NEW YORK (PRWEB)
July 01, 2020

The Financial Technology Report is pleased to announce the Top 50 Financial Technology CEOs of 2020. These exceptional executives lead some of the most prominent financial technology companies across the globe and have helped define many of the wide scale advancements the industry has undergone over recent years. They are innovators, strategists, and corporate leaders, who have built important organizations that are driving massive change in the way people spend, save, invest, or otherwise manage their financial lives. Thousands of CEOs were reviewed from which a select set was invited to participate in this year’s nomination process.

The process yielded several hundred nominations, which were closely evaluated – a more detailed review of each candidate based on demonstrated leadership capabilities by researching qualified information sources was performed. A keen focus was placed on technological impact on the financial industry, breadth of organization, number of businesses or consumers reached, career achievements and influence in the field and among peers.

It gives The Financial Technology Report team great pleasure to recognize and celebrate the accomplishments of these deserving CEOs.

Gary Norcross (FIS), Patrick Collison (Stripe), Douglas Cifu (Virtu), Max Levchin (Affirm), Dan Shulman (Paypal), Simon Paris (Finastra), Anthony Noto (SoFi), Noah Kerner (Acorns), Jon Stein (Betterment), Eric Poirier (Addepar), David Zalik (Greensky), Jeffery Yabuki (Fiserv), Jonathan Corr (Ellie Mae), Anne Boden (Starling Bank), Jason Gardner (Marqeta), Michael Hayford (NCR), Rob Frohwein (Kabbage), Brian Armstrong (Coinbase), Brock Blake (Lendio), Paul Taylor (Thought Machine), Adam Hughes (Amount), Sergei Bogatenkov (Admiral Markets Group), Michael Reitblat (Forter), Kelly Rodriques (Forge), Michael Carvin (SmartAsset), Renaud Laplanche (Upgrade), Sallie Krawcheck (Ellevest), Colin Walsh (Varo Money), Sam Graziano (Fundation), Sankaet Pathak (SynapseFI), Michael Cassau (Grover), Eyal Shinar (Fundbox), Tore Steen (CrowdStreet), Dan Holt (BillGO), Peter Maragos (Dash Financial), Mazy Dar (OpenFin), Mike Babineau (Second Measure), Angela Ceresnie (Climb Credit), Doug Ricket (PayJoy), Matt Rodak (Fund That Flip), Patrick Boyaggi (Own Up), Michael Nicastro (Continuity), Cale Johnston (ClickSWITCH), Kumesh Aroomoogan (Accern), Saum Noursalehi (tZero), Noah Breslow (OnDeck), Ryan Williams (Cadre), Guillaume Pousaz (Checkout.com), David Kerr (bonkers.ie), Yoshi Yokokawa (Alpaca Markets).

Congratulations to each of this year’s awardees.

About The Financial Technology Report

The Financial Technology Report is a comprehensive source for market research and insights, business news, investment activity and corporate actions related to the financial technology sector. Based in New York City, the firm is run by a seasoned team of editors, writers and media professionals highly knowledgeable on financial technology and the various companies, executives and investors that make up the sector. http://www.thefinancialtechnologyreport.com.

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SAN FRANCISCO (PRWEB)
June 30, 2020

Brightback, the first customer retention solution to automatically save customers at the moment of cancel, today announced the beta launch of Experience Manager, an easy way for direct-to-consumer subscription companies to create and test high-performing cancel experiences to retain more customers.

The beta launch of Experience Manager comes two years after Brightback raised $11 million in equity and debt from over 30 industry investors. Brightback is now taking advantage of the gulf in the market for automated solutions to help any subscription business—not just top-tier tech companies like Netflix and Amazon—achieve world-class retention results without diverting resources away from product and engineering projects.

Brightback’s Experience Manager gives subscription retention leaders the ability to replace static exit surveys and outdated call centers with personalized online experiences that deflect 10 to 30 percent of cancels, while delighting customers at a critical point in their journey.

The future of subscription cancel experiences for consumer businesses is online

Brightback sees a clear gap in the market between the algorithm-driven online retention systems that only a handful of leading-edge tech companies are equipped to build and the notorious call centers that customers loathe and companies need, but are unable to improve. Brightback aims to close this gap in the exploding consumer subscription industry by making available customer-friendly, smart retention tools that empower direct-to-consumer leaders to save more customers.

“Today every e-commerce site has a shopping-cart abandonment tool, and yet, subscriber retention is an afterthought and trails 10 years behind marketing tech,” said Guy Marion, co-founder and CEO of Brightback. “With this beta launch of Experience Manager, we’re giving subscription companies what they’ve asked for again and again: a way to easily create and evolve online cancel experiences without a reliance on engineering resources, so companies can react quickly to customer behavior and market forces.”

Why now? Retention reigns supreme in 2020

Earlier this year, Brightback published a study that found 96 percent of retention professionals believe they lose customers that could otherwise have been retained if they could be identified and engaged in real-time. More recently, the economic upheaval resulting from the Covid-19 global pandemic is reshuffling the subscription landscape into clear winners and losers: winners being those who are spinning on a dime to proactively improve customer relationships and retain subscribers despite a near total halt of consumer spending.

