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The future of work is human
Heather Hartnett is general partner and CEO of Human Ventures, an early-stage venture fund and startup studio in New York City.
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Human Ventures builds and invests in what we call the “human needs economy,” which encompasses products and services that address material human problems — specifically those in the areas of health and wellness, the future of work and community. This spring, our Humans in the Wild cohort program brought together a group of exceptional entrepreneurs, building companies within health and wellness. This fall, we are excited to call upon entrepreneurs who are building companies reimagining the way in which we, as humans, work. Applications are open here.
The human needs economy is the future. Throughout the last few decades, fundamental shifts in technology and human behavior have impacted the nature and life cycle of the “traditional” professional journey — and that disruption has started to shape a new labor economy. The past decade specifically has brought significant technological advancements that help humans work more efficiently, and share and organize information at scale. However, those technological advances are now starting to outpace the human condition, creating a society weary of automation, one that finds individuals searching for their place and purpose in an increasingly competitive and fast-paced labor market.
As COVID-19 saw boardrooms go dark, turning homes into makeshift offices, nascent trends were forced into prominence. Abruptly, the labor force was newly eager for innovative solutions to help them thrive in the new normal. But there is a long way to go before this new normal feels normal. There’s much work to be done to help the human needs economy not just survive this seismic shift, but to use it as an advantage.
Human Ventures has identified four areas of opportunity best positioned to serve the human side of work over the next decade:
Image Credits: Human Ventures (opens in a new window)
If you are building in these areas, we would love to connect with you.
1. New work environments
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Tracking the growth of low-code, no-code startups
Startup buzz comes in waves, with a particular thesis or focus coming into vogue at certain times. Remember the short-lived boom in chat bots? That was good fun. And there was the ICO craze, which lead every startup you’ve heard of to consider the financing option for at least a weekend.
We’ve also endured the early-AI bubble, the blockchain rush and a cannabis-driven wave as well. Even subtheses can see spikes, such as the neobanking industry, say, or roboadvising. Hell, we saw minicrazes in insurtech marketplaces and OKR software this year alone.
Fads in startups are not new. Today, as venture investment tilts toward enterprise software, we’re in something of a SaaS craze. Inside of today’s SaaS surge, however, is a smaller trend that I want to explore more: no-code and low-code startups.
Largely, low-code and no-code refer to tools that allow nondevelopers to either employ little (low-code) to no code while either building logic inside of software, or full applications. Low/no-code development often features drag-and-drop interfaces (Techopedia, TechTarget), but not all low-code and no-code tools are used to build apps.
Defining the sector and its focus is difficult. PitchBook says low/no-code development platforms “expedite the creation of new applications with minimal coding requirements and offer tools for nonprogrammers.” A recent TechCrunch article by a couple of venture capitalists argued that low/no-code work is “not a category itself, but rather a shift in how users interface with software tools.”
A bit like how AI and fintech are squishy categories, low-code and no-code have a wide remit.
After talking to a number of entrepreneurs lately who built these capabilities into their startups’ applications, it appears that today founders expect the capabilities to more helpful for nondevelopers reordering logic inside apps for their own needs, instead of building whole-cloth applications.
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All B2B startups are in the payments business
Jeff Coppolo has over 25 years of experience in the fintech industry and is currently Head of Global Business Development and Partnerships for payments processing company BlueSnap.
The COVID-19 pandemic has forced businesses to rethink how they accept and make payments. Paper invoices, checks and point-of-sale payments have given way to “corona-free payments” through mobile apps, electronic invoicing and ACH. Although significant, this is the sideshow to a more significant reshuffling of the payments industry.
Nearly $150 trillion in worldwide B2B and B2C transactions take place every year, but only a tiny portion are digital. A lot of technology companies want their piece of that massive pie. Until recently, though, only payment facilitators (aka, “payfacs”), gateways, banks and credit card companies had access to it.
