Practically Every Notable Founder In Silicon Valley Just Invested In This Payroll Startup | ||
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The investors who joined the $20 million Series A round range from celebrities such as Ashton Kutcher and Jared Leto, to Karen Mills, the former head of the U.S. Small Business Administration, and a laundry list of famed startup CEOs from Evernote, Eventbrite, Stripe, Constant Contact, SurveyMonkey, WordPress, Instagram. The founders of PayPal, Yahoo, Reddit, Nest, Twitter, HubSpot, and Mint also contributed. “When you’re building a business for the next fifty years, it’s all about the people,” says Joshua Reeves, CEO and co-founder of ZenPayroll in a press release. “This incredible group of leaders built companies from the ground up, and they want to help us solve this problem because they’ve experienced it firsthand.” “We pretty much got our dream list of investors. And we’re really grateful,” he told us. "It's always great to invest alongside great entrepreneurs and VCs," said Max Levchin in an email with us. The problem ZenPayroll hopes to eliminate is the notorious headache that is payroll processing. Legacy vendors such as ADP and Paychex currently own the market despite laborious and antiquated products and offerings. ZenPayroll hopes to streamline their complicated systems by offering simpler cloud-based system that can automate all payroll tax calculations and payments, as well as provide direct deposit to employees. The app also allows for paperless filing of all payroll-related government documents, the ability for employees to donate a portion of their paycheck to charity, and easy to read, visually clear pay stubs. ZenPayroll has more than quadrupled its rate of payroll processing since its first round of funding, and is currently processing over $1.5 billion in annual payroll for thousands of small businesses across the United States. “Right now we have a very strong focus on small businesses, and sub-100 person companies," says Reeves, "We are not just taking these investors to convert them to clients, it’s about getting a chance to talk to these people who have been in our shoes." ZenPayroll plans to use this latest round of funding to complete its nationwide expansion and eventually grow to support larger companies. Here are some of ZenPayroll’s new investors:
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Payroll processing startup, ZenPayroll, just announced more than 50 previously undisclosed angel investors, and the list reads like a who's who of Silicon Valley. This New Tool Tells You If The Government Is Spying On Your Computer | ||
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There's a new web tool that lets people see if the government is using surveillance spyware on your PC. Amnesty International release the product today in a fight back against "repressive governments" who are misusing spyware against society. Detekt scans computers for traces of major spyware and sends alerts to users if something is picked up. If an intrusion is found, there's a specific "emergency" page online. The application also logs data to use in investigations. It's been launched by a coalition of human rights charities and technology organisations, including Privacy International and the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Amnesty International explains it's the first application made available to everyone — although it's only for download on Windows — and was developed by security researcher Claudio Guarnieri. Head of Military, Security and Police at Amnesty International, Marek Marczynski, says: "Governments are increasingly using dangerous and sophisticated technology that allows them to read activists and journalist' private emails and remotely turn on their computer's camera or microphone to secretly record their activities." Marczynski adds authorities make use of spyware in a "cowardly attempt to prevent abuses from being exposed", and says Detekt is a strike back against the misuse of information. The Coalition Against Unlawful Surveillance Exports estimates the annual global trade in surveillance technology is worth $5 billion. The organisations say, ultimately, Detekt is only a temporary solution though. "The only way to prevent these technologies from being used to violate or abuse human rights is to establish and enforce strict controls on their use and trade," says Marczynski. The most high-profile incident of government spying, of course, involves computer analyst Edward Snowden, who leaked thousands of top secret documents that exposed a worldwide network of spying by the US's National Security Agency and the UK's GCHQ. A lot of spyware programs are available on the internet. One example is FinFisher's FinSpy, which can be used to monitor Skype conversations, extract files from hard drives, record microphones and emails, and take screenshots. Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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The Rochester And Strood By-Election Will Explode The UKIP Voter Stereotype | ||
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The conventional image of the average UK Independence Party voter is an old, less-educated, and relatively poor man. In fact, this is almost exactly the profile you get if you look up UKIP supporters on YouGov's new profiler tool:
If the traditional analysis of UKIP supports holds, the voters in the Rochester and Strood by-election – where UKIP is currently leading Conservatives in the polls by 12 percentage points — should fit comfortably into the picture painted by YouGov's profile above. But the data shows otherwise. Although according to YouGov the average UKIP supporter is over 60, data from the 2011 Census suggests that Rochester and Strood is on average younger than the rest of the country:
Moreover, although polls suggest only around 12% of UKIP supporters nationally have A-level qualifications or higher, the local population of Rochester and Strood demonstrate a significantly higher level of educational achievement.
