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Growth is out, profitability is in

Published October 25, 2019

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.

This week Kate and Alex held the reins as a duo (check out our chat with Greylock’s Sarah Guo from last week here) to dig into an enormous raft of news. And don’t worry, it’s not all late-stage happenings. We’re discussing early-stage news every week because that’s what the listeners want!

Up top we dug into Kate’s excellent work covering the Superhuman founder’s new micro fund, or at least his attempt at raising such a fund. Our main question is how can he be a good VC and a good executive at the same time? Folks don’t tend to do both at the same time because they’re each more than full-time jobs. Having two such gigs sounds hard.

But hey, it’s not just athletes and musicians who can bring outsized interest to deals. In-demand founders can have a similar effect. We’ll be keeping a close eye on the upcoming fun. Moving on.

Next, we turned to the other end of the venture landscape, looking at Founders Fund’s new capital vehicles. With a combined $2.7 billion in eventual capital, FF is hoping to build a financial redoubt from which they can rain capital down on late-stage targets, wherever they may be.

Is it a bit late in the cycle to cut late-stage checks to companies that might otherwise go public? That’s the gamble so far, as we can see it, but perhaps with WeWork’s IPO dreams turned to nightmares, there’s demand among a group of companies for another 12 months in the private markets. And that means more money is required.

On the theme of more money, Lime is raising some more and we were treated to new financial results from The Information’s great work getting the figures. Our discussion asked the question of how far the company’s unit economics could improve. Kate said that Lime is investing a lot now in developing better hardware so their scooters can last more than five minutes on the roads before breaking down. She thinks things will start looking up when it’s deploying only new, fancy, good scooters. Alex is bearish.

Before we could turn back to the early-stage market and wrap up, we had to cover the latest from WeWork. SoftBank did, in the end, come and save the day (at least for now) for the company, meaning that WeWork lives on, though layoffs are expected sooner rather than later. Who knows what the future holds…

And finally, Vendr, a company that is profitable, raised a $2 million round. This is interesting because, again, it’s profitable! And the startup willingly shared some financial data with us — a rarity. Read more about the recent Y Combinator graduate here.

Equity drops every Friday at 6:00 am PT, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.

Workplace learning platform HowNow scores $3M funding

Published October 25, 2019

HowNow, the workforce learning platform, has raised $3 million (£2.4 million) in a “pre-series A” funding round. The round is led by Mark Pearson’s Fuel Ventures and brings the total raised by the startup to $4.5 million.

Other investors include Andy Murray OBE; Michael Whitfield and Chris Bruce (founders of Thomsons Online Benefits); Bernie Sinniah (former managing director at Citi Bank); and Alwin Magimay (a former partner at McKinsey).

Designed for organisations that want to support teams with self-directed learning and the development of “business-critical” skills, HowNow is described as an integrated learning platform that autonomously curates learning resources, “business intelligence” and market insights that live in various internal and external sources.

The idea is to bring together these different learning resources — ranging from “nuggets” of knowledge shared by existing employees to internal data to external content libraries, blogs and podcasts — and match these to different job descriptions and employee skill-sets.

This is powered by a browser extension and integrations with Slack, Salesforce, HubSpot and more than 300 other apps. Machine-learning is also employed to push the right content to the right employee.

“Employers can also use HowNow to identify skills gaps within the company based on job market data, via HowNow’s real-time analytics and built-in certification,” adds the company. To achieve this, the platform claims to monitor more than 20,000 job specifications to understand the in-demand skills and requirements companies are searching for.

“Based on self-review, peer-review and real-time job market data we build the user’s skill profile as they onboard the platform,” explains HowNow co-founder and CEO Nelson Sivalingam. “Once in HowNow, they see learning recommendations based on assigned learning pathways, their role, skill requirements and internal benchmarks. This content is brought together from a variety of their internal sources (G Drive, Sharepoint, CRM, etc.), external sources (content libraries, blogs, podcasts, etc.) and the autonomously organised knowledge shared by their peers directly on HowNow.”

