May
20
2020
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Identity management startup Truework raises $30M to help you verify your work history

As organizations look for safe and efficient ways of running their services in the new global paradigm of increased social distancing, a startup that has built a platform to help people verify their work details in a secure way is announcing a round of growth funding.

Truework, which provides a way for banks, apartment-rental agencies, and others to check the employment details of an applicant in a quick and secure manner online, has raised $30 million, money that CEO and co-founder Ryan Sandler said in an interview that it would use both grow its existing business, as well to explore adding more details — both via its own service and via third-party partnerships — to the identity information that it shares.

The Series B is being led by Activant Capital — a VC that focuses on B2B2C startups — with participation also from Sequoia Capital and Khosla Ventures, as well as a number of high profile execs and entrepreneurs — Jeff Weiner (LinkedIn); Tom Gonser (Docusign); William Hockey (Plaid); and Daniel Yanisse (Checkr) among them.

The LinkedIn connection is an interesting one. Both Sandler and co-founder Victor Kabdebon were engineers at LinkedIn working on profile and improving the kind of data that LinkedIn sources on its users (the third co-founder, Ethan Winchell, previously worked elsewhere), and while Sandler tells me that the idea for Truework came to them after both left the company, he sees LinkedIn “as a potential partner here,” so watch this space.

The problem that Truework is aiming to solve is the very clunky, and often insecure, nature of how organizations typically verify an individual’s employment information. Details about salary and where you work, and the job you do, are typically essential for larger financial transactions, whether it’s securing a mortgage or another financing loan, or renting an apartment, or for others who might need to verify that information for other purposes, such as staffing agencies.

Typically that kind of information gathering is time-consuming both to reach out to get and to confirm (Sandler cites statistics that say on average an HR person spends over 1,000 hours annually answering questions like these). And some of the systems that have been put in place to do that work — specifically consumer reporting agencies — have been proven not be as watertight in their security as you would hope.

“Your data is flowing around lots of third party platforms,” Sandler said. “You’re releasing a lot of information about yourself and you don’t know where the data is going and if it’s even accurate.”

Truework’s solution is based around a platform, and now an API, that a company buys into. In turn, it gives its employees the ability to consent to using it. If the employee agrees, Truework sources a worker’s place of employment and salary details. Then when a third party wants to verify that information for the person in question, it uses Truework to do so, rather than contacting the company directly.

Then, when those queries come in, Truework contacts the individual with an email or text about the inquiry, so that he/she can okay (or reject) the request. Truework’s Sandler said that it uses ISO27001, SOC2 Type 1 & 2 protections, but he also confirmed that it does store your data.

Currently the idea is that if you leave your job, your next employer would need to also be a Truework customer in order to update the information it has on you: the startup makes money by charging both larger enterprises to make the platform accessible to employees as well as those organizations that are querying for the information/verifications (small business employers using the platform can use it for free).

Over time, the plan will be to configure a way to update your profiles regardless of where you work.

So far, the concept has seen a lot of traction: there are 20,000 small businesses using the platform, as well as 100 enterprises, with the number of verifiers (its term for those requesting information) now at 40,000. Customers include The College Board, The Real Real, Oscar Health, The Motley Fool, and Tuft & Needle.

While all of this was built at a time before COVID-19, the global health pandemic has highlighted the importance of having more efficient and secure systems for doing work, especially at a time when many people are not in the office.

“Our biggest competitor is the fax machine and the phone call,” Sandler said, “but as companies move to more remote working, no one is manning the phones or fax machines. But these operations still need to happen.” Indeed, he points out that at the end of 2019, Truework had 25,000 verifiers. Nearly doubling its end-user customers speaks to the huge boost in business it has seen in the last five months.

That is part of the reason the company has attracted the investment it has.

“Truework’s platform sits at the center of consumers’ most important transactions and life events – from purchasing a home, to securing a new job,” said Steve Sarracino, founder and partner at Activant Capital, in a statement. “Up until now, the identity verification process has been painful, expensive, and opaque for all parties involved, something we’ve seen first-hand in the mortgage space. Starting with income and employment, Truework is setting the standard for consent-based verifications and unlocking the next wave of the digital economy. We’re thrilled to be partnering with this exceptional team as they continue to scale the platform.” Sarracino is joining the board with this round.

While a big focus in the world of tech right now may be on building more and better ways of connecting goods and services to people in as contact-free a way as possible, the bigger play around identity management has been around for years, and will continue to be a huge part of how the internet develops in the future.

