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Dell dumps another big asset, moving Boomi to Francisco Partners and TPG for $4B

Published May 3, 2021

It’s widely known that Dell has a debt problem left over from its massive acquisition of EMC in 2016, and it seems to be moving this year to eliminate part of it in multi-billion-dollar chunks. The first step was spinning out VMware as a separate company last month, a move expected to net close to $10 billion.

The second step, long expected, finally dropped last night when the company announced it was selling Boomi to a couple of private equity firms for $4 billion. Francisco Partners is joining forces with TPG to make the deal to buy the integration platform.

Boomi is not unlike MuleSoft, a company that Salesforce purchased in 2018 for $6.5 billion, although a bit longer in the tooth. They both help companies with integration problems by creating connections between disparate systems. With so many pieces in place from various acquisitions over the years, it seems like a highly useful asset for Dell to help pull these pieces together and make them work, but the cash is trumping that need.

Providing integration services is a growing requirement as companies look for ways to make better use of data locked in siloed systems. Boomi could help, and that’s one of the primary reasons for the acquisition, according to Francisco executives.

“The ability to integrate and connect data and workflows across any combination of applications or domains is a critical business capability, and we strongly believe that Boomi is well positioned to help companies of all sizes turn data into their most valuable asset,” Francisco CEO Dipanjan Deb and partner Brian Decker said in a statement.

Dell is spinning out VMware in a deal expected to generate over $9B for the company

As you would expect, Boomi’s CEO Chris McNabb put a positive spin on the deal about how his new bosses were going to fuel growth for his company. “By partnering with two tier-one investment firms like Francisco Partners and TPG, we can accelerate our ability for our customers to use data to drive competitive advantage. In this next phase of growth, Boomi will be in a position of strength to further advance our innovation and market trajectory while delivering even more value to our customers,” McNabb said in a statement.

All of this may have some truth to it, but the company goes from being part of a large amorphous corporation to getting absorbed in the machinery of two private equity firms. What happens next is hard to say.

The company was founded in 2000, and sold to Dell in 2010. Today, it has 15,000 customer, but Dell’s debt has been well documented, and when you string together a couple of multi-billion-dollar deals as Dell has recently, pretty soon you’re talking real money. While the company has not stated it will explicitly use the proceeds of this deal to pay off debt as it did with the VMware announcement, it stands to reason that this will be the case.

The deal is expected to close later this year, although it will have to pass the typical regulatory scrutiny prior to that.

Should Dell have pursued a more aggressive debt-reduction move with VMware?

Gatheround raises millions from Homebrew, Bloomberg and Stripe’s COO to help remote workers connect

Published May 3, 2021

Remote work is no longer a new topic, as much of the world has now been doing it for a year or more because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Companies — big and small — have had to react in myriad ways. Many of the initial challenges have focused on workflow, productivity and the like. But one aspect of the whole remote work shift that is not getting as much attention is the culture angle.

A 100% remote startup that was tackling the issue way before COVID-19 was even around is now seeing a big surge in demand for its offering that aims to help companies address the “people” challenge of remote work. It started its life with the name Icebreaker to reflect the aim of “breaking the ice” with people with whom you work.

“We designed the initial version of our product as a way to connect people who’d never met, kind of virtual speed dating,” says co-founder and CEO Perry Rosenstein. “But we realized that people were using it for far more than that.”

So over time, its offering has evolved to include a bigger goal of helping people get together beyond an initial encounter –– hence its new name: Gatheround.

“For remote companies, a big challenge or problem that is now bordering on a crisis is how to build connection, trust and empathy between people that aren’t sharing a physical space,” says co-founder and COO Lisa Conn. “There’s no five-minute conversations after meetings, no shared meals, no cafeterias — this is where connection organically builds.”

Organizations should be concerned, Gatheround maintains, that as we move more remote, that work will become more transactional and people will become more isolated. They can’t ignore that humans are largely social creatures, Conn said.

The startup aims to bring people together online through real-time events such as a range of chats, videos and one-on-one and group conversations. The startup also provides templates to facilitate cultural rituals and learning & development (L&D) activities, such as all-hands meetings and workshops on diversity, equity and inclusion.

Gatheround’s video conversations aim to be a refreshing complement to Slack conversations, which despite serving the function of communication, still don’t bring users face-to-face.

Image Credits: Gatheround

Since its inception, Gatheround has quietly built up an impressive customer base, including 28 Fortune 500s, 11 of the 15 biggest U.S. tech companies, 26 of the top 30 universities and more than 700 educational institutions. Specifically, those users include Asana, Coinbase, Fiverr, Westfield and DigitalOcean. Universities, academic centers and nonprofits, including Georgetown’s Institute of Politics and Public Service and Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, are also customers. To date, Gatheround has had about 260,000 users hold 570,000 conversations on its SaaS-based, video platform.

All its growth so far has been organic, mostly referrals and word of mouth. Now, armed with $3.5 million in seed funding that builds upon a previous $500,000 raised, Gatheround is ready to aggressively go to market and build upon the momentum it’s seeing.

Venture firms Homebrew and Bloomberg Beta co-led the company’s latest raise, which included participation from angel investors such as Stripe COO Claire Hughes Johnson, Meetup co-founder Scott Heiferman, Li Jin and Lenny Rachitsky.

