1. An invoice got him into crypto 

Stefan fell into crypto in 2012 when a developer for his company Exicon asked to be paid in Bitcoin. This prompted an OTC purchase via eBay and PayPal whose speed left the CEO agape, particularly in comparison to the sweaty walk he had just taken to cash a cheque in Hong Kong.

2. He helped bring mobile to China

Back in the 1990s, Stefan was instrumental in bringing mobile technology to China when he set up four mobile networks in the country. He sold these to China Unicom in 1999 when they needed the assets to go public, paving the way for a new wave of technological innovation.

3. When he grew up, he wanted to be a cowboy 

As a young boy, Stefan’s ultimate dream was to be a cowboy, or a fireman: something on the “frontier.” This is why, he says, he got into crypto, whose wild, uncharted territory and ability to open up finance to the masses attracted the renegade entrepreneur.  

4. Sir Robert Black GCMG OBE was his grandfather 

Stefan’s grandfather was Sir Robert Black, who was the Governor of Singapore and then Governor of Hong Kong between 1955 and 1964. During his tenure, he ensured Hong Kong didn’t go dry by brokering a deal with China for water during the historic drought of 1962-64.

5. Android has a lot to thank him for 

Stefan Rust was involved in instrumental acquisitions and investments during the lead up to launching a Java-based iPhone competitor, which his firm announced at JavaONE. This ultimately opened the door to Android and a whole new world of mobile possibilities.

6. He’s a world-class swimmer  

Perhaps fitting for the CEO of “Laguna”, Stefan is a keen swimmer. In-fact, he is a world masters swimmer, claiming the title of fourth fastest in the world for 50 metre free style and sixth fastest in the world for 50 metre backstroke at the Budapest World Masters Championship.

7. He learned when to let go the hard way

Among Stefan’s key life lessons, he says knowing when to call it quits is the most important. After moving heaven, earth, and a lot of capital to keep a business venture alive that just wasn’t working, he recommends not following the “keep at it” mantra if you really shouldn’t. 

8. With Laguna, he’s finally going to crack the crypto nut

Stefan is a true crypto believer, but he’s frustrated with how slow the industry has been to found the next Google or Facebook: a company that can transform the world based on new technology. With Laguna, though, he thinks he can. 

9. Cookies & Cream is his favorite ice cream 

When he can’t get his hands on some Hong Kong-style bubble tea, Stefan’s guilty pleasure is ice cream. And when he can’t get his hands on Molten Malteser Vanilla Fluff Flavor, he’ll settle for old fashioned Cookies & Cream.

10. He wants to liberate the world through crypto 

Like a true cowboy, Stefan is not the biggest fan of lawmakers – particularly ones that are ramping-up inflation. With Truflation and Nuon, Stefan hopes to finally give the average Joanne an opportunity to preserve her wealth and build a stable financial future.

Looking to catch Stefan Rust during Consensus Festival-Austin? He’ll be at DCentral and then on stage at Grit Daily House-Consensus, especially June 10, along with Robin Guyard and Cameron Lee from Laguna. Joining them will be Rachel Wolfson (CoinTelegraph), Doug Horn (Telos), Blake Commagere (Vault12), Chad Steelberg (Veritone), James Wo (JSquare), Caitlin Long (Custodia Bank), Miles Paschini (FV Bank), Jenn Sanasie (CoinDesk) and Laila Maidan and Katie Canales from Business Insider, among others.

Alongside some of the best content during Consensus, Grit Daily House will boast Cookies & Cream ice cream, too. 

The post 10 Things You Didn’t Know about Stefan Rust appeared first on Grit Daily News.

After founding the company in the 1990’s as a recent college graduate, Mauricio has now grown the firm into an authority in design thinking which boasts a team of more than 1,000 people in offices around the world. MJV has also become a platform for Mauricio to give back, launching tech education programs such as their Data Science School and RPA School, which are tuition free online training programs to help new professionals gain the skill sets to work in technology.

We connected with Mauricio to learn more about the early days of the firm, the lessons he learned scaling a 1,000+ person company and his advice for other entrepreneurs.

GritDaily: Can you tell us about founding MJV and what the early days were like?

