Gift Guide: Games on every platform to get you through the long, COVID winter

Published December 3, 2020

Welcome to TechCrunch’s 2020 Holiday Gift Guide! Need help with gift ideas? We’re here to help! We’ll be rolling out gift guides from now through the end of December. You can find our other guides right here.

It’s a great time to be a gamer — I mean, what else is there to do? And with the prospect of a long winter and lonely holiday season ahead of us, here’s a list of games on all the major platforms that you can really sink your teeth — and a few dozen hours — into.

Buying for a gamer and have no idea what’s worthwhile? Once you’ve figured out which gaming system is their platform of choice, any of these should be guaranteed wins.

This article contains links to affiliate partners where available. When you buy through these links, TechCrunch may earn an affiliate commission.

All major platforms

Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla

Image Credits: Ubisoft

I genuinely enjoyed AC: Odyssey’s gorgeous landscapes and main characters, but the game systems felt disconnected and arbitrary. That’s much less the case with AC: Valhalla, which tells a similarly sprawling tale of Vikings in England but works a little harder to put it together into a cohesive whole. It’s still very much “Ubisoft Game, but with Vikings” but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

Price: $50 from Amazon

Minecraft Dungeons

I thought this game was a bit limited when it first came out, but since then it has gotten several new areas and cross-platform multiplayer. Between that and its simplified systems and PG-level violence, Minecraft Dungeons is a great option for families that want to fight monsters together.

Price: $20-30 (depending on platform) from Mojang

Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War

Reviewers agree: The new CODBLOPS is definitely more CODBLOPS. The latest in the gritty military series is the one everyone will be playing for the next year, so it’s definitely a must-have for quite a few people.

Price: $50-60 (depending on platform) from Amazon

Cyberpunk 2077

Image Credits: CD Projekt Red

Cyberpunk 2077, the futuristic RPG from the creators of the Witcher, isn’t out yet, but it’s one of the most anticipated titles in recent years and your special someone might like the idea that they’re getting it day one. Of course if it’s anything like The Witcher 3, they’re probably going to want to wait a few months for the bugs to get ironed out. But hey, it’s an option.

Price: $50 from Amazon

PS4 and PS5

Spider-Man: Miles Morales

Image Credits: Sony

This semi-sequel to the much-lauded 2018 Spider-Man is smaller in scale but plays even better. Plus it has a wonderfully inclusive cast and tone and feels authentic, where the original, for all its strengths, had a pretty flat take on New York. Bonus: If you buy the PS5 version of Miles Morales, you get the remastered 2018 game for free. I’d argue you’re simply not going to find a better bang for your buck right now with any other new game.

Price: $50 on Amazon

Demon’s Souls

Image Credits: Sony

The only “true” next-generation game out there right now is a remake of a PlayStation 3 game, and in many ways it feels like it. But in other ways, it’s the most amazing game on the market right now. If your loved one has enjoyed Dark Souls, Bloodborne, Sekiro and other incredibly hard games, this is the one to get.

Price: $70 on Amazon

Ghost of Tsushima

Between Nioh 2, Sekiro and Ghost of Tsushima, there’s a real bumper crop of samurai and ninja action to be had. But Ghost is the broadest and most beautiful of them all — if not necessarily the deepest.

What it lacks in challenge… first of all, is more than made up by the difficulty of those other two games I mentioned, give me a break. But Ghost’s draw is in the unity and beauty of its game world and systems. For example, instead of a quest marker or arrow pointing toward your objective, the wind is just always blowing in that direction. Amazing, right? The single player campaign is remarkably well acted, and a free update has brought a surprisingly extensive multiplayer co-op mode as well. This is truly a game you can lose yourself in. Just don’t start trying to collect everything or you’ll never leave the first area.

Price: $40 on Amazon

13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim

Image Credits: Vanillaware

This totally unique game came out of left field and obsessed me for two solid weeks. A combination of adventure game, visual novel and tactical action game, 13 Sentinels puts you in charge of a bunch of high school kids piloting giant robots to save the world from alien invaders. (In case you can’t tell, it’s a Japanese production.)

Sound familiar? That’s the idea — and then it starts pulling rugs out from under you and doesn’t stop until the last few minutes. The labyrinthine story, which progresses simultaneously through 13 interwoven narratives, is the very best kind of sci-fi mind-boggler and a pleasure to unravel from start to finish. The combat is also compelling and satisfying, if not particularly deep or challenging. There’s simply nothing else like this out there.

Price: Currently $30 from GameStop

Xbox One and Series X

Halo: The Master Chief Collection

Image Credits: Microsoft

If your loved one is a Halo fan, they’re likely very sad since Halo: Infinite, once a launch title for the new console, won’t be coming out until next year. But it can’t hurt to have the original games all updated and beautified to play through as an appetizer. Plus there’s the famous Halo multiplayer to get everyone through the winter.

Price: $30 from Amazon

Yakuza: Like a Dragon

Image Credits: Sega

The latest in the long-running and beloved Yakuza series of character-driven adventures of Japanese gangsters set in a fictional Tokyo neighborhood, this one changes up the style with a turn-based combat system and new protagonist — but some are calling it the best yet.

Price: $35 from Amazon

Gears Tactics

Image Credits: Microsoft

No one really expected that the Gears of War series would lend itself to a tactics game in the style of XCOM — let alone that it would leapfrog others in the genre and become one of the best you can get, period. Naturally it isn’t quite the urgent, visceral experience that Gears normally is, but this is a surprisingly deep and engrossing game.

Price: $38 from Amazon

Ori and the Will of the Wisps

The sequel to the lauded “metroidvania” Ori and the Blind Forest is technically on several platforms, but the Series X seems to be the absolute best one on which to play it. With beautifully updated art and a silky-smooth framerate, this will look better on that new 4K HDR TV than many “real” next-generation games. But don’t let the beautiful yet cute art style make you think this will be a cakewalk. Like the first in the series, you’ll need some serious dexterity to complete this platformer.

Price: $30 from Moon Studios

Risky move: Preorder Halo: Infinite

No one is quite sure whether the first Halo of the next generation is going to be as good as everyone hopes, and a delay to early next year didn’t allay anyone’s fears. That said, many a gamer will cherish the idea of playing the latest in this venerable series day one, so pre-ordering a copy is a possibility if none of the other games really ring their bell.

Price: $60 from Amazon

Switch

Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit

Image Credits: Bryce Durbin

Technically this is also a “toy,” because it’s real-life RC carts zooming around your home on an augmented-reality racetrack. We thought it was tons of fun, and it’s a great way to take video games off the TV and into real life… kind of. Just be aware that every player needs their own cart and their own Switch.

Price: $99 from Best Buy

Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity

Don’t go into this game expecting a full-on new Zelda title and you’ll do just fine. This is definitely an action game, and a big, rather mindless one at that. But it’s hard to resist the concept of playing as Link, Zelda or any of the champions from Breath of the Wild and dispatching enemies by the hundreds.

Price: $50 on Amazon

Super Mario 3D All-Stars

Image Credits: Ninendo

Okay, I gave Nintendo some guff over the perfunctory nature of this collection of amazing games. I’ve wanted to replay Mario 64 for years and was waiting for Nintendo to touch it up just a bit — but it, and Super Mario Sunshine, and Super Mario Galaxy, are virtually unchanged in this retro package. Really, you couldn’t make it widescreen? But for most, the chance to play these games again (or for the first time) on the Switch is worth the price of admission, period.

Price: $60 from Amazon

PC

Spelunky 2 and/or Hades

The “roguelite” genre, with its randomly generated levels and complex interlocking systems, has grown in popularity and sophistication for years — and here we have two fine examples that take the genre in different directions.