Co-founders Rosenstein, Conn and Alexander McCormmach describe themselves as “experienced community builders,” having previously worked on President Obama’s campaigns as well as at companies like Facebook, Change.org and Hustle.

The trio emphasize that Gatheround is also very different from Zoom and video conferencing apps in that its platform gives people prompts and organized ways to get to know and learn about each other as well as the flexibility to customize events.

“We’re fundamentally a connection platform, here to help organizations connect their people via real-time events that are not just really fun, but meaningful,” Conn said.

Homebrew Partner Hunter Walk says his firm was attracted to the company’s founder-market fit.

“They’re a really interesting combination of founders with all this experience community building on the political activism side, combined with really great product, design and operational skills,” he told TechCrunch. “It was kind of unique that they didn’t come out of an enterprise product background or pure social background.”

He was also drawn to the personalized nature of Gatheround’s platform, considering that it has become clear over the past year that the software powering the future of work “needs emotional intelligence.”

“Many companies in 2020 have focused on making remote work more productive. But what people desire more than ever is a way to deeply and meaningfully connect with their colleagues,” Walk said. “Gatheround does that better than any platform out there. I’ve never seen people come together virtually like they do on Gatheround, asking questions, sharing stories and learning as a group.”

James Cham, partner at Bloomberg Beta, agrees with Walk that the founding team’s knowledge of behavioral psychology, group dynamics and community building gives them an edge.

“More than anything, though, they care about helping the world unite and feel connected, and have spent their entire careers building organizations to make that happen,” he said in a written statement. “So it was a no-brainer to back Gatheround, and I can’t wait to see the impact they have on society.”

The 14-person team will likely expand with the new capital, which will also go toward helping adding more functionality and details to the Gatheround product.

“Even before the pandemic, remote work was accelerating faster than other forms of work,” Conn said. “Now that’s intensified even more.”

Gatheround is not the only company attempting to tackle this space. Ireland-based Workvivo last year raised $16 million and earlier this year, Microsoft launched Viva, its new “employee experience platform.”

Wall Street needs to relax, as startups show remote work is here to stay

Path Robotics raises $56M Series B for automated welding

Published May 3, 2021

Columbus, Ohio-based firm Path Robotics today announced the completion of a $56 million Series B. The round, led by Addition (featuring Drive Capital, Basis Set and Lemnos Lab) brings the robotic welding company’s total funding to $71 million.

Adding another piece to the broader automated manufacturing puzzle, the company is focused on robotic welding. The system uses scanning, computer vision and AI to adjust itself to different parts, understanding that sizing parts is a kind of imperfect science. Add to that the additional difficulty of working with highly reflective metals and you’ve got some interesting robotics problems to solve.

“Current industrial robotics have very little ability to understand their environment and the task at hand. Most robots merely repeat what they are told and have no ability to improve themselves,” CEO Andrew Lonsberry said in a release tied to the news. Our goal is to change this. The future of manufacturing hinges on highly capable robotics.”

The company says it’s looking to address a shortage in the welding workforce, which the American Welding Society says will experience a shortage of around 400,000 by 2024. The pandemic has also driven a number of companies to look for a more localized solution, apparently somewhat curbing the trend of offshoring the industry has seen in recent decades.

Enhanced computer vision, sensors raise manufacturing stakes for robots as a service

Hangry, an Indonesian cloud kitchen startup with plans to become a global F&B company, closes $13M Series A

Published May 3, 2021

Hangry, an Indonesian cloud kitchen startup that wants to become a global food and beverage company, has raised a $13 million Series A. The round was led by returning investor Alpha JWC Ventures and included participation from Atlas Pacific Capital, Salt Ventures and Heyokha Brothers. It will be used to increase the number of Hangry’s outlets in Indonesia, including launching its first dine-in restaurants, over the next two years before it enters other countries.

Along with a previous round of $3 million from Alpha JWC and Sequoia Capital’s Surge program, Hangry’s Series A brings its total funding to $16 million. It currently operates about 40 cloud kitchens in Greater Jakarta and Bandung, 34 of which launched in 2020. Hangry plans to expand its total outlets to more than 120 this year, including dine-in restaurants.

Founded in 2019 by Abraham Viktor, Robin Tan and Andreas Resha, Hangry is part of Indonesia’s burgeoning cloud kitchen industry. Tech giants Grab and Gojek both operate networks of cloud kitchens that are integrated with their food delivery services, while other startups in the space include Everplate and Yummy.

Indonesian cloud kitchen startup Yummy gets $12 million Series B led by SoftBank Ventures Asia

One of the main ways Hangry sets itself apart is by focusing on its own brands, instead of providing kitchen facilities and services to restaurants and other third-party clients. Hangry currently has four brands, including Indonesian chicken dishes (Ayam Koplo) and Japanese food (San Gyu), that cost about 15,000 to 70,000 IDR per portion (or about $1 to $6 USD). Its food can be ordered through Hangry’s own app, plus GrabFood, GoFood and ShopeeFood.

“Given that Hangry has developed an extensive cloud kitchen network across Indonesia, we naturally would have interest from other brands to leverage our networks,” chief executive officer Viktor told TechCrunch. “However, our focus is to grow our brands since our brands are rapidly growing in popularity in Indonesia and require all kitchen resources that they need to realize their full potential.”

Providing food deliveries helped Hangry grow during COVID-19 lockdowns and social distancing, but in order to become a global brand within a decade, it needs to operate in multiple channels, he added.

