Category: UNCATEGORIZED

When former SAP CEO Bill McDermott announced that he was stepping down in October after a decade in the position it was pretty unexpected. He indicated at that point, he would stay until the end of the year to help with the transition to new leadership — then ServiceNow hired him to be its CEO just a few weeks later. Today, the company announced, McDermott has taken over his duties earlier than expected.

The company also announced it has filled its vacant CFO job, hiring Gina Mastantuono, who previously served in similar roles at Ingram Micro and Revlon, and has more than 20 years experience in finance.

It was a game of CEO musical chairs when ServiceNow announced on October 22nd that current CEO John Donahoe was leaving to be CEO at Nike. The company also announced it was bringing in McDermott, who had spent the previous decade at SAP.

It is a time of transition for ServiceNow, having to replace both a CFO and CEO, but they landed two experienced pros, who should help continue to guide the company into the future. The company has stated that it hopes to eventually achieve a $10 billion revenue goal under the new leadership team.

As I wrote in a piece analyzing his move to ServiceNow, McDermott seemed to fully embrace that challenge, even though he has a ways to go:

McDermott has his work cut out for him. The company’s 2018 revenue was $2.6 billion. Still, he fully embraced the $10 billion challenge. “Well let me answer that very simply, I completely stand by [the $10 billion goal], and I’m looking forward to achieving it,” he said with bravado during today’s call.

Mastantuono has a lot in common with McDermott, who also came from a much larger organization to help lead ServiceNow to the next level. At her previous position at Ingram Micro she led finance for a company with $50 billion in revenue and more than 200,000 customers.

Mastantuono sees a company with great potential as she takes over to guide the financial side of the organization. “ServiceNow is highly regarded by its customers and has tremendous momentum and opportunity to enable digital transformation and help make work, work better for people,” she said in a statement.

The new leadership duo has its work cut out for it, but it’s a company with lots of room for growth. It will now be up to McDermott and Mastantuono to lead it into that next phase.

At Microsoft’s Ignite conference this month, the company announced a new vision for its personal productivity assistant, Cortana — one which aimed to make it more useful in your day-to-day work, including email, but one which also saw Microsoft scaling its ambitions back from Cortana as a true Siri, Alexa or Google Assistant competitor. Now, the other shoe has dropped, as Microsoft says it’s planning to shut down its standalone Cortana mobile apps across a number of markets.

The company quietly revealed its plans to wind down support for Cortana on iOS and Android in several regions, with an end-of-life date of January 31st, 2020. After this point, Cortana mobile app will no longer be supported. Microsoft also said it will release an updated version of its Microsoft Launcher, that will have Cortana removed.

Microsoft tells us the impacted markets include Great Britain, Australia, Germany, Mexico, China, Spain, Canada, and India. While the U.S. isn’t in this list today, it would not be surprising to see its support pulled at a later date. The Cortana app for iOS is only ranked No. 254 in the Productivity category on the App Store, and only No. 145 on Google Play, according to current data from Sensor Tower.

After Jan. 31, 2020 the Cortana content users had created like reminders and lists will no longer function in either the Cortana mobile applications or in the Microsoft Launcher, but will continue to be accessible through Cortana on Windows. In addition, Cortana’s reminders, lists, and tasks are automatically synced to the recently updated Microsoft To Do application, which will continue to work.

Microsoft has been steadily dialing back its plans for Cortana over the past couple of years. At Microsoft’s Build 2018 event, the company showed off Cortana’s interoperability with Alexa, for example — an admission of sorts that Cortana wasn’t powerful enough on its own to serve the needs of voice assistant users. And this January, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said the company no longer saw Cortana as an Alexa competitor and ended its plans to go in the direction of Cortana-powered smart speakers.

“Cortana is an integral part of our broader vision to bring the power of conversational computing and productivity to all our platforms and devices,” a Microsoft spokesperson told TechCrunch in a statement. “To make Cortana as helpful as possible, we’re integrating Cortana deeper into your Microsoft 365 productivity apps, and part of this evolution involves ending support for the Cortana mobile app on Android and iOS.”