Mauricio Vianna: I founded MJV Innovation in 1997. As a recent university graduate, and after leaving the Chicago Board of Trade Clearing Corp to accompany my family back to Rio de Janeiro, I was invited to work in banking as an individual consultant. My role was in helping the bank to develop an integrated and innovative Teller and ATM system. This project showed me a lot of challenges facing the entire financial industry with providing cutting edge customer experiences through IT. It was at that point that other financial companies began reaching out to hire me in a consulting capacity. That was when the idea of MJV was born.

As I began taking on additional consulting clients, I eventually realized that it was time to secure my own office space and begin building our team. I then reduced my work in banking to build MJV full time. I was also blessed to have my father and mentor, Ysmar Vianna, join the company very early on as my most important advisor. To this day, he serves as the chairman of MJV.

The early days of the company involved many long days. Building a successful company brought many challenges so those were difficult times. But as our momentum grew, I knew that we were serving a critical need in the marketplace that global companies across many sectors needed.

What important lessons did you learn that helped you grow the company to more than 1,000 employees today?

MV: The first lesson is that there is nothing more important in a company’s culture than how its employees are treated. From the beginning we made it a priority to build a team around kindness, respect and mentorship. We would not have been able to grow to more than 1,000 people around the world today if it were not for our guiding values around how we treat our people. Much of our success today is due to the fantastic people who work in our organization and the investment we strive to make in them everyday.

What were some of the hardest challenges of entrepreneurship?

MV: Growing a business is always difficult. In the early days you are struggling as an entrepreneur to do so much of the work by yourself, and then as your team grows, you have enormous responsibilities of leadership. Our greatest focus lies on taking care of our employees and our clients. Staying on the cutting edge of culture, technology and leadership is the most challenging and most rewarding part of building a large organization.

How can leaders cultivate a team and culture that fosters innovation and creativity?

MV: As a company who helps some of the largest brands in the world become more innovative through strategies involving design thinking, data analytics, and business transformation, it has been very important since day one that we practice what we preach within our own organization.

We have been blessed to build a highly agile, resilient culture using the very framework that we implement for clients like Coca-Cola, Delta, BNP Paribas and more. At the forefront is having a culture that is open and curious, asking questions and building an environment where teams can work together to creatively solve problems.

Tools like design thinking and business transformation have never been more critical in the toolbox of c-suite teams. As the world we are in becomes more volatile and unpredictable, organizations cannot plan for every unexpected scenario. Instead they need resilient, agile cultures that can adapt and innovate in any environment.

The post CEO’s Lessons From Building a 1,000+ Person Global Consultancy appeared first on Grit Daily News.

Now, she represents a marginalized demographic dedicating her life to solving racial and gender equity in the field where she once felt alienated. “It’s just a space I love to be in,” she said. “Some people deem code as being pretty pictures and numbers and now we’re changing lives.”

Robinson is one of Google’s top 50 Black Founders, recipient of the Cloud Solution of the Year by M12 (Microsoft’s venture capital fund) and Women in Cloud, named Top 10 Under 40 and Top CEO by Mississippi Business Journal, a SheEO Venture semi-finalist, Databird’s “Rising Star,” a military wife, a mother, a Black Woman.

However, she is more than a name for February Black History Month or a name for March Women’s History Month.

Her name is Sheffie Robinson. She is the only Black woman that she knows of working in AI workforce development.

Robinson’s startup, Shamrck is an AI solutions company that is revolutionizing workforce development in underserved and minority communities. “Everything we do looks at success from a social lens –  cause and effect. How many lives can we change? How can we change the world with our technology?” she said.

“How many lives can we change?”

Robinson has always been social-impact driven. Even since childhood, Robinson could be found combining sociological theory with technology. This tech CEO/Founders’ whole life changed the day her mother brought home one of the first computers.

“At 12 years old, AOL was the thing. My Mom couldn’t afford AOL! We ran out of time on the free disks. So I remembered all the MS Docks commands from Oregon Trail, went into the back, and hacked my way into AOL. I realized I can do so many different things with code. It’s fun for me to see how much I can create with lines of words. It just snowballed from there,” said Sheffie Robinson.

Robinson has accumulated 23 years of experience in software engineering, spending seven years in the tech workforce as a freelance software engineer. Seven years masking a hidden talent as a mere hobby; “I have been building software since 1999 and I’m completely self-taught. I had a passion for finding ways to provide technical solutions for the underserved and I still possess that passion,” she said.

