Q&A with Mark Bembridge, Founder at Smartology

Mark Bembridge, Founder at Smartology, has worked on the creation of semantic recognition platforms for at least 15 years. He has a wealth of AdTech experience that he brings to bear in his work at Smartology, helping them grow globally and continue to succeed.

While your product/solution remains key, if you don’t have the right people around the table with the necessary skills and experience, you’ll rarely fly.

MEDIA 7: Can you please take us through your professional journey to establishing and making Smartology the grand success that it is today?
MARK BEMBRIDGE:
Starting any new business is always a rollercoaster ride from the outset. And like climbing a mountain, it doesn’t get easier as you expand…just steeper and riskier! I was lucky in that Smartology was the third business I have been involved in from early inception and experience counts. The most important lesson for evolving from a start-up to an early-stage business is to hire experienced and like-minded professionals in key roles at the right moments for the business, who can help support and grow critically important areas as you scale. While your product/solution remains key, if you don’t have the right people around the table with the necessary skills and experience, you’ll rarely fly.

Smartology started out in 2010 using AI to personalize publisher content and after two years saw an opportunity with the rise of branded content within social media, to unify branded content in ad creatives alongside contextually relevant publisher editorial. This was a more commercially viable and scalable offering than working exclusively with publisher content. As we scaled our proposition across global premium publishers, our B2B brand client base increasingly grew internationally with the US becoming our largest market in 2018. We evolved our SmartMatch solution to run via programmatic advertising channels during 2019 and more recently this year via a B2B SaaS platform we have been able to scale at speed and add new clients in broader B2C verticals. But it’s all ultimately thanks to the collective team and their hard work that have taken us to this exciting stage in the company’s continued growth.

M7: Smartology initially worked with premium publishers like The Financial Times and The Independent to help them improve how they target editorial content on their websites. How did you increase free-to-paid conversion rates for these publishers?
MB: Our work with the Independent and FT.com when we started almost a decade ago contributed to very significant increases in traffic, average page views, and consumption of news content on their sites. By contextualizing news articles for example in ‘Recommended Reads’ alongside relevant articles on The Independent we increased traffic by 21% across their site as a whole. Our award-winning personalized news application for the Financial Times saw more users read personalized ‘My News’ within the app than consumed articles via the ‘Home’ page.


Brands producing the best content will drive the highest engagement when contextualizing their content in the right time and place.


M7: What is your approach to market research, both customer and competitor focused, in a data-driven advertising industry?
MB:
At Smartology we connect content and context, so we aren’t interested in user data collected via cookies or demographic sources. In an audience data obsessed advertising industry, we are therefore unusual in that we focus on researching brands and scoring the quality of their branded content. Brands producing the best content will drive the highest engagement when contextualizing their content in the right time and place. Given we have always been market leaders in terms of our next generation deep learning approach to content and context, while we do spend time on competitor market research to keep our product development ahead of the game, the main market research focus remains laser focused on branded content quality across our target customer base.

M7: With SmartMatch, how do you ensure contextual targeting has a greater user engagement for your clients?
MB:
Step one is making sure you have reliable base technology. With continuing advances in deep learning, we’ve made several significant changes to our underlying tech to be able to derive greater accuracy across different verticals and languages since 2020. Context is often touted within a company’s services but when looking under the hood, the technology is flimsy at best, relying on simple keyword matching or basic taxonomies which are limited in the granularity of inference and therefore accuracy of contextual targeting. When done properly context can drive tremendous impact.

But contextual targeting also depends on client’s producing quality branded content and so it is only viable as the right solution for a brand where they are seeking to promote their brand using thought leadership in editorial, video or audio formats. When next generation contextual technology is combined with quality branded content the final step is high impact engagement and we are always thrilled to hear brands, agencies and publishers reporting much higher performance uplift than more traditional audience targeting techniques are able to achieve.


I anticipate that people will not want to continue to be bombarded by intrusive and invasive ad targeting based on third parties harvesting their user data through nefarious means.


M7: What marketing channels do you see as the most promising given your target customers?
MB:
At Smartology we like to practice what we preach so are about to launch campaigns on our own newly launched SmartMatch SaaS platform to promote our key benefits and values; privacy first contextual targeting, brand safety and suitability, transparent pricing and premium quality publisher partnerships. Alongside SmartMatch we will also use LinkedIn to supplement our external positioning.

