Startups
Auto Added by WPeMatico
Brand power vs. product power
David Friend is the CEO of cloud storage company Wasabi, and co-founder of cyber security company Carbonite, recently bought for $1.4 billion. Wasabi is his sixth startup.
More posts by this contributor
Most tech companies — particularly B2B companies — either don’t understand the power of a brand, or do a really poor job of creating one.
An informal survey of a dozen of my young CEO friends showed that, given the choice, 10 out of 12 — 83% — would rather spend an extra dollar on product development than brand-building. It is dangerous (or at least foolish) to assume that the ROI on product development is greater than the ROI on brand building.
As a serial entrepreneur and CEO, I have had to make this choice many times. In 2006, I co-founded PC backup company Carbonite . I left the company five years ago after taking it public and I no longer have any financial interest in it, which is why I can write about it now — it was just sold for $1.4 billion to OpenText. There were many other backup products on the market at that time and many more appeared over the first five years of the company’s life. I would argue that Carbonite was slicker than most of the others, but essentially every backup product accomplishes the same result.
Unlike Carbonite’s competitors, we focused on our brand. That meant raising more money than we would have if we were just investing in R&D. But, after five years of investing in our brand, we had eleven times the brand recognition of any other consumer backup company and we dominated the market.
Here’s why: a study by Kettlefire Creative showed that 59% of people prefer to buy brands that they have heard of. Since none of our competitors had widely recognized brands, we got most of that 59%. Of the remaining 41%, we fought it out on other criteria and won most of that as well. Put yourself in the shoes of a potential customer looking to back up their PC. What do you worry about? Well, before we even launched the company, we asked PC owners to choose the five most important attributes of their ideal backup company from a list of ten possible attributes, and we found the following:
1. Trustworthy: you won’t look at my files or allow anyone to see them (1127 votes)
2. Peace of mind: when I go to retrieve my backup, it will always be there (811 votes)
3. Reliable: it backs up everything and doesn’t stop (696 votes)
4. Helpful: if I lose my computer, I want to talk to a human who can help me (446 votes)
5. Easy: it should be simple and require little attention (444 votes)
The attributes that didn’t make the top five:
6. Fast: backups happen quickly
Powered by WPeMatico
Terradepth raises $8 million to build a fleet of autonomous deep-ocean data robots
Plenty of the ocean remains unexplored, even though it’s a huge trove of potentially valuable information. Current methods for mapping and gathering ocean data, especially deep-ocean data, generally require humans in the mix (even if controlling vehicles remotely), are immensely expensive and are not designed for long periods of operation. Startup Terradepth, founded by two ex-Navy SEALs and based in Austin, Texas, is aiming to change all that using autonomous submersible vehicles that can, if deployed as a fleet with adequate scale, provide access to deep-ocean information on a data-as-a-service basis.
The startup has raised $8 million in funding in a new round led by storage hardware company Seagate Technology, and the funding will help it pursue its ambitious goal of demonstrating their technology at work in an open-water environment by next summer. From there, it hopes to scale its operations the following year, and ultimately operate an entire networked fleet of its fully autonomous underwater robots, which it calls “Autonomous Hybrid Vehicles,” or AxV.
Terradepth says that its technology will be able to operate at a scale and cost not previously possible because of their use of autonomous navigation, and it will aim to offer raw data, information processed through their own machine-learning powered analytics layer, or cloud-based third-party analytics. They aim to offer multispectral imaging, surveillance and monitoring/forecasting services for off-shore equipment and resources.
In addition to co-founders Joe Wolfel and Judson Kauffman, Terradepth’s small team includes a range of roboticists and engineers with expertise in both software and hardware. Their vehicles are designed to alternate between deep ocean passes and trips to the water’s surface, with underwater AxV communicating with the surface-based robots, which are simultaneously recharging, which then pass on data collected to satellites for relaying back to data centers and customers.
Powered by WPeMatico
Where top VCs are investing in digital health
The world of healthcare has notoriously been described as “broken” — plagued with high-friction workflows, sky-high costs and convoluted business models.
