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What Makes up a Perfect Business Plan

Doing business plan

Whether you have a small business or a large one, you have to have a business plan in order to set a path for it. A business plan is more like a manual or guide that lists your goals in an order, and how and when you will achieve them. It is even better to have a plan B if things do not work out the way you expect them to. But an important question you should ask yourself is “what makes up a perfect business plan?” What are the important factors that you have to take into consideration to create the perfect business plan?

Of course, you can’t make a plan randomly because business matters are a game of numbers—you have to be precise and accurate.

Describing Business and Writing a Summary

The first and foremost part of any business plan is the executive summary. It is a summary of what’s included in your business plan. You have to keep in mind the word “summary” i.e. you are supposed to summarize everything. You will face two challenges when you do that. First, you will have to find the most selling and appealing parts of your reports to grab the attention of the readers of your business plan instantly. Secondly, you have to find a way to shorten all the descriptions. Bear in mind that the details are in the plan itself, so you have to efficiently summarize all the points.

Furthermore, you have to explain the industry and your business. At this point, you want to talk about what industry your business serves, what the industry looks like and how much potential of growth your business (and the industry) has in the future.

Market and Competitor Analysis

At this point, you will have to put in some work to gather the details that will fill this section of your business plan. You have to know the market that you are about to target. For this, you will have to analyze the market and the sub-markets within it. By doing this, you are trying to paint a clear picture of your target audience. Without this type of analysis, you could end up selling the right product to the wrong people, which means your business will not survive. As you are describing your target audience and how you will approach them in the most effective way possible, you will have to do some analysis of your competitors.

It is just another level of market analysis. You want to get a good idea of what your competitors are doing to run their similar businesses and how much they are succeeding with their strategies. You should also pinpoint their weaknesses and why certain strategies are not working. When you have a business with many competitors, your investors will always ask you several questions about your competitors. They do this not only to know how knowledgeable you are about your target market but also to figure out if what you are about to do is going to work at all.

Development and Design

This is the section where you will define not only the design of the product but how the development takes place. Are you creating the product in your garage or do you have manufacturing plant working for you? How do you get the materials for creating the product? Are you producing your product within the country or outsourcing the production? In case of either of the options, you will have to explain why you have chosen that path. Investors will also ask you how much it costs you to design your product and make it available on the shelf.

What they don’t want you to do is pay more for the production and design of your product than you should. If there are other options available but you are sticking to the expensive ones, it will show them either the stubborn side of your personality or the less knowledgeable.

Costs of Operation and Management Planning

The ongoing processes of the business are the most important ones to pay attention to. How have you planned to take care of the daily matters? How have you assigned the roles and why have you assigned them to certain individuals? At this stage, you also have to talk about the costs of operations. You have to keep your costs realistic and justify that what you intend to spend is not an excessive by any means. In the costs of operations, you will also have to have an estimate of how much you will be spending in salaries. You can include this particular piece of information under the financial planning section as well.

Financial Planning

In this section you have to describe how you intend to finance the business. Are you using your own money to start the business or have you borrowed it from a family member? What kind of debts are there on your business. Debt is deadly for a business, so you want to have a very strong plan on how you will handle the initial debt when starting the business. You also have to show your management of the financial resources and knowledge to prove that any loans that you are taking for the business will be paid off in time and with ease.

If you have given a detail of various loans that you intend to use for your business, you will also have to state how you will use the money. Your usage of the money should be precise. At no point should the investors get a hint that you are going to use the money for something personal or something that will not benefit your business in any way.

Conclusion

Last but not least, make projections a part of your business plan as well. You will need to ready balance sheets and income statements for the coming years. It is imperative to know here that business plans are just assumptions, not facts. You should always expect things to go a bit away from how you planned them. However, such minor setbacks should not stop you from going forward and turning your small business into a large one.

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Automation: The Risk to Financial Jobs

Automation

Suppose it is 2030, and you’re teaching in a business school. What will be your reaction to seeing just a handful of learners attending your class? It must be disappointing, but it has nothing to do with your pedagogical skill, nor it’s about the subject matter you’re teaching or your school’s ranking. Students do not enroll simply because the finance sector has no jobs for them. And automation is one of the main reasons behind this phenomenon.

