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From dorm rooms to board rooms: How universities are promoting entrepreneurship

Published February 15, 2021

Earlier this year, 15 top U.S. universities joined forces to launch a one-stop shop where corporations and startups can discover and license patents.

Working in concert, Brown, Caltech, Columbia, Cornell, Harvard, the University of Illinois, Michigan, Northwestern, Penn, Princeton, SUNY Binghamton, UC Berkeley, UCLA, the University of Southern California and Yale formed The University Technology Licensing Program LLC (UTLP)  to create a centralized pool of licensable IP.

The UTLP arrives as more higher education institutions are beefing up their investment in the entrepreneurial pipeline to help more students launch startups after graduation. In some instances, schools serve as accelerators, providing students with resources and helping them connect with VCs to find seed funding.

To get a better look at the new program and more insight into the university-to-startup pipeline, we spoke to:

The UTLP initiative seems to be more focused on licensing IP to existing companies, rather than accelerating university startups.

Orin Herskowitz: The UTLP effort is really much more about licensing to the somewhat broken interface between universities and very large companies in the tech space when it comes to licensing intellectual property. But I know USC and Columbia and many of our peers, especially over the last three to seven years, have pivoted in a massive way to helping our faculty students fulfill their entrepreneurial dreams and launch startups around this exciting university technology.

The word “broken” jumped out at me. Historically, what has the problem been?

Orin Herskowitz: Universities have traditionally been a source of amazing, life-saving and life-improving inventions, for decades. There’s been a ton of new drugs and medical devices, cybersecurity improvements, and search engines, like Google, that have come out of universities over the years, that were federally funded and developed in the labs, and then licensed to either a startup or the industry. And that’s been great. At least over the last couple of decades, that interface has worked really, really well in some fields, but less well in others. So, in the life sciences, in energy, in advanced materials, in those industries, a lot of the time, these innovations that end up having a huge impact on society are based really on one or two or three core eureka moments. There’s like one or two patents that underlie an enormous new cancer drug, for instance.

In the tech space though, it’s a very different dynamic because, a lot of the time, these inventions are incredibly important and they do launch a whole new generation of products and services, but the problem is that a new device, like an iPhone, or a piece of software, might rely on dozens or even hundreds of innovations from across many different universities, as opposed to just one or two.

Obviously not every breakthrough necessitates the launch of a startup. I assume that the vast majority of these things that are coming would make the most sense to work with existing companies.

Jennifer Dyer: We’ve all had this renewed focus on innovation within the university and really helping our students and faculty that want to start companies, launch those companies. If you look at the space, helping educate our students that launching a company in a high-tech space may mean that they have to go out and acquire 100 different licenses, so maybe it doesn’t make sense. We’re going to be doing nonexclusive licensing, and it doesn’t preclude anyone from moving forward with this technology. This is probably the first pool for nonstandard essential patents in the high-tech space, which makes it somewhat unique. Because if you look back, most of the pools have been around standard essential patents.

The question of exclusivity is an interesting one. You wouldn’t grant exclusive rights for the right fee?

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Jigsaw scores $3.7M to slow down your dating swipes

Published February 15, 2021

Chalk one up for Jigsaw, an “anti-superficial” dating app that has scored £2.7 million ($3.7 million) in seed funding to put toward U.S. expansion. The round is led by a lead generation company for online dating companies, called The Relationship Corp., with backing from angel investors in the U.S. and U.K. “primarily” in the tech sector.

As the startup’s name suggests, Jigsaw adds a little cryptic fun to the transactional business of swiping photos of other singles in search of dating chemistry in a bid to offer a less superficial experience.

Albeit their (patented) anti-superficial twist looks a tad gimmicky at first blush: They literally superimpose a digital jigsaw over the faces of users, with pieces removed gradually the more you interact — and the full face only revealed after a pre-set amount of in-app engagement.

Digital filters are also banned, per the app’s FAQ; they only want “real” selfies. So no cute cat ears, etc. 

They’ve got a few more tricks up their sleeve but don’t want to offer a public reveal of the planned features we guessed were coming just yet (but, well, a quick glance at the app and it’s basically a half finished jigsaw puzzle of their product roadmap).

