The purpose of this CXTech Week 32 2021 newsletter is to highlight, with commentary, some of the news stories in CXTech this week. What is CXTech? The C stands for Connectivity, Communications, Collaboration, Conversation, Customer; X for Experience because that’s what matters; and Tech because the focus is enablers.
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Covered this week:
- IoT Connectivity Survey from Stacuity
- Talkdesk completes Series D fund raise with a new $10B valuation
- TADHack Sri Lanka focuses on Teens: TADHACK TEENS
- Avaya Acquires Contact Center Developer CTIntegrations
- Microsoft Buys Peer5
- People, Gossip, and Frivolous Stuff
IoT Connectivity Survey
Mike Bromwich and Tim Downling, previously with Partitionware, and TADSummit regulars have founded a new company Stacuity. Their aim is to make IoT connectivity fully programmable, so developers can build better solutions.
Please help Mike and Tim refine their proposition, by sharing your insights and experiences with respect to IoT connectivity. The survey will only take a few minutes to complete. Leave your email and at the end of the survey collection period they’ll have a prize draw to win a £100 Amazon voucher, and will send a summary of the survey results.
Talkdesk completes Series D fund raise with a new $10B valuation
Back in CXTech Week 30 2020 we covered how Talkdesk’s valuation had risen to $3B Following $143M Series C. Which at that point Talkdesk had raised $268 million since forming in 2011. Prior to the Series C, Viking Global Investments led Talkdesk’s $100 million Series B in 2018.
$230 million was raised in Series D. New investors Whale Rock Capital Management, TI Platform Management and Alpha Square Group came on board for this round and were joined by existing investors Amity Ventures, Franklin Templeton, Top Tier Capital Partners, Viking Global Investors and Willoughby Capital.
To date close to $500B raised from an app built at a Twilio hackathon over a decade ago. It clearly shows the new value creation potential in programmable communications applications. Though the plumbing in programmable communications also looks quite good, Sinch’s market cap is now at about $125B.
TADHack Global is on the 25-26 September, just before Enterprise Connect. Sponsored by an impressive line-up of companies upon which to build your $10B programmable communications applications company 🙂
- Symbl.ai, conversation intelligence, understand voice, video and text conversations. Beyond speech to text, generate summaries, action items, sentiment, and lots more.
- Jambonz, open source voice and SMS platform using Webhooks and REST APIs. Their client SDKs include a Node.js SDK as well as Node-RED plugins.
- Subspace, a dedicated, secure network for delivering real time applications. Make your communications app work the best possible everywhere.
- AWA Network – more coming soon. It will be easy to use and disruptive.
- Telnyx, communications across: voice, SMS, verify (easy two factor authentication), phone numbers, fax, IoT, identity, WebRTC, and much more.
TADHack Sri Lanka focuses on Teens: TADHACK TEENS
This is exciting! While we’ve had teens involved at TADHack over the years, and Popayan also included many teen competitors from its work with local high schools.
This year TADHack Sri Lanka has a stream dedicated to teenagers: TADHACK TEENS. Thank you to hSenid Mobile and Ideamart for making this possible.
Avaya Acquires Contact Center Developer CTIntegrations
And as further evidence that the money is in the programmable communications applications, Avaya has acquired CTIntegrations, a specialized contact center software development and system integration company based in Austin, Texas. CTIntegrations, founded in 2007, is the company behind CT Suite, and is part of the Avaya DevConnect partner ecosystem.
Microsoft Buys Peer5
I first met Hadar, the co-founder and CEO of Peer5 back in 2012. Their vision was clear use WebRTC for CDNs. Several companies have come and gone in the WebRTC-based CDN space.
Peer5 survived through being lean, raising only $3.5M, and focusing on an enterprise content delivery network (eCDN). Microsoft plans to use it for their streaming video services.
TADHack Global 2021 sponsor Subspace is also in this space, with a broader offer of a dedicated, secure network for delivering real time applications.
People, Gossip, and Frivolous Stuff
Ricky Gill is now Staff Product Manager at MATRIXX Software. I’ve known Ricky for over a decade, since his time in Redknee working on real-time charging and rating.
Artur Tyloch is now Head Of Research And Development at medcase (marketplace of clinicians and healthcare ). I’ve known Artur since his time in Nokia and then Canonical, where he sponsored TADHack and TADSummit.
David Saadat is now Account Manager, EMEA at Vivun, pre-sales tools. I;ve known David through his time at TelisSonera, where I was trying to persuade them to become part of TADHack.
Jose Manuel Rodriguez Martinez is now Head Of Business Development – Key for Business at Amazon Key for Business. I’ve known Jose Manuel since the start of TADHack in 2014 when he was based in Madrid. Key for business is their MDU (Multi Dwelling Unit) access, similar to the consumer Amazon Key that I use regularly.
Yann Robin is now Security & Privacy Director at Orange France. I’ve known Yann all the way back to when he was a buyer for VAS platforms.
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