Category: News

Yahoo reported its Q1 earnings on Tuesday, with GAAP revenue at $1,140 million for the quarter. Revenue ex-TAC was $1,074 million.

The company posted GAAP income from operations at $186 million and Non-GAAP income from operations at $224 million.

In the search department, GAAP revenue was $425 million for the quarter, down 10% from the same quarter last year, when it was $470 million. Search revenue ex-TAC was $409 million for the quarter, up 6% from $384 million for the first quarter of 2012.Paid Clicks (excluding Korea) increased by about 16% compared to the first quarter of 2012. Price-per-Click (excluding Korea) decreased by 7% for that time period.

CEO Marissa Mayer said, “I’m pleased with Yahoo!’s performance in the first quarter. We saw continued stability in our business, strengthened our team, and started the year with fast execution against our products and partnerships. We are moving quickly to roll out beautifully designed, more intuitive experiences for our users. I’m confident that the improvements we’re making to our products will set up the Company for long-term growth.”

As Yahoo News is reporting (okay, it’s just the AP), Yahoo’s earnings gain is being overshadowed by its ad slump. GAAP dsplay revenue dropped 11% year-over-year.

Here’s the release in its entirety:

SUNNYVALE, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) today reported results for the first quarter ended March 31, 2013.

Richard LeParmentier, the actor most famous for playing Admiral Motti in Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, has died at the age of 66.

The actor, who lived in the U.K., was reportedly visiting relatives in Austin, Texas at the time of his death. The cause of his death has not been released.

LeParmentier had a long career on screen, appearing in over thirty movies and TV shows. His acting credits include roles in Rollerball, Superman II, Octopussy, and Who Framed Roger Rabbit.

LeParmentier’s most well-known role, however, was as Admiral Motti in the first Star Wars movie. In his memorable appearance, Admiral Motti expresses overconfidence in the Death Star, saying, “This station is now the ultimate power in the universe.” He goes on to dismiss Darth Vader‘s musings on the power of the force, and receives the first on-screen instance of a ‘force choke’ in history.

Venture capital is ignoring the Middle East for all the wrong reasons. Ultimately, playing it safe will cause them to yield new opportunities.

I’ve interviewed over 150 impressive, young entrepreneurs and engineers throughout the Arab world. Many have visited the States (or would like to visit), but especially after the uprisings of two years ago, nearly all want to stay home in the long run. They care about their families and their communities. They believe that despite all the recent political uncertainty, they will eventually control their destinies. And they know, first-hand, that these are early days of sizable market opportunities in their back yards.

These entrepreneurs live in societies with over 350 million active consumers, and are situated perfectly to expand into markets east and west, north and south. They regularly approach 100% mobile penetration, which means that consumers throughout the Middle East are instantly comfortable with new mobile product adoption. Many mobile executives there tell me that while smart phone penetration is low at the moment, they expect 50% penetration in places like Egypt within three years. It is already well above this in the Gulf. The large consumer bases are on the verge of adopting widespread credit card use, ePayments, and eCommerce. They thirst for opportunities in health, education, and infrastructure that would take governments years or decades to address. They are crowd-sharing ideas, learning, expertise, and artistic creation at a border-less scale unimagined even three years ago.

Silicon Valley and other global tech operating companies get this. All the major hardware and software players (Google, Facebook, Twitter Intel, Cisco, Microsoft) and most of the major mobile players have expanded their operations in the region, and are also pro-actively working with the entrepreneurial communities to help them connect and expand. PayPal opened offices in the Middle East late last year. LinkedIn, who already had five million members from the Middle East without any presence there at all, also just opened operations for the region and Africa.

Largely absent from this equation, though, are U.S. venture investors. A few — General Atlantic, Tiger Capital, J.P. Morgan Ventures, Kleinert Perkins, Summit Partners — have stuck their toes in the waters of Istanbul and Dubai. Where are the rest?

As almost every major firm has invested, if not have offices, in emerging markets facing their own growing pains, political risk and instability can’t explain it all. So, in the course of researching my forthcoming book, Startup Rising: The Entrepreneurial Revolution Remaking the Middle East, I also spoke with my friends in Silicon Valley for their view.

To a person, everyone I interviewed was well-versed in the rapid adoption of mobile technology and believed that there will be at least five billion smart phones within a decade. They agreed, as I argued here recently, that this must mean impressive innovation coming from surprising places.