The fax and phone may be the primary tools these days for verifying employment information, but on a more general level, there are companies like Facebook, Google and Apple already playing a big role in how we “log in” and use all kinds of services online. They, along with others focused squarely on the identity and verification space (and Truework works with some of them), and using a myriad of approaches that include biometrics, ‘wallet’-style passports that link to information elsewhere, and more, will all continue to try to make the case for why they might be the most trusted provider of that layer of information, at a time when we may want to share less and especially share less with multiple parties.

That is the bigger opportunity that investors are betting on here.

“The increasing momentum Truework has seen since its founding in 2017 demonstrates the critical need for transformation in this space,” said Alfred Lin, partner at Sequoia, in a statement. “Privacy, especially around identity data, is becoming increasingly top of mind for consumers and how they make transactions online.”

Truework has now raised close to $45 million, and it’s not disclosing its valuation.

May
12
2020
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LinkedIn adds polls and live video-based events in a focus on more virtual engagement

With a large part of the working world doing jobs from home when possible these days, the focus right now is on how best to recreate the atmosphere of an office virtually, and how to replicate online essential work that used to be done in person. Today, href=”http://linkedin.com” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener noreferrer”>LinkedIn announced a couple of big new feature updates that point to how it’s trying to play a part in both of these: it’s launching a new Polls feature for users to canvas opinions and get feedback; and it’s launching a new “LinkedIn Virtual Events” tool that lets people create and broadcast video events via its platform.

Despite now being owned by Microsoft, interestingly it doesn’t seem that the Virtual Events service taps into Teams or Skype, Microsoft’s two other big video products that it has been pushing hard at a time when use of video streaming for work, education and play is going through the roof.

The polls feature — you can see an example of one in the picture below, or respond to that specific poll here — is a quick-fire and low-bar way of asking a question and encouraging engagement: LinkedIn says that a poll takes only about 30 seconds to put together, and responding doesn’t require thinking of something to write, but gives the respondent more of a ‘voice’ than he or she would get just by providing a “like” or other reaction.

But as with some of the other social features that LinkedIn has implemented over the years, its timing has not been quite right. With polls, you might say it’s been frustratingly late… or you might say it left the party too early.

The feature was first spotted by developer and app digger Jane Manchun Wong a couple of weeks ago, but it comes years after Twitter and Facebook have had polls in place on their platforms. I’d say it’s taken LinkedIn years to catch up, but actually it had polls in place years ago, yet chose to sunset the feature, back in 2014.

You could argue that LinkedIn miscalled the direction that social would go with engagement, or that it took too long to resuscitate the experience, or that the novelty of the concept that now worn off. Or you might say that LinkedIn has picked just the right time to bring it back, at a time when people are spending more time online than ever and are looking for more ways of varying the experience and interacting.

Those creating polls will be given the option in the menu of items when starting a new post. They can add four choices/options into the poll answers, and decide how long they would like for the poll to stay up, in a range of 24 hours to two weeks. You can also write an introduction post to accompany your poll with hashtags to come up in more searches.

Two important distinctions with LinkedIn Polls as you can see above are that you are polling a very specific audience of people in your professional circle, and those people can both respond to the poll but also include comments and reactions. Both of these set the feature as it works on LinkedIn apart from the others and should give it some… engagement.

The polls feature is getting rolled out (again) starting today.

The LinkedIn Virtual Events feature, meanwhile, falls into a similar placement as polls: it’s a way of getting people to engage more on LinkedIn, it taps into trends that are huge outside of the platform — in this case, videoconferencing — and it’s something that is coming surprisingly late to LinkedIn, given its existing product assets.

But is also potentially — potentially, because Live is still in an invite-only phase — going to prove very popular because it’s filling a very specific need.

LinkedIn Virtual Events is a merger of two products that LinkedIn launched last year, a live video broadcasting tool called LinkedIn Live, and its efforts to foster a sideline in offline, in person networking with LinkedIn Events. The idea here is that while physical events have been put on pause in the current climate — many cities have made group activities illegal in an attempt to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus — you can continue to use LinkedIn Events to plan them, but now carry them out over the Live platform. 

Given how huge the conferencing industry has become, I am guessing that we will be seeing a lot of attempts at recreating something of those events in a virtual, online context. LinkedIn’s take on the challenge — via Virtual Events — could therefore become a strong contender to host these.

When LinkedIn first launched Events I did ask the company whether it planned to expand them online using live, and indeed that did seem to be the plan. LinkedIn now says that it “accelerated” its product roadmap — unsurprising, given the current market — to merge the two products for targeted audiences.

