FINANCE
PR Newswire | January 10, 2024
DreamSpring, a nonprofit Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI) and Small Business Administration (SBA) lender, and Woodforest National Bank® (Woodforest), a national bank with over 760 branches across 17 states, are working together to provide access to $1.5 million in debt capital to low- and moderate-income (LMI) small business entrepreneurs. The influx of lending capital from Woodforest to DreamSpring is a milestone in their shared commitment to spur community development and job creation through expanding peer networks and increasing access to capital.
"Our collaboration with Woodforest widens the path for entrepreneurs to access much-needed capital and business resources," said Anne Haines, President and CEO of DreamSpring. "With Woodforest at our side, DreamSpring continues to expand our capacity to help small business owners realize their dreams and build stronger, more resilient communities through entrepreneurship."
Daniel Galindo, Senior Vice President & Director of the CRA Program & Strategic Initiatives at Woodforest National Bank added, "Working with a strong CDFI like DreamSpring combines both organizations' financial strengths to provide access to LMI small business owners who struggle to get the funds they need to run and grow their business which is a key focus for our team."
Both financial institutions share a commitment to empowering communities through entrepreneurship. The term loan agreement will allow DreamSpring to provide microloans to small business owners and LMI entrepreneurs as they start or grow their businesses across 10 shared states in DreamSpring and Woodforest's national footprints: Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, New York, South Carolina, and Texas.
The agreement between DreamSpring and Woodforest also strengthens the teams' vision to expand peer networks across their shared footprint to provide more resources for small business owners.
For instance, in South Dallas, both organizations have embraced the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency's (OCC) acclaimed Dallas REACh initiative, aimed at increasing LMI access to capital. Woodforest facilitated DreamSpring's connection to the monthly Dallas REACh roundtable, bringing together banks, CDFIs, and community stakeholders and leaders. This collaboration has resulted in a greater network of support in South Dallas, enriching the local small business ecosystem.
One South Dallas-based small business owner who has felt the life-changing impact of capital is Taylor Symoné. Her small day spa business offers beauty and hair treatments, therapeutic post-operative care, massages, and facials. When she was first getting started, Taylor remembers calling about 15 financial institutions and feeling frustrated every time by the paperwork needed for a small loan, as well as rigid requirements for only helping businesses with at least two years of operational history. DreamSpring was different. Taylor has since repaid three DreamSpring loans to fuel her business growth and create even more opportunities for her family.
"I'm really big on generational wealth," says Taylor. "I like to teach my kids about being their own boss, being the star of their own show, and learning and understanding that you can create your own passageway — you just have to want to."
For 30 years, DreamSpring has developed small business training and a range of loan products to meet the needs of entrepreneurs like Taylor. Today, DreamSpring offers credit-building small business loans, lines of credit, SBA 7(a) loans, and commercial real estate loans in 27 states to level the playing field by bridging credit and knowledge gaps that hinder economic mobility.
About DreamSpring
DreamSpring is a nonprofit Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI) and U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) lender dedicated to accelerating the economic inclusion and strength of underserved communities. Founded in 1994, the organization provides rapid access to capital and customized wrap-around support to the most vulnerable small business owners in 27 states, focusing on communities including people of color, women, low- to moderate-income earners, people with disabilities, and start-ups. To date, DreamSpring has issued more than 48,796 loans totaling over $538 million to small businesses that support an estimated 65,138 jobs.
About Woodforest National Bank
Celebrating over 40 years of community banking service, Woodforest National Bank has successfully stood among the strongest community banks in the nation, proudly offering outstanding customer service since 1980. Woodforest currently operates over 760 branches in 17 states across the United States and is an Outstanding CRA rated institution.
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TECHNOLOGY
PR Newswire | January 12, 2024
Rokt, the leading ecommerce technology company using machine learning and AI to make transactions more relevant to each shopper, today announced it has agreed to acquire AfterSell, a Shopify and Shopify Plus partner that helps ecommerce merchants upsell and cross-sell. Through the acquisition, Rokt will strengthen its SMB offering and expand its client portfolio to more than 20,000 SMB merchants, while giving them access to the same network and powerful AI technology built for large enterprises. The transaction is expected to close by February 1, 2024. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
The acquisition will build on Rokt's own Shopify app, Rokt Ecommerce, which leading merchants such as BlendJet and True Classic use to unlock additional revenue and provide a more relevant shopping experience to their customers. Rokt Ecommerce optimizes the checkout process, from the cart to confirmation page, and deepens brands' customer relationships by presenting highly relevant offers to each shopper during the transaction moment.
AfterSell enables Shopify merchants to increase sales with personalized cart, checkout and post-purchase upsells. Brands including Good American, KitchenAid, HexClad, Miami Heat and Bloom Nutrition use AfterSell to increase AOV and customer retention. The AfterSell product offering also includes UpCart, a fully featured cart drawer specifically designed to increase AOV and reduce cart abandonment. Rokt will further invest in its SMB Shopify offering by combining the complete capabilities of AfterSell and UpCart with the existing Rokt Shopify app to build a more robust product for merchants. AfterSell was co-founded by Armon Shokravi, Dhruv Patel, Landon Fuhr and Varun Kundra in 2019.
"AfterSell has built a brilliant roster of SMB clients on Shopify and has garnered hundreds of five-star reviews from merchants, which is a testament to how well it delivers," said Bruce Buchanan, CEO of Rokt. "This acquisition strengthens our competitive advantage by enabling us to better serve SMB customers and provide access to advertisers that aren't typically available to them. We're also thrilled to bring the AfterSell team's knowledge and expertise into our organization."
This acquisition provides more tools to Rokt Shopify app users to enhance their customers' shopping experiences while boosting revenue. Additionally, Rokt Shopify users can now look forward to enhanced assistance from AfterSell's Canada-based team, which Rokt plans to grow significantly in 2024 and beyond.
Rokt's exclusive, closed marketplace leverages intelligence powered by more than 5 billion transactions across hundreds of leading ecommerce businesses, allowing merchants to create a seamless customer experience while also controlling the types of offers eligible to be displayed to their customers.
The acquisition news follows a year of significant growth and new initiatives for Rokt, including a partnership with Formula 1's 2023 championship team, Oracle Red Bull Racing, as well as several key appointments to its executive leadership team, including Chief Product Officer Srishti Gupta and Chief Marketing Officer Doug Rozen.
About Rokt
Rokt is the global leader in ecommerce technology, enabling companies to drive incremental value from every transaction by unlocking relevant messages at the moment customers are most likely to convert. Rokt's machine learning platform, built over the last 10 years, and scaled network powers billions of global transactions annually for the world's leading companies, including Live Nation, AMC Theatres, PayPal, Uber, Hulu, Staples, GoPuff, Lands' End, and HelloFresh. Headquartered in New York City, the company operates in 15 countries across North America, Europe and the Asia-Pacific region and has been recognized as one of the fastest-growing private companies in the US by Inc. for the last three years in a row.
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TECHNOLOGY
Business Wire | January 29, 2024
Trellix, the cybersecurity company delivering the future of extended detection and response (XDR), today announced it has achieved the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Small and Medium Business Competency, recognizing the company as an AWS Partner with a unique focus on small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs).
Achieving the AWS Small and Medium Business Competency differentiates Trellix as an AWS Partner, demonstrating proficiency and proven success in helping SMBs solve their business and technical problems. Trellix is equipped to handle these challenges with solutions designed around customers’ unique needs in mind, including consideration for SMB’s typical deployment models, level of IT capabilities and financing preferences, and local and industry requirements.
“Trellix is proud to achieve the AWS Small and Medium Business Competency,” said Jason Andrew, Chief Revenue Officer, Trellix. “Our team is dedicated to helping businesses of all sizes achieve their goals, and our combined offerings with AWS empower SMBs with the agility, support, and innovation needed to do so.”
AWS is enabling scalable, flexible, and cost-effective solutions from startups to global enterprises. To support the seamless integration and deployment of these solutions, the AWS Competency Program helps customers identify AWS Partners with deep industry experience and expertise.
Along with an extensive partner ecosystem, Trellix accelerates technology innovation through machine learning and automation to empower businesses to build cyber resilience and stay ahead of the evolving threat landscape. The AI-powered Trellix XDR Platform’s open architecture and broad set of native security controls integrates with over 500 third-party tools to create multi-vector, multi-vendor event correlation and context, enabling faster detection, investigation, and remediation of threats.
“We partnered with Trellix to explore new ways to automate investigations,” says Chuck Lerch, CXO Head of Cybersecurity, Cyberuptive. “In this groundbreaking work, we combined the Trellix XDR Platform’s rich data and investigative playbooks with large language models (LLMs) running on AWS to make comprehensive assessments of alerts. The results provide useful insights, demonstrating the value of focusing on security research instead of how to run an LLM at scale.”
About Trellix
Trellix is a global company redefining the future of cybersecurity and soulful work. The company’s open and native extended detection and response (XDR) platform helps organizations confronted by today’s most advanced threats gain confidence in the protection and resilience of their operations. Trellix, along with an extensive partner ecosystem, accelerates technology innovation through machine learning and automation to empower over 40,000 business and government customers with living security.
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