Their strategies have historically been uniformly two-fold. First, as one investor who’s had offices for years in China and India put it, “We have to chase market cap; we may lose our ass in China in the short run, but over time one just has to be there as it is so large.” Second, conceding that great engineering talent has long been border-less, investors continue to focus on emerging markets as places to outsource programming and services more cost effectively. As one investor put it, “It can and will increasingly be a buyer’s market for us because new, more reliable talent springs up regularly in every time zone.”

Even though the Middle East increasingly fits these criteria, they argue, why rush in? Investors tell me that they can simply look for new opportunities in the region from their other regional hubs and business partnerships. Others argue that the remarkable ecosystems of talent and rule of law in places like Silicon Valley will always spawn plenty and more reliable opportunities and when they do discover great entrepreneurs in these other markets they will, as one investor told me, “Have them move to the Valley.”

There is logic here, but it strikes me as backward looking. What took other emerging growth markets years — if not decades — to build are now in place in the Middle East in part due to their examples and increased global access and adoption to technology. Great entrepreneurs, not only despite infrastructure challenges but because of them, are stepping up to innovate at scale changing their societies in kind. From home, they access local and regional markets that number in the hundreds of millions, and can reach the entire world in a cost effective way.

The great innovator and supporter of global entrepreneurship, Linda Rottenberg and her team at Endeavor Global, the company she co-founded, enthuse about a new investment phenomenon they call “e-to-e” — emerging market to emerging market. She sees not only local investment communities rising to new opportunities, but looking to support similar growth market entrepreneurs around them.

And, in fact, western VCs are beginning to trip over dozens and dozens of new local and regional angel funds, incubators, VCs and institutional investors happily finding great companies in their back yards. The rest can pursue business as usual — they can sit and wait. But one thing is clear: with time they will be yielding opportunity.

Cloudability says its new analytics tool will give Amazon Web Services customers customizable and more granulized views of their cloud costs by tapping into AWS hourly detailed billing reports.

Its AWS Cost Analytics will help users make sense of a deluge of usage data that most now have to put into unwieldy spreadsheets to manage, the company said.. “With this tool, you will no longer have to pump giant files — tens of megabytes in size — and pares them down so you don’t have to pump them into Excel,” said Cloudability CEO Mat Ellis.

Cloudability CEO Mat Ellis.

Ellis says this tool differs from what Cloudability competitors now offer because it provides not just “pre-canned” reports but will let the user build “17 million different combinations of reports as needed” all based on this burgeoning flow of cost information provided by Amazon.

To be sure Cloudability faces a half dozen competitors including Newvem, Cloudyn, Cloud Vertical, in this AWS cost assessment and management space – all offering their own take on what goes on in your Amazon cloud. What Cloudability says its doing differently is providing more user-defined customization and the ability to handle this new influx of hourly data.

Ron Fuller, web manager for Mentor Graphics, a large electronic design automation vendor, is sold. Other tools, provide simpler reports and alerts but by the time the alert occurs, you are probably already over budget, he said.

“If I have a $15,000 a month to spend and hit that limit half-way through the month, I can’t just shut down. Cloudability gives us daily reports with our incremental usage spend and detailed cost analysis across multiple accounts and projects,” Fuller told me. That can flag problems before they get out of hand.

Like many AWS users, Fuller loves what he’s able to do with all those AWS services, but the complexity of tracking their usage can be overwhelming. Cloudability’s tool helps him figure out where to use discounted reserved instances vs. other, pricier instance types for example. “If I’m overspending in areas of I/O peformance, I can see that right away and maybe rethink my test model.”

Cloudability and its rivals have to contend with each other but increasingly with the Amazon mothership itself which keeps adding more management and assessemnt tools of its own. But, as Forrester Research analyst Dave Bartoletti said few months ago: “Amazon’s tools will get better and better but Amazon has no desire to get you to use less of its services. It’s like in storage — You’d think EMC would be the best vendor of storage management but historically they haven’t been.”

Keep in mind: All these  third-party vendors rely on Amazon-supplied data to work their magic, and given the rather bracing competition so far, I would expect the others to add similar reporting capabilities pretty quick.

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Matter, the Kickstarter-backed, science and technology journalism startup cofounded by former GigaOM European correspondent Bobbie Johnson, has only been up and running for five months — but it’s already found a new home. Medium, the publishing platform founded by Twitter cofounder Evan Williams, has acquired Matter for an undisclosed sum, the companies plan to announce Wednesday.

