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Sora raises $5.3M to power its HR automation service

Published July 21, 2020

Think back to the last time you onboarded at a new job. Was it a mishmash of documents and calendar invites and calls and, generally speaking, a mess?

Probably. That’s likely because onboarding is a process that often depends on disparate, unconnected HR tools. Sora, a startup that today announced $5.3 million in collected fundraising, wants to shake up the HR software world with a low-code service that helps companies connect their tooling and automate their HR processes. The startup might be able to make things like onboarding better for employees and companies alike.

Low-code, no-code

Startups looking to bring low, and no-code tooling to non-engineering teams have become a trend in recent quarters. TechCrunch recently covered a $2.2 million round for no-code text analysis and machine-learning shop MonkeyLearn, for example. There have been hundreds of millions of dollars raised by low, and no-code tools in 2020 alone.

By building tools to assist non-engineers do more, faster without developer help — be it analysis, or visual programming — some technology upstarts are helping non-technical teams do what only technical teams were able to in previous years.

Sora fits into the trend because its service allows non-developers to create workflows, to use a term that the startup’s co-founder and CEO Laura Del Beccaro employed when she walked TechCrunch through her company’s product.

The Sora workflows can be built from templates, and employ triggers to fire off various processes (sending emails, pulling in data from other apps and services, that sort of thing), allowing non-engineers to create visual logic flows. The Sora system is “like a no-code workflow builder,” Del Beccaro said in an interview, allowing users to “add tasks where you have to tell someone to do something, and automate the follow-up. That’s actually one of our biggest pain point relievers. A lot of HR teams right now are manually tracking people down: Did you set up this laptop yet? Did you set up this new hire launch for these three people?”

Sora CEO Laura Del Beccaro, via the company.

The Sora workflow system is slick in practice, allowing, for example, customization around a single employee. Del Beccaro explained that her startup’s software can do things like ask a manager who a new hire’s work-buddy might be, and then send that person an email later saying that the hire has arrived.

According to Del Beccaro, Sora, wants to help “democratize your [HR] processes.” Today’s HR denizens are too dependent on data analysts for “people analytics reporting” she said, adding that once a company has all its HR “data in one place, which again, is our core offering, you can set up all these automations that you want by yourself, you don’t have to go to IT or engineering.”

And because Sora can handle swapping out different providers as needed, Sora should help HR teams at growing companies lower the “risk of changing systems,” helping them “stay flexible no matter what [their] processes look like.”

It’s a neat tool.

Money

Sora has raised $5.3 million in capital to date, a funding total that includes a pre-seed round from September, 2018. First Round and Elad Gil led its most recent round, which makes up a majority of its capital raised thus far.

With 11 employees today, Sora has around “25 people on [its] cap table,” the CEO said, telling TechCrunch that it was “pretty important to [her] to have a relatively diverse set of investors.” Del Beccaro provided this publication with a full list, which we’ve included below.

Sticking to the subject of money, after Mixpanel served as an early customer, Sora opened to more customers earlier this year. The CEO said that its customers are on one or two-year contracts, and charges per-employee, per-month, which seems reasonable. With its new cash, Sora has around 2.5 years of runway she said.

First Round’s Bill Trenchard liked Sora’s approach to building its service, saying in an email that the company was “never interested in scaling for the sake of scaling,” highlighting its work in concert with “a development partner to make sure what they were working on was actually solving real HR pain points before they took it to the market” as evidence of its “thoughtful and intentional” product approach.

Today, thanks to that method, in his view “what’s compelling about Sora is their sales momentum this year after launching,” the investor said. The next question for Sora, then, is how fast it can grow now that it has more capital in the bank than it has likely ever had before.