“We knew that we will one day have to serve customers in all channels, including dine in,” said Viktor. “We started the hard way, doing delivery-first business, where we faced the challenges surrounding making sure our food still tastes good when it reaches customers’ homes. Now we feel ready to serve our customers in our restaurant premises. Our dine-in concept is an expansion of everything we’ve done in delivery channels.”

In a press statement, Alpha JWC Ventures partner Eko Kurniadi said, “In the span of 1.5 years, [Hangry] launched multiple brands across myriad tastes and categories, and almost all of them are amongst the best sellers list with superior ratings in multiple platforms, tangible examples of product-market fit. This is only the beginning and we can already foresee their growth to be a top local F&B brand in the country.”

IoT and data science will boost foodtech in the post-pandemic era

Spying a pivot to ghost kitchens, SoftBank’s second Vision Fund pours $120 million into Ordermark

Bibit raises another growth round led by Sequoia Capital India, this time for $65M

Published May 3, 2021

Four months after leading a $30 million growth round in Bibit, Sequoia Capital India has doubled down on its investment in the Indonesian robo-advisor app. Bibit announced today that the firm led a new $65 million growth round that also included participation from Prosus Ventures, Tencent, Harvard Management Company and returning investors AC Ventures and East Ventures.

This brings Bibit’s total funding to $110 million, including a Series A announced in May 2019. Its latest round will be used on developing and launching new products, hiring and increasing Bibit’s financial education services.

Indonesian robo-advisor app Bibit raises $30 million led by Sequoia Capital India

Bibit was launched in 2019 by Stockbit, a stock investing platform and community, and is part of a crop of Indonesian investment apps focused on new investors. Others include SoftBank Ventures-backed Ajaib, Bareksa, Pluang and FUNDtastic. Bibit runs robo-advisor services for mutual funds, investing users’ money based on their risk profiles, and claims that 90% of its users are millennials and first-time investors.

According to Indonesia’s Financial Services Authority (Otoritas Jasa Keuangan), the number of retail investors grew 56% year-over-year in 2020. For mutual funds in particular, Bibit said investors grew 78% year-over-year to 3.2 million, based on data from the Indonesia Stock Exchange and Central Securities Custodian.

Despite the economic impact of COVID-19, interest in stock investing grew as people took advantage of market dips (the Jakarta Composite Index fell in the first quarter of 2020, but is now recovering steadily). Apps like Bibit and its competitors want to make capital investing more accessible with lower fees and minimum investment amounts than traditional brokerages like Mandiri Sekuritas, which also saw an increase in new retail investors and average transaction value last year.

Ajaib raises $65M Series A extension led by Ribbit Capital, increasing the round’s total to $90M

But the percentage of retail investors in Indonesia is still very low, especially compared to markets like Singapore or Malaysia, presenting growth opportunities for investment services.

Apps like Bibit focus on content that helps make capital investing less intimidating to first-time investors. For example, Ajaib also presents its financial educational features as a selling point.

In a press statement, Sequoia Capital India vice president Rohit Agarwal said, “Indonesian mutual fund customers have grown almost 10x in the past five years. Savings via mutual funds is the first step towards investing and Bibit has helped millions of consumers start their investing journey in a responsible manner. Sequoia Capital India is excited to double down on the partnership as the company brings the same customer focus to stock investing with Stockbit.”

Indonesian savings and investment app Pluang gets $20M in pre-Series B funding

Big Tech is now worth so much we’ve forgotten to be shocked by the numbers

Published May 1, 2021

Welcome back to The TechCrunch Exchange, a weekly startups-and-markets newsletter. It’s broadly based on the daily column that appears on Extra Crunch, but free, and made for your weekend reading. If you want it in your inbox every Saturday morning, sign up here. Ready? Let’s talk money, startups and spicy IPO rumors.

TechCrunch isn’t a public-market-focused publication. We care about startups. But public tech companies can, at times, provide interesting insights into how the broader technology market is performing. So we pay what we might call minimum-viable attention to former startups that made it all the way to an IPO.

Then there are the Big Tech companies. In the United States the list is well-known: Facebook, Alphabet, Microsoft, Apple and Amazon. And, in a series of results that could indicate a hot market for startup growth, they had a smashingly good first quarter of 2021. You can read our notes on their results here and here, but that’s just part of the story.

Yes, the Big Tech financial results were good — as they have been for some time — but lost amid the usual earnings deluge of numbers is how shockingly accretive Big Tech’s recent performances have proven for their valuations.

Microsoft fell as low as the $135 per-share range last March. Today it’s worth $252 and change. Alphabet traded down to around $1,070 per share. Today the search giant is worth $2,410 per share.

The result of the huge share-price appreciation is that Apple is now worth $2.21 trillion, Microsoft $1.88 trillion, Amazon $1.76 trillion, Alphabet $1.60 trillion and Facebook $0.93 trillion. That’s around $8.4 trillion for the five companies.

Back in July of 2017, I wrote a piece noting that their aggregate value had reached the $3 trillion mark. That became $4 trillion in mid-2018. And then in the next three years or so it more than doubled again.

Why?

Myles Udland, a reporter at our sister publication Yahoo Finance, has at least part of the puzzle in a piece he wrote this week. Here’s Udland:

And while it seems that almost every earnings story has sort of followed this same arc, data also confirms that this is not just our imagination: corporate earnings have never been this far out of line with expectations.