Matter raised over $140,000 through Kickstarter, and Williams was one of its 2,566 backers. Matter, which publishes one story of at least 5,000 words every month and sells them for $0.99 apiece, will remain a standalone company following the acquisition. Johnson and his cofounder, Jim Giles, will work as part of Medium’s editorial team, which also includes former literary agent Kate Lee and former Wired.com editor-in-chief Evan Hansen.

In a blog post scheduled to be released Wednesday, Johnson and his Matter cofounder Jim Giles explained what will and won’t change:

“If you already know what we do, don’t expect big changes yet. Our service is an ongoing experiment, but we have no immediate plans to alter the team, the places we publish (our website and the Kindle store), or how much we charge for each article. More importantly, we have no plans — at any time — to stop crafting hard-hitting narratives about big ideas. One of the things that made it easy to join Medium was the knowledge that the company believes in great storytelling as much as we do, and is prepared to support what we do.

But we will be rolling out some changes in the coming months. We’ve already started using Medium to expand on the ideas we cover — see, for example, Amputees & Wannabes, the recent series of commentaries around Do No Harm, our story about people who desire to amputate a healthy limb. We’ll also be introducing some exciting changes at the Matter website — changes that will make the site better for readers, and improve our mechanism for supporting long-form writing.”

Medium, which Williams and Biz Stone launched in 2012, is a collaborative publishing platform that aims to let users write, annotate, read and recommend content in a clutter-free interface. The platform isn’t open to everyone yet; for now, a select group of authors are contributing. Matter is Medium’s first acquisition.

Williams spoke about the importance of long-form content at GigaOM’s Roadmap conference last year. Watch the video here:

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HAPILABS said it has begun a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign to raise money for the manufacture and distribution of its HAPIfork. The electronic fork, that vibrates when a user eats too quickly, was unveiled at the Consumer Electronics Show in January and is still in prototype. The $100,000 Kickstarter campaign will allow up to 2,500 people to obtain the fork for $89 and offer it at $99 for everyone else.

PRESS RELEASE

HAPIfork To Release For Pre-Order on Kickstarter

Crowdfunding Campaign Kicks Off for HAPIfork, the World’s First Connected Fork; Monitors How Fast People Eat and Helps Them Slow Down

REDWOOD CITY, CA–(BUSINESS WIRE)– HAPILABS, a company whose mission is to help individuals in the 21st century take control of their HAPIness, health and fitness through applications and mobile connected devices, today announced the start of their Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign to raise funds for the manufacturing and distribution of HAPIfork – the world’s first connected fork.

HAPIfork transforms people’s relationship with food as it monitors how fast the user is eating and helps them slow down. Unveiled at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in January, HAPIfork was the recipient of the CES Innovations Award, Health & Wellness category. The word quickly spread in over 50 countries globally culminating in hundreds of articles, blog posts, tweets, television and radio appearances as well as a fun shout out fromThe Colbert Report and the Jay Leno Show.

“While our product is still a prototype, we’re thrilled by the global response so far,” says Fabrice Boutain, HAPILABS founder. “We believe this is affirmation of the growing consumer health awareness movement to gain better control of issues impacting weight and digestive issues as well as more serious issues such as diabetes and other chronic conditions.”

Keeping in line with Kickstarter rewards at various funding levels, the HAPIfork will be offered as a perk for up to 2,500 people funding $89, and at the $99 level for anyone else who would like to be in the first commercial batch. In addition, the opportunity to be part of the beta testing program, receiving the HAPIfork at the earliest possible availability date, is offered at the $300 level perk. The campaign, which starts today and runs until May 31, 2013, has a fundraising target of $100,000.

HAPIfork was designed by French entrepreneur and inventor Jacques Lépine whose idea was based on research which shows that by eating slower, people can improve the way they feel, improve their digestion and lose weight. HAPIfork aims to modify eating behavior by slowing down how fast people eat and being more present with when and how long it takes to eat, leading to an overall healthier state of being and living.

Unlike other health related tools, the HAPIfork is inconspicuous and appropriate for out of home use. The Bluetooth enabled smart fork also collects information for future analysis or monitoring in clinical settings. All data is transmitted to a ‘personalized online dashboard’ when the HAPIfork is connected to the users computer or mobile device making it easy to monitor eating habits and health improvement at home or on the road.

HAPIfork will be released in three colors (blue, green and pink) and will ship to Kickstarter funders first before the general public. HAPIfork comes with an color coordinated case making it easy to carry everywhere. The product will initially go on sale in the US and EU in the fourth quarter of this year.