M7: In the post Covid-19 era, how has advertising and marketing changed? What is the immediate future for content marketing?
MB:
Harvard Business Review published a great piece recently titled ’10 Truths About Marketing After the Pandemic’ where they highlighted several very valuable points to consider on this topic. But the one that really stands out for me is that in the past brands have stood behind great products, but today brands need to stand behind great values. I don’t see marketeers reverting to the old ‘normal’ and they will now be faced with a new set of rules, where factors like sustainability, trust, ethical sourcing, and social responsibility are increasingly important to how consumers select their products and services. This is already being demonstrated by clients increasingly focusing their branded content around these key values.

M7: How do you anticipate what people will want?
MB:
The inverse of this question is perhaps a better place to start. I anticipate that people will not want to continue to be bombarded by intrusive and invasive ad targeting based on third parties harvesting their user data through nefarious means. But I do anticipate that adding genuine value to someone’s online journey by offering insight from a trusted brand in the moment that individual is interested in reading about that subject will build stronger bonds for that brand with their key audiences and ultimately drive awareness and tangible commercial results. And all without any user data exploitation whatsoever!

ABOUT SMARTOLOGY

Smartology’s advanced media B2B SaaS Platform, SmartMatch, solves many of the key challenges the industry is grappling with including privacy, brand protection, and transparency. It is a world leader in connecting branded content with contextual targeting to drive engagement uplift across native display campaigns.

More THOUGHT LEADERS

Q&A with Rashim Mogha, Founder - eWOW, Keynote Speaker, Startup Advisor, Women in Tech Evangelist, Author, Podcaster

Media 7 | May 25, 2020

Rashim Mogha, Founder - eWOW, Keynote Speaker, Startup Advisor, Women in Tech Evangelist, Author, and Podcaster empowers professionals by articulating complex technology capabilities into crisp, clear, and attainable business benefits. Her extensive career portfolio includes leadership roles in companies such as Oracle, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and VMware where she built high-performing teams to support over $2 billion businesses. A recipient of Women Empowerment: Game Changer, Woman of the Year, and Silicon Valley Woman of Influence awards, Rashim has been a keynote speaker at global conferences and organizations. MEDIA 7: Could you tell us about your role at eWOW and the event properties you are responsible for? RM: eWOW (empowered Women of the World) is an intellectual platform that empowers women to discover, visualize, and actualize their success. The platform comprises of podcasts, webinars, in-person and online events, the virtual incubator program and our eWOW Virtual Summit. Being the founder of eWOW, I am responsible for all these events. M7: With most planned events going online, what do you think of the future events? Will you buckle up for a permanent change into virtual events? RM: Well, we had planned for the eWOW Virtual Summit to be an online event, even before COVID-19. Our mission is to enable women globally and you can’t really do that without hosting a global event. I have been an enablement leader for over 20 years and webinars and virtual events are not new to me. I think it is time now that events move to an online format to be inclusive. The reach of online events is huge, we had attendees from all 3 timezones in the US, Asia, Europe and even from Australia at the eWOW Virtual Summit. Infact our eWOW Virtual Incubator program that we launched is also a 4 week online program. That said, there is merit in in-person events and those won’t go away. I do however see online events becoming more popular in the future. ...

Read More

Q&A with Erik Newton, Vice President of Marketing at Milestone Inc.

Media 7 | October 12, 2021

Erik Newton, Vice President of Marketing at Milestone Inc., is a full-stack marketing leader driving acquisition, engagement, and retention from messaging to product to acquisition and through renewal. He is a marketing thought leader with more than 150 blogs and pieces published. Erik has managed marketing teams, covering product marketing, acquisition, retention, media, mobile, advocacy, display, search, affiliates, e-mail, web development, and site content management, e-commerce, multivariate testing, and sales forecasting and budgeting. He is also the proud author of the book, Hack the Corporate Fast Track: Accelerate your corporate maturity....

Read More

Rocket.Chat's Bruno Bin believes that good leadership plays a vital role in making a sales and marketing strategy successful.

Media 7 | March 23, 2022

Bruno Bin, VP of Marketing at Rocket.Chat takes us through Rocket.Chat's innovate new features and their remote work culture. Read on to know more about his thoughts on the recent paradigm shift in the B2B marketplace, benchmarks of a successful marketing and sales strategy in his latest interview with Media 7....

