Philly EnterpriseTech Roundup 12/25: Amazon, Planalytics, Google, BlueApron, Comcast

Business weather intelligence firm Planalytics (Berwyn) raises $10.1M.

Amazon makes it more expensive to put 'dangerous' items in its warehouses after NJ bear spray explosion.

@amazon is a "vertically integrated digital data monopoly", leading analyst Wang says. But they are doing exactly the things he would advise them to do.

Not quite Philly, but Google will open artificial intelligence lab in Princeton.

BlueApron might taste good, but not to investors as shares fall below $1

Comcast is working with Spectrum and Viacom on a blockchain-based identity solution.
























































at 1:11 PM 0 comments

PhillyEnterpriseTech PeopleNews 12/23: @FirstrRoundCapital plans, Philly Startup Leaders


With Rob Hayes joining Chris Fralic in stepping back from active roles as First Round Capital partners, it represents a generational change, except for one exception, co-founder Josh Kopelman.

Kopelman told Axios Pro Rata's Dan Primack recently:

"I don't see myself slowing down or stepping back for many funds to come. I've had amazing partners, and also think that I now have a group of amazing partners... Ultimately, I'd rather be known as a better picker of partners than a picker of companies."

That's the most I've heard him say about future plans for quite a while.












































at 10:42 PM 0 comments

Guru raises $25 million; But what market is it in?

Tom Paine




 Subscribe in a reader
Subscribe to Philadelphia Tech News by Email





There is a large market emerging called Work Management (or at least VCs expect it to), which I haven't been able to define the parameters of. By one name or another its been around for a while, but right now its a very hot sector. And its different from the existing coding collaboration tools, and distinctly different from project
management systems.

Work Management is all about improving repeatable processes which take up so much of a company's resources and operating expense.

SmartSheet, which IPOd in April, has a market value of $2.3 billion. Asana just raised $50 million in VC money , bringing it to $125 million raised this year. San Francisco-based Airtable also raised $100 million in November. There are other smaller examples.

Last Week Philly-based Guru announced a round of $25 million, bringing its total funding to $38 million. Its backers form a prestigious roster, including previous investors FirstMark Capital and Dell, which have stayed with co-founder & CEO Rick Nucci since Boomi days. Emergence Capital, a legendary name in Cloud investing, also invested again. Josh Kushner's Thrive Capital, which just raised an additional $1 billion, led this round. Thrive also led the huge recent round in Airtable.

While Guru calls itself a "Knowledge Management" vendor (and they are), it also fits tangentially into the Work Management space, though its different from others. One key aspect of Guru is way it collects, organizes and verifies information so it can be used by others within an organization. People were just talking about IBM
/Lotus Notes being sold. Perhaps Guru is the next generation of Notes.

The other way in which it differs is its focus on revenue generation (sales, marketing and customer success). Any one who glances at income statements of SaaS companies know what a large chunk that is. Guru reminds me of Aktana, which uses AI to help life science sales & marketing, partnering with Veeva and Salesforce.

Guru claims to have about 800 customers, and Nucci admits its still in the red, but the idea is to rev up the engine to pursue faster growth.



at 8:51 PM 0 comments

HOBOKEN STARTUP BASIS, WHICH RAISED $133 MILLION, IS SHUTTING DOWN AND RETURNING INVESTOR MONEY


HOBOKEN STARTUP BASIS, WHICH RAISED $133 MILLION, IS SHUTTING DOWN AND RETURNING INVESTOR MONEY




December 17, 2018 Esther Surden
Publisher & Editor, NJTechWeekly.com




Basis, the Hoboken crypto startup founded by three Princeton alumni, is shutting down. The company, whose official name is “Intangible Labs,” had raised $133 million from prominent VCs. Cofounders Nader Al-Naji, Lawrence Diao and Josh Chen said that they would return the money they hadn’t used to their venture capital backers.

According to a note on the company’s website, “Eighteen months ago, we set out with the ambitious goal of creating a better monetary system: one that would be resistant to hyperinflation, free from centralized control, and more stable and robust than the monetary systems that came before it. This was a goal we felt could create tremendous value for society if achieved, and one we also felt well-positioned to take on.”

The idea was, according to TechCrunch, to create a “stable coin” called “Basis,” whose “elastic supply would ostensibly expand and contract to keep its value at about a dollar instead of all over the map. The company’s big idea: to develop a new token that people would actually use, instead of use to speculate.”

The project, as explained on the Basis website, would have been able to keep Basis stable using algorithms that would adjust supply. When demand was rising, the blockchain would have created more Basis, and the expanded supply would have brought the price of Basis back down. Similarly, when demand was falling, the blockchain would automatically buy more Basis, to contract supply and bring the price back up.

So what happened? The company ran into regulatory issues that were so daunting, it could not continue.