Over the past several years, a long list of innovative startups and salivating venture investors have pinned their focus on repairing the healthcare industry, but its digital transformation still appears to be in the very early innings. After a record-setting 2018, however, digital health investing continued to reach meteoric heights in 2019.
Mammoth pools of capital have flooded into various sub-verticals and business models, backing collections of new B2B and B2C companies focused on optimizing healthcare workflows, improving healthcare access and offering lower-cost distribution models. Over the past two years, digital health startups have raised well over $10 billion in funding across nearly 1,000 deals, according to data from Pitchbook and Crunchbase.
As we close out another strong year for innovation and venture investing in the sector, we asked nine leading VCs who work at firms spanning early to growth stages to share what’s exciting them most and where they see opportunity in the sector:
- Annie Case, Kleiner Perkins
- Zavain Dar, Lux Capital
- Adam Goulburn, Lux Capital
- Kristin Baker Spohn, CRV
- Raju Rishi, RRE Ventures
- Olivia Lew, General Catalyst
- Bill Liao, SOSV
- Jennifer Hartt, Ben Franklin Technology Partners
- John Prendergass, Ben Franklin Technology Partners
Participants discuss trends in digital therapeutics, telehealth, mental health and the latest in biotech and medical devices, while also diving into startups improving medical practitioner efficiency, evaluating the evolving regulatory environment and debating valuations and offering a ‘temp check’ on the market for digital health startups leveraging ML.
Annie Case, Kleiner Perkins
Although Kleiner Perkins has a long history of investing in iconic health companies, we believe it is still the early innings of digital health as a category today.
When I evaluate new opportunities in the space, I often start by thinking through how the company will move the needle on cost, quality, and access to care — the “iron triangle” of health care systems. Conventional wisdom has been that it’s impossible to improve all three dimensions simultaneously, but we are seeing companies leverage technology to shift this paradigm in meaningful ways.
It’s no longer just a promise. For example, Viz.ai is using artificial intelligence to detect and alert stroke teams to suspected large vessel occlusion strokes, enabling patients to get treatment faster. Their workflows improve access to life-saving care, deliver higher quality through reduced time to treatment (every minute counts as ‘time is brain’ in stroke care), and dramatically reduce the costs associated with long-term disability.
We are also seeing companies provide this type of tech-enabled care outside of the hospital setting. Modern Health is a mental health benefits platform that employers are making available to their employees. The platform triages individual employees to the right level of care, providing clinical care to those with diagnosable depression or anxiety, and making self-guided or preventative care available to everyone else. Their solution improves quality and access by offering mental health services to every employee and reduces the cost associated with untreated mental illness, lost productivity, or employee churn.
Heading into 2020, we’re eager to back digital health companies in new areas that leverage technology to impact cost, quality, and access. A few spaces that I’m excited about are behavioral health (mental health, substance abuse, addiction, etc), care navigation, digital therapeutics, and new models integrating telehealth, remote care and AI to better leverage medical professionals’ time.
Zavain Dar and Adam Goulburn, Lux Capital
Below are some thoughts and coming predictions on health tech broadly:
- Digital therapeutics continue to pick up steam — on the back of Pear and Akili, more companies push to FDA and enter the market. In addition, broader consumer platforms like Calm and Headspace look to broaden their offerings by investigating clinical approvals.
- At least one major pharma looks to expand its consumer surface area by acquiring one of the new digital, consumer-facing generics platform (ex Hims, Ro, NuRx).
- Venture funding for biotech continues to boom with at least three Series A’s of $100M or more in size.
- Drug discovery for neurodegeneration sees a renaissance. High-profile failings of Biogen and the beta-amyloid hypothesis sees a shift of innovation to early-stage biotech and venture creation.
- Big pharma has its DeepMind moment acquiring at least one machine-learning (AI) enabled drug discovery company.
- Clinical trial tech investments heat up; new companies and technologies emerge to make trials patients first and systems get smarter at finding the right patients at their point of care; large incumbents like IQVIA, LabCorp and PPD get acquisitive.
- At least three traditional Sand Hill Road tech venture firms open life science practices or raise dedicated funds.
- Machine learning targets chemistry driven by large advancements in transformer (NLP) models; has the time for computational chemistry finally come?
