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Vestiaire Collective raises $64.2 million for its second-hand fashion platform
Vestiaire Collective just closed another big round of funding in the middle of an economic crisis — the round closed in early April. The startup raised $64.2 million (€59 million) and the company has raised more than $240 million over the year, according to Crunchbase. Vestiaire Collective operates a marketplace of pre-owned fashion items. Users can both sell and buy clothes and accessories on the platform.
There’s a huge list of investors in today’s round — Korelya Capital, Fidelity International-managed funds, Vaultier7, Cuit Invest and existing investors Eurazeo (Eurazeo Growth and Idinvest Venture funds), Bpifrance, Vitruvian Partners, Condé Nast, Luxury Tech Fund and Vestiaire Collective CEO Max Bittner are all participating.
With 9 million members across 90 countries, Vestiaire Collective has become a huge marketplace. And it makes sense that an e-commerce website focused on pre-owned items is working well. There has been a ton of backlash against fast fashion over the past few years.
People now also value circular business models as it becomes more affordable to refresh your wardrobe, especially during an economic crisis, and it is better for the environment.
As always, Vestiaire Collective will use the new influx of cash to expand to more countries. In particular, with Korelya Capital as a new backer, the company will expand to South Korea and Japan this year. While the company started in France, 80% of transactions are now cross-border transactions.
Originally, Vestiaire Collective asked you to send your items to its warehouses to check them before putting them on sale. The startup has been betting on direct shipping from the seller to the buyer in Europe and it has been working well. You can get reimbursed if there’s something wrong with what you ordered though.
Direct shipping has been available in Europe since September 2019 and it now represents over 50% of orders in the region. Up next, Vestiaire Collective will introduce direct shipping in the U.S. this summer and in Asia by the end of 2020.
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3D-printed glasses startup Fitz is making custom protective eyewear for healthcare workers
A lot of startups have answered the call for more personal protective equipment (PPE) and other essentials to support healthcare workers in their efforts to curb the spread and impact of COVID-19. One of those is direct-to-consumer 3D-printed eyewear brand Fitz, which is employing its custom-fit glasses technology to build protective, prescription specs for front-line healthcare workers in need of the best protection they can get.
Fitz Protect is a version of Fitz’s eyewear that uses the same custom measurement tool Fitz created for use via its iOS app, made possible by Apple’s depth-sensing Face ID camera on newer iPhones and all iPad Pro models. The app allows virtual try-on, and provides millimeter-level accurate measurements for a custom fit. Protect is a version of the glasses that still supports a wide range of prescriptions, but that also extends further like safety glasses to provide more coverage and guard against errant entry of any fluids through the eyes.
Healthcare professionals are doing what they can to ensure their face, mouth, nose and eyes are protected from any coughs, sneezes or other droplet-spreading activity from COVID-19 patients that could pass on the infection. These measures have more broadly focused on face shields that feature a single transparent plastic sheet, and N95 masks (and alternatives when not available) to protect the mouth and nose.
Fitz CEO Gabriel Schlumberger explained via email that the design for Fitz Protect came from working front-line doctors and nurses from New York, LA and Texas who were all looking for something to source prescription protective eyewear.
“More than 60% of doctors are glasses wearers, and current guidance is for them to stop wearing contact lenses,” Schlumberger explained, adding that Fitz Protect is also designed to be worn in conjunction with a face shield, when that’s an available option, to provide yet another layer of defense.
“We heard from prescription glasses wearers that their standard glasses didn’t provide anywhere near adequate coverage, especially over the eyebrows, and in some cases they were adding cardboard cut-outs,” he said. “We leveraged our existing system to create something much better. ”
Fitz’s model also helps on the pricing side because it’s already designed to be an aggressively cost-competitive offering when compared to traditional prescription eyewear. Their glasses typically retail for just $95 including frames, lenses and shipping, and are also offered in a $185 per year unlimited frame membership plan. For doctors, nurses and hospital staff, the entire cost of Fitz Protect is being waived, and the company is seeking donations to help offset its own manufacturing costs, which currently stand at around $100 per set, though process improvements should bring that down, according to Schlumberger, as they expand availability.
