NEWS

charlie federman 6/13/21 charlie federman 6/13/21

This online marketplace wants New Yorkers to ditch Amazon and shop local

Updated 1903 GMT (0303 HKT) June 10, 2021

New York (CNN)New York's local businesses were hit hard by the pandemic, so one Israeli immigrant, now a Brooklyn resident, created an online marketplace to bring life back to the city's struggling stores.

When Covid-19 hit the United States last year, Maya Komerov saw shoppers flock to Amazon (AMZN) at the expense of the small businesses in their neighborhoods. So she used her background in tech and previous experience working with local shop owners to build ShopIN.NYC, an e-commerce platform for local shopping in New York City.

How it began

ShopIN.NYC is the newest iteration of Cinch Wallet, a company Komerov founded in 2017 to drive shoppers to local stores where they could get personalized discounts and offers through the Cinch Wallet app.

But once the pandemic hit, Komerov focused on restructuring her business strategy. "When Covid started, we couldn't send people to the stores," she said. "Stores told us they couldn't compete with Amazon even if they had e-commerce."

So Komerov transformed Cinch Wallet into ShopIN.NYC, an online marketplace that connects with nearly 100 local shops in Brooklyn and Manhattan, aggregating goods for same-day delivery to New Yorkers.

Shifting consumer habits

In an era filled with online shopping and reliance on quick delivery times, big retailers such as Amazon and Walmart rule the e-commerce world. Komerov is trying to break consumer habits and shift the focus back to neighborhood shopping. "We need to bring back the power to the local businesses," Komerov told CNN Business.

About 100 people use the platform every day, and the average ShopIN.NYC user buys goods from three stores with an order that comes to about $70 on average, Komerov said. Shoppers pay a delivery fee if the order is below $60, and the platform isn't subscriber-based — anyone can use it to purchase goods from local stores. When it comes to adding new inventory to the site, Komerov said the team adds about 5,000 new product SKUs every week.

Once an order is placed, the store prepares the purchase and a ShopIN.NYC employee picks it up based on pre-set routes throughout the city. The items are then taken to a sorting area in Brooklyn and prepped for delivery by ShopIN.NYC staffers.

Orders placed before 10 am will arrive the same day between 4:30 pm and 9 pm. Later orders arrive the next day.

Each business owner decides how much they are willing to pay Komerov for the service. Most pay around 10% and the platform allows shop owners to change the prices of their items to increase revenue for the businesses. "The store can decide how much they can pay to make sure that they don't lose money," Komerov said, offsetting a common pain point for small businesses that use delivery platforms like Uber Eats and Seamless.

And while some businesses charge the same price for their products on ShopIN.NYC, others upcharge for the service, but that decision is up to each business owner.

Small businesses 'fighting for their lives'

Sahadi's Fine Foods opened in Brooklyn in 1948, and the store's managing director, Ron Sahadi, is one of the nearly 100 business owners who sell products on the ShopIN.NYC platform.

"Small businesses are really fighting for their lives these days," he said. ShopIN.NYC "reaches people that might not have otherwise thought of ordering from some of the local shops."

Sahadi's grocery store on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn

The big companies that are dominating e-commerce make it easy to order from them, Sahadi pointed out. And ShopIN is trying to do the same for smaller businesses.

But he emphasized that it's important for consumers to practice what they preach. "Don't tell everyone to shop small and then go off yourself and order everything from Amazon," Sahadi said.

ShopIN.NYC joins a growing list of companies working to find creative ways to support the e-commerce side of local businesses.

For example, some independent food shops work with Mercato, a grocery store delivery service, which charges a 9% commission on every sale along with a 3% credit card transaction fee.

But ShopIN's experimentation with the set-your-own fee model sets it apart.

The sustainability benefit

Waste is a huge byproduct of the e-commerce world. Online purchases produce huge amounts packaging waste, and online items tend to come from different distribution centers, increasing delivery mileage and boosting carbon emissions. Amazon packages, for instance, include the box that the goods are sold in, plus bubble wrap, plastic and other packaging materials to protect the items inside the larger shipping box.

"We really focus on sustainability," Komerov said of her business strategy, adding that the company uses only paper and minimizes packaging for every delivery.

Gearing up for growth

Komerov plans to increase the number of stores the platform works with to 300 by the end of the year. "Our goal is to bring back 20% of online sales to New York City," she said. And she intends to make local shopping part of New Yorkers' daily lives and routines.

Komerov is seeing between 20% and 30% revenue growth month-over-month and plans to expand to other cities after the company "builds a strong playbook" in New York. She's also developing an app for the platform.