- HCIT sees a renaissance driven by increased CIO responsibility towards data interoperability. Companies either working on federated ML to allow systems to speak to each other or lightweight edge applications enabling rapid clinical deployment will see quick uptake and traction, until now impossible in HC.
Kristin Baker Spohn, CRV
In the last 10 years, digital health has exploded. Over $16B has been invested in the sector by VCs and we’ve seen IPOs from Livongo, Progyny and Health Catalyst, just in the last year alone. That said, there’s still a lot that mystifies people about the sector — there are spots that are overheated and models that will struggle to deliver venture scale outcomes. I’ve seen digital health evolve first hand as both an operator and investor, and I’m more excited than ever about the future of the space.
A few areas and trends that I’ve been following recently include:
Powered by WPeMatico
Arbe raises $32 million to bring its high-resolution radar to autonomous vehicles
It’s not enough for an autonomous vehicle to see the world around it. These vehicles need to understand in real time what they’re seeing.
That understanding piece is critical, and it requires being able to identify objects in real time and in any environmental condition. It can mean the difference between an autonomous vehicle that appropriately notices and ignores a plastic bag floating by and one that slams on its brakes.
Tel Aviv-based startup Arbe has developed a high-resolution radar chipset that it says is a game changer for the automotive industry. Now, with a fresh injection of $32 million in capital, it’s pushing to bring it into production and into the hands of Tier 1 suppliers.
Arbe said Monday that it has raised $32 million in a Series B funding round from a number of new investors, including BAIC Capital, Catalyst CEL, MissionBlue Capital and AI Alliance, a joint venture fund that includes Hyundai, SK Telecom and Hanwha Asset Management. Existing investors Canaan Partners Israel, iAngels, 360 Capital Partners, O.G. Tech Ventures and OurCrowd also participated.
Arbe will use the capital to hire more employees. But its big focus in the coming year is to bring its radar systems into full production.
“With the funds raised, Arbe will continue to deploy to the market a real breakthrough in radar technology that empowers Tier 1 automakers and OEMs to finally replace their legacy chipsets with one that truly meets the safety requirements of NCAP and ADAS for years ahead,” CEO Kobi Marenko said in a statement.
Arbe already has five Tier 1 customers — two in China and three in Europe, Marenko told TechCrunch. Marenko wouldn’t name the suppliers.
Arbe developed a high-resolution radar chipset designed to help autonomous vehicles, and even passenger vehicles equipped with advanced driver assistance systems, detect and identify objects. The technology can separate, identify and track hundreds of objects in high horizontal and vertical resolution to a long range in a wide field of view. Arbe says its radar chipset generates an image 100 times more detailed than any other solution on the market today. The system is then able to take those images and simultaneously localize and map the environment.
The high-resolution radar chipset resolves a number of issues found in legacy chipsets, Marenko said, including eliminating false alarms. Arbe’s chipsets also can in real time process massive amounts of information generated by 4D imaging, and mitigate mutual radar interference. A radar system that has high-resolution object separation in azimuth and elevation will theoretically lead to more accurate decision making.
Arbe is so confident in its radar chipset that Marenko says it will enable Level 3 automation in passenger vehicles without requiring lidar, or light detection and ranging radar. Level 3 is a designation by SAE that means conditional automation in which a driver must still be prepared to intervene.
Powered by WPeMatico
Buy a demo table at TC Sessions: Robotics+AI 2020 while you can
Early-stage startup founders heed this call. Lock down your opportunity to exhibit your early-stage startup in front of a veritable who’s who in the robotics and AI industries while you can. Yes, it’s only December. And yes, TC Sessions: Robotics+AI 2020 takes place months from now on March 3 in Berkeley. Here’s why timing matters.
We have a limited number of demo tables, and they’re going fast — only nine left. Get ahead of the curve and buy your Early-Stage Startup Exhibitor Package now. It includes four tickets to the event, so you and your crew can showcase your startup in front of 1,500 influential attendees. We’re talking about the exact demographic that can help move your business forward.
A one-day event, TC Sessions: Robotics+AI focuses exclusively on these two world-changing technologies. Programming features in-depth interviews, panel discussions, Q&As, workshops and networking opportunities with the industries’ leading minds, makers, technologists, researchers and investors.