Said the cofounders, “having to apply U.S. securities regulation to the system had a serious negative impact on our ability to launch Basis.” Here are some of the specifics, in the words of the cofounders:

As regulatory guidance started to trickle out over time, our lawyers came to a consensus that there would be no way to avoid securities status for bond and share tokens (though Basis would likely be free of this characterization).
Due to their status as unregistered securities, bond and share tokens would be subject to transfer restrictions, with Intangible Labs responsible for limiting token ownership to accredited investors in the US for the first year after issuance and for performing eligibility checks on international users.
Enforcing transfer restrictions would require a centralized whitelist, meaning our system would not only lose its censorship resistance, but also that on-chain auctions would have significantly less liquidity.
Having fewer participants in the on-chain auctions adversely affects the stability of Basis, making Basis intrinsically less attractive to users. Additionally, imposing transfer restrictions on bond and share token auctions materially hurts our ability to build the Basis ecosystem.
While transfer restrictions can generally lapse 12 months after a security is issued, because the auctions of bond and share tokens governed by our monetary policy would be continuously issued, transfer restrictions and a centralized white list would be required indefinitely.
The company knew at the start that the Basis project would depend on a favorable regulatory environment, the cofounders said, and that is why they included a return-of-capital clause in their token sale to begin with.

A partial list of VCs involved in the Basis financing rounds, according to TechCrunch, includes: Bain Capital Ventures, GV, long-time hedge fund manager Stanley Druckenmiller, former Federal Reserve governor Kevin Warsh, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Foundation Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Wing Venture Capital, NFX, Valor Capital Group, ZhenFund, Ceyuan Ventures, Sky9 Capital and Digital Currency Group.




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.


at 6:15 PM 0 comments

M*Modal sells tech business to 3M for $1 billion

Tom Paine




 Subscribe in a reader
Subscribe to Philadelphia Tech News by Email









M*Modal, the surviving named entity from then Mt Laurel-based MedQuist's acquisition of M*Modal in 2011, sold off the technology side of its medical transcription business to 3M for $1 billion. it announced yesterday.

M*Modal, previously based in Pittsburgh, was bought by MedQuist Holdings in July 2011 for $130 million. MedQuist changed its own corporate name to M*Modal the following January, and the company's headquarters were moved to the Nashville area later in 2012.

M*Modal, a CMU spinout, provides health care technology and artificial intelligence-powered conversational systems used in transcribing doctors’ verbal notes.

M*Modal will continue in the transcription, scribing and coding services businesses, using the technology it is selling to 3M. Some staff & management associated with the transcription business still work from Mt Laurel, but most of the transcription work is now outsourced or done in countries such as India.

M*Modal had been on a somewhat rocky road, selling to One Equity Partners, a private investment arm of JP Morgan Chase & Co., for $1.1 billion in 2012, and declaring bankruptcy in 2014.

About 750 M*Modal employees supporting the technology business, which is based in Pittsburgh, are expected to join 3M. The business M*Modal is selling has annual revenue of approximately $200 million.

One year ago, Nuance Communications filed a patent infringement lawsuit against M*Modal that alleges the company’s products violated six Nuance patents.

There are many 'M's in this transaction, as 3M's ticker symbol is MMM.


at 9:56 PM 0 comments

Philly EnterpriseTech Roundup 12/14 thru 12/18: For Uber, what happens in Arizona stays there; Tridiuum has a redundant 'U'; Burke still down over losing Fox to Disney

Uber website



Watch out, Pittsburgers. Uber's autonomous autos will be back on the streets with the state's blessing, still in test. I understand Uber's monitors will be instructed to shout "Fore" when entering a new road.

Philly digital health startup Tridiuum raises $9.5m in VC funds & debt, and they have moved in from the outer limits (Wayne) to Center City.
Took me a while to spot the redundant 'U".

NBC Universal’s boss Steve Burke sent a rhythmic holiday greeting to employees this week, and it contained some possible predictions about 2019. OTT? NBC's best move would be to get control of Hulu.

Larry Ellison says there"s no way anyone would move from Oracle to an Amazon database.

And Google transferred the domain Duck.com to DuckDuckGo (with the redundant 'Duck"), though its not clear whether Google sold it or just turned it over to DDG. It had been a contentious issue between the two. But its yet another PR victory for Gabriel Weinberg




















































































at 10:09 PM 0 comments

Flynn's real crime?

Tom Paine




 Subscribe in a reader
Subscribe to Philadelphia Tech News by Email

Update
_______

Now some media people are saying the Flynn case has been totally separated from Russia and focuses only on Turkey. But I wonder:



Turkey indicts 28 people, including cleric Gulen, for 2016 assassination of Russian envoy (November 23, 2018)

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-turkey-security-diplomacy/turkey-indicts-28-people-including-cleric-gulen-for-2016-assassination-of-russian-envoy-idUSKCN1NS1H3

Do't know if there's any truth to these charges, but maybe Putin wants him as much as Erdogan does.


-------------------------------------------------------------


On Sunday, I tweeted this:



-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------




Today, this appeared:



If I recall correctly, Flynn's involvement in this is what the Feds considered his real crime. In transition staff meetings, Flynn reportedly suggested how Gulen might be removed from the US without due process (extradition).

Getting the plea from Flynn on the minor perjury charge may have gotten him off the hook on Turkey-related charges in return.

