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Dear Sophie: Which immigration options allow me to launch my own startup?

Published August 4, 2021

Sophie Alcorn
Contributor

Sophie Alcorn is the founder of Alcorn Immigration Law in Silicon Valley and 2019 Global Law Experts Awards’ “Law Firm of the Year in California for Entrepreneur Immigration Services.” She connects people with the businesses and opportunities that expand their lives.

Become a founding CEO and raise $250,000

A great new option for aspiring entrepreneurs is International Entrepreneur Parole (IEP), a new immigration program in the United States that allows CEOs, CTOs and others to live in the U.S. and run their company for 2.5 years with an option for a 2.5-year extension. Your spouse can obtain a work permit.

How to qualify? You need to own at least 10% of a U.S. company, such as a Delaware C corporation registered in California. Ideally, you’ll want to show that your company bank account has at least $250,000 raised from qualified U.S. investors, but you can use other evidence to demonstrate that your company has the potential to grow rapidly and create jobs in the U.S.

A startup visa and path to a green card may be soon on the way for entrepreneurs and their crucial employees: Last week, Lofgren introduced the Let Immigrants Kickstart Employment (LIKE) Act. The requirements for the proposed startup visa are the same as for IEP but would allow a longer stay — up to eight years total if the startup creates jobs and generates substantial revenue.

I’m very proud to have aided in drafting the LIKE Act. It’s a thrill to see how my suggestions were included, such as making Startup Green Cards not subject to the visa bulletin, clarifying that you can seek consecutive Startup Visas from different companies, how to allocate employee visas to startups, ensuring the Startup Visa is a dual intent status, and adding premium processing. It was such a joy to be able to contribute ideas to this amazing process. I look forward to supporting this bill to become a law; please reach out to me if you want to support this worthy cause.

Image Credits: Joanna Buniak / Sophie Alcorn (opens in a new window)

See yourself at another company

There is technically no limit to how many H-1B employers you can have or how many — or few — hours you work in an H-1B position. So, think about other companies.

One option would be to have concurrent H-1Bs: Keep your current H-1B job for stability and start your own company, preferably with another individual or two, and have your startup sponsor you for an H-1B. Take a look at this Dear Sophie column for what to do before embarking on this path.

Another option would be to transfer your H-1B to another employer, or your own startup if you are going to work there. Since you already went through the H-1B lottery with your current employer, you will not have to go through the lottery process again for a second H-1B whether you choose the concurrent or transfer option.

Setting up a startup that can sponsor you for an H-1B is complicated, so I suggest you work with both a corporate attorney and an immigration attorney. Keep in mind that you will not be able to do any work for your startup until an H-1B with your startup has been approved, which is why having co-founders is helpful. Another reason is H-1Bs require an employer-employee relationship between a startup and the H-1B candidate. That means a co-founder — or the startup’s board — must supervise you and have the ability to fire you. Moreover, we often advise founders that it may be best to own less than a 50% stake in the startup when applying for an H-1B.

Consider a green card

If you end up pursuing concurrent H-1Bs, consider asking your employer whether it is willing to sponsor you for a green card. If that’s not the case, your startup can sponsor you for one, or you can self-petition for a green card:

All EB-2 green cards — except the EB-2 NIW — and the EB-3 green card require labor certification approval (PERM) from the U.S. Department of Labor. The two green cards that allow an individual to self-sponsor are the EB-1A and EB-2 NIW.

Imagine yourself doing gigs in your field

Many startup founders qualify for an O-1A extraordinary ability visa. However, you cannot have both an H-1B and an O-1A at the same time, so if your startup sponsors you for an O-1A, you will be required to leave your current H-1B job once an O-1A is approved.

An O-1A offers more flexibility than an H-1B. You can work for a single petitioning company or on multiple gigs through an agent. However, qualifying for an O-1A is more difficult than an H-1B. Resources, such as through my firm, support people with getting qualified. The one similarity with the H-1B is that you must show your startup and you have an employer-employee relationship.