 

Looks like there’s still money to be made in news aggregation — at least according to the investors backing the news app SmartNews.

The company is announcing the close of a $92 million round of funding at a valuation of $1.2 billion. The funding was led by Japan Post Capital Co. and ACA Investments, with participation from Globis Capital Partners Co., Dentsu, and D.A. Consortium.

This includes the $28 million that SmartNews announced in August, and it brings the startup’s total funding to $182 million.

News aggregation apps seemed to everywhere a few years ago, and while they haven’t exactly disappeared, they didn’t turn into unicorns, with many of them acquired or shut down.

However, Vice President of U.S. marketing Fabian-Pierre Nicolas told me that SmartNews has a few unique advantages. For one thing, it uses machine learning rather than human curation to “thoughtfully generate a news discovery experience” that’s personalized to each user.

Secondly, he said that many news aggregators treat the publishers creating the content that they rely on “like a commodity,” whereas SmartNews treats them as “true partners.” For example, it’s working with select publishers like Business Insider, Bloomberg, BuzzFeed and Reuters on a program called SmartView First, where articles are presented in a custom format that gives publishers more revenue opportunities and better analytics.

Lastly, he said SmartNews has focused on only two key markets — Japan (where the company started) and the United States. And it sounds like one of the main goals with the new funding is to continue growing in the United States.

Nicolas also suggested that there are some broader trends that SmartNews is taking advantage of, like the fact that the shift to mobile news consumption is still underway, particularly for older readers.

And then there’s “the loss of trust in some news sources — political news, especially” which makes SmartNews’ curated approach seem more valuable. (It also recently launched a News From All Sides feature to show coverage from different political perspectives.)

As for monetization, he said SmartNews remains focused on advertising.

Yes, there’s a growing interest in subscriptions and paywalls, which is also reflected in subscription news aggregators like Apple’s News+, but Nicolas said, “Eighty-five to ninety percent of Americans are not subscribing to news media. We believe those 85 to 90 percent have a right to have quality information as well.”

Ford just unveiled its first EV and it’s stunning. Called the Mustang Mach-E it appears to get a lot of things right. From the branding to little surprises, the Mustang Mach-E looks to be a hit.

“We knew we had to do something different and something exciting and something only Ford could do,” Kumar Galhotra, president of Ford North America said at a press event prior to the Sunday unveiling. I think she’s right. The Mustang Mach-E is the ideal shape of the mass-produced electric future. Henry Ford would be proud. This is an electric car for the masses.

It’s a Mustang

It starts with branding. I hate it. The car guy in me is sad that a Mustang will soon be available in a four-door version. And electric. And lifted. That’s not a Mustang, I want to say. A Mustang is a sports car. And yet a Mustang is an affordable, reliable vehicle, and that’s exactly why Ford is calling its first EV a Mustang.

Branding is critical for the electric future. Ford is using an established brand that resonates with buyers. Look for this again and again as car companies unveil an electric version of current and past vehicles. An electric Ford F-150 and an electric Jeep Cherokee.

Instead of inventing a new model line, like Chevy tried to do with the Bolt, companies will look to convert familiar models to electric. The switch should make for more comfortable transitions. With the Chevy Bolt, consumers understand it is electric but are still left with new questions. How does the driver sit in a Bolt? Is a Bolt a low-end model? What will the resell value of a Bolt be in 3 years. With an established model, say a Chevy Cruze, Buick Regal, or BMW 3 series, a lot of the questions are more easily answered. Consumers are familiar with the branding and the meaning behind the model.

With the Mustang Mach-e, ford is addressing many questions with just the name. The Mach-e will be fast (it is), it will be smallish (it’s a small crossover), and it will be competitively priced (at $40,000 it is).

For example, other companies like jeep, Honda, and Subaru will likely follow the same scheme. It’s easier for the consumer to rehash current brands. An electric Jeep Charake would be a capable, mid-range vehicle with a tall ride height, sophisticated all-wheel drive system, and seating for five. An electric Honda Civic would be a small, affordable car while an electric Subaru Impreza would offer an electric powertrain on a car-based AWD platform.

