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Brands building for scale should look to hypercultural Latinx consumers

Published September 30, 2020
Ilse Calderon
Contributor

Ilse Calderon is an investor at OVO Fund where she specializes in pre-seed investments across capital-efficient markets. Prior to OVO, Ilse spent a year at Silicon Valley Bank rotating across consumer and software teams.
More posts by this contributor

Kathleen Garcia-Manjarres
Contributor

Kathleen Garcia-Manjarres (Kat Garcia) is a Growth Architect at BCG Digital Ventures (BCGDV) where she invests, invents, builds and scales startups with the world’s most influential companies.

As two female investors who themselves identify as hypercultural (HC) Latinx, we see much potential for brands and startups that invest in this demographic.

For the purpose of this article, we will focus on 13-to-25-year-old individuals who can trace their heritage to a Latin American country who have spent the majority of their lifetime in the U.S. Whether they were born in the U.S. doesn’t matter as much as how much time they have spent immersed in mainstream American culture. This is important to note because this demographic is largely defined by always having one foot in their parents’ native country and another in the United States.

In simplest terms: A Latinx person has origins from a country in Latin America, like Mexico or Brazil, while a Hispanic person has origins from a country where Spanish is the dominant language, such as Mexico or Spain. A Pew Research study found that one in four people who describe themselves as Hispanic or Latino have heard of the non-gendered “Latinx,” but only 3% of them use the term in everyday life.

So what makes the hypercultural Latinx so unique and worthy of pursuit? It’s not a secret that they have massive purchasing power behind them (a collective $1.9 trillion to be exact). However, they are also different from their mostly white counterparts in the way they vigorously engage with technology, their obsession with being online at all times and their unique shopping habits.

Hypercultural Latinx consumers are accustomed to being early adopters of new technology: 81% of them say they like to learn about the latest technology (overindexing their white counterparts by 36%). Latino households are filled with the latest gadgets and smart tech toys. Although we assume most Gen Zers and young millennials love technology, HC Latinx love tech at astronomical rates and shell out more dollars than their white, mostly monocultural counterparts.

This makes sense given that 60% of HC Latinx grew up in the internet age versus only 40% of their white counterparts. Across levels of HC Latinx income (or their parents’), there is always a budget for technology. In my own Mexican household (Ilse), I grew up prioritizing tech over other (sometimes more important) categories like books or vacations.

The online lives of the HC Latinx can be summed up by one statistic: 24% spend three hours or more on social media per day. compared to only 13% of their white counterparts. So much time is spent online by this Latinx youth that they are able to create a digital comunidad where they thrive socially and intellectually. This comunidad has so much influence in how the HC Latinx thinks about what they purchase and how loyal they are to the brands they buy from.

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Vista-owned backup and recovery company Datto files to go public

Published September 30, 2020

When Vista Equity Partners acquired backup and disaster recovery firm Datto in 2017, it was easy to think that was the end of the company’s story. It would be comfortably absorbed into the private equity portfolio continuing to make money for the firm, but that’s not really the way Vista works. It tends to build up its companies, sometimes eventually taking them public, and yesterday that’s what happened when Datto filed its S-1.

Datto has been busy since it was acquired and reports a healthy $507 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR) along with 17,000 managed service provider (MSP) customers. Among those, it has more than 1000 customers contributing over $100,000 in ARR. MSPs are service providers that act as a company’s IT department when they don’t have internal resources.

The company has included a standard $100 million placeholder for the amount they intend to raise for the event, and that will almost certainly change. In a nod to its manage service provider customer base, the company’s ticker symbol will be MSP.

When the company raised its $75 million Series B in 2015, former CEO and founder Austin McChord, said that the company was already profitable at that point, two years before Vista came knocking. “As a profitable company, Datto isn’t raising capital to fund operations, but instead, to enter new markets and build new products and technology,” he said in a statement at the time.

You can see that in the company’s financials. In the first six months of 2020, the company had subscription revenues of $234 million and a gross profit of $178 million. When sales and marketing and other costs are added in, the company had a net income of $10 million. That’s compared to $196 million in subscription revenue in the same period of 2019, a gross profit of $143 million, and a net loss of about $26 million.

In short, the company has managed to grow top-line revenue, keep its cost of revenues flat, and manage the growth of its other expenses to limit their effect on the bottom line. That swung its net income per share from -$0.19 to $0.07.