So what's going on? First, the figures illustrate the danger of making sweeping assumptions about where UKIP derives its support from. While it was a fringe party, the profile of its base may have been easier to establish but with recent polls giving it between 13-17% of the national vote, these stereotypes are likely to be less and less accurate. The key point to remember is that as the party grows its support base is changing with it. According to a recent survey of 5,701 UKIP supporters in October by YouGov, the party's supporters are getting significantly younger:
And, worryingly for Labour and the Liberal Democrats, there are growing signs that UKIP's appeal is growing beyond frustrated Tory voters. While in January 2013 almost 60% of respondents said they had voted Conservative in the 2010 General Election, that figure has now fallen to 48%. Meanwhile the percentage of UKIP supporters who claimed to have voted Labour in 2010 has increased from 7% to 15%. That is, Labour is starting to lose large chunks of votes to UKIP too!
These factors help to explain how UKIP has managed to turn what should have been a tight contest in Rochester and Strood into what could be a procession for its candidate Mark Reckless. Betfair, which has matched over £300,000 worth of bets on the result, currently gives UKIP a 97% chance of victory. On Wednesday Faisal Islam, Sky's political editor, reported that the Labour and Lib Dem campaigns had received "hand signed letters from Con candidate asking to "lend their votes"". If that isn't sufficient illustration of quite how panicked Westminster is becoming about the rise of UKIP, I don't know what would be. Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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A Woman Walked Around Mumbai For 10 Hours In A Short Skirt And Tight Top And Wasn't Catcalled Once | ||
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You probably remember that video of a woman who walked for 10 hours around New York and was harassed and catcalled by men on the street the whole time. That video, launched by Hollaback, a campaign dedicated to ending street harassment, has spawned several imitations all over the world. In India, however, there was a different outcome. IndieTube, a local broadcaster, produced this video of a woman walking for 10 hours in the streets of Mumbai, a city that has a certain infamy when it comes to harassment of women (a CNN reporter was almost raped on TV here in 2008). In 10 hours, the woman was not catcalled a single time. We first saw the video on Business Insider India. The video is going viral on the subcontinent: in 10 days, it hit more than 2 million views. Here it is: Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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A Chemical Firm Is Planning A Huge Fracking Project In Scotland | ||
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INEOS, a Swiss-based chemical group, is planning a massive investment in shale gas in Scotland, the BBC reports. The company, chaired by British businessman Jim Radcliffe, owns a production plant in Grangemouth, and wants to boost domestic shale gas production to fuel the plant, which is currently running at a loss and fuelled by natural gas imported from overseas. Media reports suggest that INEOS is ready to invest up to £640 million ($1 billion) in Scotland, although the company did not comment on the news when contacted by Business Insider UK. The Guardian writes that INEOS has acquired licenses for shale exploration in Stirlingshire, and "is expected to attempt to win further licenses in other parts of the country". Fracking, the drilling technique mostly used to extract gas from shale, is very controversial: it requires a huge amount of clean water to operate and chemicals are injected into the ground. Last year Cuadrilla, an exploration company, announced plans for a fracking project in Balcombe, East Sussex, but had to pull back following violent protests. However, shale gas supporters claim that the technology would allow the UK to shift away from a reliance on coal, a fuel that is much more dangerous for the environment than natural gas. They point to the US which has used fracking in the extraction of both oil and natural gas, leading to a huge leap in production over the past few years. In the UK it is yet to be tested on an industrial scale. As well as Sussex, the north west of England is one of the regions with a high shale gas potential, but anti-fracking protests have sprung up there as well. INEOS's previous announcement that it would give back £2.5 billion ($3.9 billion) to local communities met with a similarly hostile response as Friends of the Earth condemned the move as "transparent bribery". Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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PHOTOS: Check Out All The Houses You Can Buy In Liverpool For £1 | ||
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Last year, Liverpool City Council began selling abandoned homes for just £1. The idea was simple: some areas of Liverpool became completely uninhabited following the decline of the city's shipyards in the 1980s and 1990s. With vast stretches of Liverpool all but derelict, the city council offered the abandoned houses for the symbolic figure of £1, provided that the new owner would take on renovation costs. The initiative was imitated elsewhere, from sunny Sicily to not-so-sunny Stoke on Trent. The first 20 houses listed triggered more than 1,000 requests, and the houses are currently being transacted. More houses are expected to hit the market in the future: Liverpool has about 160 more to allocate. The homes are all located about 5 kilometres east of the city centre, in the area of Edge Hill (map right).