Although Robinson had work experience in technology, the lack of diverse representation in leadership throughout the industry discouraged the now, award winning innovator. In 2014, Robinson’s husband suggested she turn her side hustle into a career. In 2015, Shamrck was founded. Yet, not with the purpose of its work now. However, 95% of Robinson’s consumers were female or minority. 

“How can we change the world with our technology?“

Obtaining a Sociology degree from Thomas Edison State University, in Trenton, NJ, in 2020 amidst the commencement of a global pandemic, with a son entering his senior year of high school, Robinson had an insiders perspective of the pitfalls of COVID-level learning.

Shamrck’s business plan pivoted. Studying to be a mechanical engineer, her son’s high school didn’t offer the correct class for his high level course requirements. Robinson went to the local community college and school board. Resulting in a created a class for her son and the six other students they found with the same issue.

“It was like, wow, how many parents don’t know they can advocate for their kids this way? And how many schools don’t know they need these programs or have the resources behind them. How can we effect the future workforce in a way that gets them what they need not necessarily what we think they need. What are you going to college for? You’re not? What assistance do you get from there? Influencing diversity and equity in the workforce has to go back further than teaching college students and adults, otherwise, the next generation will have the same issues,” Sheffie Robinson said.

“Our goal is to make a community impact.”

Children in Hawaii believe in order to get a good job, they have to leave their home and family to receive proper training. However, Shamrck is repairing and impacting an entire island of overlooked people. The AI workforce development startup is currently integrated in a large high school in Hawaii stimulating economic development, solving long-stemming issues, and providing resources to students all without them having to leave the island.

Repurposing and expanding its preexisting AI functionality, Shamrck is standardizing education, creating metrics and facilitating benchmarks as it relates to current industry standards. Robinson changes lives and impacts communities, many of which are underrepresented and marginalized. Having personal experience in an industry lacking diversity, Robinson is first-handedly shaping the future for the better.

Yet, she’s as humble as she is heroic. “The work is more important than I even thought. People are recognizing. It’s just a highlight to the problem and the effort that is necessary to solve it. To me, that just means I gotta keep going. Were at the very beginning. We haven’t even touched a smidget of the capability of what the platform is or can do,” said Sheffie Robinson in response to her many awards and accolades.

The post Sheffie Robinson, Founder and CEO of Shamrck, Wants More Black Women in AI appeared first on Grit Daily News.

In addition to his expertise in cryptocurrency and software development, Karony is a video game enthusiast, a U.S. veteran, and is passionate about civil rights and social action, disaster and humanitarian relief, economic empowerment, human rights, politics, poverty alleviation, and science and technology. 

1. His first thought in the morning isn’t what you would think. Upon rising, his immediate focus is “How can I be better than I was yesterday?” And, “How do we compete with ourselves 10 years from now?”

2.  His breakfast of choice isn’t health food. “Whipped cream with a side of waffles.” 

3. He’s driven by the vision of a better world. Beyond the idea of making an impact, he wants the impacts to be available to everyone – the idea that someone in a third-world country can use crypto technology to participate in collaboration, exchange of value and innovation as readily as anyone in the most developed parts of the world 

4. Venture Philanthropy is his mantra. More than the idea that you can “make money by doing good” he is propelled by the vision that “philanthropy with an ROI” is the way to make impact soar farther and faster than anything we’ve accomplished or seen in the past. 

5. He’s a decent person. Interestingly, and maybe especially in the world of crypto, people tend to assume that anyone heading up a company is 1) rich, and 2) corrupt. In actual fact, and perhaps especially at the helm of one of the fastest launches in history, he’s a guy with an altruistic vision who’s chosen the harder path. 

6. He’s a nerd. “People don’t realize how much of a nerd I can be. If I had it my way, my house would be completely star wars themed.” 

7. He is motivated by impact. “I kept running into leaders, in both business and other areas of my life, who were focused on the wrong things. Whether it be self-promotion, self-destruction or the ‘bottom line’ – I knew there had to be so much more. I know you need resources to do good in the world, and the entrepreneurial lifestyle appealed to me as the way to achieve them. So I set off to learn, and I’ve learned best by doing.”  

8. He has a soft spot for Africa. “I spent my formative younger years living in Kenya and Ethiopia. I then spent some time studying it for some of my previous positions. There is so much potential there.” A fun fact that inspired him:  Mansa Musa, the ninth ruling Mansa of Mali, (c1280 – c1387) which at that time consisted of the former Ghana Empire is credited by historical sources to have been the richest person to have ever lived. In Cairo, his gift-giving was so impactful it single-handedly created a noticeable depression in the price of gold that lasted for more than a decade and captured the attention of the wider Muslim world (and without the benefit of social media). He helped to establish Timbuktu as the center of Islamic learning. A model for impact, writ large. 