For fun, here’s the full investor list that Del Beccaro provided, which I’m including as it’s rare to get a full cap table:

Sarah Adams (Plaid)

Shan Aggarwal (Coinbase, Greycroft)

Scott Belsky (Adobe)

Mathilde Collin (Front)

Cooley Investment Fund

David Del Beccaro & Arleen Armstrong (Music Choice/Legal)

Viviana Faga (Emergence Capital)

Avichal Garg (Electric Capital)

Elad Gil

Kent Goldman (Upside VC)

Jonah Greenberger (Bright)

Daniel Gross (Pioneer, YC)

Charles Hudson (Precursor Ventures)

Todd Jackson (First Round Capital)

Oliver Jay (Asana)

Nimi Katragadda (BoxGroup)

Nicky Khurana (Facebook)

Brianne Kimmel (Work Life Ventures)

David King (Curious Endeavors)

Fritz Lanman (ClassPass)

Lisa & Mat Lori (Perfect Provenance/New Mountain Capital)

Shrav Mehta (SecureFrame)

Sean Mendy (Concrete Rose)

Jana Messerschmidt (#ANGELS, Lightspeed)

Katie Stanton (Katie Stanton, #ANGELS, Moxxie Ventures)

Erik Torenberg (Village Global)

Bill Trenchard (First Round Capital)

Jeannette zu Fürstenberg (La Famiglia VC)

The future of work is human

Published July 21, 2020

Heather Hartnett
Contributor

Heather Hartnett is general partner and CEO of Human Ventures, an early-stage venture fund and startup studio in New York City.

1. New work environments

Spotify launches video podcasts worldwide, starting with select creators

Published July 21, 2020

Spotify today announced the global launch of video podcasts. The new feature at launch will allow users, including both free users and paid subscribers, to watch the video content from a select group of creator podcasts. But unlike on YouTube, where only paid subscribers can listen to YouTube video content in the background while they do other things on their device, Spotify says its users will be able to seamlessly move between the video version and the audio. When multitasking, audio content will continue to play in the background, as you use other apps or even if you lock your phone.

The video podcasts are supported on both the desktop and mobile app — and video will serve as an additional component, not a replacement for the audio. That means you’ll still be able to stream the audio or download the podcast for offline listening, if need be.

For creators, the launch of video podcasts represents an opportunity to grow their audience, says Spotify. Often, podcasts already have a video option — but until now, Spotify offered no way for creators to share it on its platform. That meant podcast creators would distribute their audio podcast on Spotify and other podcast distribution services, but would publish their videos to YouTube. They may continue to do, of course — especially if they’ve built a YouTube fan base for their work and no deal prevents it.

But being able to publish directly on Spotify means creators will be able to connect more directly with podcast listeners, rather than having to compete on a broader platform that pits their shows against a wide variety of other content. Video also gives Spotify a new place to sell advertising, but the company declined to comment on its ad strategy, saying it was still in the “early stages” of its video efforts.

Only a handful of podcasts are offered starting today, including Book of Basketball 2.0, Fantasy Footballers, The Misfits Podcast, H3 Podcast, The Morning Toast, Higher Learning with Van Lathan & Rachel Lindsay and The Rooster Teeth Podcast. These are only available in the markets where podcasts are already supported, Spotify says.

These podcasts include a combination of originals, exclusives and third-party podcasts. Their creators are the only ones that today have the ability to upload their own video content. In the future, Spotify will continue to expand the feature.

The company’s move into video was almost inevitable. In February, Spotify acquired The Ringer to boost its podcast sports content. The deal came with a YouTube-based video operation, which signaled an interest in an expanded media footprint.

Spotify has since inked high-profile podcast deals that could also easily translate to video, too, including one with Warner Bros. focused on DC superheros, which Spotify said in June could later include “new programming from original intellectual property.” It also landed an exclusive deal with Kim Kardashian West, The WSJ reported last month. It brought The Joe Rogan Experience in-house, in yet another exclusive. And just yesterday, Spotify booked a podcast deal with TikTok star Addison Rae.

Spotify didn’t announce video plans in these areas today, but it definitely has access to talent — and offering video could allow it to better negotiate future deals, as well.

Spotify was spotted testing video podcasts earlier this year, but it was with YouTube stars Zane Hijazi and Heath Hussar, of Zane and Heath: Unfiltered, who weren’t mentioned in today’s news announcement.

Video podcasts will begin rolling out today in supported markets. So you may not see the addition immediately, but should soon.

Tracking the growth of low-code, no-code startups

Published July 21, 2020

Startup buzz comes in waves, with a particular thesis or focus coming into vogue at certain times. Remember the short-lived boom in chat bots? That was good fun. And there was the ICO craze, which lead every startup you’ve heard of to consider the financing option for at least a weekend.

We’ve also endured the early-AI bubble, the blockchain rush and a cannabis-driven wave as well. Even subtheses can see spikes, such as the neobanking industry, say, or roboadvising. Hell, we saw minicrazes in insurtech marketplaces and OKR software this year alone.

Fads in startups are not new. Today, as venture investment tilts toward enterprise software, we’re in something of a SaaS craze. Inside of today’s SaaS surge, however, is a smaller trend that I want to explore more: no-code and low-code startups.

Largely, low-code and no-code refer to tools that allow nondevelopers to either employ little (low-code) to no code while either building logic inside of software, or full applications. Low/no-code development often features drag-and-drop interfaces (Techopedia, TechTarget), but not all low-code and no-code tools are used to build apps.

Defining the sector and its focus is difficult. PitchBook says low/no-code development platforms “expedite the creation of new applications with minimal coding requirements and offer tools for nonprogrammers.” A recent TechCrunch article by a couple of venture capitalists argued that low/no-code work is “not a category itself, but rather a shift in how users interface with software tools.”

A bit like how AI and fintech are squishy categories, low-code and no-code have a wide remit.

After talking to a number of entrepreneurs lately who built these capabilities into their startups’ applications, it appears that today founders expect the capabilities to more helpful for nondevelopers reordering logic inside apps for their own needs, instead of building whole-cloth applications.

All B2B startups are in the payments business

Published July 21, 2020

Jeff Coppolo
Contributor

Jeff Coppolo has over 25 years of experience in the fintech industry and is currently Head of Global Business Development and Partnerships for payments processing company BlueSnap.

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced businesses to rethink how they accept and make payments. Paper invoices, checks and point-of-sale payments have given way to “corona-free payments” through mobile apps, electronic invoicing and ACH. Although significant, this is the sideshow to a more significant reshuffling of the payments industry.

Nearly $150 trillion in worldwide B2B and B2C transactions take place every year, but only a tiny portion are digital. A lot of technology companies want their piece of that massive pie. Until recently, though, only payment facilitators (aka, “payfacs”), gateways, banks and credit card companies had access to it.

That’s changing. Whether they know it yet or not, B2B tech platforms are becoming payments companies. Payfacs are competing to integrate their technology into these platforms, which drive an ever-growing number of transactions. Revenue-sharing deals are on the table, and payfacs are pushing the competitive advantages they can offer to the clients of these B2B platforms. Capabilities like cross-border payments, seamless customer onboarding, fraud protection, marketplace payments and B2B invoicing influence, which payfacs win in “integrated payments” (the jargon for this space) and which don’t.

B2B companies that use to leave the choice of gateway to their clients need to become savvy in payment technology, both to control the user experience and to tap this new business. There’s a massive amount of revenue on the table, and it’s just too easy to blow this opportunity and alienate clients in the process.

How we arrived here

A decade ago, the revolution in cloud computing led to a wave of B2B tech platforms promising to “disrupt” every industry. Gyms got gym management platforms. Hospitals got clinic management platforms. Retailers got commerce management platforms. Media companies got subscription management platforms. Many of these fill-in-the-blank management platforms — all independent software vendors (ISVs) — helped clients manage their operations and interactions with consumers or other businesses.

But ISVs didn’t get involved in payments, which was odd, given how complementary payments were to their platforms and how much money was at stake. Mastercard says there is about $120 trillion annually in B2B payments worldwide, and paper checks still dominate about half of the U.S.’s $25 trillion payment volume. Meanwhile, retail e-commerce sales account for $4.2 trillion out of $26 trillion in total retail, or about 16.1%, according to eMarketer. Less than 8% of global commerce is thought to occur online.

You’d think B2B software companies would find a way to generate revenue on some of that $146 trillion in transactions, but most did not. Payment processing is its own, messy, complicated niche. Payfacs go through a grueling underwriting process to provision a merchant account, which includes know-your-customer (KYC) and anti-money laundering (AML) checks. If a merchant defaults, the payfac is next in line to make good on the transactions.

When you run a venture-backed B2B platform, you have enough to worry about already.

So, B2B platforms stayed clear. They formed integrations with a basket of payfacs (Stripe, PayPal, Square, my company BlueSnap, etc.) and then let their clients choose which one to use. That’s a lot of integrations to maintain.

Apple says its supply chains and products will be carbon neutral by 2030

Published July 21, 2020

Apple this morning announced plans to make its entire business carbon neutral within the next 10 years. The news follows the company’s push toward a fully carbon neutral corporate structure, adding its manufacturing supply chain and resulting products into the mix.

The roadmap to sustainability as released today is part of the company’s annual Environmental Progress Report. Reducing every device it sells to zero climate impact means a couple of things. The primary concern is finding ways to reduce emissions from productions by 75%. The remainder will be focused on efforts to help remove carbon from the atmosphere.

The company has already begun pushing to make a larger percentage of its products from recycled materials, thanks in part to its own in house robots Dave and Daisy (serious 2001 vibes), which recover key rare earth magnets and tungsten, along with some steel recovery. The company also runs its own Material Recovery Lab in Austin, with help from engineers at Carnegie Mellon.

Apple says it’s working with more than 70 energy suppliers to go 100% renewable for its production centers, a partnership it believes will reduce roughly the same amount of carbon emissions annually as three million cars. The company is also working to launch one of the world’s biggest solar arrays in Europe. As far as the remaining 25% of carbon reduction, there are a number of initiatives outlined in the report, including efforts to restore forests in Africa and South America.

There are also plans to launch an “Impact Accelerator,” aimed at investing in minority-owned businesses launched as part of the company’s Racial Equity and Justice Initiative. As for how that relates to the topic of sustainability, VP Lisa Jackson says in a press release, “Systemic racism and climate change are not separate issues, and they will not abide separate solutions. We have a generational opportunity to help build a greener and more just economy, one where we develop whole new industries in the pursuit of giving the next generation a planet worth calling home.”

Apple has generally received high marks from Greenpeace in recent years for its aggressive efforts to limit the impact of its massive global operations.

Medley, a life and career coaching community for everyone, launches today

Published July 21, 2020

As we speak, there are professional networks for women executives, mothers, owners of small and medium-sized businesses, and many more.

Medley, a new membership-based community that launches today, is looking to do things a little bit differently. Instead of bringing together a specific category of people, the goal of Medley is to connect users with people who aren’t just like them.

Founded by mom and daughter duo Edith Cooper and Jordan Taylor, Medley is backed by a variety of angel investors, including Jen Rubio, Tim Armstrong, Damien Dwin, as well as Foundation Capital. The company declined to disclose the amount raised.

Cooper and Taylor told TechCrunch that one of the biggest challenges with the product is defining what it is. Unlike some other professional membership communities, Medley isn’t solely focused on career growth, but rather incorporates personal growth into the framework.

“Medley is really about the connection between your career, your personal growth and your philosophy in life,” said Edith Cooper. “What I experienced is that people no longer want there to be strict barriers between those aspects of their lives.”

Folks who join Medley spend about 15 minutes on the application process, answering a wide range of questions that take a look at personal and professional information, but also at their general psychology and personality type.

From there, Medley matches users into a group of eight with the precise goal of ensuring that there is diversity among that small group. Some may be older, while others are younger. They may come from different racial backgrounds or different industries. Men and women alike will meet together in their groups.

An expert executive coach is also in on these monthly group meetings (which are currently being held virtually due to the coronavirus pandemic), and guides the group as they share about themselves and learn about their groupmates, all the while focusing on communication.

Prior to Medley, Cooper was a partner at Goldman Sachs for 20 years, and spent the last decade of her tenure as Global Head of Human Capital Management. Taylor was Chief of Staff at Mic, and was also a consultant at Boston Consulting Group and a Baker Scholar from Harvard Business School.

“There is one main theme for my investment thesis, which is the change to direct empowerment and direct ownership of relationships between people and everything else,” said Tim Armstrong. “Just like you may have a direct relationship with your gym or personal trainer — which a lot of people do and it’s an industry that’s growing tremendously — most people have not taken direct ownership of their careers. They end up outsourcing to the companies they work for that don’t have the resources to do development.”

He added that Medley is a gym for your mind and your career.

Medley’s target demographic is people in their late 20s, early 30s, who are starting to think more long-term about their choices both professionally and personally.

That said, part of what makes Medley special is that it’s open to anyone who’s curious to learn, grow and explore other people. As such, Medley is available on an opportunity-based sliding scale for the annual membership fee to ensure the community remains inclusive. Founding memberships are available now for $150/month or $1,500 annually.

