TechCrunch Startup News

If you didn’t see this coming, then clearly you didn’t have your eyes on the road. Bird, the LA-founded e-scooter giant, has confirmed that it is acquiring European competitor Circ, the micromobilty company founded by Lukasz Gadowski of Delivery Hero fame. The deal, for which terms remain undisclosed, was first reported by the FT late last week. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Memphis Meats, a developer of technologies to manufacture meat, seafood and poultry from animal cells, has raised $161 million in financing from investors including Softbank Group, Norwest and Temasek, the investment fund backed by the government of Singapore. The investment brings the company’s total financing to $180 million. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Layoffs in the technology and venture-backed worlds continued today, as 23andMe confirmed to CNBC that it laid off around 100 people, or about 14% of its formerly 700-person staff. The cuts would be notable by themselves, but given how many other reductions have recently been announced, they indicate that a rolling round of belt-tightening amongst well-funded private companies continues. Mozilla, for example, cut 70 staffers earlier this year. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Substack announced today that it has built support for multiple authors into its service. The company provides a publishing tool that blends blogs and email newsletters into a single entity, with a focus on subscription monetization. The day’s updates also include a number of publisher-friendly tools, like shared access and homepage features closer to those of traditional websites than the linear timeline style that Substack has focused on so far. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Shyft is announcing that it has raised $15 million in Series A funding to make the moving process less painful — specifically in the situations where your employer is paying for the move. There other startups are looking to offer concierge-type services for regular moving — I used a service called Moved last year and liked it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It seems like every company making lidar has a new and clever approach, but Baraja takes the cake. Its method is not only elegant and powerful, but fundamentally avoids many issues that nag other lidar technologies. But it’ll need more than smart tech to make headway in this complex and evolving industry. To understand how lidar works in general, consult my handy introduction to the topic. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Continuing our irregular surveys of the public markets, two things happened this week that are worth our time. First, a third domestic technology company — Alphabet — passed the $1 trillion market capitalization threshold. And, second, software as a service (SaaS) stocks reached record highs on the public markets after retreating over last summer. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I was in SF last week and met with more than a dozen VCs over the course of two days. This was post the holidays, post their visits to the ski chalets in Tahoe and the island beaches, and in the smack dab of one of the most important fundraise periods of the year — the mid-to-late January to April stretch when all the backlog of startups from Q4 initiate their fundraises for the new year. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

One of the most valuable resources in the tech startup community is mentorship. Founders, tackling brand new challenges and adapting to a rapidly changing world, can sometimes feel like no one understands what they’re going through. But alas, the Early Stage SF event in April will most certainly prove them wrong. Early Stage will bring together seasoned operators and experts across a wide variety of topics that fall under the broad umbrellas of funding, marketing and operations. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Equinix announced today that is acquiring bare metal cloud provider Packet. The New York City startup that had raised over $36 million on a $100 million valuation, according to Pitchbook data. Equinix has a set of data centers and co-locations facilities around the world. Companies that may want to have more control over their hardware could use their services including space, power and cooling systems, instead of running their own data centers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

At CES 2020, one of the more well-represented gadget categories was definitely consumer robots – but none was more adorable than MarsCat, a new robo-pet from industrial robot startup Elephant Robotics. This robot pet is a fully autonomous companion that can respond to touch, voice and even play with toys, and it’s hard not to love the thing after spending even just a brief amount of time with it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

