Dan Reich is an American entrepreneur, investor and philanthropist. He has co-founded Spinback, Tula, Dibs Beauty and Troops.ai.

Dan Reich
Born
Alma materUniversity of Wisconsin
Occupation(s)Investor, philanthropist
Years active2011–present
Websitedanreich.com

History

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Dan Reich graduated from the University of Wisconsin’s College of Engineering in 2008 where he ended up receiving the business school’s inaugural Accenture Leadership Center award in 2007.[1][2]

Spinback

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In 2010, he founded Spinback with a friend from college. The company created software that helped online brands and retailers measure how much money they were making from social media channels.[1][3]

In 2011, while they were raising a round of financing, they were offered a chance at a cash and stock merger opportunity with Buddy Media. Dan stayed on till 2012 when Buddy Media was acquired for $689 million by SalesForce.com.[4][5][6]

Tula

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In 2014, Dan co-founded Tula Skincare with Dr. Roshini Raj and Ken Landis. The company used natural ingredients to help make products that increased healthy skin.[7][8] The company initially was successful selling products through QVC and in 2017 they received an investment from L Catterton which allowed them to expand to sales channels such as Sephora and, ULTA where they became the top selling skincare brand. The company was sold to Procter & Gamble in 2022 after reaching a $150M in annual sales. [9][10]

Troops.ai

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In 2015, Dan co-founded Troops.ai with Scott Britton and Greg Ratner. Troops is a software company that builds “Slackbots” that integrate with the Slack customer relationship platform. Troops works with Salesforce so employees can search for records and schedule automatic reports.  The company raised $22 million from investors Aspect Ventures, with participation from the Slack Fund, First Round Capital, Felicis Ventures, Susa Ventures, Chicago Ventures, Hone Capital, and InVision founder Clark Valberg.[11][12]

In 2022, Salesforce announced it had acquired Troops.ai for an undisclosed amount though, Business Insider reported the company’s valuation at $66 million several months before the acquisition.[13][14][15]

Dibs Beauty

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In 2021 Dan launched Dibs Beauty with Bobbi Brown Cosmetics co-founder Kan Landis; entrepreneur Courtney Shields; and the former COO of ARod Corp Jeff Lee.[16] The company which is short for Desert Island Beauty Status, started with an initial round of $2.6 million from its founders and L Catteron partners, Michael Farello and Jonathan Owsley. L Catterton made an additional investment in 2023.[17][18]

Cryptocurrency wallet

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In 2018, Dan and his friend Jesse spent $50,000 in Bitcoin to purchase a new coin called Theta Coin. The coins were initially kept on a Chinese exchange but a government crackdown forced the investors to switch to a Trezor One hardware wallet with a pin. After several months the coin had decreased in value and they decided they wanted to sell the Theta Coin.[19][20][21]

The wallet they had utilized had a security measure that would erase all the data on the drive if the correct pin wasn’t entered within the first sixteen attempts. After incorrectly guessing the pin twelve times, they decided to just write off the loss since the value was estimated at only $12,000.[19][20]

By 2020, the value of their coins had risen to over a couple million dollars and they were desperate to find someone who could help them recover their assets. In February if 2021, with their wallet worth $2.5 million, they employed an electrical engineer and hacker named Joe Grand, known by his handle Kingpin.[19][20][22]

Joe was able to defeat the wallet and recover the pin by employing a combination strategies that two previous hackers had employed which both centered on switching the security level of the wallet by introducing varying electrical currents to fool the wallet into copying the pin to the temporary RAM where it could be retrieved safely.[22]

The coins were successfully recovered, the engineer received his pay and soon afterwards the manufacturers of the Trezor One wallet issued an update and release saying the security breaches had been fixed with their new software updates.[19]

References

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  1. ^ a b "UW-Madison alumni sell ecommerce analytics company". news.wisc.edu. Retrieved 2024-06-09.
  2. ^ Journal, Judy Newman | Wisconsin State (2011-07-12). "Tech and Biotech: UW grads spin success". Wisconsin State Journal. Retrieved 2024-06-11.
  3. ^ Nagri, Idris (2011-05-12). "Buddy Media Hopes Spinback Buy Boosts Social ROI Tracking". ClickZ. Retrieved 2024-06-09.
  4. ^ Shontell, Alyson. "Three 20-Somethings Quietly Made Fortunes When Buddy Media Was Acquired For $689 Million". Business Insider. Retrieved 2024-06-09.
  5. ^ https://adage.com/article/digital/buddy-media-acquires-spinback-plans-measure-sales-impact-social/227510
  6. ^ Drell, Lauren (2011-05-12). "Buddy Media Acquires Social Commerce Platform Spinback". Mashable. Retrieved 2024-06-09.
  7. ^ Collins, Allison (2017-03-24). "Probiotic Skin-Care Brand Tula Raises Series A With L Catterton". WWD. Retrieved 2024-06-10.
  8. ^ "Building a Shared Vision for Success - Inc". www.pressreader.com. Retrieved 2024-06-10.
  9. ^ Grau, Stacy Landreth (2022-05-12). Celebrity 2.0: The Role of Social Media Influencer Marketing in Building Brands. Business Expert Press. ISBN 978-1-63742-209-0.
  10. ^ Masket, Taylor. "How TULA Harnessed the Power of Influencer Marketing to Become 2021's No. 1 Skincare Brand". www.tribedynamics.com. Retrieved 2024-06-09.
  11. ^ Hartmans, Avery. "This startup is building a smart work assistant on Slack that could take on Salesforce". Business Insider. Retrieved 2024-06-10.
  12. ^ Wiggers, Kyle (2022-05-10). "Salesforce acquires Troops.ai to make useful Slack bots". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2024-06-10.
  13. ^ Clark, Kate (2019-06-04). "VCs bet $12M on Troops, a Slackbot for sales teams". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2024-06-10.
  14. ^ Stanger, Emmie Martin, Maya Kosoff, Melissa. "UNDER 35 AND CRUSHING IT: Meet the most ambitious young founders in New York who are building the next giant companies". Business Insider. Retrieved 2024-06-10.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  15. ^ https://www.computerworld.com/article/1623150/salesforce-acquires-slack-bot-maker-troops-ai.html
  16. ^ "L Catterton invests in make-up newcomer Dibs Beauty". cosmeticsbusiness.com. Retrieved 2024-06-11.
  17. ^ https://cew.org/beauty_news/dibs-beauty-gets-second-funding-from-l-catteron/
  18. ^ "DIBS Beauty's L Catterton Investment will Propel Brick-and-mortar Retail Expansion". Global Cosmetic Industry. 2023-04-26. Retrieved 2024-06-11.
  19. ^ a b c d Zetter, Kim (2022-01-24). "Cracking a $2 million crypto wallet". The Verge. Retrieved 2024-06-10.
  20. ^ a b c Dailey, Natasha. "A hacker recovered a crypto wallet worth $2 million for the owner who forgot the password: report". Markets Insider. Retrieved 2024-06-10.
  21. ^ "Here's How $2 Million Worth Of Theta Was Recovered From A Trezor Wallet". Yahoo Finance. 2022-01-26. Retrieved 2024-06-10.
  22. ^ a b "'Hackers helped me find my lost Bitcoin fortune'". BBC. 2022-02-10. Retrieved 2024-06-10.
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