news_articles-gold.jsonl

{"title": "Report: Adam Neumann, Benchmark Unloaded $676.5M In WeWork Shares Before Failed IPO", "text": "Report: Adam Neumann, Benchmark Unloaded $676.5M In WeWork Shares Before Failed IPO. The more we learn about the WeWork debacle, the more head-scratching it gets. Subscribe to the Crunchbase Daily According to a news report from The Telegraph, WeWork co-founder and ousted CEO Adam Neumann unloaded $361 million worth of shares when Japanese investment conglomerate SoftBank first invested in the company in 2017. And he wasn\u2019t the only one. The Telegraph reports that Benchmark , which was WeWorks\u2019 first major investor, also cashed out at the time. It apparently \u201csold $315.5m in shares during the 2017 deal and a later SoftBank investment in 2019,\u201d the news article reveals. Specifically, according to Crunchbase, Benchmark led WeWork\u2019s $17 million Series A (ironically some may say) on April 1, 2012. This means that WeWork\u2019s largest shareholders\u2019 (previously undisclosed) sell-offs made up nearly one-third of the $2.3 billion worth of shares SoftBank bought from insiders right before the company was set to go public in 2019. The practice of early investors getting rid of their shares before an IPO is not an illegal one but, as The Telegraph and others on Twitter acknowledge, it\u2019s not exactly typical. I mean, don\u2019t most people hope a company goes public at a higher valuation so that they will make even more money? As The Wall Street Journal reporter Eliot Brown points out , a few other high-profile companies (Zynga, Groupon and Blue Apron) also saw their founders/CEOs sell a larger number of shares. In each of those cases, he said, the companies\u2019 IPO prices were lower. For those of you who haven\u2019t been following the WeWork saga, the company decided to cancel its IPO last September. At that point, SoftBank agreed to a $9.5 billion bailout of the company in a deal that included buying $3 billion worth of shares from existing investors at a $10 billion valuation. This was significantly less than the $47 billion valuation at which SoftBank purchased shares in 2019, noted The Telegraph. Earlier this month, our own Sophia Kunthara reported that SoftBank had withdrawn its $3 billion tender offer for WeWork shares, citing conditions of the offer not being satisfied. Also today, SoftBank Group forecast a net loss of $7 billion for the fiscal year ended March due to the negative impact of coronavirus and losses related to WeWork, AFP reported . Illustration: Li-Anne Dias", "annotations": {"WeWork": "wework.com", "Benchmark": "benchmark.com", "Zynga": "zynga.com", "Groupon": "groupon.com", "SoftBank Group": "group.softbank", "WeWorks": "wework.com", "SoftBank": "group.softbank", "Blue Apron": "blueapron.com"}, "source": "https://news.crunchbase.com/news/report-adam-neumann-benchmark-unloaded-676-5m-in-wework-shares-before-failed-ipo/"}
{"title": "Report: Palantir Could Go Public In The Next Year", "text": "Report: Palantir Could Go Public In The Next Year. Big data analytics company Palantir Technologies may go public within the next year, CEO Alex Karp said on \u201c Axios on HBO .\u201d Subscribe to the Crunchbase Daily If the company goes public soon, it would be a big move for the IPO market, which has been slow so far this year because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Very few tech companies have gone public since the pandemic took hold, with most public debuts being pharmaceutical or health-centered companies. \u201cThe real holdup at Palantir was we were building products and we needed to kind of get enough of them out so that people would see the robustness of our company, both internally and externally,\u201d Karp said on the show. Last month, Bloomberg reported that Palantir expected to generate $1 billion in revenue this year, breaking even for the first time in company history. The company, which was founded in 2004, has more than $2 billion in total funding, according to Crunchbase data . Backers include Manhattan Venture Partners and Bracket Capital . The company\u2019s revenue was $739 million in 2019, up 24 percent from the previous year, according to Bloomberg. Karp noted in 2016 that he was considering an IPO for the company, although there was no timeline. For more details on Palantir\u2019s financials, check out the Crunchbase News article here . The company\u2019s been in something of an \u201cIPO limbo\u201d for some time, something Crunchbase News has noted before . So Karp saying that it could go public within the next year, when there\u2019s a global pandemic, is interesting. Palantir, which was co-founded by Peter Thiel, is known for being extremely private and for having several contracts with the United States government. Most notably, the company took heat for contracting with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, something, Karp said on Axios , that caused some of his favorite employees to leave. Illustration: Li-Anne Dias", "annotations": {"Palantir Technologies": "palantir.com", "Palantir": "palantir.com", "Manhattan Venture Partners": "mvp.vc", "Bracket Capital": "bracketcapital.com"}, "source": "https://news.crunchbase.com/news/report-palantir-could-go-public-in-the-next-year/"}
{"title": "Portal Raises $2.55 Million, Launches Video Sharing App", "text": "Portal Raises $2.55 Million, Launches Video Sharing App. In Asia, micro and in-app payments have become an important feature in many social content platforms, including WeChat. The tipping function on Tencent\u2019s superapp has given more agency to the individuals consuming mobile content and is widely popular among WeChat users, creating a culture of monetary appreciation for creators. Follow Crunchbase News on Twitter One startup, Portal , is looking to bring the user-centric micro tipping phenomenon to the United States. CEO and Cofounder Jonathan Swerdlin told Crunchbase News that the mobile tipping phenomenon in Asia inspired Portal. \u201c[Payments] are now just as easy in the West as they are [in Asia]. It\u2019s just that a lot of companies have become so addicted to the ad model that they are not exploring these other models,\u201d Swerdlin expressed. To that end, Swerdlin and his team have created a mobile video app that functions as a peer-to-peer payment-enabled content platform. The company, which is launching out of beta today, has raised an additional $2.55 million in seed funding, bringing its total funds raised to $4.2 million. The company\u2019s investors include Mark Cuban , Day One Ventures , the founder of Thinx Miki Agrawa l, and others. With the Portal iOS app, creators can upload content, which shows up in a chronological feed. They can monetize their videos through paywalls on specific content and through the tipping model that allows users to instantly give anywhere from 10 cents to $100 with purchased coins. Soon, Portal will be launching an option for subscriptions ranging from 99 cents to $24.99 a month. In eliminating the ad model, Swerdlin and his team hope to give content creators an open opportunity to create with the support of their followers rather than relying on advertisers that the creators may not support, or that may not support their content. Portal is similar to other monetization platforms like Patreon , which was founded in 2013. Investors have funneled $105.9 million into the creator-focused startup, and it was last valued at just under $450 million. However, Swerdlin said that while Patreon focuses on crowdfunding, Portal is moving that idea a step further. \u201cPatreon has done an amazing job. And what they\u2019ve done is they\u2019ve proven that audiences will absolutely unequivocally pay content creators. What we\u2019re doing is we\u2019re taking those tools for those payments, and we\u2019re baking that directly into the experience, rather than making it a crowdfunding tool that you have to go outside to use,\u201d he told Crunchbase News. He also noted that Twitch has implemented tipping and subscriptions for gaming, but that Portal is bringing that model to uploaded content for a more mainstream western audience. Portal\u2019s beta users have included well-known content creators like The Young Turks and transgender activist Corey Rae. Crunchbase News asked Swerdlin how he believed the earnings potential would change as less popular users come onto the platform. \u201cThe earning potential is limitless. And the ability to earn is important for everyone. It\u2019s going to depend on the not necessarily a size of your audience, but that the value and depth that you\u2019re bringing to your audience,\u201d Swerdlin said. In sticking with the ad-free model, Swerdlin says that he expects Portal to grow organically, with the team relying on word of mouth for its future growth. Without a huge amount of traction, battling a tech behemoth that is both deep-pocketed and culturally ubiquitous will undoubtedly prove to be a challenge. \u201cOur focus is on making sure that this is a product that solves content creators\u2019 and publishers\u2019 biggest problems and gives people a platform that they can trust, where they\u2019re getting the very best content that\u2019s made. If we do that correctly, then word of mouth will be our greatest marketing engine.\u201d Illustration Credit: Li Anne Dias", "annotations": {"Day One Ventures": "dayoneventures.com", "Patreon": "patreon.com", "Thinx": "shethinx.com", "Portal": "portal.xyz", "Tencent": "tencent.com", "Twitch": "twitch.tv"}, "source": "https://news.crunchbase.com/news/portal-raises-2-55-million-launches-video-sharing-app/"}
{"title": "Proust Goes Tech with Colin Jordan, Director of Corporate Communications at Egnyte", "text": "Proust Goes Tech with Colin Jordan, Director of Corporate Communications at Egnyte. Colin Jordan , Director of Corporate Communications (aka Head of PR) at Egnyte , a company that provides businesses (including Red Bull, IKEA, and Buzzfeed) with collaboration and management solutions, handles everything from social media strategy to executive communication. Follow Crunchbase News on Twitter & Facebook While he is not busy drafting press releases, Colin competes on a softball team, plays hockey, and is part of a pick-up basketball league. Colin recently moved to Arizona and commutes back to the Bay Area every few weeks. Not having to deal with Bay Area traffic saved Colin a little bit of time to answer the Proust questions today. What would you otherwise be doing right now? Either a sports agent or a lawyer. One of my strong points is negotiation and being argumentative. The lawyer path would probably have led me to the intersection of legal and sports management. Your main fault? Stubbornness. I see things a certain way, and I often find it difficult to relinquish something of the things I like about my idea or my vision. The quality you most desire in a tweet? Aesthetically pleasing. I cannot stand when someone starts a tweet with a #hashtag or a ton of hashtags in the middle of the tweet. Your idea of misery? Bay area traffic and unnecessary meetings. What do you appreciate the most in your friends? Their honesty and transparency. Your chief characteristic Passion. Everything that I do whether it is work, my softball team, weightlifting, my diet; I put 100 percent into it. What skill do you wish you possessed? Empathy. Being able to put myself in other people\u2019s shoes and understand that not everybody has the drive that I do, the interests that I do, or the same thought process that I do. Your most impactful book? Tools of Titans by Tim Ferriss. It\u2019s basically a huge selection of thoughts, tools, characteristics, and lessons from really successful people, whether it is an athlete, an investor or a businessman. What defines success? Making an impact on those around you, on the business that you are working for, or your family. When is confidence lost? When people that are closest to you are disappointed. What virtues do others have that you don\u2019t? I have a colleague who is amazing in terms of organization, reporting, planning, and everything. She had a spreadsheet and a document for everything. I, on the other hand, have a pretty good memory but in terms of actually having things down on paper, organization and just reporting, that\u2019s something that I wish I was better at. What\u2019s the biggest problem tech is failing to solve? Creating solutions for the masses. We are so hyper-focused on solving problems that face a small segment of people. Tech needs to do a better job addressing areas outside of our own world. Editorial note: Answers have been edited for brevity and clarity.", "annotations": {"Egnyte": "egnyte.com", "Buzzfeed": "buzzfeed.com", "Red Bull": "redbull.com", "IKEA": "ikea.com"}, "source": "https://news.crunchbase.com/news/proust-goes-tech-colin-jordan-director-corporate-communications-egnyte/"}
{"title": "Peloton Confidentially Files for IPO", "text": "Peloton Confidentially Files for IPO. Peloton , the maker of pricey in-home bicycles and treadmills paired with on-demand fitness classes, announced today that it has filed to go public confidentially. The New York-based company said it has not yet determined the number of shares to be offered or the price range. Subscribe to the Crunchbase Daily The news is not shocking as we all knew it was coming. In February, our EIC Alex detailed the company\u2019s funding history in advance of the big day. Since it was founded in 2012, Peloton has raised nearly $1 billion . Its most recent raise was a $550 million Series F that was announced last August at a $4.15 billion valuation . Backers include many heavyweight investors such as TCV , Kleiner Perkins and Tiger Global Management, among many others. As for its financials, Alex wrote in February that \u201cPeloton has posted material revenue and strong top-line growth in recent years. The subscription exercise shop put up around $400 million in revenue during 2017 and is on said to be on track for $700 million in its current fiscal year. That\u2019s the sort of growth that investors love from venture-backed companies like Peloton.\u201d Illustration: Li-Anne Dias", "annotations": {"Tiger Global Management": "tigerglobal.com", "TCV": "tcv.com", "Peloton": "onepeloton.com", "Kleiner Perkins": "kleinerperkins.com"}, "source": "https://news.crunchbase.com/news/peloton-confidentially-files-for-ipo/"}
{"title": "Lunar Tech Startup ispace Raises $28M", "text": "Lunar Tech Startup ispace Raises $28M. Japanese space tech startup ispace has raised $28 million for its Series B round, bringing its total funding to about $125 million. Subscribe to the Crunchbase Daily The lunar exploration startup is working to build a commercial lunar lander. The company is aiming to be a \u201c gateway for the private sector to bring their business to the moon,\u201d per a statement from the company. The Series B round was led by IF SPV 1st Investment Partnership (which is managed by Incubate Fund ), and included participation from Space Frontier Fund, Takasago Thermal Engineering Co. , and Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance Co. According to the announcement from the startup, the new funding will be used to develop its commercial lunar landing for ispace\u2019s first mission, which is planned for 2022, as well as its second mission, which is planned for 2023. The company is also rolling out Blueprint Moon, a lunar business data platform meant to help others with lunar market entry by collecting and providing lunar data, per a statement from the company. \u201cThis new investment and launch of our new lunar data offering concept will not only support the steady development of ispace\u2019s business, but will also prove that ispace can lead globally in the development of the lunar economy, expanding humanity\u2019s presence into space and creating a more sustainable world,\u201d CEO Takeshi Hakamada said in a statement. The company has more than 100 employees and offices in Japan, Europe, and the United States, per a statement from ispace. It last raised money with its $95 million Series A in late 2017, according to Crunchbase. Illustration: Li-Anne Dias", "annotations": {"Space Frontier Fund": "sparxsif.com/en", "Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance Co.": "msigusa.com", "ispace": "ispace-inc.com", "Incubate Fund": "incubatefund.com/en/aboutus", "Takasago Thermal Engineering Co.": "tte-net.com/english/index.html"}, "source": "https://news.crunchbase.com/news/lunar-tech-startup-ispace-raises-28m/"}
{"title": "Giving Cats Some Love: Pet Food Startup Smalls Nabs $9M Series A For Cat Food", "text": "Giving Cats Some Love: Pet Food Startup Smalls Nabs $9M Series A For Cat Food. Smalls , the direct-to-consumer pet food company for cats, received a cash infusion of $9 million in Series A funding to expand its product offerings. Subscribe to the Crunchbase Daily Left Lane Capital led the round, with participation from existing investors Founder Collective and Companion Fund . The new investment gives New York-based Smalls a total raise of $12 million since its inception in 2017. That includes a small seed round in 2018 and a seed extension in 2019, Matt Michaelson told Crunchbase News. Michaelson and Calvin Bohn started Smalls as a cat-first brand focusing on human-grade, fresh food. In the U.S. pet owners have 94 million cats versus approximately 89 million dogs. Further, about 95 percent of venture capital funding in the pet food industry goes to dog-centric companies, Michaelson said. Those statistics attracted Left Lane Partner Jason Fiedler , one of the first investors in The Farmer\u2019s Dog . \u201cWhile we\u2019ve seen a proliferation of highly successful healthy dog food brands, the cat food market has remained completely ignored,\u201d Fiedler said in a written statement. \u201cSmalls has successfully developed a brand, product mix, supply chain, and customer experience that is specifically optimized for cats that no one else has.\u201d The new funding will enable Smalls to grow its business, particularly around expanding food selection, such as formula innovation and new recipes for cats, which are naturally picky eaters, Michaelson said. It will also be used to help bring in new customers and subscribers. Next up, Smalls will continue acquiring new customers and making new hires. The company currently has an employee base of 18, and Michaelson expects that number to grow to 25 by next year. Year over year, the company has experienced four times revenue growth and has several thousand subscribers. Its growth is credited in part to the overall online cat food delivery market experiencing a 162 percent year-over-year increase from March 2019 to March 2020, Michaelson said. \u201cOur growth has been pushed a bit by COVID-19,\u201d he added. \u201cOn one level, more people are looking for food that shows up at their door. On another, pet adoption is exploding, and as people spend more time with cats, they are thinking about their health and wellness.\u201d Photo courtesy of Smalls Illustration: Li-Anne Dias", "annotations": {"Companion Fund": "companionfund.com", "Smalls": "smalls.com", "Founder Collective": "foundercollective.com", "The Farmer\u2019s Dog": "thefarmersdog.com", "Left Lane Capital": "leftlanecap.com"}, "source": "https://news.crunchbase.com/news/giving-cats-some-love-pet-food-startup-smalls-nabs-9m-series-a-for-cat-food/"}
{"title": "Relish Secures $5M Series A To Grow Relationship Training App", "text": "Relish Secures $5M Series A To Grow Relationship Training App. Gaining a more fulfilling relationship with a significant other is an ongoing activity, made even more important today as many couples spend either a lot of time together, or not as much, because of social distancing. Subscribe to the Crunchbase Daily Serial entrepreneur Lesley Eccles has raised a $5 million Series A round of funding to fuel growth plans for Relish , her new customized relationship training app that makes it easy to build a happy, healthy, more connected relationship with your partner. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t matter how much money or success you have, what matters are the relationships in your life: How strong are they, and how happy are you?\u201d Eccles told Crunchbase News. The app uses machine learning to create a customized, scientifically backed relationship improvement plan in the form of interactive lessons, quizzes and activities, with qualified human relationship coaches on hand for support when needed, she said. The 1-year-old company\u2019s Series A was led by Bessemer Venture Partners with participation from previous investors Trinity Ventures and Bullpen Capital . This latest round brings the company\u2019s total funding to $7.2 million, which includes a $2.2 million venture round in October 2018, according to Crunchbase data. In addition to the raise, Rob Stavis, partner at Bessemer Venture Partners, will join Relish\u2019s board of directors. The concept for Relish started at the end of 2017, when Eccles left fantasy sports platform FanDuel where she was a co-founder. She began reading books about relationship science and psychology, and started digging deeper into what makes a strong relationship between intimate partners. \u201cThe idea behind Relish is to get people thinking about relationship wellness,\u201d she said. \u201cI want to make the world a happier place. Two years ago, that was relevant to me, but today it is relevant to the world at large.\u201d The app mimics the experience of seeing a relationship coach, proposing customized lessons and activities based on an assessment, and will adapt as the lessons and activities are completed, Eccles said. There is also a team of relationship coaches who users can reach out to for advice. Eccles said the app is growing by 30 percent to 40 percent each month. Meanwhile, Relish is free to download, and the annual subscription is $99 for two people. Similar apps, she said, can cost near that per week. Prior to today\u2019s environment of social distancing, Relish users downloaded the app because they felt disconnected from their partner and wanted to improve communication skills, Eccles said. Now, she sees users who are at home together and find they have more time to reflect on their relationship and invest in it\u2013if it is not too late. \u201cThere is also this idea that you are in a pressure-cooker environment, and cracks in the relationship are now chasms,\u201d she added. \u201cYou need help, but can\u2019t go and meet friends. Relish is helpful for those types of relationships as well.\u201d Illustration: Li-Anne Dias .", "annotations": {"Bessemer Venture Partners": "bvp.com", "FanDuel": "fanduel.com", "Trinity Ventures": "trinityventures.com", "Bullpen Capital": "bullpencap.com", "Relish": "hellorelish.com"}, "source": "https://news.crunchbase.com/news/relish-secures-5m-series-a-to-grow-relationship-training-app/"}
{"title": "Postmates Raises $300M, Targets 2019 IPO", "text": "Postmates Raises $300M, Targets 2019 IPO. Postmates , an American delivery startup, announced today that it closed $300 million in a new funding round. Follow Crunchbase News on Twitter Tiger Global led the round. The investor is a prior investor in Postmates, having previously taken part in its massive Series D. Postmates had raised $278 million before this round, meaning that its latest capital infusion is greater in scale than all of its preceding raises combined. According to Fortune , the new round values Postmates at \u201capproximately $1.2 billion.\u201d That valuation comes against what Recode reporter Jason Delrey describes as \u201can operating loss of $75 million on $250 million in revenue in 2017\u201d at the startup. Postmates itself released a grip of metrics as part of its funding announcement, including notes on scale (greater than $1 billion annual gross merchandise volume), financial health (gross margins now \u201cnearly 50 [percent] in the last year\u201d), market viability (90 percent of locales \u201cdriving profitability,\u201d which likely means positive contribution margin), and promises (more markets and 75 percent of US household penetration coming this \u201cFall\u201d). Those numbers and factoids along with the new capital point Postmates in a single direction, per its CEO\u2019s comments and the company\u2019s blog post: an IPO. Per the company: \u201cWe\u2019ll balance targeted growth strategies, smart unit economics, and sensible customer pricing to expand from urban cores to suburban and rural parts of the country. And we\u2019ll march towards an IPO.\u201d That Postmates wants to go public isn\u2019t historically surprising; an IPO is a standard way for young companies to show maturity and provide liquidity to investors and employees. But to be so upfront about it in the unicorn era is notable. Uber is also targeting an IPO , while fellow unicorns Airbnb and Pinterest seem less certain . Uber has 2019 in mind for its own debut. As does Postmates. Postmates\u2019s CEO noted in an interview that \u201c[w]e have a beautiful path to an IPO in 2019.\u201d Questions remain and competition abounds, but Postmates remains far more than not-dead in a market that many presumed Uber would simply take over. Not so, so far. More on the matter when Postmates inevitably begins releasing financial information directly, or via targeted leaks, as it gets a few quarters out from filing. Top Image Credit: Li-Anne Dias", "annotations": {"Tiger Global": "tigerglobal.com", "Airbnb": "airbnb.com", "Uber": "uber.com", "Pinterest": "pinterest.com", "Postmates": "postmates.com"}, "source": "https://news.crunchbase.com/news/postmates-raises-300m-targets-2019-ipo/"}
{"title": "In Growing Cybersecurity Market, Darktrace Raises $50M Series E", "text": "In Growing Cybersecurity Market, Darktrace Raises $50M Series E. Cybersecurity platform Darktrace has raised $50 million in Series E funding. The round was led by Vitruvian Partners . Previous investors KKR and TenEleven Ventures also participated. Follow Crunchbase News on Twitter The company has raised $229.5 million in total known funding. That includes the company\u2019s $75 million Series D in July 2011. (Darktrace CEO Nicole Eagan told Crunchbase News in an email that $25 million of that round was secondary market financing.) The company is now valued at $1.65 billion, post-money. Founded in 2013, Darktrace deploys an AI-powered cybersecurity software that assesses normal behavior, detects abnormalities, and automatically responds to threats. The company has also launched an autonomous response platform for cloud systems and an email threat mitigation platform. \u201cDarktrace is a self-contained system that is deployed in less than an hour, requiring zero human configuration or training,\u201d Eagan told Crunchbase News in an email. \u201cOnce deployed, it instantly begins learning \u2018normal\u2019 for the network, and is identifying genuine threats and anomalies in just seven days.\u201d The company is based in Cambridge, UK but has offices globally. The company currently \u201coperates within 7,000 unique networks,\u201d and its customers range in industry from retail to government. Eagan told Crunchbase News the company is also working with local and state governments in the U.S., including the City of Las Vegas and Livingston County. The company isn\u2019t releasing specific revenue metrics, but Eagan wrote that Darktrace has grown by 100% over the past year, and that its company-wide contract agreements totaled $400 million. With the funding, the company plans to increase its 750 global headcount to 1,000 by the end of the year. It also plans to open more global offices in \u201cregions where demand is highest.\u201d Cybersecurity has been a hot topic among governments and in the venture world recently. Other companies are leveraging AI for cybersecurity including Cylance and Crowdstrike (valued at $3 billion) which raised $120 million and $200 million , respectively, in June 2018. When asked what how Darktrace differs from its competitors, Eagan told Crunchbase News that the \u201cspeed, precision, and power of [the Darktrace] technology is simply unmatched.\u201d Illustration Credit: Li Anne Dias Editiorial Update: A previous version of this article stated that the company had raised $179.5 million, that was not inclusive of the current round. It has since been updated.", "annotations": {"Darktrace": "darktrace.com/en", "Vitruvian Partners": "vitruvianpartners.com", "Cylance": "blackberry.com/us/en/cylance", "TenEleven Ventures": "1011vc.com", "Crowdstrike": "crowdstrike.com", "KKR": "kkr.com"}, "source": "https://news.crunchbase.com/news/in-growing-cybersecurity-market-darktrace-raises-50m-series-e/"}
{"title": "Quidnet Energy\u2019s $10M Series B Paves Way For Commercial Expansion", "text": "Quidnet Energy\u2019s $10M Series B Paves Way For Commercial Expansion. Quidnet Energy announced on Tuesday that it closed on a $10 million Series B round of financing and a contract with the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority for commercial demonstration of its Geomechanical Pumped Storage (GPS) technology. Subscribe to the Crunchbase Daily Based in Houston, Quidnet has offices in San Francisco and Saratoga Springs, New York. Its technology is a form of hydroelectric energy storage using time-tested well-drilling and construction technologies to pump water under pressure into subsurface geological reservoirs to store energy, the company said in a written statement. When variable renewable energy is not available, this water is released to drive hydroelectric turbines to power the electric grid. Existing investors Breakthrough Energy Ventures and Evok Innovations participated in the round, as well as new investors Trafigura and the Jeremy and Hannelore Grantham Environmental Trust , the company said in the statement. The new funding brings Quidnet\u2019s total raise to $18 million since its inception in 2013, which includes an $8 million venture round in 2018, according to Crunchbase data. Quidnet said the new round of funding will help it work with electric utilities and deliver commercial-scale projects across the North American electric grid. The company also plans to expand its team and infrastructure. The investment will also fund the construction of near-term projects, including a 2-megawatt project implementing GPS as part of the company\u2019s new contract with NYSERDA. Both the funding and new contract represent the start of deployment of commercial-scale facilities across priority markets, Quidnet Energy CEO Joe Zhou said in a written statement. \u201cIntegrating renewables and replacing retiring thermal generation require cost-effective long-duration electricity storage at an immense scale. While traditional pumped hydro has provided over 95 percent of the world\u2019s grid-scale storage, that approach faces significant siting and cost limitations going forward,\u201d he said. \u201cQuidnet unlocks these constraints to fundamentally change the economics and deployment profile of long-duration storage.\u201d Illustration: Li-Anne Dias", "annotations": {"Quidnet": "quidnetenergy.com", "Trafigura": "trafigura.com", "Breakthrough Energy Ventures": "breakthroughenergy.org", "Jeremy and Hannelore Grantham Environmental Trust": "granthamtrust.org", "Quidnet Energy": "quidnetenergy.com", "Evok Innovations": "evokinnovations.com"}, "source": "https://news.crunchbase.com/news/quidnet-energys-10m-series-b-paves-way-for-commercial-expansion/"}
{"title": "WhizAI Raises $4M To Advance Business Intelligence Software For Life Sciences", "text": "WhizAI Raises $4M To Advance Business Intelligence Software For Life Sciences. WhizAI , which touts itself as the first and only purpose-built cognitive insights platform for the life sciences, secured $4 million in seed funding. Subscribe to the Crunchbase Daily The Somerset, New Jersey-based company\u2019s platform uses artificial intelligence, machine learning and scalability to learn the language and data of life sciences to provide insights to customers about business questions. \u201cOne thing we kept seeing was apps geared toward dashboards, but those are for people who are already tech savvy,\u201d WhizAI co-founder and CEO Rohit Vashisht told Crunchbase News. \u201cThere are people who need data, but can\u2019t use those products, so we created one. We focused first on the sales side of the pharmaceutical business. They can use SMS to text a question, and WhizAI pulls the data and puts it into a chart.\u201d Healthy Ventures led the round, with participation from Bling Capital , Firebolt Ventures and existing investors. WhizAI previously raised $2.5 million in other seed rounds and other investments a few years ago, according to Crunchbase data. With this new investment, the company has raised more than $6.5 million since being founded in 2017. As part of the financing, Healthy Ventures\u2019 founder and general partner Anya Schiess will join WhizAI\u2019s board of directors. The new funding will be used for product development, new hires and to increase sales and marketing, Vashisht said. In terms of growth, WhizAI has 43 employees right now at its offices in New Jersey, India and Ukraine, having grown from 19 three months ago. By the end of the year, Vashisht expects that number to be about 70. Revenue has grown five times between 2019 and 2020, and he anticipates the same next year. \u201cWe are seeing very rapid growth, especially now that we have signed a major contract with a global pharmaceutical company that will have thousands of users,\u201d he said. \u201cWe also plan to have a small office in Europe and will go live in 26 countries.\u201d Illustration: Li-Anne Dias", "annotations": {"WhizAI": "whiz.ai", "Healthy Ventures": "healthy.vc", "Bling Capital": "blingcap.com", "Firebolt Ventures": "fireboltventures.com"}, "source": "https://news.crunchbase.com/news/whizai-raises-4m-to-advance-business-intelligence-software-for-life-sciences/"}
{"title": "Filing: OLED Manufacturing Startup Kateeva To Lay Off 144 People, Execs Included", "text": "Filing: OLED Manufacturing Startup Kateeva To Lay Off 144 People, Execs Included. Organic LED manufacturing startup Kateeva slashed its staff, according to a filing with the state of California. Subscribe to the Crunchbase Daily Kateeva chief people officer Monica Kaldani-Nasif wrote in a letter to the state\u2019s Employment Development Department on Jan. 27 that the company would be laying off 144 employees. A WARN notice from the EDD indicated that the layoffs would be effective Jan. 31. \u201cThe company plans to effectuate the entire reduction-in-force\u2013affecting a total of 144 employees\u2013in one mass layoff to occur on the layoff date, except for a limited number* of employees who will provide transition services during the 60-day notice period,\u201d Kaldani-Nasif wrote. Reporter\u2019s note: The \u201c*\u201d in the excerpt above is tied to positions listed in the document that would remain with Kateeva for a transition period. Kaldani-Nasif also wrote that the company would compensate employees laid off before the end of the 60-day notice. Companies in California are required to give a 60-day notice before mass layoffs. Positions ranging from software engineer to director of advanced research and development were listed as part of the layoffs. Executive positions including president, chief marketing officer and chief operating officer were also listed among the layoffs, though they were marked with an asterisk to indicate that the employees in those positions would be providing transition services over the following two months. Kateeva developed an inkjet printer to manufacture OLED screens in large quantities. The company is based in Newark, California. Kateeva raised $126 million in total funding from investors including Sigma Partners and TCL Capital , according to Crunchbase. It last raised money in May 2016, for its $88 million Series E. We reached out to Kateeva via its press email on Wednesday afternoon and haven\u2019t heard back yet. A phone call to Kateeva\u2019s phone operator led to a full voicemail. Illustration Credit: Li-Anne Dias", "annotations": {"Kateeva": "kateeva.com", "TCL Capital": "capital-en.tcl.com", "Sigma Partners": "sigmapartners.com"}, "source": "https://news.crunchbase.com/news/filing-oled-manufacturing-startup-kateeva-to-lay-off-144-people-execs-included/"}
{"title": "Getting Their Gobble On: Food Delivery Funding In 2019\u00a0", "text": "Getting Their Gobble On: Food Delivery Funding In 2019\u00a0. Food delivery is an interesting category. It\u2019s not a new concept, but tech has enabled it to be done more efficiently on the consumer end. Lots of startups have popped up in the space in recent years, they\u2019ve become popular among consumers, and many companies have grown extremely fast. Crunchbase News has written plenty about food delivery companies before, including about how one even managed to make an adjusted profit . But as the year ends, we wanted to take a look at how much venture capital love (i.e. funding) the space had received so far this year. Subscribe to the Crunchbase Daily A couple of caveats about the data: the numbers focus on venture capital and exclude non-venture funding (private equity, venture debt, grants, etc.) and include companies tagged with \u201cfood delivery\u201d in Crunchbase\u2019s data set. It\u2019s possible there\u2019s a lag in reporting funding, so the data may not be perfect, but it\u2019s a pretty good guiding metric. Lastly, Q4 of 2019 isn\u2019t over yet, so it\u2019s possible that food delivery companies could receive a flood of cash in the next month or so and significantly change the funding totals for this quarter and this year. So far in Q4 this year, food delivery companies have received nearly $387 million in total venture capital funding. That\u2019s significantly less than during the same period last year. Between Oct. 1, 2018 and Nov. 26, 2018, food delivery companies brought in almost $6.2 billion in VC dollars. For all of Q4 2018, food delivery companies received close to $7.3 billion in funding. That\u2019s pretty different from the situation this year. In 2019 so far, food delivery companies have received around $3.8 billion in funding, which is less than how much companies in the space received in just Q4 of last year. Last year, food delivery companies received around $11 billion in funding over the course of the whole year (it was about $10 billion by Nov.26, 2018), while so far this year, it\u2019s about $3.8 billion. Colombia\u2019s Rappi had the largest venture capital funding round of food delivery companies in 2019, with the startup bringing in $1 billion in its Series E round. This year has also seen DoorDash pull in huge chunks of cash, with the company raising $1 billion in venture capital this year through its $400 million Series F in February and its $600 million Series G in May. Food delivery hasn\u2019t been without its fair share of problems and speculation this year: DoorDash came under fire for its tipping practices and we\u2019re still waiting on Postmates to go public. So while the funding totals for this year lag behind last year, high-profile companies are still pulling in serious cash. Illustration Credit: Li-Anne Dias", "annotations": {"Postmates": "postmates.com", "DoorDash": "doordash.com", "Rappi": "rappi.com"}, "source": "https://news.crunchbase.com/news/getting-their-gobble-on-food-delivery-funding-in-2019/"}
{"title": "Steady Raises $15M Series B", "text": "Steady Raises $15M Series B. The COVID-19 pandemic closed down restaurants, stores, event venues and countless other businesses, costing millions of people their jobs. Subscribe to the Crunchbase Daily With 1.5 million people filing for first-time unemployment benefits for the week ending June 6, finding a job is no easy task. That\u2019s why Atlanta-based startup Steady wants to help\u2013and it raised $15 million in a Series B round to do so. The premise of Steady is to help low-to-moderate-income workers figure out how they can make more money. The company acquired data and analyzed it to determine how people earn money and tie that information back to their skills, experience and geography to help fill in income gaps and better spend their time. For example, if a person is earning $11 per hour working at a store, Steady will point out if a store across the street is hiring for a role that requires similar tasks, but pays more. But with the COVID-19 pandemic, the company basically had to take a step back and reassess. \u201cRight now, people just don\u2019t have money, period,\u201d CEO Adam Roseman said, pointing out that although many people who lost their jobs receive unemployment benefits, the CARES Act is set to expire at the end of July. Now, the company\u2019s goal is to give people a \u201cfighting chance\u201d to find work by directing them to opportunities where they have the highest likelihood of getting hired. That means weeding out postings for jobs at companies that have frozen hiring, for example. Steady, along with investor Shaquille O\u2019Neal , introduced the Steady Together Initiative, which distributed $2 million in emergency cash grants for members who lost their income. A lot of the new funding will be invested in the company\u2019s data architecture, and the rest will be used to address other challenges associated with not having a job (think things like telemedicine support without a subscription fee). \u201cI think [our] No. 1 (goal) is worker impact,\u201d Roseman said. \u201cThe lives of the working-class American population are just getting smashed.\u201d Since Steady is a for-profit company, its secondary goal is aligning its revenue stream with user impact, he said. The company makes money through partnerships in its personalized marketplace for financial services and benefits. Steady partners with companies that provide services like no-fee digital checking accounts. If, for example, Steady sees in a member\u2019s bank account that they are paying a lot of overdraft fees, it will refer the member to a no-fee digital checking account and split the referral fee with the member. Steady has products for reducing costs like care insurance and student loan payments, and will be announcing a consumer-facing revenue stream in the near future, Roseman said. The company sees itself as something like a 21st century version of a union, Roseman said. When it goes out to negotiate benefits and partnerships, there\u2019s strength in the fact that the Steady community has 2 million members. In terms of growth, Steady has doubled its user base over the last nine months, reaching the 2 million member mark. Its first quarter revenue for 2020 has already surpassed revenue for all of 2019, and it\u2019s continuing to accelerate, Roseman said. Recruit Strategic Partners led the Series B round, with participation from investors including Flourish Ventures and Propel Venture Partners . Steady raised its $9 million Series A in August 2018. Illustration: Li-Anne Dias", "annotations": {"Steady": "steadyhq.com", "Flourish Ventures": "flourishventures.com", "Recruit Strategic Partners": "recruitstrategicpartners.com", "Propel Venture Partners": "propel.vc"}, "source": "https://news.crunchbase.com/news/steady-raises-15m-series-b/"}
{"title": "How Legal Weed Disrupted This Flower Startup\u2019s Supply Chain", "text": "How Legal Weed Disrupted This Flower Startup\u2019s Supply Chain. Christina Stembel clearly remembers the day after California legalized recreational marijuana. That day in November 2016 was a tipping point for one of the biggest pivots her then-six-year-old startup, Farmgirl Flowers, had made to date. \u201cThe day after the vote went through and it was a \u2018yes\u2019 in California, our largest calla lily grower in California took out all of their calla lilies to put in cannabis instead \u2026 to get the soil ready for it,\u201d Stembel said during an interview for Yahoo Finance\u2019s Breakouts series. \u201cIt was pretty immediate,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd we had to change our entire supply chain in four months, otherwise we wouldn\u2019t have had enough flowers for Valentine\u2019s Day after the vote.\u201d Stembel, 42, is founder and CEO of Farmgirl Flowers, a San Francisco-based e-commerce flower bouquet delivery company that brought in $30 million in sales last year. Selling an assortment of burlap-wrapped anemones, poppies and calla lilies, Stembel and her team of more than 160 employees have aimed to disrupt a multi-billion floriculture industry rooted in more old-fashioned, cellophane-wrapped arrangements of blood-red roses and baby\u2019s breath. But Stembel\u2019s business itself was disrupted by recreational cannabis legalization in her company\u2019s home state. After the legalization vote, many of the local suppliers she\u2019d once leaned on to provide the flowers that made up her bouquets were suddenly turning to a new crop. \u201cThere\u2019re only so many farms out there in the United States now,\u201d said Stembel. \u201cAnd if they can make $2 a square foot or $1.50 a square foot on cannabis, versus $0.05 or $0.10 on snap dragons, it\u2019s a very easy choice for them.\u201d \u201cI don\u2019t blame them for that,\u201d she added. \u201cThey\u2019re business people as well. But there\u2019s definitely a lot of the flower farmers [that] have switched to growing a lot more cannabis and less flowers for that reason alone.\u201d The U.S. cannabis industry is poised to become a near $30 billion industry by 2025, according to New Frontier Data . That would begin to close in on the U.S. floriculture industry, which saw just under $35 billion in sales in 2019 , according to Bureau of Economic Analysis data. And unlike the cannabis industry, which is expected to see sales rise at a compounded annual growth rate of 14% through 2025, floriculture sales have stagnated in the low-$30 million range for years. Farmgirl Flowers has been far from the only player in the cut flower industry to take a hit from burgeoning legal recreational cannabis market. A number of reports have highlighted former Californian flower growers who switched to cannabis, as rising competition from cheaper flowers coming from Latin America drove down prices they could command from their existing flower crops. And incidentally, Latin America was ultimately where Stembel turned when her former suppliers in the U.S. had shriveled on the vine. After nearly seven years of sourcing from local farmers, Stembel wrote an open letter to her customers explaining her decision, and began buying from farmers in South America. The decision was driven both by the disruption from cannabis legalization, and by a broader inability to find enough U.S.-based farms willing to sell to her start-up to keep pace with customer orders. \u201cWe just ran out of supply,\u201d Stembel said. \u201cThere was not a supply for our demand, and so I needed to do something different. Or I needed to either stop doing business or stay a very small business and not scale.\u201d To date, the shift in sourcing has so far worked for Farmgirl Flowers, with the company consistently delivering between 6,000 and 8,000 bouquets per week across 48 states. For the week of Valentine\u2019s Day 2019, Stembel anticipates that number will jump more than 50% over last year to 30,000. Eventually, Stembel said the pendulum may swing back in the other direction and that farmers may begin shifting back to growing flowers, once the cannabis industry matures and the cultivation market becomes saturated. \u201cIf everybody is growing cannabis, there\u2019s going to be a point, which we probably have already met, where we just have oversupply,\u201d she said. \u201cMaybe it\u2019ll shift back a little bit, but in the meantime, we\u2019re going to have to find other options.\u201d \u2014 Emily McCormick is a reporter for Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Twitter: @emily_mcck Read more from Emily: Farmgirl Flowers became a multimillion dollar e-commerce startup without a penny in VC OKCupid is changing how people use dating apps amid an international expansion \u2018Most of the job growth is happening with people over age 55\u2019: Economist Netflix 4Q subscriber growth tops expectations, but guidance disappoints Tesla 4Q earnings top expectations, company sees 500K+ deliveries in 2020 Follow Yahoo Finance on Twitter , Facebook , Instagram , Flipboard , LinkedIn , and reddit . Find live stock market quotes and the latest business and finance news", "annotations": {"Tesla": "tesla.com", "Farmgirl Flowers": "farmgirlflowers.com", "Netflix": "netflix.com", "OKCupid": "okcupid.com"}, "source": "https://news.crunchbase.com/news/partner-content/how-legal-weed-disrupted-this-flower-startups-supply-chain/"}