Read More

Q&A with Rashim Mogha, Founder - eWOW, Keynote Speaker, Startup Advisor, Women in Tech Evangelist, Author, Podcaster

Media 7 | May 25, 2020

Rashim Mogha, Founder - eWOW, Keynote Speaker, Startup Advisor, Women in Tech Evangelist, Author, and Podcaster empowers professionals by articulating complex technology capabilities into crisp, clear, and attainable business benefits. Her extensive career portfolio includes leadership roles in companies such as Oracle, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and VMware where she built high-performing teams to support over $2 billion businesses. A recipient of Women Empowerment: Game Changer, Woman of the Year, and Silicon Valley Woman of Influence awards, Rashim has been a keynote speaker at global conferences and organizations. MEDIA 7: Could you tell us about your role at eWOW and the event properties you are responsible for? RM: eWOW (empowered Women of the World) is an intellectual platform that empowers women to discover, visualize, and actualize their success. The platform comprises of podcasts, webinars, in-person and online events, the virtual incubator program and our eWOW Virtual Summit. Being the founder of eWOW, I am responsible for all these events. M7: With most planned events going online, what do you think of the future events? Will you buckle up for a permanent change into virtual events? RM: Well, we had planned for the eWOW Virtual Summit to be an online event, even before COVID-19. Our mission is to enable women globally and you can’t really do that without hosting a global event. I have been an enablement leader for over 20 years and webinars and virtual events are not new to me. I think it is time now that events move to an online format to be inclusive. The reach of online events is huge, we had attendees from all 3 timezones in the US, Asia, Europe and even from Australia at the eWOW Virtual Summit. Infact our eWOW Virtual Incubator program that we launched is also a 4 week online program. That said, there is merit in in-person events and those won’t go away. I do however see online events becoming more popular in the future. ...

Read More

Q&A with Erik Newton, Vice President of Marketing at Milestone Inc.

Media 7 | October 12, 2021

Erik Newton, Vice President of Marketing at Milestone Inc., is a full-stack marketing leader driving acquisition, engagement, and retention from messaging to product to acquisition and through renewal. He is a marketing thought leader with more than 150 blogs and pieces published. Erik has managed marketing teams, covering product marketing, acquisition, retention, media, mobile, advocacy, display, search, affiliates, e-mail, web development, and site content management, e-commerce, multivariate testing, and sales forecasting and budgeting. He is also the proud author of the book, Hack the Corporate Fast Track: Accelerate your corporate maturity....

Read More

Rocket.Chat's Bruno Bin believes that good leadership plays a vital role in making a sales and marketing strategy successful.

Media 7 | March 23, 2022

Bruno Bin, VP of Marketing at Rocket.Chat takes us through Rocket.Chat's innovate new features and their remote work culture. Read on to know more about his thoughts on the recent paradigm shift in the B2B marketplace, benchmarks of a successful marketing and sales strategy in his latest interview with Media 7....

