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Unicorn fever as One Medical’s IPO pops 40% after conservative pricing
Shares of One Medical are worth $19.50 this morning after the venture-backed unicorn priced its IPO at $14 per share last night. The company opened at $18 before rising further, according to Yahoo Finance data. At its current price, One Medical is worth about 40% more than its IPO price, a strong debut for the company.
The result is a boon for One Medical, which raised $532.1 million during its time as a private company. At $14 per share, the company was worth $1.71 billion. At 19.50, One Medical is worth $2.38 billion, a winning result for a company said to be worth around $1.5 billion as a private company.
For investors The Carlyle Group, J.P. Morgan, Redmile Group, GV and Benchmark (among others), the debut is a success, pricing their stakes in the company higher once again. For other unicorns, the news is even better. One Medical, a company with gross margins under the 50% mark, deeply minority recurring revenue and 30% revenue growth in 2019 at best is now worth about 8.5x its trailing revenues.
That is about as good a signal as one could imagine for venture-backed companies that aren’t in as good shape as Slack or Zoom were letting them know that now is the time to go public.
Unicorn directions
It’s possible to read One Medical’s new revenue multiple in a few ways. You can be positive, saying that its valuation and resulting metrics are signs of investor optimism for the medical service company. Or you could go negative and assume that its pricing looks like a case of the market being more excited about a brand than a set of accounting results.
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Last day for early-bird tickets to TC Sessions: Robotics + AI 2020
Today’s your last day to score early-bird pricing on tickets to TC Sessions: Robotics + AI 2020, which takes place on March 3. If you want to keep $150 in your wallet, beat the deadline and buy your ticket here before the clock strikes 11:59 p.m. (PT) tonight!
Our one-day conference dedicated to robotics and AI — the good, the bad and the challenging — features interviews, panel discussions, Q&As, workshops and demos. Join roughly 1,500 experts, visionaries, creators, founders, investors, researchers and engineers. Rub elbows, network and engage with current and aspiring leaders, as well as students poised to drive future innovation.
We have a stellar line up, and just because we’re biased doesn’t mean we’re wrong. I mean come on — assistive robots, ethics and AI, the state of VC investment and robot demos. And that’s just for starters. Here are a couple of specific examples (peruse the full agenda right here):
- Cultivating Intelligence in Agricultural Robots: The benefits of robotics in agriculture are undeniable, yet at the same time only getting started. Lewis Anderson (Traptic) and Sebastien Boyer (FarmWise) will compare notes on the rigors of developing industrial-grade robots that both pick crops and weed fields, respectively. Pyka’s Michael Norcia will discuss taking flight over those fields with an autonomous crop-spraying drone.
- Building the Robots that Build: Join Daniel Blank (Toggle), Tessa Lau (Dusty Robotics) and Noah Ready-Campbell (Built Robotics) as they discuss whether robots can help us build structures faster, smarter and cheaper. Built Robotics makes a self-driving excavator. Toggle is developing a new fabrication of rebar for reinforced concrete and Dusty Robotics builds robot-powered tools. We’ll talk with the founders to learn how and when robots will become a part of the construction crew.
And in case you haven’t heard, we’ve added Pitch Night, a mini pitch-off, into the mix this year. We’re accepting applications until tomorrow, February 1. This is no time for fence-sitting! Apply to compete in Pitch Night now. TechCrunch editors will review the applications and choose 10 startups to pitch at a private event the night before the conference. A panel of VC judges will select five teams as finalists. Those founders will pitch again the next day — live from the Main Stage. It’s awesome exposure that could take your startup to the next level.
If you love robots, you need to be at TC Sessions: Robotics + AI 2020 on March 3. And there’s no point paying more than necessary. Today’s the last day to buy an early-bird ticket. Buy yours before the deadline expires at 11:59 p.m. (PT) and save $150.
Is your company interested in sponsoring or exhibiting at TC Sessions: Robotics + AI 2020? Contact our sponsorship sales team by filling out this form.
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Moda Operandi, an online marketplace for high-end fashion, raises $100M led by NEA and Apax
Moda Operandi, an online marketplace that specialises in right-off-the-runway luxury fashion, accessories and home decor, is today announcing a high-priced event of its own: it’s raised $100 million, a mix of equity and debt that it will use to invest in its platform and technology as well as to continue growing business overall. Founded in 2010, it offers products from some 1,000 brands and designers and ships to 125 countries.