Likewise, unnecessary questions arise if Jeep or Honda or any other car company bring an EV to market under a new name.

There risk in using a legacy name. It can be offensive to die-hard and vocal enthusiasts. Ford is getting backlash with the Mach-e name. I find it offensive on a car guy level. That’s not a mustang, I want to yell. Taking a step back, it’s easy to see Ford’s justification.

Chevrolet rereleased the Blazer last year and experienced a similar revolt. A blazer is supposed to be a beefy off-roader and not the small, sporty crossover of the current version.

The Mustang brand is arguably one of the most valuable Ford assets. It’s been around for more than 50 years. Car companies invest fortunes in building and marketing brands and models. It often takes generations to get consumer buy-in, and at that point, car companies treat them with careful consideration. With the Mustang Mach-E, Ford must have abundant data that shows a projected success.

The simple interior

The Mustang Mach-E follows the Tesla Model 3 design language: Big screen in the middle and not much else. The Mach-E builds on the Model 3 to make it a bit more palatable by including an LCD screen in front of the driver. The Bolt did this, too, but the Chevy didn’t go far enough. With the Mach-E and the Model 3, Ford and Tesla are utilizing smart manufacturing techniques, which will likely be replicated across the automotive industry — for better or worse.

Each car maker manufacturers switches and dials and screens that are installed throughout its models. A part bin, in car lingo. Often, switches are shared between brands. A switch in Audi could find its way into a Lambo as both brands are in the VW family. This is done to reduce costs. Why make a different window switch for each brand when a window switch is a window switch?

The Model 3 and the Mach-E do not have any physical buttons in their center stacks. A massive screen handles climate control, media playback, and more. Instead of making and installing gobs of little switches, Ford, Tesla, and other automakers are using a single screen to do the same functions. This makes scaling across brands and markets easier. Suddenly, without buttons, car companies can reduce the number of parts, working hours, and troubleshooting to a single device. This also makes building a car for different markets easier. Instead of building physical in a different language or for driving on the other side of the road, car companies need to rejigger the software.

This single-screen setup needs the right software, and the Mach-E is the first to demonstrate Ford’s Sync 4 system. It looks great to me with persistent controls for climate and a logical layout. Is it functional? I haven’t used it yet.

Thankfully, there’s still one physical knob: volume control. Volume should always be controlled by a spinning knob instead of a sliding bar. Always.

These screens offer car companies to integrate branding into the vehicles further. Expect Lincoln models to use similar software but with a different design scheme from Ford models. Likewise, Acura software will be similar to Honda’s but with a more sporty, upscale feel.

The little surprises

The Mach-E has several surprises, and that’s thanks to the electric platform.

The majority of the vehicles on the market right now run electric systems based on a decades-old system. It’s limiting though carmakers are pushing it as far as it can go. The move to electric opens countless opportunities to designers and engineers. Features and details that were fantasy are now possible.

The Mach-E doesn’t have traditional door handles. Instead, it has small buttons that release the doors. What happens when the battery dies? For the most part, that’s highly unlikely as the Mach-E’s electrical system doesn’t rely on a traditional battery and alternator.

The Mach-E has a front-based storage area — a frunk if you will. These are standard features on most electric vehicles. Ford did something novel, though, and made the Mach-E’s out of plastic and added a drain plug. This lets owners pack it full of ice and store drinks in the frunk.

With electric vehicles, carmakers can open their playbooks and implement brand-specific features. Jeeps should get more Jeep-ie. Lexus models should be able to stand apart from their Toyota counterparts and so on. The electric platforms are fundamentally more simple than internal combustion systems freeing engineers and designers to be more creative with creature comforts.

The downside of these new features based around a new platform will come in a couple of years when repairs have to be made. It’s unlikely that most owners will be able to diagnose and fix systems like current vehicles. Instead, owners will have to rely on auto repair service centers that will look more like IT shops than garages.

Right now, this is an issue I have with my aging Chevy Volt. I live in Michigan, where the Volt was designed and built. I take it to one of the largest Chevy dealerships in the country for service, where there is only one technician certified to work on the vehicle. Repairs take much longer than I would like, and this issue will likely compound as more complex vehicles come to market. Vehicle techs will have to be retrained, and lower-cost third-party service centers will likely lag behind expensive dealerships.

It’s an electric future

The Mustang Mach-E is an EV done right. Ford took lessons from Tesla, Chevy, and others with its first mass-produced electric vehicles. The Mach-E naming is unconventional at first glance, yet a closer look reveals its logic. The interior is exciting and yet scalable, and the model is full of surprises that will delight and could frustrate owners.

Eventually, the automotive landscape will be filled with similar models to the Mach-E: recycled branding, higher-ride height, and unique features around simple interiors.

It’s been said that the move to electric will produce stale, lookalike vehicles. That’s likely the short-term result as carmakers look to capitalize on familiar shapes and brands to get consumers onboard. Once consumers are comfortable with electric, that’s when the real fun begins. Expect the next generation of the Mustang Mach-E to be something more worthy of the Mustang name.

Ford just unveiled its first EV and it’s stunning. Called the Mustang Mach-E it appears to get a lot of things right. From the branding to little surprises, the Mustang Mach-E looks to be a hit.

“We knew we had to do something different and something exciting and something only Ford could do,” Kumar Galhotra, president of Ford North America said at a press event prior to the Sunday unveiling. I think she’s right. The Mustang Mach-E is the ideal shape of the mass-produced electric future. Henry Ford would be proud. This is an electric car for the masses.

It’s a Mustang

It starts with branding. I hate it. The car guy in me is sad that a Mustang will soon be available in a four-door version. And electric. And lifted. That’s not a Mustang, I want to say. A Mustang is a sports car. And yet a Mustang is an affordable, reliable vehicle, and that’s exactly why Ford is calling its first EV a Mustang.

Branding is critical for the electric future. Ford is using an established brand that resonates with buyers. Look for this again and again as car companies unveil an electric version of current and past vehicles. An electric Ford F-150 and an electric Jeep Cherokee.

Instead of inventing a new model line, like Chevy tried to do with the Bolt, companies will look to convert familiar models to electric. The switch should make for more comfortable transitions. With the Chevy Bolt, consumers understand it is electric but are still left with new questions. How does the driver sit in a Bolt? Is a Bolt a low-end model? What will the resell value of a Bolt be in 3 years. With an established model, say a Chevy Cruze, Buick Regal, or BMW 3 series, a lot of the questions are more easily answered. Consumers are familiar with the branding and the meaning behind the model.

With the Mustang Mach-e, ford is addressing many questions with just the name. The Mach-e will be fast (it is), it will be smallish (it’s a small crossover), and it will be competitively priced (at $40,000 it is).

For example, other companies like jeep, Honda, and Subaru will likely follow the same scheme. It’s easier for the consumer to rehash current brands. An electric Jeep Charake would be a capable, mid-range vehicle with a tall ride height, sophisticated all-wheel drive system, and seating for five. An electric Honda Civic would be a small, affordable car while an electric Subaru Impreza would offer an electric powertrain on a car-based AWD platform.

Likewise, unnecessary questions arise if Jeep or Honda or any other car company bring an EV to market under a new name.

There risk in using a legacy name. It can be offensive to die-hard and vocal enthusiasts. Ford is getting backlash with the Mach-e name. I find it offensive on a car guy level. That’s not a mustang, I want to yell. Taking a step back, it’s easy to see Ford’s justification.

Chevrolet rereleased the Blazer last year and experienced a similar revolt. A blazer is supposed to be a beefy off-roader and not the small, sporty crossover of the current version.

The Mustang brand is arguably one of the most valuable Ford assets. It’s been around for more than 50 years. Car companies invest fortunes in building and marketing brands and models. It often takes generations to get consumer buy-in, and at that point, car companies treat them with careful consideration. With the Mustang Mach-E, Ford must have abundant data that shows a projected success.

