一个崭新的、遵纪守法的 Zenefits 。 David Sacks 的一封信：The New Zenefits - Becoming the Compliance Company
这是Zenefits的CEO David Sacks新官上任3个月后、尝试以公开透明的姿态，向公众汇报Zenefits最近一段时间积极配合政府部门的检查、以及改过自新的各种举措。另外这个David Sacks 也要加入特朗普的团队了~~
文中主动坦承了创始人、前CEO确实写了个脚本帮员工知法犯法地、作弊考取卖保险的资格认证。这篇检讨书可以打几分？可以多大程度拯救这个“从天上掉到地上的独角兽”？
详细看看他的原文吧：
Three months ago, I became CEO of Zenefits after an internal investigation brought to light deficiencies in the company’s licensing compliance. In my Day 1 memo, I said that we would be transparent about these failings, because in order to fix a problem, you must first admit that it exists. Regulators and the public have an expectation that their rules will be followed, and the new leadership of this company is completely committed to doing that.
Getting compliance right is important for all businesses, but this is especially true for Zenefits. Our software is intended to help customers with their HR and Benefits, so compliance is fundamental to our value proposition. We not only have to be a compliant company, we have to be excellent at understanding compliance and delivering that in our product. We have to be the Compliance Company.
Over the past three months, we have worked hard to become this company. This transformation is still underway and there is still some work to do. But we have brought our licensing into compliance. We have dealt with many other issues as well, including a previous culture that was complacent about cutting corners and dismissive towards long-term planning. We have made a break with this culture and defined operating with integrity as our new number one value.
If there is a silver lining to the difficulties that Zenefits has gone through the past three months, it is that we have turned compliance into a core part of our values, culture, and expertise. In turn, I believe that we will be able to use this experience to improve our product and help our customers with their own compliance needs. This will ultimately make us into a stronger and more differentiated company that provides a much greater level of value to our customers.
I want to thank our customers for sticking by us during this difficult period. The fact that our ARR remains the same today as it was before all of this happened is a testament to the value that small businesses find in our platform.
As I reflect back on these first three months, I think it’s important first to make clear how our compliance issues came to light. We need to close the chapter on what went wrong so we can move forward. Second, I want to describe our remediation efforts in more detail. Finally, I want to tell you about how we are looking forward as a company.
I. Background
In late November, the company conducted an internal review of our licensing procedures that made me aware of two issues for the first time. First, contrary to what I had been led to believe, the company had engaged in many instances of unlicensed selling. Second, the review uncovered the existence a software program, or “Macro”, that created the perception that employees were studying required online coursework when they were not in fact logged in.
In response, the company initiated two investigations. In December, the company hired a Big Four auditing firm to itemize the licensing failures. After I became CEO in February, we self-reported the findings to all the state departments of insurance. Since then, we have been cooperating with regulators to fully account for all historical violations while instituting new technology and practices to avoid future ones.
Separately, we hired the firm Cooley LLP to investigate the Macro. Cooley reviewed over 15,000 documents and interviewed current and former employees. On January 25, Cooley reported its findings to me. This is when I learned for the first time that founder and former CEO Parker Conrad had written the Macro and that its use violated a state licensing requirement.
I immediately escalated the matter to the Board of Directors. An emergency board meeting occurred on February 1, Parker agreed to resign, and I instructed company counsel to self-report the issue to the California Department of Insurance. All of these actions are described in Cooley’s investigative report to the Board, which we are making public as part of our commitment to transparency.
II. Remediation
Since I became CEO on February 8, we have moved swiftly to remediate these issues. As I outlined in my Day 1 memo, this has required not just new policies, procedures, and technology but also sweeping changes to our leadership, governance, values and culture.
a. Macro Remediation
To ensure that something like Macro cannot happen again, we have disabled the underlying technology on our network. More to the point, we have terminated executives who were ringleaders in encouraging and disseminating the Macro. We are committed to operating with integrity, and behavior of this kind will never be tolerated at Zenefits again.
We are also requiring that every broker at Zenefits take 52 hours of coursework created by industry authority NAHU (the National Association of Health Underwriters). Of this, 12 hours consists of ethics training. For each NAHU course, the participant must pass a proctored NAHU test. The program has already begun and will be completed by October 1. You can see our NAHU curriculum here.
b. New Licensing Controls
To bring our licensing into compliance, our engineers have developed sophisticated new controls on the Salesforce.com platform that prevent any current or prospective account from being assigned to a sales rep who does not have a valid license in the correct state. Recently, we integrated this technology with a live feed from a national licensing database, so data on our employees’ insurance licenses is always up-to-date. Zenefits currently has approximately 300 licensed employees with almost 10,000 licenses.