“For the past eight years, Moda has disrupted the way people shop for luxury fashion,” said Moda Operandi CEO Ganesh Srivats in a statement. “This investment will enable us to build on that innovation, investing further in the client and designer experience and connecting more of the world’s best fashion to more people.”
The financing is being co-led by NEA and Apax Partners, both previous investors in Moda Operandi, with participation also from the Santo Domingo family (connected to Lauren Santo Domingo, who co-founded Moda with Aslaug Magnusdottir), Comerica Bank, TriplePoint Capital and other unnamed investors.
The company’s valuation is not being disclosed, but in its last round, in 2017, Moda Operandi had a post-money valuation of $650 million, according to data from PitchBook. It has raised $345 million to date.
High-end fashion might not be the first thing that comes to mind when you think about online shopping, but it has actually been a ripe market for the e-commerce industry.
While those in the know (and in the money) might attend catwalk shows, and bijou boutiques in swish locales are likely to be around for many years to come, there is a massive population of people who have the income and inclination to shop for luxury fashion, but might not be in the right place, or have the time, to do so.
For these shoppers, websites, mobile apps and, most recently, new channels like Instagram and messaging services have become a key route to browsing and buying, leading to the rise of huge businesses like Farfetch, Net-a-Porter and more.
That trend has helped to buffer Moda Operandi up to now, but it’s also the one that will be interesting to watch down the line.
We’ve written about the rise of direct-to-consumer brands and how that has played out specifically in the world of fashion, which in turn becomes a new group of competitors to aggregating marketplaces like Moda Operandi.
Similarly, the growing trend of targeting consumers wherever they happen to be also represents a rival business model, with some fashion retailers now foregoing websites altogether in favor of using third-party messaging apps to reach their target customers. Will Moda Operandi change with the times to do more of this kind of selling, too? Like fashion, what’s in today might be out tomorrow, so even the best channels are moving targets.
In any case, Moda Operandi has most definitely shown that it’s prepared to evolve and upset the status quo. The company got its start in 2010 as part out of an aha-moment from Santo Domingo, a socialite, former model and former editor at Vogue.
As someone who had worked for years in the luxury fashion industry, fully immersed as a consumer to boot, she knew that only a small, rarefied group of people ever got full access to a designer’s runway collection.
Moda Operandi was her solution — a platform to broaden that out, giving access to a full trunkshows (as the runway collections are called) to a wider selection of possible buyers and improving revenues for designers and brands in the process, as they no longer had to rely just on more traditional channels, namely buyers for retailers. The site had some catches — for example, as we pointed out at the time, you could shop a runway look, but still had to wait months for the piece to actually arrive, as those items would have yet to be made; but it caught on with a loyal following.
Over the years, the site’s basic remit has expanded, covering not only runway collections but also extending into jewelry, accessories and home decor. (We asked what size the business is today, and whether Moda Operandi can share any details on how that has changed over time, but a spokesperson said the company would not be sharing these or other financial details today.)
In any case, it has remained a compelling enough business to have brought in a hefty round of growth funding from its previous backers.
“We continue to be impressed with the power of Moda’s brand and its positioning in the luxury market,” said Dan O’Keefe, managing partner of Apax Digital, in a statement. “Moda has been enhancing its technology capabilities as a world leading platform for fashion discovery and is led by a world-class team. We look forward to continuing to support their expansion.”
“Moda Operandi has really disrupted the traditional ecommerce model, using technology to give people unprecedented access to fashion,” added Tony Florence, general partner and head of technology investing at NEA, in a statement. “It was a really big idea when we led the Series A, and today Ganesh and the team are executing on that data-enabled retail model at scale. We are thrilled to continue supporting the company in this latest round.”
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How to blow through capital at an incredible rate
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
It was yet another jam-packed week full of big news, IPO happenings and venture activity. As always, we’ve done our best to deliver the gist on what’s been going on. We had Alex Wilhelm and Danny Crichton on hand to handle it all, which went medium-good. In other Equity news, we’re back with guests over the next few weeks, so if you miss us having a venture capitalist along for the ride, fear not, their return is just around the corner.
Up top this week was Jon Shieber’s report that Kleiner Perkins has rapidly deployed its most recent fund, a $600 million vehicle. While the news felt surprising, digging back through our archives we were reminded that the firm had indicated it might put its capital to work quickly. Still, as Danny pointed out, it’s rare that venture capitalists have to go out raising from LPs on an annual basis.
After that, we turned to some funding rounds that held our attention, including the Free Agency round that is working to bring talent management to the technology industry similar to the sports and entertainment worlds.
