There are a few slogans that no matter how cringe they sounded, turned out to be true.
Since 2020 almost nothing has remained the same. One thing’s for sure though, companies with high digital maturity suffered the least during the pandemic.
How did they do it? Thanks to digital acceleration.
There’s this great quote by
Marek Talarczyk
that perfectly sums up the current situation:?
“If you could turn stress into electricity, then the strain that the pandemic put on executives around the world could probably power the whole Earth for a year.”
Innovating and meeting the market demands is challenging, but not impossible.
- Nearly nine in 10 in-person debit card purchases are now contactless, according to data from
Lloyds Bank
. Spend on debit cards made in person using contactless technology has grown from 65% to 87% in the last three years. The growth of contactless has been accelerated by the Covid-19 pandemic, which prompted the limit to rise from ￡30 to ￡45 and then again to ￡100. Contactless is most popular in restaurants, where it is used for 93% of transactions and least popular in electrical stores (68% of transactions), where average purchase prices are high. Read more.?
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DoxyChain
is building a solution to shake up document management, making it more secure and fit for the web3 world. The Polish startup has just landed €2.2 million to supercharge its growth. While document management might not immediately jump out as an area with interesting tech developments and innovation – it’s actually an area that has been in need of some digitalisation. Documents store valuable data that needs to be recorded and held securely, and companies, especially with the dawn of the web3 era, are increasingly looking for modern solutions. Read more.?
- Based in Berlin,
CEEZER
is on a mission to provide corporations with enhanced access to the voluntary carbon market. The startup just secured €4.2 million to fuel its growth plan and help more companies drive forward net-zero ambitions. Becoming carbon neutral is now the destination that companies around Europe are heading to. Compliance targets are pushing businesses and organizations to minimize or offset carbon emissions, with the aim of bringing Europe to a position of net-zero. It’s a business process that is fairly new, and fairly daunting, but it’s absolutely vital. Read more.?
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Bitwarden
, an open-source password manager for enterprises and consumers, has raised $100 million in a round of funding led by PSG, with participation from
Battery Ventures
. Founded initially back in 2015, Santa Barbara, California-based Bitwarden operates in a space that includes well-known incumbents such as 1Password, which recently hit a $6.8 billion valuation off the back of a $620 million fundraise, and
LastPass
, which was recently spun out as an independent company again two years after landing in the hands of private equity firms. Read more.?
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Varjo
, which builds hardware and integrated software for “professional grade” virtual and augmented reality for industrial and other enterprise applications, has raised $40 million, a Series D that it will be using both to continue R&D for its headsets, as well as to delve further into software applications and tools for the Varjo Reality Cloud, its own streaming platform that it launched earlier this year. Read more.?
- California on Tuesday passed a law requiring all employers based or hiring in the state to post salary ranges on all job listings. The law will also require California-based companies with more than 100 employees to show their median gender and racial pay gaps — a first for a US state. The bill will head to Governor
Gavin Newsom
, who has until Sept. 30 to sign or veto. He hasn’t yet expressed a position and didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. If he signs it, the law would affect some of the biggest US companies, including Meta Platforms Inc., Alphabet Inc. and Walt Disney Co. Read more. Read more.
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Netguru
is coming back with a fresh episode of Disruption Talks after a short summer break.
David Lais
, Co-Founder and Managing Director at
ecolytiq
, joined to discuss how banking can revert human impact on the climate. As he states: “One of the most powerful things we can do is to build transparency of environmental reports and carbon accountings”. Listen on Spotify.
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Maybelline Cosmetics
partnered with video game developer
星佳
to launch an in-game playable ad, according to details shared with sister publication Marketing Dive. The game launched Aug. 25. Designed by Zynga’s in-house gaming studio, Studio E, “Maybelline Mascara Merge” involves merging three icons together to reveal a Maybelline mascara and earn points. The effort, which will run for a handful of months, follows renewed interest in social gaming as platforms like TikTok begin exploring innovative ways to reach Gen Z, Gen Alpha and millennial consumers. Read more.
- For
苹果
, hardware is but a backdrop in a way, a springboard toward recurring revenues and the further cementing of an ecosystem that revolves around services, including financial services. We’ll see more evidence of that strategy on Wednesday (Sept. 7), when the technology giant hosts a product event, titled “Far Out,” that will, of course, feature new iterations of its smartphones, and where 5G will be on everyone’s lips. But the question remains, as the iPhone 14 gets new models and new features, as new cameras are announced, as to whether consumers will be willing to pay for the upgrades. Read more.
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Alloy
is announcing that it has raised an additional $52 million at a $1.55 billion valuation 11 months after raising $100 million at a $1.35 billion valuation. The fact that the startup has managed to raise this amount of capital in such a challenging fundraising environment is impressive, but the fact that it has also increased its valuation is notable considering that many companies these days are either struggling to raise or raising at flat or even down rounds. Increased demand for identity tools that help financial institutions land more “good” customers and weed out the “bad” ones has led to Alloy doubling its annual recurring revenue (ARR) over the past year, noted Tommy Nicholas, co-founder and CEO of Alloy, in an interview with TechCrunch. Read more.?
- Over the last few months, cybersecurity has become one of the most spoken about subjects in the tech world. But it did not begin only yesterday. Since the 1990s, someone has been fighting to make the Internet a better and safer place. Meet Netguru's next Hidden Hero, as written by Steven Johnson. Philip Zimmermann’s story is the fifth installment in the planned eight-part series for this year. He is best known for developing Pretty Good Privacy (PGP), the world's most widely used email encryption software. Read more.?
- Companies with high digital maturity suffered the least during the pandemic. To achieve this resilience, your company needs digital acceleration. If you could turn stress into electricity, then the strain that the pandemic put on executives around the world could probably power the whole Earth for a year. The need for digital innovation grew exponentially, and the deadlines for implementing new solutions shrank from years to weeks. It may be that the worst is behind us (for now), but there’s no returning to business-as-usual as we knew it before 2020. The rules have changed, and you need to adapt to the new reality. Read more.