Of course, companies like Datto always try to make the numbers look good in preparation for a public offering, so the real understanding will come in the next few quarters as we see if Datto can sustain its growth and keep expenses in check.

When I spoke to Alan Cline, senior managing director at Vista last year, he said his firm tends to like high-performing startups like Datto that have built substantial companies.

“Software is the easiest place to innovate inside of technology. We see a huge advantage in terms of the productivity that it drives for the end business customer, and to us that high ROI is powerful because whether it’s an up market or a down market, if I can prove to you you’re going to make more money or save money in your own operations by using my software, you can find the budget,” Cline told TechCrunch.

Just last year another company in the Vista portfolio, Ping Identity, filed to go public for the same $100 million placeholder, eventually offering 12.5 million shares at $15 per share. Today the company is trading at $31.68 per share with a market cap of over $2.5 billion.

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Homer nabs $50M from Lego, Sesame Workshop and Gymboree for its early learning apps

Published September 30, 2020

For better or worse, tablets and smartphones have become a cornerstone of how many younger children pass the time. Today, a company that builds literacy and other educational apps to help make that time more worthwhile is announcing a large round of funding from a number of strategic backers to move into the next phase of its growth, building not just apps but a comprehensive learning platform.

BEGiN, the startup behind the Homer early learning program aimed primarily at kids between the ages of two and eight, has raised $50 million in a Series C round of funding, money that it plans to use to, in the words of CEO Neal Shenoy (who co-founded the company with Stephanie Dua), create a “systematic experience” in learning.

The startup has been around since 2013 and got its start with literacy — it says that its reading apps are currently the most popular for children under age five in the U.S. App Store — which remains its core subject area, but it has also expanded into other subject areas and plans to take that further.

“We are launching the industry’s first comprehensive early learning program,” he said in an interview. “And so from a curriculum perspective, this will extend beyond reading to include math, critical thinking, creativity, and socio-emotional learning, we will deliver this learning, these experiences, across digital, physical, tangible product, and in class mediums, we will focus on both serving the child and the parent and the relationship between them says the parent is the child’s first teacher.”

The round includes a number of strategic investors that will help bring this together. The backers include LEGO Ventures, Sesame Workshop, the principal investor in Gymboree Play & Music, 3One4 Capital, Trustbridge Partners and Interlock Partners. In addition to the $50 million, Liquidity Capital is also contributing $25 million in trajectory-based funding for further growth. The strategic backers plan to help build the curriculum, the products and the distribution for the new program, he said.

The valuation of Homer, and BEGiN itself, is not being disclosed, but the company said that it already has hundreds of thousands of subscribers and generates tens of millions of dollars in revenues.

The funding news and strategic expansion comes at a critical time in the educational industry, and e-learning in particular.

Children’s educational apps — and taking even just those focused on early learning (Age of Learning is another leader in this segment of the market) — have been around for as long as the internet itself. But they have always existed in conjunction with a host of more conventional resources, such as nurseries and schools, playgroups and other activities, and general socialization. The global health pandemic, however, has changed all that for many people: many families, kids included, are spending more time at home and away from teachers and the (real life) social networks that play a part in how they develop.

That’s put a huge emphasis on rethinking how tech-based tools, starting with gadgets like tablets and software like apps, can make up the difference, for now or maybe even for longer, to make sure that kids continue to learn, but also feel engaged and stimulated at a time when a lot of options for doing that have been reduced.

Joining up app makers with those who make educational physical objects is a not a new thing per se: “educational toys,” as any parent knows, are a dime a dozen in terms of supply (if not cost… they can be expensive). But it’s interesting to see toy makers joining up with those who build entertainment content and other products for children for an even bigger-picture approach to identifying and building to address the challenge of how best to deliver some aspects of early-years education.

Indeed, LEGO Ventures is a newish effort from the Danish modular toy maker, founded to help the company, now more than 70 years old, step into the next phase of how children learn and keep themselves entertained.

“HOMER’s vision and approach to playful learning fosters curiosity and collaboration in children that aligns closely with LEGO Ventures’ investment ethos supporting founders and companies in bringing the LEGO idea of learning-through-play to life,” said Jamie Beaumont, managing partner, LEGO Ventures, in a statement. “We look forward to working with Neal and the excellent team he has built, and supporting HOMER as they grow and scale their purposeful play offerings across hands-on, in-person and digital experiences.”