{"title": "Legal Tech Platform Bodhala Brings In $10M To Help Clients Streamline Spending", "text": "Legal Tech Platform Bodhala Brings In $10M To Help Clients Streamline Spending. Law firms are not always the quickest at adopting new technology, but two Harvard Law School grads are hoping to change that. Subscribe to the Crunchbase Daily Raj Goyle and Ketan Jhaveri started New York City-based Bodhala , a data-intelligence and legal technology platform, to disrupt how law firms charge for outside services. Companies spend about $500 billion annually on outside counsel, while hourly billing rates track at nearly four times the rate of inflation, Goyle said. Bodhala applies data science, machine learning and analytic insights to help companies analyze, interpret and optimize outside counsel spend. \u201cRight now, even the most sophisticated company doesn\u2019t have an idea of what something should cost,\u201d Goyle said. \u201cWe have built algorithms that when a law firm puts invoices through the software, it gives them insight and analytics on things such as why so many lawyers are working on a case, why they chose an expensive law firm or why they paid that hourly billing. Our database helps companies understand what is wrong with what they are spending and how to correct it.\u201d To help achieve that goal, the 5-year-old company closed on a $10 million investment round on Wednesday, led by Edison Partners , a growth equity investment firm which most recently led a $17.5 million round of funding for Austin-based Overhaul, a supply chain tech startup. \u201cBodhala is a quite disruptive technology around analyzing spend and offering suggestions,\u201d said Daniel Herscovici, partner at Edison Partners. \u201cAs more and more buyers adopt this technology, the more influential it will be. The company has the potential to become the standard for transparency, codifying and transforming the legal industry.\u201d With this round of funding, Bodhala has raised a total of $15 million, according to Goyle. The company will use the funds for product expansion, and sales and market acceleration, as it transforms and modernizes the purchase of outside counsel services. Bodhala has 35 employees, and Goyle said the company intends on \u201cdoubling down on the business\u201d to grow every aspect from business development to data, and marketing over the next two years. The company currently has several dozen clients, as well as potential new clients in financial services, health care services, insurance, energy and private equity. Revenue jumped 300 percent over 2019, and Goyle expects that kind of growth to stick around in the near term. Illustration: Li-Anne Dias", "annotations": {"Overhaul": "over-haul.com", "Bodhala": "bodhala.com", "Edison Partners": "edisonpartners.com"}, "source": "https://news.crunchbase.com/news/legal-tech-platform-bodhala-brings-in-10m-to-help-clients-streamline-spending/"}
{"title": "Pricey Hardware And Subscription Revenue Drive Millions Into Connected Exercise Equipment Startups", "text": "Pricey Hardware And Subscription Revenue Drive Millions Into Connected Exercise Equipment Startups. It\u2019s the holiday season, which for you likely means lots of travel, shopping, and, of course, food. Lots and lots of calorically dense food. Barring a lot of self-discipline, most of us will start 2020 a little softer around the edges. Subscribe to the Crunchbase Daily New year, new you, right? A lot of us will end up hitting the gym, but if you have the space and cash to swing it, there are an increasing number of home fitness options to consider. Now, to be clear, the idea of buying a treadmill or stationary bike or rowing machine for home use is not new. What is new, however, are the slew of internet-connected fitness equipment offerings with classes and progress tracking on a subscription basis, allowing companies to capture value not just from the sale of physical hardware (a typically low-margin business) and long-term revenue on high-margin services over time. This business model is compelling to some venture capitalists, who\u2019ve poured millions of dollars into the connected exercise equipment sector. In the chart below, we plot the total venture capital raised by companies in the connected fitness sector. Peloton is likely the best-known venture on the list. The connected stationary bike and treadmill company helped to create the business model described earlier. In Crunchbase News\u2019s coverage of the company\u2019s S-1 filing prior to its IPO, we showed how an ever-larger proportion of Peloton\u2019s revenue is attributable to subscription revenue. Its stationary bike costs over $2,200, but to access the guided spin classes with energetic instructors, its customers pay an additional $39 per month for the privilege. Tonal is another. Its nearly $3,000 (plus tax and delivery) wall-mounted resistance training device has a $49 per month membership fee, which, like Peloton, grants Tonal users access to the company\u2019s class catalog. A MIRROR , similarly, costs nearly $1,500 (plus a $250 installation fee) but requires a $39 monthly subscription to use. Otherwise it\u2019s just a wall-mounted mirror. Clearly, these devices are marketed to and priced for people with a fair amount of disposable income. The devices themselves are not inexpensive. The subscription fees may be nominal, relative to a gym membership and the extra hassle of commuting to a workout, but if people stop paying them, the devices either stop working, or they lose the tech-enabled \u201cmagic\u201d that makes the equipment so appealing to a certain segment of the market. It\u2019s a figurative treadmill involving, in some cases, a literal treadmill. The premise of hooking a fitness fanatic for life is an appealing one for sure, but it can be costly. Illustration: Dom Guzman", "annotations": {"Tonal": "tonal.com", "MIRROR": "mirror.co", "Peloton": "onepeloton.com"}, "source": "https://news.crunchbase.com/news/pricey-hardware-and-subscription-revenue-drives-millions-into-connected-exercise-equipment-startups/"}
{"title": "Peloton\u2019s Recovery Paints The Market Bullish", "text": "Peloton\u2019s Recovery Paints The Market Bullish. Morning Markets: Peloton is back above its IPO price after a trip to the doldrums. Perhaps the public market is already over its flight-to-quality and focus on profits. When Peloton filed to go public, the consumer-exercise phenom received wall-to-wall coverage. Given the company\u2019s high marketing spend, its brand was well known even by non-users. So, the press couldn\u2019t help itself. Crunchbase News included . Subscribe to the Crunchbase Daily Investors seemed similarly intrigued. After setting a $26 to $29 per-share IPO price range , Peloton, fueled by hundreds of millions of dollars in venture capital , was set to roughly double its final private valuation . Eventually pricing at $29 per share , Peloton started life as a public company worth about $8.1 billion. But then things went off the rails. Peloton opened at $27 per share and closed its first day as a public company worth under $26 per share. The result looked like a sharp rebuke of the company\u2019s newly-extended valuation. And as SmileDirectClub , Uber , Lyft , and others struggled as public companies Peloton was looped into the idea that investors were clamping down valuation \u2014 and, therefore, revenue multiples \u2014 for tech-ish companies not selling software. Software companies sport high margins, and a high percentage of their revenue often recurs. The market values that particular cocktail richly, especially in recent quarters . When Peloton\u2019s shares were falling alongside those of many of its newly-public brethren, it appeared that the market was cutting the prices of tech- enabled companies, in contrast to how it valued tech companies themselves. 1 But then something odd happened: Peloton\u2019s shares rallied. The company, which reported earnings on Nov. 5, has recently seen its shares price not only recover from declines but surge past its IPO price. Heading into trading today, Peloton is worth $30.25 per share, after surging over 11 percent yesterday. In snark-parlance, this is called a narrative violation. For Peloton shareholders, it\u2019s a welcome result. But what does it mean for startups? In recent years, the startup mantra has been something like \u2018growth at all costs.\u2019 Investors liked high-growth companies, and have been more willing to overlook massive losses if a company reported quickly growing revenue. The idea has been that if high-growth, cash-burning companies are well-funded, they can grow quickly and eventually turn a profit, bringing in outsized returns for their investors. It\u2019s only been recently (within the past few months) that disappointing IPOs have turned people\u2019s attention toward unit economics and profitability . But maybe that was just a brief distraction, and growth is back en vogue. We\u2019ll be able to tell by looking at how other high-growth, money-losing companies perform on the public markets to tell us if growth really is back in; in contrast, if other companies that fit the bill don\u2019t see rising values, Peloton would be merely bucking a trend instead of showing that the trend itself is changing. The public markets haven\u2019t been kind to unicorns like Uber and Lyft , but if their stock starts to rise, it could be an indication that investors have more faith in high-growth companies than has been the sentiment recently. A change in market sentiment could also have an impact on the IPO market. While 2019 has seen a crop of lackluster IPOs (the stock prices of companies being below the set price on its first day of trading and beyond), a shift in attitude back towards fast growth being more important than profits could allow for better public market reception of companies that still lose money. Time and market activity will tell. Illustration: Dom Guzman Look to the gross margins, young Padawan. \u21a9", "annotations": {"Uber": "uber.com", "SmileDirectClub": "smiledirectclub.com", "Lyft": "lyft.com", "Peloton": "onepeloton.com"}, "source": "https://news.crunchbase.com/news/pelotons-recovery-paints-the-market-bullish/"}
{"title": "Hippo Insurance Acquires Sheltr", "text": "Hippo Insurance Acquires Sheltr. Home insurance startup Hippo bought home maintenance startup Sheltr , its first acquisition, the companies announced Thursday. Subscribe to the Crunchbase Daily Hippo sells home insurance, using technology to find issues in homes before they become large, expensive problems. The idea has found wide backing, with the company raising $209 million in total funding to date, according to Crunchbase. To take a more proactive approach to home insurance, Hippo conducted a variety of pilot programs, including using Sheltr, to spot issues in homes before they became larger problems, according to Daniel Blanaru , the company\u2019s VP of Growth Initiatives. \u201cAs we were doing that over the last couple of years, the Sheltr team really stood out not only in the quality of technology, as well as the operational sort of sophistication that they brought to their business, but more so it was their alignment with Hippo on customers, value of services,\u201d Blanaru said in an interview with Crunchbase News. Sheltr helps homeowners with maintaining their properties by doing home checkups, writing up home \u201chealth summaries,\u201d and connecting homeowners with professionals for maintenance services if there\u2019s ever a breakdown, according to its website. Hippo wasn\u2019t looking to make acquisitions, but after working with the Sheltr team, bringing them in-house was a \u201cno brainer,\u201d Blanaru said. Hippo isn\u2019t disclosing how much it paid for Sheltr, which was founded earlier this year and has about $3.2 million in seed funding, according to Crunchbase. The company isn\u2019t ruling out more acquisitions in the future, but they will be a rarity and only happen if it makes sense, Blanaru said. \u201cWe\u2019ve been working (with Hippo) for much of Sheltr\u2019s life, obviously we\u2019re a really young company,\u201d Sheltr CEO Andrew Wynn said. \u201cBut as we partnered with a lot of players in the space, it became really apparent that Hippo\u2019s focus on customers and its proactive approach to insurance wasn\u2019t skin deep.\u201d Sheltr has eight employees, who will join Hippo\u2019s approximately 200-person workforce. Hippo is trying to move away from the model where insurers only interact with customers when they pay a bill or submit a claim, Blanaru said. The company is trying to create more of a relationship with customers by taking a proactive approach to home insurance, rather than just react when something happens. For example, Hippo takes aerial images of homes to see if there is any discoloration or problems with a roof and sends customers \u201csmart home kits\u201d that will alert them to issues like water leaks. \u201cFor us it\u2019s really leading the charge on a broader trend of insurance being the entry point to support and enable homeowners on a broader level,\u201d Blanaru said. Illustration Credit: Li-Anne Dias", "annotations": {"Sheltr": "getsheltr.com", "Hippo": "myhippo.com", "Hippo Insurance": "myhippo.com"}, "source": "https://news.crunchbase.com/news/hippo-insurance-acquires-sheltr/"}