Employees can then access these learning resources directly within the applications they already work with and receive contextually relevant suggestions powered by HowNow’s “AI.” “For example, they can be in Slack and search all of their learning resources directly from their using the HowNow Slack app,” says Sivalingam. “They can also convert a message from a colleague into a nugget that will get stored and autonomously organised in HowNow.”

Similarly, Sivalingam says that, via HowNow, client-facing teams are able to access up-to-date product knowledge, business intelligence and market insights directly within their inbox, CRM and help desk, which enables them to reduce customer response times.

“Fast-growing companies like GymShark are able to capture the knowledge in the heads of their internal subject matter experts by giving them a quick and easy way to share knowledge, build a glue between scattered content, avoid repeat questions and get everyone on the same page,” he adds.

To that end, I’m told that more than 500,000 users currently use HowNow within over 125 businesses. These range from SMEs to larger organisations, across 14 different countries. A classic SaaS play, the startup generates revenue through a licence fee per user.

StepLadder, the collaborative deposit saving platform for first-time buyers, raises £1.5M

Published October 25, 2019

StepLadder, another London-based startup aiming to help so-called “generation rent” get onto the housing ladder, has raised £1.5 million in seed funding.

Backing the round is Spanish banking giant BBVA and fintech VC Anthemis via the London-based venture studio on which the pair have partnered. Early investor Seedcamp also followed on, in addition to unnamed angel investors.

StepLadder says it will use the new capital and support provided by BBVA/Anthemis to further develop its “collaborative finance platform.” The startup is also eyeing international expansion.

Founded in 2015 by Matthew Addison and joined by Lucy Mullins and Mihir Bhushan, StepLadder’s collaborative deposit saving platform is designed to motivate renters to save for a deposit so they can purchase their first home.

Using a financial model known as a “Rotating Credit and Savings Association” (ROSCA), StepLadder puts its members into “Circles,” whereby each individual member contributes an identical amount on a monthly basis — ranging from £25 to £1,000. A random draw then takes place each month and the winner is provided with that month’s full pot to use toward their deposit.

“For most first-time buyers, it’s really difficult to get on the property ladder,” says Addison. “Home ownership rates amongst 25 to 34-years-olds have collapsed… [with around] 250,000 fewer first-time buyers every year, for over a decade, in the U.K. alone. Raising the deposit is the biggest hurdle. At StepLadder we’re using something called a ROSCA, a form of collaborative finance where people work together in groups to help our members raise their property deposits, on average, 45% faster.”

As an example, StepLadder might match you to a £500 a month Circle for 20 months to raise £10,000. This would see it find 19 other members to be in the same Circle. “Each month the £10,000 is randomly allocated and you could be drawn at any point in that 20 months,” explains StepLadder’s Lucy Mullins. “You have to keep making your £500 a month payment for the full 20 months, so at the end everybody has paid in £10,000 and everybody has received £10,000.”

StepLadder Platform 1

To help protect the platform from being abused, Mullins says that while a member is still part of a Circle, the startup will only release the pot to their solicitor for use as a property deposit. “So, if somebody stops paying after they have been drawn then we wouldn’t release their payout until they had made catch-up payments.”

StepLadder also supports members along the house-buying journey. The app lets members engage with a community of like-minded people and access group-buying discounts on services such as mortgages, solicitor fess and surveyors. The latter forms part of the company’s revenue stream.

“We introduce our members (at their request) to high-quality service providers, such as mortgage brokers, lending banks, surveyors and insurance providers,” says Addison. “In return, these partners pay us fees or commissions. We offer discounts on these transaction services via the combined buying power of our members in their Circles.”

In addition, there is a small monthly fee (between 2-5%) to be part of a Circle, which Mullins says covers the cost of delivering the service.

This includes holding money securely in a client money account, a payment waiver if a member were to become sick or unemployed after buying a property with their StepLadder deposit, credit bureau costs and the cost of a Circle host to support members on the journey.

“We do not aim to profit from the monthly administration fees we charge members and would usually be able to save our members much more in discounts than they pay in fees,” says Mullins.

Meanwhile, StepLadder has plans to expand the use cases for Circles and evolve the platform to also cover general savings goals and targeted “big ticket items.”