The U.K. startup — which was founded back in 2016 by a couple of friends, Alex Durrant (co-founder and CEO) and Max Adamski (co-founder and CPO), when they were at university (and finding the dating app scene frustratingly superficial, as they tell it, going on to quit their jobs and go all in on the project in 2018) — launched its puzzle-faced dating experience in London in 2019; and opened up to the U.S. in November last year.

Jigsaw has some 150,000+ registered users across those two markets at this point, with 50,000 in the U.S. — and an appetite to step things up over the pond now that they’re flush with new funds.

Durrant says the team is hoping to hit half a million U.S. users in the next six months. They reckon there’s a trend toward less superficial swiping in the American dating app scene that Jigsaw is well-positioned to tap into.

“We’re not insane and think people look better with puzzles over their faces, I promise, the puzzle is our middle finger to the superficial dating industry,” he says. “It exists as you say to encourage more meaningful/sustained interactions and to help users look beyond the looks.”

Currently, Jigsaw’s face-shielding mechanism involves a puzzle made up of 16 pieces. All photos start with one piece removed “so you get a sneak peek”. Another then comes off when a user likes (matches with) the person so at the start of chatting there are two pieces revealed.

More pieces are removed as the pair mutually exchange messages until there’s no more puzzle bits left. Hopefully you also won’t run out of conversation at that point.

“Over six messages each (12 in total) is what we believe is the minimum needed for a meaningful conversation,” says Durrant. “That’s why the jigsaw puzzle currently unveils fully after seven messages are exchanged (14 pieces revealed in total), revealing the face underneath. This number has been tested and this is the current sweet spot for our users.”

Jigsaw isn’t unique in the concept of shielding facial visuals to encourage dating app users to do more chatting and less mindless swiping. There are a whole bunch of “slower reveal” style twists aimed at reducing “dating app fatigue” — as another app, INYN, which also limits the velocity of the profile reveal, puts it.

Another app which blurs users’ photos until they do some chatting is Taffy. There’s also Muslim matchmaking app Veil — which offers a “digital veil” feature (aka an opaque filter) that it applies to all profile photos, male and female, until a mutual match is made.

Other “anti-superficial” dating apps, like Willow, try a Q&A style approach — getting users to answer questions to see more photos. The list goes on.

Still, Jigsaw has come up with perhaps the most visually obvious (and gamified) twist on this slow-reveal format. And being so immediately, well, obvious, it might make its “slow reveal” twist stick for longer than the average “love is blind” alternative dating app.

Its seed investment is not about buying users, either. We made sure to check.

The Relationship Corp. does offer user acquisition/traffic generation services to dating apps — including those it invests in — but in Jigsaw’s case the investment is a straight equity investment, per Durrant. So it’s at least sounding confident in its ability to grow.

“They’re super low-key but are known in the industry,” says Durrant of the lead seed investor. “Steve Happas their CEO is ex-Match and… sits on our advisory board [as part of the investment]. We had an option to work with them to acquire users but instead, they are supporting our internal team in an advisory capacity.”

Bumble IPO could raise more than $1B for dating service

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Delivery company goPuff is in talks to acquire the UK’s Fancy

Published February 15, 2021

GoPuff, the U.S.-based startup that operates its own “microfulfillment” network and promises to deliver items such as over-the-counter medicine, baby food and alcohol in 30 minutes or less, is in talks to acquire the U.K.’s Fancy Delivery, TechCrunch has learned.

According to sources, terms of the acquisition are still being fleshed out, and the deal has yet to get over the line. However, an announcement could come in the next few weeks if not sooner. GoPuff declined to comment. Fancy’s founders couldn’t be reached before publication, either.

Launched late last year, Fancy currently operates in four cities in the U.K. and is a graduate of the Silicon Valley accelerator Y Combinator. It has a strikingly similar model to its potential buyer, leading some to describe it as a mini goPuff. The two companies are fully vertically integrated, meaning they each contract their own fleet of drivers and operate their own microfulfillment centres — sometimes dubbed “dark stores” — designed specifically for online ordering and hyperlocal delivery.

Strategically, the potential acquisition of Fancy looks to be a good fit, and most notably would signal goPuff’s intent to expand to the U.K. via purchasing a nascent local player rather than starting entirely from scratch. Sources tell me Fancy will continue to operate under the Fancy brand and that goPuff intends to invest in its growth, including hiring and opening additional fulfillment centers. One source tells TechCrunch the acquisition will be an all-stock deal.