In the words of our Big Four auditing firm, “the processes and controls over the licensing of sales agents are adequately designed to address the risk of sales activity being performed by agents without the appropriate license.” If you’re familiar with the words of auditors, this is about as enthusiastic as their evaluations get. We will be bringing back our auditors in Q3 to verify that the new controls are working as designed.
c. Dedication to Broker Education And Professionalism
Zenefits is not content just to do the minimum broker education required by the state. We have also instituted the following additional education:
As described above, every broker at Zenefits must take 52 hours of mandatory NAHU coursework and pass the NAHU test.
Zenefits has created a Boot Camp for new hires, where they receive an additional 20 hours of insurance training. In order to get into Boot Camp, new hires must show proof that they have already obtained their broker license prior to starting work.
After Boot Camp there is continuing education. We’ve developed our own quarterly exam (written by individuals with over 30 combined years of broker/carrier experience) to make sure that our brokers are keeping up their insurance knowledge.
Twice monthly, the entire team is trained on subjects like new legislation. Zenefits will begin seeking continuing education credits for many of these trainings.
Zenefits has established a Zenefits Insurance Advisory Board (ZIAB), consisting of experienced brokers who oversee the training curriculum and have Broker Office Hours to answer additional questions. ZIAB is also active in the company’s emerging compliance structure.
Finally, as a part of our dedication to the broker profession, every producer at Zenefits is a member of NAHU, as well as their associated state and local organizations. Zenefits is encouraging active participation and pays for membership fees.
d. Corporate Governance and Leadership
Zenefits has reconstituted its Board of Directors and Executive Team. Previously, the Board consisted of 4 seats, three of which were controlled by Parker; effectively he had total control. The new Board consists of 6 seats and is balanced: in addition to a CEO seat, there is one founder seat (Laks Srini), one seat for the Series A/B investors (Lars Dalgaard from Andreessen Horowitz), one seat for the Series C investors (Bill McGlashan from TPG), and two outside directors (Antonio Gracias from Valor and Peter Thiel from Founders Fund). We are grateful that prominent investors and industry leaders like Antonio, Bill, and Peter agreed to join the Board when I became CEO.
We also named a new Executive Team after each member was vetted by Cooley to ensure that they had no role in disseminating or encouraging use of the Macro. New Sales leadership has been appointed in both San Francisco and Phoenix. And throughout the company, we have appointed or promoted over 20 new mid-level managers and executives.
e. Creation of Compliance Team
One of my first acts as CEO was to appoint Josh Stein, a former federal prosecutor, in the new role of Chief Compliance Officer, which reports directly to me and to our Board of Directors. One of our key failings under the previous CEO was that we did not have a dedicated compliance department — we have fixed that.
Over the past three months, Josh has done an amazing job standing up a robust compliance organization that works with the Exec Team and managers throughout the company. We have 9 dedicated compliance personnel — up from zero under the previous CEO — with plans to hire 3 more. The team is conducting a top-to-bottom compliance review, and we have established a compliance hotline that allows any employee to report (anonymously, if they desire) any issue that needs to be investigated. Maintaining robust compliance monitoring and remediation is something that we will never stop doing as a company.
f. Change in Culture and Values
Company culture is what guides employees’ decisions when no one is looking. As Warren Buffett has written, “Culture, more than rule books, determines how an organization behaves.” That is why some of the most important changes that we’ve made have been at the level of culture and values. Zenefits declared three new company values on Day 1:
#1 Operate with integrity.
We have empowered our employees to act with integrity and we are seeing amazingly positive results from that. We don’t punish employees who make honest mistakes; we recognize them for tackling the root causes that led to those mistakes. Our employees are spotting issues and bringing them forward, knowing that the company will take their concerns seriously.
Operating with integrity is about more than just compliance, as important as that is. It’s about integrity in everything we do. A key component of that is the integrity of our data and infrastructure. We have declared a War on Errors with a dedicated quality team, and we have created a new Core Service team in Engineering. As a result of these initiatives, key metrics for error rates, site performance and reliability have all improved markedly, improving the experience for our clients and their employees.