{"title": "Brex Cuts Staff After Raising $150M", "text": "Brex Cuts Staff After Raising $150M. A little over a week after announcing $150 million in new funding, fintech startup Brex is laying off part of its staff. Subscribe to the Crunchbase Daily In a blog post published Friday, co-CEOs Pedro Franceschi and Henrique Dubugras wrote that 62 people would be let go. The company, best known for its corporate credit cards for startups, will be prioritizing building over growing this next year, according to the post. \u201cThree months in, it\u2019s clear that the impact of COVID-19 won\u2019t be short-lived. We know that the pace of growth won\u2019t be what we expected for the foreseeable future,\u201d the CEOs wrote. \u201cThis unique situation created the space for us to think about the future of Brex, and how we could use this time to accelerate our mission \u2014 to reimagine financial systems so every growing company can realize their full potential.\u201d The company will be taking another look at investments that don\u2019t make sense, and some teams will be reduced, along with changed roles and some people being asked to switch teams. Brex is far from the first well-funded, buzzy startup to have layoffs amid the COVID-19 pandemic. But the layoffs are a bit surprising, given that the company announced just last week it raised $150 million in funding in a round from investors including Lone Pine Capital and DST Global that valued the company at just over $3 billion. \u201cI\u2019m glad this round came together, but if it hadn\u2019t, we would\u2019ve been fine,\u201d Dubugras recently told TechCrunch in an interview about the new round. \u201cThe capital is so we can play offensive while everyone else plays defensive.\u201d In a statement announcing the new funding, Brex said it would be using the money to invest in engineering, product and design. It also planned to \u201cuse a combination of organic efforts as well as small acquisitions to supplement its hiring and product development efforts.\u201d Illustration: Dom Guzman", "annotations": {"DST Global": "dst-global.com", "Brex": "brex.com", "Lone Pine Capital": "lonepinecapital.com"}, "source": "https://news.crunchbase.com/news/brex-cuts-staff-after-raising-150m/"}
{"title": "VC Satisfies Its Sweet Tooth By Giving Insomnia Cookies $3.93M In Capital", "text": "VC Satisfies Its Sweet Tooth By Giving Insomnia Cookies $3.93M In Capital. Insomnia Cookies , a mainstay on college campuses for late night warm, gooey cookie delivery, has raised $3.93 million in equity-based financing, according to a Form D filing. This is the company\u2019s first known venture capital funding to date. Insomnia did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Subscribe to the Crunchbase Daily But here\u2019s what we do know: In 2018, Krispy Kreme Doughnut Corp. acquired a majority stake in the cookie chain, which some reports valuing Insomnia at $500 million . Insomnia was allowed to work as an independent company. Insomnia was founded in a dorm room in 2003 by Seth Berkowitz, a student at the University of Pennsylvania. Three years later, it opened its first brick-and-mortar store in Syracuse, New York. Mix in some food trucks, an app, and a goodbye to food trucks, and Insomnia has since grown to over 155 locations. It caters to both individuals and companies. In 2019, it expanded to new locations, like Brooklyn and Austin. Beyond its gooey double chocolate chunk and limited edition red velvet cookies, Insomnia\u2019s strength (and differentiation from a run of the mill bakery) comes from its late night delivery services. In fact, the company\u2019s senior director of marketing, Megan Bruton, told CNBC that college campuses were \u201cwhere the business started and with good reason.\u201d The statement continued to say that late night delivery \u201cis music to any college student\u2019s ears after a long night of studying, or being out until the bars close.\u201d In fact, my college campus has one too , and it made a regular appearance at our school newspaper meetings. We\u2019ll have more when Berkowitz gets back to me, but one thing is for sure: some investors have found Insomnia\u2019s growth from dorm room idea to hundreds of locations as a craving definitely worth cashing in on. Bring on the dough.", "annotations": {"Insomnia Cookies": "insomniacookies.com", "Krispy Kreme Doughnut Corp.": "krispykreme.com", "Insomnia": "insomniacookies.com"}, "source": "https://news.crunchbase.com/news/vc-satisfies-its-sweet-tooth-by-giving-insomnia-cookies-3-93m-in-capital/"}
{"title": "Lululemon To Buy Mirror For $500M", "text": "Lululemon To Buy Mirror For $500M. Athleisure company Lululemon has agreed to buy connected fitness startup Mirror for $500 million, the companies announced this week. Subscribe to the Crunchbase Daily When the acquisition is completed, Mirror will operate as a standalone company within Lululemon, and Mirror CEO Brynn Putnam will continue working as the fitness startup\u2019s chief executive, according to a statement from the company. Mirror, which is backed by investors including Spark Capital , Point72 Ventures and Lululemon, has live classes, on-demand workouts, and personal training options. The company, which launched in 2018, is based in New York. \u201cIn 2019, we detailed our vision to be the experiential brand that ignites a community of people living the sweatlife through sweat, grow and connect,\u201d Lululemon CEO Calvin McDonald said in a statement. \u201cThe acquisition of MIRROR is an exciting opportunity to build upon that vision, enhance our digital and interactive capabilities, and deepen our roots in the sweatlife. We look forward to learning from and working with Brynn Putnam and the team at MIRROR to accelerate the growth of personalized in-home fitness.\u201d Connected fitness has certainly become a popular sector for startup investments, as we\u2019ve written about before . Additionally, there\u2019s been an increase in demand for at-home fitness companies like Mirror and Peloton since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Sales for at-home fitness equipment has soared, and gyms have also started renting out their spin bikes and other equipment to bring in revenue while they\u2019ve remained closed. And with many people staying home, it\u2019s not a far stretch to say there\u2019s also likely been more people in athleisure or comfort-wear, like what Lululemon offers. Mirror last raised money with its $34 million Series B in October 2019. Point72 Ventures led the round, and Lululemon participated as an investor. Illustration: Dom Guzman", "annotations": {"Mirror": "mirror.co", "Lululemon": "eu.lululemon.com", "Spark Capital": "sparkcapital.com", "Peloton": "onepeloton.com", "MIRROR": "mirror.co", "Point72 Ventures": "point72.com"}, "source": "https://news.crunchbase.com/news/lululemon-to-buy-mirror-for-500m/"}
{"title": "Data Shows Boston\u2019s Historical Progress In Funding Women", "text": "Data Shows Boston\u2019s Historical Progress In Funding Women. On a Monday morning in her office on Newbury Street, Sarah Fay of Glasswing Ventures said that for venture capitalists to invest in more diverse founders, \u201cwe have to drop the idea that a CEO needs to be a braveheart on a white horse.\u201d Subscribe to the Crunchbase Daily \u201cThe personality of a woman is going to be different than a man, so you have to [\u2026] understand that someone can be effective, even if they really aren\u2019t aggressive,\u201d the managing director of the firm continued. \u201cIt\u2019s about opening the door wider.\u201d Fay is one of two female partners at Glasswing Ventures, headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts. The firm focuses on artificial intelligence investments. Notably, about 40 percent of the founding teams of the companies Glasswing invests include at least one woman, according to Fay. Citing female-led venture capital funds like Glasswing, and venture capitalists like Fay, All Raise , a nonprofit organization that wants to help more female founders get venture capital, expanded into Boston last month. Fay is part of the steering committee. All Raise \u2019s expansion shows there\u2019s both a need and a promise for more venture dollars to go to female founders in the city. So, for this month\u2019s Boston-focused column, we thought we\u2019d unpack the dollars raised by teams with at least one woman founder in Greater Boston over time. First, we\u2019ll do the numbers, then we\u2019ll circle back to Fay to see how it all fits into All Raise\u2019s mission. Before we get into the numbers, some caveats. Venture rounds are often prey to reporting delays, and, sometimes, founders are not tagged in Crunchbase with gender identifying characteristics. For this reason, we opted for a proportional split chart to help account for any lag in known data. Housekeeping aside, $979 million dollars have gone to venture capital-backed companies with at least one female founder so far in 2019, according to Crunchbase data. Starkly, $1.8 billion dollars went to venture capital companies with all-male founding teams. To get a more helpful perspective on how (and if) more female founders are getting funded within Greater Boston, let\u2019s wind back to 2014. The chart below breaks down the percentage break down of the data above. In 2016, 28 percent of venture capital dollars raised by Greater Boston startups went to companies with at least one female founder. Compared to years prior, 2019 isn\u2019t at the same level of equality, but it is also isn\u2019t exactly fair to hold it to the same standards due to possible data reporting delays. Fast forward to 2018, and 43 percent of venture capital dollars raised by Greater Boston startups went to companies with at least one female founder. It isn\u2019t a 50/50 split; however, the percentage is notably high. Globally, about 8 percent of venture dollars have gone to female founders, according to the latest quarterly statistics . Its historical progress of venture capital dollars going to underrepresented founders\u2014coupled with a stark contrast to global averages\u2014is part of the reason Boston was put on All Raise\u2019s radar in the first place. After all, where better place for a nonprofit to set up a pipeline and network of women in tech than a place that has already taken steps to level the playing field? Now, along with the Boston launch, the non-profit operates in the Bay Area, New York, and Los Angeles. All Raise has some lofty objectives it aims to achieve. Within the next five years , the organization wants 25 percent of all venture dollars allocated to female-founded companies. It also wants to double the percentage of female partners at venture firms (with funds greater than $25 million) in the United States from 9 percent to 18 percent over the next ten years. To do this, one of All Raise\u2019s flagship efforts has been in creating a database of diverse candidates for venture capital firms to tap into. The organization also has cohorts, where women interested venture positions from associates to general partners can join a \u201ctight-knit groups where deep connections trump empty schmoozing and real conversations replace small talk,\u201d per the website . According to Glasswing\u2019s Fay, in Boston, that looks like founder bootcamps, mentorship, and networking opportunities. Within these efforts, All Raise is intentionally having a conversation beyond just gender, when it comes to shifting pattern recognition in venture funding. \u201cThere are a lot of women involved with All Raise who are already successful,\u201d she said. Fay also added that men, alongside women, need to be included in the conversation too. \u201cIf we\u2019re just talking to each other as women to women, then we\u2019re in an echo chamber,\u201d she said. \u201cSo it is very important for men to also understand what the experiences are, so they can support us. And I can tell you in Boston, the [venture capitalists] who are men here are great.\u201d Illustration: Li-Anne Dias", "annotations": {"All Raise": "allraise.org", "Glasswing Ventures": "glasswing.vc", "Glasswing": "glasswing.vc"}, "source": "https://news.crunchbase.com/news/data-shows-bostons-historical-progress-in-funding-women/"}
{"title": "Supergiant VC Rounds Weren\u2019t Limited To Late-Stage Startups", "text": "Supergiant VC Rounds Weren\u2019t Limited To Late-Stage Startups. It\u2019s become the norm for some private tech companies to raise in a single round what VC firms raise for an entire new fund. For a certain class of large, rapidly-growing companies flying in the rarified air of startup finance, raising $100 million or more in a venture round is, if you\u2019ll forgive the pun, just not that big of a deal anymore. Subscribe to the Crunchbase Daily Supergiant venture capital rounds are on the rise across all stages, data from Crunchbase shows. It\u2019s common to associate nine-figure VC deals with later-stage companies. The first nine-figure round Uber raised was its GV-led Series C, in which the company raised at least $258 million (though Crunchbase data states $363 million ) in 2013, after the company had been around for a little over four years, previously raising just under $50 million along the way, according to Crunchbase data. Facebook, founded near the beginning of the \u201cunicorn era\u201d (starting in January 2003, as stated in Aileen Lee\u2019s article defining the term \u201cunicorn startups\u201d) 1 raised its first supergiant round in 2007, also three years after launch, and also at Series C. VC rounds of $100 million or more really took off in 2014 and 2015, as massive amounts of money began flowing into venture capital funds at the far end of the assets-under-management spectrum, which, in turn, began investing ever-larger sums in a subset of startups. While concentrated in late-stage deals, supergiant venture checks aren\u2019t exclusive to more mature companies. Series A and Series B deals accounted for between 21 and 37 percent of global supergiant deal volume since 2010, according to Crunchbase News analysis. This is in keeping with prior research, which indicated that companies aren\u2019t getting much older or younger by the time they raise their first supergiant round. At least for the past several years, the composition of companies raising supergiant venture capital hasn\u2019t changed all that much. There\u2019s just more of them now. Illustration: Li-Anne Dias Disclosure: Cowboy Ventures is an investor in Crunchbase, the parent company of Crunchbase News. Crunchbase\u2019s investors are listed as part of its Crunchbase profile . For more about Crunchbase News\u2019s editorial policies on disclosure, see the News Team\u2019s About page. \u21a9", "annotations": {"Crunchbase": "crunchbase.com", "Uber": "uber.com/de/en", "Cowboy Ventures": "cowboy.vc", "Crunchbase News": "news.crunchbase.com", "Facebook": "facebook.com"}, "source": "https://news.crunchbase.com/news/supergiant-vc-rounds-werent-limited-to-late-stage-startups/"}