Invest in your own company

The E-2 visa for treaty investors and employees is ideal for startup founders whose home country has a treaty of commerce and navigation with the U.S. Here is a list of treaty countries. For more details on E-2 visas for founders and employees, check out this previous Dear Sophie column and podcast episode.

Although there is no minimum dollar amount that a founder must invest in a startup to qualify for an E-2, we often advise founders to invest at least $100,000 to have a strong case. You cannot have both an H-1B and an E-2, so you will need to leave your current H-1B job if your E-2 is approved.

An immigration attorney can offer additional options based on your personal circumstances and legal advice tailored to you.

Enjoy the journey of building your dreams!

Sophie

Have a question for Sophie? Ask it here. We reserve the right to edit your submission for clarity and/or space.

The information provided in “Dear Sophie” is general information and not legal advice. For more information on the limitations of “Dear Sophie,” please view our full disclaimer. You can contact Sophie directly at Alcorn Immigration Law.

Sophie’s podcast, Immigration Law for Tech Startups, is available on all major platforms. If you’d like to be a guest, she’s accepting applications!

Human Interest raises $200M at a $1B valuation, plans for an IPO

Published August 4, 2021

Less than six months after raising $55 million in a Series C round of funding, SMB 401(k) provider Human Interest today announced it has raised $200 million in a round that propels it to unicorn status.

The Rise Fund, TPG’s global impact investing platform, led the round and was joined by SoftBank Vision Fund 2. The financing included participation from new investor Crosslink Capital and existing backers NewView Capital, Glynn Capital, U.S. Venture Partners, Wing Venture Capital, Uncork Capital, Slow Capital, Susa Ventures and others.

Over the past year, the San Francisco-based company has raised $305 million. With the latest financing, it has now raised a total of $336.7 million since its 2015 inception.

401(k) provider Human Interest doubles valuation with $55M fundraise

The company admittedly has an IPO in its sights, as evidenced by the appointment of former Yodlee CFO Mike Armsby to the role of CFO at Human Interest. It’s targeting a traditional IPO sometime in 2023, with execs saying the target is to have “$200 million+ in run-rate revenue before going public.” Currently, it’s at “tens of millions of run-rate revenue” now, and adding millions of new revenue each month.

Human Interest’s digital retirement benefits platform allows users “to launch a retirement plan in minutes and put it on autopilot,” according to the company. It also touts that it has eliminated all 401(k) transaction fees.

Demand for 401(k)s by SMBs appears to be at an all-time high, with Human Interest reporting that its sales tripled over the last year. The company has also more than doubled its headcount over the last 12 months to 350 employees.

The startup said it is seeing strong adoption in verticals that have not previously had retirement benefits, including construction, retail, manufacturing, restaurants, nonprofits and hospitality. For example, over the past three quarters, Human Interest has seen 4.5x customer growth in the restaurant sector. Since the start of the pandemic, Human Interest has experienced 2x higher enrollment growth among hourly workers than salaried workers, and hourly worker assets have tripled.

“Promoting financial health is a core investment pillar for The Rise Fund. Human Interest delivers one of the most compelling solutions to the persistent problem that roughly half of Americans will not have enough savings when they reach retirement age,” said Maya Chorengel, co-managing partner at The Rise Fund, in a written statement. “Despite recent legislation, primarily at the state level, legacy programs have not, to date, produced the same participant outcomes as Human Interest.”

The company said it will be using its new capital to expand its network of integrations and partnerships with financial advisers, benefits brokers and payroll companies. It also expects to, naturally, do some hiring –– another 200 employees by year’s end, primarily in its product, engineering and revenue teams.

The 401(k) for SMB space is heating up as of late. In June, competitor Guideline also raised $200 million in a round led by General Atlantic.

Additional details around the IPO and revenue were added post-publication.