We have seen that our problem was not the vast majority of our employees — our problem was fundamentally a failure of tone and leadership from the top. I’m proud of our current employees and inspired by their dedication to doing the right thing.
#2 Put the customer first.
We have made the decision to focus on small businesses because this is where we can be most impactful as a company. These are the businesses that most need a product like Zenefits. Small businesses rarely have an HR department larger than one — many have no one at all, with the heavy administrative burden falling on the business owner.
We have found that many small businesses are offering health insurance for the first time (28% of our new clients) because Zenefits makes it easy to do so. Similarly, many of our small business clients are now able to offer other big company benefits, like commuter benefits or FSAs. This helps our small business clients compete for talent and take care of their employees.
Part of our dedication to small business is a dedication to smart growth. Rather than chasing ever larger accounts, we have re-dedicated ourselves to improving our service with our small business customer in mind. Today we are focused on the quality of our offerings, with important initiatives like our War on Errors. In the near future, look for even more radical changes dramatically expanding the power of our platform for small businesses.
#3 Make this a great place to work.
We have made strides in making Zenefits a great place to work. By “great”, I don’t mean just a fun place to work. Having fun is important, but it’s not the end of the story. Working at Zenefits should be a rewarding experience, where employees believe they are part of making an important change in the world and feel a connection with each other and our customers.
We started by declaring our mission statement, which is to make entrepreneurship easier and more accessible to everyone. We sharpened our focus on small businesses to make winning achievable. We recognize employees who demonstrate our new values at our All Hands meetings through a peer nomination process. We are deepening the connections between our customers and employees with our biweekly “Live Chat” series, which brings in customers to share their experience with Zenefits. This is especially important for our employees who don’t have regular contact with our customers. A rewarding place to work is one where you can see the positive impact you’re making.
And we are catching up on all the other things employees expect from a company they give their all to: a more generous benefits program, a 401k, a thoughtful goal setting and review process, more commuter benefits, manager training, and events to socialize together outside of the office. Today, thanks to our facilities team, employees in San Francisco arrived to a much needed spruce-up of our office space in San Francisco.
III. Moving Forward
Although our work on remediation is not yet done, we have made major progress. We have sent an independent audit to regulators, owned up to our historical issues, and will accept the consequences for our past mistakes. We will continue the partnership with regulators we have forged by self-reporting this issue.
Now it is time to look forward as a company. We need to focus on making small business ownership easier and more accessible. We need to use the deeper understanding of compliance that we now have to help our customers with their own compliance-related needs. This is a value proposition that already undergirds some of our most compelling products.
One example is Onboarding. We offer a simple “Hire” button that, once configured, keeps small businesses in compliance by extending offer letters, running background checks, automatically offering eligible new hires insurance, facilitating completion of I9s, and collecting the information required for W-4s. Our goal is to make hiring a new employee as easy as calling an Uber.
Another example is our ACA Compliance tool. Particularly for companies with part-time or hourly employees, calculating whether you have to provide coverage, and for whom, when, and how much is very complex. And producing the Form 1094-Cs/1095-Cs filings is a significant administrative burden. This tool is free, regardless of whether you make us your broker. But it’s much more powerful when we’re the broker because we can auto-populate so much of the data. This shows how an all-in-one HR and Benefits system drives so much value for small businesses.
Products like these demonstrate the value we deliver as the Compliance Company. Our focus now is to continue executing for small businesses and living up to the great potential of this company.
About David Sacks
David is CEO of Zenefits. He is an Internet entrepreneur who was the founding CEO of Yammer and original COO and product leader of PayPal. He also produced the award-winning independent film Thank You For Smoking. He is an angel investor in tech companies like Facebook, Uber, Airbnb, Houzz, SpaceX, and Palantir.