Already, he said that nearly 3,000 healthcare professionals have signed up to receive a pair in their first week of availability, so they’re working on adding scale to keep up with the unexpected demand.
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Introducing the Digital Startup Alley Package for Disrupt SF
Building a startup is hard enough. But COVID-19, our generation’s worst plot twist, gives new meaning to uncertainty and stress. No one had “pandemic” on their early-stage startup’s radar, which begs the question: How do you move your business forward in unprecedented times?
It’s a huge challenge, and we’ve worked hard to find a way to help you keep momentum in the face of lockdowns and travel restrictions. Drumroll please — the Digital Startup Alley Package, a virtual exhibition for startups at Disrupt SF (September 14-16).
Accept no virtual substitutes. Disrupt is the OG of startup conferences, and TechCrunch has the resources and industry connections to replicate the Startup Alley experience as a truly world-class virtual event.
The Digital Startup Alley Package lets early-stage, pre-Series A startups disrupt from home for only $445. Digital Startup Alley kicks off early, and it runs through the end of the physical event in September. Place your startup in front of thousands of influential investors, technologists, customers and media — with months to pitch, demo, network and schedule meetings.
The Digital Startup Alley Package covers three people and includes:
CrunchMatch: TechCrunch’s AI-powered founder/investor networking platform. Save time, zero in and connect with the people who can move your business forward. Each startup will create a customizable profile, allowing startups to easily note their value add and business model to potential customers and investors.
Exceptional Pitch Coaching: Grab a brew and join TechCrunch editors for Pitchers and Pitches — an interactive opportunity to learn from the best. Whip your pitch into shape with the team that coaches the Startup Battlefield competitors.
Exposure to Investors: Exhibiting startups will be included in a deck available exclusively to investors attending Disrupt SF.
Exhibitor Guide: The definitive resource to Startup Alley and Disrupt SF — modified to reflect our digital exhibitors. Plus, you get access to the content included with a Disrupt Digital Pro Pass.
Exclusive Founder Webinars: All Startup Alley exhibitors will get exclusive access to the brightest industry minds to hear their current thinking on ways startups can adapt and thrive both during and after the COVID-19 pandemic.
Pro Tip: Come September, if you can exhibit at Disrupt SF in person, you can upgrade your package and still enjoy the benefits of Digital Startup Alley.
Remember, founders don’t quit — they adapt and move forward. Buy your Digital Startup Alley Package today.
TechCrunch is mindful of the COVID-19 issue and its impact on live events. You can follow our updates here.
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Verizon’s BlueJeans acquisition is about more than the work-from-home trend
It would be easy to assume that Verizon’s purchase last week of video-conferencing tool BlueJeans was an opportunistic move to capitalize on the sudden shift to remote work, but the ball began rolling last June and has implications far beyond current work-from-home requirements.
The video-chat darling of the moment is Zoom, but BlueJeans is considered by many to be the enterprise tool of choice. The problem, it seems, is that it had grown as far as it could on its own and went looking for a larger partner to help it reach the next level.
BlueJeans started working with Verizon (which owns this publication) as an authorized reseller before the talks turned toward a deeper relationship that culminated in the acquisition. Assuming the deal passes regulatory scrutiny, Verizon will use its emerging 5G technology to produce much more advanced video-conferencing scenarios.
We spoke to the principals involved in this deal and several industry experts to get a sense of where this could lead. As with any large company buying a startup, outcomes are uncertain; sometimes the acquired company gets lost in the larger corporate bureaucracy, and sometimes additional resources will help grow the company much faster than it could have on its own.
What is BlueJeans?
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Decrypted: Post-coronavirus, Auth0’s close call, North Korea warning, Awake’s Series C
Welcome to a look back at the past week in security and what it means for you. Each week we’ll look at the big news of the week and why it matters.
What will the world look like after the coronavirus pandemic subsides?