About—HAPILABS aims to help individuals in the 21st century take control of their HAPIness, health and fitness through applications and mobile connected devices. HAPIfork is part of suite of devices, applications and services from HAPILABS aimed at improving overall health, well-being and happiness. Products in development include the HAPIwatch to help people sleep better and the HAPItrack to help people stay in great shape. Offering elegant and simple solutions, HAPILABS helps people achieve a healthier and happier lifestyle.

HAPIfork – the world’s first connected fork. The personal technology tool monitors how fast people eat and helps them slow down. The Bluetoothenabled smart fork is slated to retail for $99 and start shipping in blue, pink and green to the general public in the US and EU in the fourth quarter of this year

The post HAPILABS Begins Kickstarter Campaign For Connected Fork appeared first on peHUB.

The report and maps are posted online.

NEW CUMBERLAND, Pa. – Eight percent of more than 5,000 wells tested across Pennsylvania contain groundwater with levels of arsenic at or above federal standards set for public drinking water, while an additional 12 percent – though not exceeding standards – show elevated levels of arsenic. 

These findings, along with maps depicting areas in the state most likely to have elevated levels of arsenic in groundwater, are part of a recently released U.S. Geological Survey study done in cooperation with the Pennsylvania Departments of Health and Environmental Protection.

The results highlight the importance of private well owners testing and potentially treating their water.  While public water supplies are treated to ensure that water reaching the tap of households meets federal drinking water standards, private wells are unregulated in Pennsylvania, and owners are responsible for testing and treating their own water.

For this study, USGS scientists compiled data collected between 1969 and 2007 from industrial, public, and private wells. Arsenic levels, along with other groundwater quality and environmental factors, were used to generate statewide and regional maps that predict the probability of elevated arsenic.   The study examined groundwater from carbonate, crystalline, and shale/sandstone bedrock aquifers, and from shallow glacial sediment aquifers. Similar maps have been produced for other states.

“This research is not intended to predict arsenic levels for individual wells; its purpose is to predict the probability of elevated levels of arsenic in groundwater to help public health efforts in Pennsylvania,” said USGS scientist Eliza Gross, who led the study.  “The study results and associated probability maps provide water-resource managers and health officials with useful data as they consider management actions in areas where groundwater is most likely to contain elevated levels of arsenic.”

The Pennsylvania Department of Health plans to use the maps as an educational tool to inform health professionals and citizens of the Commonwealth about the possibility of elevated arsenic in drinking water wells and to help improve the health of residents, particularly in rural communities.

Arsenic occurs naturally and, in Pennsylvania, is most common in shallow glacial and shale/sandstone type aquifers, particularly those containing pyrite minerals. Arsenic can also result from human activities. Geologic conditions, such as fractures, and chemical factors in groundwater, such as low oxygen, extreme pH, and salinity, can cause arsenic to leach from rocks, become mobile, and contaminate wells distant from the source.  Groundwater with elevated arsenic levels – more than 4 micrograms per liter — can be found in scattered locations throughout Pennsylvania.

Arsenic in drinking water has been linked to several types of cancer, reproductive problems, diabetes, a weakened immune system, and developmental delays in children.  Arsenic can be reduced or eliminated in tap water through treatment.

Private well owners can find testing and other information on Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection Arsenic in Drinking Water website.

Amazon has just announced that they are making another international expansion of the Android Appstore.

They’ve notified developers that they can now submit their apps for distribution in a bunch of new countries including Australia, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, India, South Africa, South Korea, and even Papua New Guinea and Vatican City.

Amazon says that the Android Appstore will launch in these countries “in the coming months.”

This brings the total number of markets with access to the Amazon Appstore to almost 200.

If you’re a developer, and you’re already registered, your apps will be internationally distributed automatically, unless you designate otherwise.

“Amazon’s platform is a complete end-to-end solution for developers wanting to build, market and monetize their apps and games on Kindle Fire and Android devices,” said Mike George, Vice President of Apps and Games at Amazon. “Allowing developers to target distribution of their apps and games in even more international countries is yet another important milestone as we strive to serve consumers and developers globally. Many of our existing developers have localized their apps and games for international consumers, and we look forward to working with new developers that have been waiting to bring their apps to more Amazon customers across the globe.”

Of course, Amazon’s Kindle Fire isn’t available in many of these new countries. But with the expansion, Android users in those areas can still utilize that Amazon App Store on their mobile devices = giving Amazon a foothold some new markets where they can compete with the likes of Apple and Google.