That’s why we accelerated our product roadmap to bring you a tighter integration between LinkedIn Events and LinkedIn Live, turning these two products into a new virtual events solution that enables you to stay connected to your communities and meet your customers wherever they are. This new offering is designed to help you strengthen relationships with more targeted audiences.

This is not a simple integration, I should point out: LinkedIn is working with third-party broadcasting partners — the initial list includes Restream, Wirecast, Streamyard and Socialive — to raise the level of production quality, which will be essential especially if you are asking people to pay for events, and if you have any hope of replicating some of the networking other features that are cornerstones of conferencing and other in-person events.

It’s also building on what has been a successful product so far for LinkedIn: the company says that Live has 23X more comments per post and 6X more reactions per post than simple native video.

Jan
22
2020
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Proxyclick raises $15M Series B for its visitor management platform

If you’ve ever entered a company’s office as a visitor or contractor, you probably know the routine: check in with a receptionist, figure out who invited you, print out a badge and get on your merry way. Brussels, Belgium and New York-based Proxyclick aims to streamline this process, while also helping businesses keep their people and assets secure. As the company announced today, it has raised a $15 million Series B round led by Five Elms Capital, together with previous investor Join Capital.

In total, Proxyclick says its systems have now been used to register more than 30 million visitors in 7,000 locations around the world. In the U.K. alone, more than 1,000 locations use the company’s tools. Current customers include L’Oréal, Vodafone, Revolut, PepsiCo and Airbnb, as well as a number of other Fortune 500 firms.

Gregory Blondeau, founder and CEO of Proxyclick, stresses that the company believes that paper logbooks, which are still in use in many companies, are simply not an acceptable solution anymore, not in the least because that record is often permanent and visible to other visitors.

Proxyclick’s founding team.

“We all agree it is not acceptable to have those paper logbooks at the entrance where everyone can see previous visitors,” he said. “It is also not normal for companies to store visitors’ digital data indefinitely. We already propose automatic data deletion in order to respect visitor privacy. In a few weeks, we’ll enable companies to delete sensitive data such as visitor photos sooner than other data. Security should not be an excuse to exploit or hold visitor data longer than required.”

What also makes Proxyclick stand out from similar solutions is that it integrates with a lot of existing systems for access control (including C-Cure and Lenel systems). With that, users can ensure that a visitor only has access to specific parts of a building, too.

In addition, though, it also supports existing meeting rooms, calendaring and parking systems, and integrates with Wi-Fi credentialing tools so your visitors don’t have to keep asking for the password to get online.

Like similar systems, Proxyclick provides businesses with a tablet-based sign-in service that also allows them to get consent and NDA signatures right during the sign-in process. If necessary, the system also can compare the photos it takes to print out badges with those on a government-issued ID to ensure your visitors are who they say they are.

Blondeau noted that the whole industry is changing, too. “Visitor management is becoming mainstream, it is transitioning from a local, office-related subject handled by facility managers to a global, security and privacy-driven priority handled by chief information security officers. Scope, decision drivers and key people involved are not the same as in the early days,” he said.

It’s no surprise then that the company plans to use the new funding to accelerate its roadmap. Specifically, it’s looking to integrate its solution with more third-party systems with a focus on physical security features and facial recognition, as well as additional new enterprise features.

Jan
04
2018
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WP Engine, a managed WordPress platform, raises $250M from Silver Lake

 While apps continue to grow in popularity as a primary route for people to interface with the digital world, there remains a very significant role for the web, and today, a startup that helps businesses build and run websites, specifically on WordPress, has raised a very large round of money. WP Engine, which claims to be one of the world’s largest WordPress hosts, has raised $250 million… Read More

Dec
17
2015
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Apple Highlights Relationship With IBM In Business Site Makeover

Onshape professional CAD runs on both Mac OS and iOs. Apple launched a redesigned version of its Mac in Business site this week as its love affair with IBM continued to develop. As the name implies, the site showcases Apple’s enterprise acumen and the new design focuses on Apple’s strengths in business. The overall site highlights the kinds of things you would expect in an Apple marketing piece like the symbiotic… Read More

Oct
05
2013
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Why my book was free for 5 days

KDPS I recently made Ocean of Dust FREE for 5 days on Kindle. Worldwide, anyone could obtain my book for absolutely nothing. Um… aren’t I writing books to make money? Well yes… and no. Why (and how) did I make my book free to so many people?

First the How

Most authors, especially in the Indie scene, are familiar or at least have heard of Amazon’s KDP Select program. It has two components:

  1. You make your book(s) exclusive to Amazon for 90 days. Your book is entered into their Kindle Owners Lending Library, meaning that subscribers to Amazon Prime (incidentally one of the best time and money savers on the planet!) can borrow your book on the Kindle for free. Amazon actually pays you for these too.
  2. For 5 days, any time within that 90 days, you can make your Kindle Book free. This is optional but usually the primary reason authors put their books into KDPS, as we will see below.