Cooper explained that some of the biggest barriers for Medley are in the midst of being broken down.

“We don’t have to explain anymore that different perspectives are valuable,” said Cooper. “We don’t have to explain anymore why it’s so important to have intentional conversations and dialogue with people, or that we can do that virtually as well as in person. Some of the biggest things that we were focused on communicating about this business and this offering have been broken down as a result of the push and inertia of the other things that are going on in society.”

Russia’s BestDoctor attracts international investors for its $4.5M round

Published July 21, 2020

The private medical insurance market is expanding year on year by over 5%, and that includes in Russia, where the insurance market — which grew by 4% in 2019 — has reached a value of almost $22 billion.

So it’s not that surprising that Russian insurtech startup BestDoctor has now closed its third round of financing for $4.5 million. Lead investors AddVenture, based out of Moscow, and Target Global, based out of Berlin, were joined by the London-based LVL1 fund, which had previously invested in the company.

BestDoctor is an online medical insurance platform offering private medical insurance for companies and their employees. As well as insurance, its also delivers 24/7 health support and medical consultations via its mobile app. Users also can get access to recommendations on preventive care and online support from BestDoctor physicians. The idea is that users save up to 23% on their annual medical expenses, and up to 95% of users renew the contract after a year.

Its clients largely consist of Russian corporates, including Voximplant, Faberlic, Ivideon, Prisma Labs and Rambler Group, which add up to more than 30,000 people. It also collaborates with 11,000 clinics across Russia.

Mark Sanevich, BestDoctor’s CEO and co-founder, says the need for online medical services was amplified during the pandemic: “Our business received a strong boost. Now we are going to focus on establishing a comprehensive platform on the basis of medical insurance.”

Target Global managing partner Mikhail Lobanov said: “BestDoctor is a rare example of a company that combines medicine and high-tech, while directly connecting employers with medical clinics. High-tech private medical insurance with the ability to consult a doctor 24/7 ensures transparency of all expenses.”

AddVenture managing partner Maxim Medvedev said: “By summer 2019, BestDoctor had a good head start: it had large enterprise clients, the company figured out the market’s problems and needs and dozens of product ideas were tested.”

BestDoctor plans to spend the newly raised funds on developing its software and also plans to expand its sales activity, concentrating on new product segments.

Eco-friendly laundry goods subscription service smol raises £8M from Balderton

Published July 21, 2020

Smol is a startup that delivers to people’s homes eco-friendly laundry capsules and dishwasher tablets on subscription through letterboxes, which undercut the price of the leading brands. It has now raised £8 million in a Series A funding round led by Balderton Capital, with participation from JamJar Investments. The funding will see smol push into new product categories, expand further into new markets and expand its team. Before this round smol had been funded by seed money from private investors.

Created by former Unilever employees Paula Quazi and Nick Green in 2018, it has also launched its own-brand, animal-fat-free, vegan fabric conditioner and a 100% plastic-free, child-lock packaging for its laundry and dishwashing products, as well as fabric conditioner made from 100% post-consumer recycled plastic, which as recyclable. Smol also offers a returns scheme for refill and reuse.

P&G and Unilever currently dominate the market, while smol hopes to become “the Dollar Shave Club” of laundry.

Paula Quazi, co-founder of smol, said in a statement: “Having seen how the industry has barely innovated in over a hundred years we launched smol to take the hassle out of washing for families whose laundry needs have been ignored for decades.”

Suranga Chandratillake, partner at Balderton Capital said: “When people think of technology disruption, it is normal to think of digital products and internet tools. However, technology has the power to make life better for us in the most unexpected ways and we believe Paula, Nick and their amazing team have tapped into just such an opportunity at smol.”

Adevinta acquires eBay’s Classifieds business unit in $9.2B deal

Published July 21, 2020

Consolidation continues apace in the world of e-commerce, and today it was the turn of the classified ads market. Today, eBay announced it had reached a deal to sell off its Classifieds business unit to Adevinta, a Norway-based classified ads publisher majority owned by Norwegian publisher Schibsted. The deal is valued at $9.2 billion, which includes eBay getting $2.5 billion in cash and 540 million Adevinta shares. The deal makes eBay a 44% owner of Adevinta, with a 33.3% voting stake.