Amazon’s Appstore turned two years old a few weeks ago. Since it’s launch, it has already expanded to many parts of Europe and Japan.

[Photo via Chris.Gray, Flickr]

Have you tried to sell anything on Facebook lately? For all the promise of interactive targeting technologies, it’s never been harder for marketers to cut through the clutter. Sure, advertisers can buy audiences in real time, independent of context, but that’s rarely the best way to make a meaningful impression on a business decision maker. Wasn’t social media supposed to enable marketing to an engaged audience?

In response, digital publishers are talking about native advertising as if advertorials were something new. In fact, there are good ways and bad ways to make use of native advertising, and some of the more promising vehicles to reach professionals are emerging vertical networks. This session will look at best practices for marketing to IT buyers and influencers.

Discussion topics include:

• How should marketers view vertical networks within the context of social platforms such as LinkedIn and Facebook?
• Where do technology buyers congregate, what are they interested in and how do they like to be engaged?
• What characteristics make vertical networks attractive?
• What are the best practices for prioritizing professional and vertical networks as marketing platforms?

Our panel of experts includes:

• Cormac Foster, research director, GigaOM Research

• David Card, VP of Research, GigaOM Pro

• Rob Harris, senior IT lead and operating systems architect, Austin Digital, Inc.

• Justin Davison, senior systems engineer, R J Lee Group

• Jay Hallberg, Co–Founder & Vice President of Marketing Spiceworks

Register here to join GigaOM Research and our sponsor Spiceworks for “Reaching buyers with vertical networks,” a free analyst roundtable webinar on Thursday, April 25, 2013 at 10:00 a.m. PT.

PLH Group Inc., which is backed by U.S. private equity firm Energy Capital Partners, has acquired Pipeworx Ltd. and its subsidiaries. Financial terms of the transaction were not announced. The Acheson, Alberta-based Pipeworx, founded in 2004, delivers infrastructure services to the oil and gas industry across the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin.

PRESS RELEASE

PLH Group, Inc. (“PLH”), a portfolio company of private equity firm Energy Capital Partners, today announced its acquisition of Pipeworx Ltd. (“Pipeworx”), a leading pipeline contractor in Western Canada.

Effective April 16, 2013, PLH has acquired Pipeworx and its subsidiaries. With four offices and headquarters in the Edmonton, Alberta area, Pipeworx delivers infrastructure services to the oil and gas industry across the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin. Since its founding in 2004, Pipeworx has been committed to the successful completion of its projects – safely performing quality workmanship on time and within budget. Specializing in the construction of pipelines ranging in size from 2″ to 20″ in diameter, Pipeworx has evolved into one of the most innovative and respected pipeline contractors in Western Canada. Pipeworx also provides infrastructure services for gathering systems, well sites and facilities, tank farm installations, compressor installations, module fabrication and integrity repair programs.

“Canada, and Western Canada in particular, presents significant emerging and long-term opportunities for PLH and the pipeline infrastructure services market as a whole,” said Mark Crowson , President and CEO of PLH. “This strategic addition to PLH significantly expands our geographic footprint in North America, and we are pleased to welcome Pipeworx to the PLH platform.” Pipeworx will be an operating unit of PLH, and its current senior management and employees will remain in place.

About PLH Group, Inc. 
PLH is a leading provider of construction and maintenance services to the electric power delivery and pipeline industries in North America. Its customers include many of the largest utilities, regional cooperatives, renewable energy developers, commercial and industrial customers, and major oil and gas producers and midstream companies. PLH, a company started by Energy Capital Partners, has acquired Sun Electric, TESSCO, AIR 2, Auger Services, Snelson Companies, IPS Engineering, Southeast Directional Drilling, M&M Pipeline Services, Energy Services South and Pipeworx. PLH is actively seeking to expand further its service offerings and geographic footprint. For more information, visit www.PLHGroupInc.com.

About Energy Capital Partners 
Energy Capital Partners is a private equity firm with over $8 billion in capital commitments. The firm is focused on investing in the power generation, electric transmission and pipeline construction services, midstream oil and gas, renewable energy, oil field services and environmental services sectors of North America’s energy infrastructure. Its management has substantial experience leading successful energy companies and energy infrastructure investments. For more information, visit www.ecpartners.com.

SOURCE PLH Group, Inc.

 Photo courtesy of Shutterstock.

The post PE-Backed PLH Group Buys Pipeworx appeared first on peHUB.

