The homestretch of the year is always an apt time to take stock of the preceding 12 months: revisiting various highs and lows, celebrating the wins and examining the progress made toward certain goals.
But it’s not just about looking back; it’s also anticipating what’s next — and when connecting with a trio of team members from Live Bash, Pricefx and Keeper Security, enthusiasm for what 2023 holds is palpable. And while these three tech companies represent markedly different industries, commonalities emerge when leaders from their teams preview their next-year plans. Think: Growth, commitment to innovation and ongoing effort to bolster their product.
Over at Live Bash, the team is priming for its official launch as part of what CEO John Hart teased as a “banner year” for the livestreaming platform, which announced a $21 million round of funding earlier in 2022.
Meanwhile, Pricefx CEO Ronak Sheth highlighted a concerted focus on improving UX as a key area of emphasis for the pricing software company.
And Craig Lurey, CTO at Keeper Security, said improvements in areas like UI and customer onboarding are parts of a “greater focus” on the small and medium-sized business customer segment.
For each of the companies, executing on a vision means growth — either through hiring more talent or continuing to support the development of current staffers.
Below, the three leaders shared how the current state of their respective industries shapes their plans on the horizon, how they’ll execute on those plans and what that means for current and prospective team members.
What are the technology trends currently impacting your industry, and how are you planning to harness or react to those trends in 2023?
2023 is set to be a banner year for Live Bash. After a year and a half of building software, underlying technology and a flagship venue, we’re ready for our close-up. We recognize the way people discover and engage with content is evolving, and thus we’re offering a new specialized platform for performers and fans.
Live Bash’s high-tech venues marry emerging trends like NFTs and blockchain technology with broadcast-quality livestreaming to allow musicians, comedians, speakers and more to monetize live performances in an entirely new way. There’s a growing demand for collecting content rather than just consuming it. That’s why we designed a platform for users to build collections of alternative assets.
NFTs traded on our two-sided marketplace allow performers to generate revenue while the buyers can collect invaluable merchandise. Our goal is to make interacting with powerful technology incredibly straightforward. To create NFTs live on-stage, performers simply push our “Bash” button. Behind our marketplace is a custom matching engine that automatically regulates and facilitates transactions.
We’re offering a new specialized platform for performers and fans. Our goal is to make interacting with powerful technology incredibly straightforward.”
What is the biggest project your teams will be working on in the next year?
We’re primarily focused on the official public launch of Live Bash. Version one of our platform has three main components.
The first component is our easy-to-use booking system that will dramatically democratize stage accessibility. In early 2023, we’ll allow performers to book stage time at our flagship venue in Chicago. All they need to do is choose a date and time to perform and then plan the event in our performer portal.
The second component is our instant NFT creation technology, which is the cornerstone of Live Bash. Our performers utilize this tech during their livestream shows to turn moments into NFTs that viewers can mint, collect and trade in our marketplace.
Third, we’re launching our proprietary blockchain. It records all transactions, is privately managed and is 100 percent carbon-offsetting. Our marketplace couldn’t function without it.
Finally, one of our most significant projects nearing completion has been transforming a warehouse into a state-of-the-art production studio. We are looking for emerging artists in Chicago to be the first to perform at Live Bash. If you know anyone, please send them our way. Our mic is always open.
What career-growth opportunities do you see for the team members who will be working on these projects?
Live Bash is a small and tenacious team working toward its official launch. Employees are encouraged to apply their experience to create strategies and products to lead teams and champion new initiatives. We expect to grow individually and professionally while shaping the company’s future.
We put our core values into practice every day, which helps us create an imaginative, supportive and productive work environment. This enables the team to feel comfortable leading and freely contributing. We aim to provide tools for career development as growth opportunities arise so employees feel prepared and excited.
Live Bash is planning on growing in 2023, expanding our production, marketing, technology and product teams. More job postings to come!
What are the technology trends currently impacting your industry, and how are you planning to harness or react to those trends in 2023?
In the current economic environment with high market volatility, companies need to match the speed of price changes to the speed of cost changes to address margin erosion. Inflation is putting even more pressure on finding the optimal price for a given product for a given segment of the market.
All this speeds up the trend towards more dynamic price changes. For industries like distributions and discrete manufacturing, we see a shift from occasional to frequent price changes. Our customers need to pass these changes in labor, raw material and energy costs to their customers to improve margin.
There is also a trend of selling value and solutions instead of just a product and competing for price. There is a clear shift toward new pricing and business models which are based on consumption or output instead of a pure product sale. To support this transition, companies need a very flexible pricing and quoting solution, which is a key differentiator from Pricefx.