As with e-learning companies targeting other age groups, the startup has seen a huge boost in business in the last several months, with a 280% increase in annual subscriptions, 230% increase in website subscriptions, and children accessing 30% more lessons than this time last year. (Overall, the company has had 80%+ year-over-year growth since launch.)

“With its focus on research and kid-centric design, and expansion to embrace the whole child curriculum, HOMER’s approach reflects the mission of Sesame Workshop to help kids grow smarter, strong and kinder,” said Steve Youngwood, president of Media and Education, and chief operating officer of Sesame Workshop, in a statement. “We’re excited to support HOMER’s growth and to look for further ways to partner with them to give young children the best possible start at a critical time of their learning and development.”

Additional reporting Natasha Mascarenhas

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Coralogix lands $25M Series B to rethink log analysis and monitoring

Published September 30, 2020

Logging and monitoring tends to be an expensive endeavor because of the sheer amount of data involved. Companies are therefore forced to pick and choose what they monitor, limiting what they can see. Coralogix wants to change that by offering a more flexible pricing model, and today the company announced a $25 million Series B and a new real-time analytics solution called Streama.

First the funding. The round was led by Red Dot Capital Partners and O.G. Tech Ventures, with help from existing investors Aleph VC, StageOne Ventures, Janvest Capital Partners and 2B Angels. Today’s round, which comes after the startup’s $10 million Series A last November, brings the total to $41.2 million raised, according to the company.

When we spoke to Coralogix CEO and co-founder Ariel Assaraf last year regarding the A round, he described his company as more of an intelligent applications performance monitoring with some security logging analytics.

Today, the company announced Streama, which has been in Alpha since July. Assaraf says companies can pick and choose how they monitor and pay only for the features they use. That means if a particular log is only tangentially important, a customer can set it to low priority and save money, and direct the budget toward more important targets.

As the pandemic has taken hold, he says that companies are appreciating the ability to save money on their monitoring costs, and directing those resources elsewhere in the company. “We’re basically building out this full platform that is going to be inside-centric and value-centric instead of volume or machine count-centric in its pricing model,” Assaraf said.

Assaraf differentiates his company from others out there like Splunk, Datadog and Sumo Logic, saying his is a more modern approach to the problem that simplifies the operations. “All these complicated engineering things are being abstracted away in a simple way, so that any user can very quickly create savings and demonstrate that it’s [no longer] an engineering problem, it’s more of a business value question,” he explained.

Since the A round, the company has grown from 25 to 60 people spread out between Israel and the U.S. It plans to grow to 120 people in the next year with the new funding. When it comes to diversity in hiring, he says Israel is fairly homogeneous, so it involves gender parity there, something that he says he is working to achieve. The U.S. operation is still relatively small, with just 12 employees now, but it will be expanding in the next year and it’s something he says that he will need to be thinking about as he hires.

As part of that hiring spree, he wants to kick his sales and marketing operations into higher gear and start spending more on those areas as the company grows.

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Gusto is expanding from payroll into a full suite financial wellness platform

Published September 30, 2020

When we caught up with Gusto last year, the small business payroll startup had just raised $200 million and was launching a new office in New York City. Over the past few years though, Gusto has also been accruing new features outside of its original payroll product, features that redefine the borders between payroll and financial wellness, and in the process, are blurring the lines of the classic fintech market map.

Today, the company announced a slew of new offerings that it hopes will give employees better financial and health options through their employers.

The most interesting one here is a tool the company is calling Gusto Wallet. It’s an app and collection of products for employees paid through Gusto that basically acts as a mini bank and financial health monitor. It offers an interest-bearing cash account (called, appropriately enough, Cash Accounts) which can also divert a small slice of each paycheck into a user’s savings, similar to products like Acorns and Digit. Cash stored in the account earns 0.34% interest today, and you can also get a Gusto debit card to spend it.

Gusto’s app gives you access to financial services and wellness tools. Image via Gusto

For employees, what’s interesting here is that these services are offered essentially for free: Gusto makes money on its payroll services from employers as a software subscription fee, and so it offers financial services like these as an inducement to keep employers and employees engaged. Gusto hopes that this can keep debt low for employees, and also offer them more financial stability, particularly as businesses open and close in the wake of COVID-19.

In addition, Gusto Wallet also offers “Cashout,” which can accelerate a payday ahead of time based on the pay history of an employee. Rather than securing a high-cost payday loan, the product is designed to help users smooth out a bit of their income if they need their paycheck a bit ahead of their actual direct deposit. It’s also free of fees.