详细文章来看看吧：https://www.zenefits.com/blog/new-zenefits-becoming-compliance-company
Managed By Q获3000万美元C轮融资，和Staples达成独家合作
根据SEC文件，智能办公管家服务Managed By Q已经获得了3000万美元的C轮融资，资方暂未透露。
成立于2013年12月的Managed By Q（MbQ）起步于纽约，为办公室管理人员更有效地处理手边的繁琐事务，比如清洁、维修、补充库存以及IT服务等等。MbQ的创立基于这样一个想法，许多公司需要一定的后勤人员来负责办公室的管理工作，但这些人员的使用率并不高。
在注册服务后，MbQ会在客户的办公室预装一个iPad。通过Facetime，MbQ可以为用户提供7×24小时全天候客户服务。办公室管理员可以在App上管理清洁用品以及咖啡、麦片之类的食品饮料，存货不足的时候通过App安排补货。而在会议室安装投影仪、灯泡，运送家具或IT服务，也可以通过App预约上门服务。
其中，App存货跟踪服务和客服支持是免费的，清洁服务和杂工服务按时计薪水，清洁服务25美元/小时，杂工80美元/小时。
你可以认为，这是一个类似Handy（家政服务提供商）的企业。不过Handy和MbQ有一些关键的区别在于，MbQ雇佣的是全职的W2（正式员工）工人，而不是承包商。事实上，在去年3月公司已经实施了一项员工持股计划，将公司5%的股份免费派发给员工。
SEC文件并未透露谁领投了本轮融资，不过到目前为止和MbQ利益相关的名单有 GV， Gary Vaynerchuk, Fabrice Grinda，Jessica Alba以及Greycroft Ventures。
一位消息人士称，本轮融资是新投资者和原有投资者的结合，资金将用于扩大市场和技术平台。最近，MbQ和美国办公用品公司Staples达成独家合作伙伴关系。作为交易的一部分，Staples将为MbQ提供独家的办公室必需品，而MbQ将为Staples的客户提供独家的办公室管理服务。
此前，公司在今年4月完成了2500万美元的B轮融资，投资方包括Google Ventures和Kapor Ventures。在去年6月完成了一轮1500万美元的A轮融资。有很多知名公司都在使用MbQ的服务，包括Uber、Kickstarter、VaynerMedia和Bitly等。
本文来自翻译：techcrunch.com
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帮助企业监控筛选新闻，Signal Media 获 580 万美元风险融资
新闻的生命周期已经从原先的24小时缩短到了24秒钟，这就要求企业必须能够随时获取相关度高的高质量信息，从而确保公司做所决策有真实的现实依据，而不仅仅是根据自己的推测。最前端的AI技术可以帮助企业实时跟踪现实世界的变化，包括竞争者、法规制定者和企业自己的声誉变化。目前有很多公司在从事“媒体监控”方面的业务，如Cision、 Factiva 和 Meltwater 。Signal Media 是一家总部位于伦敦的AI媒体监控公司，为企业提供他们需要了解的知识，帮助企业把获取到的信息转化为可以信赖的商业知识，帮助企业更好地决策。
公司近日宣布获得580万美元风险融资，投资者包括MMC Ventures、 Hearst Ventures、Frontline Ventures、Reed Elsevier Ventures 和 Local Globe。公司计划利用本轮融资促进2017年在美国市场上的销售量，推进产品研发，同时扩大公司现有的50人团队。
Signal Media 由David Benigson和 Miguel Martinez创办于2013年，公司借助AI技术，可以为企业提供更加可信的信息来源，从而减少企业在决策制定过程中对虚假信息的使用和依赖。
“互联网是我们创造的最大的数据传输机。然而，这并没有改善现有信息的质量，反而让我们更难获取相关度高的信息，对事情整体发展的真实态势也更难把握。” Signal Media 联合创始人兼CEO David Benigson 表示，“数据的数量已经把质量给淹没了。面对只有24秒钟的新闻生命周期，企业领导者需要时刻关注与公司相关的信息发展情况，才能保证决策是基于事实作出的。他们需要确保，自己的决策反映的是现实情况而非自己的推测。”
Signal Media 所要解决的正是企业领导者所面临的这一难题，公司借助AI技术为他们提供决策所需的信息。公司目前跟踪收集的信息只局限于印刷报道的新闻、广播和在线媒体。不过Signal Media表示，公司目前正在研发可以实时跟踪税务和金融法规方面变更情况的工具。
值得一提的是，公司的软件所涉及的信息员包括270万个网站、6.7万印刷新闻资源和300多个广播频道。不仅如此，软件还可以用40多种语言自动翻译来自90多个国家的新闻标题。
Signal 最初的业务关注点是企业公关团队是如何根据企业情况解读媒体报道以及整个商业环境的。目前公司的业务主要集中在金融服务、法律和专业服务领域。
Benigson解释说，“Signal不仅仅是对信息进行监控，如果有人更换了工作，企业完成了并购，或者有威胁公司信誉的事件发生，公司的AI技术可以立即识别相关信息或报道。”
本文来自翻译：1wnc.com
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