In addition to B-to-C, B-to-B represents a buoyant market for specialized companies. 4 American companies featured in Vintage Altaroc Odyssey 2021 have established themselves as leaders of high-growth companies on the other side of the Atlantic.
Evisort, the reference platform that relies on artificial intelligence to help companies categorize their business documents has seen its sales grow by 90% in 2022. Coalition, a leading provider of cyber insurance, saw its sales grow by 166% year-on-year; Incode, which reinvents the way humans verify and authenticate their identity through a simple, secure and fast platform based on artificial intelligence, saw its sales grow by 145%; and Authentic Brands Group, which owns the Quiksilver and Reebok brands among others, saw its sales increase by 54% to over $1 billion.
Coalition offers cyber insurance in a market that exceeds $320 billion
With the digitalization of the world of work, data protection is becoming a priority for both private and public companies. They therefore need IT security and cyber insurance tools. Coalition has become a world leader in this sector, and has created a comprehensive range of services to prevent and manage cyber risks.
Backed by the world's leading insurers, Coalition's platform provides automated security alerts, threat intelligence, expert advice and tools to help companies remain resilient in the face of cyber attacks. The result is far fewer attempted breaches, reduced detection, containment and recovery costs when an attack does occur, and insurance support that helps the targeted company get back on its feet.
Coalition has built its cyber offering on 3 foundations:
- Sell a comprehensive insurance product to protect businesses against rapidly emerging cyber and technological risks;
- Use the money from this product to invest in a complete security platform with free tools, technologies and information to protect all their policyholders;
- Use the data obtained to create better insurance products and even more effective tools, technologies and information.
Well-known in their industry, Coalition's founders had previously created other successful companies: Lookout, Cloudflare, OpenDNS and HackerOne. Their team also includes personalities who previously worked for US intelligence.
The Canalys Institute, which specializes in analyzing technology markets, forecasts that global spending on cybersecurity will increase by 13.2% in 2023 to reach $223.8 billion.
Evisort, artificial intelligence from Harvard and MIT
Heading for California, where Evisort has developed a platform that uses artificial intelligence to help companies sort and categorize their business documents and invoices, and assist them with mail management. It supports the legal, finance, sales, procurement and IT departments of companies worldwide.
"Evisort strives to help organizations know everything about their contacts and contract processes - without limits or dependencies," explains Jerry Ting, founder and CEO of Evisort.
Powered by 11 million contracts and 1 billion pieces of data, the technology developed by Evisort analyzes the context of documents and the meaning of legal language to help operational teams evolve faster and reduce company costs.
Based in San Francisco, the company was the first Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) company to achieve ISO 27001 and 27001 certification.
As Jerry Ting explains, "I enrolled in law school because I wanted to help businesses deal with complicated legal situations. Yet, within weeks of arriving at Harvard, I learned that the legal profession was not what I had imagined. I learned that, for many lawyers, the practice of law consisted primarily of reviewing documents, sifting through thousands of pages of contracts and looking for anomalies and risks. Talking to lawyers in the field, it became clear that nobody liked this type of work."
He adds: " We saw dozens of point solutions, which required customers to buy several pieces of software to implement a holistic solution. From an AI perspective, most legal technology providers were using rules-based approaches that had low accuracy rates."
"We set out to build a system based on the latest advances in artificial intelligence. The idea behind our approach was that if a car could drive itself, we could extract the key terms of a contract. Over the past three years, we have developed a system capable of accurately extracting dozens of fields, both legal and financial, from even scanned third-party contracts."
Incode revolutionizes digital authentication
Also based in San Francisco, Incode is completely reinventing the verification and authentication of digital identities with its simple, fast and secure platform based on artificial intelligence.
Founded in 2015, Incode 's customers include some of the world's largest financial institutions, governments, hotels and hospitals spread across the globe. The company is now recognized as the leader in facial recognition by the US government.
The turning point for the company came when it responded to a call for tenders from Citibanamex, Mexico's 2nd largest bank, which was then looking for a supplier capable of meeting the 4 components required for biometric identity validation:
- facial recognition
- facial identity
- identity validation
- videoconferencing
"Most of our technology - over 90% - is built in-house, not outsourced. The fact that the technology is built in-house gives us the flexibility and speed we need to evolve rapidly," explains Ricardo Amper, CEO and founder of the company.
"Much of the biometrics market is still relatively new. Privacy and data protection laws are still evolving. Owning the technology ourselves allows us to be agile and build our solution according to customer wishes and current regulations."
Authentic Brands Group: sales top the billion-dollar mark
Authentic Brands Group has a portfolio of over 50 international fashion, sports and entertainment brands, which, thanks to its innovative, high-performance marketing levers, are prospering and increasing their sales. The group works on the image of each of its brands to position them as close as possible to their consumers. Its brands include Nautica, Barney's, Reebok and Forever 21.
The company was founded in 2010 by Jamie Salter, former CEO of Hilco Consuler Capital (a company specializing in restructuring troubled brands). He then invested $250 million to launch Authentic Brands Group, which began by acquiring the image rights to the official products featuring Marilyn Monroe, then in 2013 acquired Juicy Couture for $195 million.
Today, the company has 217 companies in its portfolio, 30 brands, works with 800 Partners and has 285 million followers on social networks. Headquartered in New York, it employs over 11,000 people across its various subsidiaries.
Authentic Brands Group saw its sales grow by 54% in 2022, topping the billion-dollar mark.