Gusto CEO Joshua Reeves said that “One of the biggest problems is people are oftentimes living paycheck-to-paycheck — they’re either not saving money, or they’re getting stuck in debt accessing things like overdraft fees, or credit card debt, or payday loans.” The hope with Gusto Wallet is that its easy availability and low costs not only attract users, but leave them in much better financial shape than before.

What’s interesting to me is placing these new features in the wider scope of the fintech landscape. It seems that every week, there is another startup launching a consumer credit card, or a new debt product, or another savings app designed to help consumers with their finances. And then every week, we hear about the credit card startup launching a new savings account, or the savings app launching an insurance product.

The math is simple: It’s very, very hard to acquire a customer in financial services, and it’s so competitive that the cost per acquired customer is extremely high (think hundreds of dollars or more per customer). For most of these startups, once you have a customer using one financial product, much like traditional banks, they want you to use all of their other products as well to maximize customer value and amortize those high CAC costs.

Gusto is an interesting play here precisely because it starts at the payroll layer. Banks and other savings apps often try to get you to send your paycheck to their service, since if your money resides there, you are much more likely to use that service’s features. Gusto intercepts that transaction and owns it itself. Plus, because it ultimately is selling subscriptions to payroll and not financial services, it can offer many of these features outright for free.

Reeves said that “This is a future that just seems inevitable, like all this information right now is sitting in silos. How do we give the employee more of that ownership and access through one location?” By combining payroll, 401(k) planning, savings accounts, debit cards and more in one place, Gusto is hoping to become the key financial health tool for its employee end users.

That’s the financial side. In addition, Gusto announced today that it is now helping small businesses set up health reimbursement accounts. Under a provision passed by Congress a few years ago, small businesses have a unique mechanism (called QSEHRA) to offer health reimbursement to their employees. That program is riven with technicalities and administrivia though. Gusto believes its new offering will help more small businesses create these kinds of programs.

Given Gusto’s small business focus, this year has seen huge changes thanks to the global pandemic. “It’s been an inspiring, challenging, motivating [and] galvanizing time for the company,” Reeves said. “Normally, I would say [we have] three home bases: New York, SF [and] Denver. Now we have 1,400 home bases.” That hasn’t stopped the company’s mission, and if anything, has brought many of its employees closer to the small businesses they ultimately serve.

Gusto team, with CEO Joshua Reeves on the left of the second row. Image via Gusto

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VTEX raises $225M at a $1.7B valuation for e-commerce solutions aimed at retailers and brands

Published September 30, 2020

Retailers and consumer brands are focused more than ever in their histories on using e-commerce channels to connect with customers: the global health pandemic has disrupted much of their traditional business in places like physical stores, event venues and restaurants, and vending machines, and accelerated the hunt for newer ways to sell goods and services. Today, a startup that’s been helping them build those bridges, specifically to expand into newer markets, is announcing a huge round of funding, underscoring the demand.

VTEX, which builds e-commerce solutions and strategies for retailers like Walmart and huge consumer names like AB InBev, Motorola, Stanley Black & Decker, Sony, Walmart, Whirlpool, Coca-Cola and Nestlé, has raised $225 million in new funding, valuing the company at $1.7 billion post-money.

The funding is being co-led by two investors, Tiger Global and Lone Pine Capital, with Constellation, Endeavour Catalyst and SoftBank also participating. It’s a mix of investors, with two leads, that offers a “signal” of what might come next for the startup, said Amit Shah, the company’s chief strategy officer and general manager for North America.

“We’ve seen them invest in big rounds right before companies go public,” he said. “Now, that’s not necessarily happening here right now, but it’s a signal.” The company has been profitable and plans to continue to be, Shah said (making it one example of a SoftBank investment that hasn’t gone sour). Revenues this year are up 114% with $8 billion in gross merchandise volume (GMV) processed over platforms it’s built.

Given that VTEX last raised money less than a year ago — a $140 million round led by SoftBank’s Latin American Innovation Fund — the valuation jump for the startup is huge. Shah confirmed to us that it represents a 4x increase on its previous valuation (which would have been $425 million).

The interest back in November from SoftBank’s Latin American fund stemmed from VTEX’s beginnings.

