along I-80 in Hackettstown, NJ. Mars just made a huge pet care acquisition, but that also could fit well with Nestle, forming a dominant pet nutrition and health giant at a time when the guessing is that antitrust will be more relaxed.

But I'm just wondering if inquiries were made by Nestle to Pennsylvania, or New Jersey for that matter, and if so what happened as a result.


Update: From Nestle internal memorandum announcing the HQ move:


You may wonder why we chose the metropolitan D.C. area. We did comprehensive research on many locations, including Southern California, Cleveland, Texas and Atlanta. The Washington D.C. area scores very high across the key elements of our location strategy:
· Proximity to our operations, customers and key opinion leaders: The Eastern U.S. has 75% of NUSA factories and 85% of our top customers; 72% of key regulatory groups and relevant NGOs are in the D.C. area
· Sustainable access to talent to meet current and future needs
· Excellent infrastructure (space, housing, schools, airports, networks)
· Pro-business state and county
· Appealing location for employees – housing, schools, culture, favorable income tax framework vs. CA



Nestle is no stranger to M&A, says CEO (CNBC)
And the pace may pick up with Kraft Heinz pursuing Unilver.

Ben Franklin Approved $2.3M in 16 Early Stage Companies (Jan 31)

Ben Franklin Approved $2.3M in 16 Early Stage Companies
January 31, 2017

Companies approved for funding:


Jenrin Discovery – Delaware County
Jenrin Discovery is developing potential therapeutics for chronic diseases including NAFLD/NASH, diabetes and obesity. Its focus is proprietary small molecule drugs designed to selectively target peripheral receptors. It has completed pre-clinical testing and GLP safety studies for its lead compound, JD5037, and is planning on filing the IND application by the second quarter in 2017. This agent provides a mechanism of action to treat NASH and related pathologies.

Jenrin Discovery is led by Robert J Chorvat, Ph.D., CSO and Co-founder; Ross Barrett, JD, Founder, General Partner BVM Capital, Board Chairman; Barbara Schilberg, JD, Managing Director & Chief Executive Officer BioAdvance, Board Member; Jennifer Hartt, Director of Investments Life Sciences, Ben Franklin Technology Partners of Southeastern Pennsylvania, Board Member; W. Whitfield Gardner Angel (individual) Self, Board Member; Robert Ashton, MD, Partner BrookDell, Board Member; Andrea Alms, MS, MBA, Partner BrookDell, Board Member.

SonoSolve – Philadelphia County
SonoSolve is a revolutionary new device that aims to eliminate catheter-associated complications, using non-invasive sound waves to clear obstructions and biofilms within catheters. SonoSolve is the BUZZ in Blockages!

SonoSolve is led by CEO Steven C. Davis, and was founded by Jayesh Thawani MD Neurosurgeon, Jared Pisapia MD Neurosurgeon, Michael Grady MD Chairman of Neurosurgery at Hospital of University of Pennsylvania, Andrew Tsourkas PhD and Matt Zhou PhD of the University of Pennsylvania.

SonoSolve was the winner of the Penn Center for Innovation’s DevelUPMed competition in partnership with Ben Franklin for medical device spin-outs.

MBF Therapeutics – Montgomery County
MBF Therapeutics Inc. (MBFT) is a veterinary oncology company developing innovative and highly effective immunotherapies for cancer and infectious diseases in companion animals and livestock. Our proprietary checkpoint inhibitor technology, based on the Wistar Institute’s intellectual property, is a platform technology from which multiple innovative prophylactic and therapeutic products will be developed for animal health markets worth over $5BM. We are working with Dr. Hildegund Ertl at the Wistar Institute and veterinary oncologists to develop a cancer vaccine to treat dogs with melanoma.

MBF is led by Thomas Tillett, Co-founder & CEO; Lorraine Keller, Ph.D. – Co-founder & CSO; Malla Padidam, Ph.D. – Director of Research.

Kynectiv, Inc. – Delaware County
Kynectiv, Inc. Kynectiv is a leading provider of simulation-based technology to global audiences. Our platforms enable clients to transform their training programs, offering increased engagement, stronger retention and comprehensive data collection that leads to actionable insights.

Simulation is an experiential, active learning model that has been proven to be highly effective at improving retention and the application of knowledge to enhance or change behaviors. Our solutions transport participants into real world scenarios to assess and improve their knowledge, skills and confidence.