E-commerce phenom and D2C bright light Casper has filed to go public. The New York-based company that raised nearly $340 million while private, according to Crunchbase data, expects to trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol “CSPR.” Its S-1 filing includes a $100 million placeholder figure for its possible capital raise. The company will need the money, as it loses money and burns cash. Let’s explore just how a mattress company does that. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Lime is hoping to achieve profitability this year by laying off about 14% of its workforce and ceasing operations in 12 markets, Axios first reported. “Financial independence is our goal for 2020, and we are confident that Lime will be the first next-generation mobility company to reach profitability,” Lime CEO Brad Bao said in a statement to TechCrunch. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Cloudflare announced that it has acquired S2 Systems, a browser isolation startup started by former Microsoft execs. The two companies did not reveal the acquisition price. Matthew Prince, co-founder and CEO at Cloudflare, says that this acquisition is part of a new suite of products called Cloudflare for Teams, which has been designed to protect an organization from threats on the internet. S2 developed a solution specifically to help prevent browser-based code attacks. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The hardest challenges to tackle are usually the most nebulous. Culture, for example, is hard to define, implement, cultivate and evolve… How do you structure culture within a business or organization? Are there steps to follow? Is there a manual? Interestingly enough, there is. What You Do Is Who You Are is the latest book from legendary investor, entrepreneur and founding partner at Andreesen Horowitz Ben Horowitz. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The recovery in value of several high-profile electric car companies could help move yet-private EV manufacturers out of the pit lane and onto the IPO track. On the heels of NIO’s shocking value appreciation after its recent earnings report, and Tesla’s own public market run, China-based Lixiang Automotive is reported to have filed privately for an IPO in the United States. Lixiang Automotive is a Beijing-based company that was founded in 2015, according to Crunchbase data. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Mobility mavericks get ready to strut your stuff at TC Sessions: Mobility 2020 on May 14. Don’t miss our second annual day-long conference devoted to technologies that move people and parcels around the world in new, exciting ways. More than 1,000 of the industry’s mightiest minds, makers, innovators and investors will converge in San Jose for a mobile mind meld. That spells opportunity for early-stage mobility startup founders. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Venture capital investment exploded across a number of geographies in 2019 despite the constant threat of an economic downturn. San Francisco, of course, remains the startup epicenter of the world, shutting out all other geographies when it comes to capital invested. Still, other regions continue to grow, raking in more capital this year than ever. In Utah, a new hotbed for startups, companies like Weave, Divvy and MX Technology raised a collective $370 million from private market investors. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

TikTok may be the fastest-growing social network in the history of the internet, but it is also quickly becoming the fastest-growing security threat and thorn in the side of U.S. China hawks. The latest, according to a notice published by the U.S. Navy this past week and reported on by Reuters and the South China Morning Post, is that TikTok will no longer be allowed to be installed on service members’ devices, or they may face expulsion from the military service’s intranet. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

MasterCard announced today that it is acquiring RiskRecon, a Salt Lake City startup that uses publicly available data to build security assessments of organizations. The companies did not share the purchase price. It’s become increasingly important for financial services companies like MasterCard to help customers navigate cyber security and RiskRecon will give customers an objective score of a company’s risk profile. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Every once in a while on VC Twitter, a comment or statement seems so outlandish, so completely outrageous, that it must be — certainly has to be — false. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

F5 got an expensive holiday present today, snagging startup Shape Security for approximately $1 billion. What the networking company gets with a shiny red ribbon is a security product that helps stop automated attacks like credential stuffing. In an article earlier this year, Shape CTO Shuman Ghosemajumder explained what the company does: “We’re an enterprise-focused company that protects the majority of large U.S. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Leapfin, a startup selling corporate finance tooling, announced a $4.5 million round this morning. The funding event was led by Bowrey Capital, and included dollars from a number of former technology executives. Before its newly announced investment, the company had raised just a small seed round. The small capital amounts may seem inconsequential, but they’re more strategic than anything. According to Leapfin CEO Raymond Lau, the company is running lean and keeping an eye on profitability. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Make space for another dating app in your single life: Blindlee is Chatroulette for dating but with female-friendly guardrails in the form of a user-controlled video blur effect. The idea is pretty simple: Singles are matched randomly with another user who meets some basic criteria (age, location) for a three minute ‘ice breaker’ video call. The app suggests chat topics — like ‘pineapple on pizza, yay or nay’ — to get the conversation flowing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Katie Jacobs Stanton, a former Twitter executive and co-founder of the #ANGELS investment collective, has raised $25 million for her debut venture capital fund Moxxie Ventures. As the sole general partner, she plans to invest between $250,000 and $500,000 in underrepresented and underestimated founders, Stanton tells TechCrunch, with a focus on “products that make life and work better. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In the wake of WeWork’sembarrassing IPO rout, you might imagine that startups working in similar markets would cool it for a bit. Perhaps they could work on cutting spending, improving their gross margins, and, say, shooting for profitability. Not so, at least in one case. Instead of doing those things, China-based Ucommune filed to go public in America this month. The WeWork competitor is mostly a co-working business. It’s also a marketing company. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Seoul and South Korea may well be the secret startup hub that (still) no one talks about. While often dwarfed by the scale and scope of the Chinese startup market next door, South Korea has proven over the last few years that it can — and will — enter the top-tier of startup hubs. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Sleek, a startup that is making it easier for other startups and companies to incorporate and operate in Singapore and Hong Kong, said today it has extended its seed financing round to raise $5 million. The extended seed round for the two-year-old startup was led by private investors Pierre Lorinet and Fabio Blom, and MI8, an Asia-focused European backed private investment company. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome back to Startups Weekly, a weekend newsletter that dives into the week’s noteworthy startups and venture capital news. Before I jump into today’s topic, let’s catch up a bit. Last week, I wrote about U.S. VC activity in Europe. Before that, I noted Chinese investor activity in Africa. Remember, you can send me tips, suggestions and feedback to [email protected] or on Twitter@KateClarkTweets. If you’re new, you can subscribe to Startups Weekly here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On the heels of Bill.com’s debut, Chicago-based social media software company Sprout Social priced its IPO last night at $17 per share, in the middle of its proposed $16 to $18 per-share range. Selling 8.8 million shares, Sprout raised just under $150 million in its debut. Underwriters have the option to purchase an additional 1.3 million shares if they so choose. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