Spelunky 2 is the most traditional, in a way. Sequel to one of the best games out there, this one adds more variety, more weirdness and more challenge to the unforgiving platforming of the original. Like before, every death (and there will be a lot) is avoidable and while some runs may last only seconds, it’s hard to be deterred when you know that if you just paid a little more attention, or saved your bombs, or went over that other way… just one more game. (Pro tip: Buy a couple copies for friends and indulge in jolly cooperation.)

Hades combines the procedurally generated levels with an incredibly beautiful art style and an ingenious story and progression system. Escaping from the ever-shifting landscape of Hades, you’re going to die over and over, but as a young god, that’s more inconvenience than obstacle. Meanwhile every death and every inch of progress moves you closer to the mystery of your birth in a clever modern take on Greek mythology. It’s honestly hard to imagine how Hades could be improved in almost any way.

Price: $20 for Spelunky 2 on Steam | $25 for Hades on Steam

Crusader Kings III

Image Credits: Paradox

This long-awaited strategy title puts you in the throne room of a European medieval dynasty, where you can do… pretty much anything to get ahead. Assassinations, proxy wars, brutal taxes, religious cannibalism, strategic marriages… it’s all on the table. This is a story-telling engine that’s remarkably robust and, once you get past the initial learning curve, very fun. It’s also very, very nerdy, and proud of it.

Price: $50 on Steam

Other options

Game & Watch: Super Mario Bros

Nintendo's Super Mario Bros handheld system

Image Credits: Devin Coldewey / TechCrunch

This little gadget has the original Super Mario Bros., its sequel (not the weird one — what we knew as “The Lost Levels”) and a remade LCD game all built in. It’s a charming device and the games play well, plus you can turn it off and resume progress later, making it that much easier to get through the whole game.

Price: $50 (but finding one in stock can be challenging.)

Backbone One for iPhone

Image Credits: Backbone

Got a friend who prefers to game on their phone? The Backbone is built for them. This snap-on controller brings buttons and analog triggers (and good ones, at that!) into the iOS gaming world, along with a surprisingly solid companion app that can do things like record your gameplay and help you edit and post your highlight reels. It only works with select iOS titles, but the library is growing. TechCrunch Editor-In-Chief Matthew Panzarino reviewed it in October and gave it his stamp of approval with very little reservation.

Price: $99 from Backbone

Henry picks up cash to be a Lambda School for Latin America

Published December 3, 2020

Latin America’s startup scene has attracted troves of venture investment, lifting highly-valued companies such as Rappi and NuBank into behemoth businesses. Now that the spotlight has arrived, those same startups need more talent than ever before to meet demand.

That’s where one seed-stage Buenos Aires startup wants to help. Henry has created an online computer science school that trains software developers from low-income backgrounds to understand technical skills and get employed. The company was founded by brother-sister duo Luz and Martin Borchardt, as well as Manuel Barna Ferrés, Antonio Tralice and Leonardo Maglia.

The Henry team.

The company claims that there’s an estimated 1 million software engineering job openings in Latin America, but fewer than 100,000 professionals that have training suitable for those roles.

“Higher education is only for 13% of the population in Latin America,” says Martin Borchardt, CEO and co-founder of Henry . “It’s very exclusive, very expensive, and has very low impact skills. So we’re giving these people an opportunity.”

With 90% of graduates coming from no formal higher education background, Henry seeks to help bring more back-end junior developers and full-stack developers into startups. Henry offers a five-month course that goes from Monday to Friday, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., which focuses on software developer skills. Beyond technical training, Henry gives participants job coaching, resume workshops and up-skilling opportunities post-graduation.

To make the school more affordable, Henry looks to take on the same strategy used by Lambda School, a YC-graduate that has raised over $122 million in known funding: income-share agreements. The set-up would allow for boot camp participants to join the program at zero upfront costs, and then only pay once they get hired at a job.

As edtech grows cash rich, some lessons for early stage

Lambda School’s ISA terms ask students to pay 17% of their monthly salary for 24 months once they earn $4,167 monthly. The students pay a maximum of $30,000. Henry takes a much smaller slice of the pie, partly because salaries are lower in Latin American than in the United States. Henry asks students to pay 15% of their monthly salary for 24 months once students earn $500 a month.

If a Henry student doesn’t get employed in a job that allows them to make $500 a month within five years after the program completes, they are off the hook for paying back the boot camp.

Henry is also focused on helping more women get into the field of software development. Internally, Henry’s remote team is 20% women, 64% men. The current students reflect the same breakdown.

One issue with coding boot camps is that while it might help a student go from unemployed to employed, the lack of credential and degree might limit career mobility past that first job. For that reason, Henry has created a database of alumni resources, including up-skilling and reskilling opportunities in the latest skill, which will be free of charge for graduates.

Henry needs to execute on job placement to be successful in its field. Currently, more than 80% of students in Henry’s first cohort have found jobs, but it’s too soon in the startups’ trajectory to get a stronger metric on that front. About four Henry graduates have been employed by the startup.

The need for more talent in emerging countries has not gone unnoticed. Microverse, also funded by Y Combinator, is similarly using income-sharing agreements to bring education to the masses in developing countries, including spaces in Latin America. Henry thinks the competitor is approaching the dynamic too broadly.

VCs bet millions on Microverse, a Lambda School for the developing world

“They’re focusing on all emerging markets and don’t teach to Spanish speakers,” Borchardt said. Henry, alternatively, focuses on Spanish speakers, over 60% of its market in Latin America.

What if Lambda School, the source of Henry’s inspiration, was to break into Latin America? The founder added that the richly funded company has tried, and failed, to expand into international geographies, including China and Europe, due to fragmentation.

Currently, Henry has graduated 200 students and is working with 600 students across Colombia, Chile, Uruguay and Argentina. It plans to expand into Mexico and to bring on Portuguese instruction.

Now, VCs are giving Henry some cash to do so. After going through Y Combinator’s Summer batch, Henry announced today that it has raised $1.5 million in seed funding in a round led by Accion Venture Lab, Emles Venture Partners and Noveus VC. There were also a number of edtech angel investors from Latin American that participated in the round.

“I love the human interaction within instructors and our staff and students,” Borchardt said. “That is something very powerful of Henry compared to a MOOC. The biggest challenge is how do you scale maintaining those assets that bring you that?”

Equity Dive: Edtech’s 2020 wakeup call

Fantasy startup Esports One raises $4M more

Published December 3, 2020

Esports One, a startup bringing the fantasy approach to esports, is announcing that it has raised an additional $4 million in funding.

When I first wrote about Esports One in April, co-founder and COO Sharon Winter described it as the first “all-in-one fantasy platform” in the esports world, allowing you to research players, create fantasy teams and watch games, with an initial focus on the North American and European divisions of League of Legends.

According to the Esports One team, creating this platform required building out a set of data and analytics products, as well as using computer vision technology that can track game activity (and update player stats) without relying on a publisher’s API.

The startup says its user base has been growing by more than 25% month-over-month. It may also have benefited from the pause in professional sports earlier this year, while CEO and co-founder Matt Gunnin told me recently that he also sees fantasy as a way to make video games accessible to a broader audience — he recalled one Esports One user who introduced his sister to League of Legends using the fantasy platform.

“I use the example of growing up and sitting there with my dad, watching a baseball game, he’s telling me everything that’s happening,” Gunnin said. “Now it’s the opposite — parents are sitting and watching their kids.”

Many parents, he suggested, are “never going to pick up a mouse and keyboard and play League of Legends,” but they might play the fantasy version: “That’s an entry point … if we can make it easily accessible to individuals both that are hardcore gamers playing video games and watching League of Legends their entire life, as well as someone who has no idea what’s going on.”

The new funding was led led by XSeed Capital, Eniac Ventures, and Chestnut Street Ventures, bringing Esports One to a total of $7.3 million raised. The company also recently signed a partnership deal with lifestyle company ESL Gaming.

Gunnin said the money will allow the company to grow its Bytes virtual currency, which players use to enter contests and buy customizations — starting next year, players will be able to spend real money to purchase Bytes. In addition, it’s working on native iOS and Android apps (Esports One is currently accessible via desktop and mobile web).

Gunnin and his team also plan to develop fantasy competitions for Rainbow Six: Siege, Rocket League, Valorant and Fortnite.

“As a fairly new player in the esports world, we’ve seen immense determination and grit from Matt, Sharon, and the whole Esports One team to grow into a household name,” said XSeed’s Damon Cronkey in a statement. “I’m excited to be partnering with a company that will deliver new perspectives and features to an evolving industry. We’re eager to see how Esports One grows in 2021.”

Esports One launches its fantasy esports platform

Stripe announces embedded business banking service Stripe Treasury

Published December 3, 2020

Fintech startup Stripe has announced an ambitious new product today called Stripe Treasury. The company is partnering with banks to offer a banking-as-a-service API. In other words, Stripe clients will be able to provide bank accounts to their customers — the service is invite-only for now.

This is part of a bigger trend called embedded finance. Essentially, instead of separating banking services from other services that you use, embedded finance products provide financial services as close as possible to the end customer in the services that they already use.

Other companies have been working on embedded business banking products, such as Wise. Stripe could take advantage of its existing user base to convince them to use Stripe Treasury for new banking products.

For example, Shopify will use Stripe Treasury for Shopify Balance. If a Shopify merchant wants to hold money, pay bills and spend money from their Shopify account, they can open a bank account in Shopify Balance directly. This way, they can skip the traditional bank account. Behind the scenes, Stripe Treasury powers that feature.

And yet, Stripe doesn’t want to become a bank. As usual, the company is focused on infrastructure and payments. It partners with banks, such as Evolve Bank and Goldman Sachs in the U.S. Eventually, Stripe also plans to launch Stripe Treasury in other countries thanks to partnerships with Citibank and Barclays.

Stripe turns everything into API calls. An API is a programming interface that lets you interact with third-party services using simple instructions. For instance, a developer can take advantage of Stripe Treasury to open bank accounts directly from their service by triggering Stripe’s API.

Similarly, you can move money or pay bills using API calls. Combined with Stripe Issuing, you can also issue a virtual or physical card and connect it to a bank account. Slowly, Stripe is building products that cover a bigger chunk of the payment chain.

Shopify announces a new merchant debit card and support for payment installment plans

Boost ROI with intent data and personalized multichannel marketing campaigns

Published December 3, 2020

Coronavirus is causing large and small businesses to drastically cut marketing budgets. In Forrester’s self-described “most optimistic scenario,” the analysts project a 28% drop in U.S. marketing spend by the end of 2021. Even Google is cutting its marketing budget in half. As marketers move forward, Forrester predicts marketing automation platforms will grow despite an overall decline in marketing technology investment.

Automation platforms help marketers scale their communications. However, scaling communications is not a substitute for intimacy, which all humans crave. Because of the pandemic, it is harder than ever to get attention, let alone make a connection. More mass email blasts from your marketing automation platform are not going to get you the connections with prospects you crave. So how should marketers proceed? Direct mail captures 100% of your audience’s attention. It provides a sensory experience for your prospects and customers, and that helps establish an emotional connection.

Winning marketers are strategically merging automation and digital data with the more intimate channel of direct mail. We call this tactile marketing automation (TMA).

TMA is the integration of direct mail or personalized swag with a marketing automation platform. With TMA, a marketer doesn’t have to think about creating direct mail campaigns outside of digital campaigns. Rather, direct mail experiences are already fully integrated into the pre-built customer journey.

TMA uses intent data to inform content, messaging and the timing of direct mail touchpoints that maximize relevancy and scalability. Multichannel campaigns including direct mail report an ROI 18 percentage points higher than those without direct mail. Plus, 84% of marketers state direct mail improves multichannel campaign performance.

Read on to see how you can merge digital communications and direct mail to deliver remarkable experiences that spark a connection.