I don't know enough about Turkish politics and religious schisms to be able to judge whether Gulen is good or bad, but I certainly wouldn't hand him over to Erdogan unless there is verifiable overwhelming evidence against him. It could cost him his life.

And as for Flynn, this demonstrates his lack of judgement and ethics.


at 2:53 PM 0 comments

Philly EnterpriseTech Highlights 12/9-12/13: Why is Philly passed over by Big Tech?

I authored the below tweet in a pique of sarcasm, knowing Philadelphia never really had a chance at Apple. Also Amazon, though it might have garnered the 3rd slot given to Nashville.






The New York Times noted a dramatic new trend of west coast tech firms looking to set up east coast operations and find east coast people to fill them. True, but this seems to pass Philly by for the most part.


Among the Big 5 or Big 6 tech companies, Philly barely exists. Amazon is here only because of Ring.com's assumption of assets and people from the company formerly known as Zonoff. And even in that instance they airlifted a large number of people to California.

Boston is facing somewhat similar problems, but looks at them differently . And Boston is said to be getting several hundred new Apple jobs over the next few years. Philly and Boston generally compete for biotech money and jobs, but Boston is gaining more ground.

You might say Pennsylvania is the problem, and that's somewhat true, but Pittsburgh is booming in the high value R&D area, having developed specific talent pools at Carnegie-Mellon and UPMC. And Google just gave its top healthcare job to a guy working in the middle of the state.

So I'm suggesting that people do a deep self-analysis of what the real problem is. Is it the onerous taxes, particularly Philadelphia's, that scare people off? Or some radicalized City Council members who want Philadelphia to become the next Oakland, and don't understand economics? Or is it the presence of Comcast, sucking up much of the best talent.

Or is it the trash? Or the persistent culture of political corruption that nobody internally seems to be ale to challenge? (true in some suburban counties as well). Or the crime, to me the most serious problem due to its very randomness.

Is it, as Kamala Harris once said, a problem of perception, surviving old adages about Philly now largely abated in fact? I'm sure that's been studied by the City, the Chamber of Commerce, and other regional and state organizations.


But regardless of these factors, Philly is doing pretty well in the venture racket, and has developed a small but successful class of repeat entrepreneurs, and some of that is spreading. And it may just have to grow from its own bootstraps rather than relying on corporate natural selection. Which may be the best way to a point.











































































at 6:12 PM 0 comments

Tom Paine's Iron Bridge / BUILDING A UNITED STATE

From http://books.wwnorton.com/books/Tom-Paines-Iron-Bridge/

Tom Paine's Iron Bridge
BUILDING A UNITED STATES
Edward G. Gray (Author)

Sign up for the monthly New Releases email.


By signing up you agree to W. W. Norton's privacy policy and terms of use.

The little-known story of the architectural project that lay at the heart of Tom Paine’s political blueprint for the United States.

In a letter to his wife Abigail, John Adams judged the author of Common Sense as having “a better hand at pulling down than building.” Adams’s dismissive remark has helped shape the prevailing view of Tom Paine ever since. But, as Edward G. Gray shows in this fresh, illuminating work, Paine was a builder. He had a clear vision of success for his adopted country. It was embodied in an architectural project that he spent a decade planning: an iron bridge to span the Schuylkill River at Philadelphia.

When Paine arrived in Philadelphia from England in 1774, the city was thriving as America’s largest port. But the seasonal dangers of the rivers dividing the region were becoming an obstacle to the city’s continued growth. Philadelphia needed a practical connection between the rich grain of Pennsylvania’s backcountry farms and its port on the Delaware. The iron bridge was Paine’s solution.

The bridge was part of Paine’s answer to the central political challenge of the new nation: how to sustain a republic as large and as geographically fragmented as the United States. The iron construction was Paine’s brilliant response to the age-old challenge of bridge technology: how to build a structure strong enough to withstand the constant battering of water, ice, and wind.

The convergence of political and technological design in Paine’s plan was Enlightenment genius. And Paine drew other giants of the period as patrons: Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and for a time his great ideological opponent, Edmund Burke. Paine’s dream ultimately was a casualty of the vicious political crosscurrents of revolution and the American penchant for bridges of cheap, plentiful wood. But his innovative iron design became the model for bridge construction in Britain as it led the world into the industrial revolution.


at 11:15 AM 0 comments

Daily Tweet Highlights 12/9 - 12/13









































































at 11:58 AM 0 comments

A look at Philly Tech and Cloud advertising

This is a preliminary attempt to look at advertising that impacts Philly Tech & Enterprise Tech Marketing. I hope to build it into something good.

I am not only interested in ads designed to sell products, but those that are creatively distinctive (for better or worse), or reflect on nuances of the advertiser or its market in a distinct way.

If you have something you wish to share, whether video, web or just plain print, I'd be happy to see it and hopefully include it. I expect to add some commentary in the future. But again, the purpose is not to give away free advertising.

Send it to phillytechnews@gmail.com or contact or DM me @phillytechnews on twitter.



























at 9:36 PM 0 comments

Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)