Investors don’t expect the US startup funding market to slow down

GM is adding two new zero-emission commercial vehicles to its lineup

Published August 4, 2021

General Motors said Wednesday it is adding two new zero-emissions vehicles to its commercial portfolio as it looks to expand its first-to-last-mile business arm, BrightDrop.

The first vehicle will be a battery electric cargo van under the Chevrolet brand that will likely be similar to the popular Chevy Express van. The second will be a medium-duty truck that CEO Mary Barra said “will put both the Ultium and Hydrotec hydrogen fuel cell technology to work.”

Much has been made of GM’s commitment to invest in electric passenger vehicles, but the company has also been busy targeting commercial customers with zero-emitting technologies. GM’s go-to technologies are battery electric and hydrogen fuel cells for heavy-duty and long-haul purposes.

Inside GM’s startup incubator strategy

GM in January said it would supply Hydrotec Hydrogen Fuel Cell Power Cubes to trucking manufacturer Navistar, with the first hydrogen trucks anticipated to go on sale in 2024. The automaker also penned a deal with Wabtec to develop hydrogen fuel cells and batteries for locomotives.

GM launched BrightDrop in January in a bid to offer commercial customers, starting with a contract with FedEx, an ecosystem of electric and connected products.

BrightDrop started with two main products, an electric van called the EV600 with an estimate range of 250 miles and a pod-like electric pallet dubbed EP1. BrightDrop executives previously hinted that the business unit was working on other products, including a medium-distance vehicle that transports multiple electric pallets known as EP1 and rapid load delivery vehicle concept.

“Between these new trucks, BrightDrop, EV pickups coming from Chevrolet and GMC, and our work with Wabtec on locomotives, and Navistar on semi trucks, we will have electric solutions for almost any towing or hauling job you can imagine,” Barra said.

GM’s newest startup aims squarely at the commercial EV market

Work-Bench will continue supporting early-stage enterprise startups with new $100M fund

Published August 4, 2021

In spite of the pandemic, New York City remains the center of commerce and business, and over the last decade a robust startup community has developed there. Work-Bench, the NYC VC firm that concentrates on early-stage enterprise seed investments, announced its $100 million Fund 3 this morning.

The company started back in 2013, when most investment was still concentrated in Silicon Valley, but founders Jonathan Lehr and Jessica Lin believed there was room for a new firm in NYC that concentrated on writing first checks for enterprise startups. The founding team knew IT and believed that with the concentration of Fortune 500 companies in the city, they could build something that took advantage of that proximity.

The bet has paid off in a big way with investments in successful startups like Cockroach Labs, Catalyst, Dialpad and FireHydrant (all companies TechCrunch has covered). Big exits include CoreOs, which Red Hat acquired for $250 million in 2018.

NYC’s Work-Bench announces $47M enterprise investment fund

Writing in a blog post announcing the new fund, Lehr and Lin said their initial idea has grown far beyond anything they could have hoped for in those early days. “By utilizing our deep corporate network of Fortune 500 customers here in NYC, we can get conviction in companies early on, and before they have the metrics other VC firms require. It’s also through this network of customers that we can land critical early customer logos and through our extensive community events and playbooks that we can enable pivotal knowledge sharing,” the two founders wrote.

Lehr says, even with the pandemic, which could have allowed it to expand its reach, the company is mostly sticking to its NYC focus with the majority of investments based there. “This may sound ironic, but while businesses went virtual, the pandemic reinforced our focus on New York City. Our city was hit first and hardest by COVID, but despite it all, VC funding activity for local enterprise startups actually increased substantially during the pandemic. Along with that, with so many Fortune 500s in NYC all going through accelerated digital transformation during the pandemic, there was a ton of work to be done and numerous customer opportunities right here in our own backyard,” Lehr said.

He says that the $47 million Fund 2 portfolio was deployed to 70% NYC-based startups, and he predicts that Fund 3 will have a similar composition, if not slightly more concentrated in New York.

The company didn’t just decide to write first checks though, it tried to build the community by offering workspace in their offices where early-stage companies could feed off one another (at least until the pandemic came along). The founders have also offered events where various speakers came to their offices, hosting hundreds of events since inception, while going virtual when the pandemic closed down in-person gatherings.

Lehr says as the company deploys Fund 3 money, it is looking for ways to invest in a more diverse group of founders. “Right now, 20% of our portfolio is made up of women founders. While we are proud of that number within an enterprise context, we believe there is so much room for improvement. As we’ve learned, deal flow doesn’t become diverse on its own — you need to make it diverse, which is why we place a huge emphasis on identifying and amplifying the voices of women and diverse founders within our own Investment Committee meetings and across the rest of the VC and enterprise tech community.”

The company will continue to look at enterprise startups, particularly in New York City, as it looks to distribute these new funds.

US seed-stage investing flourished during pandemic

Neobanks’ moves toward profitability could be the path to public markets

Published August 4, 2021

The global venture capital bet on neobanks is massive. London-based Starling Bank has raised more than $900 million, per Crunchbase. The same data source indicates that Chime has raised $1.5 billion. Monzo has raised nearly $650 million. And the list goes on: E-commerce-focused neobank Juni raised $21.5 million last month. Novo, an SMB-focused neobank, raised $41 million in June. Nubank has raised $2.3 billion. And FairMoney has locked down more than $50 million.

On and on and on.

The Exchange explores startups, markets and money.

Read it every morning on Extra Crunch or get The Exchange newsletter every Saturday.

But despite our general inclination to lump banking-focused fintech providers that serve consumers, business customers or both into a single bucket, there’s wide divergence in how the various neobank players are performing in the market.

Back in August 2020, The Exchange noted that many neobanks were racking up steep losses. Our read at the time was that the capital being poured into the fintech category was being invested aggressively in the name of growth. Based on recent results, that view is holding up.

But not all neobanks are the unprofitable enterprises that they once were. Chime indicated in September 2020 that it generates positive, unadjusted EBITDA. That’s a stricter profit metric than the one that Lyft used recently to claim its ascendance into the realm of profitable companies; Lyft posted positive adjusted EBITDA in its most recent quarter, but burned cash to fund its operations and posted a wide net loss in the period.

And Starling Bank reached what it describes as profitable territory in October 2020. Things have changed since our first look into neobank results.

The trend of positive neobank news continued this June, when Revolut reported its recent financial performance. The company did post rather negative aggregate results for the 2020 period. But when we drilled down into its quarterly results, we saw the picture of a fintech company scaling its gross margins and revenues while nearly reaching adjusted net income neutrality by Q4 2020. We were impressed.

This morning, let’s add to our running dig into neobank results by parsing recently released data from Starling Bank and Monzo. As we’ll see, although some neobanks are managing to clean up their ledgers and work toward profits — or reach profitability — not all are in the black.

Reserve Trust raises $30.5M to become the ‘Stripe for B2B payments’

Published August 4, 2021

Reserve Trust, a Denver-based financial services provider, has raised $30.5 million in a Series A round led by QED Investors.

FinTech Collective, Ardent Venture Partners, Flywire CEO Mike Massaro and Quovo founder and CEO Lowell Putnam also participated in the financing, which included $17.9 million in secondary shares. It brings the startup’s total raised since its 2016 inception to $35.5 million.

Reserve Trust describes itself as “the first fintech trust company with a Federal Reserve master account.” What does that mean exactly? Basically, a federal reserve master account allows Reserve Trust to move dollars on behalf of its customers directly, via wire and ACH payment rails, without an intermediate or partner bank.

Historically, only banks were able to access these payment rails directly, which left both domestic and international fintechs “with limited partner options, poor technology and slow implementations when it came to embedding high-value B2B payments,” says COO Dave Cahill. Reserve Trust touts that its technology and services give companies all over the world the ability to “seamlessly move money via the first cloud-based payment system connected directly to the Federal Reserve” since it is not limited by legacy banking systems.

Image Credits: CEO Dave Wright and COO Dave Cahill / Reserve Trust

In conjunction with the fundraise, Reserve Trust is also announcing that Dave Wright has been named CEO and Cahill joined as COO. The pair worked together previously at SolidFire, a flash storage startup that Wright founded and sold to NetApp for $870 million in 2016.

Reserve Trust works with businesses that seek to embed domestic and cross-border B2B payment by offering them the ability to store funds in custody accounts that are backed by its Federal Reserve master account.

The history of the company relates back to the global financial crisis. After the crisis, banks in the U.S. went through a process called derisking, which meant they shed businesses that on a risk return basis weren’t as strong as other businesses. One of those included the handling of U.S. dollar payments, particularly in emerging countries.

“One of the consequences of this is that it became significantly more difficult and expensive for businesses and smaller economies to trade and move U.S. dollars around the world,” Wright told TechCrunch. “And the founders of Reserve Trust saw this opportunity to build a new type of financial institution that was focused on helping to provide U.S. dollar payment services, especially to emerging fintechs in markets around the world, and helping to reconnect those economies to global trade.”

But rather than start a bank, the founders (Dennis Gingold, Justin Guilder) navigated a previously unexplored part of regulatory waters to create a state-chartered trust company with a Federal Reserve master account.

“That’s something that had never really been done before,” Wright added. “Pretty much every other trust company has to work through banks for all their payment services. Reserve Trust is the first that has actually managed to get a Federal Reserve master account and can process payments directly with the Federal Reserve.”

The complex process took about three years, and in 2018, the company got a Federal Reserve master account and started providing U.S. dollar custody and payment services for fintechs all over the world. Reserve Trust began to see strong demand from payment and fintech companies that were struggling to develop strong partner bank relationships, even though fundamentally there wasn’t any reason the banks couldn’t work with them.

“They found working with banks to be a slow process, one that didn’t involve a lot of technology expertise on the side of the banks, and it was really inhibiting their ability to develop their technology,” Wright said. And that was even here in the U.S. Today, more than half of its business is from domestic fintechs, although Reserve Trust still has a strong international presence as well.

All B2B startups are in the payments business

The new funds will mainly go toward helping the company scale to handle what Wright describes as “a fairly overwhelming amount of demand” and toward building out the team, the technology and the services it needs to address the payment needs of larger, faster growing fintechs around the world.

“Most of our customers today are small and midsize fintechs, but now we’re seeing demand for much larger fintechs that have much higher payment volumes and are involved in embedded banking and B2B payments,” Wright said. “They are looking for a stronger banking partner than what they’ve been able to find among the role of traditional banks.” Customers include Unlimint and VertoFX, among others.

QED Investors partner Amias Gerety and FinTech Collective principal Matt Levinson are bullish both on Reserve Trust’s history and its potential.

The pair point to payments giant Stripe as an example of how far Reserve Trust can go.

“Stripe has significant market share doing merchant acquiring and processing e-commerce payments for the consumer,” Levinson said. “B2B payments is significantly bigger in terms of volume, so we’re talking about well over $20 trillion of addressable payment flow. But there’s no real technology company that’s brought the modern payments platform to market without being beholden to legacy banks. And that’s why we’re so excited about this business.”

Reserve Trust, he added, is giving businesses a way to facilitate B2B payments that “are smarter, faster and cheaper.”

Gerety agrees.

“Despite all the excitement around digital payments and infrastructure, there is still no fintech that can offer direct integration with the U.S. payment system,” he said. “With Reserve Trust, we are creating foundational infrastructure to hold and move payments globally and at scale.”

Third Wave Automation raises $40M to bring its autonomous forklifts to warehouses

Published August 4, 2021

Fresh off a strategic partnership with Toyota Industries Corporation to build an autonomous forklift, Third Wave Automation has snagged another $40 million from investors.