You might find it hard to believe because management, economics, finance, and accounting are some popular subjects at the graduate level in most universities. Students opt for these subjects as they are associated with high employability; however, changing due to advances in technology and automation.

According to Opimas- a renowned consulting firm, the future will be harder for many universities in terms of selling business-related degrees. Another latest research showed that by 2050, nearly 230,000 financial jobs would be lost to artificial intelligence agents and bots.

To put it simply, when a vehicle manufacturer finds aluminum or any other material lighter, more accessible, and cheaper to make cars with than steel, they stop using it. They replace it to gain functional and financial advantage. It is the same when it comes to evaluating the future of the finance sector.

The current situation raises a few questions:

Our current and prospective financial jobs under threat? Are robotic advisers/employees the future of finance?

Let’s find out.

Artificial Intelligence- A New Generation

A survey from Aite Group –a research firm evaluated that businesses have started investing in automated portfolios. The investment rate increased to 210% in 2015. Many recent reports by market analysts found that robotics-advisers have taken over already in some giant corporations. Wall Street is just one of the examples that have replaced hundreds of its financial analysts with Robo advisors and high-tech software.

Oxford academics in its 2013’s paper claims that approximately 74% of professions are at high risk of becoming automated in the next 10 to 20 years; 54% of jobs among them will be in the finance industry, which is alarming. The phenomenon not just confined to the United States. Indian banks, for example, have also reported a decline of 9% in headcount in the last two consecutive quarters due to the hiring of robots at the workplace, which shows how automation is taking over in the finance sector.

Perhaps, it’s not surprising in finance, particularly as the banking industry is all about processing information. And most of its critical operations, like passbook update and cash deposits, have been digitized. This is one reason why financial institutions and banks are adopting advanced Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology.

This new generation of technology has enabled institutes to automate their financial tasks that were traditionally performed by humans. That includes risk management, operations, algorithmic trading, and wealth management.

For instance, the COIN program and Contract Intelligence that run on a specific machine learning system, help banks shorten the time taken to review loans. Plus, the software is excellent at providing impeccable loan servicing to customers. Considering AI’s growing dominance, Accenture predicts that the banking sector will make AI a’ primary way of interaction with the customers within three years. It is because AI enables a simple and easy user interface to help banks provide a human-like client experience.

Luvo, in this regard, is a virtual chatbot that uses IBM Watson technology to learn and understand from human interaction, making manual workforce redundant.

Fintech Grads- A Traditional Threat to Banking

This might sound surprising to you, but universities are revising and reviewing their traditional education blueprints to adapt to new technological disruption in the financial job market. Like Georgetown and Stanford University, business schools are planning to include “fintech” in their MBA programs. This inclusion aims to make students learn, understand, and master financial technology.

One reason why Fintech firms are considered an existential threat to traditional banks is that they work differently from conventional banks. Plus, not only do fintech firms understand consumer issues, but also solve them in a fraction of time. They have become a reliable funding option for customers to look to invest in various businesses.

The critical weakness of the banking system lies in its technical debt. Banks are lagging due to their antiqued IT setups that date back to the last century. Fintech, on the other hand, is in a winning position with its fast-moving and technology-led services, particularly in investment and loan systems for e-commerce businesses.

Kabbage is a perfect example that gives technology-led loans to e-commerce businesses for which traditional banking is not only slow but also inflexible when it comes to lending finances.

Application Programming Interfaces (APIs)

Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) is another financial innovation that enables Fintech providers to create applications on data of bank accounts. APIs will be a long-term solution for data providers as it takes away the crucial information (that only traditional banking employees have). Fintech providers will have the same quantity and quality of data without having any physical branches.

Is Dependence on Robotics Advisors Safe?

There is no denying that robot advisers, AI, and Fintech are changing traditional banking. Many financial analysts consider them the most significant drivers in the financial sector.

However, for many analysts, it’s still unclear to what extent automation and AI will prove to be advantageous for the financial sector. They believe that relying entirely on artificial intelligence could backfire if there are no humans to supervise everything.