Shopping locally in lieu of shopping on Amazon is "a movement that that's not going to go away," Katerina Bogatireva, owner of Brooklyn's first package-free, zero waste grocery store, told CNN Business. "Of course it's convenient," Bogatireva said of shopping on Amazon. "But if there's an alternative that's almost or just as convenient, at some point, I think it's it's a no-brainer."

charlie federman 5/6/21 charlie federman 5/6/21

The people behind healthcare innovation: an interview with Doron Behar, CEO & Founder of Igentify

Published on May 3, 2021

As part of our work, we have the privilege to speak with many inspiring innovators. Although the business community usually focuses on companies, pitches, and valuations—and less on the innovator—we thought it would be interesting to learn a bit more about the people behind healthcare innovation. In this series, we’re sharing some of our conversations with innovators in a condensed format: six questions and six answers about their experience, their opinions, and their learnings.

This latest conversation is with Doron Behar, CEO and Founder of an end-to-end genetic platform Igentify, that provides a suite of digital tools designed to scale the provision of genomic medical services to more people worldwide.

Gila: What’s your story, and how did you become an innovator in healthcare?

Doron: Some like to climb mountains or ride bicycles. Since I was a kid, I was fascinated by the diversity of life. When I became an MD, I looked at “variation” on a scientific level. Variation across ethnicities sparked my interest in genomics. My PhD mentor had a keen interest in using genetics to better understand the diversity and biology of individuals, and I became interested in looking at diversity from the inside—at the genomic level.

At that time, there was a spark in the genomic revolution which led to rapid development of technologies to sequence a genome faster, to understand ethnicities, and for individuals to understand their ethnic backgrounds. It became clear that the original bottlenecks in genomics, which included sequencing a genome and developing bioinformatic pipelines, had now advanced to be able to interpret and report results efficiently. For genomic medicine to scale and be of service to more people, new tools were needed to interpret results and to help genetic counsellors report these results to patients. This was the inspiration to start Igentify.

Gila: Where do you see the field of genomics moving to in the next ten years?

Doron: The genome will become a part of everyone’s medical record. People will “carry their genomic wallet” with them and genomic data will be used for a range of healthcare services. The “genomic wallet” will be a book to open as needed to inform a wide range of health decisions in various areas such as preventative medicine, reproductive health, drug prescriptions, cancer detection, nutritional plans, and medical treatments.

The genome will become a part of everyone’s medical record.

People will “carry their genomic wallet” with them!

Gila: Looking more broadly, what are the biggest opportunities and obstacles you see impacting innovation in the healthcare environment?

Doron: Privacy is a major obstacle I would like to highlight; it is also a big opportunity. As the digital revolution meets the genomic revolution, we will see even more rapid acceleration in healthcare innovation. However, at the center of many new healthcare technologies and services will be data privacy obstacles.

The issues we are seeing now around online data privacy offer a preview of what we will soon see in relation to healthcare data. Today, people are asking: do social media platforms own all the content of my social media posts? Do online search engines own the data in my search history? How can this information about me be used? Tomorrow, we will be asking: do I own my genomic data, or is my personal genomic data owned by the lab, my doctor, the hospital, my health insurance company? And then who decides what can be done with this data?

Gila: When you look at the health system as a whole (pharma, providers, payers, doctors, patients) who do you see driving innovation the most?

Doron: People, not institutions or companies, will be the most important driver of healthcare innovation. This includes healthcare workers looking to provide enhanced care to more patients, as well as patients seeking more control and convenience in managing their health. For example, genetic counsellors (GCs) are overwhelmed by growing demand for counselling sessions. With the desire to serve more patients, and to spend more time counselling patients at risk, GCs will drive innovation and adoption around digital tools that bring more efficiency to the genetic counselling process, including enrolment, consent, and reporting of results.

Gila: How has COVID-19 affected receptiveness for innovation in healthcare?

Doron: COVID-19 has accelerated receptiveness for innovation in healthcare. With limitations on the physical delivery of certain medical services, many patients turned to monitoring their health with new digital tools and experimenting with new ways of interacting with healthcare providers. Digital health innovation was already robust, but COVID-19 resulted in even faster consumer adoption, just as it did in other industries such as ecommerce and restaurant food delivery. Our industry should take note of two benefits that are driving this receptiveness to innovation: convenience and control. Moving forward, I believe people will be looking for even more convenience and more control of healthcare services.

Digital health innovation was already robust, but COVID-19 resulted in even faster consumer adoption, just as it did in other industries such as ecommerce and restaurant food delivery.

Gila: What do you know now that you wish you had known when you were starting out as an innovator and entrepreneur?

Doron: What I didn’t know is that it is such a rollercoaster with so many turns, steep climbs, and sometimes inversions. You are responsible for bringing others—family, colleagues, and investors—on this exciting but unpredictable ride. Innovation is different than having an idea: it’s emotionally challenging and requires continuing execution at a high level. Meaningful innovation is not a sprint; it’s a marathon.