The concept makes some sense, as compensation packages for top talent in the industry can extend into the seven-figures (Free Agency takes a 5-10% cut of an employee’s income using the increasingly popular income-share agreements). Also, this round felt a bit like a reminder that the labor market is tight at the moment.
We then moved on to Josh Constine’s story about “Ring for enterprise” startup Verkada, which raised a massive $80 million round at a $1.6 billion valuation. That’s eye-popping, since the extremely small dilution implied with those numbers (5%) is very rare in the venture world.
After that we turned to a few rounds that Alex has had his eye on, namely the somewhat-recent Insurify round, the pretty-recent Gabi round and the most-recent Policygenius. All told, they sum to $150 million, which made us ask the question, why are venture capitalists so into insurance marketplace startups?
Finally, we touched on the latest from the intra-SoftBank delivery war between DoorDash and Uber Eats, including who is impacted, and what it means for future consolidation in the on-demand world. Or more precisely, why hasn’t there been more?
Finally, don’t forget that IPO season is upon us. Are you caught up?
Equity drops every Friday at 6:00 am PT, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.
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How Bykea is winning Pakistan’s ride-hailing and delivery market
Increasingly, the streets of Karachi and Lahore are being flooded with men riding bikes and wearing green T-shirts, a writer friend recently told me. In a sense, these men represent the emergence of Pakistan’s tech startups.
India now has more than 25,000 startups and raised a record $14.5 billion last year, according to government figures. But not all Asian countries are as large as India or have such a thriving startup ecosystem. Long overdue, things are beginning to change in bordering Pakistan.
Bykea, a three-year-old ride-hailing and delivery service, today has more than 500,000 bikes registered on its platform. It operates in some of Pakistan’s most populated cities, such as Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad, Muneeb Maayr, Bykea founder and CEO, told TechCrunch.
Maayr is one of the most recognized startup founders in Pakistan, and previously worked for Rocket Internet, helping the giant run fashion e-commerce platform Daraz in the country. While leading Daraz, he expanded the platform to cater to categories beyond fashion; Daraz was later sold to Alibaba.
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Publisher engagement startup Insticator bets on commenting with Squawk-It acquisition
Insticator, a startup helping publishers add to their content elements like polls, quizzes and suggested story widgets, has made its first acquisition — a commenting platform called Squawk-It.
Insticator CEO Zack Dugow said his platform benefits online publishers by keeping audiences engaged and bringing in new ad revenue (which is split between Insticator and the publisher). And he sees commenting as a natural next step toward his goal to become “the main monetization and community engagement solution for publishers.”
While “don’t read the comments” remains one of the most reliable pieces of advice you’ll get online, Dugow said Squawk-It (it was formerly known as Solid Opinion) stands out from other commenting platforms because of its reliance on “100 percent human moderation,” with moderators working in three shifts to monitor partner sites 24 hours each day.
“Anybody can game an algorithm,” he said.
And when I brought up the concern that so much of the discussion has moved out of the comments section and onto social media, Dugow responded that “merging social commenting” so that it feels like everything is part of the same conversation is “in our roadmap.”
Like other Insticator products, Squawk-It comments (which you can see below the article here) are monetized through advertising. But Dugow noted that the ads run above the comments, rather than interrupting or distracting from the comments themselves.
The financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. Dugow said the entire 13-person Squawk-It team (headquartered in New York but with an engineering team in Kiev) has joined Insticator, and that the product has already been rebranded as Insticator Comments.
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Mammoth Biosciences aims to be Illumina for the gene editing generation
In 1998, the startup company Illumina launched a revolution in the life sciences industry by developing technology to slash the costs of identifying and mapping genetic material.
Now, a little over 20 years later, Mammoth Biosciences is hoping to do the same thing for gene editing tools.
The company, co-founded by Jennifer Doudna, who did some of the pioneering work to discover the gene editing enzyme known as CRISPR, has just raised $45 million as it looks to bring to market products that can be used not only for disease detection, but are more precise editing tools for genetic material.
Rather than get bogged down in the patent dispute that raged over the provenance and ownership of applications for the original CRISPR enzyme — the Cas9 discovered by Doudna and developed for clinical applications at the Broad Institute — Mammoth has joined a number of startups in identifying new enzymes with a broader array of properties.
“From the very beginning of the company we’ve only worked with novel new enzymes to create these diagnostic products and the new novel diagnostic and editing,” says Trevor Martin, Mammoth Biosciences co-founder and chief executive.