Undoubtedly, robotics advisors are inexpensive and save a lot of time and effort when it comes to creating investment portfolios. But there is no guarantee that they will not struggle when it is about taking correct precautionary measures if the market becomes volatile. Thousands of machines are trying to operate the same thing at high speed.

In 2012, Knight Capital Group- a robotics stock trader lost $450 million in just 40 minutes when it went on a spending spree. That means these well programmed and high-tech robotics-traders can cause chaos and fatal errors in the financial markets.

Final Thoughts

Overall, there is no denying that rapidly growing dependence on automated devices and robotics-technologies is raising many concerns for commercial jobs. From banking systems to other financial institutes, automated technologies, like Fintech, APIs, and AI, are considered an integral part of the operations. They are slowly taking over and making employees redundant.

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Shoreline Funded $35M Team Expansion and Automated Incident Solutions

Solutions

Shoreline is a Redwood City, CA-based developer of an operational automated platform designed to mitigate technical issues before creating widespread solutions. The company’s platform automates scanning for known problems and performing mitigation, orchestrates across clouds and on-premises, providing equivalent service across all machines, and integrates with any command-line interface, Linux command, or shell and python scripts without requiring any rewrites, enabling technical operators to reduce tickets and improve availability.

Shoreline was funded $35 million funding Series B led by Insight Partners with participation from Dawn Capital and other strategic angel investors. The new grant allows the company to grow the team and its mission to help customers enhance availability, reduce toil, and free up time for engineers to create.

The company has created Jupyter-style notebooks to document and automate the response to common problems for a given solutions, providing step-by-step instructions for solving an issue while automating the response whenever possible. The objective is to help relieve the stress of reacting at the moment.

Gupta said the SRE function is growing exponentially to keep up with the increasing need to solve system problems as they happen. Still, he said that simply throwing bodies at the problem is not a sustainable approach.

Louis-Philippe Kronek, GM, Dataiku Online, said they use Shoreline to reduce manual work and improve the reliability of our cloud infrastructure that helps any company harness the power of Everyday AI. They estimate that Shoreline has saved one engineer ten days of work a month and expect the value to grow as Dataiku Online does. Shoreline makes their engineers make solutions to more effective and allows them to spend more time doing what they love — building, coding, and producing results.

By: K. Tagura

Author statement:

Funded.com is the leading platform for accredited investors network worldwide. We monitor and provide updates on important funding events. Angel Investors and Venture Funding can be a key growth for a startup or existing business. Whether it is a first, second or third round financing having a strategic alliance with an Angel Investor or Venture Capital financing can propel a business to the next level and give the competitive edge.

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Calculating Startups Costs before Approaching Investors

Startup

If you have a unique idea that you think can turn into a business startup, you should get ready to do some preparation before you take it to investors. When you present your idea, which might just be in a prototype form, to an investor, you have to be well-prepared to be scrutinized. Quite understandably, investors are always keen to know where their money is going.

They want to have full details of where you will use their money and what return their investment will generate. In order to answer their piercing questions, you have to be on top of your game, know the costs that are associated with your startup, and create ways to justify them.

Getting into the Depths of Startup Costs

You have to create a list of everything that’s going to require money to start your business. How much money you ask for from the investors also depends on what stage your startup is at. Sometimes, your business is running on a micro-level and you need money to expand it. At other times, all you have is a unique idea and possibly a prototype that proves the practical application of the concept but no money to go into production. In either case, your knowledge of the many startup costs helps you get the right investment and decides the fate of your startup.

Here is a list of the major startup costs.

Office Space, Furniture and Supplies

If you are going to have a physical location, you will need cash to arrange an office and everything that goes inside it. You can buy or rent office space. It is a pure expense when you rent it, unless you prepay a lump sum lease. Office furniture will include desks, cabinets, wooden cabins, paper, pencils, etc. These are all expenses and while some of them become your asset too, they are not the best assets you can rely on to get loans.

Professional Fees

Hiring professionals has its benefits, but you have to pay their fees and count them as expense. You will need lawyers and accountants to help you with various tax laws, zoning laws, business structuring, and any other legal matters that can arise when starting a business. If there is one thing that you can be sure of, it is that these professionals are not cheap.

Marketing, Advertising and Promotion

Marketing and advertising are the processes that don’t stop for as long as the business lives. More importantly, they start well before a business even comes into existence. Your marketing and advertising expenses will include the following and much more.

  • Brochures, leaflets, flyers, flexes, etc.
  • Cable advertisements, infomercials, etc.
  • Digital marketing e.g. SEO, PPC, email marketing, etc.
  • Giveaways, gifts for customers, special discounts for first timers, etc.
  • Your website, blog, social media pages and campaigns, etc.

In the beginning, you have to consider taking advantage of the marketing methods that are affordable yet highly productive.

Equipment

Your office furniture and supplies aren’t necessarily business equipment. Business equipment means anything that’s an integral part of your business. For example, if you are opening a restaurant then a fryer, boiler, smoke machine, microwave, etc. will be your equipment. If you are starting a gymnasium, the bench in the waiting area is not your equipment, but the elliptical machines, treadmills, rowing machines, etc. are part of your equipment.

Inventory Costs

If you are a product-selling business, you need inventory right from day one. You will have to do a lot of calculation and forecasting to come up with the right size of inventory that you will start with. You don’t want to commit too much and have excessive inventory due to the fear of spoilage. On the other hand, having too little means you will have to send your customers home or to your competitors. Investors love to ask inventory-related questions. You will always have to prove to the investors why you are producing as much inventory as you have planned to produce.

Salaries

You need workers right from the first day of your business. You cannot afford to pay your employees too much right from the beginning even if they are specialists in their fields. Your investors will not like the fact that you are paying your employees generously when your business has not even lifted off the ground. Hire your talent sensibly and after proper scrutiny to get the most out of every employee.

Taxes and Insurance

Not everything you earn can go right in your pocket. You have to pay taxes on your business property, sales, and income. Furthermore, you need proper protection for your business against lawsuits. The most important insurance covers for businesses include product liability insurance, property insurance, vehicle insurance, workers’ compensation insurance, etc.

Traveling

If the nature of your business requires you or your employees to travel, you have to factor in those costs as well. However, you should be happy to know that most of the business-related traveling expenses can be claimed as deductions. But because that money goes out of your business account, you have to calculate it among expenses too.

Cash Reserve

In addition to all the expenses stated above, you need the right size of cash reserve. Cash reserve is the money you set aside to finance your business without getting loans from banks. You take this money out of your net profit and set it aside for business expansion or to fulfill large orders. Additionally, you have to have at least six months of backup for your business to run smoothly when sales are low and profit margins are thin at the initial startup phase.

Approaching Your Investors

Now that you have a list of every expense that will come in your way at the time of starting your business, it is time you come up with a number and approach your investors. You have to be good with numbers when you stand in front of your investors. If math is not your strength, hire someone to be with you to help you answer cost-related questions from investors. Your accurate calculation and cost analysis increase your chances of impressing investors and compelling them to invest.

Calculate your startup costs and note them down because doing so will help you win over the investors and also show the transparency of your business plan. Also, it is important that you trust your calculations and avoid going back and forth on your investment demands. Asking for more or less than what you have calculated will get you in trouble down the road. Having too much will lure you into overspending, and bury you under a mountain of debt. Having too little will shrink your cash flow, which will choke your business as a result.

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$38M funded! Series A Financing to Nitrome Biosciences

Nitrome Biosciences

Biopharmaceutical company Nitrome Biosciences in San Francisco, CA, developing a platform around a newly identified class of enzymes to target Parkinson’s disease and other age-related disorders.

In development, the therapies will target these enzymes and potentially help slow or halt the progression of diseases such as Parkinson’s while the initial focus is on Parkinson’s disease, the company target to expand its proprietary platform to include other disease indications.

The Series A financing has closed of $38 million funded co-led by Sofinnova Partners and AbbVie Ventures. AbbVie’s corporate strategic venture capital arm, with further participation from the Dementia Discovery Fund, Mission Bay Capital, and Alexandria Venture Investments and some strategic angel investors.