Data out of the team at Refinitiv published Thursday showed the rate at which companies were beating estimates and the magnitude by which they were beating expectations through Thursday morning’s results were the best on record.

So earnings are beating the street’s guesses more frequently, and at a higher differential, than ever? That makes recent stock-market appreciation less worrisome, I suppose. And it helps explain why startups have been able to raise so much capital lately in the United States, as they have in Europe, and why private-market investors are pouring so much capital into fintech startups. And it’s probably why Zomato is going public and why we’re still waiting for the Robinhood debut.

This is what a market feels like when the underlying businesses are firing on all cylinders, it appears. Just don’t forget that no business cycle is unending, and no boom is forever.

An insurtech interlude

Extending The Exchange’s recent reporting regarding fintech funding, and our roundup from last week of insurtech startup rounds, a few more notes on the latter startup niche, which can be broadly viewed as part of the larger financial technology world.

This time we’ll hear from Accel’s John Locke regarding his investments in The Zebra — which recently raised even more capital — and the insurtech space more broadly.

Asked why insurtech marketplaces like The Zebra have been able to raise so very much money in the last year, Locke said that it’s a mix of “insurance carriers […] finally embracing marketplaces and willing to design integrated consumer experiences with marketplaces,” along with more consumer “comparison shopping” and, finally, growth and revenue quality.

The Zebra, Locke said, is “still growing north of 100% at ~$120M+ revenue run-rate.” That means it can go public whenever it wants.

Insurtech startups are leveraging rapid growth to raise big money

But on that matter, there has been some weakness in the stock market for some public insurtech companies. Is Locke worried about that? He’s neutral-to-positive, saying that his firm does not “think all the companies in the market will work but still thinks ‘insurtechs’ will take market share from incumbents over the next decade.” Fair enough.

And Accel is still considering more deals in the space, as are others. Locke said that the venture market for insurtech investments is “definitely more aggressive” this year than last.

Various and sundry

Closing today, a few notes on things that we didn’t get to that matter:

Productboard closed a $72 million Series C. First, that’s a huge round. Second, yes, Tiger did lead the deal. Third, the product management software company has around 4,000 customers today. That’s a lot. Add this company to your two-years-from-now IPO list.
Chinese bike-sharing startup Hello is going public in the United States. We are going to get back to this on Monday, but its F-1 filing is here. The company turned $926.3 million worth of 2020 revenues into $109.6 million in gross profit, and a net loss of $173.7 million in net losses. Yowza.
Darktrace went public this week. I know of it because it sponsors an F1 team that I adore, but it enters our world today as a recent U.K.-listed company. And after Deliveroo went kersplat, the resounding success of the Darktrace listing could make the U.K. a more attractive place to list than it was a week ago.
And, finally, drone delivery is, maybe, coming at last? U.K.-listed venture capital group Draper Esprit led the $25 million round into Manna, which wants to use unmanned drones in Ireland to deliver grub. “Manna sees a huge appetite for a greener, quieter, safer, and faster delivery service,” UKTN reports.

A long, weird week. Make sure to follow the second denizen of The Exchange’s writing team: Anna Heim. Okay! Chat next week!

Alex

Emotional marketing and an e-mail titan walk into a bar

Published May 1, 2021

My mom cuts to the chase when she is describing my beat to others. In her words, I cover companies like Uber before they become companies like Uber. And honestly? I can’t exactly disagree with the description. The best feeling in tech journalism is telling a story about a startup before it becomes a household name. As an early-stage reporter, I honestly bet a lot on the potential of a savvy edtech founder or creative marketplace play. And when I’m doing my job right, I point to the unique insight that will make the startup successful or challenged in the future.

On that note, one of my favorite renewed series at TechCrunch is an EC-1 (Extra Crunch subscription required), a story series that goes through the nitty-gritty of a startup’s story, from its original days to its pivots along the way. I’ve spent the past few months on one of these projects — and mine is coming out next week! In the meantime, you’ve read packages about StockX and Tonal, and our latest just came out: the Klaviyo EC-1:

How Klaviyo transformed from a lifestyle business into a $4.15B email titan (2,600 words/10 minutes)
How Klaviyo used data and no-code to transform owned marketing (3,000 words/12 minutes)
Marketing in 2021 is emotional and not just transactional (2,200 words/9 minutes)
Drama and quirk aren’t necessary for startup success (1,900 words/8 minutes)

Image Credits: Nigel Sussman

Enjoy this long-form read and big thanks to Danny Crichton, my Equity co-host and managing editor here at TechCrunch, who has been managing and editing all of these projects.

In the rest of this newsletter we’ll get into All Raise data, the new Miami and a new lineup you don’t want to miss. Follow me on Twitter @nmasc_ for updates throughout the week.

All (aren’t) Raise(d)

All Raise, a nonprofit dedicated to increasing the footprint of women founders and funders, has released its annual report for 2020. The whole thing is honestly worth a read, but we especially paid attention to how funding has dropped for female founders:

Round sizes for women + non-binary founders were up to 49% lower than males
85% of venture funding goes to all-male teams
64% of VC firms still don’t have a single female partner
Black + Latinx female founders receive only 0.64% of VC funding, a slight uptick from the year prior.