Read More

Related News

Channel Partnerships

HiddenLayer Launches Channel Partner Program to Secure AI and MLOps Lifecycle

PR Newswire | January 25, 2024

HiddenLayer, the leading security provider for artificial intelligence (AI) models and assets, today announced a new partner program to empower enterprises with complete AI protection including rapid threat detection and security across the entire MLOps lifecycle. "Our Channel Partner Program is designed to drive innovation by allowing partners to introduce security for AI to their customers, helping to educate more businesses about a new threat landscape," said Rebecca Cahak, Head of Channel, HiddenLayer. "By leveraging this new offering, partners will ensure margin and deal protection, leverage incentives, access flexible and easy-to-use training tools, demo environments, and proof of value tools to drive success." The Channel Partner Program allows partners to seamlessly onboard while providing predictable, transparent pricing and flexible licensing models, and a first-of-its-kind unobtrusive, automated, scalable Artificial Intelligence Security (AISec) Platform. Partners will be able to educate customers on a new threat landscape and provide the solutions they need to protect their AI, and competitive edge, build stronger relationships, and establish their team as AI leaders for their customers. "The HiddenLayer line of products is an important component in our AI security service offerings," said Matt Keating, Head of AI Security at Booz Allen Hamilton. "We are excited to continue to strengthen our strategic partnership with the HiddenLayer team, furthering our ability for joint strategy and co-solutioning." HiddenLayer aims to optimize its current partner network, enhancing it through streamlined support and collaborative offerings. There will be three tiers for the program, Covert, Concealed, and Clandestine, so customers can work together with HiddenLayer to achieve the best-shared outcome. Each tier includes pricing discounts, free online training for sales, and technical enablement and security for AI marketing partnerships. Concealed includes free on-site training and performance incentive programs for extra financial success. Clandestine includes everything previously mentioned, with the addition of account mapping, executive security research briefings, and more. "By joining HiddenLayer's partner program, we're enabling customers to safeguard against constantly evolving cybersecurity risks," said Rick Echevarria, Vice President and General Manager, Intel Security Center of Excellence. "We are now able to provide a scalable security solution for AI and help more businesses foster the acceleration of safer AI adoption." Additionally, HiddenLayer recently announced that CRN®, a brand of The Channel Company, named HiddenLayer to its 2023 Stellar Startups list. This annual list, previously known as CRN Emerging Vendors, recognizes fast-rising technology manufacturers committed to delivering leading-edge solutions that propel innovation and growth in the IT channel. Learn more about HiddenLayer's Channel Partner Program here. About HiddenLayer HiddenLayer, a Gartner-recognized AI Application Security company, helps enterprises safeguard the machine learning models behind their most important products with a comprehensive security platform. Only HiddenLayer offers turnkey security for AI that does not add unnecessary complexity to models and does not require access to raw data and algorithms. Founded in March of 2022 by experienced security and ML professionals, HiddenLayer is based in Austin, Texas. For additional information, including product updates and the latest research reports, visit www.hiddenlayer.com.

Read More

Channel Partnerships

FiscalNote Announces Strategic Commercial Partnership to Accelerate Company’s Global AI Co-pilot Program

FiscalNote | December 11, 2023

FiscalNote Holdings, Inc. ("FiscalNote"), a leading AI-driven provider of policy and global intelligence, today announced a commercial partnership with Era Global Technologies, LLC (“Era”), a technology-focused investment firm backed by leading, closely-held family enterprises. This marks continued support from an early-stage investor and strategic advisor to the Company who has been closely aligned with FiscalNote for over five years. Era’s dedicated value-creation platform, Era Catalyst, will be a foundational channel partner, providing distribution support for FiscalNote’s recently-announced AI Co-pilot program. Era will provide referral services into their extensive network to accelerate sales and introduce FiscalNote’s proprietary AI products in the legal and regulatory space to several of the world’s largest conglomerates. Through these referrals, FiscalNote will drive further AI innovation augmented by input from Era’s network of family-owned enterprises, including large European and Asia-based multinational chemical and consumer goods conglomerates which operate across 19 countries and 25 industries. The collaboration is expected to enable FiscalNote to accelerate its ongoing growth and expansion strategy, advance new product development, and optimize sales and marketing efforts. In connection with the agreement, Era’s investment vehicle, EGT–East, is investing $5.5 million in FiscalNote in the form of a convertible subordinated promissory note, with the potential for up to an additional $2.0 million. The strategic investment will, in part, fund further capital expenditures and development of FiscalNote’s next generation of AI Co-Pilot capabilities, inclusive of deployments into Era’s network of global companies. The terms of the promissory note are further described in FiscalNote’s Current Report on Form 8-K filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on December 11, 2023. “We are delighted to have Era as a foundational partner in our mission to extend the power of AI-driven policy and global intelligence to businesses and organizations around the world,” said Josh Resnik, President and COO, FiscalNote. “This investment is a testament to the industry-leading and innovative nature of our technology and our potential to transform the way businesses operate by leveraging our longstanding pedigree and leadership in AI. We are especially excited that this investment will galvanize and accelerate our product development and go-to-market strategy for our AI Co-pilot program, which is positioned to revolutionize the legal, regulatory, and legislative domain. Our Co-pilot program marks yet another development in FiscalNote’s ongoing leadership as we innovate and bring to market more AI-enabled solutions aimed at the legal and regulatory sector, while providing incremental growth opportunities to complement our proven, durable base of recurring revenue solutions.” FiscalNote’s AI Co-pilots are new AI solutions customized for policy and risk management professionals to facilitate their day-to-day work such as key tasks related to legislation, advocacy, constituent communications, regulatory responses, and global risk analysis. FiscalNote’s Co-pilots will combine the power of large language models, FiscalNote’s trusted industry leading policy and geopolitical data, and customers’ data, all in a seamless workflow to provide intelligent assistance for the world’s most important decision makers. By deploying FiscalNote’s AI Co-pilots, customers will be able to automate tasks, improve decision-making, and increase productivity and efficiencies – driving value and results across the enterprise. About FiscalNote FiscalNote (NYSE: NOTE) is a leader in policy and global intelligence. By uniquely combining data, technology, and insights, FiscalNote empowers customers to manage political and business risk. Since 2013, FiscalNote has pioneered technology that delivers critical insights and the tools to turn them into action. Home to CQ, FrontierView, Oxford Analytica, VoterVoice, and many other industry-leading brands, FiscalNote serves approximately 5,000 customers worldwide with global offices in North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia. To learn more about FiscalNote and its family of brands, visit FiscalNote.com and follow @FiscalNote. About Era Global Technologies Founded by Jasper Lau, Era is a global investment firm backed by leading closely-held family enterprises across 19 countries and 25 industries. Era harnesses the collective knowledge, corporate intelligence, and strategic capital of the firm's families to build and back transformative, category-defining technology companies.