Explains Addison: “In Brazil, ROSCAs are used by nine million consumers for everything from dishwashers to cars to homes. We have already begun to demonstrate this potential with both our First Step offering (smaller circles from £25 a month) and proposed partnered launches.”

Elon Musk predicts Tesla energy could be ‘bigger’ than its EV business

Published October 25, 2019

Tesla CEO Elon Musk forecast that the company’s energy business will eventually be the same size as — or even bigger than — its automotive sector, the latest sign that the company plans to put more time and resources to scaling up its solar and storage products.

“It could be bigger, but it will certainly be of a similar magnitude,” Musk said during an earnings call Wednesday. The company surprised Wall Street by reporting a return to profitability in the third quarter.

The bulk of Tesla’s revenue is generated from sales of its Model S, Model X and Model 3 electric vehicles. In the third quarter, automotive revenues were $5.35 billion. The company doesn’t break out revenue generated from solar, energy storage or other products and services. However, the total revenue in the third quarter was $6.3 billion, which gives some indication of the size of automotive compared to its other businesses.

Tesla’s energy and solar businesses languished for nearly two years as attention and resources were directed to the Model 3. That diversion of resources included redirecting to the car battery cell production lines meant for its home Powerwall and commercial Powerpack energy storage products because the company didn’t have enough cells.

“We had to do it because if we didn’t solve the Model 3, Tesla wouldn’t survived,” he said. “So, unfortunately that shorted other parts of the company.”

Now, the company is committed to scaling up energy storage and solar. Kunal Girotra, who initially joined Tesla in 2015 as a senior product manager for Powerwall, was promoted to senior director of the company’s energy operations.

In the third quarter, Tesla deployed 43 megawatts of solar, a 48% increase from the previous quarter. Solar installations are still 54% lower than the same period last year.

Energy storage deployments have continued to grow, reaching an all-time high of 477 MWh in the third quarter, according to earnings posted Wednesday.

Part of this new effort includes its solar roof tile product, which was originally unveiled in 2016. Musk said that a new, third iteration of its solar roof tile will debut Thursday afternoon.

Lotame unveils Cartographer, its new approach to tracking user identity

Published October 24, 2019

Lotame, a company offering data management tools for publishers and marketers, today unveiled a new product called Cartographer — described by CMO Adam Solomon as “our new people-based ID solution.”

In other words, it’s Lotame’s offering to help businesses connect their visitor and customer data across platforms and devices.

We’ve written about plenty of other cross-device targeting technologies — and in fact, Lotame acquired one of them, AdMobius, in 2014. But Solomon said the landscape has become more challenging given privacy regulations and especially updated browsers that place new limits on the types of cookies that can be used to track users.

“There’s been an explosion of first-party cookies,” Solomon said, referring to cookies that are stored on the domain you’re actually visiting (as opposed to third-party cookies, which are increasingly blocked).

He argued that these “short-lived” cookies then create problems for publishers: “If you’re in Safari visiting the same site every day, a new ID could be generated” each day. So Cartographer deals with this by using data science and machine learning to attempt to “cluster” different IDs together that likely belong to the same user.

“Every day when we see an ID, we’ll capture it,” Solomon said. “We’re graphing those cookies together, these dozens or hundreds of cookies that we believe, based on our technology, that these cookies belong to the same individual.”

He also said that connecting IDs in this way is crucial to the whole “Russian nesting doll” of how a publisher or advertiser understands identity on the internet: “Cookies ladder up to devices, devices ladder up to people, people ladder up to households.” So by connecting cookies to people, Lotame can also offer better household-level data.

Lotame pitches an ‘unstacked’ approach to selling data tools

And far from being an attempt to circumvent privacy restrictions, Solomon argued that Cartographer actually makes it easier for publishers to stay compliant with Europe’s GDPR and California’s CCPA rules, because they can do a better job of storing a customer’s privacy preferences.

Grant Whitmore, chief digital officer at Lotame customer Tribune Publications, made a similar point: “One of the things that I think all publishers are wrestling with right now is really the disconnect that is occurring in the adtech landscape and the legislative landscape and really managing the persistence of that consent.”

Whitmore continued, “One of the unintended consequences of that legislation and some of what is happening in the browser space is that we could be forced into a position where we are having to ask you every single time you visit a site whether it’s okay to sell your data, whether it’s okay to track.”

And he said that’s one of the big reasons Tribune is deploying Cartographer across all its properties, including its nine core newspaper sites. Though he acknowledged that it’s more broadly useful too.

“From the standpoint of our core business, getting a more complete picture of who a user is across these device types … That is of ongoing importance to us,” Whitmore said. “As we fight in this very competitive landscape, our ability to bring our understanding of who a user is, what their interests are … and providing good solutions — whether on the advertising front or whether that’s handling digital subscription offers — is just table stakes at this point.”

Solomon, meanwhile, said that Cartographer’s benefits go beyond “just figuring which IDs cluster together to represent an individual,” because it’s also ensuring that there’s proper ID synchronization with other data and ad-buying platforms.

“We make sure there’s maximum connectivity, maximum dial tone, with all the ecosystem participants,” he said.

GameClub offers mobile gaming’s greatest hits for $5 per month

Published October 24, 2019

Apple Arcade introduced the idea of all-you-can-eat subscription-based mobile gaming to the mainstream. Google Play Pass soon followed as a way to subscribe to a sizable collection of both apps and games on Android devices. Today, a startup called GameClub is launching in the U.S. to offer an alternative. For $4.99 per month, mobile consumers will be able to access a library that includes some of the best games to have ever hit the App Store.

To be clear, GameClub is not a cloud gaming platform, like Google Stadia. It’s a way to subscribe to actual App Store games, similar to Arcade. In GameClub’s case, however, the focus is not on new releases but on quality games that already have proven track records and high ratings.

In fact, many GameClub games have made Apple’s own editorially selected “Game of the Year” lists in years past. And like the games offered on Apple Arcade, they don’t have ads or any in-app purchases.

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At launch, GameClub’s library includes more than 100 titles, with around half that available for play today. More titles will roll out on a weekly basis in the months ahead. Combined, the games have over 100 million collective downloads, the company says.

On GameClub, you’ll find games like: Super Crate Box, Hook Champ, Mage Gauntlet, Space Miner, Forget-Me-Not, MiniSquadron, Plunderland, Pocket RPG, Sword of Fargoal, Incoboto, Tales of the Adventure Company, Hook Worlds, Orc: Vengeance, Mr. Particle-Man, Legendary Wars, Deathbat, The Path to Luma, Grimm, Zombie Match, Faif, iBlast Moki 2, Kano, Baby Lava Bounce, Run Roo Run, Gears and many others.

It’s a selection that extends across gaming categories, like Action, Arcade, Puzzle, Adventure, Platformer, Retro, Role Playing, Simulation, Strategy and more.

To use the service, you first download the main GameClub app, which becomes the hub for your GameClub activities. You then sign up for the $4.99 per month subscription, which includes a 30-day free trial. Within the main app, you can browse the available titles as well as read editorial content like in-depth overviews and histories, get tips and learn about gaming strategies.

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The startup was founded last year by game industry vets Dan Sherman and Oliver Pedersen.

Sherman, GameClub CEO, has worked in the gaming industry for around 17 years, including time spent at EA and his own startup, Tilting Point. His experience has involved, predominantly, signing content partnerships with game creators. Pedersen, meanwhile, built backend systems and platforms for games, including at Yahoo Games.

Though GameClub is seemingly arriving after Apple Arcade’s debut, it actually began before that. The startup was founded in 2018, ahead of any Apple Arcade rumors. It went live on iOS outside the U.S. before Arcade launched.

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The founders say they were inspired to address the issues caused by the free-to-play model that has infiltrated the gaming industry. In addition, they had witnessed a decline in consumers’ willingness to purchase content upfront, which was impacting the industry.

“I was seeing all these amazing game developers leave mobile because the types of games they make are not the types of games that monetize through in-app purchases and ads,” Sherman tells TechCrunch. “The free-to-play model actually only works for a handful of genres,” he explains. “A lot of companies make a lot of money through a very small number of genres and game experiences — to the exclusion of a lot of other types of genres that GameClub is bringing back — action, adventures, arcade, tower defense — anything that can be completed.”