The financing planned to support the advancement of Nitrome’s lead program targeting Parkinson’s Disease toward human clinical proof of hypothesis studies and to explore the execution of the company’s platform technology in other age-related disorders. Because globally have Parkinson’s disease is around 7 million to 10 million individuals and some 1 million in the United States.

Conducted by Doctor Irene Griswold-Prenner, Ph.D., Founder, CEO, and CSO, Nitrome Biosciences is a platform company developing drugs against a newly identified class of enzymes called Nitrases, initially targeting Parkinson’s disease.

By: K. Tagura

Author statement:

Funded.com is the leading platform for accredited investors network worldwide. We monitor and provide updates on important funding events. Angel Investors and Venture Funding can be a key growth for a startup or existing business. Whether it is a first, second or third round financing having a strategic alliance with an Angel Investor or Venture Capital financing can propel a business to the next level and give the competitive edge.

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Ordermark Funded $120M to Expand its Virtual Business

Virtual

Ordermark is based in Los Angeles, CA, one of the leading online ordering management solutions for restaurants and virtual restaurant concepts.

Ordermark was funded $120 million series C round funding. The funding was led by prominent technology investor SoftBank Vision Fund, joined by returning investor Act One Ventures and strategic angel investors. The grant will use to help more restaurants transition to online ordering during the pandemic and beyond.

The company’s software consolidates incoming orders from multiple platforms and sends them to a single printer. Ordermark also operates a company called Nextbite, a portfolio of 15 readymade virtual brands such as CraveBurger, Firebelly Wings, and HotBox by Wiz, a collaboration with rapper Wiz Khalifa. Restaurants can offer these delivery-only brands out of existing kitchens, opening up additional revenue streams.

Jeff Housenbold, the Managing Partner at SoftBank Investment Advisers, said. They believe Ordermark is a leading technology platform and innovative virtual restaurant concepts transform the restaurant industry. And they are excited to support their mission to help independent restaurants optimize online ordering and generate incremental revenue from under-utilized kitchens.

The rise of ghost kitchens and virtual restaurants, often referred to as the 3rd wave of food delivery, have paved the way for a broader addressable market for online food delivery.

The statement of Alex Canter, the chief executive officer behind Ordermark 2020, has been a tough year for restaurants. That’s why they are focus on providing products and services to help keep their doors open. This funding allows them to offer more restaurants with innovative ways to reach more consumers.

By: K. Tagura

Author statement:

Funded.com is the leading platform for accredited investors network worldwide. We monitor and provide updates on important funding events. Angel Investors and Venture Funding can be a key growth for a startup or existing business. Whether it is a first, second or third round financing having a strategic alliance with an Angel Investor or Venture Capital financing can propel a business to the next level and give the competitive edge.

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Popchew Funded $3.6M to Launch New Food Brands and Expand Market with Creators

Food

Popchew is a startup company based in New York City. This company is an operator of a food plug-and-play platform intended to build, launch, and grow brands nationally in just weeks. The company’s platform has built products at food delivery applications and worked with casual restaurants, enabling creators to launch food brands.

Popchew was funded $3.6 million, led by Long Journey Ventures with Anti Fund, Flybridge, the Uber Alumni Syndicate, WndrCoand, a group of angel investors. The funds’ infusion will help the company launch a new digitally native food brand each month with creators.

This startup company founded in 2021 by Rushir Parikh and Nick Sopchak. In the company’s first six months, established two trademarks, Bitcoin Pizza with investor Anthony “Pomp” Pompliano and Wing SZN, collaborating with YouTuber Zias. They are known for delivery through third-party apps and the Popchew website.

The concept for the company derived from Parikh’s childhood growing up working at his uncle’s restaurant and Sopchak’s background in the hospitality industry. They sensed the food was fun and could open the food delivery market to help creators expand their brand, connect with fans and create a new revenue stream.

To support creators in establishing a new revenue stream, Popchew taps into restaurants’ new capability and helps them make a new revenue stream and optimize it. With more than 600,000 restaurants in the U.S., Popchew’s brands can resume expanding their reach without changing restaurants’ existing operations.

Popchew’s brands are already public in dozens of cities across the U.S., including New York, Chicago, Atlanta, Austin, Denver, Las Vegas, and Los Angeles.