Some of us are now in our fifth week of sheltering in place, but there’s no fixed end-date in sight. We’ve gone from a period of confusion and concern to testing and mitigation. Now we’re starting to look ahead at the world post-coronavirus. Things still have to get done. But how do we regain a semblance of normality in the middle of a pandemic?
Tech can be the answer but it’s not a panacea; Apple and Google have explained more about their contact tracing efforts to help better understand the spread of the virus seems promising. But privacy concerns and worries that the system could be abused have raised justified concerns. On the other hand, with a U.S. presidential election slated for later this year, many experts want tech out of the picture in favor of a secure solution that uses paper ballots.
Will tech save the day, or will it kick us while we’re down? Let’s dive in.
THE BIG PICTURE
Voting by mail should be having its moment. Will it?
This year’s U.S. presidential election will still go ahead — it’s in the constitution as an immutable fact — but a pandemic throws a wrench in the works.
But security experts say electronic voting isn’t secure or resilient enough to protect from foreign interference. Even the more established mobile voting offerings have been shown to be deeply flawed.
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Clubhouse voice chat leads a wave of spontaneous social apps
Forget the calendar invite. Just jump into a conversation. That’s the idea powering a fresh batch of social startups poised to take advantage of our cleared schedules amidst quarantine. But they could also change the way we work and socialize long after COVID-19 by bringing the free-flowing, ad-hoc communication of parties and open office plans online. While “Live” has become synonymous with performative streaming, these new apps instead spread the limelight across several users as well as the task, game, or discussion at hand.
The most buzzy of these startups is Clubhouse, an audio-based social network where people can spontaneously jump into voice chat rooms together. You see the unlabeled rooms of all the people you follow, and you can join to talk or just listen along, milling around to find what interests you. High-energy rooms attract crowds while slower ones see participants slip out to join other chat circles.
Clubhouse blew up this weekend on VC Twitter as people scrambled for exclusive invites, humblebragged about their membership, or made fun of everyone’s FOMO. For now, there’s no public app or access. The name Clubhouse perfectly captures how people long to be part of the in-crowd.
Clubhouse was built by Paul Davison, who previously founded serendipitous offline people-meeting location app Highlight and reveal-your-whole-camera-roll app Shorts before his team was acquired by Pinterest in 2016. This year he debuted his Alpha Exploration Co startup studio and launched Talkshow for instantly broadcasting radio-style call-in shows. Spontaneity is the thread that ties Davison’s work together, whether its for making new friends, sharing your life, transmitting your thoughts, or having a discussion.
It’s very early days for Clubhouse. It doesn’t even have a website. There’s no telling exactly what it will be like if or when it officially launches, and Davison and his co-founder Rohan Seth declined to comment. But the positive reception shows a desire for a more immediate, multi-media approach to discussion that updates what Twitter did with text.
Sheltered From Surprise
What quarantine has revealed is that when you separate everyone, spontaneity is a big thing you miss. In your office, that could be having a random watercooler chat with a co-worker or commenting aloud about something funny you found on the internet. At a party, it could be wandering up to chat with group of people because you know one of them or overhear something interesting. That’s lacking while we’re stuck home since we’ve stigmatized randomly phoning a friend, differing to asynchronous text despite its lack of urgency.
Clubhouse founder Paul Davison. Image Credit: JD Lasica
Scheduled Zoom calls, utilitarian Slack threads, and endless email chains don’t capture the thrill of surprise or the joy of conversation that giddily revs up as people riff off each other’s ideas. But smart app developers are also realizing that spontaneity doesn’t mean constantly interrupting people’s life or workflow. They give people the power to decide when they are or aren’t available or signal that they’re not to be disturbed so they’re only thrust into social connection when they want it.
Houseparty chart ranks via AppAnnie
Houseparty embodies this spontaneity. It’s become the breakout hit of quarantine by letting people on a whim join group video chat rooms with friends the second they open the app. It saw 50 million downloads in a month, up 70X over its pre-COVID levels in some places. It’s become the #1 social app in 82 countries including the US, and #1 overall in 16 countries.
