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This Week in Apps: Sneak peek at TikTok shopping, new iOS and Android betas, kids’ app Prodigy hit with FTC complaint
Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the weekly TechCrunch series that recaps the latest in mobile OS news, mobile applications and the overall app economy.
The app industry is as hot as ever, with a record 218 billion downloads and $143 billion in global consumer spend in 2020.
Consumers last year also spent 3.5 trillion minutes using apps on Android devices alone. And in the U.S., app usage surged ahead of the time spent watching live TV. Currently, the average American watches 3.7 hours of live TV per day, but now spends four hours per day on their mobile devices.
Apps aren’t just a way to pass idle hours — they’re also a big business. In 2019, mobile-first companies had a combined $544 billion valuation, 6.5x higher than those without a mobile focus. In 2020, investors poured $73 billion in capital into mobile companies — a figure that’s up 27% year-over-year.
This week, we’ve got a first look at one of TikTok’s early e-commerce tests, which involves a program for sellers involving product anchors on videos and the option for affiliate sales. We’re also digging into the new iOS and Android betas, the FTC complaint against math app Prodigy and more.
Top Stories
TikTok tests a new e-commerce experience in Indonesia
The Financial Times recently reported TikTok was preparing to launch a range of new e-commerce experiences in 2021, including the ability for creators to share links to products, support for affiliate sales, and even livestreamed shopping. Now, we’ve got a first look at some of the live tests around e-commerce that TikTok has in progress.
The company recently launched a “Seller University” website aimed at its Indonesian audience, where it details how brands can advertise their products on video. Here, TikTok explains brands have two ways to advertise, either by making their own videos or by working with affiliates.
“If you choose to sell through your personal page, you can then display products via livestreaming or short videos, with product anchors embedded in your content. When customers view your content, they can be redirected to the corresponding product detail page by clicking on the product anchor,” the site explains.
The Seller University also details other information, like how to sign up to be a TikTok seller and what sort of products are prohibited, along with other rules and guidelines.
Image Credits: TikTok
TikTok Sellers have to provide their contact information, including location, phone, email, shop and warehouse location, and other required documentation to be approved. They can then set up a Seller profile, where they can manage other users associated with their account. Once live as a Seller on the app, they’ll have a “TikTok Shop” on the second tab on their profile, which users can view when they visit the page.
When their videos showing their products are viewed, there are “product anchors” embedded in the content. Clicking on these anchors will redirect the viewer to the product detail page where they can transact. In addition, brands can collaborate with TikTok influencers to promote their products through a new “TikTok Affiliate” program.
Image Credits: TikTok
TikTok told TechCrunch the program is a test of its e-commerce solutions in Indonesia, and one of several product tests in the area of e-commerce.
Consumer advocacy groups file FTC complaint against edtech app Prodigy
A coalition of 20 consumer advocacy groups, led by the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, have filed an FTC complaint against the popular edtech app Prodigy, which offers a math learning app for web and mobile. The app is designed much like modern-day freemium games, with math “battles” designed to improve math skills, grades and test scores.
The complaint alleges a variety of abuses, including how it aggressively pushes kids using the free version provided to schools to nag parents for the paid $59 annual subscription, which includes a richer gaming experience.
The groups also take issue with the app’s in-app rewards and badges — some of which are only available to paid users, including fancier loot boxes — saying these features cause division between those who pay and those who can’t. And it alleges that Prodigy’s claims about educational improvements don’t hold merit.
In response, Prodigy says it takes the concerns seriously, but over 95% of users play the game for free and the business model involving the paid membership is how free access is provided.
“Without this model, we would be required to put all of our educational content behind a paywall, which contradicts our mission of providing full access to fun and engaging math learning,” a company spokesperson said. “The alternative would be to generate revenue via advertising, which is not a model we believe best benefits or protects our users. We never show third-party ads on our platform, nor do we sell or lease any other user information to third parties,” they noted.
The FTC has stepped up its enforcement over how apps targeting children can behave, with a focus on data collection practices and COPPA violations, which has resulted in fines for apps like TikTok and YouTube. This complaint, however, is not about children’s privacy, but rather how they’re being marketed to via edtech.
Weekly News
Platforms: Apple
Apple rolls out iOS 14.5, beta 2. The update includes a new Apple Music interface with the ability to share lyrics on social and use new swipe gestures; new Shortcuts actions for taking screenshots, setting screen orientation switching between cellular data modes, and more; expanded support for iPad privacy features (in relation to shutting off the microphone); and more than 200 new emoji.
The most notable new emoji include the heart on fire, exhaling face, face in clouds, gender options for people with beards and an updated syringe that removes the blood, making it more useful for conversations about the COVID vaccine.
Image Credits: Emojipedia (opens in a new window)
Apple welcomed the teams from 13 app companies in its inaugural cohort for Apple’s Entrepreneur Camp for Black Founders and Developers. The program focuses on building technical skills and designing a great user experience through sessions, hands-on labs, one-on-ones with Apple experts and engineers, and more. VC firm Harlem Capital will also offer mentorship.
Participants include fitness app B3am, news app Black, music app Bar Exam, 3D photos app Film3D, MIDI Controller app FormKey, healthcare app Health Auto Export, gardening app Hologarden, remote learning solution Hubli (beta testing), game Justice Royale, sneaker enthusiast app Kickstroid, nail art app Nailstry, social app Peek: Movies & TV Shows and music app TuneBend.
Platforms: Google
Google launches the first developer preview of Android 12. The update includes new privacy controls; pre-set password complexity levels of high, medium and low; other improved user experience tools and app compatibility improvements; the ability to transcode media into higher-quality formats like the AV1 image format; transitions and animations for notifications, plus the ability to decorate notifications with custom content; enrollment-specific IDs for employee-owned devices; streamlined credential management for unmanaged devices; an improved screenshot editor; better support for multi-channel audio; Project Mainline improvements; and more.
Google’s Play Store adds support for Nearby Sharing. The feature allows users to share apps and updates with nearby Android devices.
Google suspended the Trump 2020 app from the Play Store for non-functionality. The app would either hang upon first launch or immediately reported a server error. Google says the app was in violation of its policies around non-functional apps, but the app can return if it’s fixed.
E-commerce
YouTube says it’s now beta testing a new e-commerce shopping experience in the app that allows creators to market products to fans, who can then buy directly on YouTube. The feature, which aims to compete with TikTok’s growing shopping ambitions, will expand later in 2021 beyond the initial group of creators.