Incorporate intent data

Personalization is a key ingredient of a remarkable experience. Many marketers automate processes by introducing marketing software and then call it personalization. But, oftentimes it’s just quicker batching and blasting. Brands can’t just change the first name on a piece of content and call it “personalized.” Real personalization is necessary and vital for real results. Our consumers expect more. The best way to introduce real personalization within a marketing mix is to use intent data and trigger-driven campaigns.

Thoma Bravo acquires Flexera for second time paying $2.85B

Published December 3, 2020

Thoma Bravo must really like Flexera, an IT asset management company out of Chicago. The private equity firm bought the company for the second time today. Sources told TechCrunch the price was $2.85 billion.

Technically, Thoma Bravo is getting a majority stake in the company, buying it from previous owners TA Associates and Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan Board. The firm originally bought Flexera in 2008 from Macrovision for just $200 million. It turned it around just three years later in 2011 for $1 billion profit, according to reports.

While reports last year had the company’s investors looking for $3 billion, they didn’t quite reach that mark, but it’s still a hefty profit as the company continues to change hands, giving each of its owners a substantial return on investment.

At $2.85 billion, Thoma Bravo will have a bigger challenge on its hands to make that same kind of return, but it sees a company it liked before and it still likes it, especially the management team, which to some degree at least remains intact.

Private equity firms can offer enterprise startups a viable exit option

“Jim [Ryan] and his team have positioned Flexera for sustained growth by focusing on the strategic challenges enterprises face with complex IT infrastructures,” Seth Boro, managing partner at Thoma Bravo said in a statement.

Ryan was pleased to see the company’s value continue to rise and to connect once again with Thoma Bravo. “This is a resounding vote of confidence in the growth Flexera has shown and the strategic initiatives we’ve undertaken to address the exponential challenges faced by organizations today,” he said in a statement.

Flexera was founded in 2008 and has bought 12 companies along the way, including five in the last couple of years, according to Crunchbase data. The deal is expected to close in the first quarter of next subject to regulatory approvals.

AWS expands startup assistance program

Published December 3, 2020

Last year, AWS launched the APN Global Startup Program, which is sort of AWS’s answer to an incubator for mid to late-stage startups deeply involved with AWS technology. This year, the company wants to expand that offering, and today it announced some updates to the program at the Partner keynote at AWS re:Invent.

While startups technically have to pay a $2,500 fee if they are accepted to the program, AWS typically refunds that fee, says Doug Yeum, head of the Global Partner Organization at AWS — and they get a lot of benefits for being part of the program.

“While the APN has a $2,500 annual program fee, startups that are accepted into the invite-only APN Global Startup Program get that fee back, as well as free access to substantial additional resources both in terms of funding as well as exclusive program partner managers and co-sell specialists resources,” Yeum told TechCrunch.

And those benefits are pretty substantial, including access to a new “white glove program” that lets them work with a program manager with direct knowledge of AWS and who has experience working with startups. In addition, participants get access to an ISV program to work more directly with these vendors to increase sales and access to data exchange services to move third-party data into the AWS cloud.

AWS announces DevOps Guru to find operational issues automatically

What’s more, they can apply to the new AI/ML Acceleration program. As AWS describes it, “This includes up to $5,000 AWS credits to fund experiments on AWS services, enabling startups to explore AWS AI/ML tools that offer the best fit for them at low risk.”

Finally, they get partially free access to the AWS Marketplace, offsetting the normal marketplace listing fees for the first five offerings. Some participants will also get access to AWS sales to help use the power of the large company to drive a startup’s sales.

While you can apply to the program, the company also recruits individual startups that catch its attention. “We also proactively invite mid to late-stage startups built on AWS that, based on market signals, are showing traction and offer interesting use cases for our mutual enterprise customers,” Yeum explained.

Among the companies currently involved in the program are HashiCorp, Logz.io and Snapdocs. Interested startups can apply on the APN Global Startup website.

Find out how startups like Skyroot and Bluefield are building new industries at TC Sessions: Space 2020

Published December 3, 2020

At our fast-approaching first TC Sessions: Space event, which is happening December 16-17, we’re going to be highlighting some of the most exciting startups and founders tackling big problems with innovative and groundbreaking solutions.

Some of those companies are focused on building tomorrow’s spacecraft, and others are working on in-space technologies that could become the next big anchor upon which countless other businesses are built.

Two of the companies joining us at TC Sessions: Space are Skyroot and Bluefield. Skyroot is India’s first private space launch startup, founded in 2018 with the goal of developing a low-cost and reliable launch vehicle to help democratize access of space.

More panels from TC Sessions: Space

Founder, CEO and CTO Pawan Kumar Chandana will join us to talk about building his new business, his experience developing rockets for the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) and how Skyroot’s Vikram-series launch vehicles plan to achieve the company’s ambitious goals.

Bluefield Technologies is focused on an entirely different, but potentially just as impactful opportunity: Observation, monitoring and analysis of methane emissions data on Earth. Their satellite-based methane observation technology offers a new high bar of precision and detail.

Bluefield founder and CEO Yotam Ariel will join us to talk about what becomes possible across a range of industries once you offer them the ability to track up to 90% of the Earth’s methane emissions with pinpoint accuracy, at costs that are up to 100% cheaper than existing solutions on up to a daily basis.

We’ll have conversations with Chandana, Ariel and others as part of our “Founders in Focus” series, just one small part of the all-star agenda at TC Sessions: Space. Tickets are still available at the Late Registration price, with discounts for students, government/military employees and groups, so grab yours below to attend this fully virtual event.

VCs who want better outcomes should use data to reduce founder team risk

Published December 3, 2020

Janneke Niessen
Contributor

Janneke Niessen is a partner at CapitalT, a serial entrepreneur and a tech diversity advocate.

VCs expect the companies they invest in to use data to improve their decision-making. So why aren’t they doing that when evaluating startup teams?

Sure, venture capital is a people business, and the power of gut feeling is real. But using an objective, data-backed process to evaluate teams — the same way we do when evaluating financial KPIs, product, timing and market opportunities — will help us make better investment decisions, avoid costly mistakes and discover opportunities we might have otherwise overlooked.

An objective assessment process will also help investors break free from patterns and back someone other than a white male for a change. Is looking at how we have always done things the best way to build for the future?

Sixty percent of startups fail because of problems with the team. Instinct matters, but a team is too big a risk to leave to intuition. I will use myself as an example. I have founded two companies. I know what it takes to build a company and to achieve a successful exit. I like to think I can sense when someone has that special something and when a team has chemistry. But I am human. I am limited by bias and thought patterns; data is not.

You can (and should) take a scientific approach to evaluating a startup team. A “strong” team isn’t a vague concept — extensive research confirms what it takes to execute a vision. Despite what people expect, soft skills can be measured. VCVolt is a computerized selection model that analyzes the performance of companies and founding teams developed by Eva de Mol, Ph.D., my partner at CapitalT.

We use it to inform every investment decision we make and to demystify a common hurdle to entrepreneurial success. (The technology also evaluates the company, market opportunity, timing and other factors, but since most investors aren’t taking a structured, data-backed approach to analyzing teams, let’s focus on that.)

VCVolt allows us to reduce team risk early on in the selection and due diligence process, thereby reducing confirmation bias and fail rates, discovering more winning teams and driving higher returns.

I will keep this story brief for privacy reasons, but you will get the point. While testing the model, we advised another VC firm not to move forward with an investment based on the model’s findings. The firm moved forward anyway because they were in love with the deal, and everything the model predicted transpired. It was a big loss for the investors, and a reminder that hunch and gut feeling can be wrong — or at least blind you to some serious risk factors.