Here’s what to know: On Equity, we talked about how these abysmal metrics were both a predicted but still surprising effect of Zoom investing. This disconnect is the conversation no one has during an upmarket — and metrics are one way we can benchmark progress.

Precursor Ventures’ Charles Hudson on ‘the conversation no one has during an upmarket’

Internet is the new Miami

To quote Winnie CEO and co-founder Sara Mauskopf, “Internet is the new Miami.” The networks made online — either through the rise of meme culture or Substack spice — can be a competitive advantage in the world of investment, as two new funds this week showed us.

Here’s what to know: Ryan Hoover and Vedika Jain announced Weekend Fund 3, which will include a $1 million community raise. And Chief Meme Officer Turner Novak finally debuted Banana Capital’s debut fund launched with $9.99 million in funding.

Banana Capital’s debut fund is for internet-first founders

Novak explained how being internet-first impacts his investments:

“It just kind of happens where [my investments] are people who understand the culture of the internet, to understand memes and understand wit and humor and appreciate that a little bit more,” he said. “Those are probably the people that are more naturally intuitive investments, so it definitely does skew that direction.”

While Novak didn’t share explicit targets or mandates around investment in diverse founders, he pointed to his track record at Gelt VC, in which 41% of capital went to woman CEOs. To date, 65% of Banana Capital’s portfolio founding teams include non-white founders and 50% of the teams include more than one gender.

And in the little-known capital lender space, Shopify is using machine learning to lend money to startups. Shopify Capital has a nice strategic ring to it, no?

Around TechCrunch

Announcing the Agenda for TC Sessions: Mobility 2021
Sydney Thomas is coming to judge startups at Disrupt
And, as this clip will tell you, we’re losing the Webby’s, so vote for Equity!

Announcing the Agenda for TC Sessions: Mobility 2021

Across the week

Seen on TechCrunch

The AWS for blockchain

Atlassian launches a Jira for every team

CES will return to Las Vegas in 2022

Microsoft’s new default font options, rated

Seen on Extra Crunch

Hacking my way into analytics: A creative’s journey to design with data

How Brex more than doubled its valuation in a year

Hacking my way into analytics: A creative’s journey to design with data

And finally

India is in crisis. It is devastating and heartbreaking to watch this unfold and impact our family and friends and colleagues and people. My colleague Manish Singh, who is based there, wrote up the different ways you can donate to help out.

India’s entrepreneurs and investors are mobilizing to help the nation fight COVID-19 — and you can too

I’ll end by quoting Singh:

With several major industries, including film and sports, going about their lives pretending there is no crisis, entrepreneurs and startups have emerged as a rare beam of hope in recent days, springing to action to help the nation navigate its darkest hours.

It’s a refreshing change from last year, when thousands of Indian startups themselves were struggling to survive. And while some startups are still severely disrupted, offering a helping hand to the nation has become the priority for most.

Until next week,

Extra Crunch roundup: Fintech stays hot, Brex doubles, and startup IRR is up all over

Published April 30, 2021

Tech companies in Silicon Valley, the geography, have had an incredible year. But one indicator points to longer-term changes. The internal rate of return (IRR) for companies in other startup hub cities has been even better. A big new analysis by AngelList showed aggregate IRR of 19.4% per year on syndicated deals elsewhere versus 17.5% locally. A separate measure, of total value of paid-in investment, revealed 1.67x returns for other hubs versus 1.60x in the main Silicon Valley and Bay Area tech cities.

The data is based on a sample of 2,500 companies that have used AngelList to syndicate deals from 2013 through 2020. Which is just one snapshot, but a relevant one given how hard it can be to produce accurate early-stage startup market analysis at this scale. I believe we’ll see more and more data confirming the trends in the coming years, especially as more of the startup world acclimates to remote-first and distributed offices. You can increasingly do a startup from anywhere and make it a success. Not that Silicon Valley is lacking optimism, as you’ll see in a number of the other stories in the roundup below!

Eric Eldon
Managing Editor, Extra Crunch

(Subbing in for Walter today as he’s enjoying a well-deserved break and definitely not still checking the site.)

Optimism reigns at consumer trading services as fintech VC spikes and Robinhood IPO looms

Image Credits: Nigel Sussman (opens in a new window)

With the Coinbase direct listing behind us and the Robinhood IPO ahead, it’s a heady time for consumer-focused trading apps.

Mix in the impending SPAC-led debut of eToro, general bullishness in the cryptocurrency space, record highs for some equities markets, and recent rounds from Public.com, M1 Finance and U.K.-based Freetrade, and you could be excused for expecting the boom in consumer asset trading to keep going up and to the right.

But will it? There are data in both directions.

Optimism reigns at consumer trading services as fintech VC spikes and Robinhood IPO looms

After going public, once-hot startups are riding a valuation roller coaster

Image Credits: Nigel Sussman (opens in a new window)

A short meditation on value, or, more precisely, how assets are valued in today’s markets.

Long story short: This is why I only buy index funds. No one knows what anything (interesting) is worth.

After going public, once-hot startups are riding a valuation roller coaster

Should you give an anchor investor a stake in your fund’s management company?

Image of a red anchor resting on pile of money.

Image Credits: Matthias Kulka (opens in a new window) / Getty Images

Raising capital for a new fund is always hard.