Read More

Channel Partnerships

Ingram Micro Empowers Channel Partners to Innovate, Grow and Create More Value with AWS

Ingram Micro | December 12, 2023

Ingram Micro is enabling thousands of channel partners worldwide to do more with more as a Premier Amazon Web Services (AWS) Consulting Partner and an award-winning Geo and Global AWS Distributor Partner of the Year recipient. Demonstrating its deep and wide technical knowledge and professional services expertise, Ingram Micro has been honored by AWS with two high profile wins – 2023 Global Distributor Partner of the Year and North America Distributor Partner of the Year. Both awards recognize Ingram Micro for playing a key role in helping channel partners worldwide accelerate success and move businesses to AWS through all phases of complex migration projects, including discovery, planning, migration, and operations. The North America honor is a back-to-back win for team Ingram Micro. Announced during AWS re:Invent 2023, the Geo and Global AWS Distributor Partner of the Year Awards shine the spotlight on Ingram Micro’s high-performing team and continued investments in advanced AWS technical talent, professional services and cloud migration competencies. “Through a strategic alliance with AWS, Ingram Micro has played a pivotal role in empowering Keystone Technologies to take the lead in healthcare EHR data solutions,” says Andy Belval, Chief Revenue Officer, Keystone Technologies. “Ingram Micro’s expertise in cloud solutions, coupled with a dedicated relational partner approach, not only enhances their own business value but also significantly contributes to Keystone Technologies’ ability to deliver better outcomes and cost savings for our healthcare customers.” In 2023, Ingram Micro’s AWS business continued to grow with more and more partners leveraging Ingram Micro to progress through their AWS Partner Network (APN) journey. Ingram Micro navigates AWS partners through APN programs while also expanding their services capabilities including assessment, design, deployment, and management of cloud migrations with greater speed. Additional differentiators to Ingram Micro’s success with AWS channel partners include its wide and deep executive relationships, as well as its Center of Excellence, strategic acquisitions of technical talent, and expansion of its Professional Services portfolio as it relates to cloud and migration services. “Ingram Micro’s early adoption of Cloud, understanding of an entrepreneur's needs and focus on the success for us to become one of their largest AWS resellers is what we were looking for in a distribution partner to grow our business and improve our value in the eyes of our customers,” says Dao Jensen, CEO of Oak Rocket. Ingram Micro provides channel partners access to experienced talent and professional services that can help them accelerate the customer cloud adoption journey including the technical personnel, tools, education, technology, and technical support needed to ideate, deploy, and manage AWS solutions. “AWS is a gold mine of opportunity for an MSP yet remains a heavy lift for most,” says Duncan Robinson, vice president, growth partnerships, Ingram Micro. “We’re here to help our channel partners optimize their sales cycle and effectively design, deploy, and manage AWS solutions that improve the customer’s experience, performance, reliability, and agility, while reducing the total cost of ownership.” Ingram Micro’s long-standing and successful relationship with AWS includes earning several AWS Competency and AWS Service Delivery designations in recent years, including being the first global distributor to earn the AWS Migration Competency and more recently being awarded the AWS Data & Analytics Competency. Other designations include the AWS Cloud Management Tools (CMT) Competency, the AWS DevOps Consulting Competency, and the AWS Config Service Delivery designation. “The experience that Mxmart has had working with Ingram Micro as a strategic partner of AWS has been fundamental for our growth,” says Dario Gomez, CEO Mxmart Solutions. “The support we’ve received technically, commercially, and via programs has added invaluable strength to our company.” About Ingram Micro Ingram Micro is the business behind the world’s brands with the ability to reach nearly 90 percent of the world’s population. Our diverse solutions portfolio includes advanced and specialty solutions, cloud, mobility, and commercial/consumer technologies, while enabling a global circular economy with full-service IT Asset Disposition and reverse logistics and repair services. Leveraging investments in technical, financial, and marketing resources, Ingram Micro helps customers run their businesses better and grow their technology practices faster. Ingram Micro operates in 59 countries and reaches close to 200 countries. We have approximately 26,000 associates committed to providing our more than 161,000 customers and 1,500 vendor partners worldwide with a superior experience. Our fully digital, AI-driven business platform, known as Ingram Micro Xvantage™, eliminates the friction of doing business in IT and allows our customers to have a more insightful experience both buying and managing technology. We are also fully committed to being a global steward with world-class ESG practices.