That’s changing. Whether they know it yet or not, B2B tech platforms are becoming payments companies. Payfacs are competing to integrate their technology into these platforms, which drive an ever-growing number of transactions. Revenue-sharing deals are on the table, and payfacs are pushing the competitive advantages they can offer to the clients of these B2B platforms. Capabilities like cross-border payments, seamless customer onboarding, fraud protection, marketplace payments and B2B invoicing influence, which payfacs win in “integrated payments” (the jargon for this space) and which don’t.
B2B companies that use to leave the choice of gateway to their clients need to become savvy in payment technology, both to control the user experience and to tap this new business. There’s a massive amount of revenue on the table, and it’s just too easy to blow this opportunity and alienate clients in the process.
How we arrived here
A decade ago, the revolution in cloud computing led to a wave of B2B tech platforms promising to “disrupt” every industry. Gyms got gym management platforms. Hospitals got clinic management platforms. Retailers got commerce management platforms. Media companies got subscription management platforms. Many of these fill-in-the-blank management platforms — all independent software vendors (ISVs) — helped clients manage their operations and interactions with consumers or other businesses.
But ISVs didn’t get involved in payments, which was odd, given how complementary payments were to their platforms and how much money was at stake. Mastercard says there is about $120 trillion annually in B2B payments worldwide, and paper checks still dominate about half of the U.S.’s $25 trillion payment volume. Meanwhile, retail e-commerce sales account for $4.2 trillion out of $26 trillion in total retail, or about 16.1%, according to eMarketer. Less than 8% of global commerce is thought to occur online.
You’d think B2B software companies would find a way to generate revenue on some of that $146 trillion in transactions, but most did not. Payment processing is its own, messy, complicated niche. Payfacs go through a grueling underwriting process to provision a merchant account, which includes know-your-customer (KYC) and anti-money laundering (AML) checks. If a merchant defaults, the payfac is next in line to make good on the transactions.
When you run a venture-backed B2B platform, you have enough to worry about already.
So, B2B platforms stayed clear. They formed integrations with a basket of payfacs (Stripe, PayPal, Square, my company BlueSnap, etc.) and then let their clients choose which one to use. That’s a lot of integrations to maintain.
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Medley, a life and career coaching community for everyone, launches today
As we speak, there are professional networks for women executives, mothers, owners of small and medium-sized businesses, and many more.
Medley, a new membership-based community that launches today, is looking to do things a little bit differently. Instead of bringing together a specific category of people, the goal of Medley is to connect users with people who aren’t just like them.
Founded by mom and daughter duo Edith Cooper and Jordan Taylor, Medley is backed by a variety of angel investors, including Jen Rubio, Tim Armstrong, Damien Dwin, as well as Foundation Capital. The company declined to disclose the amount raised.
Cooper and Taylor told TechCrunch that one of the biggest challenges with the product is defining what it is. Unlike some other professional membership communities, Medley isn’t solely focused on career growth, but rather incorporates personal growth into the framework.
“Medley is really about the connection between your career, your personal growth and your philosophy in life,” said Edith Cooper. “What I experienced is that people no longer want there to be strict barriers between those aspects of their lives.”
Folks who join Medley spend about 15 minutes on the application process, answering a wide range of questions that take a look at personal and professional information, but also at their general psychology and personality type.
From there, Medley matches users into a group of eight with the precise goal of ensuring that there is diversity among that small group. Some may be older, while others are younger. They may come from different racial backgrounds or different industries. Men and women alike will meet together in their groups.
An expert executive coach is also in on these monthly group meetings (which are currently being held virtually due to the coronavirus pandemic), and guides the group as they share about themselves and learn about their groupmates, all the while focusing on communication.
Prior to Medley, Cooper was a partner at Goldman Sachs for 20 years, and spent the last decade of her tenure as Global Head of Human Capital Management. Taylor was Chief of Staff at Mic, and was also a consultant at Boston Consulting Group and a Baker Scholar from Harvard Business School.
“There is one main theme for my investment thesis, which is the change to direct empowerment and direct ownership of relationships between people and everything else,” said Tim Armstrong. “Just like you may have a direct relationship with your gym or personal trainer — which a lot of people do and it’s an industry that’s growing tremendously — most people have not taken direct ownership of their careers. They end up outsourcing to the companies they work for that don’t have the resources to do development.”