But should you give preferential economics or other benefits to a seed anchor investor who makes a material commitment to the fund? Let’s break down the pros and cons.

Should you give an anchor investor a stake in your fund’s management company?

2021 should be a banner year for biotech startups that make smart choices early

Image Credits: TEK IMAGE/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY / Getty Images

Last year was a record 12 months for venture-backed biotech and pharma companies, with deal activity rising to $28.5 billion from $17.8 billion in 2019.

As vaccines roll out, drug development pipelines return to normal, and next-generation therapies continue to hold investor interest, 2021 is on pace to be another blockbuster year.

But founder missteps early in the fundraising journey can result in severe consequences.

In this exciting moment, when younger founders will likely receive more attention, capital and control than ever, it’s crucial to avoid certain pitfalls.

2021 should be a banner year for biotech startups that make smart choices early

Two investors weigh in: Is your SPAC just a PIPE dream?

A picture of a Dandelion in the wind, with a background of cool blue colours, blurred from the narrow pane of focus. Composition made in photoshop. (A picture of a Dandelion in the wind, with a background of cool blue colours, blurred from the narrow

Image Credits: Maxime Robeyns/EyeEm (opens in a new window) / Getty Images

The fundamental thing to remember about the SPAC process is that the result is a publicly traded company open to the regulatory environment of the SEC and the scrutiny of public shareholders.

In today’s fast-paced IPO world, going public can seem like simply a marker of success, a box to check.

But are you ready to be a public company?

Two investors weigh in: Is your SPAC just a PIPE dream?

There is no cybersecurity skills gap, but CISOs must think creatively

Image of a question mark, gears, a lightbulb, and an exclamation point on chairs in a waiting room.

Image Credits: Westend61 (opens in a new window) / Getty Images

Those of us who read a lot of tech and business publications have heard for years about the cybersecurity skills gap. Studies often claim that millions of jobs are going unfilled because there aren’t enough qualified candidates available for hire.

Don’t buy it.

The basic laws of supply and demand mean there will always be people in the workforce willing to move into well-paid security jobs. The problem is not that these folks don’t exist. It’s that CIOs or CISOs typically look right past them if their resumes don’t have a very specific list of qualifications.

In many cases, hiring managers expect applicants to be fully trained on all the technologies their organization currently uses. That not only makes it harder to find qualified candidates, but it also reduces the diversity of experience within security teams — which, ultimately, may weaken the company’s security capabilities and its talent pool.

There is no cybersecurity skills gap, but CISOs must think creatively

To be frank, we do not know how to value Honest Company

Image Credits: Nigel Sussman (opens in a new window)

We do not know how to value Honest Company.

It’s outside our normal remit, but that the company is getting out the door at what appears to be a workable price gain to its final private round implies that investors earlier in its cap table are set to do just fine in its debut. Snowflake it is not, but at its current IPO price interval, it is hard to not call Honest a success of sorts — though we also anticipate that its investors had higher hopes.

Returning to our question, do we expect the company to reprice higher? No, but if it did, The Exchange crew would not fall over in shock.

To be frank, I do not know how to value Honest Company

How Brex more than doubled its valuation in a year

Image Credits: TechCrunch

Brex, a fintech company that provides corporate cards and spend-management software to businesses, announced Monday that it closed a $425 million Series D round of capital at a valuation of around $7.4 billion.

The new capital came less than a year after Brex raised $150 million at a $2.9 billion pre-money valuation.

So, how did the company manage to so rapidly boost its valuation and raise its largest round to date?

TechCrunch spoke with Brex CEO Henrique Dubugras after his company’s news broke. We dug into the how and why of its new investment and riffed on what going remote-first has done for the company, as well as its ability to attract culture-aligned and more diverse talent.

How Brex more than doubled its valuation in a year

Founders who don’t properly vet VCs set up both parties for failure

Image Credits: Flashpop (opens in a new window) / Getty Images

There’s a disconnect between reality and the added value investors are promising entrepreneurs. Three in five founders who were promised added value by their VCs felt duped by their negative experience.

While this feels like a letdown by investors, in reality, it shows fault on both sides. Due diligence isn’t a one-way street, and founders must do their homework to make sure they’re not jumping into deals with VCs who are only paying lip service to their value-add.

Looking into an investor’s past, reputation and connections isn’t about finding the perfect VC, it’s about knowing what shaking certain hands will entail — and either being ready for it or walking away.

Founders who don’t properly vet VCs set up both parties for failure

Fifth Wall’s Brendan Wallace and Hippo’s Assaf Wand discuss proptech’s biggest opportunities

Image Credits: Jeff Newton / Hippo

What is the biggest opportunity for proptech founders? How should they think about competition, strategic investment versus top-tier VC firms and how to build their board? What about navigating regulation?

We sat down with Brendan Wallace, co-founder and general manager of Fifth Wall, and Hippo CEO Assaf Wand for an episode of Extra Crunch Live to discuss all of the above.

Fifth Wall’s Brendan Wallace and Hippo’s Assaf Wand discuss proptech’s biggest opportunities

SaaS subscriptions may be short-serving your customers

Suggesting scarcity, a single green pea rests in the middle of a dinner plate surrounded by tableware.

Image Credits: emyerson (opens in a new window) / Getty Images

Software as a service (SaaS) has perhaps become a bit too interchangeable with subscription models.