Image Credits: YouTube
Fintech
Robinhood’s CEO Vlad Tenev testified before Congress this week over the GameStop frenzy. Tenev denied helping hedge funds and asked for the SEC to modify trading rules. AOC pointed out that Robinhood isn’t truly free, it’s just hiding the cost from retail investors by subsidizing free trades with payment for order flow. (A percentage of its revenue Tenev ridiculously claimed he couldn’t recall, saying only “it’s over 50%.”)
From the hearing, via CSPAN
Social
TikTok parent ByteDance is exploring a sale of its TikTok operations in India to Bangalore-headquartered Glance, a mobile content platform founded by InMobi founder Naveen Tewari. Glance operates a TikTok rival Roposo, which has seen massive growth since TikTok was banned in India over national security concerns. The two companies — ByteDance and Glance parent InMobi Pte — share an investor with SoftBank, which initiated the talks, per a Bloomberg report.
Instagram is fixing the iMessage bug. Some suspected the issue was related to Apple and Facebook’s ongoing public battles, but Instagram said the problem where Instagram links in iMessage wouldn’t show a preview was just a bug. The company noted a fix will arrive soon.
TikTok inks a multi-year deal with UFC which includes livestreams of pre- and post-fight content, and other behind-the-scenes footage. The content will stream on UFC TikTok accounts including @UFC, @UFCRussia, @UFCBrasil and @UFCEurope.
Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, now has 550 million users for its in-app Search feature alone. The app last reported in September it had 600 million daily users, indicating an even larger base of MAUs.
Right-wing social network Parler announced it’s back online for existing users and will re-open to new users next week. The company also has a new interim CEO, Mark Meckler, who previously co-founded the Tea Party Patriots.
Triller is mired in controversy over its MAUs. A Billboard report says the company misrepresented the number of monthly active users it had — 25 million instead of the 50 million it claimed. Triller CEO Mike Lu had said the discrepancies didn’t matter because there’s “no legal definition” for an MAU. After the report came out, Lu denied the company was inflating its numbers. We happen to recall that Triller immediately threatened to sue over a report that it had inflated its downloads last year.
Photos
YouTube star David Dobrik’s photo-sharing app Dispo, backed by a $4 million seed, launched into private beta to a ton of buzz. The app quickly maxed out TestFlight’s 10,000-person limit, instead of being the low-key beta debut the team had expected. Dispo’s gimmick is that users have to wait 24 hours to see the photos they snap.
Messaging
Image Credits: WhatsApp
WhatsApp will roll out an in-app banner in an attempt to better explain its new privacy policy. When clicked, users will be directed toward policy information they can review at their leisure ahead of the May 15 deadline to accept the changes.
Streaming & Entertainment
Image Credits: App Annie
Clubhouse has topped 8 million global downloads, 2.6 million of which were in the U.S., according to a new report from App Annie. The report also highlighted the broader impact Clubhouse is having on social audio, as local audio apps are gaining new installs, too.
Global mobile users streamed 935 billion hours of video in 2020, up 40% YoY, says App Annie. The pandemic impacts were clear — users went from 146 billion hours in Q1 2019 to 240 billion in Q4 2020, a 65% rise in two years.
Cameo, the app that connects customers with celebs for paid personalized messages, is said to be raising $100 million, valuing its business at $1 billion, reports Bloomberg Quint. Not coincidentally, Facebook just began testing its Cameo clone, Super.
YouTube reveals its 2021 plans. In a blog post from Chief Product Officer Neal Mohan, YouTube gave a look at coming updates across its suite of apps:
- YouTube to redesign its YouTube VR app homepage to improve navigation, accessibility and search functionality.
- YouTube says it will expand its video chapters feature to add chapters automatically and update the watch experience to be more intuitive, including on the tablet.
- YouTube TV, now with 3 million-plus users, will introduce a paid add-on that will support 4K streaming, DVR for off-line playback and unlimited simultaneous in-home streams.
- YouTube Kids will add a feature that allows parents to specify the channels and videos their kids are allowed to watch.
- YouTube will expand its Applause tipping feature to more creators in 2021.
- YouTube Music will improve playlist creation and make those playlists more discoverable.
- And as noted above, YouTube is testing an e-commerce feature that lets users check out on the app.
- YouTube Shorts, an in-app TikTok rival of sorts, will come to the U.S. in March, following its tests in India.
Gaming
Microsoft xCloud, the game streaming service that lets users play Xbox games on Android tablets and phones, has begun testing a web version. In a review by The Verge, the experience is described as similar to the mobile version, with a simple launcher, recommendations, access to cloud games through Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and the ability to resume recently played games.
Apple demanded sensitive data from Valve to aid in its legal battle with Epic Games. The request included things like total yearly sales of apps and in-app products; annual ad revenues from Steam; annual revenues from Steam; annual earnings gross or net from Steam; and more. Apple also wanted the names of all Steam apps, price and IAP, and date range available. Valve, not surprisingly, did not agree to this. PCGamer has the full report.
Epic Games expands its legal fight with Apple to the EU. The Fortnite owner filed a formal antitrust complaint with the European Commission, alleging Apple’s anti-competitive restrictions that have “eliminated competition in app distribution and payments.” Epic Games is also fighting Apple in the U.S., U.K. and Australia.
Stadia layoffs shocked team. Google Stadia, the game streaming service available via Chromecast Ultra, the Chrome browser, ChromeOS tablets and the Stadia mobile app for Android, recently shut down its in-house game development studio, Stadia Games and Entertainment. A report from Kotaku this week indicates how much of a surprise this was to team, as just days before the mass layoffs, leadership was praising staff for their “great progress.”
Health & Fitness
Apple tells developers that only apps submitted by recognized public health authorities will be able to publish “health pass” apps to the App Store. These apps are designed to show someone’s COVID-19 testing and vaccination status. Apple says it will accept apps from government, medical and other credentialed institutions, healthcare providers, laboratories and test kit manufacturers.
Apple promotes iOS health apps to Apple Card holders. In honor of American Heart Month, Apple emailed Apple Card users savings on iOS health apps including Strava, Ten Percent Happier, Sleep Cycle and Lifesum.
U.S. health & fitness apps saw over 405 million installs in 2020, up 22% year-over-year, reports Sensor Tower. The apps, which benefited from gym closures amid COVID, saw $838 million in consumer spend, up 42% YoY. The average age of users also continued climb, demonstrating better retention with older users.