With free-to-play, games are built around perpetual retention loops. “And the freemium model comes out of the casino industry, not the premium game industry,” Sherman points out.

But because this is how games could make money, it led to homogeneity in the marketplace, he says.

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GameClub aims to offer a subscription to the premium games that got left behind.

They are meant to be wholesome and fun, not overly addictive. They’re not designed to manipulate you into spending money. You simply pay your subscription fee every month to access the catalog, then play unencumbered.

Thanks to Apple Arcade and Google Play Pass, consumers are now comfortable with the idea of the subscription model for mobile games. And other services — like Spotify Netflix, and Xbox Game Pass, for example — have pushed the idea of subscription access to content across platforms and genres.

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GameClub is different from Arcade, however, because it’s not funding the development of content upfront — at least, not yet. Instead, it’s forging agreements with largely indie developers to release their existing IP as a GameClub exclusive.

This may include bringing an older game into the 64-bit era — something GameClub handles on their behalf.

“Many of [the GameClub titles] have been gone for many years,” says Sherman. “It’s with our team, our technology and our developers that they’ve been brought back. And they’ve been brought back in a way that is 100% using the original code and the exact same design…but making them look and feel new, with higher resolution, Retina Display assets and by optimizing for the latest screen sizes and configurations,” he adds.

The company doesn’t discuss the business model for GameClub, but it’s not the same as Apple Arcade’s pay-upfront model.

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What Sherman could say is that the more important the game is to the GameClub service, the more money the creator makes. Additionally, GameClub says it’s transparent with developers about its subscription revenue, so there’s no question about which games are earning or why.

The same can’t be said for Apple Arcade, which is a total black box to the point that consumers don’t know which Arcade games are most popular, developers can’t see how they’re doing compared with others and third-party measurement firms have no data.

Of course, there could be concerns that GameClub exists in a gray area, with regard to App Store policy. Those with longer memories may recall that Apple banned app-stores-within-a-store starting back in 2012. The company had kicked out apps that recommended other apps like AppHero, FreeAppADay, Daily App Dream, AppShopper and more. It also banned the more popular app recommendation service AppGratis the following year.

But Apple’s concern was that these apps were leveraging their power to manipulate App Store charts and rankings, often charging for that service. GameClub, on the other hand, plays fairly. Its service also benefits Apple, by offering subscription access to quality games that couldn’t thrive as free-to-play titles.

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Longer-term, GameClub wants to produce its own original content and offer its service across platforms, starting with Google Play, but eventually tackling PC and console gaming.

The startup is headquartered in New York City, with offices in Copenhagen. In addition to the founders, it includes Eli Hodapp, the former editor-in-chief of the popular game news and review site TouchArcade, and COO Britt Myers, the former chief product officer of subscription-based edtech apps platform Homer.

With the close of a seed round last week, GameClub is backed by $4.6 million in funding.

Investors from a round that closed last year include GC VR Gaming Tracker Fund, CRCM Ventures, Watertower Ventures, Ride Ventures, BreakawayGrowth Fund and others. New investors include GFR Fund, Gramercy Fund, Century Gold and others.

GameClub is available on the App Store.

Stewart Butterfield says Microsoft sees Slack as existential threat

Published October 24, 2019

In a wide ranging interview with The Wall Street Journal’s global technology editor Jason Dean yesterday, Slack CEO and co-founder Stewart Butterfield had some strong words regarding Microsoft, saying the software giant saw his company as an existential threat.

The interview took place at the WSJ Tech Live event. When Butterfield was asked about a chart Microsoft released in July during the Slack quiet period, which showed Microsoft Teams had 13 million daily active users compared to 12 million for Slack, Butterfield appeared taken aback by the chart.

Chart: Microsoft

“The bigger point is that’s kind of crazy for Microsoft to do, especially during the quiet period. I had someone say it was unprecedented since the [Steve] Ballmer era. I think it’s more like unprecedented since the Gates’ 98-99 era. I think they feel like we’re an existential threat,” he told Dean.