{"title": "Uber\u2019s Eats Ad Push Explained", "text": "Uber\u2019s Eats Ad Push Explained. Morning Markets: As on-demand companies hunt profits, expect more of what we\u2019re now seeing from Uber. According to a report in TechCrunch , publicly-traded ride-hailing company Uber is working to invest in building an ads business inside of Uber Eats , its food-delivery service. The move, TechCrunch notes, comes after Uber Eats allowed restaurants to offer discounts in exchange for better placement inside of the application itself. Subscribe to the Crunchbase Daily While an advertising business inside of Eats makes good sense for Uber, in our view, it is better understood from a profit perspective than from a growth orientation one. What\u2019s more, the move underscores the fact that while Uber has scaled Eats quickly, the service\u2019s losses have grown as well ( more from Uber\u2019s Q3 earnings here ). If the ads experiment goes well for Uber, expect to see yet-private, on-demand companies also pursue similar monetization methods. From the consumer perspective, don\u2019t expect on-demand services to become cheaper; expect them instead to look for new sources of topline to staunch losses. Let\u2019s explore the Uber example. Uber Eats is a quickly-growing portion of the larger Uber business. In the last quarter, Uber Eats pulled in $3.7 billion in gross bookings, representing a 73 percent increase year-over-year. Its revenue grew 64 percent year-over-year to $645 million and its adjusted net revenue also grew 105 percent to $392 million. Across most metrics, Uber Eats was the second-fastest-growing segment of the company in percentage terms, coming in only behind Freight. That makes sense, as Freight is a less mature division at Uber and therefore one growing from a smaller revenue base. In the quarter, Uber Eats accounted for 22 percent of Uber\u2019s total gross bookings, compared to the year-ago quarter when it made up 16.6 percent. In the third quarter, Uber Eats made up 11 percent of the company\u2019s adjusted net revenue, compared to last year when it made up 7.2 percent of the adjusted net revenue. It\u2019s clear that Uber Eats is important to Uber\u2019s growth story, as it\u2019s one of the fastest-growing segments in the company while competing in the hot market of food delivery. It makes sense that Uber would double-down on the service by helping make it more commercially viable. That being said, Uber Eats is deeply unprofitable. It lost $316 million in adjusted EBITDA in the third quarter. For reference, Rides brought in $631 million in positive adjusted EBITDA during the same period. Uber Eats is a key driver of growth for the company while also a source of more red ink than Uber can stomach. The good is therefore also bad for Uber, a firm that very much wants to be valued on growth and not, say, GAAP profits. It\u2019s stuck, therefore, pursuing Eats for the sake of growth while also trying to reach for profitability. Enter ads, a business that can layer revenue into the Eats mix, lessening pressure on Uber to raise fees or dig deeper into the coffers of restaurants to help its must-work food delivery service become a viable long-term business. Uber has a lot of cash, yes, but it also needs to start generating more of the stuff in time. If it doesn\u2019t, it was never a real company to begin with. Illustration: Dom Guzman", "annotations": {"Uber": "uber.com", "Uber Eats": "ubereats.com", "Freight": "uber.com/de/en/freight"}, "source": "https://news.crunchbase.com/news/ubers-eats-ad-push-explained/"}
{"title": "Q32 Bio Comes Online With $46M Series A To Develop Immunity Therapeutics", "text": "Q32 Bio Comes Online With $46M Series A To Develop Immunity Therapeutics. Q32 Bio , a biotechnology company developing treatments for patients with severe autoimmune and inflammatory diseases, secured $46 million in Series A funding, led by Atlas Venture , to officially launch, the company announced Thursday. Subscribe to the Crunchbase Daily The Cambridge, Massachusetts, company was also seeded and incubated by Atlas Venture. Q32 Bio\u2019s lead candidate, ADX-914, was developed to re-regulate and restore healthy immune regulation in numerous autoimmune and inflammatory diseases, the company said in a written statement. \u201cAutoimmune and inflammatory diseases are driven by dysregulation of the immune response,\u201d Q32 Bio CEO Michael Broxson said in the statement. Autoimmune diseases\u2013lupus and multiple sclerosis for example\u2013cause the immune system to begin attacking the body. A Phase 1 human clinical trial for ADX-914 is planned for late 2020, the company said. In addition to Atlas Venture, the new funding round included OrbiMed Advisors , Abingworth , Sanofi Ventures , University of Colorado and Children\u2019s Hospital Colorado Center for Innovation . Q32 Bio is also working on a platform to provide tissue-targeted regulation, ADX-097, which will go into clinical trials in late 2021, the company said. Because some autoimmune and inflammatory diseases become hyperactivated, causing the immune system to attack and damage healthy tissue, Q32 Bio\u2019s approach aims to block those pathogens responsible. \u201cThis gives us a running start in developing therapies that may improve and save lives,\u201d Broxson said. Illustration: Li-Anne Dias", "annotations": {"OrbiMed Advisors": "orbimed.com", "Abingworth": "abingworth.com", "Q32 Bio": "q32bio.com", "Atlas Venture": "atlasventure.com", "Sanofi Ventures": "sanofiventures.com"}, "source": "https://news.crunchbase.com/news/q32-bio-comes-online-with-46m-series-a-to-develop-immunity-therapeutics/"}
{"title": "US Startups Look To South Korea Amid Country\u2019s COVID Success", "text": "US Startups Look To South Korea Amid Country\u2019s COVID Success. South Korea is a country winning in the war against COVID-19 and U.S. startups are taking notice. As a result of its success, the country has attracted entrepreneurs from around the world who are eager to grow their businesses during the pandemic. Subscribe to the Crunchbase Daily Although growth for South Korea is not new\u2013two years ago we reported that South Korea was working to establish itself as a startup innovation hub \u2013recent reports from both HSBC and OECD have reinforced that South Korea is among the countries best positioned to capitalize on economic recovery from COVID-19. For one economic indicator, we caught up with the K-Startup Grand Challenge , a three-month acceleration program for startups in South Korea. Organizers reported a 33 percent surge in the number of applications received for the fifth installment of its program that starts in September. Claire Chang , founding partner of Palo Alto-based venture capital firm igniteXL Ventures , is an adviser to the K-Startup Grand Challenge and an expert on the entrepreneurial ecosystem in Korea. \u201cAs COVID numbers surge in South and North America, South Korea\u2019s numbers remain low, not to mention Korea\u2019s economy has been able to stay open while many other countries\u2019 business operations are shut down or drastically reduced during the pandemic,\u201d Chang said via email. \u201cIf you have plans to target Asia, Korea is a great place to test the market and expand your business to other parts of Asia.\u201d Some U.S. entrepreneurs kept their operations in South Korea after finishing the K-Startup program there last year\u2013a wise decision as the pandemic shut down economic activity elsewhere. One of those startups is Los Angeles-based GIBLIB . The startup offers on-demand continuing education for physicians wanting to learn directly from experts at top hospitals. GIBLIB co-founder Jihye Shin is currently stationed in Gangnam, Seoul, along with much of the startup\u2019s developer team. GIBLIB\u2019s commercialization focus has primarily been in the U.S., but after COVID-19 affected education across the globe, the company has seen a shift to online medical education for doctors and students, said GIBLIB co-founder and CEO Brian Conyer who has remained in the U.S. \u201cIt\u2019s been very sad to see many of our startup peers struggle during the pandemic,\u201d Conyer told Crunchbase News via email. \u201cWe have been very fortunate to be on the benefiting side of the global black swan crisis. With most of our developers located in Seoul, we\u2019ve had little disruption in terms of workflow and development. In fact, we are looking to expand our development team in Seoul and are actively hiring.\u201d John Nahm , co-founder and managing partner of Los Angeles-based Strong Ventures , said South Korea\u2019s local startup ecosystem is benefitting from its ability to bring COVID-19 under control. Strong Ventures, a seed fund with an office in Seoul, is an investor in GIBLIB. \u201cThe local startup ecosystem is thriving as a result of the accelerated digital adoption and transformation of society,\u201d Nahm said via email. \u201cYou can preview in advance what a post-COVID world will look like and bring back those lessons to your local market.\u201d Meanwhile, Tim Marzullo , co-founder and chief scientific officer at Backyard Brains , decided to stay in South Korea after finishing the K-Startup Grand Challenge in 2019. Given the country\u2019s effective response to the pandemic, Ann Arbor, Michigan-based Backyard Brains was able to build a team and remain productive, he said via email. It was able to expand into elementary school education and make advances in its human physiology research tool prototype development. With Korea\u2019s access to fresh sea life, Backyard Brains was also able to conduct research on the nervous systems of squids and octopi, something Marzullo said could only be conducted sporadically in the U.S. while visiting specialized marine research labs. \u201cThere was an initial unease in February, when the first cases outside of China appeared in Korea, but we decided to be patient and wait it out,\u201d Marzullo said. \u201cFortunately we made the right decision.\u201d Illustration: Dom Guzman", "annotations": {"Backyard Brains": "backyardbrains.com", "HSBC": "hsbc.com", "Strong Ventures": "strongvc.com", "igniteXL Ventures": "ignitexl.vc", "GIBLIB": "giblib.com"}, "source": "https://news.crunchbase.com/news/us-startups-look-to-south-korea-amid-countrys-covid-success/"}
{"title": "Credit Karma Goes Deeper Into Fintech With App Startup Haven Money", "text": "Credit Karma Goes Deeper Into Fintech With App Startup Haven Money. As every startup becomes a bank and every tech company does the same , one 12-year-old company that is already in the fintech space isn\u2019t joining the growing crowd. Instead, San Francisco\u2019s Credit Karma is finding innovation in a five-person team about two miles away from its current headquarters. Subscribe to the Crunchbase Daily Credit Karma, which has amassed 100 million users to date, has acquired a five-person company to build out its savings app: Haven Money. The terms of the deal, including the price, were not disclosed. It\u2019s part of the Credit Karma\u2019s investment in autonomous finances for its customers, moving from understanding their customers money through credit scores and taxes to \u201cplaying an active role in it,\u201d Jagjit Chawla, the vice president and general manager of Tax and Savings at Credit Karma, told me. \u201cThe industry of neobanks is trying to do a lot of different things,\u201d he said. \u201cI don\u2019t intend for us to ever become a bank. But we still operate in a highly regulated financial industry.\u201d This is the company\u2019s seventh acquisition to date. Haven Money helps users manage their savings for investing and retirement using proprietary technology and algorithms. Per its website, Haven will no longer be available after December 15, 2019. After that. \u201cany money still in Haven will be returned to its original source account,\u201d the website says. Users were told to withdraw money before this date. While Credit Karma hasn\u2019t yet made a decision on specific product plans, the company said it will leverage Haven Money\u2019s technology and assets (once the deal closes, of course). \u201cWe have trust with customers to hold their money, the next step there would be is [to] help people managing someone\u2019s personal finances,\u201d Chawla said. \u201cIt\u2019s not just a recommendation engine, it\u2019s a place where you will go to think about your personal finances.\u201d He said that of the 100 million people on the platform, half of the users come back on a quarterly basis. It makes sense, Credit Karma is assumedly trying to be on your mind not just during tax season, or when you\u2019re worried about your credit score. Think week by week basis, instead. Credit Karma is one of the more old school companies in a blossoming crew of startups taking a crack at finance. During our call, Chawla said that historical perspective is one of the reasons he is optimistic about the company\u2019s future. \u201cEach [other fintech companies] has about 1 to 5 million users right now,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019re in a different headspace. We are not looking to get to scale, we have already scaled.\u201d Comparatively, Chime, which was founded in 2013, reached 5 million customers in September. It\u2019s creating an FDIC-insured mobile bank with lower fees . It also recently raised $ 500 million in a Series E . Instead, Credit Karma has \u201cthe reverse problem\u201d said Chawla, which is to keep building and compounding products to keep those millions of users happy. Each fintech company I\u2019m seeing pop up is targeting a niche, whether it\u2019s savings, micro investing, or something else. But just as we\u2019ve seen with wellness apps, users aren\u2019t going to want to download a million options for each aspect of their financial life Bigger companies, and eventually consolidation of smaller companies, will recognize how a holistic company that does everything from credit scores to savings products could be the slow and steady home screen mainstay. Illustration: Li-Anne Dias", "annotations": {"Chime": "chime.com", "Credit Karma": "creditkarma.com"}, "source": "https://news.crunchbase.com/news/credit-karma-goes-deeper-into-fintech-with-app-startup-haven-money/"}
{"title": "Meet PandemicTech: A 4-Year-Old Virtual Incubator Confronting Infectious Disease Threats", "text": "Meet PandemicTech: A 4-Year-Old Virtual Incubator Confronting Infectious Disease Threats. While the world is struggling with the COVID-19 pandemic, one Austin-based virtual incubator is amping up efforts to use technology to confront infectious disease threats. Subscribe to the Crunchbase Daily Dr. Andrew Nerlinger and his wife, Dr. Lisa McDonald , launched PandemicTech in 2016. Its main goal has been to explore how the private sector and innovation community can take a different approach to preventing pandemics, instead of relying only on the government. Little did they know how timely and useful their efforts would be as the spread of COVID-19 has officially reached pandemic levels. Nerlinger is also a venture partner with Bill Wood Ventures, which was founded by prominent venture capitalist Bill Wood . Wood was a founding partner at the now defunct Austin Ventures and also founded Silverton Partners . McDonald is also director of health care at Austin Technology Incubator (ATI), the startup incubator of the The University of Texas at Austin . Wood got involved with PandemicTech in April 2018, and is now one of its primary funders along with the Houston-based Laura and John Arnold\u2019s family office, Centaurus Advisors. \u201cWhen Andrew told me about PandemicTech, it just looked really interesting as a way for me to apply some of my background in technology and entrepreneurship to help solve some really big global problems such as infectious diseases,\u201d Wood told Crunchbase News. Since its inception, PandemicTech has issued grants and made investments in projects in Nigeria, Egypt, Ethiopia, Australia and Mexico. It recently launched \u201cThe PandemicTech Innovation Fellowship 2020 \u201d \u2013 a $100,000 innovation challenge focused on global health security. It\u2019s also formed a partnership with the World Health Organization (WHO). Dr. Moredreck Chibi , regional adviser on innovation for WHO\u2019s Regional Office of Africa , said he engaged PandemicTech and the Austin community to support the inaugural WHO Innovation Challenge that was launched in October 2018. PandemicTech offered the WHO \u201camazing support\u201d on the evaluation of more than 2,400 applications, Chibi wrote via email. \u201cWe continue to work with PandemicTech on supporting the selected innovators to further develop their innovations for transition to scale,\u201d he said. \u201cThis has been one of the most productive and fulfilling partnerships WHO AFRO had in complementing its effort towards scaling appropriate innovations fit for the African context.\u201d Wood believes organizations that traditionally attack infectious disease threats are not really \u201cbuilt for innovation, and the use of technology.\u201d \u201cWhen you get plugged into global health, you realize the profound needs that are not being met,\u201d Wood added. \u201cYou start to realize how dramatically unprepared we are. And now, when something like this [COVID-19] happens, the evidence is really clear that there has been an enormous lack of investment and innovation in this space.\u201d McDonald agrees. The fundamental push behind PandemicTech was about preparing in advance for situations such as the Coraonavirus pandemic. \u201cIt\u2019s very interesting to see that sort of reaction in the moment or retrospectively,\u201d she told Crunchbase News. \u201cAnd that supports the fundamental thesis behind what we\u2019ve done.\u201d From a humanitarian perspective, the WHO has launched its COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund , according to Nerlinger. But he said it will also be critical for the private sector to support local economies, particularly those left without a source of income, while still following public health guidelines. \u201cThe private sector can also drive the uptake of technologies like telemedicine that can both improve access to medical care and support the call for social distancing,\u201d Nerlinger said. PandemicTech is also observing that many companies, even early-stage startups, are working on technologies that could be used to support our response to the COVID-19 pandemic. \u201cWe encourage these companies to seek partnerships that help adapt technologies to fighting COVID-19, particularly with promising technologies like telemedicine, and for investors to support these innovative efforts,\u201d Nerlinger said. Beyond its goal of identifying promising applicants for its fellowship program, PandemicTech is looking for experienced mentors across sectors to join its advisory network. It\u2019s also interested in partnering with investors or other funding organizations to support early-stage innovation in the fight against pandemics. Blog Roll Illustration: Li-Anne Dias", "annotations": {"Austin Technology Incubator": "ati.utexas.edu", "Centaurus Advisors": "centaurusenergy.com", "PandemicTech": "pandemictech.com", "ATI": "ati.utexas.edu", "Silverton Partners": "silvertonpartners.com"}, "source": "https://news.crunchbase.com/news/meet-pandemictech-a-4-year-old-incubator-confronting-infectious-disease-threats-with-tech/"}