At the very beginning, there were 14 startups. After two days of incredibly fierce competition, we now have a winner. Startups participating in the Startup Battlefield have all been hand-picked to participate in our highly competitive startup competition. They all presented in front of multiple groups of VCs and tech leaders serving as judges for a chance to win $50,000 and the coveted Disrupt Cup. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Many companies realized that there was a huge opportunity when it comes to on-demand delivery of food and groceries. And apparently, too many companies as Glovo co-founder Sacha Michaud expects some consolidation in the space in the near future. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week Gtmhub announced a $9 million Series A led by CRV. The investment was not a large round, even for an A. But the capital found its way into one of the fastest-growing SaaS companies that we’ve spoken with recently, which made it interesting all the same. And, the firm was willing to talk about its financial performance in some detail. The combination made its Series A impossible to ignore. TechCrunch caught up with Gtmhub’s CMO Seth Elliott this morning to learn more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

As Airbnb absorbs more and more of the demand for housing, it’s exploring how to monetize opportunities beyond vacation rentals. A marketplace for longer term corporate housing could be a huge business, but rather than build that itself, Airbnb is making a strategic investment in one of the market leaders called Zeus Living and will list its homes on the Airbnb site. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Nodle, which is competing in the TechCrunch Disrupt Berlin Startup Battlefield this week, is based on a simple premise: What if you could crowdsource the connectivity of smart sensors by offloading it to smartphones? For most sensors, built-in cell connectivity is simply not a realistic option, given how much power it would take. A few years of battery life is quite realistic for a sensor that uses Bluetooth Low Energy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Open source is a great source of free tools for developers, but as these projects proliferate, and some gain in popularity, the creators sometimes look for ways to monetize successful ones. The problem is that it’s hard to run a subscription-based, dual-license approach and most developers don’t even know where to start. Enter Israeli startup xs:code, which has created a platform to help developers solve this problem. “xs:code is a monetization platform for open source projects. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

According to CEO Afif Khoury, we’re in the middle of “the third wave of social” — a shift back to local interactions. And Khoury’s startup Soci (pronounced soh-shee) has raised $12 million in Series C funding to help companies navigate that shift. Soci works with customers like Ace Hardware and Sport Clips to help them manage the online presence of hundreds or thousands of stores. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello and welcome back to Startups Weekly, a weekend newsletter that dives into the week’s noteworthy startups and venture capital news. Before I jump into today’s topic, let’s catch up a bit. Last week, I wrote about Chinese investor activity in Africa. Before that, I noted Airbnb’s issues. Remember, you can send me tips, suggestions and feedback to [email protected] or on Twitter@KateClarkTweets. If you’re new, you can subscribe to Startups Weekly here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Nathan Beckord Contributor Share on Twitter Nathan Beckord is CEO of Foundersuite.com, a software platform for raising capital and managing investors that has helped entrepreneurs raise over $2 billion since 2016. He is also the host of Foundersuite’s How I Raised It podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

