Startups Weekly: The opportunities & challenges for mental health tech

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 Zoom and Superhuman’s PR disasters. Before that, I noted the big uptick in VC spending in 2019. Remember, you can send me tips, suggestions and feedback to kate.clark@techcrunch.com or on Twitter @KateClarkTweets. If you don’t subscribe to Startups Weekly yet, you can do that here. Now let’s talk about mental health startups....

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Medallia stock up 76% following first day trading on the NYSE

Customer experience management platform Medallia (NYSE: MDLA) rose more than 70% in its New York Stock Exchange debut Friday. The nearly two-decades-old business priced its shares at $21 apiece, the top of its proposed range, Thursday evening and traded as high as $39.54 the following morning. Medallia closed up roughly 76% at about $37 per share on Friday. Medallia sold a total of 15.5 million shares in its IPO, raising $326 million at a $2.5 billion valuation in the process. San Mateo-headquartered Medallia, led by chief executive officer Leslie...

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TikTok tests an Instagram-style grid and other changes

Short-form video app TikTok, the fourth most downloaded app in the world as of last quarter, is working on several new seemingly Instagram-inspired features — including a Discover page, a grid-style layout similar to Instagram Explore, an Account Switcher, and more. The features were uncovered this week by reverse-engineering specialist Jane Manchun Wong, who published screenshots of these features and others to Twitter. A TikTok spokesperson declined to offer further details on the company’s plans, but confirmed the features were things the company...

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Deadline extended! Apply to the All Raise female founder program at Disrupt SF 2019

We’ve got great news for all the time-strapped female founders out there. Yeah, we’re looking at you, sister. We’re extending the application deadline to apply for the All Raise “ask me anything” (AMA) sessions at Disrupt SF 2019. Don’t miss this rare opportunity to meet with a leading female VC and, well, ask her anything. Apply for an AMA session by August 15. Not familiar with All Raise? This startup nonprofit, dedicated to accelerating female founder success, will host a day-long AMA event on October 3 at Disrupt SF 2019 — in a dedicated...

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Self-driving startup AutoX expands beyond deliveries and sets its sights on Europe

AutoX, the Hong Kong and San Jose, Calif.-based autonomous vehicle technology company, is pushing past its grocery delivery roots and into the AV supplier and robotaxi business. And now, it’s taking its business to Europe. AutoX has partnered with NEVS — the Swedish holding company and electric vehicle manufacturer that bought Saab’s assets out of bankruptcy — to deploy a robotaxi pilot service in Europe by the end of 2020. Under the exclusive partnership, AutoX will to integrate its autonomous drive technology into a next-generation electric vehicle...

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India’s Oyo valued at $10B after founder purchases $2B in shares

The fast-growing Indian hospitality business Oyo has garnered a valuation of $10 billion after its founder, Ritesh Agarwal, reportedly purchased $2 billion in shares from venture capital firms Sequoia Capital and Lightspeed Venture Partners. Agarwal, 25, founded Oyo in 2013 at the age of 19. Following immense growth of the now global hotel chain business, Agarwal opted to increase his 10% stake to 30% via a Cayman Islands company called RA Hospitality Holdings, according to The Wall Street Journal. SoftBank has also increased its percent ownership...

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Mylk Guys wants to be the online vegan grocery store that non-vegans can love

Gaurav Maken, the chief executive officer of the online vegan grocery store, Mylk Guys, doesn’t think of his company as a place to just buy food. For him, it’s a testing ground and platform for all of the new food products he expects to be developed as startup entrepreneurs and established food companies start tackling the plant-based and alternative meat market in earnest. The company has raised $2.5 million in support of that vision from investors including Khosla Ventures, Pear Ventures, and Fifty Years. “Today we’re an online grocery store,”...

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How to go to market in middle America

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Tiny UK startup takes on Google’s Wing in the race to a drone traffic control system

A future where drones can easily and cheaply do many useful things such as deliver packages, undertake search and rescue missions and deliver urgent medical supplies, not to mention unclogging our roads with flying taxis, seems like a future worth shooting for. But before all this can happen, we need to make sure the thousands of drones in the sky are operating safely. A drone needs to be able to automatically detect when entering into the flight path of another drone, manned aircraft or restricted area and to alter its course accordingly to safely...

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VertoFX raises $2M for its African and EM currency trading platform

VertoFX, an Africa and emerging markets-focused currency trading and payment startup, has raised a $2.1 million seed round, led by Accelerated Digital Ventures. The London based company, with a subsidiary in Lagos, Nigeria, has created a platform that allows businesses and banks to exchange and make payments in exotic foreign currencies that don’t often convert or trade conveniently across businesses or banks. For example, South Africa’s Rand is Africa’s most convertible and traded currency—with lower spreads and transaction costs—while currencies...

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WeWork CEO Adam Neumann has reportedly cashed out of over $700 million ahead of its IPO

Adam Neumann, the co-founder and chief executive of the international real estate co-working startup WeWork has reportedly cashed out of more than $700 million from his company ahead of its initial public offering. The size and timing of the payouts, made through a mix of stock sales and loans secured by his equity in the company, is unusual, considering that founders typically wait until after a company holds its public offering to liquidate their holdings. Despite the loans and sales of stock, first reported by The Wall Street Journal, Neumann...

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Twitter tests a new way to label replies

Twitter is testing a new way to make conversation threads easier to follow, with the launch of a new test that labels notable replies with special icons. If the original poster replies somewhere in the thread, their tweet will have a small microphone icon next to their profile picture. Other tweets may be labeled, as well — including those from users who were mentioned in the original tweet and replies from people you’re already following on Twitter. These will be labeled with the at symbol (@) and a small person icon with a checkmark by it, respectively. The...

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Twitter to attempt to address conversation gaps caused by hidden tweets

Twitter’s self-service tools when it comes to blocking content you don’t want to see, as well as a growing tendency for users to delete a lot of the content they post, is making some of the conversations on the platform look like Swiss cheese. The company says it will introduce added “context” on content that’s unavailable in conversations in the next few weeks, however, to help make these gaps at least less mystifying. There are any number of reasons why tweets in a conversation you stumble upon might not be viewable, including that a poster has...

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Huawei’s new OS is for industrial use, not Android replacement

{rss:content:encoded} Huawei’s new OS is for industrial use, not Android replacement https://ift.tt/30FGa0H https://ift.tt/2JFgg7K July 19, 2019 at 04:27PM Seems Hongmeng isn’t the Android replacement it’s been pitched as, after all. The initial story certainly tracked, as Huawei has been preparing for the very real possibility of life after Google, but the Chinese hardware giant says the operating system is primarily focused on industrial use. The latest report arrives courtesy of Chinese state news agency, Xinhua, which notes that the OS has...

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Lexion raises $4.2M to bring AI to contract management

Contract management isn’t exactly an exciting subject, but it’s a real pain point for many companies. It also lends itself to automation, thanks to recent advances in machine learning and natural language processing. It’s no surprise then, that we see renewed interest in this space and that investors are putting more money into it. Earlier this week, Icertis raised a $115 million Series E round, for example, at a valuation of more than $1 billion. Icertis has been in this business for ten years, though. On the other end of the spectrum, contract...

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Huawei 5G indecision is hitting UK’s relations abroad, warns committee

{rss:content:encoded} Huawei 5G indecision is hitting UK’s relations abroad, warns committee https://ift.tt/2SnGvCt https://ift.tt/2XTPvoI July 19, 2019 at 02:20PM The UK’s next prime minister must prioritize a decision on whether or not to allow Chinese tech giant Huawei to be a 5G supplier, a parliamentary committee has urged — warning that the country’s international relations are being “seriously damaged” by ongoing delay. In a statement on 5G suppliers, the Intelligence and Security committee (ISC) writes that the government must take a decision...

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Hardware startups take center stage for Hardware Battlefield at TC Shenzhen

Software grabs so much attention that it even has its own catchphrase — there’s an app for that. It’s not a bad thing, but we know nothing happens without hardware. That’s why we’re hunting for the best early-stage hardware startups to take center stage at Hardware Battlefield at TC Shenzhen on November 11-12 in China. Apply here to compete in TC Hardware Battlefield 2019, our hardware-focused pitch competition. If selected, you’ll go head-to-head against some of the world’s most innovative hardware makers for a shot at $25,000. What’s more,...

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VMware acquires ML acceleration startup Bitfusion

VMware today announced that it has acquired Bitfusion, a former participant in our Startup Battlefield competition. Bitfusion was one of the earliest companies to help businesses accelerate their complex computing workloads on GPUs, FPGAs and ASICs. In its earliest iteration, over four years ago, the company’s focus was less on AI and machine learning and more on other areas of high-performance computing, but unsurprisingly, that shifted as the interested in AI and ML increased in recent years. VMware will use Bitfusion’s technology, which is vendor-...

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Submittable raises $10M to help publishers and other organizations manage their submissions

Submittable is announcing that it has raised $10 million in Series B funding. When I first wrote about the company in 2012, it was focused on helping literary magazines manage their submissions — useful, but maybe not the kind of thing that venture capitalists write big checks for. Since then, Submittable raised a $5 million Series A and expanded by helping companies in a number of industries manage their submissions and applications. Co-founder and CEO Michael FitzGerald said the company has built products for four main verticals (corporate, academic,...

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Rent the Backyard wants to build a studio apartment in your yard

Rent the Backyard is one of the rare startups with a name that perfectly suits what it does. The company, which is part of Y Combinator’s current batch, builds studio apartments in homeowners’ backyards, which are then rented out for income. Of course, if you already own a house with a backyard, you could theoretically do this without getting a startup involved, but co-founder Brian Bakerman told me, “The goal is to have no headaches for the homeowners.” That means Rent the Backyard works with a partner to build the apartment, finances the construction,...

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