{"title": "Pandemic Survey Finds Founders Less Worried", "text": "Pandemic Survey Finds Founders Less Worried. NFX updated its VC and founder survey, which was last conducted early in the pandemic and released on April 2 . The updated survey , conducted at the end of May with early-stage founders (451 respondents) and VCs (141 respondents), shows that founders are a little less worried about the effects of the pandemic compared to how they felt at the end of March. Subscribe to the Crunchbase Daily Overall, both founders and VCs have extended the time frame for the recovery, with the majority projecting recovery beyond April 2021. In the previous survey, VC drying up and sales were the top concerns for founders. Despite the projection of a longer recovery, the majority of founders (70 percent) reported that they see no change or growth in revenue, which is higher than expected going into the crisis. In the survey results, 60 percent of VCs report that early-stage valuations have dropped by 20 percent to 30 percent, and predict a further decline in valuations to an average of 40 percent in total. In Crunchbase\u2019s data, we have not seen a decline in round size (which is a proxy for valuation) for the first five months of the year compared to previous years. That information is influenced by the fact that rounds added to Crunchbase in a timely manner tend to be larger. For now, reported rounds are holding up. As more data is added, however, average and median round sizes will come down. Leading tech companies have announced plans to allow team members to shift to remote work permanently, including Facebook , Square , Shopify and Twitter . This will be a major shift for Silicon Valley, doing more than any other trend to move tech away from the valley. Many startups also are changing their attitude about remote work. VC sentiment from the survey, however, is that remote work teams are less attractive for investment. This reaction is surprising as many companies report productivity has not been negatively impacted by remote work. Added to that, access to talent will expand, the cost of engineering talent will come down, and the major cost of office space will be reduced, which will allow startups to stretch investment dollars further. VC concern might have to do with acquisitions being less attractive if the acquirer values a team in one place. There are also concerns around the network effects of in-person relationships and spontaneous conversation, which can increase innovation. According to James Currier , founder of NFX, \u201cThe more distributed a team is, and for longer periods of time, the more a startup needs to reimagine the social and serendipitous attributes of work that office settings traditionally provided.\u201d A high percentage of founders have not experienced a material impact to revenue growth. For 23.5 percent of responding founders, revenue has increased. Around 46 percent of founders see no change in revenue. For 30 percent of founders, revenue has decreased. Travel, energy, recruiting, construction and ad tech startups\u2013in that order\u2013are the most impacted, according to the survey. Despite revenue not being materially impacted for 70 percent of startups, hiring is nonetheless slowing down for many of them. A hiring freeze has been instituted at 40 percent of startups, and 32 percent are hiring more slowly. Only 10 percent of startups are hiring aggressively. For those that are hiring, 50 percent of founders report that salaries have come down. VC drying up was the top concern for founders from the earlier survey, ahead of sales and layoffs. There\u2019s good news, however, we are not yet experiencing a significant contraction in venture funding. Funding in the U.S. is down slightly, by 14 percent for January-May 2020, compared to the same time period for 2019. 2020 funding dollars already exceed 2018\u2019s amount by $700 million for the same time frame. It\u2019s worth noting that due to data lags, 2020 funding will increase relative to prior years. Illustration: Dom Guzman", "annotations": {"Twitter": "twitter.com", "Square": "squareup.com", "NFX": "nfx.com", "Shopify": "shopify.com", "Facebook": "facebook.com"}, "source": "https://news.crunchbase.com/news/pandemic-survey-finds-founders-less-worried/"}
{"title": "SharesPost And Forge Global To Merge", "text": "SharesPost And Forge Global To Merge. Private securities marketplaces SharesPost and Forge Global will be merging, the companies announced Tuesday. Subscribe to the Crunchbase Daily The combined company will operate under the name Forge Global, with Forge Global CEO Kelly Rodriques continuing as the chief executive of the combined entity. SharesPost CEO Greg Brogger will step down from his role and join the company\u2019s board of directors, according to a statement from the companies. \u201cTogether, we will provide our clients with even deeper insight into private company trends, including bid, offer and pricing data,\u201d Brogger wrote in a blog post. \u201cThough we believe all market participants will benefit from these enhancements, we think perhaps it is the private companies that ultimately will benefit the most. Providing efficient, company-controlled liquidity to shareholders and employees ensures that they will have continued access to growth capital and to the talent they need to build world beating companies.\u201d SharesPost and Forge Global have facilitated more than 10,000 client transactions worth more than $6 billion in shares of more than 320 private companies, Brogger wrote. The companies give employees and investors access to private company information and liquidity. The merger positions the new combined company as a large player to compete in the private securities market. Nasdaq Private Market, which lets private companies do tender offers and share buybacks, and shareholders to sell private company stock to institutional investors, is another prominent player in the space. Carta is planning for a private share trading platform as well, according to the Financial Times . Forge Global agreed to $160 million in cash and stock for the deal, according to TechCrunch. Forge is backed by investors including Tim Draper and Peter Thiel, and SharesPost investors like Kinetic and LUN Partners Group , according to Crunchbase. Illustration Credit: Li-Anne Dias", "annotations": {"LUN Partners Group": "lunpartners.com", "Forge": "forgeglobal.com", "Forge Global": "forgeglobal.com", "Carta": "carta.com", "Kinetic": "wearkinetic.com", "SharesPost": "sharespost.com"}, "source": "https://news.crunchbase.com/news/sharespost-and-forge-global-to-merge/"}
{"title": "BigCommerce Stock Closes 201% Above IPO Price", "text": "BigCommerce Stock Closes 201% Above IPO Price. E-commerce startup BigCommerce \u2019s stock closed at $72.27, about 201 percent above its IPO price, on its first day of trading. Subscribe to the Crunchbase Daily The Austin-based company priced its shares at $24 apiece on Tuesday, raising more than $216 million. BigCommerce\u2019s stock opened at $68 on Wednesday, with the price going as high as $91.80 around 12:35 p.m. ET. The company\u2019s shares trade on the Nasdaq under the ticker BIGC. If a startup\u2019s stock surging like crazy on its first day of trading sounds familiar, it\u2019s because it\u2019s been happening a lot lately. BigCommerce is one of a long string of companies to see their stock open well over its IPO price when it hits the public markets. It\u2019s definitely a change of pace from earlier this year, considering the long IPO lull for tech companies following COVID-19 being declared a pandemic. BigCommerce raised at least $219 million in funding as a private company from investors including GGV Capital , General Catalyst and SoftBank . It reported $33 million in revenue for the first quarter of 2020 and $4 million in losses during the same period. BigCommerce isn\u2019t profitable, but most startups going public aren\u2019t these days. It\u2019s a good time to be an e-commerce company, and it looks like public market investors think so too. Illustration: Li-Anne Dias", "annotations": {"GGV Capital": "ggvc.com", "BigCommerce": "bigcommerce.com", "General Catalyst": "generalcatalyst.com", "SoftBank": "softbank.jp/en"}, "source": "https://news.crunchbase.com/news/bigcommerce-stock-opens-183-above-ipo-price/"}
{"title": "Andreessen Horowitz Raises $750M For Its Third Bio Fund", "text": "Andreessen Horowitz Raises $750M For Its Third Bio Fund. On Tuesday, Andreessen Horowitz (often abbreviated as \u201ca16z\u201d) announced it raised $750 million for it\u2019s third fund, earmarked for biotechnology and health care investing. Subscribe to the Crunchbase Daily Fund III is the largest in this series of funds. Andreessen Horowitz\u2019s previous biotech and health care funds came in at $450 million for Bio Fund II (announced in December 2017) and $200 million for Bio Fund I (announced in November 2015). According to Crunchbase data and announcements on Andreessen Horowitz\u2019s blog , the firm has made investments in dozens of companies in the health care, biotechnology and pharmaceutical sectors. In its announcement for Fund III, the firm\u2019s managing directors said \u201c[t]ech, biotech, and our healthcare system are merging\u2014into what we call simply \u2018bio.\u2019 And whether for pharma, hospitals, or investors, bio is now officially the hot new thing.\u201d The firm\u2019s portfolio companies are operating on several sides of this emerging sector. Take Devoted Health as an example. It\u2019s a broker of Medicare Advantage plans. Andreessen Horowitz led the company\u2019s $300 million Series B round in October 2018. More recent additions to the portfolio include cancer drug company Erasca and The One Health Company , which develops cancer treatment protocols for dogs, and medical data management upstart Ciitizen . \u201cWe are now approaching a new ability to rethink bio\u2019s biggest problems, from intractable diseases and massive inefficiencies or disparities in an overburdened health care system, to what we eat, what we wear, what we build, even how we heal our planet. And we will do this by using our most advanced technological tools, as well as the engineering principles that brought them to us,\u201d fund managers Vineeta Agarwala , Jorge Conde , Vijay Pande and Julie Yoo said in their announcement. Illustration: Li-Anne Dias", "annotations": {"Ciitizen": "ciitizen.com", "a16z": "a16z.com", "Andreessen Horowitz": "a16z.com", "The One Health Company": "fidocure.com", "Devoted Health": "devoted.com", "Erasca": "erasca.com"}, "source": "https://news.crunchbase.com/news/andreessen-horowitz-raises-750m-for-its-third-bio-fund/"}
{"title": "Accolade Is Latest To Join Health Service IPO Bandwagon", "text": "Accolade Is Latest To Join Health Service IPO Bandwagon. To launch a successful IPO in the current market environment, it seems to help to be a fast-growing health care services provider. Shares of One Medical , a provider of primary care clinics and telemedicine, closed up nearly 60 percent in first-day trading a month ago. Since then, it\u2019s largely held on to those gains. Subscribe to the Crunchbase Daily Progyny , a benefits management focusing on fertility, meanwhile, has seen its shares roughly double from its initial offer price back in October. While the broader markets have swooned, Progyny has held strong. Now, another well-funded health service company is betting investor enthusiasm for the space will trump market skittishness. Accolade , a service provider that serves as a kind of go-between for consumers, employers and health insurance companies, is seeking to raise up to $100 million in an IPO, according to a prospectus filed late Friday. Like most venture-backed companies on the IPO path, Accolade is posting both strong growth and persistent losses. Its most recent financials are for the ninth-month period ending Nov. 30, for which it reported revenue of $88 million, and a net loss of $49 million. For the corresponding period a year earlier, revenue was $60 million, with the same net loss of $49 million. (Accolade operates on a fiscal year ending in February, so results for its last full fiscal year are not yet available.) The company\u2019s pitch to investors is that its platform will see continued large-scale adoption as health care plans and services become increasingly complicated for people to navigate. Its customers are primarily employers that deploy Accolade to provide employees and their families \u201ca single place to turn for their health, healthcare, and benefits needs,\u201d per the IPO prospectus. Accolades core offerings includes a software platform backed by a support staff of health assistants and clinicians. Headquartered in Seattle, with significant operations in the Philadelphia area, Accolade has raised $237 million in known funding since its founding in 2007. Key backers include Andreessen Horowitz , Comcast Ventures and Carrick Capital Partners . Illustration: Li-Anne Dias .", "annotations": {"Comcast Ventures": "comcastventures.com", "Accolade": "accolade.com", "Progyny": "progyny.com", "One Medical": "onemedical.com", "Andreessen": "a16z.com", "Carrick Capital Partners": "carrickcapitalpartners.com"}, "source": "https://news.crunchbase.com/news/accolade-is-latest-to-join-health-service-ipo-bandwagon/"}