Chiefly, the company is touting its Cas14 enzyme, which the company says opens up new possibilities for programmable biology thanks to its small size, diverse targeting ability and high fidelity — meaning that there are no unforeseen side effects to edits made using the enzyme (something that has arisen with Cas9 applications).
“There’s not one protein that’s going to be the best at everything,” says Martin. “For any particular product that you’re building, at Mammoth, we have the broadest toolbox.”
The Cas14 enzyme can be used to make gene edits in-vivo, meaning in live organisms, instead of ex-vivo, or outside of an organism. The in-vivo use-case could accelerate the time it takes to conduct experiments or develop treatments.
“Twenty years from now, when the umpteenth drug gets approved using Crispr and some nuclease named Cas132013, people are going to look back on this patent battle and think, ‘what a godawful waste of money,’ ” Jacob Sherkow a patent law scholar at New York Law School told Wired back in 2018.
Already, Horizon Discovery, a Cambridge, U.K.-based gene editing technology developer, is using the new tools developed by Mammoth Bioscience to create new CRISPR tools for Chinese Hamster Ovary cell line editing.
That partnership is an example of how Mammoth is thinking about the commercialization of the new Cas14 enzyme line and its role in biological engineering.
“You will need a full toolbox of CRISPR proteins,” says Martin. “That will allow you to interact with biology in the same way that we interact with software and computers. “From first principles, companies will programmatically modify biology to cure a disease or decrease risk for a disease. That’s going to be really kind of a turning point.”
To achieve its vision, Mammoth has managed to nab top talent from the life sciences industry, including Peter Nell, a co-founder of Casebia (a joint venture between Bayer and CRISPR Therapeutics), who came on board as chief business officer, and Ted Tisch, a former executive at Synthego and Bio-Rad, who joined the company as chief operating officer.
The company also nabbed $45 million of funding, including investment firms Mayfield, NFX, Verily (the Alphabet subsidiary) and Brook Byers, which was led by Decheng Capital — bringing the company to more than $70 million in funding.
“There are a dozen or so products that are in clinical development with CRISPR,” says Ursheet Parikh, a partner with Mayfield. “Maybe that number would go up by five or 10 without Mammoth, but it will go up by one or two orders of magnitude with Mammoth.”
To Parikh, Mammoth is the best positioned of the CRISPR development tools, because the company is building a whole platform that customers can license and use to develop products using gene editing.
The thinking, according to Parikh, is as follows, “if this technology can power lots of applications, let’s basically ensure that lots of these applications can come to market and as that happens I get my app store cut.”
“It’s an Illumina-like business,” Parikh says. “Just as anybody who is innovating with genomics needs an Illumina sequencer because they want to be able to do the sequencing… if someone wants to do editing… This gives them the access to do the right sequencing.”
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IPO pricing for One Medical and Casper will set the tone for 2020’s unicorn debuts
Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the gray space in between.
As One Medical looks to become the first venture-backed company to price its IPO in 2020 this afternoon and Casper aims to price its own shares next Wednesday, the market is gearing up for a pair of tests.
If you listen to the Nasdaq and the NYSE, IPO volume in 2020 will prove vibrant. A surprise, perhaps, in the wake of the WeWork meltdown that many had expected might reduce IPO cadence. One Medical and Casper, though, are charging ahead, meaning that their debuts will help set the tone for the 2020 IPO market.
If they struggle with weak pricing and slow initial trading, their disappointing offerings could slow the IPO market. If they price well and are welcomed by the street, however, the opposite.
Let’s take a look at how many IPOs are coming, what One Medical and Casper are hoping for and what their results might mean for unicorn liquidity. Don’t forget that we’re still living in the midst of a unicorn liquidity crisis — there are hundreds of private companies worth $1 billion or more around the world that need an exist, and the market is creating them faster than it can get them out the door. If IPOs stumble in 2020, lots just won’t make it out before the market turns.
An IPO crowd
Yesterday, CNBC reported notes from Nasdaq CEO Adena Friedman and NYSE President Stacey Cunningham, each speaking about their expected IPO cadence in 2020. Friedman said there are “lot of companies looking to tap the public markets in the first half,” implying a strong flow of potential debuts.