GoPuff was recently valued at $3.9 billion and has raised $1.35 billion in funding to-date (backers include Accel, D1 Capital Partners, Luxor Capital and SoftBank Vision Fund). It already operates in 500 U.S. cities, and isn’t shy of making acquisitions, either, most recently purchasing alcohol-focussed BevMo.

Meanwhile, Europe is seeing a slew of startups inspired by goPuff’s vertically integrated model sprouting up. They include Berlin’s much-hyped Gorillas and London’s Dija and Weezy, and France’s Cajoo, all of which claim to focus more on fresh food and groceries, where margins are arguably tighter. There’s also the likes of Zapp, which is still in stealth and more focused on a higher-margin convenience store offering.

Delivery startup goPuff acquires BevMo for $350M

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Private equity firm Marlin snatches up e-commerce optimization platform Lengow

Published February 15, 2021

French startup Lengow has a new landlord as Marlin Equity Partners has acquired a majority stake in the company. Lengow operates a software-as-a-service platform to optimize e-commerce listings. Terms of the deal are undisclosed.

In particular, many sellers now list their items on multiple e-commerce websites at once. For instance, a company could have its own e-commerce website and also sell products on Amazon, eBay, etc. And you may have noticed the same third-party sellers on different marketplaces.

Manually listing items across multiple e-commerce platforms would be extremely tedious. Behind the scenes, Lengow tries to automate as many steps as possible. First, you can import your products by connecting Lengow with your product information management system (PIM) or your e-commerce back end — it can run on Akeneo, Shopify, Magento, WooCommerce, etc.

You can then publish your products on multiple sales channels at once. It can be a marketplace, a price comparison website, a social network or an adtech platform. Examples include Amazon, Google Shopping, Criteo, Instagram, etc.

Lengow also helps you track orders, create rules when you’re running low on stock and manage your advertising strategy. Essentially, it’s the glue that makes all the moving parts of e-commerce stick together. There are 4,600 merchants using Lengow globally.

Marlin describes the deal as a growth investment. The firm plans to increase the value of Lengow in the coming years as it hasn’t reached its full potential yet. “We are looking forward to leveraging our operational and financial resources to support Lengow’s growth trajectory and continued international expansion,” Marlin principal Roland Pezzutto said in a statement.

Thrasio raises $750M more in equity for its Amazon roll-up play

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Meet the Black Female Founders from TC Include at TC Sessions: Justice 2021

Published February 15, 2021

On March 3, we’re hosting TC Sessions: Justice 2021, a day-long virtual conference dedicated to examining diversity and inclusion in tech. Tune in to presentations, panel discussions, breakout sessions and interactive Q&As with key tech leaders. Topics range from accessible product design and fighting algorithmic bias to the justice system, workplace organizing and support for underrepresented founders — and that’s just for starters.

Don’t miss your chance to meet some founders currently participating in TechCrunch’s Include program. We partnered with various founder organizations — who in turn nominated promising early-stage startup founders — and collectively provide educational resources and mentorship to help these young founders develop and succeed over the course of the year. This collaborative program also includes prominent VC organizations like Kleiner Perkins, Salesforce Ventures and Initialized Capital to develop lasting mentorships with the TC Include founder cohort.

We joined forces with Black Female Founders, and they nominated an impressive posse of early-stage startup founders. Register for TC Sessions: Justice to meet some of the visionary female founders who are part of the Black Female Founders organization and watch them take part in a live pitch feedback session with TechCrunch during the event.

We’ll be highlighting many more TC Include startups and founder organizations over the coming weeks, so keep checking back. And now, without further ado, behold the TC Include program startups sponsored by Black Female Founders:

