Latest news with #Kopp
Yahoo
28-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Rillet raises $25M from Sequoia to automate general ledger systems using AI
For accounting departments, no software is more important than the general ledger system. It's the central hub that summarizes all financial transactions, providing the essential data needed to create accurate financial statements. "The general ledger is the beating heart of the finance function, and so asking a company to remove it is a kind of open-heart surgery," said Julien Bek, a partner at Sequoia Capital. Until a few years ago, Bek believed that VCs wouldn't dare to invest in startups building new general ledger software. It's not only difficult to get customers to switch from their existing accounting software, but building a new general ledger business is also very challenging, he explained. Bek changed his mind when he discovered Rillet, a three-year-old company leveraging machine learning and generative AI to automate accounting reports. Rillet directly pulls data from their customers' banks and platforms, such as Salesforce, Stripe, Ramp, Brex and Rippling, to generate essential financial statements, including the balance sheet and income statement. Rillet founder Nicolas Kopp (pictured above) says thanks to machine learning and AI, his company's software enables accounting and finance teams at medium-sized companies to close their monthly or quarterly books in hours, a process that previously took weeks. Prior to Rillet, Kopp was U.S. CEO of European neobank N26. Since launching its product last year, Rillet's revenue has grown five-fold, and it has brought on nearly 200 customers, including fast-growing companies like Windsurf, the AI coding assistant reportedly sold to OpenAI for $3 billion, and Decagon, an AI customer support startup reportedly valued at $1.6 billion. In the past, companies of that size would likely have installed NetSuite, general ledger software developed in the late 1990s that is still very popular with middle-sized companies. But NetSuite is slow and clunky. "I think a third of their deals are coming from [customers] replacing NetSuite, or NetSuite-like systems," Bek said about Rillet's customers. It was this statistic that helped Sequoia decide to invest. "What I was watching for is that they start replacing NetSuite. Because [with] many companies, you can get the small customers, but getting the big ones, I think that's really hard," Bek said. On Wednesday, Rillet said it has raised a $25 million Series A led by Sequoia Capital, with participation from existing investors. The fresh funding comes 10 months after the company raised a $13.5 million seed and pre-seed round from First Round Capital, Creandum and Susa Ventures. Rillet's AI makes the installation process relatively painless. It used to take many months to transfer all the data from one general ledger software to another, Rillet can reduce that time to about four to six weeks, Kopp said. Clients simply continue to use the existing general ledger platform until they are sure that all the data has moved to Rillet. According to Kopp, Rillet competes with NetSuite and other legacy platforms, but currently doesn't have a clear rival that leverages AI and machine learning to replace accounting systems for mid-size companies. Digits, another AI accounting startup, recently launched its autonomously-powered general ledger, but unlike Rillet, it targets small businesses that use QuickBooks and Xero. This article originally appeared on TechCrunch at Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
13-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Alaska House passes public pension bill, sending it to Senate
May 13—The Alaska House on Monday narrowly adopted a new pension plan for state employees, sending the bill to the Senate for consideration. The bill passed in a 21-19 vote, dividing the chamber along caucus lines. However, the Senate unlikely to vote on its passage before the end of the regular session next week, Senate Majority Leader Cathy Giessel said on Tuesday. "It looks like it will be a next-year bill," said Giessel, an Anchorage Republican who sponsored the legislation in the Senate. If it becomes law, the measure would offer guaranteed retirement income to public-sector workers in Alaska for the first time since 2006, when lawmakers eliminated the state's defined benefit system in the face of a massive unfunded liability. Lawmakers in 2006 instead adopted a defined contribution system that allows public-sector workers to contribute to individual investment accounts but does not guarantee any specific income in retirement. Several recent analyses have shown that the new plan leaves most public sector workers without enough