The caveat to this program is that your book has to be exclusive to Amazon. That means you must withdraw your book from all other distributors, i.e. Kobo, Nook, SmashWords, Apple’s iBooks etc. Authors, consider this carefully. By un-publishing your book from other distributors you are limiting your audience to Kindle users only, and buying in to the idea of a monopoly, albeit a limited 90 day one. After 90 days, you can either extend your time in KDPS or withdraw, and are then free to re-publish your book through other distributors. Caveat: Doing so negates any ranking you might have built with them, and your book starts from scratch again.

So Ocean of Dust remains in KDPS at its usual $2.99 price point until December 18th, and then I will withdraw from KDPS and re-publish across all formats. Ideally I want my book available in all formats. I am a firm believer in healthy competition and a reader’s freedom to choose any ebook device.

Why give my book away?

As a debut author, my experience was typical of 95% of first time Indie publishers. After almost a year, sales on my book were flagging. The reviews on Ocean of Dust remain high (4.7+ out of 5) and I am thrilled to have received very kind words from readers. The largest problem debut authors face is getting known, getting the book in front of more people. Audience is far more important than sales, especially in the early days when an author has to earn the respect and loyalty of readers one by one.

So I needed a big promotion. There are literally thousands of services that can help promote an author and his book, but there is one kind of promotion that beats all: Something for nothing! Who can turn that offer down? :) OK, so I could have just made my book free on all formats and promoted it thus. That would work great, but KDPS offers something even better: Book charts that are read by millions of people.

Here’s how that works. Make a book free on KDPS and promote it. As people download it, it starts to climb up the charts, maybe from #10,000 in the Fantasy category to #2000. More downloads, higher ranking. Amazon is smart. They put those rankings right on the book page so a reader can view them. Everyone likes to check out a popular book, right? Once the book hits the Top 100 then the lists become more visible, and downloads increase. The Top 10 lists are constantly checked by savvy readers.

Technical details aside, the more people I can get to download the book, the more people hear about me. Simple!

Sort of. Just being in the Top 10 doesn’t mean an automatic download. The book needs to have a compelling title, cover and interesting blurb. Never skimp on those things.  Also, we all know that downloading a free book doesn’t mean that it will get read. Some people just like free things, others want to get it before the price goes up. It might languish on their Kindle for weeks, months, even years. If just 10% of all downloads are read, I have just increased my audience considerably. And if it isn’t read… well, they probably wouldn’t have bought it anyway. It’s a win-win.

Before we go into the additional benefits, I’m sure you want to see the numbers, right?

The numbers

The highest rankings I achieved over the 5 days: (Remember these are Free charts, Paid charts are separate)

  • #44 of ALL free books on the Kindle
  • #1 in Fantasy – Swords and Sorcery
  • #1 in Teen/Young Adult

I’m very happy with that.

Country Downloads
USA 6406
Germany 161
UK 154
Canada 42
India 13
France 3
Brazil 3
Italy 2
Japan 1
TOTAL 6785

I know, we are used to seeing bestsellers in the millions, making these numbers look pitiful, but these are many times my previous sales.

Other Benefits

  • The Germany and India numbers were a large surprise. The UK I expected. I have since been contacted by over a dozen readers in Germany who have read and enjoyed the book. My first major push into a non-English country. :)
  • I was also surprised just how many people read the book in the first couple of days. That supports my theory that getting the book in front of people does work.
  • Within days, my social media numbers increased: Facebook, Twitter, visitors to my site, adds to GoodReads, subscribers to my newsletter. I’m sure these will continue to increase over the coming months as more folk get around to reading the book.
  • I have received dozens and dozens of notes from people wanting to know when my next book came out. That to me is the real success: turning casual readers into fans.
  • Even if a person did not download my book, they likely saw my name on the Kindle charts. When they see my next book, hopefully that spark of recognition will make them more likely to look further.
  • Most importantly, I have already made a bunch of new friends, readers and authors, since my promotion.

More on Promotion

A huge, huge thank you to everyone who helped me promote the giveaway by telling your friends, sharing my posts, tweeting etc. You guys helped big time, and I really do appreciate it!