Paul, an investor through Anti Fund said, food is a new vertical for creators, and it’s vital to both partners and invest in a team that understands the audience and technology to deliver a great experience. Popchew is a scalable key that will open new opportunities for creators to engage with their fans everywhere.

By: K. Tagura

Author statement:

Funded.com is the leading platform for accredited investors network worldwide. We monitor and provide updates on important funding events. Angel Investors and Venture Funding can be a key growth for a startup or existing business. Whether it is a first, second or third round financing having a strategic alliance with an Angel Investor or Venture Capital financing can propel a business to the next level and give the competitive edge.

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Fast Break Labs Funded $6M for Development of Web3 Basketball Gaming

basketball

Fast Break Labs is a startup based in San Francisco, CA. The company is a developer of blockchain-based basketball games and experiences platforms intended to empower people to create the future of sports, gaming, and entertainment. Fast Break Lab offers a gaming platform, competitive compensation, company equity, and benefits, allowing users to own teams of fictional non-fungible tokens (NFT) athletes to compete in simulated games, tournaments, and leagues for crypto prices.

Fast Break Lab was funded $6 million led by Patron with participation from Pantera Capital. Additional participants in the early round include Collab+Currency, Solana Ventures, South Park Commons, and Angel investors Brooklyn Nets. The new funding plans to use for the growth team and both the development and deployment of the VBA.

Established in late 2021 by Charles Du and John Wu, Fast Break Labs is the brainchild of the ex-Meta teammate’s longtime habit with sports and gaming. As the imagination basketball fanatics envisioned the theoretical decisions they’d make as professional team owners, the idea for Fast Break Labs and its first product, the Virtual Basketball Association (VBA), was born. Du and Wu quickly created a talented roster, including several experts who have competed in the former’s dream basketball league for almost a decade.

The new game allows basketball fans to strategize as general managers of their virtual teams and compete for rewards via pretend games. Users create rosters by drafting and trading collectible, fictional athletes with unique attributes and skill levels. The VBA integrates traditional fantasy sports UI with web3 technology to make the game available and intuitive. Aspiring GMs also can bridge the real and digital worlds and craft original storylines for their VBA players.

Du said they are creating a sports game that offers all basketball fans an opportunity to have an actual ownership experience. They are mainly focused on making a new and fun experience. However, it was also important to give power back to gamers by allowing them to shape the game’s direction and accrue the economic benefits.

Paul Veradittakit, partner at Pantera Capital said, they are proud to support Fast Break Labs and its vision to democratize the ownership, control, and economics of sports gaming. Also, they are excited to see this group continue to elevate engagement across the intersection of collectibles, sports, and gaming on the blockchain.

By: K. Tagura

Author statement:

Funded.com is the leading platform for accredited investors network worldwide. We monitor and provide updates on important funding events. Angel Investors and Venture Funding can be a key growth for a startup or existing business. Whether it is a first, second or third round financing having a strategic alliance with an Angel Investor or Venture Capital financing can propel a business to the next level and give the competitive edge.

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Telgorithm Funded $3.8M to Develop the New Messaging Platform Globally

Messaging
2d rendering Cloud computing, Cloud Computing Concept

Telgorithm cloud communications technology startup based in Los Angeles, CA. Their messaging platform is intended to simplify business communication and compliance for vertical SaaS companies. The company uses an A2P (application-to-person) compliant application to fulfill clients’ messaging services needs without disruption, enabling the clients to get guaranteed deliverability and higher messaging throughput.

Telgorithm was funded $3.8M led by Bonfire Ventures with Daher Capital, Amplify.LA, other structural angel investors, and I2BF. Fresh seed funding will support the California-based tech startup addressing the exploding need from SaaS verticals to construct messaging services into their software applications.

Today, Telgorithm delivers hosted messaging services that let SaaS providers bring text messaging to their essence for an Application to Person (A2P) messaging via a standard 10-digit-long code (10DLC) and toll-free telephone numbers.