The simple interior

The Mustang Mach-E follows the Tesla Model 3 design language: Big screen in the middle and not much else. The Mach-E builds on the Model 3 to make it a bit more palatable by including an LCD screen in front of the driver. The Bolt did this, too, but the Chevy didn’t go far enough. With the Mach-E and the Model 3, Ford and Tesla are utilizing smart manufacturing techniques, which will likely be replicated across the automotive industry — for better or worse.

Each car maker manufacturers switches and dials and screens that are installed throughout its models. A part bin, in car lingo. Often, switches are shared between brands. A switch in Audi could find its way into a Lambo as both brands are in the VW family. This is done to reduce costs. Why make a different window switch for each brand when a window switch is a window switch?

The Model 3 and the Mach-E do not have any physical buttons in their center stacks. A massive screen handles climate control, media playback, and more. Instead of making and installing gobs of little switches, Ford, Tesla, and other automakers are using a single screen to do the same functions. This makes scaling across brands and markets easier. Suddenly, without buttons, car companies can reduce the number of parts, working hours, and troubleshooting to a single device. This also makes building a car for different markets easier. Instead of building physical in a different language or for driving on the other side of the road, car companies need to rejigger the software.

This single-screen setup needs the right software, and the Mach-E is the first to demonstrate Ford’s Sync 4 system. It looks great to me with persistent controls for climate and a logical layout. Is it functional? I haven’t used it yet.

Thankfully, there’s still one physical knob: volume control. Volume should always be controlled by a spinning knob instead of a sliding bar. Always.

These screens offer car companies to integrate branding into the vehicles further. Expect Lincoln models to use similar software but with a different design scheme from Ford models. Likewise, Acura software will be similar to Honda’s but with a more sporty, upscale feel.

The little surprises

The Mach-E has several surprises, and that’s thanks to the electric platform.

The majority of the vehicles on the market right now run electric systems based on a decades-old system. It’s limiting though carmakers are pushing it as far as it can go. The move to electric opens countless opportunities to designers and engineers. Features and details that were fantasy are now possible.

The Mach-E doesn’t have traditional door handles. Instead, it has small buttons that release the doors. What happens when the battery dies? For the most part, that’s highly unlikely as the Mach-E’s electrical system doesn’t rely on a traditional battery and alternator.

The Mach-E has a front-based storage area — a frunk if you will. These are standard features on most electric vehicles. Ford did something novel, though, and made the Mach-E’s out of plastic and added a drain plug. This lets owners pack it full of ice and store drinks in the frunk.

With electric vehicles, carmakers can open their playbooks and implement brand-specific features. Jeeps should get more Jeep-ie. Lexus models should be able to stand apart from their Toyota counterparts and so on. The electric platforms are fundamentally more simple than internal combustion systems freeing engineers and designers to be more creative with creature comforts.

The downside of these new features based around a new platform will come in a couple of years when repairs have to be made. It’s unlikely that most owners will be able to diagnose and fix systems like current vehicles. Instead, owners will have to rely on auto repair service centers that will look more like IT shops than garages.

Right now, this is an issue I have with my aging Chevy Volt. I live in Michigan, where the Volt was designed and built. I take it to one of the largest Chevy dealerships in the country for service, where there is only one technician certified to work on the vehicle. Repairs take much longer than I would like, and this issue will likely compound as more complex vehicles come to market. Vehicle techs will have to be retrained, and lower-cost third-party service centers will likely lag behind expensive dealerships.

It’s an electric future

The Mustang Mach-E is an EV done right. Ford took lessons from Tesla, Chevy, and others with its first mass-produced electric vehicles. The Mach-E naming is unconventional at first glance, yet a closer look reveals its logic. The interior is exciting and yet scalable, and the model is full of surprises that will delight and could frustrate owners.

Eventually, the automotive landscape will be filled with similar models to the Mach-E: recycled branding, higher-ride height, and unique features around simple interiors.

It’s been said that the move to electric will produce stale, lookalike vehicles. That’s likely the short-term result as carmakers look to capitalize on familiar shapes and brands to get consumers onboard. Once consumers are comfortable with electric, that’s when the real fun begins. Expect the next generation of the Mustang Mach-E to be something more worthy of the Mustang name.

