It’s holiday season for tech unicorns

Editor’s note: Get this free weekly recap of TechCrunch news that any startup can use by email every Saturday morning (7 a.m. PT). Subscribe here.

Did you follow all of the unicorn news from the last couple of weeks? No? Here’s a list of headlines to catch you up, because this holiday season is already featuring mega acquisitions, even more IPO filings, and a steady drumbeat of fundraises.

Somehow, after one of the toughest years in recent memory, the tech industry is heading into December with more enthusiasm than ever. (Still remember the WeWork IPO fiasco from last year? No?)

Salesforce buys Slack in a $27.7B megadeal

Everyone has an opinion on the $27.7B Slack acquisition

What to make of Stripe’s possible $100B valuation

How the pandemic drove the IPO wave we see today

A roundup of recent unicorn news

C3.ai’s initial IPO pricing guidance spotlights the public market’s tech appetite (EC)

Working to understand C3.ai’s growth story (EC)

Insurtech’s big year gets bigger as Metromile looks to go public (EC)

Wall Street needs to relax, as startups show remote work is here to stay (EC)

In first IPO price range, Airbnb’s valuation recovers to pre-pandemic levels (EC)

3 new $100M ARR club members and a call for the next generation of growth-stage startups (EC)

Virtual fundraising is here to stay

Connie Loizos sat down with Jason Green of leading enterprise-focused firm Emergence Capital to get his view of SPACs, and how they are likely to be used next year and beyond. But early-stage startups, don’t miss his affirmation of Zoom meetings as part of the fundraising process going forward.

I would say that over the last five years, we’ve made almost a total transition. Now we’re very much a data-driven, thesis-driven outbound firm, where we’re reaching out to entrepreneurs soon after they’ve started their companies or gotten seed financing. The last three investments that we made were all relationships that [date back] a year to 18 months before we started engaging in the actual financing process with them. I think that’s what’s required to build a relationship and the conviction, because financings are happening so fast.

I think we’re going to actually do more investments this year than we maybe have ever done in the history of the firm, which is amazing to me [considering] COVID. I think we’ve really honed our ability to build this pipeline and have conviction, and then in this market environment, Zoom is actually helping expand the landscape that we’re willing to invest in. We’re probably seeing 50% to 100% more companies and trying to whittle them down over time and really focus on the 20 to 25 that we want to dig deep on as a team.

Thousands of startup founders will resume the trek around Silicon Valley VC offices, once the vaccines arrive. But we’ll remember 2020 as the year that venture truly joined the cloud.

Image Credits: Brighteye Ventures

Edtech looks to the future

Every level of education was forced online by the pandemic this year, at least temporarily. While the children might be back in the classroom already, higher education and corporate education are still booming remotely. Natasha Mascarenhas analyzed the latest market changes for Extra Crunch, and put together a panel of industry leaders for a special Thanksgiving edition of Equity. Here’s more about what you’ll find on the show:

For this Equity Dive, we zero onto one part of that conversation: Edtech’s impact on higher education. We brought together Udacity co-founder and Kitty Hawk CEO Sebastian Thrun, Eschaton founder and college dropout Ian Dilick, and Cowboy Ventures investor Jomayra Herrera to answer our biggest questions.

Here’s what we got into:

• How the state of remote school is leading to gap years among students.
• A framework for how to think of higher education’s main three products (including which is most defensible over time).
• What learnings we can take from this COVID-19 experiment on remote schooling to apply to the future.
• Why edtech is flocking to the notion of life-long learning.
• The reality of who self-paced learning serves — and who it leaves out.

How to price your SaaS product for a bottoms-up growth strategy

SaaS is continuing to be reshaped by consumer internet techniques, with top companies of our era competing through word-of-mouth growth versus incumbent sales forces. The revenue model must be precise for this to scale, though. In a guest post for Extra Crunch, Caryn Marooney and David Cahn of Coatue lay out a strategic framework for how to price your bottoms-up SaaS product the right way for the market. Called “MAP,” for Metrics, Activity and People, it helps you sort your product against the actual ways that people are trying to use and pay for it. Here’s how they describe the A:

Activity: How do your customers really use your product and how do they describe themselves? Are they creators? Are they editors? Do different customers use your product differently? Instead of metrics, a key anchor for pricing may be the different roles users have within an organization and what they want and need in your product. If you choose to anchor on activity, you will need to align feature sets and capabilities with usage patterns (e.g., creators get access to deeper tooling than viewers, or admins get high privileges versus line-level users). For example:

• Figma — Editors versus viewers: Free to view, starts changing after two edits.
• Monday — Creators versus viewers: Free to view, creators are charged $10-$20/month.
• Smartsheet — Creators versus viewers: Free to view, creators are charged $10+/month.

Around TechCrunch

Extra Crunch membership now available to readers in Israel

Find out how we’re working toward living and working in space at TC Sessions: Space 2020

Aerospace’s Steve Isakowitz to speak at TC Sessions: Space 2020

Investors Lockheed Martin Ventures and SpaceFund are coming to TC Sessions: Space 2020

Across the week

TechCrunch

Calling VCs in Israel: Be featured in The Great TechCrunch Survey of European VC

SEC issues proposed rulemaking to give gig workers equity compensation

The downfall of adtech means the trust economy is here

How Ryan Reynolds and Mint Mobile worked without becoming the joke

What will tomorrow’s tech look like? Ask someone who can’t see

Extra Crunch

Mental health startups are raising spirits and venture capital

Who’s building the grocery store of the future?