The Kynectiv simulation platform has been adopted by leaders in healthcare, including the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), pharmaceutical companies, medical societies, medical education providers, patient education innovators, and academic institutions. To date, there have been over 200,000 simulation sessions completed and almost 5 million decisions made in the simulations.

Kynectiv is led by Bob Yayac, CEO; Rene Smith, VP Technology; and Jeff Zack, VP Operations. Kynectiv has an experienced and deep team of instructional designers, technologists and data scientists to
help ensure the maximum benefits from our simulation platform.

BINTO – Delaware County
BINTO is a reproductive and fertility healthcare company. We take the guesswork out of finding safe and effective products to use during the period and fertility years. BINTO does this through a highly curated subscription based service, and connecting you to your suite of monthly products. In conjunction with our product line, we get people to helpful information the need from REAL medical experts in an easy to read fashion. We are in the process of building our app prototype. The myBINTO app helps physicians and patients connect while navigating fertility treatments.

BINTO is led by founder and CEO, Suzie Welsh, and by CIO Kevin Ramirez.

Shock Analytics, LLC – Philadelphia County
Schock AnalyticsShock Analytics has developed a non-invasive device for measuring systemic vascular resistance (SVR), an indicator for both congestive heart failure and sepsis, two of the deadliest and most costly diseases in modern medicine. Currently, the gold standard for measuring SVR is a right heart catheterization, a very invasive and costly procedure.

Shock Analytics is led by Dr. Jennifer Monti, CEO,CSO. Dr. Monti received her undergraduate degree in biochemistry from Harvard College, and her doctorate of medicine and master of public health from Case Western Reserve University. She completed medical residency at Johns Hopkins University, and received a cardiology fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania. She has served as a clinical lead on several biomedical engineering projects at Penn and Hopkins. Before her medical training, Dr. Monti worked in San Francisco as an emerging biotechnologies analyst.

Veena Krish, BSE, MSE Veena Krish our CTO is a computer scientist with a strong background in the biomedical sciences. She recently completed her master’s in bioengineering at Penn. Bob Harrington, COO Bob Harrington joins Shock Analytics after thirty years of executive positions in the health care sector. Bill Bullard, CFO Bill has 35 years experience in merchant banking, corporate finance and recently was CFO of a technology
startup that went from pre-revenue to $4.5 billion in revenue with operations in 5 countries.

Shock Analytics was runner-up of the Penn Center for Innovation’s DevelUPMed competition in partnership with Ben Franklin for medical device spin-outs

Advent Therapeutics, Inc. – Bucks County
advent therapeuticsAdvent Therapeutics was formed by senior industry executives with extensive expertise and proven track records in Neonatal / Pediatric and similar Orphan Drug “niche” markets to address serious unmet medical needs facing underserved patient populations by taking novel advantage of targeted already commercially-available or late-stage therapeutic opportunities – A Platform Approach to serving the most fragile patients.

Advent Therapeutics, Inc. is led by David L. Lopez, Esq., C.P.A., one of the Company’s founders and serves as its Chief Business Officer; Dr. Thomas Hofmann, M.D., Ph.D. (2015 recipient of the Dr. Milton Graub Award for CF research and care) is Chief Scientific Advisor.

VitalTrax – Philadelphia County
VitalTraxVitalTrax delivers a complete clinical trial data collection and patient engagement solution for today’s clinical trials comprising of a cloud based enterprise platform and a mobile application for patients.

VitalTrax is led by Zikria Syed, CEO; Todd Kueny, CTO.

Choosito!, Inc. – Philadelphia County
VitalTraxChoosito is a Philadelphia-based early stage NSF-funded company with cutting edge technology that brings elite personalized learning to every child. Choosito’s AI natural language processing and machine learning technology solves the problem of digital content selection appropriate for the reading level, skills, and interests of the learner.

Choosito! is led by co-founders Eleni Miltsakaki (CEO/CTO) and Christos Georgiadis (CFO).