“Airbnb’s unit economics are quite legendary — the S-1 is going to be MOST disrupted FASTEST in the next 3 YEARS? Caps for effect.” Who Tweeted that? Initialized Capital’s Garry Tan? Homebrew’s Hunter Walk? Y Combinator co-founder Paul Graham? Or perhaps one of the dozens of other venture capitalists active on Twitter . No, it was Parrot.VC, a new Twitter account and website dedicated to making light of VC Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Uberflip is acquiring SnapApp, bringing together two startups that promise help marketers use their content more effectively. President and Chief Marketing Officer Randy Frisch argued that Uberflip focuses on content experience, not content marketing. In other words, it’s not selling productivity and workflow tools for marketers to write blog posts and and create videos. Instead, it helps them present their existing content in a smarter and more personalized way. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Uniform Teeth, the teeth straightening startup that helped me figure out I needed a root canal, has just raised a $10 million round of funding led by Canaan Ventures. This brings Uniform Teeth’s total funding to $14 million. With the new funding, Uniform Teeth plans to open up two more locations, one in Seattle and one in Chicago early next year. Uniform Teeth currently operates two locations in San Francisco. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A lot of companies talk about the value of your data, and about helping you get more control over the information you share, but Toronto-based Delphia is unique in aiming to build a viable, sustainable and scalable way to take a person’s data and turn that into real monetary gain. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Accel, one of the world’s most influential venture capitalist firms, is becoming more bullish on India. The Silicon Valley-headquartered firm, which largely focuses on early stage investments, said today it has closed $550 million for its sixth venture fund in India. This is a significant amount of capital for Accel’s efforts in India, where it began investing 15 years ago and has infused roughly $1 billion through all of its previous funds combined. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Back in February, we wrote that Postscript “wants to be the Mailchimp for SMS.” Now they’ve raised $4.5 million to help get it done. This round was led by Accomplice, and backed by Kayak co-founder Paul English, Wufoo co-founder Kevin Hale, Klaviyo co-founder Andrew Bialecki, Drift co-founder Elias Torres, Front co-founder Mathilde Collin and Podium co-founders Eric Rea and Dennis Steele. The Postscript team is currently made up of 14 people. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Have we got a Cyber Monday deal for you. TC Sessions: Robotics+AI (March 3) and TC Sessions: Mobility (May 14) are coming back to California in 2020 with early bird tickets starting at $275 and $250 respectively. But if you buy your pass today, you’ll save an extra 15 percent on each event. How sweet is that? Don’t delay, startuppers. Buy your pass to TC Sessions: Robotics & AI and/or TC Sessions: Mobility before this one-day deal expires promptly tonight at 11:59 pm PT. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello and welcome back to Startups Weekly, a weekend newsletter that dives into the week’s noteworthy startups and venture capital news. Before I jump into today’s topic, let’s catch up a bit. Last week, I wrote about Airbnb’s issues. Before that, I noted Uber’s new “money” team. Remember, you can send me tips, suggestions and feedback to [email protected] or on Twitter@KateClarkTweets. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The New York Stock Exchange filed paperwork this morning with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to allow companies to raise capital as part of a direct listing. Direct listings are a way for companies to go public by selling existing shares held by insiders, employees and investors directly to the market, rather than the traditional method of issuing new shares. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Zebra Fuel, the startup that brought fuel directly to your vehicle, is ‘no longer’ delivering in London Zebra Fuel, the London-based startup that delivered fuel directly to your vehicle — backed by Robin and Saul Klein’s LocalGlobe, Brent Hoberman’s Firstminute Capital and Zoopla founder Alex Chesterman — has told customers it is “no longer” delivering fuel in London. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Joe Procopio Contributor Share on Twitter Joe is a multi-exit, multi-failure entrepreneur. Joe is currently building Spiffy, and previously sold Automated Insights, sold ExitEvent, and built Intrepid Media. Find more about Joe at joeprocopio.com or @jproco on Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices