TechCrunch Startup News

One of Europe’s most popular fitness applications is poised to flourish in the U.S. market with the help of several Los Angeles-based investors. Freeletics, headquartered in Munich, Germany, is today announcing its first round of private capital after bootstrapping since 2013. The $45 million Series A was co-led by FitLab, Causeway Media Partners and JAZZ Venture Partners, with participation from Courtside Ventures, Elysian Park Ventures and ward.ventures. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Telemedicine startup Nurx— once dubbed the “Uber for birth control” — has launched a direct-to-consumerHuman papillomavirus (HPV) testing kit. The addition means its customers can test for the most common sexually transmitted infection in the U.S. and a cause of genital warts and cervical cancer in the comfort of their own homes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Uber Eats has effectively invented its own native ad unit. Uber confirmed to TechCrunch that a test quietly running in markets around India allows restaurants to bundle several food items together and sell them at a discounted price in exchange for promoted placement by Uber Eats in a featured section of local “Specials”. In some cases, restaurants foot the cost of the discount, while in others Uber pays for the discounts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

French startup Agricool is raising another $28 million round of funding (€25 million). The company is working on containers to grow fruits and vegetables in urban areas, starting with strawberries. Bpifrance, Danone Manifesto Ventures, Marbeuf Capital, Solomon Hykes and other business angels participated in today’s funding round. Some existing investors also participated, such as daphni, XAnge, Henri Seydoux and Kima Ventures. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Augmented reality has been a buzzword for years, but for the most part, it has remained a novelty. WiARframe, which is competing in our Startup Battlefield competition today at Disrupt Berlin, believes that we are still very early on in the AR game and that part of what is holding the market back is that the tools need to become easier to use and that designers need to find better ways to find inspiration for their AR experiences. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Lyft has finally given us a glimpse of its forthcoming line of shareable bikes, which the ridesharing company says will be available to rent within its mobile app in select cities “soon.” The news comes as the $15 billion company announces the final close of its acquisition of Motivate, the New York City-based mobility startup that owns a number of bike-rental services, like Citi Bike, Ford GoBike, Divvy, Blue Bikes and Capital Bikeshare. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Meet Spin Analytics, a startup that wants to leverage artificial intelligence to automatically write credit risk modeling regulation reports. The company is participating in Startup Battlefield at TechCrunch Disrupt Berlin. If you work for a big bank, you know how painful it can be to launch a new product. Every time you start selling a new asset, you need to comply with regulations around the world. It can take months and a lot of money to write detailed documents about your asset. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

After eight years of bootstrapping, Deputy sought scale. So the workforce management platform turned to venture capital, quickly raising a $25 million Series A in early 2017. Today, Deputy is announcing a major accomplishment: the close of an $81 million round — the largest Series B in Australian history. IVP has led the investment for the Sydney and Atlanta-headquartered company, with support from OpenView Venture Partners, Square Peg Capital and Equity Venture Partners. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The mainstream will never adopt blockchain-powered decentralized apps (dApps) if it’s a struggle to log in. They’re either forced to manage complex security keys themselves, or rely on a clunky wallet-equipped browser like MetaMask. What users need is for signing in to blockchain apps to be as easy as Login With Facebook. So that’s what Bitski built. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Airbnb has completed a much-needed hire ahead of its rumored 2019 initial public offering. Thehospitality giant has brought on Dave Stephenson, a long-time Amazon vice president and former president of Big Fish Games, as its chief financial officer. Stephenson replaces the company’s head of global financial planning and analysis, Ellie Mertz, who served as interim head of finance as Airbnb searched for its former CFO Laurence Tosi’s replacement. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Banuba raises $7M to supercharge any app or device with the ability to really see you Walking into the office of Viktor Prokopenya – which overlooks a central London park – you would perhaps be forgiven for missing the significance of this unassuming location, just south of Victoria Station in London. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Part of Agora’s team. The cloud communications startup has offices in Santa Clara and Shanghai. Agora, a developer of cloud communication APIs, will create products for new markets and verticals after raising a $70 million Series C led by Coatue Management. Existing investors SIG, Morningside Capital, and Shunwei Capital also returned for the round, which brings Agora’s total funding so far to $125 million. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Move over Le Creuset? A new cookware startup founded by and for millennials is getting down to business Sometimes, it’s hard to imagine a product or industry that a new e-commerce startup hasn’t tried to remake already, fromslipperstomattresses, fromluggagetolipstick. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