Image Credits: Sensor Tower
A second report from the firm indicated U.S. pharmacy app installs were up 47% as the COVID-19 vaccine began to roll out.
Productivity
Microsoft launched a unified app for iPad that combines Word, PowerPoint, Excel and OneNote into one single app. The app is a free download with in-app subscriptions, starting at $6.99/month. A $69.99/year subscription is also available. Microsoft previously launched unified apps for the iPhone and Android.
Government & Policy
TikTok faces a new series of regulatory complaints in Europe, including unfair terms over its virtual currency, whose exchange rate can be modified by TikTok; unfair terms in relation to copyright, related to TikTok’s ability to redistribute users’ videos without paying them (e.g. for ads); child safety concerns over suggestive content and “hidden marketing” of its branded Hashtag Challenges; and other accusations of misleading data processing and privacy practices.
North Dakota’s Senate votes down the App Store bill that would have forced Apple to allow users to sideload apps on their mobile devices. The bill was funded by the advocacy group Coalition for App Fairness, which includes Epic Games, Spotify, Match Group, Tile and others with a beef against Apple over its commission structure. Similar bills are under consideration in Arizona and Georgia.
Adtech
The Post-IDFA Alliance, which consists of Liftoff, Fyber, Chartboost, InMobi, Vungle and Singular, launched a new “No IDFA? No Problem” resource that aims to help publishers and advertisers navigate the iOS 14 transition.
Security
File sharing app SHAREit, one of the world’s most popular apps, is found to have several security flaws, researchers reported. The vulnerabilities could be abused to leak sensitive user data and “execute arbitrary code” with app permissions.
Funding and M&A
Robinhood rival Public.com raised $220 million just months after its $65 million Series C, as previously reported by TechCrunch. Prior investors returned, including Greycroft, Accel, Tiger Global, Inspired Capital, and others, valuing the business at $1.2 billion.
Robinhood rival Webull raised $150 million in a new round that values the business at over $1 billion. The brokerage was founded by Alibaba alum Wang Anquan and, like Public.com, has benefitted from the exodus of disgruntled Robinhood users, who left over the GameStop debacle.
Math learning app Photomath raised $23 million in Series B funding in a round led by Menlo Ventures. The app, now with 220 million downloads, lets you point your phone at a math problem and it explains the solution.
Live video shopping startup Talkshoplive raised $3 million from Spero Ventures for its live video shopping platform that lets users watch its videos on the web and mobile web — or anywhere else they’re embedded.
Event networking app Grip raised a $13 million Series A, despite the pandemic. The app pivoted last year to support virtual, hybrid and live events, instead of just in-person events.
Mobile gaming startup Artie raised $10 million for its gaming platform that lets users play mobile games without installing an app, from the browser or anywhere links can be shared online. Investors included Zynga founder Mark Pincus, Kevin Durant and Rich Kleiman’s Thirty Five Ventures, Scooter Braun’s Raised In Space, Shutterstock founder Jon Oringer, Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, Googler Manuel Bronstein and YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley.
Low-code app development service OutSystems raised $150 million in a round led by Abdiel Capital and Tiger Global, valuing the business at $9.5 billion.
Cross-border neobanking app Zolve raised $15 million in a seed round led by Accel and Lightspeed. The app was founded by the Raghunandan G, the founder of ride-hailing firm TaxiForSure, which exited to Ola. It’s aimed at people moving from India to the U.S. or vice versa.
Dating app Jigsaw raised $3.7 million for its app that hides daters’ faces with puzzle pieces in an effort to push users to engage and get to know each other before the reveal. While “face reveals” are popular on social media, a dating app that does this lends itself to objectifying people by not showing the face, as users focus on the daters’ body instead.
Downloads
Outfit
Image Credits: Outfit
TechCrunch this week covered DIY home renovation startup Outfit, which leverages consumers’ mobile devices to help them with their home projects. After submitting information, including dimensions and photos, Outfit’s app offers the customer a step-by-step guide for completing the project, including documenting their space, getting items and tools delivered, a custom to-do list and receiving support while the project is underway.
Hush
Image Credits: Hush
Hush, a recently launched Safari ad blocker for Mac, iPhone and iPad, does more than just block ads. The app also works to block other invasive trackers and those annoying cookie warnings that now pop up everywhere due to GDPR laws. (it actually doesn’t consent or deny the “accept cookies?” requests — it just blocks the scripts and elements on the website. It doesn’t interact with the site or click any buttons.
Unlike some blockers, Hush doesn’t collect your data. It doesn’t log your browser habits or passwords or even collect crash reports. It’s also free, but you can sponsor the developer on GitHub.
Zillow’s update
The updated version of Zillow’s 3D Home app introduced new technology that combines into one interface 3D Home tours, listing photos and AI-generated floor plans. To create the floor plans and home tour, the app uses computer vision and machine learning on panoramic photos the agent or photographer captured using the app and a 360-degree camera. The app also leverages AI to predict things like room dimensions and square footage. Both the home tour and floor plan can then be automatically uploaded to the lists and added to a website, MLS or shared on email/social media.
Due to the pandemic, Zillow 3D Home tours published on for-sale listings increased 255% during 2020 as customers used it as a safer way to tour properties, the company also noted.
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Extra Crunch roundup: Optimized SaaS pricing, recruiting growth experts, VC surveys, more
Since the pandemic began, have you been walking more, or do you know someone who bought a new car? Perhaps you ran your first errand on a rented e-bike or scooter?
Over the last year, I’ve experimented with different mobility options to see which ones best suit my needs, as have most people I know. It can be challenging to maintain a recommended physical distance on a bus or subway. (After a decade-plus hiatus, I even briefly considered rejoining the ranks of automobile owners!)
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Use discount code ECFriday to save 20% off a one- or two-year subscription.
It took some getting used to, but I now enjoy traveling around San Francisco on a scooter or e-bike. Pre-pandemic, I was leery of riding two-wheeled vehicles in a city with a high rate of injury collisions, but there are fewer cars on the road than there used to be.
COVID-19 has spotlighted many of the weakest points in our transportation system, but some of the rapid shifts in consumer behavior are creating opportunities for tech once considered fanciful, like sidewalk delivery robots and eVTOLs (electric vertical and takeoff vehicles).