The company got its start building e-commerce storefronts and strategies for businesses that were hoping to break into Brazil — the B of the world’s biggest emerging “BRIC” markets — and the rest of Latin America. It made its name building Walmart in the region, and has continued to help run and develop that operation even after Walmart divested the asset, and it’s working with Walmart now in other regions outside the US, too, he added.

But since then, while the Latin American arm of the business has continued to thrive, the company has capitalized both on the funding it had picked up, and the current global climate for e-commerce solutions, to expand its business into more markets, specifically North America, EMEA and most recently Asia.

“We are today even more impressed by the quality and energy of the VTEX team than we were when we invested in the previous round,” said Marcello Silva at Constellation. “The best is yet to come. VTEX’s team is stronger than ever, VTEX’s product is stronger than ever, and we are still in the early stages of ecommerce penetration. We could not miss the opportunity to increase our exposure.”

Revenues were growing at a rate of 50% a year before the pandemic ahead of it’s more recent growth this year of 114%, Shah said. “Of course, we would prefer Covid-19 not to be here, but it has had a good effect on our business. The arc of e-commerce has grown has impacted revenues and created that additional level of investor interest.”

VTEX’s success has hinged not just on catering to companies that have up to now not prioritized their online channels, but in doing so in a way that is more unified.

Consumer packaged goods have been in a multi-faceted bind because of the fragmented way in which they have grown. A drinks brand will not only manufacture on a local level (and sometimes, as in the case of, say, Coca-Cola, use different ingredient formulations), but they will often have products that are only sold in select markets, and because the audiences are different, they’ve devise marketing and distribution strategies on a local level, too.

On top of all that, products like these have long relied on channels like retailers, restaurants, vending machines and more to get their products into the hands of consumers.

These days, of course, all of that has been disrupted: all the traditional channels they would have used to sell things are now either closed or seeing greatly reduced custom. And as for marketing: the rise of social networks has led to a globalization in messaging, where something can go viral all over the world and marketing therefore knows no regional boundaries.

So, all of this means that brands have to rethink everything around how they sell their products, and that’s where a company like VTEX steps in, building strategies and solutions that can be used in multiple regions. Among typical deals, it’s been working with AB InBev to develop a global commerce platform covering 50 countries (replacing multiple products from other vendors, typically competitors to VTEX include SAP, Shopify and Magento, and giving brands and others a viable route to market that doesn’t cut in the likes of Amazon).

“CPG companies are seeking to standardize and make their businesses and lives a little easier,” Shah said. Typical work that it does includes building marketplaces for retailers, or new e-commerce interfaces so that brands can better supply online and offline retailers, or sell directly to customers — for example, with new ways of ordering products to get delivered by others. Shah said that some 200 marketplaces have now been built by VTEX for its customers.

(Shah himself, it’s worth pointing out, has a pedigree in startups and in e-commerce. He founded an e-commerce analytics company called Jirafe, which was acquired by SAP, where he then became the chief revenue officer of SAP Hybris.)

“We are excited to grow quickly in new and existing markets, and offer even more brands a platform that embraces the future of commerce, which is about being collaborative, leveraging marketplaces, and delivering customer experiences that are second-to-none,” said Mariano Gomide de Faria, VTEX co-founder and co-CEO, in a statement. “This injection of funding will undoubtedly support us in achieving our mission to accelerate digital commerce transformation around the world.”

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Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscribers will get EA Play on November 10th

Published September 30, 2020

Earlier this month, Microsoft announced that Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscribers would be able to access EA Play for no additional cost. The company shared more details about the rollout. Console players will be able to activate their complimentary EA Play subscription on November 10th.

Microsoft is also launching the Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S on November 10th. As a reminder, EA Play includes back-catalog games from EA, such as FIFA 20, Madden NFL 20, Battlefield V, Mass Effect games, Dead Space games, etc.

The Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription includes access to Microsoft’s library of games, an Xbox Live Gold subscription, Microsoft’s cloud gaming service xCloud and soon EA Play. It costs $14.99 per month. If you just subscribe to the Xbox Game Pass for $9.99 per month, you won’t get EA Play.

On Windows, Xbox Game Pass (and Xbox Game Pass Ultimate) subscribers will be able to download EA games in December. Unfortunately, you’ll have to create an EA account, download the EA client and link your Xbox and EA accounts.