It’s worth noting, that as Dean pointed out, you could flip that existential threat statement. Microsoft is a much bigger business with a trillion-dollar market cap versus Slack’s $400 million. It also has the benefit of linking Microsoft Teams to Office 365 subscriptions, but Butterfield says the smaller company with the better idea has often won in the past.

For starters, Butterfield noted that of his biggest customers, more than two-thirds are actually using Slack and Office 365 in combination. “When we look at our top 50 biggest customers, 70% of them are not only Office 365 users, but they’re Office 365 users who use the integrations with Slack,” he said.

He went on to say that smaller companies have taken on giants before and won. As examples, he held up Microsoft itself, which in the 1980s was a young upstart taking on established players like IBM. In the late 1990s, Google prevailed as the primary search engine in spite of the fact that Microsoft controlled most of the operating system and browser market at the time. Google then tried to go after Facebook with its social tools, all of which have failed over the years. “And so the lesson we take from that is, often the small startup with real traction with customers has an advantage versus the large incumbent with multiple lines of business,” he said.

When asked by Dean if Microsoft, which ran afoul with the Justice Department in the late 1990s, should be the subject of more regulatory scrutiny for its bundling practices, Butterfield admitted he wasn’t a legal expert, but joked that it was “surprisingly unsportsmanlike conduct.” He added more seriously, “We see things like offering to pay companies to use Teams and that definitely leans on a lot of existing market power. Having said that, we have been asked many times, and maybe it’s something we should have looked at, but we haven’t taken any action.”

Here’s what the Pixel 4’s radar chip looks like

Published October 24, 2019

I’ve been tearing my gadgets apart for as long as I can remember. Consoles, phones, printers, whatever — I’ve always needed to see what makes it all work. Sometimes they even work when I put them back together.

As soon as Google announced that the new Pixel 4 had friggin’ radar built-in for detecting hand gestures, I needed to see under the hood. While I haven’t picked up a Pixel 4 yet, our friends over at iFixit busted out the heat guns and did what they do best, tearing the Pixel 4 XL down to parts and uncovering the Project Soli radar chip along the way.

Image Source: iFixit

That board you’re looking at contains a good amount of stuff beyond the Soli chip — it’s also where you’ll find the earpiece speaker and the ambient light sensor, for example. The Soli chip seems to be that little greenish box in the upper-right area.

Alas, there’s… not a ton to learn just from looking at it. Google has spent the last few years working on this, and they’ve ended up with something that’s honestly a bit wild. With no moving parts, and without line of sight, these chips are able to do things like detect when people are near the device (and how many), whether they’re standing or sitting, how they’re moving their hands and more. As iFixit so succinctly puts it, “TL;DR: magic rectangle knows your every move.”

For anyone looking to tear apart the Pixel 4 XL themselves, be it to make repairs or just out of curiosity, make sure you know what you’re getting into. iFixit gives the device a relatively paltry 4 out of 10 on its repairability score, citing easily breakable pull tabs and particularly strong adhesives as obstacles along the way. You can find their full teardown here.

Image Source: iFixit

Mobile banking app Current raises $20M Series B, tops half a million users

Published October 24, 2019

Mobile banking app Current, which began as a teen debit card controlled by parents, expanded to offer personal checking accounts earlier this year. Now the company says it has grown to host more than 500,000 accounts on its service and has closed on $20 million in Series B funding to further its growth.

The round included new investors Wellington Management Company, Galaxy Digital EOS VC Fund and CMFG Ventures — the venture capital arm of the CUNA Mutual Group, a mutual insurance company serving credit unions and their 120 million members. Returning investors included QED Investors, Expa and Elizabeth Street Ventures.

phone in context app The first version of Current, which debuted in 2017, was focused on giving parents a more modern way to dole out allowances and reward their kids for chores. But over time, the product became more like a real bank account for teens, culminating with the addition of routing and account numbers late last year. This allowed working teens to direct their paycheck to Current, as they could with a traditional bank.

This year, Current launched personal checking using the same core technology powering its teen banking product. The product includes features like faster direct deposits, gas hold crediting and merchant blocking without charging overdraft fees, hidden fees or requiring minimum balances.

While the teen checking account users have an average age of 15, the average age for the new personal checking account users is 27.