9. He worked for the U.S. Government – why? “I was an analyst. I originally went to Utah for college, and decided it wasn’t for me at the time,” says Karony. He added: “I’m not political. But I joined the military as a chance to do some good and to educate myself through real-world experiences in the mid east, the orient, and all over the world.” 

10. You can hear John Karony and SafeMoon onstage at Grit Daily House during SxSW. March 12 is “SafeMoon Saturday” followed by a VIP Dinner. We invite you to join us live or online. 

The post 10 Things You Didn’t Know about Entrepreneur John Karony appeared first on Grit Daily News.

After the training I was promoted almost instantly.

Today, there are so many AWS, Azure and Google certification courses for architecture training.  Unfortunately, these courses focus only on the tech, the engineering skills.  Workers with only engineering skills often apply for architect jobs but they don’t get hired.  When they don’t get hired, they then ask their certification provider for advice, and the provider sells them more certification training.  This sets in motion a vicious–and expensive!–cycle, as the worker becomes even more technology myopic and fails to learn the critical non-tech skills that he or she lacked in the first place.  We have seen time and time again that when we train the engineers in architecture, leadership, emotional intelligence, presentation skills, executive writing skills, interview skills, and negotiation skills, that person is hired immediately–and often for a much higher salary then they ever dreamed.

The Great Resignation

We’ve heard a lot about the so-called Great Resignation–the four million-plus workers who have been leaving their jobs every month since April. But instead of soul-searching or panicking, let’s look at this trend objectively. When people change employers, they rarely change careers.  It’s kind of like the Who Song: “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.” They move but go nowhere.  But it doesn’t need to be this way.  This trend has created enormous opportunities!

The Great Resignation has predominantly affected mid-career people in both the healthcare and the technology industries. They’ve been working really long hours for at least two years now. And they’re frustrated by the lack of advancement. Meanwhile, in the last few years tech has unleashed some of the greatest opportunities of our lifetimes. Prior to this year, for example, we’d been developing transformative technologies, like cloud computing. And prior to the Great Resignation, there were hundreds of thousands of open cloud computing jobs. Now with people quitting, there are even more jobs waiting to be filled. If you’re a professional, now is the time to get the job you really want. 

Playing Favorites

The job quitters have created opportunities for career advancement. This crisis has created incredible opportunities for both employers and employees.

In many cases, the millions of workers leaving their jobs are usually not the ones getting promoted. In other words, the quitters are often not the employer’s favorites, or they would be getting promoted and not be frustrated.  Many of the people quitting are good, strong, and highly capable people, that are just not the perfect fit to an organization’s culture.  As people leave, the companies can now find the employees they desire most.

Now for those who desire to get promoted in their company, there are many job vacancies.  So this is the optimal time to get promoted.  If someone wants to start a new career, or get a new job, there are openings everywhere.  Given the critical shortage for qualified tech workers, and the vast number of openings, this may be the best time to start a new tech career.  Given the shortages, employers are often willing to look past things such as lack of experience, for the right candidate with the right attitude.  This is the perfect time for career transitions!

Certified Intelligence

Every field has some form of certification or professional licensure.  In tech we have IT certifications.  IT certifications can help build someone’s brand, and build the appearance of credibility.  In fact certifications can really help someone get a job interview so they are part of the getting hired process.  Not all certifications are equal, some can have a big impact on one’s career, others not so much.

Our favorite certifications to improve your career are as follows:

Networking – Cisco Certified Internet Expert (CCIE) and Cisco Certified Networking Professional

Cloud Computing – Azure Expert, the AWS Certified Solution Architect Professional, and the Google Professional Cloud Architect

Security – Certified Information System Security Professional, the Certified

Information Security Manager, the Certified Risk and Information Secured Control, CRISC

Cloud DevOps – AWS DevOps Engineer Professional. 

Emotional Intelligence

Here’s the catch: collecting certifications does not mean getting hired or even promoted. Certification simply proves that someone knows the name of a vendor service and how to configure it. Having the right acronym helps get an interview with the hiring manager, which is necessary. But what’s taught in certifications may be completely different from the job itself.