After receiving numerous questions on our weekly call-in podcast about GoogleChromebooks and the Chrome OS, it became clear that listeners were interested in all things Chrome. So in the words of Silicon Valley: we’re pivoting!

Welcome to the inaugural GigaOm Chrome podcast, where we’ll discuss all things Chrome on a weekly basis. That means topics such as the Chrome browser, Chrome OS, Chromebooks, and Chromeboxes are all on the table. And we’ll do that in a short 20 minutes or so, making the audio podcast digestible on your commute, over a meal or just before bed. In another first, our two hosts are actually in a makeshift studio together; normally, they’re on different coasts!

Show notes:
Hosts: Chris Albrecht and Kevin C. Tofel

• What’s the show all about and who are we
• Google I/O hardware outlook
• Blink and WebKit: what’s it all mean?
• How to move files from a Chromebook to an Android device: AirDroid is a great option
• Must-have extensions for a new Chrome OS user: Pocket, Evernote Clearly, Save to Google Drive
• Powerwash vs Recovery: When to do which and how to do them
• Three-finger scrubbing through tab browsers in beta; Goodbye CTRL + TAB
• New Chrome management for IT admins, plus support for legacy browsers arrives

Got questions, tips or tricks for an upcoming GigaOm Chrome Show? Find Kevin on Google+, Twitter (@kevinctofel) or via e-mail ([email protected])

(download this episode)

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• What Does the Future Hold For Browsers?
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Here it is, your first official Steve Jobs biopic in what is sure to be a long line of Steve Jobs biopics released after his death in October of 2011.

And it’s Funny or Die’s iSteve. After being delayed a couple of days in light of the Boston Marathon attacks, Funny or Die has finally released the film for you free, streaming pleasure.

It’s available here.

Funny or Die previously said that they simply wanted to do the first Steve Jobs movie (and beat out others like Ashton Kutcher’s and Aaron Sorkin’s films), and they have succeeded in doing just that.

Last week, Funny or Die producer Allison Hord said that the 79-minute long film was written in 3 days and shot in only 5 days.

The film stars Justin Long as the late Apple co-founder. You may remember Long as the guy who played the “Mac” in those old Mac vs. PC advertisements (The Daily Show‘s John Hodgman played the PC). Jorge Garcia ( Hurley in Lost) plays Steve Wozniak.

Billed as “a comedic look at the life of Steve Jobs,” check out iSteve and then let us know what you think.

Continue reading…

Most of the focus these days seems to be around Outlook.com, as Microsoft anxiously endeavours to move its apps online and turn software into a service. But, while the latest version of Microsoft’s productivity suite — Office 365 Home Premium — includes the ability to access the apps on the web, ultimately it is still a software suite on your computer.

Now Microsoft Research wants to bring new functionality to the desktop version of Outlook and is announcing the release of Mañana Mail to do just that.

Mañana, Spanish for “tomorrow”, lives up to its name by allowing users to schedule an email to be sent at midnight. Outlook does not need to be running in order for the message to go out, and you can still edit or cancel the message up until midnight. The new Outlook plugin also adds a feature that has been available in Gmail for sometime — Undo Send. This means that every message is held for 15 seconds before being sent, during which time you can click “undo” to get it back.

Many users, especially in business, still prefer their email to be desktop-based so it’s good to see that Microsoft is still paying attention to this, as opposed to focusing completely on the web version of the email app.

credit: Gina Sanders/Shutterstock

There is a clamor of voices demanding the rebooting of capitalism, from academics (such as Michael Porter) and politicians (like Al Gore) to investors (such as CalPERS) and Occupy’s street activists.

The common thread is that today’s model of capitalism overemphasizes short-term financial data and neglects information that gets at the true sources of sustainable value creation — things like innovation, brand equity, customer loyalty, and key stakeholder relationships. Corporate reporting today emphasizes compliance, boilerplate and legalese. As a result, we have a massive glut of filings, press releases, analyst reports and articles focused on financial data. The system has lost sight of the point of reporting: to give companies access to financial capital by communicating their value to investors.

The consequence of the systemic failure of this lopsided model is that companies focus on short-term financial performance — because that is what they believe investors are interested in — to the detriment of long-term value creation. Investors, meanwhile, compensate for the lack of knowledge about issues central to longer term value by pricing in a risk premium. This can result in market valuations that do not reflect the fundamental performance or prospects of the business, leading to a misallocation of capital and reduced visibility for investors, reinforcing short-term decision-making. And it is business that pays the price through more expensive capital, while furthering a flawed model of capitalism.