The One Health Company – Philadelphia County
The One Heath Company has re-imagined animal testing for the 21st Century. We connect naturally sick pets to clinical trials just like in human trials, replacing induced synthetic diseases in lab animals. Pets get access to cutting edge treatments for free while also helping advance more effective therapeutics in human oncology. The National Cancer Institute (NCI), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), has validated that our method saves over $117 million per approved drug because natural diseases in pets have a better predictive value of which drugs will work in humans and which won’t. The One Health Company has built the world’s largest veterinary trial network (95 trial sites) and an Electronic Data Capture system allowing us to reach 1.8 million pets in need of care. With these capabilities powered by the best technology, we also deliver on the trifecta required to evaluate the next 20 years of cancer therapies: real disease, immunocompetence, and intact tumor microenvironments.

The One Health Company is led by Co-Founders Christina K. Lopes, CEO, and Benjamin Lewis, President and COO.

Photosonix Medical, Inc. – Montgomery County
PhotoSonix Medical, Inc. is developing CLENS™ (Coincident Light Energy and Non-focused ultraSound), a novel energy-based therapy which synergistically combines light and ultrasound to treat chronic bacterial infections known as biofilms. We are initially targeting moderate to severe acne, a $1.5 Billion market of over 5 million patients who are currently seeking physician treatments.. We have strong in vitro (lab) and in vivo (live tissue) results, and 3 issued patents.

Photosonix was co-founded by Drs. Mark Schafer and Tessie McNeely, and Adam Dakin. Mark is an internationally recognized ultrasound industry expert. He holds 21 patents and has served in senior management roles for many early stage companies developing innovative ultrasonic devices. Tessie McNeely is an expert on infectious disease and biofilms, having served in senior scientific roles at Merck for 17 years, where she was Principal Scientist for R&D of bacterial vaccines including a vaccine for acne. Adam Dakin has served as CEO for numerous early stage, venture-backed medical device companies. He has secured over $50 million in venture and strategic partner funding and led several M&A transactions.

FlockU – Montgomery County
FlockU is a digital hub dedicated to providing college students a voice in the world around them. As the gatekeeper of college knowledge, FlockU services all student needs — from current events to party tips — with authentic, compelling perspectives. All FlockU features are written, created and curated by students, for students.

FlockU is led by CEO and Co-Founder, Josh Verne, Co-Founder, Jon Dorfman, CTO, Jerry Baklycki, and CMO, Umang Shah.

Verge Aero – Delaware County
Verge AeroVerge Aero (Verge) is a Philadelphia-based team of electrical, computer, software, systems, and aerospace engineers, whose mission is focused on building and deploying unmanned aerial systems (UASs), or drones, for use in the entertainment industry. Verge has designed, developed, and implemented a drone performance software capable of controlling swarms of drones and integrating into existing entertainment systems, providing dynamic interactions with audiences and actors. Near-term applications of the technology include recurring drone performances, venue installations, touring drone performance productions, and drone entertainment products.

Verge Aero is led by Co-founders Michael Duffy, Tony Samaritano, and Anthony Merlino, along with early-stage members Richard Kitei, Martin Phillips, Christopher Franzwa, and Nils Thorjussen, who serves as CEO for the company.

Sustrana, LLC – Chester CountySustrana
Sustrana’s unique online software system delivers much needed tools and materials for organizations to assess and manage complex sustainability issues.

Sustrana is led by co-founders Nancy Cleveland, CEO, and Jennifer Anderson, COO; and Ron Zettlemoyer, CTO.

Keriton, LLC – Philadelphia County
Every year around 500,000 infants are admitted Keritonto one of the 1,100+ Neonatal ICUs (NICUs) across US. While mother’s breast milk is important for all newborns, it is vital for the survival of these fragile patients. However, despite its critical role, the current state of breast milk management in NICUs is extremely manual, labor-intensive and error prone. Keriton is working with Penn Medicine to develop a new gold-standard for breast milk management. With end-to-end process automation and validation, Keriton’s HIPAA-compliant SaaS suite significantly lowers the nurses’ time spent on breast milk management, reduces errors and automatically generates an audit trail for the process. The Keriton suite also aims to improve expression of breast milk in lactating NICU mothers by enhancing their pumping experience, which has been empirically linked to improved clinical outcomes.

Keriton is led by Founder & CEO Vidur Bhatnagar.

COSY (Cognitive Operations Systems, Inc.) – Philadelphia County
COSY’s omni-channel software platform prepares retailers with a solution for their inventory needs in the 21st Century. Founded in 2012 by a team of Ivy League computer vision engineers and retail experts, COSY brings the same technology behind Google Street View and driverless cars to retail stores and other large indoor facilities. COSY’s technology enables robots to navigate retail store floors autonomously without any prior knowledge of the store’s layout or products – no RFID or beacons required. The same back-end technology can power mobile applications for store operations and consumer shopping.