For example, my company builds and trains cloud architects. Cloud architects are end-to-end system designers that transform a business through technology, which means the cloud architect needs to go to the client site, speak to the management team, the executives and the engineers. They need to be able to conduct a deep dive of the client’s business.

After they analyze the business, they must then craft the technology solution – which may also include workflow redesign, and process redesign. None of this is covered in the certification. So, the process from getting certified to getting hired could be smooth and fast, or it could be non-existent depending upon the field. In many cases, the certificated worker will need substantial training in the fundamentals, i.e. how underlying processes work.

They might also need some business acumen training, as well as some communication skills. They may need presentation skills training. They may need to learn how to negotiate. And so on. The certifications are great for getting somebody an interview. But you still need to learn the soft skills to get hired, which is rarely easy! 

Emotional intelligence is by far the most important one of these. It implies an ability to manage not just your emotions but the emotions of others–i.e. the ability to walk in a room and command respect. Leadership is the ability to lead large teams and make people want to do their jobs minus a heavy hand or a heavy fist. Leadership involves a mastery of negotiation, business acumen and communication. These are the essential skills for both the architect and the executive. Learning them can take a tech career from $100,000 to $400,000 a year and even all the way to the C-suite.

Don’t Waste This Crisis!

When tech professionals, specifically engineers, desire to become architects they often become so focused on the tech part of their job, and miss the key element of architecture.  Architecture is about designing a solution to improve an organization’s business performance, not building the tech.  To design a solution to improve a customer’s business, you need to understand business and the tools to improve a business performance, whether that be new technology, process redesign, or even hiring new staff.

A silver lining of the Great Resignation is a disruption of this career myopia. It should not be wasted.

Indeed, every crisis is an opportunity; the bigger the crisis, the bigger the opportunity. Right now is the time to volunteer for new projects or mentor someone at work. If you don’t know, ask your manager how you can help. Don’t just make a difference; make your goals known. The perception of technology people, unfortunately, is that we are all hardcore-focused engineers who know tech and nothing else.

Yet what the CEO, the ultimate hirer, cares about is increasing shareholder value. His or hers is a very different perspective than the engineer’s. Our first job as trainers is taking the engineer out of that engineering mindset, which means training them in executive communication skills, as well as more general leadership skills: emotional intelligence, of course, but also presentation skills, ROI modeling and business acumen.

Knowing the business, identifying the solutions, designing the solution, then handing it over to the builders to implement the solution is a leadership mindset (an architect mindset). But you can’t get there if you don’t know how to talk to the CEO or if you lack the knowledge base to evaluate the business to begin with.

Essentially, engineers must be taught how to be what we call CXO-relevant. They need to start thinking from the lens of a CEO, a CFO, a CIO, and a CTO. It can be done. Indeed, techies  like myself have been consulting to C-suites for years. We now have the opportunity to move to C-suite positions all the time. But here’s the key: if you focus on the technology, you’ll be stuck in tech, forever. If you focus on how the technology can transform a business’ performance, however, you’ll begin moving up to the C-suite, and fast.

The post Adapt or Die: Why Tech Jobs Are Evolving In The Great Resignation appeared first on Grit Daily News.

More than 40,000 people are set to arrive in Lisbon over the next week to attend the largest tech event to take place since the pandemic began. Portugal, now the most vaccinated country in the world, will host founders, investors and media from all over the world. People will once again be able to connect in person with stars including Amy Poehler and Thierry Henry, tech giants such as Apple’s Craig Federighi and Amazon CTO Werner Vogels, and the next generation giants like Sorare’s Nicolas Julia. 

“We have defied all odds. The return has been way faster than we expected. We didn’t think we’d even get to 10,000 attendees. Everyone has been in lockdown for two years. Very few of us have been able to connect, so the excitement among attendees this year is palpable,” says Paddy Cosgrave, co-founder and CEO at Web Summit. 

The Opening Night, taking place on Monday, November 1, will see Black Lives Matter co-founder Ayọ (fka Opal) Tometi, Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen and Sorare CEO Nicolas Julia take to the stage in the Altice Arena. More than 1,000 speakers including Grit Daily News’ Jordan French and Stewart Rogers, 1,500 journalists and 700 investors will be taking part in the event, alongside 1,250 startups and partners, including global brands such as Google, AWS, Siemens, H&M, Cisco and  eToro. 