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With $30 million in fresh funds, The Bouqs plans to plant its flower delivery business in Japan
The Bouqs plans to take a slice of Japan’s $6 billion flower market this year with a $30 million strategic growth round from Japanese enterprise business investor Yamasa. While The Bouqs still must compete with bigger contenders like 1-800-Flowers and FTD in the U.S., it will now have to take on incumbents like Ayoma Flower Market and FloraJapan, both of which also offer same-day delivery throughout the land of the rising sun.
So why Japan? According to The Bouqs founder and CEO John Tabis, his company had been looking to expand internationally for awhile and Japan seemed to fit well within that plan.
The Bouqs CEO and founder John Tabis
But as far as bigger competition in any country, Tabis is undeterred, telling TechCrunch there’s plenty of opportunities in the flower delivery business if you know where to look. “There’ve been four or five other startups that tried something similar — some of them no longer exist,” Tabis said. “But the thing that’s worked for us, the first is the way that we’ve sourced is unique and it’s really the foundation of our brand.”
The Bouqs sprung up in a wave of Silicon Valley funded flower delivery startups like BloomThat, Farm Girl and Urban Stems, all promising Pinterest -worthy bouquets at the click of a button. But what set it apart was its farm-direct supply chain, cutting out costs from middlemen and delivering flowers that last longer.
This particular round now puts The Bouqs up top as far as total funding raised among its flower delivery startup peers, bringing in $74 million in total funding to date, with competitor Urban Stems in second place with $27 million in funding, according to Crunchbase.
Tabis also tells TechCrunch the new funds will further the company’s development into brick-and-mortar stores and that it’s jumping into the wedding biz. As anyone who’s ever planned a wedding will tell you, it’s an industry ripe for disruption — with brides and grooms spending about 8% of the budget on the flowers alone.
One other renewed focus for the company will be its subscription business, keeping customers set up with a fresh bunch of flowers once the old bouquet is ready for tossing. “It’s sort of the linchpin of our business that’s grown very nicely…expanding both our revenue and profitability,” Tabis told TechCrunch.
The SVP of Yamasa, Norikazu Sano, also mentioned further expansion into Asia for the company in a company press release, so we could see The Bouqs in more international areas over time, if all goes right in Japan.
“This financing will enable us to fully realize our vision to create a global network of top-quality farms paired with a category-defining local floral brand enabled by proprietary supply chain technology and vertically integrated sourcing capabilities. We’re so excited for this next phase of the business, and all of the opportunities that lie ahead,” Tabis said.
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One day left for early-bird tickets to TC Sessions: Robotics + AI 2020
No one ever wants to pay more, and that’s as true for well-financed companies as it is for early-stage startup founders on a shoe-string budget. So if you love robots and machine learning, why spend more on your ticket to TC Sessions: Robotics + AI 2020? Prices go up on January 31, which means you have just one day left to buy an early-bird ticket. You’ll save a tidy $150 in the process. Sweet!
On March 3, roughly 1,500 attendees will spend the day delving into the future of robots, the AI that drives them and the people at the forefront. We’re talking some of the top makers, visionaries, founders, investors and engineers. Join your community for live interviews, panel discussions, demos, workshops, audience/speaker Q&As and world-class networking.
We’ve posted the day’s agenda, and we’ll add a few more surprises in the coming weeks. Here’s a quick peek at just some of the engaging speakers and presentations you’ll enjoy:
- Lending a Helping Robotic Hand: As populations age, caregivers in many countries are turning to robots for assistance. Vivian Chu, co-founder and CEO of Diligent Robotics, and Mike Dooley, co-founder and CEO of Labrador Systems, will join us to discuss the role technology can play in helping care for and assist those in need.
- Fostering the Next Generation of Robotics Startups: Robotics and AI are the future of many or most industries, but the barrier of entry is still difficult to surmount for many startups. Joshua Wilson, co-founder and CEO of Freedom Robotics, joins us to talk about how these companies are helping ease the first steps into the wider world of automation.
In a classic “but wait, there’s more” moment, our Pitch Night finalists will present live on the Main Stage. Don’t know what we’re talking about? Read more about Pitch Night here, and hey — we’re accepting applications until February 1. Don’t wait — toss your hat into the ring. It’s free, and you’ll have a chance to introduce your early-stage startup to a group of heavy-hitting influencers. What’s not to love?
TC Sessions: Robotics + AI 2020 takes place on March 3. You have plenty of time to plan the day, but your opportunity to save $150 runs out in one short day. Prices go up on January 31 — buy your early-bird ticket today.
Is your company interested in sponsoring or exhibiting at TC Sessions: Robotics + AI 2020? Contact our sponsorship sales team by filling out this form.
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