funds to retire securely. The plan has been particularly harmful for teachers, who do not contribute to Social Security and do not have access to a Social Security alternative offered by the state to other public sector workers. Since 2006, unions have warned with increasing urgency that the lack of a defined benefit option has made it difficult to recruit and retain workers in Alaska. Unions and lawmakers in the majority say the elimination of state pensions has led to dire teacher shortages that have forced some districts to hire staff from other countries on temporary visas, and state troopers and corrections officers are relying on overtime shifts rather than filling all posts. The debate in the House over the new pension plan boiled down to a single question: What would it cost? Proponents of the bill said it would ultimately save the state money by removing the need to pay tens of millions of dollars annually for recruiting and training new workers in a variety of sectors. Opponents said the pension system would shackle the state to payments it cannot afford, even as it is still paying off the unfunded liability it accrued for the pension system it closed in 2006. The bill is expected to cost around $600 million in the coming 14 years, or roughly $40 million per year, according to House Majority Leader Chuck Kopp, an Anchorage Republican who is sponsoring the legislation. However, Kopp said the state is currently spending far more than that on recruitment and retention bonuses, overtime pay and the cost of regularly training new workers to make up for high turnover. "We are burning bonfires of money," Kopp said. "What we're doing now is staggeringly expensive." Kopp and other proponents of the bill said the measure — which would allow current state employees in the defined contribution system to opt in to the new pension system — would save the state money by improving worker retention in the long haul. Minority members said that despite the fact that the plan was designed to ensure that employees would increase their contribution rate if the pension plan became underfunded, it was impossible to ensure that the plan remained solvent in perpetuity due to a variety of factors, including the fast-ballooning cost of health care premiums in Alaska. "We cannot predict the future," said Rep. Justin Ruffridge, a Soldotna Republican. "I want to support this bill. I really, actually do. I think that there are a lot of options in here that are good for people, but until we can have a hard conversation about the costs of this bill and really take a hard look at the levers that are in this bill, and until we can use some fiscal constraint around the cost over time, it's really hard to support this at this time." The bipartisan majority in the Senate adopted similar legislation in 2023 but has yet to take a final vote a pension plan this year. Gov. Mike Dunleavy has not taken a position on the legislation. The regular legislative session must end by May 21, giving lawmakers limited time to consider the bill or amend it this year. "We simply don't have time the rest of this year," said Giessel.
Yahoo
16-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Alaska lawmakers say pension reform is a 'two-year project'
Apr. 16—Revamping retirement options for Alaska's public sector is "a two-year project," state Senate and House majority leaders said Tuesday, signaling that adoption of a new pension bill was unlikely before this year's legislative session ends next month. The bipartisan House and Senate coalitions both identified pension reform as one of their top policy goals when they formed late last year, amid ongoing recruitment and retention challenges in Alaska's public sector. Senate Majority Leader Cathy Giessel, an Anchorage Republican, since 2023 has advocated for a new defined benefit plan that would guarantee income to retirees from Alaska's public sector employers — including the state, school districts and law enforcement agencies — for the first time since 2006. In 2023, the Senate adopted Giessel's bill only to have it languish in the Republican-controlled House. This year, Giessel said the Senate is waiting on the House to act on the bill first. Meanwhile, House Majority Leader Chuck Kopp, also an Anchorage Republican, said Tuesday that though pension reform remains a priority for his caucus, progress on the legislation was slowed by several factors, including an unexpectedly protracted debate on the operating budget in the House Finance Committee. In February, Kopp said the bill would be voted on by the full House by the end of March. March came and went, and the bill remains before the House Finance Committee. On Tuesday, Kopp said he expected House Bill 78 — which would create