We Tried DropLabs, the Haptic Feedback Shoes That Let You Feel Sound

We can all probably officially say that 2020 was bunk: between a raging, mutating plague that seems like a deep cut from a Danny Boyle film, all the way through whack-ass killer hornets and painful, unreconciled racial injustice, the year was a hackneyed sprint to close out a marathon of a decade. 

Still, the sneakerheads among us can be resolute in the face of chaos: 2020 wasn't entirely unkind to the footwear game—we’ve seen insane kicks come through, from the 100 limited-run all-black Fear of God Nike drop to Undefeated’s throwback release of Nike’s Air Max 97s. But some of the most interesting shoes aren’t coming from our usual suspects like Nike, Adidas or Reebok: there are small companies on the come up pushing the very boundaries of footwear. Enter DropLabs, the scrappy upstart out of L.A. making crazy-ass shoes that let you feel sound. Yeah, you read that right. 

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2021 Ushers In One Of The Biggest Innovations For The Payroll Industry: DailyPay's Off-Cycle Payroll Solution

NEW YORK, Jan. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Over the last six years, DailyPay has revolutionized the way Americans are paid. Now, DailyPay is leveraging its on-demand pay technology to give payroll professionals a game-changing product that is revolutionizing the payroll industry, CYCLE, which will save employers and employees millions of dollars each year. 

After a year of piloting this product with a number of blue-chip forward-thinking companies, CYCLE hits the market today with a mission to relieve payroll professionals from much of the costly burden of handling off-cycle payroll payments.

Companies spend an abundance of time and money each year making payments outside of their usual payroll schedule. This labor-intensive process often features the creation of paper checks for bonuses, termination pay or to make other necessary off-cycle payments to employees. The creation of the paper check and the costs to overnight it to the recipient can cost upwards of $50each. In this time when companies are prioritizing optimization of every dollar, those costs are simply wasteful. 

For the employees, many are forced to utilize predatory check-cashing establishments that carry a high surcharge.

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Noteworth Partners with Esse Health to Integrate Virtual Care Delivery Solutions

HOBOKEN, N.J., Jan. 12, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Noteworth, a first-of-its-kind virtual care delivery platform, today announced its partnership with Esse Health — a Level 3 Patient-Centered Medical Home (PCMH) — to help the independent physician group deliver virtual care technologies to meet new patient expectations. 

"In an industry notoriously resistant to change, we've advanced 15 years within five months," said Erin Stamm, COO of Esse Health. "Noteworth helped our organization meet short-term needs in response to COVID-19; more importantly, the platform enables us to change how we deliver care in the future to meet patient expectations."

Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, Esse Health recognized the need to evolve its care delivery strategy to offer patients more accessible and convenient visits through virtual care options. In early 2020, Esse Health partnered with Noteworth to leverage condition management and telemedicine solutions, expanding care delivery to a select cohort of patients. However, when the COVID-19 pandemic hit in March, Esse Health needed to quickly scale its virtual care solutions to all patients to avoid delayed interventions and reduce patient and staff exposure to infections. Able to pivot rapidly, Esse Health deployed Noteworth across the entire 180-provider organization within three days and has since managed over 35,000 telehealth visits, with nearly 32,000 patients continuing to engage with the platform heading into 2021. Esse Health attributes Noteworth's platform with saving lives as it has allowed patients to seek care and receive proactive interventions via telehealth services from the safety of their homes. Up to 80% of Esse Health's patient visits have been conducted via Noteworth platform, resulting in an increase in revenue and optimal care coordination.

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Seattle startup Syndio raises $17.1M as demand spikes for HR software that helps identify pay gaps

Syndio, the Seattle startup that works to eliminate gaps in pay equity, has raised $17.1 million in new funding, the company announced Thursday.

The new investment, led by Bessemer Venture Partners, comes just eight months after Syndio raised $7.5 million in a Series A round in May 2020.

“We have seen incredible demand in 2020, and this investment gives us the ability to innovate faster, creating new products that address some of the most difficult and embedded problems organizations face,” Syndio CEO Maria Colacurcio said in a statement.

The startup’s so-called EquityTech analytics software, and flagship product PayEQ, analyzes salaries, rooting out discriminatory differences in pay that are tied to gender, race, ethnicity or age while providing strategies for fixing those disparities. Syndio says more than 100 companies, including Nordstrom, Salesforce, Slack, Adobe and others, use the product across 2.3 million employees.

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Niantic buys competitive gaming platform Mayhem

Pokémon GO creator Niantic has acquired a small SF gaming startup building a league and tournament organization platform to help gamers create their own communities around popular titles.

Mayhem was in Y Combinator’s winter 2018 batch and went on to raise $5.7 million in funding, according to Crunchbase. Other backers include Accel, which led the startup’s Series A in 2018, Afore Capital and NextGen Venture Partners.

The startup’s focus has shifted quite a bit since its initial YC debut, when it announced a service called Visor that would analyze video of esports gameplay and coach users on how they could improve their performance. The company has seemed to shift its focus wholly to community tools to help gamers find matches and organize tournaments for games like Overwatch on its platform.

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