As one of a select number of exhibitors, you’ll place your startup in the path of those industry leaders. Here are just a few of the luminaries scheduled to speak at this year’s event:
- Noah Campbell-Ready, founder and CEO of Built Robotics, a company that’s developed an autonomous bulldozer.
- Tessa Lau, CEO and founder of Dusty Robotics. Her company developed a construction-site robot that helps automate building layouts.
- Daniel Blank, CEO of Toggle, a startup that builds robots to fabricate and assemble rebar.
- Tye Brady, Amazon Robotics’ chief technologist. Brady will join us to talk about Amazon’s robotics efforts and the future of the automation-driven workforce.
- Stuart Russell, computer scientist and world-leading expert on AI, joins us to discuss how today’s researchers and founders will determine AI’s ultimate impact on humanity.
That’s an awesome start to the speaker lineup, and we’re just getting started. We’re announcing more every week, so keep checking back. Take a look at last year’s agenda to get a sense of the kind of programming you can expect.
Hey, there’s more than one way to shine at this event. Check out Pitch Night, our new pitch competition. It’s totally free and open to founders of early-stage startups focused on robotics and AI. Simply apply here by February 1.
TC Sessions: Robotics+AI 2020 takes place on March 3 at UC Berkeley’s Zellerbach Hall. Don’t miss this opportunity to step in the spotlight. Buy an Early-Stage Startup Exhibitor Package and present your product and company to the top movers and shakers in robotics and AI.
Is your company interested in sponsoring or exhibiting at TC Sessions: Robotics & AI 2020? Contact our sponsorship sales team by filling out this form.
Powered by WPeMatico
Building robotic safety inspectors nabs Gecko Robotics $40 million
Gecko Robotics has landed $40 million in financing as it looks to build an additional 40 robots over the next year to meet what the company sees as growing demand for its safety and infrastructure monitoring services.
“We are growing fast solving critical infrastructure problems that affect our lives, and can even save lives,” says Jake Loosararian, Gecko Robotics’ 28-year-old co-founder and chief executive officer, in a statement. “At our core, we are a robot-enabled software company that helps stop life-threatening catastrophes. We’ve developed a revolutionary way to use robots as an enabler to capture data for predictability of infrastructure; reducing failure, explosions, emissions and billions of dollars of loss each year.”
In the three years since its launch in 2016, Gecko Robotics has managed to grow from a small team of Pittsburgh robotics experts hailing from Carnegie Mellon. Indeed, the company has added more than 100 new employees. The hiring push has been largely around creating a team of qualified experts in particular market segments who can operate the robots that Gecko deploys to industrial work sites.
There’s been something of a robotics revolution in the safety and compliance market over the past few years. From automated assembly lines to warehouses and now to chemical plants and refineries, robots are making their presence felt.
And Gecko isn’t the only company that’s trying to tackle the market. Other companies like Invert Robotics, a Christchurch, New Zealand-based company, has built its own competitive robotic safety inspector.
The initial pitch from Gecko managed to attract angel investors like Mark Cuban, Deep Nishar (a managing partner at SoftBank), Josh Reeves and Jake Seid, the managing director at Stone Bridge Ventures.
Now the company adds the Midwestern venture capital juggernaut Drive Capital to its stable of investors.
“We are very excited for the future of robotics in industrial inspection. The Gecko Robotics team are revolutionizing an industry that is in need of a real upgrade and will save lives,” said Mark Kvamme, lead investor and partner at Drive Capital. “I see amazing potential for Gecko’s business model, they are on the path to become a market leader in their industry.”
Gecko Robotics has already opened a 20,000-square-foot office in Houston, and has offices in Houston, Austin and Pittsburgh.
“The robots are amazing, but they’re not going to be able to complete the job done by these experts who have experience of 30 to 40 years,” says Loosararian. “We have thought leaders who go out in the field… they take the robots out and they use their own manual ability and knowledge to provide the expertise to the clients.”
Gecko currently has 60 robots in its stable of robots and will add at least another 40 over the course of the year. “The product at the end is the software license that they pay for annually,” Loosararian says.