The world has gotten so much faster. Amazon has made two-day shipping the standard and same- or next-day shipping commonplace. And that doesn’t even include the collection of on-demand players who can get us everything from groceries to alcohol to services like concierge storage and in-home cleaning with the press of a button.

But the logistics around same- or next-day delivery are incredibly complicated, which usually means that only the biggest, most successful brands and platforms can pull it off.

Enter Ohi.

Ohi was founded last year by Ben Jones, with a mission to democratize e-commerce by offering Amazon-level speed to smaller brands. The company today announced the close of a $2.75 million seed round led by Flybridge Capital Partners .

Ohi partners with landlords to turn what would normally be leased as commercial retail property or office space into micro-warehouses within major cities. The company then offers those warehouses on flexible leases that can be as short as three months, which help D2C brands distribute their inventory and power same- or next-day delivery of their products. Ohi employs 1099 workers to handle pick and pack at warehouses, and partners with Postmates and Doordash for last-mile courier services.

Eventually, Ohi has plans to turn this into a full-fledged platform, paying landlords based on volume. For now, however, the startup is doing traditional leases with landlords, taking on more of a financial risk with the spaces, as it scales up the brand side of the platform.

Ohi charges brands a fixed monthly access fee to the platform, which starts at $750/month. More expensive tiers unlock premium intelligence features around matching inventory to warehouse location, as well as access to more spaces. At the transaction level, Ohi asks for a fee of $2.50 for pick and pack.

Jones says that delivery is actually a higher cost for brands than storage, and that same-day shipping can cost upwards of $50/package for a brand, with same-day pick and pack costing about $10/item. The hope is that Ohi can bring down the price of same-day and next-day delivery by using this Ohi network of commercial space, pick and pack, and courier services to compete with Amazon.

Moreover, Ohi believes that the platform can go well beyond bringing down the price of same-day delivery. The company says it’s brands are also seeing a decrease in cart abandonment when customers see that same-day or next-day delivery option.

Plus, through the data it collects by handling fulfillment for brands, Ohi expects to be able to use its tech to predict demand based on geography and category, helping brands understand their own customers and customers shopping in their particular category.

“There is a lot of positive momentum behind what we’re doing,” said Jones. “Every brand we talk to knows this is the future.”

Jones came up with the idea for Ohi after suffering a serious back injury that left him unable to get around easily or carry things for more than a year. This forced him into a situation where ecommerce was his only option for just about everything. Many of the orders he placed offered three- to five-day shipping, leaving him waiting for what he needed.

He started to investigate how a service could democratize the convenience of same-day and next-day delivery for brands and their customers. And Ohi was born.

Ohi currently offers its service in Manhattan and Brooklyn in New York City, and is launching in Los Angeles this week.

“The greatest challenge we face is how to scale quickly without making mistakes,” said Jones. “It’s not quite as simple as a piece of software that has one-to-many distribution. We’re actually holding brands’ inventory and there’s a physical aspect to this business that makes it more complex. Making sure we can scale that efficiently without making mistakes is going to be one of the biggest challenges.”

The world has gotten so much faster. Amazon has made two-day shipping the standard and same- or next-day shipping commonplace. And that doesn’t even include the collection of on-demand players who can get us everything from groceries to alcohol to services like concierge storage and in-home cleaning with the press of a button.

But the logistics around same- or next-day delivery are incredibly complicated, which usually means that only the biggest, most successful brands and platforms can pull it off.

Enter Ohi.

Ohi was founded last year by Ben Jones, with a mission to democratize e-commerce by offering Amazon-level speed to smaller brands. The company today announced the close of a $2.75 million seed round led by Flybridge Capital Partners .

Ohi partners with landlords to turn what would normally be leased as commercial retail property or office space into micro-warehouses within major cities. The company then offers those warehouses on flexible leases that can be as short as three months, which help D2C brands distribute their inventory and power same- or next-day delivery of their products. Ohi employs 1099 workers to handle pick and pack at warehouses, and partners with Postmates and Doordash for last-mile courier services.

Eventually, Ohi has plans to turn this into a full-fledged platform, paying landlords based on volume. For now, however, the startup is doing traditional leases with landlords, taking on more of a financial risk with the spaces, as it scales up the brand side of the platform.

Ohi charges brands a fixed monthly access fee to the platform, which starts at $750/month. More expensive tiers unlock premium intelligence features around matching inventory to warehouse location, as well as access to more spaces. At the transaction level, Ohi asks for a fee of $2.50 for pick and pack.

Jones says that delivery is actually a higher cost for brands than storage, and that same-day shipping can cost upwards of $50/package for a brand, with same-day pick and pack costing about $10/item. The hope is that Ohi can bring down the price of same-day and next-day delivery by using this Ohi network of commercial space, pick and pack, and courier services to compete with Amazon.

Moreover, Ohi believes that the platform can go well beyond bringing down the price of same-day delivery. The company says it’s brands are also seeing a decrease in cart abandonment when customers see that same-day or next-day delivery option.

Plus, through the data it collects by handling fulfillment for brands, Ohi expects to be able to use its tech to predict demand based on geography and category, helping brands understand their own customers and customers shopping in their particular category.

“There is a lot of positive momentum behind what we’re doing,” said Jones. “Every brand we talk to knows this is the future.”

Jones came up with the idea for Ohi after suffering a serious back injury that left him unable to get around easily or carry things for more than a year. This forced him into a situation where ecommerce was his only option for just about everything. Many of the orders he placed offered three- to five-day shipping, leaving him waiting for what he needed.

He started to investigate how a service could democratize the convenience of same-day and next-day delivery for brands and their customers. And Ohi was born.

Ohi currently offers its service in Manhattan and Brooklyn in New York City, and is launching in Los Angeles this week.

“The greatest challenge we face is how to scale quickly without making mistakes,” said Jones. “It’s not quite as simple as a piece of software that has one-to-many distribution. We’re actually holding brands’ inventory and there’s a physical aspect to this business that makes it more complex. Making sure we can scale that efficiently without making mistakes is going to be one of the biggest challenges.”

He’s reportedly not going to take over WeWork, but John Legere is definitely on his way out of the CEO role at T-Mobile, the carrier that is currently merging with SoftBank-controlled Sprint. Today the carrier and Legere confirmed that Mike Sievert — currently T-Mobile’s COO — will succeed Legere as CEO on May 1 of 2020. Legere will stay on the board.

Neither Legere or T-Mobile commented on what his next move will be, and specifically if this will pave the way to him taking over the top job at WeWork. There had been reports that Legere — something of a turnaround specialist — was being lined up for the job at the very troubled office-space startup, which had to shelve its IPO earlier this year after showing poor financials amid questionable management that not only led to the departure of its founder Adam Neumann as CEO, but a strong devaluation of the company that resulted in SoftBank, as a major creditor, taking control.

The reports of Legere coming in to fix things at WeWork seemed to get refuted quite swiftly. However, the same “sources” that quashed that story also insisted he had “no plans” to leave T-Mobile, so that effectively puts the WeWork rumors (or thoughts of other SoftBank roles, for that matter) back on the table. We’ve asked Legere directly and will update this post if he replies.

Legere has been with T-Mobile since 2012, where he used his irreverent personality to directly spar with the industry while at the same time position the carrier — which has long trailed bigger competitors like AT&T and Verizon (which owns us) in size — as a growth story and different from the pack (hence the “un-carrier” marketing strategy).

Sievert will be tasked with continuing that route, T-Mobile said, “demonstrating that T-Mobile will remain a disruptive force in US wireless marketplace to benefit consumers.”

“I hired Mike in 2012 and I have great confidence in him. I have mentored him as he took on increasingly broad responsibilities, and he is absolutely the right choice as T-Mobile’s next CEO,” said Legere in a statement. “Mike is well prepared to lead T-Mobile into the future. He has a deep understanding of where T-Mobile has been and where it needs to go to remain the most innovative company in the industry. I am extremely proud of the culture and enthusiasm we have built around challenging the status quo and our ongoing commitment to putting customers first.”