{"title": "Duck Creek Technologies Prices Shares At $27 Apiece", "text": "Duck Creek Technologies Prices Shares At $27 Apiece. Duck Creek Technologies on Thursday set a price of $27 per share for its initial public offering. Subscribe to the Crunchbase Daily The Boston-based company makes software for the property and casualty insurance industry. It initially set a price range of between $19 and $21 before raising it to $23 to $25. With a price of $27 per share, the company raised $405 million through its IPO, excluding underwriters\u2019 options. Duck Creek Technologies, which was founded in 2000, raised at least $357 million in total funding from investors including Insight Partners and Temasek Holdings . Apax Partners , a private equity firm, acquired a majority stake in Duck Creek Technologies in April 2016. The company reported total revenue to the tune of $153 million for the nine-month period that ended on May 31. That was up from $123 million during the same period the prior year. The company\u2019s net losses also shrunk to about $8.5 million for the nine months that ended on May 31, down from $14 million during the same period the year prior. Its stock is set to start trading on the Nasdaq on Friday under the ticker symbol DCT. We\u2019ll have more tomorrow when the company starts trading. Illustration: Li-Anne Dias", "annotations": {"Temasek Holdings": "temasek.com.sg/en/index", "Duck Creek Technologies": "duckcreek.com", "Apax Partners": "apax.com", "Insight Partners": "insightpartners.com"}, "source": "https://news.crunchbase.com/news/duck-creek-technologies-prices-shares-at-27-apiece/"}
{"title": "Investors Serve Up $53M In Series C Funding To Web Dev Platform Netlify", "text": "Investors Serve Up $53M In Series C Funding To Web Dev Platform Netlify. Developer platform Netlify announced it has raised $53 million in a Series C funding led by EQT Ventures . Prior investors Andreessen Horowitz , Kleiner Perkins , and Preston-Werner Ventures 1 participated in the deal, which brings the San Francisco-based company\u2019s total funding to $93 million. Subscribe to the Crunchbase Daily Valuations and other key financial metrics were not publicly disclosed by the company. However, in its announcement, Netlify did say that it\u2019s tripled its customer base (to 800,000 users) and revenue year over year. The company says that 8 percent of internet users visit a Netlify-powered site each month. In a public statement, Netlify\u2019s co-founder and CEO Mathias Biilmann said \u201cWe started Netlify with the mission to empower developers and change the way the web is built. The growing number of developers signing onto Netlify daily and the latest investment in our business has validated that vision. With this funding we\u2019re full-speed ahead delivering new features, investing in our enterprise-grade infrastructure and growing our team, to help more developers and businesses take advantage of the JAMstack.\u201d What is the JAMstack? It\u2019s a web development architecture co-developed by Biilmann. The acronym stands for JavaScript, APIs and prebuilt Markup. Dynamic functionality is handled by client-side JavaScript; server-side operations get abstracted into composable APIs which can be called over HTTPS via JavaScript; and sites are served as static HTML which can either be written natively or be generated from source files written in Markdown format using a static site generator. 2 The principal benefits the JAMstack offers to web developers is that sites can be served exclusively over a content delivery network (CDN), which improves scalability. Because a project\u2019s entire codebase lives in a version control system like Git, and each deployment represents a snapshot of the entire site, developers are able to trace version histories and ensure consistency across an entire live site. Netlify builds software tools that help with different aspects of JAMstack development. Netlify Dev is a local application server developers can use for building and testing their websites prior to production deployment. Netlify Build is a Git workflow for web development. Edge is Netlify\u2019s \u201capplication delivery network\u201d that offers features some traditional CDNs don\u2019t. \u201cTo enable more use cases at scale in 2020, we\u2019re investing in new features catering to our enterprise customers, including more control and better collaboration for larger teams. We look forward to enabling the JAMstack at scale with the services they need as they look to migrate major parts of their web infrastructure to Netlify,\u201d said co-founders Chris Bach and Matt Biilmann in a separate statement about the round. The company offers a set of pricing tiers for tinkerers and small teams, but with this new funding the company is intent to scale out its enterprise service offerings . These include more processing power on the build side, higher speed on the deployment side, and other client services like security auditing and premium support. \u201cNetlify and the JAMstack are fundamentally changing how websites and web applications are built. The large and growing community of developers building on the JAMstack is testament to the movement that Matt and Chris and the team are spearheading, and to the unified platform they\u2019ve built,\u201d said Laura Yao of EQT Ventures. Illustration: Li-Anne Dias The family investment office of GitHub co-founder Tom Preston-Werner and his spouse Theresa Preston-Werner , who both left GitHub after a bullying scandal involving a female subordinate . \u21a9 Thank you to the enormously helpful informational site jamstack.wtf for digesting a lot of technical documentation into something that\u2019s easy for semi-technical audiences to understand and relay. \u21a9", "annotations": {"Andreessen Horowitz": "a16z.com", "Kleiner Perkins": "kleinerperkins.com", "Preston-Werner Ventures 1": "prestonwernerventures.com", "Netlify": "netlify.com", "GitHub": "github.com", "EQT Ventures": "eqtventures.com"}, "source": "https://news.crunchbase.com/news/investors-serve-up-53m-in-series-c-funding-to-web-dev-platform-netlify/"}
{"title": "Biotech IPOs Are On A Tear", "text": "Biotech IPOs Are On A Tear. While tech IPOs commonly generate a lot of buzz and big first-day gains, the same cannot be said for biotech. Typically, venture-backed biotech companies go public well before they\u2019re generating revenue. For these companies, an IPO is less an exit and more a financing event, aimed at amassing capital for the costly work of R&D and clinical trials. Subscribe to the Crunchbase Daily Given the lack of flashiness, most of us probably wouldn\u2019t recognize the names of life sciences companies that tapped public markets this year. There are exceptions, such as last week\u2019s blockbuster debut of CureVac , the German biotech deploying its messenger RNA technology in COVID-19 vaccine development. Overall, however, they\u2019re an obscure bunch. Yet taken in aggregate, the numbers speak for themselves: Biotech IPOs are going gangbusters this year. So far in 2020, at least 37 venture-backed North American life sciences companies have carried out IPOs ( see list ), raising a total of $6.7 billion. By comparison, in all of 2019, the same cohort pulled in just $5 billion across 51 public offerings. Overall, this year is easily on track to post the highest biotech IPO numbers in five years. And not only are companies raising a lot of capital, they\u2019re generating comparatively high market valuations as well. That\u2019s illustrated in the chart below. A few deals this year stand out for size or performance: New Jersey-based Legend Biotech , a developer of cellular therapies backed by a host of large-cap pharmaceutical companies, raised $424 million in its June IPO, and was recently valued around $4 billion. Relay Therapeutics , a company applying its expertise in protein motion to the drug discovery process, just raised $400 million in a late July offering. Shares of the Massachusetts company are trading for roughly double the initial offering price. Pliant Therapeutics , a developer of therapies for the treatment of fibrosis, raised $144 million in its June IPO. Shares of the South San Francisco, California-based company have fallen from late June highs, but are still up more than 50 percent from the initial IPO price. We should note that it\u2019s not just biotech IPOs that are up in 2020. Venture funding to life sciences companies is up as well, as we covered in July, which bodes well for the pipeline of startups eyeing future offerings. Additionally, the combination of a receptive market for new issues and a strong recent track record of post-IPO performance indicates we\u2019ll probably see the high volume of biotech offerings continue. Another factor to consider: The search for COVID-19 therapies and vaccines has led to heightened public and investor interest in the inner workings of biotech. There\u2019s good reason to presume that will only intensify should biotech innovation be the force that eventually puts the pandemic behind us. Illustration: Li-Anne Dias", "annotations": {"Legend Biotech": "legendbiotech.com", "Pliant Therapeutics": "pliantrx.com", "CureVac": "curevac.com", "Relay Therapeutics": "relaytx.com"}, "source": "https://news.crunchbase.com/news/biotech-ipos-are-on-a-tear/"}
{"title": "Lion Capital Takes Minority Stake In Real Estate Startup REX For $25M", "text": "Lion Capital Takes Minority Stake In Real Estate Startup REX For $25M. REX , a licensed residential real estate brokerage using AI and big data, announced today it has received a $25 million investment from Lion Capital in exchange for a minority stake in the company. Subscribe to the Crunchbase Daily Austin-based REX last November raised $40 million in what it described as a C1 round. That financing was an add-on from its $45 million Series C in January 2019. London-based Lion Capital\u2019s new investment brings the startup\u2019s total raised since its inception in late 2015 to $140 million, according to Crunchbase data. In a statement Lion Capital Partner Matthew Nordby said his firm believes the REX brand and service offerings are scalable to serve an expanded audience. \u201cREX Homes was made for this exact moment where families need safe and secure options, and demand greater value when selling their asset or buying their next home,\u201d he added. REX says the new financing follows a high-growth year for the company. In 2019, the startup said its listings grew about 160 percent. And its revenue surged 180 percent compared to the year prior. The COVID-19 pandemic is only fueling demand for its services, the company said. From January to April 2020, REX said it has helped consumers move three times more homes into escrow compared to the same period in 2019. For a quarter of the homes in escrow, the buyers only toured the home virtually, it added. And from January to March 2020, REX saw its virtual tours surge by 1,000 percent \u201cas consumers looked for safe options to shop for homes.\u201d Once a buyer has found the home it would like to purchase, REX says its \u201cfully automated\u201d back office can handle the entire transaction, including mortgage, escrow and insurance, without requiring any in-person meetings. REX currently has 220 full time employees,10 part time workers and approximately 245 gig workers (which it describes as a combination of mostly \u201cAssociate Agents\u201d and a few IT-related contractors). That\u2019s up from September 2019, when it had 185 full-time employees, three part time workers and about 220 gig workers. REX currently has 36 open roles, saying that it is focused on growing within targeted markets. As of April 2020, REX is operating in 17 states nationwide, including Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Nevada, New York, New Jersey, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia and Washington DC. There are so many real estate tech startups these days that it can be difficult to differentiate them. Similar to Redfin, REX charges a lower commission (2 percent) than most traditional real estate brokerages, which typically charge 6 percent. Using data science, machine learning and artificial intelligence, the startup claims to be able \u201cto price homes more accurately than traditional brokerages.\u201d It also pays its agents a salary, as opposed to working with them as contractors. If a buyer purchases an MLS home through REX Homes, the company returns 50 percent of the fee to the buyer. As part of a continued effort toward social good, REX Homes said it is also working with World Housing to fund the construction of a new home for every 50 homes sold on the REX platform. REX Homes is also currently contributing to a World Housing \u201cGirls to Grannies\u201d community in Cambodia by building a local school and 15 homes for needy families, with an additional 20 future homes slated to be built this year. In addition, CEO and co-founder Jack Ryan said he has dedicated his ownership in REX Homes to building homes and schools for children who have lost access to their parents. Illustration: Dom Guzman", "annotations": {"REX": "rexhomes.com", "REX Homes": "rexhomes.com", "Redfin": "redfin.com", "Lion Capital": "lioncapital.com", "World Housing": "worldhousing.org"}, "source": "https://news.crunchbase.com/news/lion-capital-takes-minority-stake-in-austin-based-real-estate-startup-rex-for-25m/"}
{"title": "Postman Raises $150M, Reaching $2B Valuation", "text": "Postman Raises $150M, Reaching $2B Valuation. API development platform Postman raised $150 million in new funding, bringing its valuation to $2 billion. Subscribe to the Crunchbase Daily The Series C round, which was led by Insight Partners , is Postman\u2019s largest funding round to date. The company last raised a $50 million Series B in June 2019. Postman, which was founded in Bengaluru in 2014, lets users build and collaborate on application programming interfaces, or APIs. The company counts 11 million developers in its community and is used by more than 500,000 companies around the world. \u201cWe believe that APIs are the building block of modern software \u2026 this trend is just going to fundamentally explode,\u201d CEO Abhinav Asthana said in an interview with Crunchbase News. Postman is a very developer-led community, and wants to be the single provider for everything API-related, he added. The company will be using the new funding to invest in product design and engineering around the world, according to Asthana. It will also be investing in resources for its community through webinars and by distributing educational materials and webinars. Postman has hubs in Bengaluru, where it was founded, and San Francisco, and has employees distributed around the world. The company will be growing both offices, along with its distributed workforce. While the company currently employs around 250 people, it\u2019s aiming to double its headcount within the next year. Asthana said there has been a lot of interest in investing in Postman since it was founded, and the company had been talking to Insight Partners for a while. The company\u2019s other backers include CRV , which led its Series B last year, and Nexus Venture Partners , which led its Series A in 2016, according to Crunchbase. Asthana said he\u2019s particularly excited about the Postman API Network, and the company will be investing in fully automatable solutions (such as security testing) and integrating with the full DevOps cycle. \u201cWe feel very strongly that we\u2019re going to be driving more and more of the API revolution forward in the next decade,\u201d Asthana said. Illustration: Li-Anne Dias", "annotations": {"Nexus Venture Partners": "nexusvp.com", "CRV": "crv.com", "Insight Partners": "insightpartners.com", "Postman": "postman.com"}, "source": "https://news.crunchbase.com/news/postman-raises-150m-reaching-2b-valuation/"}