Transportation editor Kirsten Korosec reached out to 10 investors to learn more “about the state of mobility, which trends they’re most excited about and what they’re looking for in their next investments.”
Here’s who she interviewed:
- Clara Brenner, co-founder and managing partner, Urban Innovation Fund
- Shawn Carolan, partner, Menlo Ventures
- Dave Clark, partner, Expa
- Abhijit Ganguly, senior manager, Goodyear Ventures
- Rachel Holt, co-founder and general partner, Construct Capital
- David Lawee, founder and general partner, CapitalG
- Sasha Ostojic, operating partner, Playground Global
- Sebastian Peck, managing director, InMotion Ventures
- Natalia Quintero and Rachel Haot, Transit Innovation Partnership/Transit Tech Lab
Thanks very much for reading Extra Crunch this week!
Walter Thompson
Senior Editor, TechCrunch
@yourprotagonist
A fraction of Robinhood’s users are driving its runaway growth
Image Credits: Nigel Sussman (opens in a new window)
Yesterday’s House Financial Services Committee hearing on the GameStop short squeeze saga was fairly typical: Most lawmakers used their time to grandstand and little new information was revealed.
But Alex Wilhelm found one tidbit: Much of Robinhood’s revenue is generated from payment for order flow (PFOF). Under the practice, market makers pay the trading platform for executing trades.
To get a sense of how much Robinhood’s high rollers contribute to the company’s general health, he calculated its PFOF revenues for the last three months of 2020.
“Borrowing a term from the casino trade, these whales generate the bulk of the company’s revenue stream.”
Why do SaaS companies with usage-based pricing grow faster?
Image Credits: John Lund (opens in a new window) / Getty Images
HubStop introduced usage-based pricing in 2011 to boost its retention rate, then near 70%.
When it went public three years later, its net revenue retention rate was edging close to 100%, “all without hurting the company’s ability to acquire new customers.”
Offering new users frictionless onboarding, customer support and free credits is a proven method for making them more active — and loyal.
So, why do public SaaS firms with usage-based pricing see faster growth?
“Because they’re better at landing new customers, growing with them and keeping them as customers,” says Kyle Powar, VP of growth at OpenView.
Paying $115B for Stripe or $77B for Coinbase might be quite rational
Image Credits: Nigel Sussman (opens in a new window)
In October 2018, private-market money valued Coinbase at around $8 billion. As of this week, it’s valued at $77 billion.
Similarly, Stripe is valued at $115 billion on secondary markets. In the middle of last year, that figure was closer to $36 billion.
“Would I line up to pay $77 billion for Coinbase?” asked Alex. “Probably not, but that doesn’t mean that the public markets won’t.”
Pandemic-era growth and SPACs are helping edtech startups graduate early
Image Credits: Witthaya Prasongsin (opens in a new window) / Getty Images
Natasha Mascarenhas reports that some edtech startups are hitching rides with special purpose acquisition vehicles so they can speed up their journey to the public markets.
To learn more, she interviewed Susan Wolford, chairperson of $200 million SPAC Edify Acquisition, and Nerdy CEO Chuck Cohn. Nerdy, parent company of Varsity Tutors, is going through a reverse merger with TPG Pace Tech Opportunities.
“It’s less about going into the public markets and more about that this transaction allows us to take an offensive position and lean into the big opportunities,” Cohn said.
Dear Sophie: Tips for filing for a green card for my soon-to-be spouse
Image Credits: Bryce Durbin/TechCrunch
Dear Sophie:
My fiancé is in the U.S. on an H-1B visa, which is set to expire in about a year and a half.
We were originally planning to marry last year, but both he and I want to have a ceremony and party with our families and friends, so we decided to hold off until the pandemic ends. I’m a U.S. citizen and plan to sponsor my fiancé for a green card.
How long does it typically take to get a green card for a spouse? Any tips you can share?
— Sweetheart in San Francisco
Inside Rover and MoneyLion’s SPAC-led public debuts
Image Credits: Nigel Sussman (opens in a new window)
When I saw that Alex Wilhelm wrote on Tuesday about two more startups that were taking the SPAC route to public markets, I briefly wondered if we’ve been covering special purpose acquisition companies too frequently.
After I read his first sentence, I realized Alex made exactly the right call because the trend that emerged in 2020 may be turning into a actual wave: This week, pet e-commerce company Rover and fintech startup MoneyLion both announced that they’re planning SPAC-led debuts.
On Monday, Alex covered the news that Lerer Hippeau Acquisition Corp. and Khosla Ventures Acquisition Co. I, II and III. filed S-1 filings last week.
“You have to wonder if every VC worth a damn in the future will have their own raft of SPAC offerings,” says Alex.
Wrote Lerer Hippeau Acquisition Corp.:
With our portfolio now maturing to the stage at which many are considering the public markets, we view SPACs as a natural next step in the evolution of our platform.
“If we are not careful, every entry of this column could consist of SPAC news,” writes Alex.
From dorm rooms to board rooms: How universities are promoting entrepreneurship
Image Credits: CasarsaGuru (opens in a new window) / Getty Images
Fifteen U.S.-based institutions of higher learning have joined forces to create the University Technology Licensing Program LLC (UTLP).
The program makes it easier for entrepreneurs and investors to find IP that can drive their companies forward, but it’s also an attempt to repair what one participant calls “the somewhat broken interface between universities and very large companies in the tech space.”
4 strategies for deep tech companies recruiting top growth marketers
Image Credits: Mallika Wiriyathitipirm/EyeEm (opens in a new window) / Getty Images
Here’s some real talk for technical founders: if you find it frustrating to work with growth experts and marketing professionals, the feeling’s probably mutual.
“Incredible growth people are independent and creative and are drawn to environments that explicitly value these traits,” says Jessica Li, a content/growth professional who was previously a VC.
To land top talent, “demonstrate that you have a team structure in place where a growth marketer could fit in and thrive.”
9 investors discuss hurdles, opportunities and the impact of cloud vendors in enterprise data lakes
Image Credits: Donald Iain Smith (opens in a new window) / Getty Images
Before my first cup of coffee this morning, I’d already interacted with four different devices that transmitted details about my behavior to a data lake.
Hopefully, the response I sent to an automated text while waiting for the kettle to boil will generate a discount offer in my inbox later today. (And hopefully, the raw data I’m transmitting has been properly secured and cataloged.)
