![]() ![]() ![]() Leahy, president and chief executive officer, CDW. “Helping our customers leverage technology to protect their most critical data is core to our mission,” said Christine A. – Aug 2, 2021 – CDW Corporation (Nasdaq: CDW), a leading multi-brand technology services and solutions provider to business, government, education and healthcare customers in the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada, announced today that it has acquired Focal Point Data Risk, a leading provider of cybersecurity services with customers across a diverse set of industries. Today’s $3 million seed came from a group of investors including Susa Ventures, Amplo, GoPoint Ventures, Bungalow Capital and Operator Partners.Acquisition of Focal Point accelerates platform for world-leading identity and access management, cyber security consulting and talent development business In terms of raising at a time when VC dollars are tightening, he sees his solution helping procurement teams find better deals in a more efficient way, something that should remain attractive regardless of economic conditions. He reports that his Ukraine-based team is safe at the moment but some members have had dangerous experiences, having to evacuate from shelling, and he helped his employees get to safety, a job he takes very seriously. But they’re not mutually exclusive,” he said. So we are looking to hire the best talent, the best available and, of course, we have to have an eye towards diversity also. And I would say that at least half of our team onshore here in Atlanta is also diverse. It’s just they’re our developers now, and the complement there is fairly diverse. Our dev team is actually still in the Ukraine. “So having an eye for diversity is something that we always have. He points out that the company is a disabled-owned business. He says that diversity is something that’s near and dear to his heart. He’s putting the brakes on hiring for the rest of the year while he sees how external economic conditions play out. He started building the software with a small group of Ukrainian developer contractors in 2021, and today has 21 employees, four of whom he recently hired. He has a handful of large customers using the software, and reports a healthy pipeline. Lillevik launched the company in 2020 and raised a $679,000 pre-seed investment from Surface VC, Techstars and various angels in 2021, which he put to work to build the first version of the software last year. Procurement officers can track all of this activity across their organization with analytics that help them understand where different items are in the buying process and what is being spent. The customer can create a workflow and Focal Point can then present the user with a set of suppliers and then help send out RFPs, process them and eventually award the business. The system can help find suppliers that meet a specific set of requirements, whether technical, environmental, diversity or whatever. “All reporting comes out of the box, so it becomes a much better user experience with all the information available at your fingertips rather than having to swivel chair it from system to system, then copy and paste into Excel and email.” He said that this approach eliminates the need to log into multiple systems to find information and record it in the dreaded spreadsheet. So we have that data integration layer, and then we have a process layer that allows users to set up their own workflows and processes with the data available to them,” Lillevik told TechCrunch. That in and of itself is not necessarily unique, but what we do is we make that data available as part of workflows. ![]() “So essentially, what we do is we take all the data that sits in the underlying systems and bring them together. Today, his startup announced a $3 million seed investment to help build the platform he envisioned, one that would bring a level of automation to a highly manual process. He saw a different way and set about to build a company to deliver it. Nothing was really changing in spite of the significant investment. They were spending $1.5 million, yet would still be doing most of the work in Excel and email. He says the idea for his startup really came into focus when he was working as a consultant helping a client select procurement software. He saw an opportunity to modernize an industry desperately in need of digitization by applying the power of open APIs to get at data often locked away in various enterprise systems. Focal Point founder Anders Lillevik has spent more than 25 years in procurement, where he has observed that the vast majority of business was still being conducted using spreadsheets and email. ![]()
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