Every software company now looks to sell by subscription ASAP, but the model itself might not fit all industries or, more importantly, align with customer needs, especially early on.

SaaS subscriptions may be short-serving your customers

What can the OKR software sector tell us about startup growth more generally?

In the never-ending stream of venture capital funding rounds, from time to time, a group of startups working on the same problem will raise money nearly in unison. So it was with OKR-focused startups toward the start of 2020.

How were so many OKR-focused tech upstarts able to raise capital at the same time? And was there really space in the market for so many different startups building software to help other companies manage their goal-setting? OKRs, or “objectives and key results,” a corporate planning method, are no longer a niche concept. But surely, over time, there would be M&A in the group, right?

Image Credits: Nigel Sussman (opens in a new window)

What can the OKR software sector tell us about startup growth more generally?

Internal rates of return in emerging US tech hubs are starting to overtake Silicon Valley

Passenger Jet Plane Flying Above San Francisco for travel concept

Image Credits: petdcat (opens in a new window) / Getty Images

Tech innovation is becoming more widely distributed across the United States.

Among the five startups launched in 2020 that raised the most financing, four were based outside the Bay Area. The number of syndicated deals on AngelList in emerging markets from Austin to Seattle to Pittsburgh has increased 144% over the last five years.

And the number of startups in these emerging markets is growing fast — and increasingly getting a bigger piece of the VC pie.

Internal rates of return in emerging US tech hubs are starting to overtake Silicon Valley

Fund managers can leverage ESG-related data to generate insights

Image of a hand holding green piggybank in a green field.

Image Credits: Guido Mieth (opens in a new window)/ Getty Images

Almost two centuries ago, gold prospectors in California set off one of the greatest rushes for wealth in history. Proponents of socially conscious investing claim fund managers will start a similar stampede when they discover that environmental, social and governance (ESG) insights can yield treasure in the form of alternative data that promise big payoffs — if only they knew how to mine it.

ESG data is everywhere. Learning how to understand it promises big payoffs.

Fund managers can leverage ESG-related data to generate insights

Dear Sophie: What’s the latest on DACA?

lone figure at entrance to maze hedge that has an American flag at the center

Image Credits: Bryce Durbin/TechCrunch

Dear Sophie,

My company is looking to hire a very talented data infrastructure engineer who is undocumented. She has never applied for DACA before.

What is the latest on DACA? What can we do to support her?

—Multicultural in Milpitas

Dear Sophie: What’s the latest on DACA?

Zomato juice: Indian unicorn’s proposed IPO could drive regional startup liquidity

Image Credits: Nigel Sussman (opens in a new window)

The IPO parade continued this week as India-based food-delivery unicorn Zomato filed to go public.

The Zomato IPO is incredibly important. As our own Manish Singh reported when the company’s numbers became public, a “successful listing [could be] poised to encourage nearly a dozen other unicorn Indian startups to accelerate their efforts to tap the public markets.”

So, Zomato’s debut is not only notable because its impending listing gives us a look into its economics, but because it could lead to a liquidity rush in the country if its flotation goes well.

Zomato juice: Indian unicorn’s proposed IPO could drive regional startup liquidity

Investment in construction automation is essential to rebuilding US infrastructure

Well bought construction workers building house

Image Credits: Donald Iain Smith (opens in a new window) / Getty Images

With the United States moving all-in on massive infrastructure investment, much of the discussion has focused on jobs and building new green industries for the 21st century.

While the Biden administration’s plan will certainly expand the workforce, it also provides a massive opportunity for the adoption of automation technologies within the construction industry.

Despite the common narrative of automating away human jobs, the two are not nearly as much in conflict, especially with new investments creating space for new roles and work.

In fact, one of the greatest problems facing the construction industry remains a lack of labor, making automation a necessity for moving forward with these ambitious projects.

Investment in construction automation is essential to rebuilding US infrastructure

How to fundraise over Zoom more effectively

Image showing person at computer and person presenting seeking funding.,

Image Credits: fourSage (opens in a new window)/ Getty Images

Even though in-person drinks and coffee walks are on the horizon, virtual fundraising isn’t going away.

Now, it’s imperative to ensure your virtual pitch is as effective as your IRL one.

Not only is it more efficient — no expensive trips to San Francisco or trouble fitting investor meetings into one day — virtual fundraising helps democratize access to venture capital.

How to fundraise over Zoom more effectively

Hacking my way into analytics: A creative’s journey to design with data

Abstract Particle connection network background

Image Credits: Xuanyu Han (opens in a new window) / Getty Images

There’s a growing need for basic data literacy in the tech industry, and it’s only getting more taxing by the year.

Words like “data-driven,” “data-informed” and “data-powered” increasingly litter every tech organization’s product briefs. But where does this data come from?

Who has access to it? How might I start digging into it myself? How might I leverage this data in my day-to-day design once I get my hands on it?

Hacking my way into analytics: A creative’s journey to design with data

Fintech startups set VC records as the 2021 fundraising market continues to impress

Image Credits: Nigel Sussman (opens in a new window)

The first three months of the year were the most valuable period for fintech investing, ever.

Where did the fintech venture capital market push the most money in Q1, and why? Let’s dig in.

Fintech startups set VC records as the 2021 fundraising market continues to impress

Healthcare is the next wave of data liberation

Image of a balloon carrying away a brain.