  • Five to Nine: Five to Nine is a Black and women-owned software company that enables organizers to track, manage and evaluate their events and programs for impact. Founded by Denise Umubyeyi.
  • MYAVANA: Myavana is a virtual hair care company that provides product recommendations and personalized guidance using AI technology and professional experts. Founded by Candace Mitchell Harris.
  • Go Together, Inc.: Go Together’s Carpool to School is a B2B SaaS platform that’s equitable, makes organizing school transportation convenient for parents and reduces per-student transportation cost for schools/districts. Founded by Kimberly Moore.
  • kweliTV: KweliTV allows you to discover and celebrate critically acclaimed and award-winning Black stories across the globe through curated indie films, documentaries, web series and live experiences. Founded by DeShuna Spencer.
  • Viledge: Viledge connects Black businesses to new fans by curating gift boxes full of dope finds. Friends, co-workers and families can discover and share together in live unboxing experiences. Founded by Zuley Clarke.
  • Civic Eagle: Civic Eagle is a SaaS company that helps organizations gain a strategic edge in advocacy and lobbying by using AI to unlock legislative data insights. Founded by Shawntera Hardy.
  • Unpacking: Unpacking is the No. 1 online learning platform for social impact. We’re disrupting boring, inefficient and outdated diversity training through real talk and interactive gaming. Founded by Kristina Williams.
  • Official Black Wall Street: Official Black Wall Street is a digital platform and app connecting consumers to Black-owned businesses, while giving Black entrepreneurs the resources and exposure needed to thrive. Founded by Mandy Bowman.
  • Go See The City: We drive foot traffic to local restaurants, brands and events by connecting customers to deep-discounted coupons. We then provide consumer analytics to small businesses and municipalities. Founded by Aneshai Smith.

TC Sessions: Justice 2021 takes place virtually on March 3. Register today and join us as we explore diversity, equity and inclusion in tech.

Is your company interested in sponsoring TC Sessions: Justice 2021? Contact our sponsorship sales team by filling out this form.

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Investors’ SPAC push could revamp the private market money game

Published February 15, 2021

Since last year, we’ve been tracking the growing list of capitalists who got into the SPAC game. You can read an interview we conducted with Amish Jani, the co-founder of FirstMark Capital, about his SPAC here. And if you need a refresher on all things SPAC, we have that for you as well.

This morning, I want to better understand the trend by parsing a few new venture capitalist SPACs. We’ll examine Lerer Hippeau Acquisition Corp. and Khosla Ventures Acquisition Co. I, II and III. The SPACs are, somewhat obviously, associated with New York-based Lerer Hippeau and Menlo Park’s Khosla Ventures. And all four dropped formal S-1 filings last week.

The Exchange explores startups, markets and money. Read it every morning on Extra Crunch, or get The Exchange newsletter every Saturday.

Today’s topic may sound dry, but it really does matter. As we’ve reported, Lux Capital is in on the SPAC wager, along with Ribbit and, of course, SoftBank. Adding our latest names to the mix and you have to wonder if every VC worth a damn in the future will have their own raft of SPAC offerings.

In that way, as some late-stage venture capital funds invest earlier — and now later — full-service VC outfits will offer first check to final liquidity, will such a full-stack venture outfit be able to win more deals than a group offering a limited set of financing options? If so, the recent venture capital SPAC wave could become more of a rising tide in time, to torture a metaphor.

Regardless, let’s quickly parse what Khosla and Lerer Hippeau are telling public investors about why they will be great SPACers before working our way backward to what the resulting pitch must be to startups themselves.

Full-stack capital

The Lerer Hippeau SPAC is the most interesting of the two firms’ combined four offerings, so we’ll start there. That isn’t to diss Khosla, but the Lerer Hippeau blank check has some explicit wording I want to highlight.

From the Lerer Hippeau Acquisition Corp. S-1 filing, read the following (bolding: TechCrunch):

As our seed portfolio matured over the last decade, we added a growth strategy to our platform through our select funds. This capital enables us to continue providing financial support to our top performing early-stage companies as they scale, and to selectively make new investments in later-stage companies in the Lerer Hippeau network. With our portfolio now maturing to the stage at which many are considering the public markets, we view SPACs as a natural next step in the evolution of our platform.

After writing that it has had four portfolio companies “publicly announced business combination agreements with SPACs” and noting that it expects more of the same, Lerer Hippeau added that it considers its “expansion into the SPAC market as a highly complementary element of our strategy to support founders throughout their entrepreneurial journeys.”

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The Series A deal that launched a near unicorn: Meet Accel’s Steve Loughlin and Ironclad’s Jason Boehmig

Published February 14, 2021

The only people who truly understand a relationship are the ones who are in it. Luckily for us, we’re going to have a candid conversation with both parties in the relationship between Ironclad CEO and cofounder Jason Boehmig and his investor and board member Accel partner Steve Loughlin.