“The Un-carrier culture, which all our employees live every day, will not change,” Sievert said in a separate statement. “T-Mobile is not just about one individual. Our company is built around an extraordinarily capable management team and thousands of talented, committed, and customer-obsessed employees. Going forward, my mission is to build on T-Mobile’s industry-leading reputation for empowering employees to deliver an outstanding customer experience and to position T-Mobile not only as the leading mobile carrier, but as one of the most admired companies in America.”

Regardless of whether this is a sign that SoftBank indeed has a job lined up for Legere at one of its other portfolio companies, such as WeWork, the changing of the guard makes some sense, since the merger with Sprint would leave a question mark over who would lead the combined business. The two companies were reportedly close to releasing a management line-up for the merged business earlier this year, but that has yet to happen. The merger is due to be completed early next year.

 

Private equity firm Vista Equity Partners has acquired Sonatype, a cybersecurity-focused open source automation company.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Sonatype said the acquisition will help to build out its Nexus platform, an enterprise ready repository manager and library with access to analysis on 65 million open source components. The platform helps enterprises to keep track of open source code to ensure software in the devops pipeline remains up-to-date with the latest bug and security fixes.

It’s that kind of technology that Sonatype says can help prevent another Equifax-style attack, which saw close to 150 million records stolen because an open source Apache server was not kept up to date.

The company said that several existing investors will retain a stake in the company.

Sonatype, based in Fulton, MD, hasn’t disclosed its financials but claims to have seen annual revenue grow up to 250% in the past three years. Its last fundraise was for $80 million in September 2018. The company also said it has more than 1,000 customers, including over than 60% of the Fortune 100 on its books, to monitor their code environments, including tech giants and several financial giants.

Vista, which invests almost exclusively in enterprise tech companies, has more than $52 billion in cumulative capital investments, it said.

Last year at Dreamforce, Salesforce’s enormous annual customer conference, Apple and Salesforce announced the beginnings of a partnership where the two organizations would work together to enhance Salesforce products running on Apple devices. Today, the companies announced the fruits of that labor with general availability of two new tools that were first announced at last year’s event.

For starters, Apple has been working with Salesforce to redesign the Salesforce Mobile to build in Apple iOS features into the app like being able to use Siri shortcuts to get work done faster, using your voice instead of typing, something that’s sometimes awkward to do on a mobile device.

For instance, you could say, “Hey Siri, next sales meeting,” and Siri can interact with Salesforce CRM to tell you who your meeting is with, the name of his or her company, when you last met and what the Einstein opportunity score is to help you predict how likely it is that you could make a sale today (or eventually).

In addition, the Mobile App takes advantage of Apple’s Handoff feature to reflect changes across devices immediately, and Apple’s Face ID for easy log on to the app.

Salesforce also announced a pilot of Einstein Voice on Salesforce Mobile, allowing reps to enter notes, add tasks and update the CRM database using voice. Einstein is Salesforce’s general artificial intelligence layer, and the voice feature use natural language understanding to do what the rep asks.

Salesforce reports that over 1000 companies participated in piloting the updated app, which constitutes the largest pilot in the history of the company.

The company also announced its new mobile development platform SDK, built specifically for iOS and iPadOS using the Swift language. The idea is to provide a tool to give Salesforce developers with the ability to build apps for iPad and iPhone, then package them up with a new tool called Swift UI and Package Manager.

Trailhead Go is the mobile version of the company’s online learning platform designed specifically for iPad and iPhone. It was built using the new Mobile SDK, and allows users to access the same courses they can on the web in a mobile context. This includes the ability to “handoff” between devices along with support for picture-in-picture and split view for multi-tasking when it makes sense.

Salesforce Mobile and Trailhead Go are available starting today for free in the iOS App Store. The Salesforce Mobile SDK will be available later this year.

As this partnership continues to develop, both companies should benefit. Salesforce gets direct access to Apple features, and can work with Apple to implement them in an optimized way. Apple gets deeper access to the enterprise with help from Salesforce, one of the biggest enterprise software vendors around.