Our platform connects with ERP, CRM and other systems, making it easy to integrate and exchange data as time to value is key for our customers.
What is the biggest project your teams will be working on in the next year?
In 2023 our product and engineering team will be focused on usability and user experience. Having an easy-to-use and -implement solution is key for modern solutions.
In 2023 our product and engineering team will be focused on usability and user experience.”
Users are looking for similar experiences in enterprise solutions like the ones they are having in private life with mobile apps, where everything is just a couple of clicks away and intuitive to use. Unfortunately, most business applications are more complex and drive more complex processes. Nevertheless, more and more, the user expects the same experience. We are doing a lot of customer research and investing in this area to have an easy-to-use application and shield all the complexity. A fast implementation is also key for our customers to achieve time to value. Our solution needs to be easy to set up but also easy to maintain and adaptable over time.
With our Accelerator program — that is, preconfigured best practices — we can reduce the implementation time by 50 to 60 percent. Pricefx is built with an easy-to-use configuration layer. It is even possible for business users to make adjustments and changes in the application.
What career-growth opportunities do you see for the team members who will be working on these projects?
We are a very flexible and fast-growing company with a lot of opportunities for team members to develop their careers. Many of our leaders and managers today started in individual contributor roles and took on different growth opportunities as we scaled. Pricefx is committed to our team's engagement, motivation and retention. We support our employees by providing internal and external development opportunities.
We expect to see several team members move into leadership/management roles or lateral roles across Pricefx, which will allow them to challenge and share their knowledge with others. We empower our employees to own their career development but work collectively with their manager and mentor to drive individual growth plans and professional goals.
We are proud to be on Built In Chicago’s Best Midsize Companies to Work For two years in a row, as well as having glowing reviews and a 4.9 rating on Glassdoor. We will continue to invest and develop our talent to take on complex challenges.
What are the technology trends currently impacting your industry, and how are you planning to harness or react to those trends in 2023?
Covid-19 ushered in a new era of remote and hybrid working. The explosion in endpoints, with an increasing number of them accessed remotely, requires a higher level of security to tackle growing online threats. Zero trust is now the only realistic and comprehensive framework for securing modern, cloud-based data environments and distributed workforces.
The zero-knowledge security model helps support zero trust by protecting against data breaches and is crucial for cybersecurity vendors to achieve customer trust and approval. It ensures an unauthorized third party cannot access customer data, decrypt records or view passwords or credentials. Despite the importance of zero knowledge and zero trust, adoption is limited. In Keeper’s recent report exploring insights from U.S. IT leaders, only 32 percent said they have plans to adopt a zero-trust, zero-knowledge security approach.
In 2023, Keeper plans to further engage with organizations to share how our platform provides full visibility, security and control across every user on every device. Keeper enables zero-trust security and compliance by unifying enterprise password management, secrets management and privileged connection management.
What is the biggest project your teams will be working on in the next year?
Small and medium-sized businesses are the most underserved market regarding cybersecurity, yet they are a primary attack target by cybercriminals. This has significant economic impacts, as small businesses are critically important to the health of our broader economy. The U.S. Small Business Administration reports small businesses make up 99.9 percent of all U.S. businesses. Yet, we’ve all seen the news headlines and read the stats — many SMBs are just one cyberattack away from being forced to shut their doors.
In the coming year, Keeper will put greater focus on the highly exploited SMB market, providing the cyber defense tools it needs. We will continue to develop cybersecurity solutions that are simpler to provision by IT departments, easier for the employee to use and are more cost effective. Specifically, that includes improvements to our user interface and streamlining customer onboarding across all of our platforms.
We will continue to develop cybersecurity solutions that are simpler to provision by IT departments, easier for the employee to use and are more cost effective.”
What career-growth opportunities do you see for the team members who will be working on these projects?
At Keeper, we prioritize the professional growth of team members and continuously challenge our team with new and innovative ways of thinking about problems and solutions. Through open communication and maintaining a flat hierarchy, employees at all levels feel comfortable interacting in any project and sharing their thoughts, feedback and opinions.
Employee check-ins happen on an ongoing basis so that employee goals can be actively met. This includes having a high internal promotion rate and also fostering mentoring programs. With a flat management model and an open-door policy, team members are able to get to know their C-suite leaders on a more meaningful mentorship-style level.
The company hires diverse, talented, growth-minded individuals who are intuitive, persistent and team-driven. Most recently, Keeper has been prioritizing hiring in technical and development roles. Keeper invests in the training and development of each team member, from the very day an individual joins the team, to their continued path towards self-actualization. Keeper’s culture fuels its innovation and unrelenting desire to fulfill critical unmet needs of the global market.