They are all two-up, two-down style Victorian terraced houses, and Liverpool City Council has undertaken major renovations to make them livable. "They come with basic kitchen and bathroom, the owner needs to undertake the cost of decorating and making them pretty," a spokesperson from Liverpool City Council told to Business Insider UK. The BBC estimates that a further £35,000 would be required to bring them up to standard, and the owner has to commit to live in them for five years. Still, it is much cheaper than a regular mortgage. We decided to take a tour with Google Streetview of the available houses in Liverpool. Frankly, the neighbourhoods look bleak. Some of the houses are nice Victorian terraces, with a bit of garden in the front:
They were clearly in need of a massive renovation when the pictures were taken:
But this one, for example, has a nice pair of houses on each side, and looks promising:
Some other bidders were not that lucky. This looks rough:
Or here (the house for sale is the one in the middle):
Left or right, both of them for £1. Which one do you fancy?
The purple paint seems to be a feature, because we found it on this other house too:
These two are also part of the scheme:
The neighbourhood looks very empty:
In some areas, kids are banned from playing football in the street. | ||
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EU rejects Britain bonus cap challenge | ||
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Luxembourg (AFP) - A top EU court advisor rejected Thursday a barrage of British challenges against a cap on banking bonuses, dealing a blow to Prime Minister David Cameron's government. Brussels set the rules in a bid to curb excessive risk taking in the wake of the financial crisis, saying that bonuses cannot exceed a banker's fixed salary, or twice that if given shareholder approval. But banking is a pillar of the British economy and Cameron's government fiercely resisted the cap, taking the case to the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg. The court's Advocate General Niilo Jaaskinen gave a legal opinion saying that the limits were valid, and although the decision is not binding the European Union's top court mostly follows such recommendations. "In his Opinion today, Advocate General Niilo Jaaskinen suggests that all the UK’s pleas should be rejected and that the Court of Justice dismiss the action," the court said in a statement. The opinion comes the same day as Cameron faces a local election defeat against the anti-EU UK Independence party led by Nigel Farage. UKIP is looking to gain a second seat in the British parliament and the courtroom setback will be further ammunition for the party's arguments that Brussels encroaches on national sovereignty. The ECJ is Europe's top court on questions of EU law and regularly publishes opinions by its senior lawyers on pending cases. Britain put forward a series of arguments against the cap, including the argument that Brussels has no right to limit pay in a member state. But the advocate general said limiting a bonus "does not equate" to the fixing of pay. "As there is no legal limit to the basic salary that can be paid there is no limit to the total level of pay," the statement said. City of London authorities have come out hard against tighter oversight of banker activity despite multiple scandals. Britain was pleased earlier this year when its man Jonathan Hill was appointed the new European commissioner for financial services, but responsibility for rules on bankers' bonuses has been removed from his portfolio. In a statement, the British treasury said it "notes" the Advocate General's opinion on our legal challenge against the EU bonus cap. "We are considering the opinion and its implications in detail," it said. The opinion lands as further scandals hit the British banking sector, including the rigging of foreign exchange rates. Amid the misbehaviour, on Monday Bank of England governor Mark Carney said authorities may need more powers to regulate pay of bankers as well as their bonuses.
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Practically Every Notable Founder In Silicon Valley Just Invested In This Payroll Startup | ||
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The investors who joined the $20 million Series A round range from celebrities such as Ashton Kutcher and Jared Leto, to Karen Mills, the former head of the U.S. Small Business Administration, and a laundry list of famed startup CEOs from Evernote, Eventbrite, Stripe, Constant Contact, SurveyMonkey, WordPress, Instagram. The founders of PayPal, Yahoo, Reddit, Nest, Twitter, HubSpot, and Mint also contributed. “When you’re building a business for the next fifty years, it’s all about the people,” says Joshua Reeves, CEO and co-founder of ZenPayroll in a press release. “This incredible group of leaders built companies from the ground up, and they want to help us solve this problem because they’ve experienced it firsthand.” “We pretty much got our dream list of investors. And we’re really grateful,” he told us. "It's always great to invest alongside great entrepreneurs and VCs," said Max Levchin in an email with us. The problem ZenPayroll hopes to eliminate is the notorious headache that is payroll processing. Legacy vendors such as ADP and Paychex currently own the market despite laborious and antiquated products and offerings. ZenPayroll hopes to streamline their complicated systems by offering simpler cloud-based system that can automate all payroll tax calculations and payments, as well as provide direct deposit to employees. The app also allows for paperless filing of all payroll-related government documents, the ability for employees to donate a portion of their paycheck to charity, and easy to read, visually clear pay stubs. ZenPayroll has more than quadrupled its rate of payroll processing since its first round of funding, and is currently processing over $1.5 billion in annual payroll for thousands of small businesses across the United States. “Right now we have a very strong focus on small businesses, and sub-100 person companies," says Reeves, "We are not just taking these investors to convert them to clients, it’s about getting a chance to talk to these people who have been in our shoes." ZenPayroll plans to use this latest round of funding to complete its nationwide expansion and eventually grow to support larger companies. Here are some of ZenPayroll’s new investors:
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