The platform uses a validated model that is based on more than five years of scientific research, data from more than 1,000 companies and input from world-class experts and scientists. Its predictive validity is noted in top-tier scientific journals and other publications, including Harvard Business Review. By asking the right questions — science-based questions validated by more than 80,000 datapoints — the platform analyzes the likelihood that a team will succeed. It considers:

Space startup Aevum debuts world’s first fully autonomous orbital rocket launching drone

Published December 3, 2020

Launching things to space doesn’t have to mean firing a large rocket vertically using massive amounts of rocket-fuel-powered thrust — startup Aevum breaks the mould in multiple ways, with an innovative launch vehicle design that combines uncrewed aircraft with horizontal take-off and landing capabilities, with a secondary stage that deploys at high altitude and can take small payloads the rest of the way to space.

Aevum’s model actually isn’t breaking much new ground in terms of its foundational technology, according to founder and CEO Jay Skylus, with whom I spoke prior to today’s official unveiling of the startup’s Ravn X launch vehicle. Skylus, who previously worked for a range of space industry household names and startups, including NASA, Boeing, Moon Express and Firefly, told me the startup has focused primarily on making the most of existing available technologies to create a mostly reusable, fully automated small payload orbital delivery system.

To his point, Ravn X doesn’t look too dissimilar from existing jet aircraft, and bears obvious resemblance to the Predator line of UAVs already in use for terrestrial uncrewed flight. The vehicle is 80 feet long, and has a 60-foot wingspan, with a total max weight of 55,000 lbs including payload. Seventy percent of the system is fully reusable today, and Skylus says the goal is to iterate on that to the point where 95% of the launch system will be reusable in the relatively near future.

Image Credits: Aevum

Ravn X’s delivery system is designed for rapid response delivery, and is able to get small satellites to orbit in as little as 180 minutes — with the capability of having it ready to fly and deliver another again fairly shortly after that. It uses traditional jet fuel, the same kind used on commercial airliners, and it can take off and land in “virtually any weather,” according to Skylus. It also takes off and lands on any one-mile stretch of traditional aircraft runway, meaning it can theoretically use just about any active airport in the world as a launch and landing site.

One of they key defining differences of Aevum relative to other space launch startups is that what they’re presenting isn’t theoretical, or in development — the Ravn X already has paying customers, including over $1 billion in U.S. government contracts. Its first mission is with the U.S. Space Force, the ASLON-45 small satellite launch mission (set for late 2021), and it also has a contract for 20 missions spanning nine years with the U.S. Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center. Deliveries of Aevum’s production launch vehicles to its customers have already begun, in fact, Skylus says.

The U.S. Department of Defense has for quite some time now been actively pursuing space launch options that provide it with responsive, short turnaround launch capabilities. That’s the same goal of companies like Astra, which was originally looking to win the DARPA challenge for such systems (since expired) with its Rocket small launcher. Aevum’s system has the added advantage of being essentially fully compatible with existing airfield infrastructure — and also of not requiring that human pilots be involved or at risk at all, as they are with the superficially similar launch model espoused by Virgin Orbit.

Astra targets December for next orbital launch attempt

Aevum isn’t just providing the Ravn X launcher, either; its goal is to handle end-to-end logistics for launch services, including payload transportation and integration, which are parts of the process that Skylus says are often overlooked or underserved by existing launch providers, and that many companies creating payloads also don’t realize are costly, complicated and time-consuming parts of actually delivering a working small satellite to orbit. The startup also isn’t “re-inventing the wheel” when it comes to its integration services — Skylus says they’re working with a range of existing partners that all already have proven experience doing this work but haven’t previously had the motivation or the need to provide these kinds of services to the customers that Skylum sees coming online, both in the public and private sector.

The need isn’t for another SpaceX, Skylus says; rather, thanks to SpaceX, there’s a wealth of aerospace companies that previously worked almost exclusively with large government contracts and the one or two massive legacy rocket companies to put missions together. They’re now open to working with the greatly expanded market for orbital payloads, including small satellites that aim to provide cost-effective solutions in communications, environmental monitor, shipping and defense.

Aevum’s solution definitely sounds like it addresses a clear and present need, in a way that offers benefits in terms of risk profile, reusability, cost and flexibility. The company’s first active missions will obviously be watched closely, by potential customers and competitors alike.