Read More

Channel Partnerships

HiddenLayer Launches Channel Partner Program to Secure AI and MLOps Lifecycle

PR Newswire | January 25, 2024

HiddenLayer, the leading security provider for artificial intelligence (AI) models and assets, today announced a new partner program to empower enterprises with complete AI protection including rapid threat detection and security across the entire MLOps lifecycle. "Our Channel Partner Program is designed to drive innovation by allowing partners to introduce security for AI to their customers, helping to educate more businesses about a new threat landscape," said Rebecca Cahak, Head of Channel, HiddenLayer. "By leveraging this new offering, partners will ensure margin and deal protection, leverage incentives, access flexible and easy-to-use training tools, demo environments, and proof of value tools to drive success." The Channel Partner Program allows partners to seamlessly onboard while providing predictable, transparent pricing and flexible licensing models, and a first-of-its-kind unobtrusive, automated, scalable Artificial Intelligence Security (AISec) Platform. Partners will be able to educate customers on a new threat landscape and provide the solutions they need to protect their AI, and competitive edge, build stronger relationships, and establish their team as AI leaders for their customers. "The HiddenLayer line of products is an important component in our AI security service offerings," said Matt Keating, Head of AI Security at Booz Allen Hamilton. "We are excited to continue to strengthen our strategic partnership with the HiddenLayer team, furthering our ability for joint strategy and co-solutioning." HiddenLayer aims to optimize its current partner network, enhancing it through streamlined support and collaborative offerings. There will be three tiers for the program, Covert, Concealed, and Clandestine, so customers can work together with HiddenLayer to achieve the best-shared outcome. Each tier includes pricing discounts, free online training for sales, and technical enablement and security for AI marketing partnerships. Concealed includes free on-site training and performance incentive programs for extra financial success. Clandestine includes everything previously mentioned, with the addition of account mapping, executive security research briefings, and more. "By joining HiddenLayer's partner program, we're enabling customers to safeguard against constantly evolving cybersecurity risks," said Rick Echevarria, Vice President and General Manager, Intel Security Center of Excellence. "We are now able to provide a scalable security solution for AI and help more businesses foster the acceleration of safer AI adoption." Additionally, HiddenLayer recently announced that CRN®, a brand of The Channel Company, named HiddenLayer to its 2023 Stellar Startups list. This annual list, previously known as CRN Emerging Vendors, recognizes fast-rising technology manufacturers committed to delivering leading-edge solutions that propel innovation and growth in the IT channel. Learn more about HiddenLayer's Channel Partner Program here. About HiddenLayer HiddenLayer, a Gartner-recognized AI Application Security company, helps enterprises safeguard the machine learning models behind their most important products with a comprehensive security platform. Only HiddenLayer offers turnkey security for AI that does not add unnecessary complexity to models and does not require access to raw data and algorithms. Founded in March of 2022 by experienced security and ML professionals, HiddenLayer is based in Austin, Texas. For additional information, including product updates and the latest research reports, visit www.hiddenlayer.com.

Read More

Channel Partnerships

FiscalNote Announces Strategic Commercial Partnership to Accelerate Company’s Global AI Co-pilot Program

FiscalNote | December 11, 2023

FiscalNote Holdings, Inc. ("FiscalNote"), a leading AI-driven provider of policy and global intelligence, today announced a commercial partnership with Era Global Technologies, LLC (“Era”), a technology-focused investment firm backed by leading, closely-held family enterprises. This marks continued support from an early-stage investor and strategic advisor to the Company who has been closely aligned with FiscalNote for over five years. Era’s dedicated value-creation platform, Era Catalyst, will be a foundational channel partner, providing distribution support for FiscalNote’s recently-announced AI Co-pilot program. Era will provide referral services into their extensive network to accelerate sales and introduce FiscalNote’s proprietary AI products in the legal and regulatory space to several of the world’s largest conglomerates. Through these referrals, FiscalNote will drive further AI innovation augmented by input from Era’s network of family-owned enterprises, including large European and Asia-based multinational chemical and consumer goods conglomerates which operate across 19 countries and 25 industries. The collaboration is expected to enable FiscalNote to accelerate its ongoing growth and expansion strategy, advance new product development, and optimize sales and marketing efforts. In connection with the agreement, Era’s investment vehicle, EGT–East, is investing $5.5 million in FiscalNote in the form of a convertible subordinated promissory note, with the potential for up to an additional $2.0 million. The strategic investment will, in part, fund further capital expenditures and development of FiscalNote’s next generation of AI Co-Pilot capabilities, inclusive of deployments into Era’s network of global companies. The terms of the promissory note are further described in FiscalNote’s Current Report on Form 8-K filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on December 11, 2023. “We are delighted to have Era as a foundational partner in our mission to extend the power of AI-driven policy and global intelligence to businesses and organizations around the world,” said Josh Resnik, President and COO, FiscalNote. “This investment is a testament to the industry-leading and innovative nature of our technology and our potential to transform the way businesses operate by leveraging our longstanding pedigree and leadership in AI. We are especially excited that this investment will galvanize and accelerate our product development and go-to-market strategy for our AI Co-pilot program, which is positioned to revolutionize the legal, regulatory, and legislative domain. Our Co-pilot program marks yet another development in FiscalNote’s ongoing leadership as we innovate and bring to market more AI-enabled solutions aimed at the legal and regulatory sector, while providing incremental growth opportunities to complement our proven, durable base of recurring revenue solutions.” FiscalNote’s AI Co-pilots are new AI solutions customized for policy and risk management professionals to facilitate their day-to-day work such as key tasks related to legislation, advocacy, constituent communications, regulatory responses, and global risk analysis. FiscalNote’s Co-pilots will combine the power of large language models, FiscalNote’s trusted industry leading policy and geopolitical data, and customers’ data, all in a seamless workflow to provide intelligent assistance for the world’s most important decision makers. By deploying FiscalNote’s AI Co-pilots, customers will be able to automate tasks, improve decision-making, and increase productivity and efficiencies – driving value and results across the enterprise. About FiscalNote FiscalNote (NYSE: NOTE) is a leader in policy and global intelligence. By uniquely combining data, technology, and insights, FiscalNote empowers customers to manage political and business risk. Since 2013, FiscalNote has pioneered technology that delivers critical insights and the tools to turn them into action. Home to CQ, FrontierView, Oxford Analytica, VoterVoice, and many other industry-leading brands, FiscalNote serves approximately 5,000 customers worldwide with global offices in North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia. To learn more about FiscalNote and its family of brands, visit FiscalNote.com and follow @FiscalNote. About Era Global Technologies Founded by Jasper Lau, Era is a global investment firm backed by leading closely-held family enterprises across 19 countries and 25 industries. Era harnesses the collective knowledge, corporate intelligence, and strategic capital of the firm's families to build and back transformative, category-defining technology companies.