Fortunately, there is a better way to communicate about the sources of value creation: integrated reporting. Such reporting integrates material information about a firm’s financial performance with information on sustainability performance and intangibles such as intellectual and human capital.

From the investor standpoint, integrated reporting provides insights about a firm’s business model, strategy, risk, performance and prospects that are simply not available under the current reporting model. It therefore supports investor decision-making by providing a more complete basis for dialogue with the company’s board and an assessment of present and future value. This benefits not only the investor, but also investors’ beneficiaries and the broader economy by providing a platform that encourages financial stability. Companies such as Danone, SAP, AkzoNobel and Unilever are already pushing the boundaries on their corporate reporting in this direction.

This week, the International Integrated Reporting Council (of which I am the chief executive) launched the consulting draft of integrated reporting framework. Over the next ninety days, the IIRC is seeking feedback on the draft from companies, investor groups, reporting standards organizations, accounting bodies and regulators — anybody who has a stake in seeing the transformation of corporate reporting.

The framework differs from standard financial reporting in a number of ways:

• It provides guidance on reporting that goes beyond simply conveying past performance in order to help investors understand how value is created (or destroyed) in the company, given its business model and its strategies, risks and opportunities.
• It acknowledges that financial capital is not the only asset in a business that drives value creation; instead, a business must report on the interaction of six different types of capital: financial, manufactured, intellectual, human, social and relationship, and natural.
• It demands that reporting go beyond being simply a mash-up of a firm’s existing reports, or a forced combination of the financial and sustainability reports. Instead, it is a concise report that concentrates on material issues — those relevant to investors — that affect the firm’s strategy and future orientation.

Despite the evidence of green shoots representing a new pathway for corporate reporting, I don’t believe that true integrated reporting exists anywhere just yet. However, the new framework gets us closer to that goal.

While all this makes me hopeful for the future of corporate reporting, one dark cloud hangs over my outlook: US companies are lagging their European, Asian and Latin American counterparts in moving towards an integrated reporting model. Of course, we have great examples of US companies, such as Coca Cola, Prudential Finance and Clorox, joining around ninety global companies in IIRC’s pilot program right now, alongside dozens of investors. But my concern is that there are deep-rooted reasons why the US environment may stifle innovation in corporate reporting.

One is that companies hesitate to make statements about anticipated future performance because they fear litigation. But there are other reasons too. Many see reporting as a compliance issue — if it’s not legislated, then don’t bother. And some will only move on this when they believe the majority of investors want this sort of information.

The danger for US firms who lag in adopting integrated reporting is twofold: not only will their investors lack complete information about their performance, but they also will lose out on the integrated thinking that integrated reporting drives: it reduces barriers between functional silos, aligns data systems and processes, and encourages a culture that focuses on the full spectrum of value drivers. This is all about innovation, and I am saddened to think that US companies, some of the world’s most innovative businesses in their own right, might be held back because they are stuck in an out-of-date reporting model.

If integrated reporting can play its role in better corporate performance, holistic investor engagement and the proliferation of a longer-term model of capitalism, it will not have come a moment too soon.

Breakout Labs, an offshoot of PayPal Co-founder Peter Thiel’s eponymous Thiel Foundation, has funded its first two startups of the year: SkyPhrase and Stealth Biosciences. The former is trying to improve data analysis and interaction via better natural language processing, while the other is trying to improve our health by literally sticking straws into our cells.

SkyPhrase is a very early-phase company that, according to its web site, has “made breakthroughs in algorithms that enable computers to understand more complex language with greater precision than has ever been possible.” The goal is to improve search functionality but also to give developers a new, easy way to incorporate natural language processing into their apps. The company was founded by Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Professor Nick Cassimatis.

In January, MIT Technology Review reporter Rachel Metz covered the company and actually reviewed an early version of the technology as applied to searching through tweets and emails. It wasn’t yet trained to do what she wanted with tweets but, she wrote, did a “decent” job searching through emails. Part of what makes it work appears to be its ability to understand conjunctions, even if it doesn’t yet have semantic capabilities: “I could search for, say, ‘e-mails from Bob Loblaw in December and January about recipes with a PDF,’ or ‘e-mails from Bob Loblaw or Tobias Funke about cookies in December,’” Metz explained.

Nanostraws in a cell

Breakout Labs’ other new investment, Stealth Biosciences, is a team of Stanford professors, executives and entrepreneurs that has invented a way to get materials into and out of individual cells and to monitor their activity via electric probe. Called Nanostraws and Stealth Electrodes, respectively, the companies two techniques do just what they sound like they do: NanoStraws let doctors inject or extract material from cells in the aims of advancing research and delivering personalized medicine, while the electrodes “automate long-term intracellular electrical recordings of neurons and heart cells.”

Stealth Biosciences, in particular, seems like a heady endeavor, but that’s exactly what Breakout Labs is all about. Launched in 2011, the organization aims to fund projects too early in their lives to attract traditional venture capital. Those funded aren’t giving up large equity stakes in their companies, but are expected to provide a “modest portion” of their revenues back into the program to fund the next generation of Breakout Labs investments. Other investments thus far include Modern meadow — a company trying to create artificial meat using 3-D printers — and AVEtec, a Canadian startup trying to harness the power of tornadoes for good.

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Gainsight, a provider of customer service management software, has raised a $9 million Series A round led by Battery Ventures. The company, formerly known as Jbara Software, uses big data analytics to monitor and predict customer behavior. Gainsight previously raised about $300,000 in seed-stage funding. As part of the Series A round, Roger Lee, a general partner at Battery Ventures, has joined the board. The company also named Nick Mehta as CEO. Mehta was most recently executive-in-resident at Accel Partners, according to his LinkedIn profile, and before that was CEO at LiveOffice, a SaaS email archiving provider that was bought by Symantec in 2012.

PRESS RELEASE

Gainsight Raises $9 Million to Revolutionize Customer Retention Using Big Data Analytics

Battery Ventures Leads Round, SaaS Veteran Nick Mehta Joins as CEO

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA – April 17, 2013 – Gainsight, formerly known as JBara Software, the leading Customer Success Management solution, today announced a $9 million Series A funding round led by Battery Ventures. Delivering the first and only complete Customer Success Management platform and leveraging Big Data predictive analytics technology, the company will use the funds to accelerate product development and drive its aggressive go-to-market strategy. Gainsight is also announcing the appointment of Nick Mehta as chief executive officer. Mehta was previously CEO at SaaS email archiving leader LiveOffice where he led the company’s profitable growth and successful sale to Symantec in 2012. Gainsight founder Jim Eberlin will be dedicated full time to the company’s product strategy and sales development as newly named president. Companies such as Marketo, Jive, Eloqua and other B2B leaders use Gainsight to reduce churn, increase up-sell and drive customer success.

“Recurring revenue business models have permeated most industries and companies are realizing that customer retention is just as strategic as customer acquisition. Gainsight, with its innovative technology, is helping businesses navigate this transition and maximize revenue from existing customers,” said Roger Lee, general partner at Battery Ventures. “We are confident that under Nick’s experienced leadership Gainsight will define the growing Customer Success Management category.”

Over the past decade, companies have leveraged data, analytics and automation to accelerate customer acquisition efforts from marketing through sales. As companies today are increasingly being paid over time versus up front, customer retention represents a huge revenue opportunity. However, siloed data sets, error-prone guesswork and manual workflows prevent companies from understanding their customers and driving aligned customer retention efforts.

Gainsight enables businesses to proactively manage retention, reduce unexpected churn and identify up-sell opportunities by leveraging Big Data analytics across sales data, usage logs, support tickets, surveys and other sources of customer intelligence. For example, customer success and account management teams can track product adoption and usage and get early warnings about churn risk; sales teams can identify up-sell and reference opportunities and forecast renewals; and executive teams can track and analyze churn.

“Data is transforming industries and business processes around the world. Yet many companies today still don’t leverage data to understand their existing customers after they come on board,” said Nick Mehta, CEO at Gainsight. “Companies, from healthcare to financial services to retail, are moving to a model where financial success depends on customer success. Gainsight’s mission is to help businesses of all sizes reduce customer churn, drive up-sell and maximize customer satisfaction by using Big Data analytics to power insight and action.”

For more information about Gainsight’s products, see the company’s separate announcement today here http://www.gainsight.com/product-announcement.

About Gainsight
Gainsight, the first and only complete Customer Success Management solution, helps businesses reduce churn, increase up-sell and drive customer success. The company’s SaaS suite integrates with Salesforce and uses Big Data analytics to evaluate sales data, usage logs, support tickets, surveys and other sources of customer intelligence. In this way, Gainsight provides a 360° view of customers and drives retention across customer success, sales, marketing, executive and product management. Learn how leading companies like Marketo, Jive Software, Informatica and Eloqua are using Gainsight to help their customers succeed at www.gainsight.com.

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