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Pinterest files confidentially to go public
Visual search engine Pinterest has joined a long list of high-flying technology companies planning to go public in 2019. The business has confidentially submitted paperwork to the Securities and Exchange Commission for an initial public offering slated for later this year, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal.
Pinterest declined to comment.
Founded in 2008 by Ben Silbermann, earlier reports indicated the company was planning to debut on the stock market in April. In late January, Pinterest took its first official step toward a 2019 IPO, hiring Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase as lead underwriters for its offering.
The company garnered a $12.3 billion valuation in 2017 with a $150 million financing.
Touting 250 million monthly active users, Pinterest has raised nearly $1.5 billion in venture capital funding from key stakeholders Bessemer Venture Partners, Andreessen Horowitz, FirstMark Capital, Fidelity and SV Angel. The business brought in some $700 million in ad revenue in 2018, per reports, a 50 percent increase year-over-year.
Pinterest employs 1,600 people across 13 cities, including Chicago, London, Paris, São Paulo, Berlin and Tokyo. The company says half its users live outside the U.S.
Pinterest will likely follow Lyft, Uber and Slack to the public markets, which have all filed confidential paperwork for IPOs or, in Slack’s case, a reported direct listing, expected in the coming months.
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Zoba raises $3 million to help mobility companies predict demand
Scooter share, bike share and ride hailing are quickly becoming staple commodities in cities all over the world. As companies in those respective spaces try to improve their economics, Zoba is aiming to contribute to those goals by predicting demand for scooters, bikes and, eventually, rides in particular areas. To support Zoba’s mission, the company has raised a $3 million seed round led by CRV with participation from Founder Collective, Mark Cuban and others.
Using spatial analytics, Zoba aims to better understand the relationships between different phenomena in order to improve the efficiency of cities. Mobility is Zoba’s first focus, Zoba co-founder Dan Brennan told TechCrunch. More specifically, Zoba looks to better understand the relationship between demand and environmental data (e.g. weather), as well as city layout. From there, Zoba helps mobility companies determine the best places to put their vehicles.
“The key is this type of spatial analytics and machine learning is very specific,” Brennan said. “You don’t see a lot of data scientists trained in this. What we do is say, ‘no matter what skill set of your data scientist, you can look at all this spatial and temporal stuff.’ We’ll make it like you have three really highly trained spatial data scientists.”
Zoba would not disclose which companies it’s working with, just that it’s working with some of the industry leaders in bike, scooter and car share. Down the road, Zoba also envisions working with on-demand delivery companies, as well as urban logistics companies.
“The world is experiencing a Cambrian explosion of smart mobility and logistics services, all requiring geo-based forecasting and optimization,” CRV general partner and Zoba board member Izhar Armony said in a statement. “We knew after meeting with the Zoba founders that they’re the best team to tackle this hard problem. What they’re doing will change the way we live and we’re excited for what’s to come.”
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Logistics startup Flexport just raised a SoftBank-led round at a whopping $3.2 billion valuation
Flexport, a 5.5-year-old, San Francisco-based full-service air and ocean freight forwarder, says it has raised $1 billion in fresh funding led by the SoftBank Vision Fund.
Earlier backers of the company, including Founders Fund, DST Global, Cherubic Ventures, Susa Ventures and SF Express, all participated in the round, which reportedly pegs the company’s post-money valuation at $3.2 billion.
According to Forbes, which broke the news, Flexport generated revenue of $471 last year, up from $224.8 million in 2017, thanks in part to some customers who the company says spend more than $10 million a year at Flexport for its help in managing their supply chains.
The company is apparently moving so fast, it hasn’t had a chance to update its marketing materials. CEO Ryan Petersen tells Forbes the company now employs 1,066 people across 11 offices and four warehouses around the world. Its site states it has 600 employees.
Axios reported last week that Flexport was in talks to raise money in a deal led by SoftBank that would value the company in the $3 billion range.
It had previously raised $305 million across five rounds, including, most recently, in April 2018, according to Crunchbase.
Flexport competes with numerous other freight forwarding online marketplaces that are focused on price comparison, as well as helping their clients book and track shipments. But its goal, seemingly, is to compete more directly with heavyweights like DHL, FedEx and UPS. In late 2017, it said it was beginning to charter its own aircraft. Petersen tells Forbes that Flexport now has four warehouses around the world, too.
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About.me acquired by mobile-first small business startup Broadly
Personal homepage startup About.me has been acquired. Again! The company, once bought by AOL for a reported $35 million, decided a couple years after the deal to go it alone, and spun About.me back out to become an independent company. Today, About.me announced it’s being acquired by the Oakland-based startup Broadly.
About.me founder and True Ventures partner Tony Conrad called the deal “definitely a meeting of the minds,” as About.me has been more recently focused on helping people and companies showcase their professional talents and skills, while Broadly creates tools that help small businesses stay connected to their customers.
Today Broadly offers web chat, text, email, online review collection and team messaging — all in its own mobile app.
However, its biggest draw is its online review platform that makes it easier for happy customers to quickly leave the business a positive review on any review site, including Google, Facebook, TripAdvisor and others.
Last September, Broadly raised $10 million in Series B funding, co-led by original investor Foundry Group and new partner Calibrate Ventures. The funding was allocated toward further product development and hiring — both things which an About.me acquisition can now help to expedite. The company also last year launched its small business-focused web chat feature in its app, and snagged the No. 107 spot on the 2018 Inc. 500 list of fastest-growing private companies in the U.S., which cited its 2017 revenue as $4.7 million.
Terms of the About.me deal were not disclosed, but it is an all-stock acquisition we understand, and one Conrad feels positive about.
In addition, the majority of About.me’s team is joining Broadly as a result of the acquisition, which will bring Broadly’s total team to more than 75. This includes About.me’s CEO Mindy Lauck, whose background includes time at Adobe Systems, NBCUniversal and E*Trade Financial. She becomes Broadly’s vice president of Product following the deal’s closure.
Conrad said he wanted to find About.me a new home with a company that was a good fit.
“It was important to the About.me leadership team to join forces with a company that had a strong go-to-market strategy and a similar level of passion for serving small business owners, who are an integral part of
keeping our economy strong and vibrant,” said Conrad. “We found that in Broadly and see the very real potential for powerful future growth as a result of this alignment,” he added.
At Broadly, Lauck will be focused on expanding the company’s existing product suite to support the full range of the small business owners’ needs — that will include About.me’s technology. The plan is to offer the About.me pages to Broadly’s small business user base going forward.
“The About.me product is another frictionless mechanism for helping small businesses promote themselves and start capturing leads, which aligns well with our mission and brand,” said Josh Melick, CEO and co-founder of Broadly, in a statement. “More personally, we’re thrilled to welcome the About.me team to the Broadly family – we’re even stronger together,” he added.
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Loop acquires ScreenPlay to build its streaming library
A new streaming startup called Loop Media is announcing its first acquisition — a 30-year-old company called ScreenPlay.
While you may not have heard of ScreenPlay, the company has licensed a library of 200,000 music videos and movie/game/TV trailers, which it broadcasts in thousands of venues for partners like Hard Rock Cafe, Norwegian Cruise Line, Yard House, Buffalo Wild Wings and Caesars Entertainment.
This announcement comes just a week after Loop officially came out of stealth — and in fact, co-founder and CEO Jon Niermann (previously an executive at EA and Disney) said he’s always seen ScreenPlay’s content library as the foundation for Loop’s business.
It also sounds like this deepens an existing relationship, with Loop previously making a minority investment in ScreenPlay. The idea is to preserve and even grow ScreenPlay’s existing business — bringing video to out-of-home locations — while also introducing new technology into the mix, including a mobile app for short-form video.
“[ScreenPlay] is a company that generates millions in top-line revenue, it’s profitable,” Niermann said. “As technology has evolved and been updated, we want to come in with our team and really help them grow that.”
There are plenty of other mobile apps featuring short videos, but Niermann said Loop can now take advantage of ScreenPlay’s content library, and also connect the venue experience with the app. In addition, he said Loop is building “a very streamlined, slick app” that offers better curation than most video services, as well as “a strong social component.”
The acquisition was for an undisclosed price, combining both cash and stock. Niermann noted that “the ScreenPlay team remains intact,” with founder and chairman Mark Vrieling joining Loop as its chief content officer.
He added that existing ScreenPlay customers will not experience any interruption in their service. The plan is to launch the Loop app and an improved ScreenPlay screencast system in the next six months.
“[The business] is going to be a hybrid,” he said. “We wanted to continue to have the business roots, so to speak, but everybody’s mobile, everybody’s viewing everywhere. The question for us is, how do you create something that’s unique, that truly is a seamless experience?”
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Citymapper announces subscription service for multiple transportation methods
Citymapper is becoming a fintech startup, sort of. The company announced a prepaid card called Citymapper Pass for users based in London. This new product is both a subscription service to aggregate all your transportation subscriptions and a plastic card to pay for your rides.
According to Wired, Citymapper will start with two weekly subscription packages. For £30 per week, you’ll get full access to zone 1 and 2 on TfL’s network. For an additional £10 per week, you’ll also get unlimited Santander bike rides and two rides using Citymapper’s ride-sharing service.
This isn’t exactly revolutionary for London commuters, but it’s a start. Eventually, the startup wants to add more transport methods, from dockless bikes to e-scooters and other private networks. But this is going to be a bit more complicated as the startup needs to sign a deal with each company.
You could imagine creating a custom package with your favorite transportation methods and pay once for all services. More interestingly, the plastic card is a good old prepaid card. You can top up your balance just like you’d top up your Revolut account and use that card if you’re traveling to a different zone.
The card should be compatible with Apple Pay and Google Pay. If you travel a lot, Citymapper lets you pause your subscription whenever you want — there’s no long-term commitment.
As urban mobility becomes more fragmented, Citymapper wants to act as an aggregator. Many people already rely on the app to calculate itineraries. But the startup now wants to go beyond mapping. It could be a way to monetize the service as well. You’ll be able to subscribe to Citymapper Pass in March or April.
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Made.com founder Ning Li launches cosmetics startup Typology
Meet Typology, a new Paris-based startup that designs and sells directly to consumer quality skincare and cosmetics products. The startup has been founded by Made.com co-founder Ning Li and is officially launching today.
“Typology is a relatively ambitious project. We want to challenge FMCG [fast-moving consumer goods] brands with a digital pure player,” Ning Li told me. “I spent all my career working in e-commerce. I’ve seen a lot of industries move from offline to online. But some industries, such as cosmetics, food and do-it-yourself, have been migrating to online channels more slowly.”
And it starts with a list of values. Typology wants to differentiate itself from cosmetics giants with simple lists of ingredients and no dangerous product for your skin or the environment. The company also promises that all its products are vegan, cruelty-free and made in France.
So the startup ticks all the right boxes. But if you’ve been following up-and-coming skincare companies, there are countless brands that make the same promises.
The main difference is that Typology doesn’t want to become yet another small-batch beauty brand. The team wants to create an e-commerce giant with multiple sub-brands, hundreds of products and an aggressive e-commerce strategy.
“Unilever, L’Oréal and P&G represent over 50 percent of the market. And on the other side, you have a ton of independent brands that are quite small and will probably never stand out,” Ning Li said.
Typology plans to launch 10 different product lines over the coming months. Each line will have its own concept and its own sub-brand. Everything has been developed in-house.
Today, the startup is launching three sub-brands. “Raw” is all about mixing products at home. You can order a kit and you’ll get oils, powders, spoons and a small box to create your own mask, hair oil, beard oil, etc. You can also order each product individually — Raw products are only made using one ingredient.
In the “Lab” product line, you’ll only find cosmetic serums. The company has launched six different tiny bottles for now. Each serum has its own set of properties depending on your needs.
Finally, “Ten” products are basic skincare products with less than 10 ingredients. The company is starting with face, hand and body moisturizers. Soon, the startup will also launch shower gels, shampoos, micellar water and a makeup remover.
When it comes to branding and packaging, Typology is betting everything on a minimalist design. I’m sure branding experts will tell you that clean, white labels mean transparency and simplicity. It’s also worth noting that Typology is a unisex brand.
The company wants to use recyclable packaging as much as possible by relying on glass and aluminum — you’ll get plastic bottles if you order bigger products though.
For now, Typology is only available in France, but the company plans to expand to other European countries very quickly. And they probably mean it as they have raised a significant seed round.
The startup has raised a $10 million funding round from Alven Capital, Marc Simoncini, Xavier Niel and Firstminute Capital. There are now 12 people working for Typology.
Some sub-brands will likely be instant hits while others might not attract that many customers. Typology is taking advantage of its bank account to try many different things and experiment when it comes to positioning. It’s going to be interesting to see how the product lineup evolves over the years.
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QuizUp founder launches Teatime, a mobile gaming platform with built-in video chat
At the end of 2016, Plain Vanilla founder Thor Fridriksson left the company he founded with the intent to take at least a year off of work.
His product QuizUp, a social trivia game that raised more than $40 million and said it had more than 100 million users, never truly found a way to monetize. After a few missteps, including a proposed TV deal that eventually got cancelled, Plain Vanilla was acquired by Glu Mobile for a deal reportedly valued at $7.5 million.
Fridriksson was only a few weeks into his planned yearlong vacation when he became restless and asked a few members of his core team at QuizUp — Gunnar Holmsteinn, Johann Thorvaldur Bergthorsson and Ymir Finnbogason — to start brainstorming with him about the future of mobile gaming.
That’s where the seed was planted for what would eventually become Teatime.
“The main thing we kept focusing on, and it seems straightforward and common sense but these things often do in retrospect, is why people play games,” said Fridriksson. “One of the main value propositions of playing a game is not about the game itself but about the human interaction you have while playing with someone — talking to the people you’re playing with and seeing their reactions.”
Teatime Live is a mobile gaming platform that allows users to interact with one another, face to face, while playing games on their phone through a built-in video chat. On top of the video chat, Teatime Live offers users Snapchat-style face filters called Game Faces, that are unique to each individual game on the platform. Players can take their earned game faces from one game to other games, and eventually, Fridriksson sees the opportunity for these items to be collectibles.
Most forms of games or sports have a social element built in. Whether it’s board games or physical sports or even video games, players have been able to communicate with one another in some way shape or form. That simply hasn’t been the case on mobile, which means that it’s still unclear what the best possible game for this platform looks like.
Teatime is debuting the platform with Hyperspeed, a simple racer game that the company developed in house. Teatime will continue to operate as a studio and build out other titles on top of the Teatime Live platform, but it also plans to work alongside other game developers as a publishing partner.
There are obvious concerns around enabling live video chat among strangers across the internet, and Teatime has tried to take steps toward preventing abuse.
To start, users are not allowed to play Teatime games as a guest. All players must sign up with Facebook, Gmail or a phone number, which means bad actors will have a more taxing time getting back on the platform with a new username.
More importantly, Teatime’s game-face filters require facial recognition technology, which means that the system knows when there is no face visible in the camera. Unless a user is playing with someone that they’ve friended, Teatime will blur the picture whenever a face isn’t visible in the camera.
As per usual, Teatime also has a team of moderators going through profile pictures, etc. and a user reporting system.
Teatime hopes to build games around relatively proven models in mobile gaming to earn revenue on its own games, while sharing revenue with other game developers who build on the platform.
Teatime has raised $9 million in Series A funding from Atomico and Index Ventures.
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MLG co-founder Mike Sepso joins 100 Thieves board of directors
Mike Sepso has joined the board of directors for 100 Thieves, an esports and content creation brand.
Sepso co-founded Major League Gaming in 2002, bringing the first true semblance of infrastructure to competitive gaming. MLG became the biggest independent esports league in the world, and played a big part in the evolution of esports as we know it today. In fact, MLG secured the first televised esports series ever with NBC sports, and eventually launched its own esports streaming platform.
MLG was acquired for $46 million by Activision Blizzard in 2016, but still lives as an esports content hub for Activision Blizzard titles like Call of Duty and Overwatch.
Sepso joins the 100 Thieves board alongside 100 Thieves founder and CEO Matthew “Nadeshot” Haag, president and COO John Robinson, Jake Cohen from Detroit Venture Partners and Scooter Braun (entertainment industry mogul who represents Justin Bieber and Ariana Grande).
“Mike is the godfather of esports,” said Haag. “The most influential thing that happened in my career was seeing Halo 2 competitions on Major League Gaming on TBS on the weekends. It was just mind-blowing that kids like me could play games competitively.”
Currently, Sepso serves as chairman and co-founder of the Electronic Sports Group, which is an advisory firm for executives across the finance, media, advertising and sports industries as they navigate esports deals.
“[Haag] been able to move quickly and build something that transcends esports and esports teams and has become an increasingly significant mainstream brand, and that opens up a lot of business opportunities,” said Sepso. “The strategy that 100 Thieves has put in place, using esports and gaming personalities as a way to bring this brand to market, I think it could eventually be much more than that.”
Before founding 100 Thieves, Haag was a decorated pro player in his own right and continues to be a popular Twitch streamer and YouTuber. Many esports orgs are founded by former pros, but Haag has taken a Silicon Valley approach to building out 100 Thieves, at least with regards to pace.
100 Thieves built out professional teams for a variety of titles very quickly. The company also secured capital from the likes of Sequoia, Marc Benioff, Drew Houston, Dan Gilbert, Tao Capital and Advancit Capital. Alongside traditional VCs and tech angels, 100 Thieves has also gotten investment from Scooter Braun and Drake.
Total funding for the org is $25 million.
Beyond titles and professional teams, 100 Thieves is diversifying its product early as well, with a content creator house and a line of apparel coming this spring.
The company recently signed a deal with Totino’s (yes, the pizza rolls) that includes an upcoming docuseries that offers a look behind the scenes at the 100 Thieves Call of Duty team.
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Resooma launches Resooma Bills to help ‘generation rent’ manage household expenditures
Resooma, the U.K. accommodation booking platform, is entering the fintech and utilities space with the launch of Resooma Bills, a new product to help “gen rent” manage household expenditures. The Cardiff, Wales-based company’s core offering is an accommodation marketplace primarily targeting students and other renters aged 18-30.
Previously trading under the brand name of University Cribs, Resooma was founded in 2014 by Jack Jenkins, Dan Jefferys and Christian Samuel as a solution aimed specifically at the student lettings market. The company has since broadened its remit to “fix the outdated methods” of renting a home and living together in shared accommodations.
“The existing processes, much of which [are] sitting offline, was a total mess and the numbers of people who have to experience it is climbing rapidly,” says co-founder Jenkins. “With more people living in shared accommodation post University life, we aim to appeal to a time constrained user base that want instant gratification from the products and services they use. We’re building a solution for generation rent.”
As a first step, Resooma set out to eradicate the viewing process, or at least make it digital, and help facilitate bookings online. This includes rolling out “VR tours” for homes, in a bid to gain the trust of renters booking online. “Student and young professionals are time sensitive, often nomadic in choosing where they work and live and as such our platform needs to cater for this,” says Jenkins. The startup also has plans to introduce rental guarantees and “Resooma Verified” stamps for rentals.
“Interestingly, we brand ourselves as a booking platform, a relatively unused term in the market we are in. People are used to booking directly on platforms for short-term accommodation, with the rise of Airbnb and Booking.com but our goal is to make this the norm for people renting medium or longer-term homes,” adds the Resooma co-founder.
Jenkins says the next problem the company wants to solve is around utilities and the splitting of household bills. “We’ve all sat there in our new home, admiring the wall paper for the first two weeks while we wait for the internet or Sky TV to be set up. It’s brainless really, and we’re fixing it,” he says.
“Our product journey will put utilities as part of the rental transaction, allowing users to set up their household bills directly through the platform at the time of booking. What’s more, we’ll allow you to split these bills evenly between all tenants. No more arguments because Tom didn’t pay for his share of the internet bill. Our solution will track utility payments, aim to source the cheapest deals for our customers and then automatically issue each of the housemates one single bill each month for their share of the total house bills.”
While part of the full product vision of Resooma, Resooma Bills will sit as a standalone product as well to allow users the flexibility to use the service for homes found away from the Resooma platform.
Asked to name Resooma’s competitors, Jenkins says the likes of Spotahome or Uniplaces are probably its most direct competition from a product perspective. “We differentiate ourselves through our adaptation of the utilities, as well as our focus on working with letting agents rather than directly with landlords,” he says.
With regards to utilities and bill splitting, London-based Acasa could also be considered a very direct competitor.
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