Powered by WPeMatico
Solve, the startup creating an interactive ‘Law & Order’ for social media, raises $20 million
When “Law & Order” ended its 20-year run in 2010, it had already cemented its place as one of the longest-running television dramas in history. Its success was a testament to the enduring popularity of a good mystery.
Mining that same well of a demand for whodunnits, a roughly one-year-old Los Angeles-based startup called Solve has raised $20 million in financing to update the genre for a new generation of media consumers.
Its eponymously titled social media programming, available on Instagram and Snap, has managed to nab roughly 30 million interactions over the year-and-a-half that it distributed its productions. Now the company is launching a true crime podcast on the iHeartMedia and Apple platforms to tap into another potentially high-growth market.
Solve began as a series developed within the mobile-focused entertainment studio, Vertical Networks. Helmed by Tom Wright and financed by Elisabeth Murdoch (through her Freelands Ventures fund, which Wright also managed) and Snap, the company was one of the early entrants to raise cash as a production studio for mobile content. But it was far from the only studio to see money in mobile-first entertainment. All of the major internet-age media companies had their own mobile strategies.
Murdoch eventually replaced Wright (so that he could work on spinning up Solve as an independent entity) and sold Vertical Networks two months ago to the online media startup, Whistle, for an undisclosed amount.
“I spent a year looking deep, deep, deep into audience behavioral data on Snap and Facebook,” Wright says. “The DNA of what I thought [audience] sensibilities was leading towards was this format.”
As Vertical Networks was winding down, Solve was spinning up with help from Lightspeed Venture Partners, Upfront Ventures and Advancit Capital.
“We’ve seen incredibly popular crime mystery shows across media, including podcasts like Serial and Dirty John, TV shows like Making a Murderer and Law & Order, and movies like The Usual Suspects and Gone Girl,” said Jeremy Liew, partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners, in a statement. “Games have attained a first class status as media but we’ve yet to see a crime mystery format game achieve the same success, and Solve is going to right that wrong.”
The gamification element that’s made Solve’s episodes resonate with mobile audiences on social platforms will be a small part of the initial series, says Wright, with plans to expand the interactive elements going forward.
Produced in partnership with SALT audio, whose previous work includes “Blackout” and “Carrier” and iHeartMedia, the 10-episode series uses the same “ripped from the headlines” storytelling for its 30-minute broadcasts and offers listeners clues in leaked audio files, voicemails, courtroom testimony and other evidence to try to guess the killer.
For now, Solve is content to be a studio producing ad-supported media for platforms like Apple, Snap, Facebook, iHeartMedia and other distributors, according to Wright. It’s a different path than studios like Quibi, which is creating its own streaming service dedicated to mobile storytelling and backed by many of the major Hollywood studios.
The current pace of production means that Solve is making 18 original episodes per month. For the 40-year-old Wright, Solve represents a fourth foray into the world of startups. And while he’s not a fan of the crime or mystery genre himself, Wright said that the data around engagement was too compelling to not try to launch a business around it.
“The Internet has changed how we interact with the world from taxis to news to shopping. We believe that Solve can fundamentally change how we interact with narrative video storytelling,” said Mark Suster, managing partner, Upfront Ventures, in a statement. “When we heard Tom’s vision for short-form video that you not only watch but also must ‘solve‘, we knew that it had enormous potential.”
Powered by WPeMatico
Licious raises $30M to grow its meat and seafood e-commerce platform in India
Licious, a Bangalore-based startup that sells fresh meat and seafood online, has secured $30 million in a new financing round as it looks to expand its footprint in the nation.
The new financing round, dubbed Series E, for the four-year-old startup was led by Singapore-based Vertex Growth Fund, it said Monday. Existing investors 3one4 Capital, Bertelsmann India Investments, Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia and India and Sistema Asia Fund also participated in the round.
The Series E pushes Licious’ to-date raise to $94.5 million.
Licious operates an eponymous e-commerce platform to sell meat and seafood in cities in India (Bengaluru, NCR, Hyderabad, Chandigarh, Panchkula, Mohali, Mumbai, Pune, and Chennai). The startup does not stock any inventory, so any raw material it procures, it processes and ships on the same or next day. It processes more than 17,000 orders every day.