a new defined benefit program for the public sector — to be before the full House for a vote by the first week of May. Alaska discontinued its previous defined benefit plan for new public sector workers in 2006, amid an unfunded liability that was fueled by incorrect actuarial analyses. Nearly 20 years later, the state is still paying off its debt to the plan. Since then, Alaska has offered its teachers, police officers, firefighters and other public sector workers access to a defined contribution plan similar to a 401(k), under which workers could contribute to an investment account but had no option for guaranteed income from the state in retirement. That change has left many public sector workers in Alaska without enough funds to securely retire. It has also made Alaska the only state in the union to offer its teachers neither a pension nor access to Social Security. Public sector union leaders and agency heads now say that the lack of a defined benefit option is a key driver in the state's recruitment and retention crisis, which has led to high vacancy rates in Alaska school districts, state agencies, and law enforcement posts. Jesse Slone, a data analyst for the Alaska Department of Corrections and a representative for his union, said earlier this month that he supports the return of pensions for state employees. Those who were hired by the state before it discontinued pensions — including his relatives — "aren't wealthy, but they have what so many in my generation fear that they won't: a dignified, stable retirement," he told lawmakers in the House Finance Committee. "Some say young people don't want pensions, but when I've repeated that line to recent graduates, they've literally laughed at my face," said Slone. "That belief that hard work should be honored — it isn't outdated." But disagreements persist on whether a new pension system will solve Alaska's worker recruitment and retention crisis. Republicans in the House and Senate minorities have largely opposed the effort to reintroduce pensions, citing fears over another unfunded liability or a cost that the state cannot bear amid reduced revenue forecasts and disinterest in levying new taxes. A new actuarial analysis presented to the House Finance Committee earlier this month indicated the bill would cost up to $580 million over a 14-year period, averaging out to around $40 million per year. Kopp said that cost will likely be balanced in the long run by reductions in hiring and retention bonuses that the state has resorted in recent years to offering in key sectors — including to correctional officers, state troopers and state workers who process food assistance applications. The state would also likely save money by reducing the cost of frequently hiring and training new workers, Kopp said. "It compares favorably with the projected savings to the state, which is $76 million a year in savings in just reduced lost training dollars, the cost of turnover, recruitment, rehire, retraining," Kopp said. "The cost of doing nothing is dramatically higher than what's being presented in this bill." Past efforts to reintroduce a pension plan have stalled in either the House or the Senate. But Kopp said that over time, the cause of improving public sector retirement has become more popular among voters and elected officials. Kopp last year won his seat against incumbent Rep. Craig Johnson, after Kopp made public pensions a key element of his campaign. The defined benefit plan considered this year is not a return to the pensions Alaska offered until 2006, Kopp and Giessel say. Unlike that plan, their proposal would have Alaska workers shoulder a share of the burden if the retirement plan becomes underfunded. Their plan also does not offer health insurance to retirees, and does not offer a cost of living adjustment to those who choose to stay in Alaska. Those changes have some Alaskans worried. During a recent session of public testimony before the House Finance Committee, most speakers said they favored a return to defined benefits, but some worried about the specifics of the plan encompassed in House Bill 78. Danielle Redmond, a former retirement counselor for the state of Alaska, said she was concerned about the lack of medical benefits — known as AlaskaCare — included for retirees in the new pension plan proposal. "I can't tell you how many retirees told me it was even more important to them than the money," said Redmond. "You can get a 401(k) plan anywhere, but retiree medical was the key for many of the members that I talked to." Redmond, who herself does not currently qualify for a pension because she was hired by the state after 2006, said she was not sure how she would pick "if forced to choose between a pension plan or health care."
Yahoo
07-04-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Opinion - How lazy journalism helps bring junk science into the mainstream
In 2020, researchers at the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences announced a shocking discovery: Black babies are three times more likely to die when cared for by a white doctor than by a black one. It's terrible. It's a scandal. It's also nonsense. The study was junk science — data manipulated to produce a divisive and partisan narrative. Yet you'd think otherwise, given how the press has covered the report in the years since its publication. And this isn't just one dishonest study. The widespread dissemination of intentional falsehoods through the media is more common than you'd think. It's enough to raise all the obvious questions about how much faith we should put in 'settled science.' 'A September 2024 replication effort concluded that the original study authors did not statistically control for very low birth weight newborns at the highest risk of dying,' reported the Daily Caller's Emily Kopp. 'Applying that control zeroed out any statistically significant effect of racial concordance on infant mortality. Now, evidence has emerged that the paper's lead author buried information in order to tell a tidier story than the one his methods and data originally illustrated.' In other words, the reduplication effort revealed that the study by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences had failed to control for very low birth weight, a critical predictor of infant mortality. Since white doctors are significantly more likely to care for low birth-weight infants — those at greatest risk of death — they were thus carelessly associated with the mortality rates. This is why the replication, when very low birth weight was accounted for, found no significant racial divergence in the data. Thus, a false narrative of racist white doctors causing infant deaths had been allowed to spread widely. 'Black newborn babies in the US are more likely to survive childbirth if they are cared for by black doctors, but three times more likely to die when looked after by white doctors, a study finds,' CNN reported in 2020. Declared National Public Radio, 'A key to black infant survival? Black doctors.' 'Black babies are more likely to survive when cared for by Black doctors, study finds,' reported USA Today. And so on. It gets worse, because the records also suggest the researchers also intentionally concealed data that might have distracted from the preferred narrative. Kopp, citing documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, noted an initial version of the study had included this line: 'White newborns experience 80 deaths per 100,000 births more with a Black physician than a white physician, implying a 22 percent fatality reduction from racial concordance.' Lead author Brad Greenwood, displeased with this finding, noted in the draft's margin: 'I'd rather not focus on this. If we're telling the story from the perspective of saving black infants, this undermines the narrative.' Even more distressing than this study's journey from junk to accepted narrative is that this incident is not isolated. This type of thing is so common, and it's so easy for bogus 'science' to find a foothold in our newsrooms that a journalist once tricked editors worldwide with a fake study just to make a point. 'Dr. Johannes Bohannon,' whose real first name is John, published a deliberately made-up study in 2015 that claimed chocolate was the secret to speedy weight loss. As intended, the press ate it up. 'Pass the Easter Egg! New study reveals that eating chocolate doesn't affect your Body Mass Index … and can even help you LOSE weight!' reported the Daily Mail. Modern Healthcare published a headline that stated, 'Dieting? Don't forget the chocolate.' Europe's highest-circulation newspaper, Bild, simply asserted: 'Slim by Chocolate!' But the study was a hoax. It was deliberately falsified as a test to see whether journalists, their editors, and members of the scientific community were paying attention. The results were not flattering. 'Our point was not that journalists could be tricked by fakers, but rather that scientists themselves in this field and other fields are making the kinds of mistakes that we made on purpose,' Bohannon told me in 2015. 'This whole area of science has become kind of corrupted by really poor standards between scientists and journalists.' The fabricated study was personal, he added: His mother had suffered kidney damage after falling victim to a dubious fad diet. 'There are smart people out there who are getting fooled by this stuff because they think scientists know what they're doing,' Bohannon said. He told me that no one had bothered to double-check his research, seek comments from independent experts, or ask him about possible inaccuracies in his work. 'I was kind of shocked at how bad the reporting is,' he said. 'I didn't realize how bad people who call themselves proper journalists are at covering this beat.' The problem extended well beyond the usual clickbait websites. Even reputable publications that employ fact-checkers skimmed the details of his research, Bohannon recalled. 'Right now, there's absolutely no accountability,' he said. 'The bulls— is just flooding. And it's flooding out of these media venues, and no one gets any pushback.' This raises the obvious question related to the Gell-Mann amnesia effect — that is, our tendency to trust sources despite knowing them to be poorly informed on specific topics. If we know the news media is susceptible to junk science, and researchers are not above intentionally manipulating data, then what are we to believe about our journalism and scientific institutions? We are told to trust the science. We are told to trust the experts. But how can we know we're not being misled — either by accident or by design? Becket Adams is a writer in Washington and program director for the National Journalism Center. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
The Hill
07-04-2025
- Health
- The Hill
How lazy journalism helps bring junk science into the mainstream
In 2020, researchers at the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences announced a shocking discovery: Black babies are three times more likely to die when cared for by a white doctor than by a black one. It's terrible. It's a scandal. It's also nonsense. The study was junk science — data manipulated to produce a divisive and partisan narrative. Yet you'd think otherwise, given how the press has covered the report in the years since its publication. And this isn't just one dishonest study. The widespread dissemination of intentional falsehoods through the media is more common than you'd think. It's enough to raise all the obvious questions about how much faith we should put in 'settled science.' 'A September 2024 replication effort concluded that the original study authors did not statistically control for very low birth weight newborns at the highest risk of dying,' reported the Daily Caller's Emily Kopp. 'Applying that control zeroed out any statistically significant effect of racial concordance on infant mortality. Now, evidence has emerged that the paper's lead author buried information in order to tell a tidier story than the one his methods and data originally illustrated.' In other words, the reduplication effort revealed that the study by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences had failed to control for very low birth weight, a critical predictor of infant mortality. Since white doctors are significantly more likely to care for low birth-weight infants — those at greatest risk of death — they were thus carelessly associated with the mortality rates. This is why the replication, when very low birth weight was accounted for, found no significant racial divergence in the data. Thus, a false narrative of racist white doctors causing infant deaths had been allowed to spread widely. 'Black newborn babies in the US are more likely to survive childbirth if they are cared for by black doctors, but three times more likely to die when looked after by white doctors, a study finds,' CNN reported in 2020. Declared National Public Radio, 'A key to black infant survival? Black doctors.' 'Black babies are more likely to survive when cared for by Black doctors, study finds,' reported USA Today. And so on. It gets worse, because the records also suggest the researchers also intentionally concealed data that might have distracted from the preferred narrative. Kopp, citing documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, noted an initial version of the study had included this line: 'White newborns experience 80 deaths per 100,000 births more with a Black physician than a white physician, implying a 22 percent fatality reduction from racial concordance.' Lead author Brad Greenwood, displeased with this finding, noted in the draft's margin: 'I'd rather not focus on this. If we're telling the story from the perspective of saving black infants, this undermines the narrative.' Even more distressing than this study's journey from junk to accepted narrative is that this incident is not isolated. This type of thing is so common, and it's so easy for bogus 'science' to find a foothold in our newsrooms that a journalist once tricked editors worldwide with a fake study just to make a point. 'Dr. Johannes Bohannon,' whose real first name is John, published a deliberately made-up study in 2015 that claimed chocolate was the secret to speedy weight loss. As intended, the press ate it up. 'Pass the Easter Egg! New study reveals that eating chocolate doesn't affect your Body Mass Index … and can even help you LOSE weight!' reported the Daily Mail. Modern Healthcare published a headline that stated, 'Dieting? Don't forget the chocolate.' Europe's highest-circulation newspaper, Bild, simply asserted: 'Slim by Chocolate!' But the study was a hoax. It was deliberately falsified as a test to see whether journalists, their editors, and members of the scientific community were paying attention. The results were not flattering. 'Our point was not that journalists could be tricked by fakers, but rather that scientists themselves in this field and other fields are making the kinds of mistakes that we made on purpose,' Bohannon told me in 2015. 'This whole area of science has become kind of corrupted by really poor standards between scientists and journalists.' The fabricated study was personal, he added: His mother had suffered kidney damage after falling victim to a dubious fad diet. 'There are smart people out there who are getting fooled by this stuff because they think scientists know what they're doing,' Bohannon said. He told me that no one had bothered to double-check his research, seek comments from independent experts, or ask him about possible inaccuracies in his work. 'I was kind of shocked at how bad the reporting is,' he said. 'I didn't realize how bad people who call themselves proper journalists are at covering this beat.' The problem extended well beyond the usual clickbait websites. Even reputable publications that employ fact-checkers skimmed the details of his research, Bohannon recalled. 'Right now, there's absolutely no accountability,' he said. 'The bulls— is just flooding. And it's flooding out of these media venues, and no one gets any pushback.' This raises the obvious question related to the Gell-Mann amnesia effect — that is, our tendency to trust sources despite knowing them to be poorly informed on specific topics. If we know the news media is susceptible to junk science, and researchers are not above intentionally manipulating data, then what are we to believe about our journalism and scientific institutions? We are told to trust the science. We are told to trust the experts. But how can we know we're not being misled — either by accident or by design?