Image Credits: PM Images (opens in a new window)/ Getty Images

Why can we see all our bank, credit card and brokerage data on our phones instantaneously in one app, yet walk into a doctor’s office blind to our healthcare records, diagnoses and prescriptions?

Our health status should be as accessible as our checking account balance.

The liberation of healthcare data is beginning to happen, and it will have a profound impact on society — it will save and extend lives.

Healthcare is the next wave of data liberation

What private tech companies should consider before going public via a SPAC

Image of intertwining arrows on a chalkboard to represent decision-making.

Image Credits: cnythzl (opens in a new window) / Getty Images

The red-hot market for special purpose acquisition companies, or SPACs, has “screeched to a halt.”

As the SPAC market grew in the past six months, it seemed that everyone was getting into the game. But shareholder lawsuits, huge value fluctuations and warnings from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission have all thrown the brakes on the SPAC market, at least temporarily.

So what do privately held tech companies that are considering going public need to know about the SPAC process and market?

What private tech companies should consider before going public via a SPAC

The era of the European insurtech IPO will soon be upon us

Detail of Euro note showing European continent

Image Credits: Image Source (opens in a new window) / Getty Images

Once the uncool sibling of a flourishing fintech sector, insurtech is now one of the hottest areas of a buoyant venture market. Zego’s $150 million round at unicorn valuation in March, a rumored giant incoming round for WeFox, and a slew of IPOs and SPACs in the U.S. are all testament to this.

It’s not difficult to see why. The insurance market is enormous, but the sector has suffered from notoriously poor customer experience, and major incumbents have been slow to adapt. Fintech has set a precedent for the explosive growth that can be achieved with superior customer experience underpinned by modern technology. And the pandemic has cast the spotlight on high-potential categories, including health, mobility and cybersecurity.

This has begun to brew a perfect storm of conditions for big European insurtech exits.

The era of the European insurtech IPO will soon be upon us

The health data transparency movement is birthing a new generation of startups

Medicine doctor hand working with modern computer interface as medical network concept

Image Credits: Busakorn Pongparnit (opens in a new window) / Getty Images

The recent movement toward data transparency is bringing about a new era of innovation and startups.

Those who follow the space closely may have noticed that there are twin struggles taking place: a push for more transparency on provider and payer data, including anonymous patient data, and another for strict privacy protection for personal patient data.

What’s the main difference, and how can startups solve these problems?

The health data transparency movement is birthing a new generation of startups

Analytics as a service: Why more enterprises should consider outsourcing

Published April 30, 2021

Joey Lei
Contributor

Joey Lei is director of service management at Synoptek. With more than 14 years of experience in engineering and product management, Lei is responsible for the development and growth of the Synoptek service portfolio and solution development with strategic technology alliance partners.

Y Combinator-backed Uiflow wants to accelerate no-code enterprise app creation

Published April 30, 2021

TechCrunch recently caught up with recent Y Combinator graduate Uiflow, a startup that is building a no-code enterprise app creation service.

If you are thinking wait, don’t a number of companies already do that?, the answer is yes. But what Quickbase, Smartsheet and others are working on isn’t quite the same thing, at least from the startup’s perspective.

Uiflow, a Bay Area-based concern that has been alive for far less than a year, has built an app creation tool that works with whatever backend a large company currently employs, and helps its development team build apps collaboratively. As the startup explained in a public posting, customer developers can import Figma files while their engineers can use existing UI libraries, and product managers can quickly vet an app’s logic.

The service is akin to a “cross between Unity and Figma,” Uiflow says.

Here’s what its own user interface looks like, per a screenshot the company provided to TechCrunch after an interview:

Per Y Combinator, the company has closed a pre-seed round of more than $500,000. The company told TechCrunch that it has been talking to investors lately — as essentially every Y Combinator-backed startup does after their public unveiling — but appears to be holding off raising more capital until it fully launches self-service of its product; the company may also accelerate its hiring efforts once its self-serve GTM motion is more broadly available.

The startup told TechCrunch that after its Product Hunt launch it picked up around 1,200 signups. It’s vetting the group and letting in some as pilot customers. Those customers currently pay the company, so it has revenue, although the startup is more product-focused at the moment than centered around boosting its short-term revenues.

Uiflow thinks that its target customers are companies with 250 or more workers, the scale at which a company begins to start thinking about its own UI elements. However, Uiflow is talking to companies with 100 to 1,000 customers, it said.

The five-person team is building a service in a market that is more than active at the moment. As TechCrunch has explored, private-market investors are bullish on the no-code space, especially after the COVID-19 pandemic bolstered the pace at which companies large and small moved toward digital solutions. No-code and low-code services came into greater demand as accelerating digital transformation efforts met the market’s general dearth of available developer talent.

TechCrunch has covered the no-code space extensively in recent quarters, given both rising market demand for its products and what seemed to be growing investor demand for shares in startups pursuing the model. All that’s to say that there’s a reasonable chance that we’ll hear from Uiflow soon regarding a fresh capital raise. Let’s see how long that takes.

In the meantime, here’s a photo of the Uiflow team. In 2021-style, it’s a Zoom shot:

From upper left, clockwise: Michael Tildahl, Eric Rowell (CTO and co-founder), Brian Lichliter, Rocco Cataldo and D. Sol Eun (CEO and co-founder). Via the company.

Five VCs discuss how no-code is going horizontal across the world’s industries