Loughlin led Ironclad’s Series A deal back in 2017, making it one of his first Series A deals after returning to Accel.

This episode of Extra Crunch Live goes down on Wednesday at 3pm ET/12pm PT, just like usual.

We’ll talk to the duo about how they met, what made them ‘choose’ each other, and how they’ve operated as a duo since. How they built trust, maintain honesty, and talk strategy are also on the table as part of the discussion.

Loughlin was an entrepreneur before he was an investor, founding RelateIQ (an Accel-backed company) in 2011. The company was acquired by Salesforce in 2014 for $390 million and later became Salesforce IQ. Loughlin then “came back home” to Accel in 2016, and has led investments in companies like Airkit, Ascend.io, Clockwise, Ironclad, Monte Carlo, Nines, Productiv, Split.io, and Vivun.

Not entirely unsurprising for a man who has dominated the legal tech sphere, Jason Boehmig is a California barred attorney who practiced law at Fenwick & West and was also an adjunct professor of law at Notre Dame Law School. Ironclad launched in 2014 and today the company has raised more than $180 million and, according to reports, is valued just under $1 billion.

Not only will we peel back the curtain on how this investor/founder relationship works, but we’ll also hear from these two tech leaders on their thoughts around bigger enterprise trends in the ecosystem.

Then, it’s time for the Pitch Deck Teardown. On each episode of Extra Crunch Live, we take a look at pitch decks submitted by the audience and our experienced guests give their live feedback. If you want to throw your hat pitch deck in the ring, you can hit this link to submit your deck for a future episode.

Felicis’ Aydin Senkut and Guideline’s Kevin Busque on the value of simple pitch decks

As with just about everything we do here at TechCrunch, audience members can also ask their own questions to our guests.

Extra Crunch Live has left room for you to network (you gotta network to get work, amirite?). Networking is open starting at 2:30pm ET/11:30am PT and stays open a half hour after the episode ends. Make a friend!

As a reminder, Extra Crunch Live is a members-only series that aims to give founders and tech operators actionable advice and insights from leaders across the tech industry. If you’re not an Extra Crunch member yet, what are you waiting for?

Loughlin and Boehmig join a stellar cast of speakers on Extra Crunch Live, including Lightspeed’s Gaurav Gupta and Grafana’s Raj Dutt, as well as Felicis’ Aydin Senkut and Guideline’s Kevin Busque. Extra Crunch members can catch every episode of Extra Crunch Live on demand right here.

You can find details for this episode (and upcoming episodes) after the jump below.

See you on Wednesday!

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There is infinite money for stock-trading startups

Published February 13, 2021

Welcome back to The TechCrunch Exchange, a weekly startups-and-markets newsletter. It’s broadly based on the daily column that appears on Extra Crunch, but free, and made for your weekend reading. Want it in your inbox every Saturday morning? Sign up here. 

Ready? Let’s talk money, startups and spicy IPO rumors.

Earlier this week TechCrunch broke the news that Public, a consumer stock trading service, was in the process of raising more money. Business Insider quickly filled in details surrounding the round, that it could be around $200 million at a valuation of $1.2 billion. Tiger could lead.

Public wants to be the anti-Robinhood. With a focus on social, and a recent move away from generating payment for order flow (PFOF) revenues that have driven Robinhood’s business model, and attracted criticism, Public has laid its bets. And investors, in the wake of its rival’s troubles, are ready to make it a unicorn.

Of course, the Public round comes on the heels of Robinhood’s epic $3.4 billion raise, a deal that was shocking for both its scale and speed. The trading service’s investors came in force to ensure it had the capital it needed to continue supporting consumer trades. Thanks to Robinhood’s strong Q4 2020 results, and implied growth in Q1 2021, the boosted investment made sense.

As does the Public money, provided that 1) The company is seeing lots of user growth, and 2) That it figures out its forever business model in time. We cannot comment on the second, but we can say a bit about the first point.

Thanks not to Public, really, but M1 Finance, a Midwest-based consumer fintech that has a stock-buying function amongst its other services (more on it here). It told TechCrunch that it saw a quadrupling of signups in January as compared to December. And in the last two weeks, it saw six times as many signups as the preceding two weeks.