Strike first, strike hard, no mercy: How emerging managers can win

This is a good time to start a proptech company

7 things we just learned about Sequoia’s European expansion plans

#EquityPod

From Alex Wilhelm:

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast (now on Twitter!), where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.

We’re back with not an Equity Shot or Dive of Monday, this is just the regular show! So, we got back to our roots by looking at a huge number of early-stage rounds. And a few other things that we were just too excited about to not mention.

So from Chris and Danny and Natasha and I, here’s the rundown:

• A hacker house aimed at college-age women and non-binary individuals.
• What Sketchy is and why it just raised north of $30 million.
• AgentSync’s rapid-fire funding news, and what we can discern from it.
• Pave’s round, Welcome’s second this year, and what’s up with helping startup employees navigate equity compensation.
• What Heru is building in Mexico with its new round.
• How BuildBuddy managed to raise double what it had originally targeted.
• Then we touched on AI: The new Scale AI round, what happened to Element AI, and Danny’s take on some big news from the technology itself.
• Finally, Lightspeed bought Upserve, Facebook bought Kustomer, Vista bought Gainsight, and Amazon wants to get into paid podcasting.

That was a lot, but how could we leave any of it out? We’re back Monday with more!

Equity drops every Monday at 7:00 a.m. PDT and Thursday afternoon as fast as we can get it out, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.

 

https://ift.tt/36L2BaN It’s holiday season for tech unicorns https://ift.tt/3lLx8JF

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This Week in Apps: The year’s best apps, 2020’s biggest downloads, the App Store’s newest hire

{rss:content:encoded} This Week in Apps: The year’s best apps, 2020’s biggest downloads, the App Store’s newest hire https://ift.tt/37B0NAg https://ift.tt/3gfT26O December 05, 2020 at 05:20PM

Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the TechCrunch series that recaps the latest in mobile OS news, mobile applications and the overall app economy.

The app industry is as hot as ever, with a record 204 billion downloads and $120 billion in consumer spending in 2019. People now spend three hours and 40 minutes per day using apps, rivaling TV. Apps aren’t just a way to pass idle hours — they’re also a big business. In 2019, mobile-first companies had a combined $544 billion valuation, 6.5x higher than those without a mobile focus.

This week, Apple and Google announced their editorially curated lists detailing the best apps of the year, and Apple also revealed those that were downloaded the most. Apple also made a notable new hire for an App Store role and opened up its anticipated App Store Small Business Program to developers.

Top Stories

Best Apps of the Year

Image Credits: Apple

Both Apple and Google released their “best apps of 2020” year-end lists and there were some similarities between the two, as well as some differences. Both companies’ lists reflected the tough and stressful year 2020 has been, with everyone being stuck at home during a pandemic that changed how we worked, attended school, connected with friends and family, and entertained ourselves.

Apple and Google, as a result, both selected at least one “de-stressing” app among their year-end winners. In Apple’s case, it was Endel, an iOS app that won for Apple Watch App of the Year. Google, however, awarded sleep app Loóna the title of best app of the year.

Disney+ also made both Apple and Google’s lists, the former as Apple TV App of the Year and the latter as the User’s Choice for app of the year. The new streaming service was a godsend for families with younger children, who often struggled in 2020 to keep kids entertained. New releases like Onward and Mulan in 2020 helped give families something to look forward to, while Marvel and Star Wars content, including new series “The Mandalorian,” were hits with streamers, as well.

Another pandemic-prompted choice was Zoom, which won as iPad App of the Year. Though Zoom was around before the coronavirus outbreak, it’s now become a part of our everyday lexicon as an interchangeable term for “online video meeting” — as in, “let’s do a zoom call about that.” The iPad app at least made these endless virtual meetings a little less painless.

And home workout companion Wakeout! become Apple’s iPhone app of the year, as most people gave up the gym due to coronavirus risks. The app’s quick one-minute breaks helped users stay moving, even when stuck at home for days on the couch or working on their laptop in bed.

Image Credits: Genshin Impact (screenshot via Sensor Tower)

Meanwhile, gacha-based action role-playing game Genshin Impact won as “best game” of the year on both Apple and Google’s lists. While a cynical take is that the app stores wanted to point users to a huge moneymaker — the game reportedly earned $245 million its first month and nearly $400 million in two months on mobile — it also highlights consumers’ desire for console-like experiences on mobile.

The game, however, has been heavily criticized for its gacha game monetization techniques, which though common to games in China, Japan and South Korea, are basically gambling mechanics. And addictive ones at that. But as a Wired report noted, some of this comes down to cultural differences. U.S. users grew up on cartridge games, not arcade games, where you were constantly inserting more money to keep playing. Western users just aren’t as comfortable with this “spend to keep playing” business model, which they feel is predatory.

Apple’s other top apps of the year included perennial favorite Fantastical as Apple’s Mac App of the Year; Legends of Runeterra as iPad Game of the Year; Disco Elysium as Mac Game of the Year; Dandara Trials of Fear as Apple TV Game of the Year; and Sneaky Sasquatch as the Apple Arcade Game of the Year.

Google’s list also included SpongeBob: Krusty Cook-Off as users’ choice for best game, and it highlighted a variety of top titles in various gaming subgenres in a dedicated section of its Play Store.

2020’s most downloaded apps

Apple also gave a peek into the “best” apps of the year, as determined by app downloads. The pandemic played a role here as well, making Zoom the most-downloaded iPhone app of 2020.

Also of note, TikTok was the biggest social media app by downloads, ahead of all the Facebook-owned apps making the list, including Facebook, Instagram and Messenger. Square’s Cash App hit No. 10, as the pandemic saw increased demand for contactless payments and direct giving to people in need.

The most-downloaded apps and games of 2020 were, as follows:

Top Free iPhone Apps

1. ZOOM Cloud Meetings
2. TikTok
3. Disney+
4. YouTube
5. Instagram
6. Facebook
7. Snapchat
8. Messenger
9. Gmail
10. Cash App

Top Paid iPhone Apps

1. TouchRetouch
2. Procreate Pocket
3. Dark Sky Weather
4. Facetune
5. HotSchedules
6. AutoSleep Track Sleep
7. The Wonder Weeks
8. SkyView
9. Shadowrocket
10. Sky Guide

Top Free iPhone Games

1. Among Us!
2. Call of Duty: Mobile
3. Roblox
4. Subway Surfers
5. Ink Inc. – Tattoo Drawing
6. Magic Tiles 3: Piano Game
7. Brain Test: Tricky Puzzles
8. Brain Out
9. Coin Master
10. Cube Surfer!

Top Paid iPhone Games

1. Minecraft
2. Plague Inc.
3. Heads Up!
4. Monopoly
5. Bloons TD6
6. Geometry Dash
7. NBA 2K20
8. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
9. The Game of Life
10. True Skate

Top Free iPad Apps

1. ZOOM Cloud Meetings
2. Disney+
3. YouTube
4. Netflix
5. Google Chrome
6. TikTok
7. Amazon Prime Video
8. Gmail
9. Hulu
10. Google Classroom

Top Paid iPad Apps

1. Procreate
2. GoodNotes 5
3. Notability
4. Duet Display
5. Teach Your Monster
6. LumaFusion
7. Affinity Designer
8. Toca Hair Salon 3
   9: Toca Life: Hospital
9. Toca Kitchen 2

Top Free iPad Games

1. Among Us!
2. Roblox
3. Magic Tiles 3: Piano Game
4. Ink Inc. – Tattoo Drawing
5. Call of Duty: Mobile
6. Subway Surfers
7. Dancing Road: Color Ball Run!
8. Tiles Hop – EDM Rush
9. Mario Kart Tour
10. Save The Girl!

Top Paid iPad Games

1. Minecraft
2. Monopoly
3. Bloons TD 6
4. Plague Inc.
5. Geometry Dash
6. The Game of Life
7. Five Nights at Freddy’s
8. Human: Fall Flat
9. Stardew Valley
10. Terraria

Top Arcade Games

1. Sneaky Sasquatch
2. Hot Lava
3. Skate City
4. Sonic Racing
5. PAC-MAN Party Royale
6. SpongeBob: Patty Pursuit
7. Oceanhorn 2
8. Crossy Road Castle
9. WHAT THE GOLF?
10. LEGO Brawls

Josh Elman joins Apple to focus on App Store discovery 

VC Josh Elman announced this week he was joining Apple in a role that will see him helping customers “discover the best apps for them.” In other words, app discovery.

Elman’s background includes RealNetworks, LinkedIn, Zazzle, Facebook and Twitter, and later moved into VC. Elman worked at venture firm Greylock in 2011 as a principal, and by 2013 he had become a general partner. While there, he invested in SmartThings, as well as social networks like Musical.ly (now the massive No. 2 app of the year, TikTok), Nextdoor, Houseparty and Discord. He later moved to fast-rising fintech startup Robinhood and now, he’s heading to Apple.

With an eye for what’s next, longtime operator and VC Josh Elman gets pulled into Apple

Weekly News

Platforms

• Apple opens up enrollment into the App Store Small Business Program. The program will reduce App Store commissions to 15% for qualified developers with revenues under $1 million.
• Google announced Android’s winter update will include an expanded Emoji Kitchen in Gboard, auto-narration for Google Play Book without narration, a “Go Tab” in Google Maps for frequent destinations, Android Auto soon arriving in more countries, support for app sharing in Nearby Share and Voice Access improvements.
• Google launches the first version of Android Studio Arctic Fox (2020.3.1) on the Canary channel, along with Android Gradle plugin (AGP) version 7.0.0-alpha01. The release is also notable for moving to a year-based system more aligned with IntelliJ IDEA, the IDE upon which Android Studio is built. Going forward, the number scheme will work like this: <Year of IntelliJ Version>.<IntelliJ major version>.<Studio major version>. The new version of Android Studio includes over 200 improvements and bugs, including those in the code editor, app inspection tools, layout editor and the embedded emulator.

Android’s winter update adds new features to Gboard, Maps, Books, Nearby Share and more

Services

• Amazon will now let iOS users text Alexa to ask for things instead of using their voice.

Security & Privacy

• Twitter now supports hardware security keys for iPhones and Android.
• Google Authenticator app for iOS adds a dark theme and support for bulk 2FA account transfers, helpful for switching between devices.
• Google launches Android Enterprise Essentials, an MDM for SMBs that will require their employees to use a lock screen and encryption to protect company data and can remotely wipe devices. It also prevents users from installing apps outside the Google Play Store via the Google Play Protect service.

Twitter now supports hardware security keys for iPhones and Android

Accessibility

• iPhones can now automatically recognize and label buttons and UI features for blind users using Screen Recognition in iOS 14.
• Android’s winter update, similarly, will introduce a new version of Voice Access that will use ML to understand interface labels and buttons on devices.

iPhones can now automatically recognize and label buttons and UI features for blind users

Apps in the News

• Google now lets anyone contribute to Google Maps’ Street View using the Street View app and Android phone that supports ARCore.
• Telegram is the first third-party app to use Apple’s Announce Messages with Siri feature for AirPods.
• Google adds the messaging feature every iMessage user dreams of: the ability to schedule sending of messages in Google’s Messages app.
• Reddit reveals DAUs for first time: 52 million.
• Google Assistant can now reply to messages from WhatsApp, Google Voice and more.
• Google Maps gets a Facebook-like news feed with business updates, local reviews and more.
• TikTok tests three-minute long videos. (But we don’t need longer versions of its viral hits like M to the B).
• Triller claims 321 million downloads and 65 million MAUs. (Former employees have accused the TikTok rival of inflating its numbers, which Triller denies.)
• Evernote rolls out a redesign on Android. The updates include a new note editor, faster search and improved navigation.
• Google’s learn-to-code app Grasshopper is now available in Spanish.
• WhatsApp will now allow users to set custom wallpapers, adds doodle wallpaper in more colors and adds new stickers.
• E-commerce app Wish accused of selling counterfeit products. 
• 7-Eleven adds its own mobile wallet to its app to allow customers, including cash customers, a contactless way to pay at its stores using their phone.
• Match-owned dating app Hinge refreshes design and adds a “Standouts” feature to show users outstanding prompts and photo prompts from their best potential matches, and can answer with a new paid feature, Roses.
• Quibi is really gone now.

French administration suspects Wish of selling counterfeit products

Trends

Image Credits: App Annie

• App download rates have declined by 4% since 2015, but active engagement has grown.
• Messaging app usage is up 13% (four-year CAGR), and users spend 67% more time in messaging apps than in social media apps.
• Messaging apps that offer privacy features see, on avgerage, 30% more active users than alternatives.
• Q3 smartphone sales down 5.7% in Q3 to 366 million.
• Mobile shopping climbed 25% on Black Friday to $3.6 billion. 
• U.S. shopping app downloads on Black Friday reached a record 2.8 million per Sensor Tower, or 2.7 million per App Annie. App Annie also said shopping shopping app downloads topped 2.3 million on Thanksgiving and 2.1 million on Cyber Monday.
• On Black Friday, Walmart was the No. 1 U.S. shopping app download, followed by Amazon. On Cyber Monday, that was reversed, also per App Annie.
• In-app revenue was 150% higher on Black Friday than the average of the previous 30 days, says AppsFlyer.
• App Store and Google Play consumer spending topped $100 billion from January 1-November 29, Sensor Tower says.

US shopping app downloads on Black Friday reached a record 2.8M installs

Funding and M&A

• Salesforce buys Slack for $27.7 billion.
• VSCO acquires the tech and team from the AI-powered video editing app Trash to move further into the video market. Deal terms weren’t available, but Trash was backed by $3.3 million.
• Teen banking app Step raises $50 million. The app is TikTok star Charli D’Amelio’s first startup investment. Other investors included lead Coatue; returning investors from Stripe, Crosslink Capital, Collaborative Fund and Will Smith’s Dreamers VC; and celeb investors D’Amelio, Justin Timberlake and The Chainsmokers, Eli Manning, Kelvin Beachum, Larry Fitzgerald and Andre Iguodala.
• Ivanti acquired security firms, including enterprise mobile security firm MobileIron and corporate VPN provider Pulse Secure. Ivanti bought MobileIron for $872 million in stock.
• U.K. challenger banking app Monzo adds £60 million in funding.
• AR gaming startup Krikey raises undisclosed funding, including from Jio Platforms. The company has raised $22 million to date.
• Wellory raises $4.5 million for its anti-diet nutrition app.
• Airbnb to IPO with shares priced between $44 and $50.
• ESL app for kids Novakid raises $4.25 million.
• Virtual fitness app Salut raises $1.25 million.
• Video app Supergreat, a TikTok for beauty products, raises $6.5 million.
• Mental health app Intellect raises undisclosed round led by Insignia VP.

Review

We tried the Apple Watch Family Setup with a tween. They weren’t impressed with the apps or the controls, but did like the Memoji. No Roblox group chat on the small screen? Boo.

A tween tries Apple’s new ‘Family Setup’ system for Apple Watch

Downloads

Iconboard

Image Credits: Iconboard

If you find it too frustrating to use Apple’s Shortcuts to build your own custom icons, you can turn to Iconboard instead. This newly launched app lets you design a style for your icons and apply it to all of your icons at once. It can even create invisible icons to give you a way to space out items on your screen.

Cardlet

Image Credits: Cardlet

While I’ve been enjoying Punkpost’s custom designs for when I’m too lazy…err I mean busy…to send my own handwritten notes and cards, Cardlet is ready to give my go-to app a run for the money. Like Punkpost, Cardlet will send a real paper card on your behalf, but it adds a modern-day touch: The app includes a hidden AR experience that brings the card to life when viewed with the camera.

Heynote

Image Credits: Heynote

Some people don’t trust to-do lists, reminders or calendar notifications to always get the job done. When there’s something we really need to remember, we stick it directly on our home screen. (Okay, this one may only appeal to a small niche of scatterbrained users like me.) But if you have, in the past, also designed your own temporary wallpaper just so you won’t forget a super critical appointment, the Android app Heynote, (hat tip to Android Police!) might help. Instead of a widget or reminder, this app lets you put custom text directly on your home screen as a custom wallpaper. Doctor appt. at 11 AM? You can’t forget it when it’s there every single time you look at your phone.

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Revel pulls electric mopeds after failing to make a dent in Austin’s car culture

Shared electric moped startup Revel said Friday that it will shut down its service in Austin later this month.

The startup’s CEO and co-founder Frank Reig didn’t place the entire blame on the COVID-19 pandemic, which has caused ridership to fall across shared micromobility services as well as public transit, for the company’s decision. Instead, Reig cited the combination of Austin’s “deep-rooted” car culture, which has only become further engrained during COVID. The service will shut down in Austin on December 18.

“When Revel came to Austin we knew there would be challenges,” Reig wrote in the statement that was posted on Twitter. “In addition to having a less dense urban core than our other markets, the city’s deep-rooted car culture has proven difficult to penetrate, especially during COVID.”

A statement from our CEO & Co-Founder: pic.twitter.com/Cl5LSgGv5C

— Revel (@_GoRevel) December 4, 2020

The company did not respond to a request for comment. TechCrunch will update the article if the company responds.

Revel, founded in March 2018 by Frank Reig and Paul Suhey, started with a pilot program in Brooklyn and later expanded to Queens, the Bronx and sections of Manhattan. It has been on a fast-paced growth track thanks to the $27.6 million in capital raised in October 2019 in a Series A round led by Ibex Investors. The equity round included newcomer Toyota AI Ventures and further investments from Blue Collective, Launch Capital and Maniv Mobility.

Electric moped startup Revel raises $27.6 million as it eyes new markets

Revel expanded to Austin, Miami and Washington, D.C in its first 18 months of operation. In January, the company launched in Oakland and received a permit in July to operate in San Francisco.

Revel has had a challenging year, and not just because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The company voluntarily shut down operations in New York on July 28 after several of its users died in crashes. The company restarted its 3,000-strong fleet of mopeds in four boroughs after the city of New York approved its relaunch plan, which included several new features in its app aimed at increasing safety. Revel added training videos, tests and a helmet selfie feature that requires photographic evidence the user is wearing a helmet, as well as a community reporting tool.

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J Revel pulls electric mopeds after failing to make a dent in Austin’s car culture https://ift.tt/3qw7kVJ

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Zephr raises $8M to help news publishers grow subscription revenue

Zephr has raised $8 million in a new funding round led by Bertelsmann Digital Media Investments (owned by media giant Bertelsmann).

The London-headquarted startup’s customers already include publishers like McClatchy, News Corp Australia, Dennis Publishing and PEI Media. CEO James Henderson told me via email that rather than creating “a monolithic product that tries to do a bit of everything,” Zephr is “focused entirely on the experience and journey for the prospect or customer,” driving an average 150% increase in conversion rates and 25% increase in subscription revenue within the first six months.

Henderson added, “By offering the right product, package or message at the right time to the right person, Zephr improves conversion rates, drastically decreases churn and drives new, stable revenue.”

To do this, Zephr largely relies on the publisher’s first-party data about its readers — Henderson said that this data is “by far the most important and powerful type of data that Zephr both uses and generates.” But it also takes advantage of contextual data, such as “time of day, to location, device or consumption patterns.”

He also noted that Zephr is a no-code tool, allowing non-technical members of the marketing, revenue and product teams to use a drag-and-drop editor to create different customer journeys.

Image Credits: Zephr

Asked how the pandemic has affected the startup’s business, Henderson said there were both “positive and negative indicators,” with newsrooms seeing record readership but in some cases also freezing spending.

“As firms prepare for a ‘post-pandemic’ world, we are beginning to see our markets seize the opportunity of all these new potential subscribers and invest in subscription models — and in Zephr.” he said. “In publishing and news media, the old model of dominant advertising revenue is on the way out and we are well-placed to capitalize on that interest.”

The new funding also includes financing from Silicon Valley Bank UK Branch and brings Zephr’s total funding to $11 million. Previous investors include Knight Capital and Nauta Capital.

According to the company’s funding announcement, this money will go toward further product development (with a focus on increased personalization), as well as expansion across the United States, Europe and Asia.

“The recent weakness in the advertising market increased pressure for media companies to diversify revenue streams and aim to introduce or optimize subscription models,” said BDMI Managing Director Urs Cete in a statement. “We recognise Zephr’s excellent technology that empowers publishers to galvanise the online subscription opportunity and create customer journeys that are truly unique.”

Google says its News Showcase will add free access to paywalled stories

https://ift.tt/2VDGrAN Zephr raises $8M to help news publishers grow subscription revenue https://ift.tt/37QCOgP

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SunCulture wants to turn Africa into the world’s next bread basket, one solar water pump at a time

The world’s food supply must double by the year 2050 to meet the demands from a growing population, according to a report from the United Nations. And as pressure mounts to find new crop land to support the growth, the world’s eyes are increasingly turning to the African continent as the next potential global breadbasket.

While Africa has 65% of the world’s remaining uncultivated arable land, according to the African Development Bank, the countries on the continent face significant obstacles as they look to boost the productivity of their agricultural industries.

On the continent, 80% of families depend on agriculture for their livelihoods, but only 4% use irrigation. Many families also lack access to reliable and affordable electricity. It’s these twin problems that Samir Ibrahim and his co-founder at SunCulture, Charlie Nichols, have spent the last eight years trying to solve.

Armed with a new financing model and purpose-built small solar power generators and water pumps, Nichols and Ibrahim, have already built a network of customers using their equipment to increase incomes by anywhere from five to ten times their previous levels by growing higher-value cash crops, cultivating more land and raising more livestock.

The company also has just closed on $14 million in funding to expand its business across Africa.

“We have to double the amount of food we have to create by 2050, and if you look at where there are enough resources to grow food and a lot of point — all signs point to Africa. You have a lot of farmers and a lot of land, and a lot of resources,” Ibrahim said.

African small farmers face two big problems as they look to increase productivity, Ibrahim said. One is access to markets, which alone is a huge source of food waste, and the other is food security because of a lack of stable growing conditions exacerbated by climate change.

Apeel gets more cash to fight poverty and food insecurity in emerging markets with its food-preserving tech

As one small farmer told The Economist earlier this year, ““The rainy season is not predictable. When it is supposed to rain it doesn’t, then it all comes at once.”

Ibrahim, who graduated from New York University in 2011, had long been drawn to the African continent. His father was born in Tanzania and his mother grew up in Kenya and they eventually found their way to the U.S. But growing up, Ibrahim was told stories about East Africa.

While pursuing a business degree at NYU Ibrahim met Nichols, who had been working on large scale solar projects in the U.S., at an event for budding entrepreneurs in New York.

The two began a friendship and discussed potential business opportunities stemming from a paper Nichols had read about renewable energy applications in the agriculture industry.

After winning second place in a business plan competition sponsored by NYU, the two men decided to prove that they should have won first. They booked tickets to Kenya and tried to launch a pilot program for their business selling solar-powered water pumps and generators.

Conceptually solar water pumping systems have been around for decades. But as the costs of solar equipment and energy storage have declined the systems that leverage those components have become more accessible to a broader swath of the global population.

That timing is part of what has enabled SunCulture to succeed where other companies have stumbled. “We moved here at a time when [solar] reached grid parity in a lot of markets. It was at a time when a lot of development financiers were funding the nexus between agriculture and energy,” said Ibrahim.

Initially, the company sold its integrated energy generation and water pumping systems to the middle income farmers who hold jobs in cities like Nairobi and cultivate crops on land they own in rural areas. These “telephone farmers” were willing to spend the $5000 required to install SunCulture’s initial systems.

Now, the cost of a system is somewhere between $500 and $1000 and is more accessible for the 570 million farming households across the word — with the company’s “pay-as-you-grow” model.

It’s a spin on what’s become a popular business model for the distribution of solar systems of all types across Africa. Investors have poured nearly $1 billion into the development of off-grid solar energy and retail technology companies like M-kopa, Greenlight Planet, d.light design, ZOLA Electric, and SolarHome, according to Ibrahim. In some ways, SunCulture just extends that model to agricultural applications.

“We have had to bundle services and financing. The reason this particularly works is because our customers are increasing their incomes four or five times,” said Ibrahim. “Most of the money has been going to consuming power. This is the first time there has been productive power.”

 SunCulture’s hardware consists of 300 watt solar panels and a 440 watt-hour battery system. The batteries can support up to four lights, two phones and a plug-in submersible water pump. 

The company’s best selling product line can support irrigation for a two-and-a-half acre farm, Ibrahim said. “We see ourselves as an entry point for other types of appliances. We’re growing to be the largest solar company for Africa.”

With the $14 million in funding, from investors including Energy Access Ventures (EAV), Électricité de France (EDF), Acumen Capital Partners (ACP), and Dream Project Incubators (DPI), SunCulture will expand its footprint in Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda, Zambia, Senegal, Togo, and Cote D’Ivoire, the company said. 

Ekta Partners acted as the financial advisor for the deal, while CrossBoundary provided additional advisory support, including an analysis on the market opportunity and competitive landscape, under the United States Agency for International Development (USAID)’s Kenya Investment Mechanism Program. 

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J SunCulture wants to turn Africa into the world’s next bread basket, one solar water pump at a time https://ift.tt/33GEFDC

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YC-backed LemonBox raises $2.5M bringing vitamins to Chinese millennials

Like many overseas Chinese, Derek Weng gets shopping requests from his family and friends whenever he returns to China. Some of the most wanted imported products are maternity items, cosmetics and vitamin supplements. Many in China still uphold the belief that “imported products are better.”

The demand gave Weng a business idea. In 2018, he founded LemonBox to sell American health supplements to Chinese millennials like himself via online channels. The company soon attracted seed funding from Y Combinator and just this week, it announced the completion of a pre-A round of $2.5 million led by Panda Capital and followed by Y Combinator.

LemonBox tries to differentiate itself from other import businesses on two levels — affordability and personalization. Weng, who previously worked at Walmart, where he was involved in the retail giant’s China import business, told TechCrunch that he’s acquainted with a lot of American supplement manufacturers and is thus able to cut middleman costs.

“In China, most supplements are sold at a big markup through pharmacies or multi-level marketing companies like Amway,” Weng said. “But vitamins aren’t that expensive to produce. Amway and the likes spend a lot on marketing and sales.”

Inside LemonBox’s fulfillment center (Image: LemonBox)

LemonBox designed a WeChat-based lite app, where users receive product recommendations after taking a questionnaire about their health conditions. Instead of selling by the bottle, the company customizes user needs by offering daily packs of various supplements.

“If you are a vegetarian and travel a lot, and the other person smokes a lot, [your demands] are going to be very different. I wanted to customize user prescriptions using big data,” explained Weng, who studied artificial intelligence in business school.

A monthly basket of 30 B-complex tablets, for instance, costs 35 yuan ($5) on LemonBox. Amway’s counterpart product, a bottle of 120 tablets, asks for 229 yuan on JD.com. That’s about 57 yuan ($9) for 30 tablets.

Selling cheaper vitamins is just a means for LemonBox to attract consumers and gather health insights into Chinese millennials, with which the company hopes to widen its product range. Weng declined to disclose the company’s customer size, but claimed that its user conversion rate is “higher than most e-commerce sites.”

With the new proceeds, LemonBox is opening a second fulfillment center in the Shenzhen free-trade zone after its Silicon Valley-based one. That’s to provide more stability to its supply chain as the COVID-19 pandemic disrupts international flights and cross-border trade. Moreover, the startup will spend the money on securing health-related certificates and adding Japan to its sourcing regions.

Returnees adapt

Screenshot of Lemonbox’s WeChat-based store

In the decade or so when Weng was living in the U.S., the Chinese internet saw drastic changes and gave rise to an industry largely in the grip of Alibaba and Tencent. Weng realized he couldn’t simply replicate America’s direct-to-customer playbook in China.

“In the U.S., you might build a website and maybe an app. You will embed your service into Google, Facebook or Instagram to market your products. Every continent is connected with one other,” said Weng.

“In China, it’s pretty significantly different. First off, not a lot of people use web browsers, but everyone is on mobile phones. Baidu is not as popular as Google, but everybody is using WeChat, and WeChat is isolated from other major traffic platforms.”

As such, LemonBox is looking to diversify beyond its WeChat store by launching a web version as well as a store through Alibaba’s Tmall marketplace.

“There’s a lot of learning to be done. It’s a very humbling experience,” said Weng.

Walmart sells Yihaodian, its Chinese e-commerce marketplace, to Alibaba rival JD.com

https://ift.tt/36Eb0wI YC-backed LemonBox raises $2.5M bringing vitamins to Chinese millennials https://ift.tt/3g9AeWO

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Revolut lets businesses accept online payments

Fintech startup Revolut is launching its own acquiring solution. With this move, the company is competing directly wit hStripe, Adyen, Braintree or Checkout.com. This is an in-house product and not just a fresh coat of paint on an existing solution.

As a reminder, Revolut already offers business accounts. It lets you send and receive international payments, exchange funds in multiple currencies. You can also order debit cards to spend money from your Revolut account directly.

With Revolut’s acquiring solution, the company is going one step further as you can now accept card payments. Revolut supports 14 currencies and settle payments on your Revolut Business account the next day.

When it comes to fees, you get a small allowance of free card payment processing fees depending on your plan. Above that limit, you pay 1.3% on card transactions from customers based in Europe and the U.K. For other cards, you pay 2.8% on all transactions — there’s no free allowance.

This is slightly cheaper than Stripe, which costs 1.4% + £0.20 for European cards and 2.9% + £0.20 for non-European card. Of course, companies like Stripe have been optimizing their payments infrastructure for many years. Right now, Stripe supports more payment methods, more currencies, advanced fraud prevention features, etc.

After you’ve created your merchant account, Revolut offers plugins for WooCommerce, Prestashop and Magento already. You can also user the Merchant API to add a checkout widget on your custom website.

If you’re a freelancer and you just need to send a couple of invoices per month, you can also generate payment links. The recipient can then pay from a web page hosted by Revolut.

The main advantage of Revolut’s acquiring solution is that it’s integrated with Revolut Business. You can see payments and banking in the same interface, you don’t need to alternate between your Stripe account and your bank account to reconcile transaction data.

It could work particularly well for B2B businesses that don’t handle a ton of transactions and don’t want to set up a separate payments solution. Let’s see what customers think of the API when they start using it.

Online payments are available for business customers in the U.K., Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain and Sweden. The rest of the European Economic Area should get the feature soon.

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J Revolut lets businesses accept online payments https://ift.tt/33McwLf

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Enter new markets and embrace a distributed workforce to grow during a pandemic

Sarah Cole Contributor

Sarah Cole is a senior associate in Taylor Wessing's Silicon Valley office. She advises mostly North American technology and life sciences companies on their investments into the UK and Europe, including on European launches, cross-border M&A, venture capital and other growth company investment work.

Mark Barron Contributor

Mark Barron is the head of Taylor Wessing's market-leading technology and life sciences inward investment team, and advises North American companies on how to translate their domestic success to new jurisdictions and cultures and to thrive as global businesses.

Many companies will not see the uncertainty of a global pandemic as the perfect moment to go international, but for others (particularly in healthcare, online communications, and workplace mobility) the market is stronger than ever and companies are having to respond quickly internationally to both service existing clients and take advantage of the growth in demand.

We and our team at Taylor Wessing advise 50 to 75 venture-backed North American companies each year on setting up in Europe or Asia. We’ve helped companies such as TaskRabbit, Lime, Glossier, InVision and many others translate their domestic success to new jurisdictions and cultures and to thrive as global businesses.

This is a practical guide to international expansion with the challenges of the current time in mind. It’s a quick-read providing some practical tips and sharing best practices from peer companies to help you come out of the pandemic with a strong international presence. A great deal of this advice is evergreen and will serve you well whatever the circumstances may be.

In particular, we’ll cover the rise (and risks) of distributed workforces — a way for CEOs to hire the best talent anywhere in the world. This has taken on new significance with the boom in remote working as one of several options for CEOs looking for strategic growth during and after COVID.

Is this the right time to expand overseas?

Ten years ago, the timing question was much simpler. Founders would first of all focus on developing a product and winning over their domestic market, funded through their Series A and B rounds, and then go on to raise their Series C round, which investors would expect to be used to push into new markets.

Since then, with the age of the smartphone in full swing and international direct ordering ubiquitous, opportunities to sell into new markets appeared far earlier in a company’s growth and there is no longer a canned strategy for timing your international expansion.

The current circumstances have exaggerated this trend. There are many challenges in traditional sectors, but also many new market opportunities quickly appearing in healthcare and other technology sectors with founders wanting to move quickly into new markets.

Although it may be tempting to just get a few sales people on the ground to go for it, we would still recommend laying some groundwork and making some key decisions before diving in. For example: ensuring management can give sufficient time and attention to the new market; tweaking your product to comply with local regulations; reworking your sales approach.

If you are early-stage, tread carefully. Our belief is that the Series B round is still the earliest a founder or board should consider international expansion.

If you are early-stage, tread carefully. Our belief is that the Series B round is still the earliest a founder or board should consider international expansion. The companies we’ve worked with who have moved earlier than the B round will generally end up realizing it’s too early. They’ll end up pressing pause, or making a full strategic exit, tail between legs.

International expansion is a matter of focus, as well as financial resources. Once you’re selling into a new market, everyone in the business needs to be thinking internationally, including the CEO, CFO, general counsel, the board, engineers and staff. It can stretch everyone before there are the necessary resources in place to cope.

Decision made: How do you get going quickly?

Even in the best of times our advice would be to not experiment or push the boundaries when it comes to your international strategy, do that elsewhere in your business. You should follow the path most travelled at this stage. This is especially true in the current climate. If you’re thinking of doing something new, something your peers haven’t done before, we should have a conversation first.

Whichever market you’ve chosen, there are some universal first steps (although they might vary slightly between jurisdictions). For example:

• If you have a permanent establishment for tax purposes (i.e., the local tax authorities consider you established enough to be paying income tax and corporation tax), work on the basis that you’ll need to incorporate a company or register a local branch.
• Consider flexible options when it comes to taking on people (more on this below). Remember that in all cases local employment contracts will be needed (subject to the use of PEOs – see below).
• Perhaps most importantly, local agreements transferring IP ownership will be needed (see next chapter).
• There will also be some local filings (e.g., tax, corporate, payroll) where you will need a local service provider such as an accountant and payroll provider.

Common international expansion traps … and how to avoid them

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J Enter new markets and embrace a distributed workforce to grow during a pandemic https://ift.tt/3qsBg4N

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Health tech venture firm OTV closes new $170 million fund and expands into Asia

OTV (formerly known as Olive Tree Ventures), an Israeli venture capital firm that focuses on digital health tech, announced it has closed a new fund totaling $170 million. The firm also launched a new office in Shanghai, China to spearhead its growth in the Asia Pacific region.

OTV currently has a total of 11 companies in its portfolio. This year, it led rounds in telehealth platforms TytoCare and Lemonaid Health, and its other investments include genomic machine learning platform Emedgene; microscopy imaging startup Scopio; and at-home cardiac and pulmonary monitor Donisi Health. OTV has begun investing in more B and C rounds, with the goal of helping companies that already have validated products deal with regulations and other issues as they grow.

OTV focuses on digital health products that have the potential to work in different countries, make healthcare more affordable, and fill gaps in overwhelmed healthcare systems.

Tyto Care raises $50 million as it looks to buy and build new services during COVID-19 demand surge

Jose Antonio Urrutia Rivas will serve as OTV’s Head of Asia Pacific, managing its Shanghai office and helping its portfolio companies expand in China and other Asian countries. This brings OTV’s offices to a total of four, with other locations in New York, Tel Aviv and Montreal. Before joining OTV, Rivas worked at financial firm LarrainVial as its Asian market director.

OTV was founded in 2015 by general partners Mayer Gniwisch, Amir Lahat and Alejandro Weinstein. OTV partner Manor Zemer, who has worked in Asian markets for over 15 years and spent the last five living in Beijing, told TechCrunch that the firm decided it was the right time to expand into Asia because “digital health is already highly well-developed in many Asia-Pacific countries, where digital health products complement in-person healthcare providers, making that region a natural fit for a venture capital firm specializing in the field.”

He added that OTV “wanted to capitalize on how the COVID-19 pandemic has thrust the internationalized and interconnected nature of the world’s healthcare infrastructures into the limelight, even though digital health was a growth area long before the pandemic.”

Where top VCs are investing in digital health

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J Health tech venture firm OTV closes new $170 million fund and expands into Asia https://ift.tt/3qlSZep

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Stripe announces embedded business banking service Stripe Treasury

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J Stripe announces embedded business banking service Stripe Treasury https://ift.tt/37vy13X

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