Originally built for gaming, Discord lets communities spontaneously connect through persistent video, voice, and chat rooms. It’s seen a 50% increase in US daily voice users with spikes in shelter-in-place early adopter states like California, New York, New Jersey, and Washington. Bunch, for video chat overlayed on mobile gaming, is also climbing the charts and going mainstream with its user base shifting to become majority female as they talk for 1.5 million minutes per day. Both apps make it easy to join up with pals and pick something to play together.
The Impromptu Office
Enterprise video chat tools are adapting to spontaneity as an alternative to heavy-handed, pre-meditated Zoom calls. There’s been a backlash as people realize they don’t get anything done by scheduling back-to-back video chats all day.
- Loom lets you quickly record and send a video clip to co-workers that they can watch at their leisure, with back-and-forth conversation sped up because videos are uploaded as they’re shot.
- Around overlays small circular video windows atop your screen so you can instantly communicate with colleagues while most of your desktop stays focused on your actual work.
- Screen exists as a tiny widget that can launch a collaborative screenshare where everyone gets a cursor to control the shared window so they can improvisationally code, design, write, and annotate.
Screen
- Pragli is an avatar-based virtual office where you can see if someone’s in a calendar meeting, away, or in flow listening to music so you know when to instantly open a voice or video chat channel together without having to purposefully find a time everyone’s free. But instead of following you home like Slack, Pragli lets you sign in and out of the virtual office to start and end your day.
Raising Our Voice
While visual communication has been the breakout feature of our mobile phones by allowing us to show where we are, shelter-in-place means we don’t have much to show. That’s expanded the opportunity for tools that take a less-is-more approach to spontaneous communication. Whether for remote partying or rapid problem solving, new apps beyond Clubhouse are incorporating voice rather than just video. Voice offers a way to rapidly exchange information and feel present together without dominating our workspace or attention, or forcing people into an uncomfortable spotlight.
High Fidelity is Second Life co-founder Philip Rosedale’s $72 million-funded current startup. After recently pivoting away from building a virtual reality co-working tool, High Fidelity has begun testing a voice and headphones-based online event platform and gathering place. The early beta lets users move their dot around a map and hear the voice of anyone close to them with spatial audio so voices get louder as you get closer to someone, and shift between your ears as you move past them. You can spontaneously approach and depart little clusters of dots to explore different conversations within earshot.
An unofficial mockup of High Fidelity’s early tests. Image Credits: DigitalGlobe (opens in a new window) / Getty Images
High Fidelity is currently using a satellite photo of Burning Man as its test map. It allows DJs to set up in different corners, and listeners to stroll between them or walk off with a friend to chat, similar to the real offline event. Since Burning Man was cancelled this year, High Fidelity could potentially be a candidate for holding the scheduled virtual version the organizers have promised.
Houseparty’s former CEO Ben Rubin and Skype GM of engineering Brian Meek are building a spontaneous teamwork tool called Slashtalk. Rubin sold Houseparty to Fortnite-maker Epic in mid-2019, but the gaming giant largely neglected the app until its recent quarantine-driven success. Rubin left.
His new startup’s site explains that “/talk is an anti-meeting tool for fast, decentralized conversations. We believe most meetings can be eliminated if the right people are connected at the right time to discuss the right topics, for just as long as necessary.” It lets people quickly jump into a voice or video chat to get something sorted without delaying until a calendared collab session.
Slashtalk co-founder Ben Rubin at TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2015
Whether for work or play, these spontaneous apps can conjure times from our more unstructured youth. Whether sifting through the cafeteria or school yard, seeing who else is at the mall, walking through halls of open doors in college dorms, or hanging at the student union or campus square, the pre-adult years offer many opportunities for impromptu social interation.
As we age and move into our separate homes, we literally erect walls that limit our ability to perceive the social cues that signal that someone’s available for unprompted communication. That’s spawned apps like Down To Lunch and Snapchat acquisition Zenly, and Facebook’s upcoming Messenger status feature designed to break through those barriers and make it feel less desperate to ask someone to hang out offline.
But while socializing or collaborating IRL requires transportation logistics and usually a plan, the new social apps discussed here bring us together instantly, thereby eliminating the need to schedule togetherness ahead of time. Gone too are the geographic limits restraining you to connect only with those within a reasonable commute. Digitally, you can pick from your whole network. And quarantines have further opened our options by emptying parts of our calendars.
Absent those frictions, what shines through is our intention. We can connect with who we want and accomplish what we want. Spontaneous apps open the channel so our impulsive human nature can shine through.
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Top investors predict what’s ahead for Boston’s VC scene in Q1
Before the COVID-19 pandemic shook up the world and reshaped the economy, Boston was quietly setting records.
According to new venture data compiled by TechCrunch, the region set what was at least a local maximum in venture capital raised in the space of a single quarter in Q1 2020.
But while Boston’s startup market announced a number of huge rounds that bolstered its total venture dollars raised in the first quarter, there were signs of weakness: Deal volume was its best since Q2 2019, according to a set of data compiled and released by PwC and CB Insights, but was still a little under the pace set in 2018.
So Boston’s startups raised lots of money, but couldn’t match prior highs when it came to the number of checks written. And those results were largely recorded before COVID-19 shuttered the city. Since then, we’ve seen a number of area startups lay off staff, something we explored last week.
Now, with fresh data in hand, we can take a closer look at the city’s first quarter of 2020. To better understand what we’re unpacking, we asked a number of local venture capitalists to weigh in. Let’s look back at Boston’s Q1 as we stride into Q2 with the help of Venture Lane, .406 Ventures, Volition Capital and Flybridge Capital Partners.
The data
Starting with a programming note is counter-flow, but bear with us. TechCrunch is starting a regular, monthly series on Boston and its startup market. This is a second prelude of sorts. Normally we’d hold news and interviews for a later date so that we’d have plenty of material for a column. In the face of relentless change, however, we didn’t want to hold off on reporting and synthesizing new information. When things are more normal, our pace will follow.
Per PwC and CB Insights, here’s the last few quarters of data, along with a few yearly totals to draw you the picture we can now see:
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Sales startup People.ai lays off 18% of staff, raises debt round amid COVID-19 uncertainty
Another startup has turned to downsizing and fund raising to help weather the uncertainty around the economy amid the global coronavirus health pandemic. People.ai, a predictive sales startup backed by Andreessen Horowitz, Iconic, Lightspeed and other investors and last year valued at around $500 million, has laid off around 30 people, working out to about 18% of staff, TechCrunch has learned and confirmed.
Alongside that, the company has quietly raised a debt round in the “tens of millions of dollars” to make strategic investments in new products and potentially other moves.
Oleg Rogynskyy, the founder and CEO, said the layoffs were made not because business has slowed down, but to help the company shore up for whatever may lie ahead.
“We still have several years of runway with what we’ve raised,” he noted (it has raised just under $100 million in equity to date). “But no one knows the length of the downturn, so we wanted to make sure we could sustain the business through it.”
Specifically, the company is reducing its international footprint — big European customers that it already has on its books will now be handled from its U.S. offices rather than local outposts — and it is narrowing its scope to focus more on the core verticals that make up the majority of its current customer base.
He gave as an example the financial sector. “We create huge value for financial services industry but have moved the functionality for them out to next year so that we can focus on our currently served industries,” he said.
People.ai’s software tracks the full scope of communication touch points between sales teams and customers, supposedly negating the tedious manual process of activity logging for SDRs. The company’s machine learning tech is also meant to generate the average best way to close a deal — educating customer success teams about where salespeople may be deviating from a proven strategy.
People.ai is one of a number of well-funded tech startups that is making hard choices on business strategy, costs and staffing in the current climate.
Layoffs.fyi, which has been tallying those losing their jobs in the tech industry in the wake of the coronavirus (it’s based primarily on public reports with a view to providing lists of people for hire), says that as of today, there have been nearly 25,000 people laid off from 258 tech startups and other companies. With companies like Opendoor laying off some 600 people earlier this week, the numbers are ratcheting up quickly: just seven days ago, the number was just over 16,000.
In that context, People.ai cutting 30 may be a smaller increment in the bigger picture (even if for the individuals impacted, it’s just as harsh of an outcome). But it also underscores one of the key business themes of the moment.
Some businesses are getting directly hit by the pandemic — for example, house sales and transportation have all but halted, leaving companies in those categories scrambling to figure out how to get through the coming weeks and months and prepare for a potentially long haul of life and consumer and business behavior not looking like it did before January.
But other businesses, like People.ai, which provides predictive sales tools to help salespeople do their jobs better, is (for now at least) falling into that category of IT still in demand, perhaps even more than ever in a shrinking economy. In People.ai’s case, software to help salespeople have better sales conversations and ultimately conversions at a time when many customers might not be as quick to buy things is an idea that sells right now (so to speak).
Rogynskyy noted that more than 90% of customers that are up for renewal this quarter have either renewed or expanded their contracts, and it has been adding new large customers in recent weeks and months.
The company has also just closed a round of debt funding in the “tens of millions” of dollars to use for strategic investments.
It’s not disclosing the lender right now, but it opted for debt in part because it still has most of its most recent round — $60 million raised in May 2019 led by Iconic — in the bank. Although investors would have been willing to invest in another equity round, given that the company is in a healthy position right now, Rogynskyy said he preferred the debt option to have the money without the dilution that equity rounds bring.
The money will be used for strategic purposes and considering how to develop the product in the current climate. For example, with most people now working from home, and that looking to be a new kind of “normal” in office life (if not all the time, at least more of the time), that presents a new opportunity to develop products tailored for these remote workers.
There have been some M&A moves in tech in the last couple of weeks, and from what we understand People.ai has been approached as well as a possible buyer, target and partner. All of that for now is not something the company is considering, Rogynskyy said. “We’re focused on our own future growth and health and making sure we are here for a long time.”
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Autofleet raises $7.5M to help fleets put idle vehicles into drive
On-demand mobility, when done successfully, strikes a balance between demand and supply while providing reliable service and making a profit. It’s a sweet spot that can be difficult, if not impossible, to find.
Autofleet, a startup that develops fleet optimization software to redirect underused vehicles into ride-hailing and delivery services, wants to solve that mission impossible. Now, the company founded by former Avis and Gett employees, has raised $7.5 million in seed and Series A funding to expand into international markets and grow its research and development team.
The Series A was led by MizMaa Ventures with participation from Maniv Mobility, Next Gear Ventures and Liil Ventures. Its seed financing was led by Maniv Mobility.
Autofleet developed a fleet management platform that can be used by rental car companies, car sharing operators and automakers to launch or better manage mobility services. The platform includes a booking app and integrations to delivery services, demand prediction, pooling and optimization algorithms as well as a driver app, and control center. The company also has developed a simulator tool that lets operators plan how a fleet will be deployed before a single vehicle hits the road.
For example, a rental company with abundant inventory and little demand for traditional multi-day contracts could use the platform to launch and then manage a car-sharing service. Autofleet already has partnerships with Avis Budget Group, Zipcar, Keolis and Suzuki .
That focus on managing supply side constraints is what attracted Maniv Mobility to invest in the seeding and Series A rounds, according the firm’s general partner Olaf Sakkers.
Autofleet’s biggest markets today are in Europe and the U.S., CEO Kobi Eisenberg told TechCrunch . The company is seeing early traction and fast growth in Latin America and Asia-Pacific. Eisenberg said they plan to double down on these markets. The company also expects to announce a partnership in Asia to accelerate growth in that region.
Autofleet is also looking for new opportunities for how vehicle fleets can be used, including ways to help micromobility companies improve their unit economics, according to Eisenberg.
In this age of COVID-19 — when asset-heavy businesses like rental car companies have seen their businesses upended — Autofleet has already discovered new uses for its platform. The platform is being used to help companies shift fleets to meet today’s demand for logistics and medical transportation. Autofleet is also selling its platform to companies looking to leverage their vehicle assets for their delivery services.