The startup, which employs more than 2,000 people, has built its own supply chain network to control sourcing and production of food, it said. Licious executives said the startup is growing at a healthy rate of 300% year-over-year and aims to generate $140 million in annual revenue by 2023.
Licious will use the fresh capital to expand to more cities in India, and launch new products, said Vivek Gupta, co-founder of the startup.
The startup competes with Bangalore-based FreshToHome, which has amassed more than 650,000 customers in 10 cities in India. As of August, when FreshToHome raised $20 million in a new funding round, the startup was handling 14,000 orders a day.
Gupta said the vast majority of the Indian meat and seafood industry remains unorganized, which has created an immense opportunity for startups to address the sector. The cold-chain market of India is estimated to grow to $37 billion in the next five years, according to industry estimates.
“The traditional meat and seafood industry are in dire need of tech intervention, quality standardisation and a skilled talent pool. Licious is working towards creating these differentiators and will stay committed towards elevating India’s meat and seafood experience,” he said.
Powered by WPeMatico
With $4B food delivery acquisition, Korea poised to enter upper tier of startup hubs
Seoul and South Korea may well be the secret startup hub that (still) no one talks about.
While often dwarfed by the scale and scope of the Chinese startup market next door, South Korea has proven over the last few years that it can — and will — enter the top-tier of startup hubs.
Case in point: Baedal Minjok (typically shortened to Baemin), one of the country’s leading food delivery apps, announced an acquisition offer by Berlin-based Delivery Hero in a blockbuster $4 billion transaction late this week, representing potentially one of the largest exits yet for the Korean startup world.
The transaction faces antitrust review before closing, since Delivery Hero owns Baemin’s largest competitor Yogiyo, and therefore is conditional on regulatory approval. Delivery Hero bought a majority stake in Yogiyo way back in 2014.
What’s been dazzling though is to have witnessed the growth of this hub over the past decade. As TechCrunch’s former foreign correspondent in Seoul five years ago and a university researcher locally at KAIST eight years ago, I’ve been watching the growth of this hub locally and from afar for years now.
While the country remains dominated by its chaebol tech conglomerates — none more important than Samsung — it’s the country’s startup and culture industries that are driving dynamism in this economy. And with money flooding out of the country’s pension funds into the startup world (both locally and internationally), even more opportunities await entrepreneurs willing to slough off traditional big corporate career paths and take the startup route.
Baemin’s original branding was heavy on the illustrations.
Five years ago, Baemin was just an app for chicken delivery with a cutesy and creative interface facing criticism from restaurant franchise owners over fees. Now, its motorbikes are seen all over Seoul, and the company has installed speakers in many restaurants where a catchy whistle and the company’s name are announced every time there is an online delivery order.
(Last week when I was in Seoul, one restaurant seemingly received an order every 1-3 minutes with a “Baedal Minjok Order!” announcement that made eating a quite distracted experience. Amazing product marketing tactic though that I am surprised more U.S.-based food delivery startups haven’t copied yet).
The strengths of the ecosystem remain the same as they have always been. A huge workforce of smart graduates (Korea has one of the highest education rates in the world), plus a high youth unemployment and underemployment rate have driven more and more potential founders down the startup path rather than holding out for professional positions that may never materialize.
What has changed is venture capital funding. It wasn’t so long ago that Korea struggled to get any funding for its startups. Years ago, the government initiated a program to underwrite the creation of venture capital firms focused on the country’s entrepreneurs, simply because there was just no capital to get a startup underway (it was not uncommon among some deals I heard of at the time for a $100k seed check to buy almost a majority of a startup’s equity).
Now, Korea has become a startup target for many international funds, including Goldman Sachs and Sequoia. It has also been at the center of many of the developments of blockchain in recent years, with the massive funding boom and crash that market sustained. Altogether, the increased funding has led to a number of unicorn startups — a total of seven according to the The Crunchbase Unicorn Leaderboard.
And the country is just getting started – with a bunch of new startups looking poised to driven toward huge outcomes in the coming years.
Thus, there continues to be a unique opportunity for venture investors who are willing to cross the barriers here and engage. That said, there are challenges to overcome to make the most of the country’s past and future success.