He added that Medley is a gym for your mind and your career.
Medley’s target demographic is people in their late 20s, early 30s, who are starting to think more long-term about their choices both professionally and personally.
That said, part of what makes Medley special is that it’s open to anyone who’s curious to learn, grow and explore other people. As such, Medley is available on an opportunity-based sliding scale for the annual membership fee to ensure the community remains inclusive. Founding memberships are available now for $150/month or $1,500 annually.
Cooper explained that some of the biggest barriers for Medley are in the midst of being broken down.
“We don’t have to explain anymore that different perspectives are valuable,” said Cooper. “We don’t have to explain anymore why it’s so important to have intentional conversations and dialogue with people, or that we can do that virtually as well as in person. Some of the biggest things that we were focused on communicating about this business and this offering have been broken down as a result of the push and inertia of the other things that are going on in society.”
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Russia’s BestDoctor attracts international investors for its $4.5M round
The private medical insurance market is expanding year on year by over 5%, and that includes in Russia, where the insurance market — which grew by 4% in 2019 — has reached a value of almost $22 billion.
So it’s not that surprising that Russian insurtech startup BestDoctor has now closed its third round of financing for $4.5 million. Lead investors AddVenture, based out of Moscow, and Target Global, based out of Berlin, were joined by the London-based LVL1 fund, which had previously invested in the company.
BestDoctor is an online medical insurance platform offering private medical insurance for companies and their employees. As well as insurance, its also delivers 24/7 health support and medical consultations via its mobile app. Users also can get access to recommendations on preventive care and online support from BestDoctor physicians. The idea is that users save up to 23% on their annual medical expenses, and up to 95% of users renew the contract after a year.
Its clients largely consist of Russian corporates, including Voximplant, Faberlic, Ivideon, Prisma Labs and Rambler Group, which add up to more than 30,000 people. It also collaborates with 11,000 clinics across Russia.
Mark Sanevich, BestDoctor’s CEO and co-founder, says the need for online medical services was amplified during the pandemic: “Our business received a strong boost. Now we are going to focus on establishing a comprehensive platform on the basis of medical insurance.”
Target Global managing partner Mikhail Lobanov said: “BestDoctor is a rare example of a company that combines medicine and high-tech, while directly connecting employers with medical clinics. High-tech private medical insurance with the ability to consult a doctor 24/7 ensures transparency of all expenses.”
AddVenture managing partner Maxim Medvedev said: “By summer 2019, BestDoctor had a good head start: it had large enterprise clients, the company figured out the market’s problems and needs and dozens of product ideas were tested.”
BestDoctor plans to spend the newly raised funds on developing its software and also plans to expand its sales activity, concentrating on new product segments.
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Eco-friendly laundry goods subscription service smol raises £8M from Balderton
Smol is a startup that delivers to people’s homes eco-friendly laundry capsules and dishwasher tablets on subscription through letterboxes, which undercut the price of the leading brands. It has now raised £8 million in a Series A funding round led by Balderton Capital, with participation from JamJar Investments. The funding will see smol push into new product categories, expand further into new markets and expand its team. Before this round smol had been funded by seed money from private investors.
Created by former Unilever employees Paula Quazi and Nick Green in 2018, it has also launched its own-brand, animal-fat-free, vegan fabric conditioner and a 100% plastic-free, child-lock packaging for its laundry and dishwashing products, as well as fabric conditioner made from 100% post-consumer recycled plastic, which as recyclable. Smol also offers a returns scheme for refill and reuse.
P&G and Unilever currently dominate the market, while smol hopes to become “the Dollar Shave Club” of laundry.
Paula Quazi, co-founder of smol, said in a statement: “Having seen how the industry has barely innovated in over a hundred years we launched smol to take the hassle out of washing for families whose laundry needs have been ignored for decades.”
Suranga Chandratillake, partner at Balderton Capital said: “When people think of technology disruption, it is normal to think of digital products and internet tools. However, technology has the power to make life better for us in the most unexpected ways and we believe Paula, Nick and their amazing team have tapped into just such an opportunity at smol.”
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Adevinta acquires eBay’s Classifieds business unit in $9.2B deal
Consolidation continues apace in the world of e-commerce, and today it was the turn of the classified ads market. Today, eBay announced it had reached a deal to sell off its Classifieds business unit to Adevinta, a Norway-based classified ads publisher majority owned by Norwegian publisher Schibsted. The deal is valued at $9.2 billion, which includes eBay getting $2.5 billion in cash and 540 million Adevinta shares. The deal makes eBay a 44% owner of Adevinta, with a 33.3% voting stake.
Adevinta’s interest in eBay was reported earlier in the week, but with the deal coming at a much lower valuation, of $8 billion.
More generally, it caps off months of speculation about the future for the classifieds business, which has come out of long-term pressure spurred by activist investors for eBay to rationalise what had once been a sprawling e-commerce business empire (advocating for a reverse Amazon, I guess you could say). That included not just its marketplace, but classified ads, payment services (PayPal, which got spun out as a separate company) and ticketing (Viagogo acquired its Stubhub business in a $4 billion deal last year, although that is now facing some regulatory scrutiny).
Now, all three of those business units are no longer a part of eBay.
Adevinta is in 15 countries and prior to this deal had 35 digital products and websites. Ebay meanwhile owns 12 brands in 13 countries around the world, but the business has been hard hit by the coronavirus crisis. In the last quarter, eBay said that Classifieds brought in revenues of just $248 million, down 3% on an as-reported basis and remaining flat on a FX-Neutral basis. For some context, eBay’s Marketplace unit brought in revenues of $1.9 billion in the same period.
The overlap will mean a classified ad footprint of 20 countries, and the companies believe that some $150 million – $185 million in synergies will be reached through the combination.
“We are pleased we reached an agreement with Adevinta that brings together two great companies,” said Jamie Iannone, CEO of eBay, in a statement. “eBay believes strongly in the power of community and connections between people, which has been essential to our Classifieds businesses globally. This sale creates short-term and long-term value for shareholders and customers, while allowing us to participate in the future potential of the Classifieds business.”
Early mover
With little needed but text and a search facility to create a very basic list of offers, classifieds were one of the first early “hits” of the internet, disrupting newspapers and one of their traditionally most consistent revenue streams (not so anymore, of course). Classifieds was an obvious area for eBay to move into in the early days: it complemented its marketplace, which back then had a strong emphasis on used goods and selling items on auction rather than buying outright, and for selling by using imagery and dynamic sales pitches (something that was not second nature to many, who were migrating from newspaper ads based only on a small amount of text).
But over the years, the tech behind what constitutes a “classified ad” has changed, and so have expectations from buyers and sellers.
And those in the classified ads market now compete with a wide plethora of alternatives, for example, which leverage social and geographical networks to connect people to things or services they might like to buy or rent. They include the likes of Facebook’s Marketplace but also handy mobile app-based listings services, and more. Some of these completely undercut the business model of the original classifieds disruptors.
That has meant that those who have established themselves in the space have played on consolidation to grow and improve their economies of scale.
“With the acquisition of eBay Classifieds Group, Adevinta becomes the largest online classifieds company globally, with a unique portfolio of leading marketplace brands. We believe the combination of the two companies, with their complementary businesses, creates one of the most exciting and compelling equity stories in the online classifieds sector,” said Rolv Erik Ryssdal, CEO of Adevinta, in a statement.
“We have been impressed with eBay Classifieds Group’s achievements in recent years, leading across markets with nationally recognized brands including Mobile.de, Gumtree, Marktplaats, dba, Bilbasen, Kijiji, 2dehands, 2ememain, Vivanuncios, Automobile.it, Motors.co.uk, Autotrader (Australia), Carsguide (Australia), and eBay Kleinanzeigen, and innovating consistently across its product portfolio and advertising technology platform.”
For now, there are no announcements of layoffs or other moves, with eBay’s classifieds executive team coming over with the deal.
“This deal is a testament to the growth and potential of the eBay Classifieds business,” said Alessandro Coppo, SVP and GM, eBay Classifieds Group. “We are excited for our local classifieds brands to join Adevinta and shape a global leader in an industry full of potential.”