COSY was founded by Jonas Cleveland, CEO, and Professor Kostas Daniilidis, former Director of the GRASP Lab at Penn and co-founder of kapou.gr, a vision-based mapping company.



Origin: http://www.sep.benfranklin.org/news_reports/fy17-q2-report/#approvedcompanies

Former Time Warner Cable, Arris Execs Lead Petrichor Networks (Multichannel News)

Survival questions swirl over HHGregg (Indianapolis Business Journal)


uBeam shows off futuristic wireless charging tech in its first public demo (The Verge)
uBeam is headed by Penn grad Meredith Perry.

2/3: When Will AWS Move Up The Stack To Real Applications?; Could Google Bid For Salesforce.com Despite Amazon Cloud Pact?

Follow @phillytechnews

 Subscribe in a reader
Subscribe to Philadelphia Tech News by Email



When Will AWS Move Up The Stack To Real Applications? (The Next Platform)

Stacking up the cloud vendors: AWS vs. Microsoft Azure, IBM, Google, Oracle (ZDNet)

Could Google Bid For Salesforce.com Despite Amazon Cloud Pact? (Investor's Business Daily)

Tableau stock spikes 14% after earnings beat as data analytics company taps new sales chief
(GeekWire)

Welcome back to #Boomi HQ @bobmoul! https://t.co/QUaZh4lhLT

— Dell Boomi (@boomi) February 3, 2017

MapAnything raises $33.1 million to map Salesforce data (VentureBeat)

Notes on Geisinger Health, Instamed (Health Data Management)

PhRMA, the biopharma trade association, launches "GoBoldly" ad campaign to address price criticisms

Tom Paine

Follow @phillytechnews

 Subscribe in a reader
Subscribe to Philadelphia Tech News by Email


PhRMA, the trade association and lobbyist representing biopharmaceutical companies, unveiled a new ad campaign in late January aimed at counteracting criticisms of rising drug costs, especially for specialty pharmaceuticals.


PhRMA officials said they would spend in the high tens of millions of dollars every year for the next four to five years, which adds up to considerable money, to help rehabilitate the industry's image in the wake of some well-publicized price hike incidents, such as the one involving Mylan's EpiPen.

The campaign, branded “GoBoldly,” features in its first ad a voiceover of Dylan Thomas' famous poem, "Do not go gentle into that good night." I had mixed feelings about having one of my favorite poems used in this way, but must admit it was rather effective. I definitely preferred, however, listening to an old, scratchy vinyl recording of Thomas reading it himself when I was in college.

The campaign was created by WPP's health and wellness group.

IoT Podcast with Stacey Higginbotham and Kevin Tofel; Guest: Felicite Moorman, the CEO of Stratis

Episode 97: Enterprises will spend big bucks ($269 billion) on IoT (IoT Podcast – Internet of Things)

Hosts: Stacey Higginbotham and Kevin Tofel
Guest: Felicite Moorman, the CEO of Stratis

At Waterfront Ventures, the Story of RJMetrics, a Company Started in South Jersey

Esther Surden
Publisher & Editor, NJTechWeekly.com

Robert Moore, founder of RJ Metrics | Esther Surden

Robert J. Moore came to the UP Startup Conference, held at Waterfront Ventures (Camden) on January 14, to tell his story about the growth of his startup RJMetrics (Philadelphia), which culminated in the sale of the company’s CloudBI division to Magento Commerce.

Moore stayed on to run his business, renamed “Magento Analytics,” while his cofounder, Jake Stein, is now the CEO of Stitch (Philadelphia), which is what remains of the RJMetrics Pipeline division. Moore is also chairman of that entity.

His description of how the business (which started in an attic in Collingswood, grew at some inexpensive offices at Waterfront Ventures, and ended up in Philadelphia) progressed to the point of sale captivated the audience.

He traced the story of RJMetrics back to the lessons he learned when selling software that he had developed in college to help poker players determine the statistical odds of winning. However, the real story began at Insight Venture Partners (New York), where, after a stint cold-calling CEOs, he became more of an analyst, researching businesses that Insight wanted to fund, finding out who their best customers were and how these businesses could get more customers like them.