Adevinta’s interest in eBay was reported earlier in the week, but with the deal coming at a much lower valuation, of $8 billion.

More generally, it caps off months of speculation about the future for the classifieds business, which has come out of long-term pressure spurred by activist investors for eBay to rationalise what had once been a sprawling e-commerce business empire (advocating for a reverse Amazon, I guess you could say). That included not just its marketplace, but classified ads, payment services (PayPal, which got spun out as a separate company) and ticketing (Viagogo acquired its Stubhub business in a $4 billion deal last year, although that is now facing some regulatory scrutiny).

Now, all three of those business units are no longer a part of eBay.

Adevinta is in 15 countries and prior to this deal had 35 digital products and websites. Ebay meanwhile owns 12 brands in 13 countries around the world, but the business has been hard hit by the coronavirus crisis. In the last quarter, eBay said that Classifieds brought in revenues of just $248 million, down 3% on an as-reported basis and remaining flat on a FX-Neutral basis. For some context, eBay’s Marketplace unit brought in revenues of $1.9 billion in the same period.

The overlap will mean a classified ad footprint of 20 countries, and the companies believe that some $150 million – $185 million in synergies will be reached through the combination.

“We are pleased we reached an agreement with Adevinta that brings together two great companies,” said Jamie Iannone, CEO of eBay, in a statement. “eBay believes strongly in the power of community and connections between people, which has been essential to our Classifieds businesses globally. This sale creates short-term and long-term value for shareholders and customers, while allowing us to participate in the future potential of the Classifieds business.”

Early mover

With little needed but text and a search facility to create a very basic list of offers, classifieds were one of the first early “hits” of the internet, disrupting newspapers and one of their traditionally most consistent revenue streams (not so anymore, of course). Classifieds was an obvious area for eBay to move into in the early days: it complemented its marketplace, which back then had a strong emphasis on used goods and selling items on auction rather than buying outright, and for selling by using imagery and dynamic sales pitches (something that was not second nature to many, who were migrating from newspaper ads based only on a small amount of text).

But over the years, the tech behind what constitutes a “classified ad” has changed, and so have expectations from buyers and sellers.

And those in the classified ads market now compete with a wide plethora of alternatives, for example, which leverage social and geographical networks to connect people to things or services they might like to buy or rent. They include the likes of Facebook’s Marketplace but also handy mobile app-based listings services, and more. Some of these completely undercut the business model of the original classifieds disruptors.

That has meant that those who have established themselves in the space have played on consolidation to grow and improve their economies of scale.

“With the acquisition of eBay Classifieds Group, Adevinta becomes the largest online classifieds company globally, with a unique portfolio of leading marketplace brands. We believe the combination of the two companies, with their complementary businesses, creates one of the most exciting and compelling equity stories in the online classifieds sector,” said Rolv Erik Ryssdal, CEO of Adevinta, in a statement.

“We have been impressed with eBay Classifieds Group’s achievements in recent years, leading across markets with nationally recognized brands including Mobile.de, Gumtree, Marktplaats, dba, Bilbasen, Kijiji, 2dehands, 2ememain, Vivanuncios, Automobile.it, Motors.co.uk, Autotrader (Australia), Carsguide (Australia), and eBay Kleinanzeigen, and innovating consistently across its product portfolio and advertising technology platform.”

For now, there are no announcements of layoffs or other moves, with eBay’s classifieds executive team coming over with the deal.

“This deal is a testament to the growth and potential of the eBay Classifieds business,” said Alessandro Coppo, SVP and GM, eBay Classifieds Group. “We are excited for our local classifieds brands to join Adevinta and shape a global leader in an industry full of potential.”

The deal is expected to be completed in the first quarter of 2021, subject to regulatory and shareholder approvals.

As part of Schibsted, will acquire eBay Classifieds’ Danish business once the deal closes.

“Schibsted’s Board of Directors and management strongly supports the agreement between Adevinta and eBay, as we are confident that it will further strengthen the value creation potential for Schibsted and the rest of Adevinta’s shareholders. Schibsted intends to continue to contribute to the value creation for all Adevinta shareholders as a significant long-term anchor shareholder,” said Kristin Skogen Lund, CEO of Schibsted in a statement.