Additionally, regulation and governments are increasingly pro-consumer. Legislation passed in California in 2018 requires subscriptions that can be purchased online must also be able to be cancelled online. The industry is steadily moving toward a customer-centric approach, with Visa introducing similar requirements for credit-card accepting merchants.

What’s available in the Experience Manager beta?

Brightback is flexible enough to support multiple types of customer journeys, including cancels, downgrades, and trials, while easily integrating with the retention tools that most direct-to-consumer subscription businesses use.

• Experience Manager: Create and manage multiple cancel experiences from a central view.
• Page Editor: Edit copy and imagery on the fly while personalizing the cancel page with dynamic content and components.
• Brand Manager: Apply logos, color schemes, URLs and custom CSS at a global level to ensure a seamless customer experience across all cancel pages.
• Reason Editor: Eliminate sampling bias in exit surveys with mandatory cancel, and leverage Brightback’s categorized reasons to track actionable change
• Offer Library: Create, test, and personalize offers using templates from six categories: pauses, discounts, plan changes, extensions, feedback, and support & training.
• Integrating the retention stack: Use the brightback.js code snippet to integrate with data warehouse and billing systems, or leverage pre-built workflow integrations with Slack, Segment, and Zapier, and enrichment integrations with Salesforce, Recurly and Stripe.
• Insights and deflection funnel: Gain a bird’s eye view across your retention programs, then drill into aggregated insights, trends and real-time activity.
• Revenue attribution: Validate save and deflection performance, and assess impact on revenue instantly, via pre-built integrations with Stripe and Recurly.

The beta launch of Experience Manager opens the door for consumer subscription companies to launch high-performing cancel experiences, as well as target customer audiences and test a broad range of offers in order to achieve best-in-class retention results.

Pricing starts at $500/mo. To see Brightback’s Experience Manager in action, request a live demo at: https://brightback.com    

About Brightback

Brightback is the first customer retention solution that automatically saves customers at the moment of cancel. Trusted by high volume subscription businesses like MeUndies and Unbounce, Brightback helps retention leaders deflect churn with personalized cancel experiences, optimize offboarding processes through testing and targeting and gather aggregated insights to drive product and company improvements. Headquartered in San Francisco, Brightback is a remote-first company with a team of subscription-industry veterans located across the United States.

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RED BANK, N.J. (PRWEB)
June 30, 2020

Two education industry leaders will be joining the Board of Directors of Achieve3000, the leader in personalized and differentiated digital solutions that provide equity for remote and in the classroom instruction. These two additions, effective July 1, expand the company’s Board of Directors to a total of seven members.

Lynda Cloud comes to the Achieve3000 board of directors with deep experience in the K-12 school market as an executive leader, and product development and marketing expert. Cloud has built some of the most significant education platforms currently in use in schools around the world. She currently serves as CEO at The Institute for Integrative Nutrition, the world’s largest nutrition school that trains health coaches online. Immediately prior, Cloud served as the founding CEO of EqualEd, a division of GEMS Education, a global school operator and curriculum provider. Earlier in her career, Cloud served as Executive Vice President of Product and Technology at K12 Inc., where she additionally served as General Manager of the $100 million institutional K-12 schools division. Cloud started her education career and spent 24 years at Pearson in a variety of technology, product, and marketing roles, culminating her tenure there as General Manager and Senior Vice President of Science, Humanities, and the Online Learning Exchange. Cloud has a BA in English and Elementary Education from Susquehanna University.

Dr. Wayne D. Lewis, Jr. brings to the Achieve3000 board of directors executive leadership experience in K-12 education, higher education, and state government, as well as deep academic and educational thought leadership. Since January 1, 2020, he has served as the inaugural Dean of the School of Education at Belmont University in Nashville, TN, where he oversees undergraduate and graduate educator preparation programs. Leading up to this role, Lewis served in Kentucky state government, most recently as the state’s Commissioner of Education and prior to that as Executive Director of Education Policy and Programs in the Education & Workforce Development Cabinet. He spent 10 years at the University of Kentucky as a faculty member and graduate program chairperson in the Department of Educational Leadership Studies, as well as an affiliated faculty member with the African American and Africana Studies Program. Lewis started his career in education as a middle and high school special education teacher in Louisiana and North Carolina. Lewis holds his Ph.D. in educational leadership and policy analysis from North Carolina State University, a Master’s in urban studies and public administration from the University of Akron, with post-baccalaureate studies in special education from the University of New Orleans. He also currently serves on the board of directors of Future of School, a public charity focused on fostering innovative education models, and on the Practitioner Council of the Hoover Education Success Initiative (HESI) at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.

Achieve3000 CEO, Stuart Udell, stated, “We are absolutely thrilled that both Mrs. Cloud and Dr. Lewis chose to join our board. I have had the past pleasure to serve alongside each of them and can say with certainty, that they will add significant thought leadership and tremendous value to our organization. They are both esteemed leaders in the K-12 education space, and most notably, have committed their careers towards making a difference with all students.”

About Achieve3000

Achieve3000 partners with educators to deliver a comprehensive suite of digital solutions that significantly accelerate literacy and deepen learning across the content areas. The organization’s personalized and differentiated solutions provide equity for remote and in the classroom instruction, enabling teachers to help all students achieve accelerated growth. For more than four million students in grades PreK-12, Achieve3000 improves high-stakes test performance and drives college and career readiness.

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Media Contact:

Rebecca Salem

(732) 367-5505 x263

media@achieve3000.com

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CHICAGO (PRWEB)
June 30, 2020

Cannabis executives report slashing budgets and significant disruption to suppliers and services during the COVID-19 crisis, according to a new report published by Cannabis Business Executive (CBE) and cannabis market research firm High Yield Insights. Business-to-business transactions, already complicated by restrictive banking and finance regulations, have been further challenged as 45% of executives report issues receiving payments from customers.

While being deemed an “essential business” in most states has helped sustain the industry, 53% of service and equipment providers expect revenue shortfalls and 49% of “plant-touching” businesses have cut year-end forecasts. Remaining budgets for travel and live events have been outright canceled by some (33%) while other cannabis companies are reallocating to virtual online events (33%) or web-based media (26%). The joint report captures the sentiments of over 700 decision-makers in the cannabis industry prior to and during the coronavirus outbreak.

Executives among a diverse cross-section of ancillary service providers and licensees entered the year with bullish expectations. Among licensees, such as cultivators, processors, and dispensary operators, an overwhelming 74% expected a year-over-year revenue increase along with 56% of service providers.

Several months later, in the midst of the pandemic roiling the country, forecasts have been slashed despite speculation that cannabis could be a “recession-proof” industry. While consumer demand remains high, executives are struggling to adjust to unprecedented business challenges in areas such as supply chains, which 63% report having been somewhat or significantly disrupted. Added to the pressure to nimbly adjust to preventative measures like social distancing, many companies have been forced to do more with less. Although 47% plan to maintain pre-COVID staffing levels, 39% of executives intend to reduce headcount.

“We surveyed industry executives early in the year looking for benchmarks on strategic issues like revenue forecasts and growth drivers,” says Mike Luce, co-founder of High Yield Insights. “I was excited to share the results in collaboration with Rob Meagher, CBE Press’s President and Editor-in-Chief. Gathering quantitative data on the perspectives and purchasing decisions of executives can be tremendously challenging. As we began analyzing the results in March, we saw an opportunity to deliver more timely value by also asking executives about the impact of COVID-19. By circling back with a second survey, we created a unique before and after look at the mindset of industry influencers and decision-makers. We hope the data combined with interviews by leaders such as Nancy Whiteman of Wana Brands, Kris Krane of 4Front Ventures, and Tom Siciliano of Elixinol informs difficult strategic choices executives are being forced to make.”

According to Meagher, “Prior to the COVID crisis, the cannabis industry was already dealing with a number of impediments to sustain its meteoric growth, including slow movement on federal policy, a capital shortage, and social equity concerns. When the coronavirus took hold, those challenges looked minuscule by comparison. This joint report provides a real-time snapshot of how leading industry executives are responding to the pandemic, along with hard data derived from our industry executive readership to provide concrete steps companies can take to survive this unprecedented threat. It also highlights the innovative and entrepreneurial spirit that is driving one of the, if not the fastest growing industry in the nation and abroad.”

For more information, visit http://www.highyieldinsights.com.

About High Yield Insights

High Yield Insights is led by industry veterans of brand strategy, consumer insights, market intelligence, and analytics. Supported by a team of analysts and research professionals, leadership combines a unique skill set and practice expertise drawn from decades in consumer-facing industries. High Yield Insights conducts exclusive, independent research on cannabis consumers and the cannabis industry, providing data-driven insights and fostering fact-based strategic decisions.

The joint report in collaboration with Cannabis Business Executive marks the first-ever quantitative and qualitative investigation of challenges and opportunities for industry decision-makers. Future reports will continue to provide actionable data designed to aid executives in the cannabis industry chart a path forward in an environment of uncertainty.

For more information about High Yield Insights, send inquiries to: contact.us@highyieldinsights.com.

About Cannabis Business Executive

CBE Press LLC (CBE), founded in 2014, is an integrated business to business media company serving the cannabis industry. CBE’s mission is to provide cannabis industry leaders with utilitarian information to help them run their businesses successfully and advance the cannabis industry by helping its leaders stay abreast of emerging trends that impact their long-term success. CBE currently publishes http://www.cannabisbusinessexecutive.com and distributes CBE Week and CBE Policy & Legal e-mail newsletters to 53,000 plus subscribers each week.

CBE distinguishes itself as a premier Cannabis Industry information authority by developing original content, aggregating news content and partnering with recognized industry experts who contribute thought-provoking feature articles, news, opinions and insights, events and e-media based on their areas of expertise. CBE provides its readers with business intelligence and the knowledge they need to succeed in new and changing markets.

For more information about CBE Press LLC, send inquiries to: robm@cbepress.com or call 703.992.6779 or visit http://www.cannabisbusinessexecutive.com.

Media Contact:

Natalie Bauer Luce

nataliebauerluce@gmail.com

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