Recent Posts by Amy Sorrells

In the spring of 2016, technologists Karyl Fowler and Orie Steele entered Austin’s first blockchain hackathon contest aimed at solving mobility challenges which drew project topics from smart parking apps to addressing social mobility barriers. At the time, thousands of refugees were pouring into Europe with no means to identify themselves. Government organizations had no integrated way to validate and track identities across the variety of disparate systems they use to...

“I think it'll probably take a decade to see real change. We’ve been stuck around the 2% figure of VC funding going to females for years and it’s going to take time to reach 40% or higher. And I think that one of the biggest ways to change it, in my mind, is more female investors.” – Maren Bannon, founder and partner at Jane VC @JaneVentureCap “I became a venture capitalist because I saw a need in the market for a fund focused on women. Even from my Stanford days, my cofounder...

Zak MacRunnels has lived a mile from Sand Hill Road in Silicon Valley for almost twenty-five years. It’s a fitting location for this long-time technology entrepreneur who has steered a handful of companies to successful exits. As CEO of Reconstruct, he is helping Reconstruct become a leading technology for the construction and real estate industry. We sat down with Zak to get his advice on navigating the wonderful but complex world of venture. [Reconstruct is a member of Oracl...

The growth of BotSupply is white-hot, thanks in part to Oracle. Building on top of Oracle Cloud, the Copenhagen-based startup is using its multilingual bot platform and conversational AI to help create engaging and relevant customer experiences for Oracle clients around the globe. And as a member of Oracle’s global startup program, BotSupply is tapping into resources such as customer connections, marketing and media exposure. Co-selling with Oracle, BotSupply is currently in...

Oracle and the Government of Ghana have established a new collaborative partnership to support technology-enabled startups and entrepreneurs across Ghana. Announced during a launch event in Accra on April 4, the Ghana Oracle Digital Enterprise Program leverages resources from Oracle’s global startup program to support 500 local startups with access to Oracle Cloud technology, mentoring, workshops, marketing and business-enablement resources. Oracle’s global startup program is...

Image: Profit, Editor’s Choice: The Best of 2018 Oracle’s Profit Magazine covered hundreds of innovative companies and new technologies during the past year, from emerging businesses like Stitch Fix to perennial brands like Toyota. So, when the editors of Profit set out to choose their top stories of the year it was no easy feat. We are beyond proud that a startup in our global program, iGeolise, was chosen by Profit editors as a top story of 2018 for the “Matter of Minutes”...

GridMarkets isn’t your typical startup in the sense that gaining customers has never been a challenge. Virtually all of their customers have come from word-of-mouth recommendations. They have no paid marketing to speak of. Their customers have such absolute trust in the GridMarkets solution that recommendations come organically and willingly.  To date, GridMarkets has over 2,000 customers in more than 90 countries. A quick read of their website testimonials reveals a...

There’s fast, and then there’s 20 milliseconds fast. As in 0.02 seconds. That’s the time it takes a hummingbird to beat its wings almost twice. The shutter speed of a modern camera. Roughly speaking, it’s around as short an interval of time as we humans can perceive. In a world where real-time data, analytics and action means everything, that’s the speed of winning. So, when Higinio (H.O.) Maycotte saw his re-engineered technology reduce data queries from 20 seconds to 20...

The importance of fair remuneration, transparency and inclusion is rising on the agendas of organizations around the world. UK-based startup Gapsquare is partnering with companies to help close the gender and ethnicity pay gaps with cloud-based software that analyses a company’s remuneration structures with gender pay gap analysis, ethnicity pay gap analysis and pay transparency. As part of the Oracle for Startups program and with their entire technical infrastructure and...