Grit Daily’s fourth-annual speaker’s and media dinner with Filecoin and Filecoin Head of Events & Community, Aaron Stanley, will be held November 2 at 7pm. The few remaining tickets are available here.

Web Summit will ensure all appropriate measures, as set by the Portuguese health authorities, are adhered to. Official Covid vaccine certificates will be required to access the venue. Where official certificates cannot be provided, organisers will require a negative PCR test, which will only remain valid for 72 hours, or a negative rapid antigen test, which will remain valid for 48 hours. 

Earlier this week, Web Summit announced that the software in use at the event will be licensed out for use by CES 2022 – the world’s largest trade show – in Las Vegas. 

About Web Summit
Grit Daily has called it the “supernerds’ startup sandbox of the century” and Forbes says Web Summit is “the best tech conference on the planet.” Bloomberg calls it “Davos for geeks;” Politico “the Olympics of tech;” the Guardian “Glastonbury for geeks.” In the words of Sky News, Web Summit is “the world’s most influential tech event,” and the Telegraph calls it the “planet’s best tech conference.” 

The post Web Summit Is Now Sold Out appeared first on Grit Daily News.

Fungible was established in 2015 by the founders Pradeep Sindhu and Bertrand Serlet, a former SVP of Apple.

The company is working to develop a new processor with an architecture and instruction set designed to use information that is involved in data communications between data center infrastructure elements like network switches, storage arrays, and servers.

As a result, the unloading of an ever-increasing burden could allow near-hyper-scale data centers free up tremendous amounts of server CPU resources to run code.

Sindhu commented,

“It has been a great privilege for me to lead this extraordinarily talented group of dedicated individuals to invent the DPU and bring to market industry-leading products that exploit its unique capabilities. The DPU is a new category of microprocessor destined to become a key building block of data centers as the industry embraces data-centric computing.”

In 2019, Fungible raised its last funding with a $200 million C-round, and completed the overall capital raise of $310.9 million.

With the new funds, the startup introduced its first hardware products, which use its first-generation chip, and purchased Cloudistics for DPU-related software composability technology.

According to Sindhu, the company’s first products including its FS1600 storage node, DPU chips, and composable data center software, have gotten good feedback from consumers.

Eric Hayes, who grew Broadcom’s switching silicon business from $100 million to more than a billion dollars a year, has been hired aiming to accelerate the firm’s momentum.

Hayes said,

“My new role allows me to focus on technology – taking the learnings from our first generation of DPUs and applying them to the next, and further enhancing our already industry-leading products.”

Previously, Hayes worked at Inphi for two years, and also served for five years at Marvell finishing, and also worked for more than 13 years at Broadcom.

The post DPU Startup Fungible Names Eric Hayes as New CEO appeared first on Grit Daily News.

The former app head for Facebook has been part of the tech industry for more than 15 years, leading operations and strategy development for some of the most important tech companies in the world.

Fidjo Simo will replace Instacart’s Co-founder Apoorva Mehta, who had served as the startup’s CEO since 2012. Mehta will now serve as Executive Chairman and continue to be involved in the company’s daily activities.

Mehta referred to the reasons behind Simo’s appointment by stating:

“Seven months ago, I invited Fidji to join Instacart’s Board and, since then, I’ve been blown away by her capabilities as a leader. Over the last decade at Facebook, she’s been a part of every big moment in the company’s history including helping it grow from 1,000 to nearly 100,000 people and leading the world’s most popular app. Fidji was also at Facebook during its transition from a private company to the public market and understands what it takes to lead and scale a transformational company like Instacart. I believe that with Fidji at the helm we’ll be in an even stronger position to seize the incredible opportunity in front of us.”

The appointment, which will be effective August 2nd, resulted in Facebook losing one of its highest-ranking female executives at a time when diversity in the workplace is a major concern for the tech giant.

Back in November of 2020, Instacart was valued at $17.8 billion, which increased to $30 after the startup successfully picked the interest of Goldman Sachs Group to lead its IPO. Now, the company is valued at $39 billion, making it the third-largest private startup in the United States.

The delivery startup offers same-day delivery and pickup services across the United States and Canada, the result of having partnered with more than 600 local retailers. The service allows customers to order from nearly 55 thousand stores across more than 5.5 thousand cities, making it available to more than 80% of households in the 2 countries.