Given that M1 doesn’t allow for trading — something that its team repeatedly stressed in notes to TechCrunch — we can’t draw a perfect line between M1 and Public and Robinhood, but we can infer that there is huge consumer interest in investing of late. Which helps explain why Public, which is hunting up a way to generate long-term incomes, can raise another round just months after it closed a different investment.

Our notes last year on how savings and investing were the new thing last year are accidentally becoming even more true than we expected.

Market Notes

As the week came to a close, Coupang filed to go public. You can read our first look here, but it’s going to be big news. Also on the IPO beat, Matterport is going out via a SPAC, I chatted with Metromile CEO Dan Preston about his insurtech public offering this week that also came via a SPAC, and so on.

Oscar Health filed, and it doesn’t look super strong. So its impending valuation is going to test public traders. That’s not a problem that Bumble had when it priced above-range this week and then skyrocketed after it started to trade. Natasha and I (she’s on Equity, as well) have some notes from Bumble CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd that we’ll get to you early next week. (Also I chatted about the IPO with the BBC a few times, which was neat, the first of which you can check out here if you’d like.)

Roblox’s impending public debut was also back in the news this week. The company was a bit bigger than it thought last year (cool), but may delay its direct listing to March (not cool).

Near to the IPO beat, Carta started to allow its own shares to trade recently, on the back of news that its revenues have scaled to around $150 million. Not bad Carta, but how about a real IPO instead of staying private? The company’s valuation more than doubled during the secondary transitions.

And then there were so very many cool venture capital rounds that I couldn’t get to this week. This Koa Health round, for example. And whatever this Slync.io news is. (If you want some earlier-stage stuff, check out recent rounds from Treinta, Level, Ramp and Monte Carlo.

And to close, a small callout to Ontic, which provides “protective intelligence software” and said that its revenue grew 177% last year. I appreciate the sharing of the numbers, so wanted to highlight the figure.

Various and Sundry

Wrapping this week, I have a final bit for you to chew on from Mark Mader, the CEO of Smartsheet, a public company — former startup, it’s worth noting — that plays in the no-code, automation and collaboration markets. That’s a rough summary. Anyhoo, I asked Mader about no-code trends in 2021, as I have my eyes on the space. Here’s what he wrote for us:

If you thought the sudden shift to remote work sped up corporate America’s shift to digital, you haven’t seen anything yet. Digital transformation is going to accelerate even more rapidly in 2021. Last year, the workforce was exposed to many different types of technology all at once. For example, a company may have deployed Zoom or DocuSign for the first time. But much of this shift involved taking analog processes like meetings or document signing and approval and bringing them online. Things like this are merely a first step. 2021 is the year the companies will begin to connect large-scale digital events to infrastructure that can make them automated and repeatable. It’s the difference between one person signing a document and hundreds of people signing hundreds of documents, with different rules for each one. And that’s just one example. Another use case could involve linking HR software to project management software for automated, real-time resource allocation that allows a company to get more out of both platforms, as well as its people. The businesses that can automate and simplify complex workflows like these will see dramatically improved efficiency and return on their technology investments, putting them on the path to true transformation and improved profitability.

We shall see!

Alex

 

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Multiplayer fintech, and the muddled world of startup data

Published February 13, 2021

There’s always a fintech angle, even on Valentine’s Day.

This week, I covered Zeta, a new startup working on joint finances for modern couples. It aims to take away the money chores of a relationship, from splitting the bill at dinner to requesting rent through a payment app every month.

Aditi Shekar, the co-founder, gave me some notes about why the ongoing popularity of Venmo is validation for the company, instead of competition.

Here’s what I learned:

The success of Zeta hinges on the idea that people want to share their finances in an ongoing and meaningful way, and that the world of finance is ready to shift from individualism to collectivism earlier and louder. It sounds daunting, but we already know that social finance is big, as shown by apps like Venmo and Splitwise, and phenomena like the GameStop saga from just a few weeks ago.

Other startups have taken notice too, entering the world of multiplayer fintech, a term that categorizes socially focused and consumer-friendly financial services. Braid, a group-financing platform, is trying to make transactions work for various entities, from shared households to side hustles to creative projects.

Money is emotional and complex, and the opportunity within the multiplayer fintech reflects just that. The next wave of products will be able to straddle the line of comfort to successfully get adoption, and cultural shift to successfully deliver a truly collaborative cash experience.

What should banking look like for modern couples?