Jim Andelman, the managing director of Bonfire Ventures, said, Telgorithm enables SaaS vendors to deliver more importance to their end customers and drive superior business performance. It’s a huge market opportunity. They love that the founders previously worked together and brought very similar products to market for the exact use-case, so here is simply off the charts. They are very excited to be supporting Telgorithm and these founders as the company grows.

Alter spent nearly five years as the head of ServiceTitan’s telecommunications division and worked as director of telecommunications for SignalWire. In the last few years, mobile operators insisted that commercial messaging move from P2P to A2P because the volume completed it difficult for carriers to protect their end-users from unwanted messages.

Co-Founder and COO Mason Zheng, a veteran business processes consultant and former manager for ServiceTitan, and other top organizations said. Telgorithm’s platform aims to race up a product manager’s go-to-market journey by getting a new level of attainability to SaaS verticals looking to offer telecom features that can easily be integrated into their core applications.

Telgorithm’s objective is to launch a voice product to help SaaS providers accelerate their go-to-market journey across the communication stack. As a result, product managers aren’t spending 12-18 months figuring out the building blocks to get a product to market.

By: K. Tagura

Author statement:

Funded.com is the leading platform for accredited investors network worldwide. We monitor and provide updates on important funding events. Angel Investors and Venture Funding can be a key growth for a startup or existing business. Whether it is a first, second or third round financing having a strategic alliance with an Angel Investor or Venture Capital financing can propel a business to the next level and give the competitive edge.

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Sekr Funded $2.25M to Simplify the Travel App Experience of Outdoor Travelers

Travel

Sekr startup company based in San Diego, CA. This travel app with the most significant national database of free and dispersed campsites demonstrates growth in the booming industry.

Sekr was funded $2.25 million led by Storyteller Overland, Backstage Capital, Techstars, Ad Astra Ventures, Crescent Ridge Ventures, and angel investor Andy Ballester, co-founder of GoFundMe. The new funding will empower people to pursue a connection with the outdoors and its communities. Also, to grow Sēkr’s reservable inventory and its community initiatives, including its alliance called Project Respect Outdoors, aims to unite women and minorities to take scalable action to evolve the outdoor industry into a more inclusive space.

In 2017, Sekr’s co-founders, Breanne Acio (CEO) and Jess Shisler (COO), we’re peeking for a better way to explore our new camping locations. First, the two traveled along with their partners in their camper vans, embracing the so-called van life lifestyle. But they shortly learned it was hard to find safe places to camp and people to connect with while on the road. Plus, they both wanted a more straightforward method to discover campgrounds with the same services they required — whether that was shower facilities, bathrooms, overnight parking for vans, access to water, or free Wi-Fi.

Acio said trip planning is the number one problem for anyone going outdoors. If you would like to book a hotel or travel someplace, you’d have to call hotels individually. There’s no online website or availability. Some of these challenges weren’t just annoyances; they complicated the reality of living and working while on the road.

In the Sēkr app, you can explore campsites across the U.S., filter them by conveniences and services, save favorites, and network with others via social features. Its listings are created by public data warehouses from the government and other databases, enhanced with crowdsourced information. Sēkr’s team of ambassadors will explore areas, verify details, and take photographs to share with the community, as do the app’s members.

Now, the company is working on adding more additional reservable inventory straight to Sēkr by digitizing and aggregating campgrounds and campsites, going from private lands to campgrounds. This work is even in the early stages, though.

Jeffrey Hunter said the CEO at Storyteller Overland and lead investor of Sekr’s funding round. The camping drive is one of the only hospitality verticals yet to embrace technology successfully. As a result, Sekr grabbed the opportunity to digitize campsite inventory at scale, changing the outdoor planning procedure from a frustrating circle of hours of failed Google searches into something consumers can do by themselves. As a result, they believe the Sekr team is uniquely positioned to have the most significant effect and impact on the outdoor travel planning experience for the nearly three-fourths of Americans who experience outdoor travel yearly.

By: K. Tagura

Author statement:

Funded.com is the leading platform for accredited investors network worldwide. We monitor and provide updates on important funding events. Angel Investors and Venture Funding can be a key growth for a startup or existing business. Whether it is a first, second or third round financing having a strategic alliance with an Angel Investor or Venture Capital financing can propel a business to the next level and give the competitive edge.