If you’re already paying for EA Play and an Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription that grants you access to EA Play, your EA Play subscription will be canceled and your remaining time will be converted to Xbox Game Pass Ultimate. If you had between 50 days and three months left, you’ll receive one month of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate. If you had between four and six months remaining, you’ll receive two months of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate. You can get more details in the FAQ.

Microsoft is using this opportunity to confirm that some Bethesda games will be added to its subscription service. Doom Eternal is coming on October 1, for instance.

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Apple to release new emojis with iOS 14.2

Published September 30, 2020

While the current version of iOS is iOS 14.0.1, Apple is already testing iOS 14.2. The company released an early beta version of the update yesterday, and it includes a new set of emojis, as Emojipedia spotted.

Apple already shared an early look of the new emojis back in July. Overall, there will be dozens of new emojis this year. Emojis will also be more diverse and inclusive than ever, with new variations of existing emojis.

Earlier this year, the governing body in charge of approving new emojis, the Unicode Consortium, approved 117 new emojis as part of Unicode 13.0. Operating system developers and social network companies, such as Apple, Google, Microsoft, Twitter, Facebook and Mozilla, then draw their own versions of the new emojis and release them on their platforms.

In this release, you’ll find a transgender flag, a smiling face with tear, pinched fingers, two people hugging, some insects and animals, a disguised face and more.

My favorite is arguably disguised face:

Emojipedia compiled those new emojis on a single image:

👀 New emojis in iOS 14.2 beta https://t.co/883idFLiJn pic.twitter.com/KMmATUf6NQ

— Emojipedia (@Emojipedia) September 29, 2020

When it comes to new variations, there will be a Mx Claus, a gender-inclusive alternative to Santa Claus and Mrs. Claus. Tuxedos are no longer limited to men and veils are no longer limited to women — you’ll be able to send an emoji with a woman wearing a tuxedo and a man wearing a veil.

You can expect the full release of iOS 14.2, iPadOS 14.2 and macOS Big Sur in a month or two.

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Papaya Global raises $40M for a payroll and HR platform aimed at global workforces

Published September 30, 2020

Workforces are getting more global, and people who work day in, day out for organizations don’t always sit day in, day out in a single office, in a single country, to get a job done. Today, one of the startups building HR to help companies provision services for and manage those global workers better is announcing a funding round to capitalise on a surge in business that it has seen in the last year — spurred in no small part by the global health pandemic, the impact it’s had on travel and the way it has focused the minds of companies to get their cloud services and workforce management in order.

Papaya Global, an Israeli startup that provides cloud-based payroll, as well as hiring, onboarding and compliance services for organizations that employ full-time, part-time, or contract workers outside of their home country, has raised $40 million in a Series B round of funding led by Scale Venture Partners. Workday Ventures — the corporate investment arm of the HR company — Access Industries (via its Israeli vehicle Claltech), and previous investors Insight Partners, Bessemer Venture Partners, New Era Ventures, Group 11 and Dynamic Loop also participated

The money comes less than a year after its Series A of $45 million, following the company growing 300% year-over-year annually since 2016. It has now raised $95 million and is not disclosing valuation. But Eynat Guez, the CEO who co-founded the company in that year with Ruben Drong and Ofer Herman, said in an interview that it’s 5x the valuation it had in its round last year.

Its customers include fast-growing startups (precisely the kind of customer that not only has global workforces, but is expanding its employee base quickly) like OneTrust, nCino and Hopin, as well as major corporates like Toyota, Microsoft, Wix and General Dynamics.

Guez said Papaya Global was partly born out of the frustrations she herself had with HR solutions — she’s worked in the field for years. Different countries have different employment regulations, varied banking rules, completely different norms in terms of how people get paid, and so on. While there have been some really modern tools built for local workforces — Rippling, Gusto and Zenefits now going head to head with incumbents like ADP — they weren’t built to address these issues.

Other HR people who have dealt with international workers would understand her pain; those who control the purse strings might have been less aware of the fragmentation. All that changed in the last eight months (and for the foreseeable future), a period when companies have had to reassess everything about how they work to make sure that they can get through the current period without collapsing.

“The major impact of COVID-19 for us has been changing attitudes,” said Guez. “People usually think that payroll works by itself, but it’s one of the more complex parts of the organization, covering major areas like labor, accounting, tax. Eight months ago, a lot of clients thought, it just happens. But now they realize they didn’t have control of the data, some don’t even have a handle on who is being paid.”