Although personal checking was only launched in late January, it already accounts for about half of Current’s accounts. It also benefits from conversions from Current’s teen users who turn 18 and want to graduate to their own banking app. (Around 98% of teens on Current move to the personal checking app when they come of age, the company noted.)

This puts Current in a more competitive market, where a number of banking apps are now targeting a younger, more mobile generation that has begun to favor modern, feature-rich apps over brick-and-mortar banks. Among its rivals are apps like Step, Cleo, N26, Chime, Simple, Stash and others.

Like many in this space, Current isn’t actually a bank — its banking services are provided by Choice Financial Group and Metropolitan Commercial Bank, which allows it to offer FDIC insurance up to $250,000. Instead, many of the banking apps focus instead on the feature set and user experience they can offer.

Both of Current’s products include a Visa co-branded debit card tied to the Current account. Along with the funding, Current and Visa are also announcing an expanded joint marketing partnership, which will help Current reach new customers.

“We believe everyone should have access to affordable financial services that improve the chances for a better life,” said Stuart Sopp, Current founder and CEO. “We have made this a reality through rebuilding financial infrastructure with the Current Core. It allows us to build more products that offer new ways to interact with money. Our rapid growth to half a million accounts serves as a testament to the ways our products and cost savings are bringing better financial outcomes and we anticipate bringing those benefits to over 1,000,000 customers by mid-2020.”

The company is planning to launch more features starting next year, including a cash-back system with brands and merchants in Q1, and further down the road, it’s considering things like a credit product and maybe Bitcoin investing. But this will require further education and careful attention to do well.

“It’s expensive to be poor — it really is,” he says. “If you don’t have much money, you’re paying 30% or 35% for your credit, whereas if you’re rich you’re paying 5%. So it’s like the world is inverted for you and it holds you down,” Sopp says. “So if we were to do [credit], we are going to do it right.”

In the near-term, the focus is on offering better budgeting tools and more ways for users to save money. This, Sopp argues, is what Current’s young users need most.

To date, Current has raised $45 million in funding.

Grafana Labs nabs $24M Series A for open source-based data analytics stack

Published October 24, 2019

Grafana Labs, the commercial company built to support the open-source Grafana project, announced a healthy $24 million Series A investment today. Lightspeed Venture Partners led the round with participation from Lead Edge Capital.

Company CEO and co-founder Raj Dutt says the startup started life as a way to offer a commercial layer on top of the open-source Grafana tool, but it has expanded and now supports other projects, including Loki, an open-source monitoring tool not unlike Prometheus, which the company developed last year.

All of this in the service of connecting to data sources and monitoring data. “Grafana has always been about connecting data together no matter where it lives, whether it’s in a proprietary database, on-prem database or cloud database. There are over 42 data sources that Grafana connects together,” Dutt explained.

But the company has expanded far beyond that. As it describes the product set, “Our products have begun to evolve to unify into a single offering: the world’s first composable open-source observability platform for metrics, logs and traces. Centered around Grafana.” This is exactly where other monitoring and logging tools like Elastic, New Relic and Splunk have been heading this year. The term “observability” is a term that’s been used often to describe these combined capabilities of metrics, logging and tracing.

Grafana Labs is the commercial arm of the open-source projects, and offers a couple of products built on top of these tools. First of all it has Grafana Enterprise, a package that includes enterprise-focused data connectors, enhanced authentication and security and enterprise-class support over and above what the open-source Grafana tool offers.

The company also offers a SaaS version of the Grafana tool stack, which is fully managed and takes away a bunch of the headaches of trying to download raw open-source code, install it, manage it and deal with updates and patches. In the SaaS version, all of that is taken care of for the customer for a monthly fee.

Dutt says the startup took just $4 million in external investment over the first five years, and has been able to build a business with 100 employees and 500 customers. He is particularly proud of the fact that the company is cash flow break-even at this point.

Grafana Labs decided the time was right to take this hefty investment and accelerate the startup’s growth, something they couldn’t really do without a big cash infusion. “We’ve seen this really virtuous cycle going with value creation in the community through these open-source projects that builds mind share, and that can translate into building a sustainable business. So we really want to accelerate that, and that’s the main reason behind the raise.”