This last bit is for the benefit of Indie authors. A friend did a similar KDPS  experiment a couple of weeks before mine. My numbers were much higher. Not because I had the better book, but because I took a few extra steps than he, and I strongly advise you do similar if considering 5-free days on KDPS:

  • Investigate the hordes of web sites that will promote your book, particularly those specializing in Kindle freebies. A google search will show a ton of them. Most are free. I used 12 such services for a total of $20. Choose carefully and be sure to go for the ones that operate email lists. If someone has subscribed to a list, they are obviously hungry for books.
  • Approach the bigger names like Bookbub. They operate genre-specific email lists and some of them have a quarter of a million subscribers on them.
  • Post to all the social media sites. This should go without saying. If you’ve been reciprocating sharing and tweeting for fellow authors, they are going to be happy to help you spread the word.
  • If you are sending emails, e.g. a newsletter, or to friends or family, be careful how you phrase your promotion. “FREE for 5-days only” is likely to hit spam filters, so be creative.
  • The one thing I didn’t do, and should have, was a Facebook Ad. For a small cost you can hit a huge number of people.

Conclusion

KDPS is widely debated among authors, some claiming incredible success, others none. I am extremely happy with the publicity I received for $20. :)

Would I do it again? Not if I am consistently selling across all ebook formats. If I had a well-received book whose sales are flagging, then maybe.

 

[KDP Select and the graphic above are trademarks and copyright of Amazon.com]

 

Jun
06
2009
0

My favorite Web Comic: The Order of the Stick

Order of the Stick

Order of the Stick

I just love this web comic. Been following it religiously for months now and can’t wait for the next strip. If you like D&D related humour then this is the comic for you.

Written by in: D&D,Fun,Websites | Tags: , , ,
May
22
2009
0

Reading Now: High Performance MySQL

High Performance MySQL

High Performance MySQL

Well after my last book, I’m now reading High Performance MySQL.

My new job now has me working in a much larger server farm and so now instead of handling 10,000 users I’m handling many more times that.  This book will build on my background and make my queries work better in a distributed environment.

Written by in: Books,MySQL,Tech | Tags: ,
Apr
11
2009
0

6 Gmail Lab Features you should try

So I’m going though my Settings in my Gmail account and I notice a tab called “Labs”.  Interesting I think to myself and click on it and it seems the Gmail Gnomes have been slaving away at the nifty little options in their experimental features for Gmail.  Here are 6 Gmail Lab Features you should try:

YouTube previews in mail
Ever get a YouTube video in your email from a friend that asks you to  “Hey man, check this out!”?  Well now if you turn on this Gmail lab feature the link will expand inside the Gmail page.  You won’t have to navigate away from your message and have to wait for Gmail to reload your Inbox, its all right there in your message.

Flickr previews in mail
Just like the YouTube video in your message if you have photophiles that are always sending you their newest photos in their favorite Photo Streams then this is for you.  Expands Flickr links inside your message for you to preview.

Fixed width font
Are you old school and hate the default Ariel font?  Can’t align your ‘text tables’ right?  Well then this Gmail Lab feature is for you.  You can now have an option to view your messages in fixed with font like Courier.  Great ready for some ASCII art!

Default ‘Reply to all’
Always find yourself having to select the ‘Reply to all’ option at the bottom of a message because the top right button in each message is plane plane ol’ ‘Reply’?  Well, now you can change that option to be ‘Reply to all’ to the enjoyment of all your friends and family I’m sure.

Mail Goggles
Have you ever sent a message late at night to your friends or co-workers after a long night of drinking?  Are you an alcoholic?  Well then this Gmail Lab feature maybe for you.  When you have this feature activated you’ll be prompted to do basic math when sending a message during predefined time periods (customizable).  If you are inebriated that message won’t go out because you’re too smashed to know what 8 x 7 is.

Undo Send
OOPS did I just send that…unsend unsend unsend!!!  If you find yourself sending a message and needed to unsend that last message because of a misspelling, bad link, or accidentally sending it to the wrong person then you can turn on this little nifty Gmail Lab feature to give yourself 5 seconds to undo that sent message.

Apr
03
2009
0

Reading Now: The Definitive Guide to symfony

The Definitive Guide to symfony

The Definitive Guide to symfony

Well after my last book, I’m now reading The Definitive Guide to symfony.

My new job has me working with the symfony Framework instead of the Zend Framework I used to use.

Here’s an excerpt from the book:

Why ‘symfony‘ and not ‘FooBarFramework’? Because Fabien wanted a short name containing an s, as in Sensio, and an f, as in framework–easy to remember and not associated with another development tool. Also, he doesn’t like capital letters. symfony was close enough, even if not completely English, and it was also available as a project name. The other alternative was ‘baguette’.

Written by in: Books,symfony | Tags: ,

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