As people moved into and out of jobs, and out of offices into working from home, as the pandemic kicked off, some operations fell apart as a result, she said. “Payroll continuity is like IT continuity, and so all of a sudden when COVID started its march, we had prospects calling us saying they didn’t have data on, for example, their Italian employees, and the office they were using wasn’t answering the phone.”

Guez herself is walking the walk on the remote working front. Papaya Global itself has offices around the world, and Guez is normally based in Tel Aviv. But our interview was conducted with her in the Maldives. She said she and her family decided to decamp elsewhere before Israel went into a second lockdown, which was very tough to handle in a small flat with small children. Working anywhere, as we have found out, can work.

The company is not the only one that has identified and is building to help organizations handle global workforces. In fact, just when you think the unemployment, furlough and layoff crunch is affecting an inordinate number of people and the job market is in a slump, a rush of them, along with other HR companies, have all been announcing significant funding rounds this year on the back of surges in business.

Others that have raised money during the pandemic include Deel, which like Papaya Global is also addressing the complexities of running global workforces; Turing, which helps with sourcing and then managing international teams; Factorial with its platform targeting specifically SMBs; Lattice focused on the bigger challenges of people management; and Rippling, the second act from Zenefits’ Parker Conrad.

“Papaya Global’s accelerating growth is a testament to their top-notch executive leadership as well as their ability to streamline international payroll management, a first for many enterprises that have learned to live with highly manual payroll processes,” said Rory O’Driscoll, a partner at Scale Venture Partners, in a statement. “The complexity and cost of managing multi-region workforces cannot be understated. Eynat and her team are uniquely serving their customers’ needs, bringing an advanced SaaS platform into a market long-starved for more effective software solutions.”

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Salesforce creates for-profit platform to help governments distribute COVID vaccine when it’s ready

Published September 30, 2020

For more than 20 years, Salesforce has been selling cloud business software, but it has also used the same platform to build ways to track other elements besides sales, marketing and service information, including Work.com, the platform it created earlier this year to help companies develop and organize a safe way to begin returning to work during the pandemic.

Today, the company announced it was putting that same platform to work to help distribute and track a vaccine whenever it becomes available, along with related materials like syringes that will be needed to administer it. The plan is to use Salesforce tools to solve logistical problems around distributing the vaccine, as well as data to understand where it could be needed most and the efficacy of the drug, according to Bill Patterson, EVP and general manager for CRM applications at Salesforce.

“The next wave of the virus phasing, if you will, will be [when] a vaccine is on the horizon, and we begin planning the logistics. Can we plan the orchestration? Can we measure the inventory? Can we track the outcomes of the vaccine once it reaches the public’s hands,” Patterson asked.

Salesforce has put together a new product called Work.com for Vaccines to put its platform to work to help answer these questions, which Patterson says ultimately involves logistics and data, two areas that are strengths for Salesforce.

The platform includes the core Work.com command center along with additional components for inventory management, appointment management, clinical administration, outcome monitoring and public outreach.

While this all sounds good, what Salesforce lacks of course is expertise in drug distribution or public health administration, but the company believes that by creating a flexible platform with open data, government entities can share that data with other software products outside of the Salesforce family.

“That’s why it’s important to use an open data platform that allows for aggregate data to be quickly summarized and abstracted for public use,” he said. He points to the fact that some states are using Tableau, the company that Salesforce bought last year for a tidy $15.7 billion, to track other types of COVID data.

“Many states today are running all their COVID testing and positive case reporting through the Tableau platform. We want to do the same kind of exchange of data with things like inventory management [for a vaccine],” he said.

While this sounds like a public service kind of activity, Salesforce intends to sell this product to governments to manage vaccines. Patterson says that to run a system like this at what they envision will be enormous scale, it will be a service that governments have to pay for to access.

This isn’t the first time that Salesforce has created a product that falls somewhat outside of the standard kind of business realm, but which takes advantage of the Salesforce platform. Last year it developed a tool to help companies measure how sustainable they are being. While the end goal is positive, just like Work.com for Vaccines and the broader Work.com platform, it is a tool that they charge for to help companies implement and measure these kinds of initiatives.

The tool set is available starting today. Pricing will vary depending on the requirements and components of each government entity.

The real question here is, should this kind of distribution platform be created by a private company like Salesforce for profit, or perhaps would it be better suited to an open-source project, where a community of developers could create the software and distribute it for free.

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