The California-based startup, which was founded in 2018, has raised $40 million in a Series B round led by Norwest Venture Partners, including participation from prior investors Innovation Endeavors and Eclipse, along with Toyota Ventures, according to a Form D filed with regulators. Matt Howard, general partner at Norwest Venture Partners, will join Third Wave’s board of directors.

The injection of capital came after Howard learned of Third Wave’s partnership with Toyota Industries Corporation, which builds a third of the world’s forklifts, Third Wave CEO Arshan Poursohi told TechCrunch. Under that deal, which was announced in May, Third Wave and Toyota Industries (TICO) will develop an autonomous forklift together. The machine will be manufactured at a TICO factory and be equipped with Third Wave’s sensors and compute stack. Third Wave will support the software side.

Third Wave’s three co-founders — including Mac Mason, who is chief roboticist, and James Davidson, who is no longer with the company — have long backgrounds in robotics, oftentimes working together at places like Google’s robotics program and Google Research and Toyota Research Institute.

“We’ve covered just about every kind of robot there is,” Poursohi said. “But all of these robots that we built ended up, you know, sitting in a closet somewhere because ultimately, Google or, in my case, Sun Microsystems, would decide it’s not worth scaling it out because it’s not the core business, or some other reason.”

The co-founders struck out to form their own company to focus on robots that would be used and would meet an immediate need.

“When we looked at forklifts, it’s this beautiful manipulation problem, so it’s a robot that actually touches the world on purpose,” Poursohi said. “And it’s a thing that we can actually build and ship on a time horizon that is not measured in decades.”

The forklifts they have developed operate under what is called shared autonomy. This means the forklift, which can lift pallets and move them around, will operate on its own 90% of the time. However, every robot can also be controlled remotely if the need arises. The robots are easy to operate, meaning the customer, not Third Wave, can have on-site employees to provide assistance remotely if the robot encounters something that prevents it from operating.

“There’s a big impact we can make on logistics and supply chain, just by moving pallets around, and that’s where we’ve been concentrated. The key to our technology is that it’s very fast to set up and it works in brownfield [environments],” Poursohi said.

Third Wave is still at an early stage in its development, but it’s making progress. The momentum from the funding and the recent completion of technical trials will allow the company to speed up its hiring effort and focus on commercialization, Poursohi said. He noted that Third Wave is in active conversations with 20 third-party logistics operators and retailers in the industry.

“We’ve tackled and have solid answers on all the technical fronts,” Poursohi said. “The next year and a half to two years is about is scaling out our operations team. And the market demand for this right now is massive.”

The target is to have 100 units in the field — meaning warehouses and other indoor locations — by the end of 2022 and scaling to 350 to 400 by the end of 2023.

Mobility’s Robotic Future

Robinhood is now a stonk

Published August 4, 2021

Update: Trading of Robinhood shares has been halted due to volatility. The company’s stock paused at $65.60 on Robinhood itself. Yahoo Finance has a higher $77.03 price on the company’s equity, up a stunning 64.59% today. Things are fluid, but Robinhood may have been halted and then rose again when it resumed trading. Stonks indeed.

Shares of Robinhood, an investing-focused consumer fintech company, soared this morning in premarket trading. The stonk phenomenon, which helped propel minor companies like GameStop and AMC earlier this year, appears to be impacting Robinhood’s own stock; that much GameStop and AMC trading took place on Robinhood’s platform during stonk-fever is irony not lost on this publication.

Here’s what things look like this morning, per Yahoo Finance:

Recall that Robinhood went public at $38 per share, the low end of its range, and sank in its early trading sessions to below its IPO price. Now, it’s worth $54 per share.

Cool.

Normally we’d crack a joke and close this small news item here, but with Robinhood’s IPO featuring a unique twist on the traditional public offering, we have to do a bit more work. When it went public, Robinhood reserved a chunk of its equity for purchase by its own users. The impact of this was that more retail investors likely owned Robinhood equity at the start of its trading life than would be normal with a traditional IPO.

How Robinhood’s explosive growth rate came to be

One hypothesis regarding Robinhood’s somewhat slack early trading performance was that early retail demand for its shares was sated by its effort to allow its users to buy stock in its shares, leading to a less-skewed supply/demand curve when it debuted.

Things have changed. What’s going on? Last week, an analyst put a $65 per share price target on the stock. And there are a handful of other ratings to chew on. But the wild swing in the price of Robinhood today appears from our vantage point to be another stonk moment. The stock is being traded like a short-squeeze, even if some market participants are skeptical of the idea due to what they view as a limited short interest in the company.

Checking the Robinhood IR page, there’s no news. Robinhood did not recently report earnings. And the company’s recent 606 filings that deal with PFOF incomes seemed to match up with expectations in revenue terms regarding what the company detailed in its Q2 2021 flash numbers. Perhaps there was more crypto in there than expected, but nothing truly wild.

It appears that Robinhood is simply going up because it is. This happens in 2021; we just have to get used to it.

But what matters most for our purposes is that Robinhood’s decision to sell some IPO stock to its users did not manage to create so much float for the now-public unicorn to diminish weird trading. You can go public in an unusual manner and still catch a stonk wave. Now we know.

Robinhood’s CFO says it was ready to go public

Financial concierge startup Zeni banks $34M to show SMBs their finances in real time

Published August 4, 2021

Zeni, a Palo Alto fintech company providing real-time financial services data to venture-backed startups, raised $34 million in Series B funding led by Elevation Capital.

The new investment comes just five months after Zeni announced $13.5 million in a combined seed and Series A round. The company has now raised $47.5 million in total since it was co-founded in 2019 by twin brothers Swapnil Shinde and Snehal Shinde.

Elevation was joined in the new round by new investors Think Investments and Neeraj Arora, as well as existing investors Saama Capital, Amit Singhal, Sierra Ventures, Twin Ventures, Dragon Capital and Liquid 2 Ventures. As part of the investment, Ravi Adusumalli, founder and managing partner at Elevation Capital, will join Zeni’s board.

The Shinde siblings started the company after selling their last company, Mezi, a travel concierge, to American Express in 2018. Zeni’s AI-powered finance concierge platform offers bookkeeping, accounting, tax and CFO services, managing these for a flat monthly fee starting at $299 per month. Founders have real-time access to financial insights via the Zeni Dashboard, including cash in and out, operating expenses, yearly taxes and financial projections. They can also download the financial data in the “slice” that they want.

At the time of its seed/Series A round, the company was managing more than $200 million in funds each month, and that has ballooned to more than $500 million, CEO Swapnil Shinde told TechCrunch. Its customers range from pre-revenue startups to businesses generating more than $100 million in annual revenue.

In addition to the cash in and cash out analysis, the company also created a search function for transactions and spend and income trends on every customer and vendor, Snehal Shinde, chief product officer, said.

Zeni’s dashboard

Zeni experienced 550% revenue growth year-over-year, while the company’s customer base grew 375%, driven by referrals and organic growth, Swapnil Shinde said.

Despite the growth, the Series B came as a surprise to the siblings. The company was already “very well capitalized,” with a majority of the previous round still around, Swapnil Shinde said.

However, Zeni began receiving so many inbound inquiries that he said it was too exciting to pass on. Especially with the addition of Elevation Capital as an investor. Shinde said that was appealing because the firm was an investor in Paytm, and “knows how to partner and build unicorns.”

The new funding will be used to continue scaling and building the bookkeeping and accounting functions and to accelerate hiring, particularly in the engineering, sales and finance team verticals. Shinde expects to double or triple the finance team in the next year.

“As our customers scale through to their Series B, the more you can use our solution in real time to see what is happening with your finances, especially with startups and businesses having more of a remote workforce,” Swapnil Shinde added. “Zeni fits with that.”

Ash Lilani, managing partner at Saama Capital, one of Zeni’s earliest and largest investors, said he knew how big the total addressable market was — $200 billion — and how much these kinds of financial services were a giant pain point for startup companies.

“To know where you stand financially in real time is hard to do, usually, you get that information at month-end,” Lilani said. “I believe we have the opportunity to build a large company. Though Zeni is going after startups today, the small and medium markets can be leveraged. As they grow, Zeni will become their controller on the back end, while companies can just hire a CFO for the strategic decisions.”

With the right tools, predicting startup revenue is possible

Buildots raises $30M to put eyes on construction sites

Published August 4, 2021

One year after raising $16 million, construction technology company Buildots is back to claim another $30 million, this time in Series B funding.

Lightspeed Venture Partners led the round, with participation from previous investors TLV Partners, Future Energy Ventures, Tidhar Construction Group and Maor Investments. This gives the company $46 million in total funding, Roy Danon, co-founder and CEO of Buildots, told TechCrunch.

The three-year-old company, with headquarters in Tel Aviv and London, is leveraging artificial intelligence computer vision technology to address construction inefficiencies. Danon said though construction accounts for 13% of the world’s GDP and employs hundreds of millions of people, construction productivity continues to lag, only growing 1% in the past two decades.

Danon spent six months on construction sites talking to workers to understand what was happening and learned that control was one of the areas where efficiency was breaking down. While construction processes would seem similar to manufacturing processes, building to the design or specs didn’t happen often due to different rules and reliance on numerous entities to get their jobs done first, he said.

Buildots’ technology is addressing this gap using AI algorithms to automatically validate images captured by hardhat-mounted 360-degree cameras, detecting immediately any gaps between the original design, scheduling and what is actually happening on the construction site. Project managers can then make better decisions to speed up construction.

“It even finds events where contractors are installing out of place and streamline payments so that information is transparent and clear,” Danon said. “Buildots also creates a collaborative environment and trust by having a single source telling everyone what is going on. There is no more blaming or cutting corners because the system validates that and also makes construction a healthier industry to work in.”

Buildots went after new funding once it was able to show product market fit and was expanding into other countries. The platform is being utilized on major building projects in countries like the U.S., U.K., Germany, Switzerland, Scandinavia and China. To meet demand, Buildots will use the new funding to continue that expansion; double the size of its global team with a focus on sales, marketing and R&D; and grow on the business side. Danon’s aim is “to get to the point where we are the standard for every construction site.” The company is also looking at areas outside construction where its technology would be applicable.

Buildots raises $16M to bring computer vision to construction management

Tal Morgenstern, partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners, said he keeps an eye on graduates of the Israel Defense Forces, where the three Buildots founders came from. However, in the case of this company, Lightspeed actually passed on both the seed and Series A.

Morgenstern admits the decision was a mistake, but at the time, he thought the technology Buildots was trying to build “first, impossible and second, I knew construction was difficult to sell into.” He felt that Buildots, with such a premium product, would have a challenge selling to a low-margin industry that was late to adopt technology in general.

By the time the Series B came round, he said Buildots had solved both of those issues, proving that it works, but also that customers were adopting the technology without much sales and marketing. In addition, other solutions in construction tech were still relying on lasers or people to manually input or tap photos.

“Buildots is seamlessly capturing images and providing a level of insights that is so high, and that is why the company is able to command the price structure they have and are receiving interesting commercial results,” Morgenstern said.

Walking around today’s construction site, Danon said the adoption of technology is enabling Buildots to move quickly to build processes for the industry.

As such, the company saw more than 50% growth quarter over quarter over the past year in three of the countries in which it operates. It is now working with four of the top 10 construction companies in Europe and around the world.

“We did a good job selling remotely, but now we need local offices,” Danon added. “We are also sitting on piles of data from construction sites. We learn from one project to another and want to look for the challenges where data will help make a financial impact. It’s a natural next step for the company.”

Despite the hype, construction tech will be hard to disrupt