Read More

Channel Partnerships

Ingram Micro Empowers Channel Partners to Innovate, Grow and Create More Value with AWS

Ingram Micro | December 12, 2023

Ingram Micro is enabling thousands of channel partners worldwide to do more with more as a Premier Amazon Web Services (AWS) Consulting Partner and an award-winning Geo and Global AWS Distributor Partner of the Year recipient. Demonstrating its deep and wide technical knowledge and professional services expertise, Ingram Micro has been honored by AWS with two high profile wins – 2023 Global Distributor Partner of the Year and North America Distributor Partner of the Year. Both awards recognize Ingram Micro for playing a key role in helping channel partners worldwide accelerate success and move businesses to AWS through all phases of complex migration projects, including discovery, planning, migration, and operations. The North America honor is a back-to-back win for team Ingram Micro. Announced during AWS re:Invent 2023, the Geo and Global AWS Distributor Partner of the Year Awards shine the spotlight on Ingram Micro’s high-performing team and continued investments in advanced AWS technical talent, professional services and cloud migration competencies. “Through a strategic alliance with AWS, Ingram Micro has played a pivotal role in empowering Keystone Technologies to take the lead in healthcare EHR data solutions,” says Andy Belval, Chief Revenue Officer, Keystone Technologies. “Ingram Micro’s expertise in cloud solutions, coupled with a dedicated relational partner approach, not only enhances their own business value but also significantly contributes to Keystone Technologies’ ability to deliver better outcomes and cost savings for our healthcare customers.” In 2023, Ingram Micro’s AWS business continued to grow with more and more partners leveraging Ingram Micro to progress through their AWS Partner Network (APN) journey. Ingram Micro navigates AWS partners through APN programs while also expanding their services capabilities including assessment, design, deployment, and management of cloud migrations with greater speed. Additional differentiators to Ingram Micro’s success with AWS channel partners include its wide and deep executive relationships, as well as its Center of Excellence, strategic acquisitions of technical talent, and expansion of its Professional Services portfolio as it relates to cloud and migration services. “Ingram Micro’s early adoption of Cloud, understanding of an entrepreneur's needs and focus on the success for us to become one of their largest AWS resellers is what we were looking for in a distribution partner to grow our business and improve our value in the eyes of our customers,” says Dao Jensen, CEO of Oak Rocket. Ingram Micro provides channel partners access to experienced talent and professional services that can help them accelerate the customer cloud adoption journey including the technical personnel, tools, education, technology, and technical support needed to ideate, deploy, and manage AWS solutions. “AWS is a gold mine of opportunity for an MSP yet remains a heavy lift for most,” says Duncan Robinson, vice president, growth partnerships, Ingram Micro. “We’re here to help our channel partners optimize their sales cycle and effectively design, deploy, and manage AWS solutions that improve the customer’s experience, performance, reliability, and agility, while reducing the total cost of ownership.” Ingram Micro’s long-standing and successful relationship with AWS includes earning several AWS Competency and AWS Service Delivery designations in recent years, including being the first global distributor to earn the AWS Migration Competency and more recently being awarded the AWS Data & Analytics Competency. Other designations include the AWS Cloud Management Tools (CMT) Competency, the AWS DevOps Consulting Competency, and the AWS Config Service Delivery designation. “The experience that Mxmart has had working with Ingram Micro as a strategic partner of AWS has been fundamental for our growth,” says Dario Gomez, CEO Mxmart Solutions. “The support we’ve received technically, commercially, and via programs has added invaluable strength to our company.” About Ingram Micro Ingram Micro is the business behind the world’s brands with the ability to reach nearly 90 percent of the world’s population. Our diverse solutions portfolio includes advanced and specialty solutions, cloud, mobility, and commercial/consumer technologies, while enabling a global circular economy with full-service IT Asset Disposition and reverse logistics and repair services. Leveraging investments in technical, financial, and marketing resources, Ingram Micro helps customers run their businesses better and grow their technology practices faster. Ingram Micro operates in 59 countries and reaches close to 200 countries. We have approximately 26,000 associates committed to providing our more than 161,000 customers and 1,500 vendor partners worldwide with a superior experience. Our fully digital, AI-driven business platform, known as Ingram Micro Xvantage™, eliminates the friction of doing business in IT and allows our customers to have a more insightful experience both buying and managing technology. We are also fully committed to being a global steward with world-class ESG practices.

Read More

Spotlight

Smartology

Smartology’s advanced media B2B SaaS Platform, SmartMatch, solves many of the key challenges the industry is grappling with including privacy, brand protection, and transparency. It is a world leader in connecting branded content with contextual targeting to drive engagement uplift across native dis...

Events

Resources