Innovation is different than having an idea: it’s emotionally challenging and requires continuing execution at a high level. Meaningful innovation is not a sprint; it’s a marathon.

charlie federman 5/29/20 charlie federman 5/29/20

Semperis Announces $40 Million in Growth Funding After Completing Six Consecutive Profitable Quarters

NEW YORK (05/13/2020) – Semperis, the pioneer of identity-driven cyber resilience for enterprises, today announced $40 million in Series B funding. Global venture capital and private equity firm Insight Partners led the round with participation from existing investors. The new investment follows Semperis completing its sixth consecutive profitable quarter, bringing total funding to $54 million. With this capital infusion, Semperis will continue to expand its global presence and accelerate hiring across all functional areas.

Semperis also announced that Teddie Wardi, Managing Director at Insight Partners, and Charlie Federman, Partner at SilverTech Ventures, will be joining its board of directors.

“Across every industry, companies are waking up to the fact that ransomware can literally shut off the lights and end their business if recovery isn’t swift and secure,” said Wardi. “With ransomware damages projected to reach $20 billion by 2021, Semperis is filling an enormous gap, especially for organizations that can’t tolerate lengthy outages or degraded service. We’re thrilled to partner with the team and help them scale.”

Semperis partners with government agencies and Global 2000 enterprises to empower comprehensive protection for their directory services on-premises and in the cloud. With Semperis, organizations can continuously monitor their directories for security vulnerabilities, intercept cyber-attacks in progress, and quickly respond to breaches and operational errors.

“This funding event marks a significant milestone for Semperis, and we’re proud to have such an elite group of investors joining us in our mission,” said Mickey Bresman, CEO, Semperis. “Cybersecurity programs, big and small, are on the front lines of a new war that has virtually no boundaries and no rules of engagement. If you think about hospitals that can’t access their systems to save a life, or cities that get held hostage, we have a responsibility to help organizations take back control. That’s what drives us.”

As the gatekeeper to critical applications and data, Microsoft Active Directory (AD) has become a prime target for widespread attacks that have crippled businesses in recent years. The most destructive attack to date, NotPetya, wrought $10 billion in total damages in 2017 according to White House officials. Like many high-profile companies impacted by NotPetya, the world’s largest shipping firm, Maersk, spent over a week manually recovering its Active Directory.

“NotPetya ushered in an entirely new era of cyberwarfare and AD is in its crosshairs,” Bresman added. As reported, Maersk emphasized that nine days for an AD recovery isn’t good enough. Because if you can’t recover AD, then you can’t repair anything else and business halts. Organizations must be able to safely automate AD recovery even if host servers are infected or wiped out.”

In 2019, Semperis introduced a cyber-first approach to disaster recovery for Active Directory. The company’s patented technology fully automates the Active Directory recovery process, avoids human errors, reduces downtime to minutes instead of days or even weeks, and eliminates the risk of malware reinfection.

“Semperis is a mission-driven company uniquely positioned to not only help organizations prevent costly downtime, but also to curb the funding of evil,” said Edward Amoroso, founder and CEO, TAG Cyber. While COVID-19 is disrupting many aspects of daily living, it’s not slowing down the work of nation-state hackers and cybercriminals. When organizations can say ‘no’ to blackmail and ransom demands, we’re all safer.”

Headquartered in New York City, Semperis’ team of identity experts and Microsoft MVPs bring vast experience building and operating world-class cybersecurity programs. For more information, visit www.semperis.com or follow Semperis on Twitter @SemperisTech.

About Semperis

Semperis is the pioneer of identity-driven cyber resilience for cross-cloud and hybrid environments. The company provides cyber preparedness, incident response, and disaster recovery solutions for enterprise directory services—the keys to the kingdom. Semperis’ patented technology for Microsoft Active Directory protects over 40 million identities from cyberattacks, data breaches, and operational errors. Semperis is headquartered in New York City and operates internationally, with its research and development team distributed between San Francisco and Tel Aviv.

Semperis hosts the award-winning Hybrid Identity Protection conference. The company has received the highest level of industry accolades; most recently being named Best Business Continuity / Disaster Recovery Solution by SC Magazine’s 2020 Trust Awards. Semperis is accredited by Microsoft and recognized by Gartner.

About Insight Partners

Insight Partners is a leading global venture capital and private equity firm investing in high-growth technology and software ScaleUp companies that are driving transformative change in their industries. Founded in 1995, Insight Partners has invested in more than 400 companies worldwide and has raised through a series of funds more than $30 billion in capital commitments. Insight’s mission is to find, fund, and work successfully with visionary executives, providing them with practical, hands-on software expertise to foster long-term success. Across its people and its portfolio, Insight encourages a culture around a belief that ScaleUp companies and growth create opportunity for all. For more information on Insight and all its investments, visit www.insightpartners.com or follow us on Twitter @insightpartners.

For Semperis:
Dan Chmielewski
Madison Alexander PR
714-832-8716
949-231-2965
dchm@madisonalexanderpr.com

For Insight Partners:
Megan Dawe
MWW PR
646-351-2456
585-305-5647
mdawe@mww.com

charlie federman 5/14/20 charlie federman 5/14/20

Semperis Announces $40 Million in Growth Funding After Completing Six Consecutive Profitable Quarters

Semperis’ Series B Funding Led by Insight Partners, to Capture Market Demand for Threat Mitigation and Rapid Response to Directory Attacks

May 13, 2020

NEW YORK-Semperis, the pioneer of identity-driven cyber resilience for enterprises, today announced $40 million in Series B funding. Global venture capital and private equity firm Insight Partners led the round with participation from existing investors. The new investment follows Semperis completing its sixth consecutive profitable quarter, bringing total funding to $54 million. With this capital infusion, Semperis will continue to expand its global presence and accelerate hiring across all functional areas.

Semperis also announced that Teddie Wardi, Managing Director at Insight Partners, and Charlie Federman, Partner at SilverTech Ventures, will be joining its board of directors.

“NotPetya ushered in an entirely new era of cyberwarfare and AD is in its crosshairs,” Bresman added. As reported, Maersk emphasized that nine days for an AD recovery isn't good enough. Because if you can’t recover AD, then you can't repair anything else and business halts. Organizations must be able to safely automate AD recovery even if host servers are infected or wiped out.”

In 2019, Semperis introduced a cyber-first approach to disaster recovery for Active Directory. The company's patented technology fully automates the Active Directory recovery process, avoids human errors, reduces downtime to minutes instead of days or even weeks, and eliminates the risk of malware reinfection.

About Semperis

charlie federman 5/9/20 charlie federman 5/9/20

Julius Acquires HYPR

MTS May 7, 2020

Two influencer marketing software leaders unite

Julius Works Inc. announced the completion of its acquisition of HYPR Brands. Julius and HYPR are industry-leading, 360-degree software solutions that streamline, simplify, and scale influencer marketing for renowned brands and agencies, such as Nike, ViacomCBS, Pepsi, Revlon, and Edelman. Their cutting-edge capabilities include influencer search and discovery, campaign management, and measurement and reporting suites. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Headquartered in New York City, HYPR has received prestigious awards, being named best influencer marketing company and platform by DIGIDAY and Business of Apps. Julius and HYPR have raised more than $30 million combined from investors including: Edgewater Capital Partners, Klingenstein Fields Wealth Advisors, LaunchCapital, Maverick Capital, Prudence Holdings, Resolute Ventures, Silvertech Ventures, and World Trade Ventures.

Marketing Technology News: Adam Morgan Joins SC as Partner

The influencer marketing industry is on track to be worth up to $15 billion by 2022, up from as much as $8 billion in 2019, according to Business Insider Intelligence estimates based on Mediakix data. The North American influencer marketing SaaS market is projected to be worth $2 billion in 2020, according to MarketsandMarkets.

“We are thrilled to acquire HYPR and merge their outstanding product and team with our own,” said Jared Augustine, co-founder & CEO of Julius. “Both companies have innovated this industry since it came to life. Together, we are creating an unmatched knowledge center for influencer marketing software, which will translate to best-in-class products for our customers.”

As a result of this transaction, Julius will merge the best features of Julius and HYPR’s platforms. For example, Julius will combine its robust influencer profiles, the most detailed on the market, with HYPR’s comprehensive influencer database featuring over 12 million influencers, the largest in the world. The Julius and HYPR platforms will take up to a year to completely merge. In the interim, each company’s customers will continue using the platform they are subscribed to.

Gil Eyal, founder & CEO of HYPR, adds, “We’re excited about this transaction bringing together two market leaders in influencer marketing SaaS. HYPR and Julius have long been aligned on serving the enterprise market with best-in-class technology and service, so customers of both platforms will benefit from this combination.”

Julius and HYPR will now serve the largest enterprise customer base in the influencer marketing software industry, boasting over 200 major international brand and agency clients, combined. The transaction is a win for influencers as well, as Julius and HYPR enable brands and agencies to easily identify and access influencers for their marketing programs, but they don’t take a cut of resulting influencer deals. Instead, they charge clients annual license fees for access to their software.

“Julius has been a valued partner of Foot Locker, Inc., from informing and developing our influencer strategy to identifying talent at the core of sneaker culture,” said Francine Feder, VP of Marketing Communications for Foot Locker North America. “We are excited to see how their acquisition of HYPR will further enhance their influencer network and data-driven technology in the future.”