The deal is expected to be completed in the first quarter of 2021, subject to regulatory and shareholder approvals.
As part of Schibsted, will acquire eBay Classifieds’ Danish business once the deal closes.
“Schibsted’s Board of Directors and management strongly supports the agreement between Adevinta and eBay, as we are confident that it will further strengthen the value creation potential for Schibsted and the rest of Adevinta’s shareholders. Schibsted intends to continue to contribute to the value creation for all Adevinta shareholders as a significant long-term anchor shareholder,” said Kristin Skogen Lund, CEO of Schibsted in a statement.
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Gett raises $100M more to double down on its B2B on-demand ride business
A number of on-demand ride hailing companies are feeling the strain from reduced business, with many consumers still reluctant to travel, and especially to travel in surroundings that might increase the risk of spreading or catching the novel coronavirus. But today, one of the startups in the space is announcing a significant round of funding to continue growing in its target sector of corporate travel, underscoring where there may still be some existing and growing opportunities.
Gett, the London and Israel-based company that competes with the likes of Uber and many others to provide private car rides on-demand, has raised $100 million. Gett’s CEO and founder Dave Waiser told TechCrunch that the funding is all primary equity capital, and the company says it plans to use it to continue investing in its B2B business, which has been growing — not shrinking or staying flat — in the midst of the global health pandemic.
“The way people move around in cities is changing dramatically as a result of COVID-19 and businesses are seeking to optimise costs and to put in place efficient and safe ground travel solutions for their employees,” said Waiser, in a statement. “Our mobility software is helping businesses thrive by empowering people to be their best on the go. Being fully funded and reaching a key milestone in our profitability journey is an important step for the company. The proceeds will help us grow our unique corporate SaaS platform internationally, while we consider an IPO in the future, to further accelerate our expansion.”
The company turned operationally profitable in December 2019 and had said it planned to go public in 2020, but it sounds like that timeline, if it happens, has now been pushed back to 2021. Gett says it has met its “original financial targets that were set pre-COVID-19.” It also reached profitability in each of its core markets in June, and is on target now to be cash flow positive in 2021, ahead of a “potential” IPO.
“It’s a luxury, enabling flexibility for the company to go public when it’s best, rather than from the cash needs reasoning as many (money-losing) companies have to do nowadays,” Waiser said in an interview.
Gett is not disclosing the names of any of its investors in this round except to note that it’s a mix of new and existing backers, nor is it disclosing its valuation.
Waiser said the reason for that is that the round is still being expanded after getting oversubscribed, so it plans to announce a list of investors (and valuation?) after the expansion closes.
For some context, though, Gett has now raised $750 million, with investors including VW, Access and its founder Len Blavatnik, Kreos, MCI and more, and its last valuation was $1.5 billion, pegged to a $200 million fundraise in May 2019.
Gett started operations years ago serving both consumers and corporate users going head-to-head with the Ubers of the world for app-based, on-demand rides, but it had always differentiated its positioning by working with (in London) the “black cabs” and in NYC “yellow cabs” — that is, the established infrastructure of ride-hailing.
In recent years, it has honed its focus specifically on business accounts. No surprise, when you think about it, considering the capital intensiveness, competitiveness and subsequent poor unit economics of scaling a consumer-focused ridesharing business (a confluence of factors we’ve seen played out at Uber, Lyft, Grab and many others).
Gett’s turn to B2B has seen it pick up some 15,000 corporate customers, including one-third of the Fortune 500.
What has been interesting too is the approach Gett has taken to scale: Today, it provides rides in some 1,500 cities, but a large part of that footprint is served not directly by Gett. One of its key partners is Lyft — the result of a deal Gett inked with the company in November 2019 after Gett shut down its Juno operations in New York City. And it’s been expanding that list to include other third-party partnerships in the mix.
Partnerships may not yield margins as strong as those Gett has with direct operations. Gett still is the direct link between drivers and riders in its key markets, which include cities like London and Moscow. (It’s not disclosing what percentage of its business today is direct versus via third-party businesses.)
But on the other hand, Gett has been building its business by providing a plethora of analytics and invoicing services around the actual ride, and what it makes by securing corporate accounts on the back of that software becomes a revenue stream to offset the decline in margins from partnerships. Gett claims that its services ultimately undercut by about 25% other ground transportation options for corporates.
While a lot of consumers may have curtailed their Uber rides in recent months, the business market has seen a turn to ensuring that the travel that its users are taking is well-controlled when it has to be done, specifically to meet specific safety standards. That has been the sweet spot for Gett, with its very specific B2B approach.
“The completion of the fundraising during the pandemic is a clear expression of confidence by our shareholders and new investors in Gett’s vision to focus on the corporate market and its plan to expand globally, as well as in the Company’s strong operational and financial performance,” said Amos Genish, Gett chairman, in a statement.
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Higher Steaks brings home the bacon, revealing lab-grown pork belly and bacon strips
In what could be a starting gun for the commercialization of the cell-based meat business, upstart cultivated meat company Higher Steaks said it has managed to produce samples of its first products — bacon strips and pork belly made in a lab from cellular material.
With the revelation, Higher Steaks, a bootstrapped Cambridge, U.K.-based company, leapfrogs into a competitive position with a number of far larger companies that have raised far more capital.
“There’s still a lot of work until it’s commercial,” said Higher Steaks chief executive Benjamina Bollag, “but the revelation of a pork belly product that’s made from 50% cultivated cells and a bacon product which contains 70% meat grown from a cell material in a laboratory is something of a milestone for the industry.”
The remaining ingredients in Higher Steaks bacon and pork belly are a mixture of plant base, proteins, fats and starches to bind the cellular material together. To achieve this first step on its road to commercialization, Higher Steaks tapped the expertise of an undisclosed chef to formulate the meat into an approximation of the pork belly and bacon.
Higher Steaks head of research and development, Ruth Helen Faram (left) and chief executive Benjamina Bollag (right) Image Credits: Higher Steaks (opens in a new window)
At this stage, the pilot was more to show what Higher Steaks can do rather than what the company will do, said Bollag.
“In the future it will be scaffolding,” said Bollag. “It’s more showing what our meat can do and what we’re working on. In the future it will be with scaffolding.”
A number of companies, including Tantti Laboratories, Matrix Meats and Prellis Biologics, make the kind of biomaterial nano-scale scaffolding that could be used as a frame on which to grow structures equivalent to the fibrous textures of muscle.
The commercial viability of products from companies like Higher Steaks, Memphis Meats, Aleph Farms, Meatable, Integriculture, Mosa Meat and Supermeat depends on more than just companies like Tantti and Matrix, but also on the ability of Thermo Fisher, Future Fields and Merck to bring down the cost of the cell cultures that are required to grow the animal cells.
In all, some 30 cell-based meat startups have launched globally since 2014, and they’re all looking for a slice of the $1.4 trillion meat market.
Meanwhile, demand for pork continues to rise even as supplies have been decimated by an outbreak of African Swine Fever that could have killed as much as 40% of China’s population of pigs in 2019.
“Our mission is to provide meat that is healthy and sustainable without the consumer making any sacrifices on taste,” said Bollag in a statement. “The production of the first ever cultivated bacon and pork belly is proof that new techniques can help meet overwhelming demand for pork products globally.”
Given the highly capitalized competitors that Higher Steaks faces off against, the company is looking for industry partners to help commercialize its technology.
To improve its competitive position, Higher Steaks recently hired Dr. James Clark, the former chief technology officer of PredictImmune.
“I was always quite intrigued by cultured meat production, a mix of both science and food production. In 2013 I watched the first cultured meat burger from Mark Post costing £250,000, cooked on the BBC,” said Clark. “I was approached about joining Higher Steaks earlier this year and was attracted to joining primarily by the science along with the ambition and energy of the Higher Steaks founder Benjamina Bollag . I believe Higher Steaks is a company with a technology to be disruptive in the cultured meat area and at my career stage I was looking for a challenge.”
Brought in to scale the cultivated meat process at Higher Steaks, Clark has led the development of biotech and pharma products at early-stage and publicly traded companies.
“The addition of Dr. James Clark to the team gives Higher Steaks a significant advantage,” said Dr. Ruth Helen Faram, head of R&D. “Cultivated pork belly and bacon have never been demonstrated before and Higher Steaks is the first to develop a prototype containing over 70% cultivated pork muscle, without the use of bovine serum.”
Consumers shouldn’t expect to see Higher Steaks’ pork belly on store shelves or in restaurants anytime soon, Bollag cautioned. “We’re still in the thousands of pounds per kilogram.”
The company does expect to have a larger tasting event later this year.
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Former SoundCloud founders launch e-bike subscription service, backed by BlueYard
You’ve heard of e-bike and e-scooter rental startups spreading across cities. But today three veterans of the startup world will launch what appears to be a brand new take on the “e-revolution” sweeping cities in the wake of the global pandemic: subscription e-bikes, or, if you will, “EaaS” or “E-bikes-as-a-Service.” The previous founders of SoundCloud and Jimdo will today launch Dance, a new subscription e-bike service, backed by a stellar lineup of European investors.
The invite-only program kicks-off first in Berlin, with an all-inclusive service package of a €59-a-month “introductory price” and its own design of e-bike. The founders’ goal is to emphasize the community aspects of the rental service, just as they did with SoundCloud.
Dance is co-founded by SoundCloud founders Eric Quidenus-Wahlforss and Alexander Ljung, together with the co-founder of Jimdo, Christian Springub. While Quidenus-Wahlforss and Ljung are best known for co-founding SoundCloud more than 10 years ago as CTO and CEO, respectively, Quidenus-Wahlforss is taking the CEO role this time, while Ljung will be chairman. Ljung remains chairman of SoundCloud in the meantime.
The main institutional backer is Berlin-based VC BlueYard Capital, together with entrepreneurs and investors such as Ilkka Paananen (founder & CEO Supercell), Jeannette zu Fürstenberg (La Famiglia), Kevin P. Ryan (founder & CEO, AlleyCorp), Neil Parikh (founder & CSO Casper), Bjarke Ingels (founder & CEO BIG Architects) and several others.
Here’s how it will work: Users will download an app and register for the service. A fully assembled e-bike is delivered to a subscriber within 24 hours. If the bike needs maintenance or gets stolen, the user alerts Dance via the app and the bike is replaced “immediately.” That’s more or less it. Here’s the current design of the bike:
Image Credits: Dance
However, a specially designed Dance e-bike will look closer to this rendering at launch:
Image Credits: Dance
Quidenus-Wahlforss, co-founder and CEO of Dance said: “Dance means having a state-of-the-art e-bike always and only available to you, but without the hassle of buying and owning it… Dance is the perfect solution for those who are looking for a healthy, environmentally friendly, time-saving and joyful form of mobility.”
“We are convinced that Dance provides the missing piece of the puzzle at the right time to accelerate a broad and lasting movement from individual car ownership to daily use of e-bikes,” he added.
The startup notes that 45% of Germans are interested in owning an e-bike, while the European market is projected to double by 2025, according to some estimates.
This could be a disruptive moment in the e-bike space. E-bikes are generally considered the fastest and most efficient means of individual urban transport on routes up to 10 kilometres, but the pandemic has put new emphasis on their utility.
But with an average purchasing price of €2,300, e-bikes can be expensive and have a higher probability of being stolen, leaving many consumers out of the market.
At the same time, more than 930 kilometres of new cycling infrastructure have been implemented in Europe since March due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which has shifted populations away from “risky” public transport.
Ljung commented: “You save time and you save the environment. You exercise, but you don’t sweat. And besides that, riding an e-bike is simply joyful. Music was one of the first industries to experience the shift from ownership to subscription. At SoundCloud we helped usher in this transformation… Now we want to transfer this experience to the mobility space and start a movement that will ultimately make our cities more livable.”
Springub added: “We have carefully analyzed the mobility market in the past years and we are deeply concerned that despite the new options out there and the clear necessities set by climate protection, car ownership continues to be high, along with all its negative implications such as congestion and pollution.”
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