“We’re hearing from fleet partners around the globe who are experiencing dramatic drops in demand, and therefore significant portions of their fleet and drivers are un-utilized,” Eisenberg said. “At the same time, we have seen a sharp increase in demand for delivery services from businesses across all verticals: retail and supermarkets, restaurants.”
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Grain, a startup built expressly atop of Zoom for note-taking and video-clip making, raises $4 million
Whenever a platform breaks out, companies emerge to seize on its reach by building their services or products atop it. It happened with Facebook and Twitter and Slack. Now, it’s happening with Zoom, the video conferencing company that took the world by storm earlier this year as the coronavirus sent people around the globe indoors and into self-imposed isolation.
It’s not a brand-new trend. Plenty of companies are selling their wares through the Zoom App Marketplace, which launched in the fall of 2018 and now features 18 pages of providers. But Grain, founded in 2018 in San Francisco, is among the first to build its entire business around it, at least as a starting point.
What is that business? According to co-founder and CEO Mike Adams, the idea is to capture content in Zoom calls that can be saved and shared across platforms, including Twitter, Discord, Notion, Slack and iMessages.
Say a student wants to take notes; he or she can record part of what a teacher is saying to save or share with classmates, without having to rewatch an entire lecture. The same is true in work settings. By using Grain, a colleague can flag the most important bits of information that was conveyed, then share just those bits via a clip that has its own unique URL.
Grain also transcribes content in clips and allows users to turn on closed captions if they choose.
The video clips can range from 30 seconds up to 10 minutes. They can also be strung together into reels to create summary highlights. (These have no time limit.) Not last, users can trim or adjust the length of the highlight after it has been recorded, as well as control who else can edit the video afterward to prevent nefarious actors from manipulating the snippets.
Adams says he and his brother, Jake — a former software engineer at Branch Metrics with whom he co-founded the company — are even using Grain to save snippets of precious moments on Zoom involving nieces and nephews, though the focus is very much on the companies and schools that will pay on a per-seat basis for the software.
Indeed, Adams says the idea for Grain was really born at the last company he co-founded: MissionU, a Zoom-based one-year alternative to a traditional college whose students weren’t asked for tuition but instead agreed to hand over up to 15% of their incomes for three years once they landed a job that paid $50,000 or more.
MissionU — which was founded in 2016 and raised $11.5 million from investors — sold to WeWork in 2018 in a stock deal before its students earned anything (they were released from their income-sharing agreements). Still, the experiment was long enough that Adams, who left MissionU at the time of the sale, says he saw firsthand the need for better tools to help students capture what’s important in their online content.
The question, of course, is whether Zoom also sees the opportunity. Relying so heavily on another company is always a risk. (See Facebook and Twitter and the long list of third-party developers that have been burned by both companies.)
If Zoom, which is starting to make venture-like bets, were an investor in Grain, it might help inoculate it from potential competition down the road.
Still, that it isn’t didn’t dissuade other investors who are betting that Zoom will prove friend and not foe. In fact, late last year, Grain raised $4 million over two seed rounds from a long list of notable investors, including Acrew Capital, Founder Collective, Peterson Partners, Slack Fund, Scott Belsky, Sriram Krishnan, Andreas Klinger, Scooter Braun and others.
Now its 11-person team is ready to take the wraps off what they’ve been building in beta with some of that capital.
Certainly, Grain — which plans to eventually integrate with numerous other companies — could do worse as springboards go than Zoom, one of the rare new breakout platform companies in memory and a tool that, early this week, Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison called an “essential service” that will change how work is done.
Zoom has long been powered by viral end user adoption, enjoying growth internally and externally because of the nature of video conferencing across companies. Now, its pick-up as a consumer company is following a similar trajectory, with a high percentage of new users who are invited to Zoom calls eventually signing up for the service so that they can themselves host a call.
If Grain gets lucky, some percentage of that percentage will also discover Grain.
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