Perhaps the hardest problem is simply getting insight on what is happening locally. While China attracts large contingents of foreign correspondents who cover everything from national security to the country’s startups and economy, Korea’s foreign media coverage basically entails coverage of the funny guy to the North and the occasional odd cultural note. Dedicated startup journalists do exist, but they are unfortunately few and far between and vastly under-resourced compared to the scale of the ecosystem.
Plus, similar to New York City, there are also just a number of different ecosystems that broadly don’t interact with each other. For Korea, it has startups that target the domestic market (which makes up the bulk of its existing unicorns), plus leading companies in industries as diverse as semiconductors, gaming, and music/entertainment. My experience is that these different verticals exist separately from each other not just socially, but also geographically as well, making it hard to combine talent and insights across different industries.
Yet ultimately, as valuations soar in the Valley and other prominent tech hubs, it is the next tier of startup cities that might well offer the best return profiles. For the early investors in Baemin, this was a week to celebrate, perhaps with some fried chicken delivery.
Powered by WPeMatico
Startups Weekly: This year in startups
Welcome back to Startups Weekly, a weekend newsletter that dives into the week’s noteworthy startups and venture capital news. Before I jump into today’s topic, let’s catch up a bit. Last week, I wrote about U.S. VC activity in Europe. Before that, I noted Chinese investor activity in Africa.
Remember, you can send me tips, suggestions and feedback to kate.clark@techcrunch.com or on Twitter @KateClarkTweets. If you’re new, you can subscribe to Startups Weekly here.
Hello from Berlin, where we’ve just wrapped our annual conference, TechCrunch Disrupt Berlin. Top investors shared insight into European venture capital, well-known individuals and firms made announcements (large and small), and entrepreneurs pontificated about the future of startups in their respective regions.
As I spoke with various early-stage startup founders presenting at the event, chatted with U.S. and European venture capitalists and brain-stormed with my colleagues, I reflected on my last 12 months inside the tech bubble. Soon, I’ll be publishing an extended look at what I see as the 10 biggest themes in startups and VC in 2019. But for now, here’s a sneak peek at my top picks.
- SoftBank screw ups. From WeWork to Wag to Fair.com, SoftBank made headlines over and over again this year—for all the wrong reasons.
- WeWork woes. SoftBank’s star portfolio company struggled the most. This was the biggest story of the year and its complete with drugs, private jets, burned cash and upset employees.
- CEO exodus. From Away co-founder Steph Korey to WeWork’s Adam Neumann, a whole lot of executives exited their posts this year.
- Unicorn IPO struggles. Uber, Lyft, Pinterest, Zoom and more unicorns went public this year. Some fared better than others.
- The fight for seed. There was more competition than ever at the earliest stage of venture capital. As a result, investors got creative, hired fresh faces, raised new funds and even gave founders lavish gifts.
- Y Combinator growth. Everyone’s favorite accelerator got a whole lot bigger this year. Not only did its cohorts swell, but its president, Sam Altman, stepped down and the firm cemented changes to its investment process.
- VCs + direct listings = <3. When venture capitalist weren’t busy gossiping about WeWork and SoftBank, they were debating a new and innovative path to the public markets: direct listings.
- Every startup is a bank. Brex raised hundreds of millions, Stripe launched a corporate card, credit card startup Deserve nabbed $50 million. 2019 was the year that consumer banking upstarts became the new e-scooter businesses.
- VC isn’t the only option. While VCs were going crazy for consumer financial services, companies like Clearbanc and Capital expanded to give founders alternatives to venture capital, like revenue-based financing and venture debt.
- The diversity disaster persists. Women still only raise 2.8% of venture capital in the U.S., up from 2.2%. Enough said.
If you like this newsletter, you will definitely enjoy Equity, which brings the content of this newsletter to life — in podcast form! Join myself and Equity co-host Alex Wilhelm every Friday for a quick breakdown of the week’s biggest news in venture capital and startups.
This week, I sat down with Chris Mayo, head of primary markets at the London Stock Exchange, to discuss the rise of direct listings.
Equity drops every Friday at 6:00 am PT, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.
Powered by WPeMatico