Enterprise reporter Ron Miller interviewed nine investors to learn more about their approach to the lucrative data lake market:
- Caryn Marooney, general partner, Coatue Management
- Dharmesh Thakker, general partner, Battery Ventures
- Casey Aylward, principal, Costanoa Ventures
- Derek Zanutto, general partner, CapitalG
- Navin Chaddha, managing director, Mayfield
- Jon Lehr, co-founder and general partner, Work-Bench
- Peter Wagner, founding partner, Wing Ventures
- Nicole Priel, managing director, Ibex Ventures
- Ilya Sukah, partner, Matrix Partners
Felicis’ Aydin Senkut and Guideline’s Kevin Busque on the value of simple pitch decks
Image Credits: Felicis Ventures / Guideline
When it comes to building a durable relationship between a founder and an investor, “the trust starts in the pitch deck,” says Guideline CEO Kevin Busque.
Busque joined Extra Crunch Live last week with Felicis Ventures’ Aydin Senku to discuss the seed round Senku declined to join — and the Series B he led a short while later.
In keeping with our new format, the pair also offered feedback on pitch decks submitted by members of the audience. Read highlights, or watch a video with the full conversation.
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Ironclad’s Jason Boehmig: The objective of pricing is to become less wrong over time
In 2017, Ironclad founder and CEO Jason Boehmig was looking to raise a Series A. As a former lawyer, Boehmig had a specific process for fundraising and an ultimate goal of finding the right investors for his company.
Part of Boehmig’s process was to ask people in the San Francisco Bay Area about their favorite place to work. Many praised RelateIQ, a company founded by Steve Loughlin who had sold it to Salesforce for $390 million and was brand new to venture at the time.
“I wanted to meet Steve and had kind of put two and two together,” said Boehmig. “I was like, ‘There’s this founder I’ve been meaning to connect with anyways, just to pick his brain, about how to build a great company, and he also just became an investor.’”
On this week’s Extra Crunch Live, the duo discussed how the Ironclad pitch excited Loughlin about leading the round. (So excited, in fact, he signed paperwork in the hospital on the same day his child was born.) They also discussed how they’ve managed to build trust by working through disagreements and the challenges of pricing and packaging enterprise products.
As with every episode of Extra Crunch Live, they also gave feedback on pitch decks submitted by the audience. (If you’d like to see your deck featured on a future episode, send it to us using this form.)
We record Extra Crunch Live every Wednesday at 12 p.m. PST/3 p.m. EST/8 p.m. GMT. You can see our past episodes here and check out the March slate right here.
Episode breakdown:
- The pitch — 2:30
- How they operate — 23:00
- The problem of pricing — 29:00
- Pitch deck teardown — 35:00
The pitch
When Boehmig came in to pitch Accel, Loughlin remembers feeling ambivalent. He had heard about the company and knew a former lawyer was coming in to pitch a legal tech company. He also trusted the reference who had introduced him to Boehmig, and thought, “I’ll take the meeting.”
Then, Boehmig dove into the pitch. The company had about a dozen customers that were excited about the product, and a few who were expanding use of the product across the organization, but it wasn’t until the ultimate vision of Ironclad was teased that Loughlin perked up.
Loughlin realized that the contract can be seen as a core object that could be used to collaborate horizontally across the enterprise.
“That was when the lightbulb went off and I realized this is actually much bigger,” said Loughlin. “This is not a legal tech company. This is core horizontal enterprise collaboration in one of the areas that has not been solved yet, where there is no great software yet for legal departments to collaborate with their counterparts.”
He listed all the software that those same counterparts had to let them collaborate: Salesforce, Marketo, Zendesk. Any investor would be excited to hear that a potential portfolio company could match the likes of those behemoths. Loughlin was hooked.
“There was a slide that I’m guessing Jason didn’t think much of, as it was just the data around the business, but I got pretty excited about it,” said Loughlin. “It said, for every legal user Ironclad added, they added nine other users from departments like sales, marketing, customer service, etc. It was evidence that this theory of collaboration could be true at scale.”
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With $20M A round, Promise brings financial flexibility to outdated government and utility payment systems
The last year has been one of financial hardship for billions, and among the specific hardships is the elementary one of paying for utilities, taxes and other government fees — the systems for which are rarely set up for easy or flexible payment. Promise aims to change that by integrating with official payment systems and offering more forgiving terms for fees and debts people can’t handle all at once, and has raised $20 million to do so.
When every penny is going toward rent and food, it can be hard to muster the cash to pay an irregular bill like water or electricity. They’re less likely to be shut off on short notice than a mobile plan, so it’s safer to kick the can down the road… until a few bills add up and suddenly a family is looking at hundreds of dollars of unpaid bills and no way to split them up or pay over time. Same with tickets and other fees and fines.
The CEO and co-founder of Promise, Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins, explained that this (among other places) is where current systems fall down. Unlike buying a TV or piece of furniture, where payment plans may be offered in a single click during online checkout, there frequently is no such option for municipal ticket payment sites or utilities.
“We have found that people struggling to pay their bills want to pay and will pay at extremely high rates if you offer them reminders, accessible payment options and flexibility. The systems are the problem — they are not designed for people who don’t always have a surplus of money in their bank accounts,” she told TechCrunch.
“They assume for example that if someone makes their first payment at 10 PM on the 15th, they will have the same amount of money the next month on the 15th at 10 PM,” she continued. “These systems do not recognize that most people are struggling with their basic needs. Payments may need to be weekly or split up into multiple payment types.”
Even those that do offer plans still see many failures to pay, due at least partly to a lack of flexibility on their part, said Ellis-Lamkins — failure to make a payment can lead to the whole plan being cancelled. Furthermore, it may be difficult to get enrolled in the first place.
“Some cities offer payment plans but you have to go in person to sign up, complete a multiple-page form, show proof of income and meet restrictive criteria,” she said. “We have been able to work with our partners to use self-certification to ease the process as opposed to providing tax returns or other documentation. Currently, we have over a 90% repayment rate.”
Promise acts as a sort of middleman, integrating lightly with the agency or utility, which in turn makes anyone owing money aware of the possibility of the different payment system. It’s similar to how you might see various payment options, including installments, when making a purchase at an online shop.
Image Credits: Promise
The user enrolls in a payment plan (the service is mobile-friendly because that’s the only form of internet many people have) and Promise handles that end of it, with reminders, receipts and processing, passing on the money to the agency as it comes in — the company doesn’t cover the cost up front and collect on its own terms. Essentially it’s a bolt-on flexible payment mechanism that specializes in government agencies and other public-facing fee collectors.
Promise makes money by subscription fees (i.e. SaaS) and/or through transaction fees, whichever makes more sense for the given customer. As you might imagine, it makes more sense for a utility to pay a couple bucks to be more sure of collecting $500, than to take its chance on getting none of that $500, or having to resort to more heavy-handed and expensive debt collection methods.
Lest you think this is not a big problem (and consequently not a big market), Ellis-Lamkins noted a recent study from the California Water Boards showing there are 1.6 million people with a total of $1 billion in water debt in the state — one in eight households is in arrears to an average of $500.
Those numbers are likely worse than normal, given the immense financial pressure that the pandemic has placed on nearly all households — but like payment plans in other circumstances, households of many incomes and types find their own reason to take advantage of such systems. And pretty much anyone who’s had to deal with an obtusely designed utility payment site would welcome an alternative.
The new round brings the company’s total raised to over $30 million, counting $10 million it raised immediately after leaving Y Combinator in 2018. The funding comes from existing investors Kapor Capital, XYZ, Bronze, First Round, YC, Village, and others.
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SailPoint is buying SaaS management startup Intello
SailPoint, an identity management company that went public in 2017, announced it was going to be acquiring Intello, an early-stage SaaS management startup. The two companies did not share the purchase price.
SailPoint believes that by helping its customers locate all of the SaaS tools being used inside a company, it can help IT make the company safer. Part of the problem is that it’s so easy for employees to deploy SaaS tools without IT’s knowledge, and Intello gives them more visibility and control.
In fact, the term “shadow IT” developed over the last decade to describe this ability to deploy software outside of the purview of IT pros. With a tool like Intello, they can now find all of the SaaS tools and point the employees to sanctioned ones, while shutting down services the security pros might not want folks using.
Grady Summers, EVP of product at SailPoint, says that this problem has become even more pronounced during the pandemic as many companies have gone remote, making it even more challenging for IT to understand what SaaS tools employees might be using.
“This has led to a sharp rise in ungoverned SaaS sprawl and unprotected data that is being stored and shared within these apps. With little to no visibility into what shadow access exists within their organization, IT teams are further challenged to protect from the cyber risks that have increased over the past year,” Summers explained in a statement. He believes that with Intello in the fold, it will help root out that unsanctioned usage and make companies safer, while also helping them understand their SaaS spend better.
Intello has always seen itself as a way to increase security and compliance and has partnered in the past with other identity management tools like Okta and OneLogin. The company was founded in 2017 and raised $5.8 million according to Crunchbase data. That included a $2.5 million extended seed in May 2019.
Yesterday, another SaaS management tool, Torii, announced a $10 million Series A. Other players in the SaaS management space include BetterCloud and Blissfully, among others.
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SESO Labor is providing a way for migrant farmworkers to get legally protected work status in the US
As the Biden administration works to bring legislation to Congress to address the endemic problem of immigration reform in America, on the other side of the nation a small California startup called SESO Labor has raised $4.5 million to ensure that farms can have access to legal migrant labor.
SESO’s founder Mike Guirguis raised the round over the summer from investors including Founders Fund and NFX. Pete Flint, a founder of Trulia, joined the company’s board. The company has 12 farms it’s working with and is negotiating contracts with another 46. The company’s other co-founder, Jordan Taylor, was the first product hire at Farmer’s Business Network and previously of Dropbox.
Working within the existing regulatory framework that has existed since 1986, SESO has created a service that streamlines and manages the process of getting H-2A visas, which allow migrant agricultural workers to reside temporarily in the U.S. with legal protections.
At this point, SESO is automating the visa process, getting the paperwork in place for workers and smoothing the application process. The company charges about $1,000 per worker, but eventually as it begins offering more services to workers themselves, Guirguis envisions several robust lines of revenue. Eventually, the company would like to offer integrated services for both farm owners and farm workers, Guirguis said.
SESO is currently expecting to bring in 1,000 workers over the course of 2021 and the company is, as of now, pre-revenue. The largest industry player handling worker visas today currently brings in 6,000 workers per year, so the competition, for SESO, is market share, Guirguis said.
America’s complicated history of immigration and agricultural labor
The H-2A program was set up to allow agricultural employers who anticipate shortages of domestic workers to bring to the U.S. non-immigrant foreign workers to work on farms temporarily or seasonally. The workers are covered by U.S. wage laws, workers’ compensation and other standards, including access to healthcare under the Affordable Care Act.
Employers who use the visa program to hire workers are required to pay inbound and outbound transportation, provide free or rental housing and provide meals for workers (they’re allowed to deduct the costs from salaries).
H-2 visas were first created in 1952 as part of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which reinforced the national origins quota system that restricted immigration primarily to Northern Europe, but opened America’s borders to Asian immigrants for the first time since immigration laws were first codified in 1924. While immigration regulations were further opened in the sixties, the last major immigration reform package in 1986 served to restrict immigration and made it illegal for businesses to hire undocumented workers. It also created the H-2A visas as a way for farms to hire migrant workers without incurring the penalties associated with using illegal labor.
For some migrant workers, the H-2A visa represents a golden ticket, according to Guirguis, an honors graduate of Stanford who wrote his graduate thesis on labor policy.
“We are providing a staffing solution for farms and agribusiness and we want to be Gusto for agriculture and upsell farms on a comprehensive human resources solution,” says Guirguis of the company’s ultimate mission, referencing payroll provider Gusto.
As Guirguis notes, most workers in agriculture are undocumented. “These are people who have been taken advantage of [and] the H-2A is a visa to bring workers in legally. We’re able to help employers maintain workforce [and] we’re building software to help farmers maintain the farms.”
Opening borders even as they remain closed
Farms need the help, if the latest numbers on labor shortages are believable, but it’s not necessarily a lack of H-2A visas that’s to blame, according to an article in Reuters.
In fact, the number of H-2A visas granted for agriculture equipment operators rose to 10,798 from October through March, according to the Reuters report. That’s up 49% from a year ago, according to data from the U.S. Department of Labor cited by Reuters.
Instead of an inability to acquire the H-2A visa, it was an inability to travel to the U.S. that’s been causing problems. Tighter border controls, the persistent global pandemic and travel restrictions that were imposed to combat it have all played a role in keeping migrant workers in their home countries.
Still, Guirguis believes that with the right tools, more farms would be willing to use the H-2A visa, cutting down on illegal immigration and boosting the available labor pool for the tough farm jobs that American workers don’t seem to want.
Photo by Brent Stirton/Getty Images.
David Misener, the owner of an Oklahoma-based harvesting company called Green Acres Enterprises, is one employer who has struggled to find suitable replacements for the migrant workers he typically hires.
“They could not fathom doing it and making it work,” Misener told Reuters, speaking about the American workers he’d tried to hire.
“With H-2A, migrant workers make 10 times more than they would get paid at home,” said Guirguis. “They’re taking home the equivalent of $40 an hour. The H-2A is coveted.”
Guirguis thinks that with the right incentives and an easier onramp for farmers to manage the application and approval process, the number of employers that use H-2A visas could grow to be 30% to 50% of the farm workforce in the country. That means growing the number of potential jobs from 300,000 to 1.5 million for migrants who would be under many of the same legal protections that citizens enjoy while they’re working on the visa.
Protecting agricultural workers through better paperwork
Interest in the farm labor nexus and issues surrounding it came to the first-time founder through Guirguis’ experience helping his cousin start her own farm. Spending several weekends a month helping her grow the farm with her husband, Guirguis heard his stories about coming to the U.S. as an undocumented worker.
Employers using the program avoid the liability associated with being caught employing illegal labor, something that crackdowns under the Trump administration made more common.
Still, it’s hard to deny the program’s roots in the darker past of America’s immigration policy. And some immigration advocates argue that the H-2A system suffers from the same kinds of structural problems that plague the corollary H-1B visas for tech workers.
“The H-2A visa is a short-term temporary visa program that employers use to import workers into the agricultural fields … It’s part of a very antiquated immigration system that needs to change. The 11.5 million people who are here need to be given citizenship,” said Saket Soni, the founder of an organization called Resilience Force, which advocates for immigrant labor. “And then workers who come from other countries, if we need them, they have to be able to stay … H-2A workers don’t have a pathway to citizenship. Workers come to us afraid of blowing the whistle on labor issues. As much as the H-2A is a welcome gift for a worker it can also be abused.”
Soni said the precarity of a worker’s situation — and their dependence on a single employer for their ability to remain in the country legally — means they are less likely to speak up about problems at work, since there’s nowhere for them to go if they are fired.
“We are big proponents that if you need people’s labor you have to welcome them as human beings,” Soni said. “Where there’s a labor shortage as people come, they should be allowed to stay … H-2A is an example of an outdated immigration tool.”
Guirguis clearly disagrees and said a platform like SESO’s will ultimately create more conveniences and better services for the workers who come in on these visas.
“We’re trying to put more money in the hands of these workers at the end of the day,” he said. “We’re going to be setting up remittance and banking services. Everything we do should be mutually beneficial for the employer and the worker who is trying to get into this program and know that they’re not getting taken advantage of.”
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A16z doesn’t invest, it manifests
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
Natasha and Danny and Alex and Grace were all here to chat through the week’s biggest tech happenings. In very good Show News
, Chris is back! He’s working on the next iteration of the show, something that you will be able to see starting Very Soon. Get hyped!
Today though, we had a delectable dish of dynamic doings, namely news items of the following persuasion:
- Bitcoin broke the $50,000 barrier, something that we wanted to talk about. Especially in light of Coinbase’s $77 billion valuation. Natasha walked us through some growth metrics, and Alex was sad that he isn’t already retired. Danny remains a full-on crypto bull.
- And on the blockchain thing, Blockchain.com raised $120 million, proving that there are huge amounts of capital available for the guts-and-bolts tooling of the bitcoin world.
- Li Jin, who coined the term “passion economy,” has closed her debut $13 million fund for startups within the same category. She joined other investors in our latest survey on the creator economy’s changing tides.
- Off of $1 million in ARR, Circle has brought on $4 million in funding at a valuation north of $40 million.
- A16z invested in Stir, which helps creators manage and view their various income streams. The funding total was not disclosed, but is reportedly valuing the company, still in beta, at $100 million.
- TalkShopLive brought on new cash for live video shopping.
- Pipe17 closed an $8 million round that caught our eye. By building a service to help smaller e-commerce operations connect their tooling to one another, the company is betting on smaller e-commerce needing pipes to link up their various software services. This reminded us of Alloy, another neat company in e-commerce automation that also recently raised money.
- From there we riffed on the software market itself, its size and the potential for investors to loosen their rules of intra-portfolio competition.
- Public raised $220 million, OutSystems raised $150 million and Ally.io raised $50 million.
- Finally, a wave of edtech startups is over Zoom University and hopes to create much, much better. alternative.
And that’s our show! We are back early Monday morning for a packed week. So keep your podcast app warm, we’re coming for it.
Equity drops every Monday at 7:00 a.m. PST and Thursday afternoon as fast as we can get it out, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.
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Anthony Lin named permanent managing director and head of Intel Capital
When Wendell Brooks stepped down as managing partner and head of Intel Capital last August, Anthony Lin was named to replace him on an interim basis. At the time, it wasn’t clear if he would be given the role permanently, but today, six months later, the answer is known.
In a letter to the firm’s portfolio CEOs published on the company website, Lin mentioned, almost casually, that he had taken on the two roles on a permanent basis. “Personally, I want to share that I have been appointed to managing partner and head of Intel Capital. I have been a member of the investment committee for the past several years and am humbly awed by the talent of our entrepreneurs and our team,” he wrote.
Lin takes over in a time of turmoil for Intel as the company struggles to regain its place in the semiconductor business that it dominated for decades. Meanwhile, Intel itself has a new CEO with Pat Gelsinger returning in January from VMware to lead the organization.
As the corporate investment arm of Intel, it looks for companies that can help the parent company understand where to invest resources in the future. If that is its goal, perhaps it hasn’t done a great job, as Intel has lost some of its edge when it comes to innovation.
Lin, who was formerly head of mergers and acquisitions and international investing at the firm, can use the power of the firm’s investment dollars to try to help point the parent company in the right direction and help find new ways to build innovative solutions on the Intel platform.
Lin acknowledged how challenging 2020 was for everyone, and his company was no exception, but the firm invested in 75 startups, including 35 new deals and 40 deals involving companies in which it had previously invested. It has also made a commitment to invest in companies with more diverse founders. To that end, 30% of new venture-stage dollars went to startups led by diverse leaders, according to Lin.
What’s more, the company made a five-year commitment that 15% of all its deals would go to companies with Black founders. It made some progress toward that goal, but there is still a ways to go. “At the end of 2020, 9% of our new venture deals and 15% of our venture dollars committed were in companies led by Black founders. We know there is more progress to be made and we will continue to encourage, foster and invest in diverse and inclusive teams,” he wrote.
Lin faces a big challenge ahead as he takes over a role that had the same leader for the first 28 years in Arvind Sodhani. His predecessor, Brooks, was there for five years. Now it passes to Lin, and he needs to use the firm’s investment might to help Gelsinger advance the goals of the broader firm, while making sound investments.
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Why do SaaS companies with usage-based pricing grow faster?
Today we know of HubSpot — the maker of marketing, sales and service software products — as a preeminent public company with a market cap above $17 billion. But HubSpot wasn’t always on the IPO trajectory.
For its first five years in business, HubSpot offered three subscription packages ranging in price from $3,000 to $18,000 per year. The company struggled with poor churn and anemic expansion revenue. Net revenue retention was near 70%, a far cry from the 100%+ that most SaaS companies aim to achieve.
Something needed to change. So in 2011, they introduced usage-based pricing. As customers used the software to generate more leads, they would proportionally increase their spend with HubSpot. This pricing change allowed HubSpot to share in the success of its customers.
In a usage-based model, expansion “just happens” as customers are successful.
By the time HubSpot went public in 2014, net revenue retention had jumped to nearly 100% — all without hurting the company’s ability to acquire new customers.
HubSpot isn’t an outlier. Public SaaS companies that have adopted usage-based pricing grow faster because they’re better at landing new customers, growing with them and keeping them as customers.
Image Credits: Kyle Poyar
Widen the top of the funnel
In a usage-based model, a company doesn’t get paid until after the customer has adopted the product. From the customer’s perspective, this means that there’s no risk to try before they buy. Products like Snowflake and Google Cloud Platform take this a step further and even offer $300+ in free usage credits for new developers to test drive their products.
Many of these free users won’t become profitable — and that’s okay. Like a VC firm, usage-based companies are making a portfolio of bets. Some of those will pay off spectacularly — and the company will directly share in that success.
Top-performing companies open up the top of the funnel by making it free to sign up for their products. They invest in a frictionless customer onboarding experience and high-quality support so that new users get hooked on the platform. As more new users become active, there’s a stronger foundation for future customer growth.
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Volta Energy Technologies raises over $90M of a targeted $150M fund to back energy storage startups
Volta Energy Technologies, the energy investment and advisory services firm backed by some of the biggest names in energy and energy storage materials, has closed on nearly $90 million of a targeted $150 million investment fund, according to people familiar with the group’s plans.
The venture investment vehicle complements a $180 million existing commitment from Volta’s four corporate backers — Equinor, Albermarle, Epsilon and Hanon Systems — and comes at a time when interest in energy storage technologies couldn’t be stronger.
As the transition away from internal combustion engines and hydrocarbon fuels begins in earnest, companies are scrambling to drive down costs and improve performance of battery technologies that will be necessary to power millions of electric cars and store massive amounts of renewable energy that still needs to be developed.
“Capital markets have noticed the enormity of the opportunity in transitioning away from carbon,” said Jeff Chamberlain, Volta’s founder and chief executive.
It was born of an idea that began in 2012 when Chamberlain began talking with the head of the Department of Energy under the Obama administration. What began when Chamberlain was at Argonne National Lab leading the development of JCESR, the lead lab in the U.S. government’s battery research consortium, evolved into Volta Energy as Chamberlain pitched a private sector investment partner that could leverage the best research from National Laboratories and the work being done by private industry to find the best technology.
Support for the Volta project remained strong through both public and private institutions, according to Chamberlain. Even under the Trump administration, Volta’s initiative was able to thrive and wrangle some of the biggest names in chemicals, utility, oil and gas and industrial thermal management to invest in a $180 million fund that could be evergreen, Chamberlain said.
According to people with knowledge of the organization’s plans, the new investment fund, which is targeting $150 million but has a hard cap of $225 million, would complement the existing investment vehicle to give the firm more firepower as additional capital floods into the battery industry.
Chamberlain declined to comment specifically on the fund, given restrictions, but did say that his firm had a mandate to invest in technology that is battery and storage related and that “enables the ubiquitous adoption of electric vehicles and the ubiquitous adoption of solar and wind.”
Back during the first cleantech boom the brains behind Volta witnessed a lot of good money getting poured into bad ideas and vaporware that would never amount to commercial success, said Chamberlain. Volta was formed to educate investors on the real opportunities that scientists were tracking in energy storage and back those companies with dollars.
“We knew that investors were throwing money into a dumpster fire. We knew it could have a negative impact on this transition to carbon,” Chamberlain said. “Our whole objective was to help guide individuals deploying massive amounts of their personal wealth and move it from putting money into an ongoing dumpster fire.”
That mission has become even more important as more money floods into the battery market, Chamberlain said.
The SPAC craze set off by Nikola’s public offering in electric vehicles and continuing through QuantumScape’s battery SPAC through a slew of other electric vehicle offerings and into EV charging and battery companies has made the stakes higher for everyone, he said.
Chamberlain thinks of Volta’s mission as finding the best emerging technologies that are coming to market across the battery and power management supply chain and ensuring that as manufacturing capacity comes online, the technology is ready to meet growing demand.
“Investors who do not truly understand the energy storage ecosystem and its underlying technology challenges are at a distinct disadvantage,” said Goldman Sachs veteran and early Volta investor Randy Rochman, in a statement. “It has become abundantly clear to me that nothing happens in the world of energy storage without Volta’s knowledge. I can think of no better team to identify energy storage investment opportunities and avoid pitfalls.”
The new fund from Volta has already backed a number of new energy storage and enabling technologies, including: Natron, which develops high-power, fire-safe Sodium-ion batteries using Prussian blue chemistry for applications that demand a quick discharge of power; Smart Wires, which develops hardware that acts as a router for electricity to travel across underutilized power lines to optimize the integration of renewable power and energy storage on the grid; and Ionic Materials, which makes solid lithium batteries for both transportation and grid applications. Ionic Materials’ platform technology also enables breakthrough advancements in other growing markets, such as 5G mobile, and rechargeable alkaline batteries.
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