The post Fidjo Simo is Now The CEO of Instacart appeared first on Grit Daily News.

The former president of GoDaddy, one of the world’s most important internet companies, will be succeeding Serguei Beloussov. Having founded Acronis back in 2003, Beloussov served as CEO since 2013 and will continue to do so until July 1st of 2021.

Pulvermueller led GoDaddy’s strategic expansion of its hosting, productivity, and security services through resellers and agency partners, while also holding executive leadership roles as CEO of Host Europe GmbH and Group CEO of Host Europe Group (HEG).

He talked to Grit News about the announcement of his appointment by stating:

“I feel we have one of the best company cultures in the tech industry, which is one of the main reasons I accepted this new role. Serguei has done a tremendous job of instilling a startup company culture into a large global business – an initiative I plan to continue. It truly feels like a family.”

The appointment comes at a time when Acrovis is preparing to expand its business, having received more than $250 million in its latest investment round which included the participation of firms such as CVC Capital Partners VII. The company is now valued at more than $2.5 billion

Back in May, Beloussov said that the company was looking into different alternatives to provide its shareholders with liquidity, mentioning an IPO, M&A, or dividends as a viable option.

When asked about this by Grit Daily, Pulvermueller said:

“Mergers and acquisitions have always been something that Acronis explores when the opportunity is right, as is evident by our recent acquisitions of Synapsys, DeviceLock, and CyberLynx. In regards to future plans, I aim to accelerate growth through our partners and reseller channels, as I believe those are key to success. As for an IPO, the company is growing rapidly and the value of the company is increasing. We will continue to consider all options that accelerate the completion of our product vision around the five vectors of cyber protection: Safety, Accessibility, Privacy, Authenticity, and Security.”

Bellussov is expected to join the Board of Directors as a member, as well as serve as Chief Research Officer for the cybersecurity startup he founded and is the largest shareholder.

The post Cybersecurity Unicorn Acronis Appoints Former GoDaddy President As CEO appeared first on Grit Daily News.

Throughout his life, Anderson has had a series of epiphanies that changed his course, some of which came about randomly. When he was working a job that required a lot of travel and came home to find that his golden retriever had urinated on the couch, he realized, “If you made your golden retriever mad you might be doing life wrong.” After that, he decided to look for something that would not require so much travel. Since Anderson had worked for various cybersecurity firms, a friend suggested he start a cybersecurity company of his own, and promised to be his first client. Over 13 years, he grew the business, Palmetto Security Group, from one to 25 employees. 

He had thrown himself into the role of CEO, but eventually his brother and the president of the company told him that his marriage was on the rocks and forced him to realize that things in his life as a whole were not going well, so they fired him. Anderson says, “They loved me enough to keep paying me and so I fired myself, and I didn’t show up to the office for three years and they continued to run the company. It was a huge identity crisis because I thought I was a big deal, and I thought I was the one doing all the work and turns out, they did better without me. It was really humbling but also super cool, because I learned an important lesson.”

Now, Anderson consults company CEOs at certain stages of growth about how to successfully fire themselves without losing their sense of self worth and identity. He says, “Part of the game of firing yourself and not screwing it up is being mentally supported and prepared on how to do it in a graceful way that doesn’t destroy your company.” Anderson doesn’t believe that every CEO should fire themselves, but those whose companies are at a certain stage of growth, when they feel they have taken the company as far as they possibly can, and before they start to feel burnt out.

The latest company he founded, Hook Security, focuses on psychological security as a way to tackle cybersecurity threats in the workplace. Myriad companies have welcomed his new approach to cybersecurity education, which uses humor instead of fear to educate employees about cybercrime. Anderson is all about personal mindset when approaching any endeavor. His father was in the Air Force for 20 years, and pioneered the fields of behavioral science, bioethics and psychological warfare. That spurred Anderson’s fascination with emotional intelligence. He believes that long-lasting cybersecurity protection starts with a healthy work environment, where employees do not fear retribution for coming forward with cybersecurity concerns.

The pandemic has woken a lot of people up to the role of work in their lives, and to the state of their mental health. As so many people’s jobs moved online, it also gave cyber criminals a lot more opportunity to infiltrate company systems. Adam Anderson understands the importance of maintaining a healthy mental state, whether to spare employees from the repercussions of your identity crisis, or to detect cyber threats. He says, “I really champion entrepreneurship as a way of doing well—doing good—in a sustainable way.”

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