(And in case that wasn’t enough Valentine’s Day content for you, here’s one more piece about a new dating app for gamers).

In the rest of this newsletter, we’ll talk about the new career path to CEO, our favorite startups from Techstars Demo Day and the latest SPAC you should probably know about. As always, you can find me on Twitter @nmasc_ or e-mail me at natasha.m@techcrunch.com. Want this in your inbox each week? Sign up here.

Data on startups is dreadful

Data about startups is helpful to understand directional trends and how the flow of capital works and changes over time. But as ventures as an asset class grows and the documentation around raises gets thornier, the data can sometimes be missing a big chunk of what’s actually happening on the scenes.

Here’s what to know per Danny Crichton and Alex Wilhelm: PSA: most aggregate VC trend data is garbage and Are SAFEs obscuring today’s seed volume are two pieces that explain some of the reasons why the numbers might be flawed today. The good news is that the government is also in the dark about funding data; the bad news is that without good tracking, we don’t know how progress is being made.

Etc: Shameless plug for you to tip us on Secure Drop, TechCrunch’s submission system for any news you think is important to share. You can stay anonymous.

Image via Getty Images / Sadeugra

The new CEO

Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos announced weeks ago that he was shifting into an executive chairman role and AWS CEO Andy Jassy would take over as chief executive. In this analysis, our enterprise cloud reporter Ron Miller explores the question: is overseeing cloud operations the new path to CEO?

Is overseeing cloud operations the new career path to CEO?

Here’s what to know, per Andrew Bartels, an analyst at Forrester Research:

“In both cases, these hyperscale business units of Microsoft and Amazon were the fastest-growing and best-performing units of the companies. [ … ] In both cases, cloud infrastructure was seen as a platform on top of which and around which other cloud offerings could be developed,” Bartels said. The companies both believe that the leaders of these two growth engines were best suited to lead the company into the future.

Etc: Ember names former Dyson head as consumer CEO as the startup looks beyond the smart mug, and Monzo, the British challenger bank nearing 5 million customers, has recruited a new US CEO.

AWS CEO Andy Jassy and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella

Image Credits: Amazon / Microsoft

A triple-hitter Demo Day

TechCrunch covered favorites from Techstars’ three Demo Days, which were focused on Chicago, Boston and workforce development. Make sure to dig into the startups yourself to form your own opinions, but if you care what stood out to us, here’s what we ended up with.

TechCrunch’s favorites from Techstars’ Boston, Chicago and workforce accelerators

Here’s what to know: The reason I love Demo Days is that it’s a fast way to understand what the next wave of startups and entrepreneurs are thinking about. In this year’s cohorts, we saw an exclusive sneaker marketplace, flexible life insurance and a part-time childcare platform that helps parents cover random gaps in their childcare schedule.

Etc: Without desks and a demo day, are accelerators worth it?

Image Credits: Paper Boat Creative (opens in a new window) / Getty Images

Public markets fly high

Archer Aviation, the electric aircraft startup targeting the urban air mobility market, is teaming up with United Airlines to become a publicly traded company via, you guessed it, a SPAC.

Archer lands $1B order from United Airlines and a SPAC deal

Here’s what to know per Kirsten Korosec, our transportation editor:

The agreement to go public and the order from United Airlines comes less than a year after Archer Aviation came out of stealth. Archer was co-founded in 2018 by Adam Goldstein and Brett Adcock, who sold their software-as-a-service company Vettery to The Adecco Group for more than $100 million. The company’s primary backer was Lore, who sold his company Jet.com to Walmart in 2016 for $3.3 billion. Lore was Walmart’s e-commerce chief until January.

Etc: Bumble priced and Nigeria’s IROKO plans to go public on the London Stock Exchange.

Use cloud foam to dollar sign

Around TC

Across the week

Seen on TechCrunch

Seen on Extra Crunch

@Equitypod: Does SoftBank have 20 more DoorDashes?

SoftBank earnings always give key insights about how a heavyweight in venture capital is performing (and the bonanza always comes with a healthy share of content and memes). This week on Equity, we couldn’t resist nerding out about it:

Of course, if SoftBank isn’t your jam, there was a whole host of other news we chatted about, from Reddit’s latest raise to DoorDash buying a salad robot. Listen here.

DoorDash acquires salad-making robotics startup, Chowbotics

Until next week,

N

 

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