French crowd-lending platform October (formerly known as Lendix), wants to educate more people about new ways to borrow money. That’s why the company is launching a project called Grandir Ensemble (grow together). 11 big companies are borrowing €100,000 each on October at a 2.5 percent interest rate. October users will be able to lend as little as €20 to one of these companies. If you look at the list of companies, all those names will sound familiar to French readers and beyond. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

CVCompiler is an robot that fixes your resume to make you more competitive Machine learning is everywhere now, including recruiting. Take CVCompiler, a new product by Andrew Stetsenko and Alexandra Dosii. This web app uses machine learning to analyze and repair your technical resume, allowing you too shine to recruiters at Google, Yahoo, and Facebook. The founders are marketing and HR experts who have a combined fifteen years experience in making recruiting smarter. Stetsenko founded Relocate. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Wind Mobility, a Berlin-based mobility startup that offers “dockless” e-scooter (and electric bicycle) rentals, has raised $22 million in seed funding, throwing its hat into the European competitor to Bird and Lime ring. It follows recent raises by Sweden’s VOI ($50 million Series A led by Balderton) and Germany’s Tier (€25 million Series A led by Northzone). All three companies are attempting to be pan-European from the get-go. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Radio giant iHeartMedia announced today that it’s reached an agreement to acquire Jelli, a company bringing programmatic ad-buying to radio broadcasters. In fact, iHeartMedia was already working with Jelli to allow businesses to use programmatic tools to buy advertising on the company’s 850 broadcast radio stations. iHeartMedia also invested in Jelli’s most recent funding round. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Genies is emerging as the top competitor to Snapchat’s wildly popular Bitmoji as Facebook, Apple, and Google have been slow to get serious about personalized avatars. Over one million people have customized dozens of traits to build a realistic digital lookalike of themselves from over a million possible permutations. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Anyone that has experience in the service or retail industry knows swapping shifts can be a logistical nightmare that leaves employees in trouble with management or stuck working during a friend’s birthday party. As a former Old Navy “sellebrity” myself, I can confirm there’s a huge need for an efficient tool to solve this problem. That’s where Shyft, a Seattle-based startup that helps connect shift workers, comes in. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

“I wasn’t asking to pay in Bitcoin!” Plastiq CEO and co-founder Eliot Buchanan recalls with a laugh. “I went to pay part of my tuition at Harvard and I was told that they didn’t (and never would) accept credit card. It was inconvenient and seemed odd. Credit cards had been around for 50 years.” That set off the a light bulb in his head. “Why couldn’t I use a credit card to pay for this important bill? So, I set out to solve my own problem. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Amazon Go store requires hundreds of cameras to detect who’s picking up what items. Standard Cognition needs just 27 to go after the $27 trillion market of equipping regular shops with autonomous retail technology. Walk into one of its partners’ stores and overhead cameras identify you by shape and movement, not facial recognition. Open up its iOS or Android app and a special light pattern flashes, allowing the cameras to tie you to your account and payment method. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The best parts of gaming are the jokes and trash talk with friends. Whether it was four-player Goldeneye or linking up PCs for Quake battles in the basement, the social element keeps video games exciting. Yet on mobile we’ve lost a lot of that, playing silently by ourselves even if we’re in a squad with friends somewhere else. Bunch wants to bring the laughter back to mobile gaming by letting you sync up with friends and video chat while you play. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

There are few things certain in our world except for the uplifting tendencies of technology. I’ve spent the past few years trying to prove this to myself, at least, by interviewing hundreds of thinkers on the topic. I’ve come to a singular conclusion: when tech moves into a city, be it an iOS dev shop or a robotic facility for making widgets, things change primarily for the better. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Selling equity to buy Facebook and Google ads is a bad deal for startups. Clearbanc offers a fundraising alternative. For fast-growing businesses reliably earning sales from their marketing spend, Clearbanc offers funding from $5,000 to $10 million in exchange for a steady revenue share of their earnings until it’s paid back plus a 6 percent fee. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Lime, the well-funded startup known for its fleet of brightly colored dockless bicycles and electric scooters, has a new way for its customers to get around: cars. Beginning this week, Lime users in Seattle will be able to reserve a “LimePod,” a Lime-branded 2018 Fiat 500, within the Lime mobile app. There will be 50 cars available to start as part of the company’s initial rollout. Lime plans to increase that number at the end of the month. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Wellness app Calm has today announced a $3 million equity investment in XpresSpa Group, a fast-spa service you may have noticed in your local airport. Calm sees the investment as a way to expand its offline presence, growing awareness of the app as well as its retail products like Sleep Mist and the Calm Book. Calm subscribers will have access to a variety of in-store benefits and treatments at one of 52 XpresSpa locations in cities like Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami and New York. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