Moore and Stein met at Insight, and decided that they’d prefer to be at the other end of those cold calls. They wanted to become entrepreneurs themselves. While still at Insight, they spent a lot of their spare time proposing ideas for all sorts of businesses, and failing at them. This was before the days of Lean Startup, but that method was essentially the one they used to find new opportunities.

Finally, Moore realized that everyone they spoke to about their ideas said something like, “I really wish I could just know who my most valuable customers are, and how to get more like them.” Moore told the audience, “RJMetrics came from the sense of the market pull I was getting.”

The two founders quit their jobs on Friday, Sept. 13, 2008, and the very next business day Lehman Brothers declared bankruptcy. The country went into a deep recession. Cash had dried up, but they were going to have to make their business work, anyway.

At this point, they realized that they could continue to live in New York and have a business for six weeks or they could move to the greater Philadelphia area (where Moore was from and Stein had gone to school) and operate for six months. Moore moved to Collingswood and Stein to Philadelphia, and the business was started in an attic in Collingswood.

“For the next two years we did the grind,” he said. “I went into debt, but took no outside financing. Every month we added one new customer, two new customers, and just kept it going. Over the course of those two years, we got to the point where we could hire employees.” Moore recalled that the Collingswood attic had no air conditioning, so the when the company had some money it moved to Waterfront Ventures, at 200 Federal Street in Camden. “It was awesome. I think it was a great spot to actually start this business. It gave us things that made us look like a larger company.”

Moore then explained the economics of running a company like RJMetrics. He noted that at the outset of the sales cycle, it’s very expensive. There is a sales person who talks to the customer, and someone who implements a free trial, hosting fees and technology outlays. Once a customer starts paying, the company recovers that outlay and eventually makes a profit from the customer. RJMetrics was losing money on more than half its customers because it was growing so quickly, but those customers would eventually become profitable.

The startup needed outside money to finance its growth, however. “If we lost any customers, we would have missed a payroll.” RJMetrics was a 10-employee company at that time, and the thought of missing payroll was terrifying, he said.

“What was happening to us is that we were unable to grow as quickly as we wanted to because of the unit economics of our customer growth. Now was the time to think about smarter capital and financing strategies, when we knew those dollars would go to a good place. …We were able to go to our customers and talk to their customers and investors and put together a seed round north of $1.25 million.” The startup then began investing in marketing and customer success and the growth kicked in, he said.

Moore stopped contributing code to the product, and began to focus instead on “critical stuff like recruiting, culture, team building, PR, content marketing, increasing our visibility outside the Philadelphia region, business development, board relations and venture capital relations,” while still staying very much involved in product strategy.

“The company continued to raise money, and in 2013 raised $6 million from Trinity Ventures, a Silicon Valley VC firm.” By the end of 2013 they had 40 people on the payroll. “Then we raised $6.5 million from August Capital, which is in the same building as Trinity Ventures,” on Sand Hill Road, he said.

“In 2015, the scaling broke for us,” Moore continued. “We had raised a lot of money in a short amount of time, unless you compare us to our competitors, who raised a lot more money in a short amount of time.” For example, GoodData (San Francisco) had raised more than $100 million. “The companies we were competing with were so flush in cash that they didn’t mind … spending three dollars to make one dollar.” The analytics and business intelligence market had become so hot that there was enormous pricing pressure on these companies to scale.

Moore said that for RJMetrics, the only channels that did scale were paid advertising and outbound sales; the company was doing market push instead of generating market pull. But it would have needed to raise hundreds of millions of dollars to make that approach work in the long run. “And by the time we realized this, no one wanted to put that much money into data analytics companies anymore because the market was flush and the economics didn’t make any sense,” he said.

“This is the moment when many VC backed-companies go to die. They run out of capital.”

The founders decided that, in order to survive, they had to make the company attractive to a suitor. They split their offerings into two distinct business lines, each with its own branding: RJ CloudBI and Pipeline. “We wanted it to be so if a profitable company acquired us, they wouldn’t have to worry about us making them unprofitable.”

Once they had done the preparation work, they started to talk to key partners about a merger. “The hardest day of my professional life was when we cut headcount at RJ. We had to let 25 people go in sales and sales support that were hired on the backs of the economic model we were pulling away from.” Moore noted that everyone who was laid off found new jobs within three months, but it was still a terrible ordeal for those 25 people.

Among the candidates for a merger was Magento, which had been one of RJMetrics’ best partners. In fact, more than a third of RJMetrics’ customers were also Magento customers. But Magento was part of eBay, a mammoth organization that would be impossible to crack. Coincidentally, however, eBay restructured and spun out Magento.

“That changed everything,” Moore said. The startup made sure to get its executive team in front of Magento’s board of directors and the relevant people who could make decisions at the private equity firm that had bought that company. After a period of courtship, the RJMetrics’ CloudBI business line was acquired by Magento and the Pipeline business line was spun out and became Stitch.

“This thing that we built is in the hands of an enormous ecosystem, and people will still be using the software 10 years from now. That was important to me. And we are still swinging the bat hard on a business that has newer technology, but doesn’t have the challenges in the market that we ran into with Cloud BI,” Moore concluded.



Esther Surden is Publisher and Editor of NJTechWeekly, and a contributor to Philly Tech News. This article originally appeared in NJTechWeekly, and is republished here with her permission.

2/2: Big day in Bala Cynwyd, as Entercom, Hamilton Lane make news

Follow @phillytechnews

 Subscribe in a reader
Subscribe to Philadelphia Tech News by Email

CBS Radio, Bala Cynwd-based Entercom to Merge, Creating Industry Giant With 244 Stations (Hollywood Reporter)

CBS Radio, born in Philly 90 years ago, will now be based here (Update) (Philly.com)

Hamilton Lane files to go public (Pensions & Investments)
Two big stories today from Bala Cynwyd-based companies.

Comcast Employees Protest Trump Executive Order on Partial Immigration Ban (NBC Philadelphia)

Amazon forecasts lower operating income, shares dip
(Reuters)

Amazon's massive cloud business hit over $12 billion in revenue and $3 billion in profit in 2016 (Business Insider Enterprise)

Companies Anticipate Big Software Deals, With Help From Trump (Bloomberg)
Should Google buy Salesforce?

MyPOV: lots of end of year @salesforce @workday deals. some mega deals that will surprise markets. Seeing good traction w/ @zuora #Cloud

— R Ray Wang (王瑞光) (@rwang0) February 2, 2017

And the winners of the 2017 CRM Watchlist are... (Paul Greenberg /ZDNet)

The state of financial software in early 2017 – hot, cloudy, competitive (Diginomica)

Reports: Foxconn considering Pennsylvania molding plant (Plastics News)
This may be a smaller investment, before the larger investment that's been talked about.

Cox Super Bowl Ad to Tout New ‘Panoramic WiFi’ ProductCampaign with ‘It’s wall-to-wall fast’ (Multichannel News)

Wealthfront Puts More ‘Robo’ Into Financial Planning (Fortune)

2/1: Comcast will charge extra fee for watching TV on Roku boxes; Hayman appointed PTC COO, responsibilities include ThingWorx

Follow @phillytechnews

 Subscribe in a reader
Subscribe to Philadelphia Tech News by Email




Amazon will build its own $1.5 billion air cargo hub (TechCrunch)

PTC Promotes Craig Hayman to Chief Operating Officer (Press Release)
An ex-IBMer who once headed EBay Enterprise, Hayman will oversee ThingWorx among other PTC units.

MyPOV: despite the fog and rain, massively packed house @westincostamesa @Oracle #oraclecloudday #cio #cmo #cdo pic.twitter.com/XKerc5sv3g

— R Ray Wang (王瑞光) (@rwang0) February 1, 2017

Oracle probably brought in the clouds for effect https://t.co/7XJRCBMOW0

— tom paine (@phillytechnews) February 1, 2017

Comcast will charge extra fee for watching TV on Roku boxes (Ars Technica)

Analyst to Arris Investors: Relax About Comcast’s Roku App (Multichannel News)


Google Fiber Rolls Into Raleigh
(Multichannel News)

Project Fi integration for Google Voice could be on its way (Android Authority)

AT&T will launch 5G wireless in two cities this year (Engadget)

AT&T wants to be the Linus Torvalds of network software (PCWorld)

Facebook to Develop App for Television Set-Top Boxes (Fortune)

Elliott turns up CEO pressure blending activism with buyouts (Reuters)

Siemens Healthineers boosts Q1 profits despite flat sales (Mass Device)