SAP agrees to buy Qualtrics for $8B in cash, just before the survey software company’s IPO Enterprise software giant SAP announced today that it has agreed to acquire Qualtrics for $8 billion in cash, just before the survey and research software company was set to go public. The deal is expected to be completed in the first half of 2019. Qualtrics last round of venture capital funding in 2016 raised $180 million at a $2.5 billion valuation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The kids in Madrid’s El Retiro Park are loving their new on-demand joyriding toys. Lime launched its scooters in the Spanish capital this summer. Spending a weekend in the city center last month the craze was impossible to miss. Scooters parked in clusters vying for pay-to-play time. Sometimes lined up tidily. All too often not. The bright Lime rides really stood out, though it’s not the only brand in town. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Another day, another exit scam. This time it comes to us from South Korea where an exchange, Pure Bit, has completely shut down after raising $2.8 million in Ethereum from investors. The exchange, which promised to deliver something call Pure Coin, was live yesterday and today is completely shut down after posting “Sorry” and “Thanks” to their communications channels. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Fifteen startups have spent the day presenting on-stage in Sao Paulo, Brazil. For the finalists, that meant presenting twice — once in the initial rounds, then again for our finalist judges. This was all part of Startup Battlefield Latin America, an event that we put on in partnership with Facebook’s FB Start program. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The scooter startups are taking over the world — or trying to. Earlier this week, Bird debuted its electric scooters in London’s Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park; today, Lime is announcing its foray into the land down under with the launch of a three-month scooter pilot atMonash University in Melbourne, Australia. Lime has also released several hundred of its dockless electric bikes in Sydney and plans to introduce its scooters there, aswell as in Brisbane, soon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We are experimenting with new content forms at TechCrunch. This is a rough draft of something new – provide your feedback directly to the authors: Danny at [email protected] or Arman at [email protected] if you like or hate something here. Ignoring the midterm hysteria, we continue our obsession with SoftBank today by looking at the group’s IPO of its telecom unit, but first, some thoughts about Form Ds. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Automakers invest in Transit, the app that helps people get around without a car Transit, a company that built a mobile app designed to help people in cities live without cars, has raised $17.5 million from two automakers in a Series B round. The round wasled by RenaultNissan-Mitsubishi’s joint investment arm Alliance Ventures.InMotion Ventures, Jaguar Land Rover’s venture capital fund, also joined the round, as well as two past investors, Accel and Real Ventures. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Exactly one year to the day since it launchedits line of men’s health products, HIMS is announcing its foray into women’s wellness. The company is using its mountain of venture capital to support the new brand, called HERS. In September, HIMS raised another $50 million in a round led by IVP. The financing valued the startup, which has brought in $97 million to date, at $500 million, according to PitchBook. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

VICIS has closed its Series B on $28.5 million, with participation from NFL quarterback Aaron Rodgers via Rx3 Ventures. Rodgers joins a list of other pro footballers to back the helmet startup, includingRogerStaubach, JerryRice, Russell Wilson and Doug Baldwin. VICIS is known for its $950 Zero1 football helmet designed for adult players. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Brex, the corporate card built for startups, unveiled its new rewards program today. The billion-dollar company, which announced its $125 million Series C three weeks ago, has partnered with Amazon Web Services, WeWork, Instacart, Google Ads, SendGrid, Salesforce Essentials, Twilio, Zendesk, Caviar, HubSpot, Orrick, Snap, Clerky and DoorDash to give entrepreneurs the ability to accrue and spend points on services and products they use regularly. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

After four months “on the beach,” per his LinkedIn profile, Uber’s former global head of business and corporate development has a new gig. Lime has hired David Richter (pictured) as its first-ever chief business officer and interim chief financial officer. Based in San Francisco, Richter will be overseeing the bike- and e-scooter-sharing startup’s business operations. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

To get an edge on the market, investors must look beyond traditional financial info like revenue and profits. Our every online activity generates data exhaust like web traffic, Twitter mentions, app downloads, and search trends. It’s the ability to overlay the old and new data sets to spot surprising trends that will set the best traders apart. Sentieo wants to be their tool. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

There are few things more irritating than a canceled flight, whether it’s on your way to a friend’s wedding, a conference or to celebrate a holiday back home. Wouldn’t it be nifty if technology could put an end to our travel woes? Freebird, a travel rebooking service, has raised an $8 million Series A to do just that. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Airware desperately sought cash for 18 months before running out of money and shutting down last month, leaving about 120 employees without jobs after the startup had burned $118 million in funding. Bandaid strategic investments from construction company Caterpillar and others kept Airware alive as it looked for a $15 million round, according to a former employee. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Keith McCarty couldn’t stay out of the booming weed business for long. The co-founder and former chief executive officer of the well-funded marijuana delivery startup Eaze has launched WAYV, a B2B cannabis logistics and compliance platform that delivers inventory to cannabis retailers. Today, the company is announcing its first round of funding, a $5 million seed round led by David Sacks at Craft Ventures. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We couldn’t put together a conference in Berlin without inviting Valentin Stalf from N26, the co-founder and CEO of one of Europe's most promising startups. A few years ago, few people would have bet on a startup creating a bank from scratch. N26 now has over 1.5 million clients and a ton of funding. N26 originally launched at TechCrunch Disrupt London back in 2014. The company didn't win the Startup Battlefield. At the time, the company was called Number26 and they had 0 client. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Founders Fund has led the $6 million Series A for Summersalt, an early-stage e-commerce startup embracing the next-gen consumer’s penchant for inclusivity and affordability. Headquartered in St. Louis, the 1-year old company sells swimsuits designed in-house with eco-friendly fabrics directly to consumers. Like other D2C brands, Summersalt cuts out the middlemen to give its customers access to its swimsuits for $95 or less. What sets it apart is its data-focused fit system. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

ShopRunner chief executive Sam Yagan conquered the online dating world. Can he conquer the e-commerceworld, too? Hot off the heels of its first profitable year, ShopRunner is announcing its first infusion of venture funding under Yagan, an acquisition of the shopping app Spring and, sources tell TechCrunch, it’s readying a major overhaul to its mobile app, signaling what could be a new era for the company. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here: 1. Tesla earns its first profit in two years Tesla reported a profit in the third quarter, reversing seven consecutive quarters of losses. This is only the third time in the company’s history that it has achieved this milestone. The turnaround was driven by sales of the Model 3. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If your Instagram followers aren’t aware that you’ve voted, did you really even vote? In 2018, the act of voting is great social media fodder. People want their friends to know they’ve registered to vote, or that they’ve just mailed in their absentee ballot or even that they’ve bought some sort of “look, I voted” t-shirt.These announcements are being shared across social platforms like it’s a required part of the voting process. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Startup Battlefield Africa is set for December 11 in Lagos and investor Marieme Diop and ICT expert Shikoh Gitau will be there to lend their perspective and expertise.The Lagos TechCrunch event is a return to Africa for the Startup Battlefield series after its debut on the continent in Nairobi, Kenya. Shikoh Gitau Diop — who is a VC investor in early-stage African startups at Orange Digital Ventures— will speak on venture capital in Africa. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

There’s a war brewing to become the cloud pharmacy for men’s health. Roman, which launched last year offering erectile dysfunctional medication and recently added a ‘quit smoking’ kit, is taking on $97 million-funded Hims for the hair loss market. Today, Roman launched four new products it hopes to cross-sell to users through a unified telemedicine subscription and pill delivery app. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Tier, one of a number of electric scooter rental startups based in Berlin, has raised a chunky €25 million in Series A funding. Leading the round is VC fund Northzone, with participation from existing investors Speedinvest, and Point Nine. The investment marks the biggest financial backing for a European company in the space, and, according to my sources, signals the beginning of a pending VC war to create the “Bird or Lime of Europe”. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

How can Lime differentiate its scooters and bikes from the piles of Birds and Spins filling Los Angeles sidewalks? Apparently with a physical storefront where it can convince customers of the wonders of on-demand mobility. According to a job listing from Lime seeking a “Retail Store Manager”, the startup plans to open a “lifestyle brand store in Santa Monica” that “will place heavy importance on brand experience and customer engagement. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices