Luminance and Omnius are bringing AI to legacy industries

Artificial intelligence is a powerful tool, but it’s not a magic wand. Applying the technology requires thought and dedication, especially with legacy industries like law and insurance, which are being taken on in this way by Luminance and Omnius respectively. The companies’ founders, Emily Foges and Sofie Quidenus-Wahlforss, spoke with great insight on this on stage at Disrupt Berlin.

Luminance uses AI and natural language processing to help law firms process documents more quickly, not replacing the lawyer but providing additional intelligence and analysis of what may be hundreds or thousands of pages and saving time and money. Omnius applies AI not just to the text of insurance claims, but to the process of handling them, ensuring rapidity not only in documentation but in results like payouts.

Omnius has raised about $30 million in multiple small rounds and grants, while Luminance has raised some $23M mainly in its A and B rounds.

I’ve edited and contextualized our conversation here, but you can also watch the full panel below. I’ve made some slight changes for readability but left things mostly intact. Pull quotes belonging to Emily are on the left, Sofie’s are on the right.

The first thing I wanted to hear from the founders was why they chose these industries, and why now? After all, law and insurance are notoriously old-fashioned, some would even say backwards in many ways. How could they be sure this was an opportunity, and not a folly?

Emily Foges (Luminance): It had more to do with the capabilities of the technology, actually. We started with technology that can read a lot of language, and then we looked at what industry would benefit most from that. It was that way around.

I think the timing is 80 percent of the battle; The fact that the legal profession had got to a point of being ready to accept the use of that kind of technology was more luck than anything. But there’s been such an explosion in enterprise data that lawyers just can’t possibly cope with reading and all of the documentation that they need to — so the market was ready.

Sofie Quidenus-Wahlforss (Omnius): I think we come from a very similar background. We started on a horizontal level, with deep document understanding, and at some point we understood, if you really want to ship business value, you need to dive into one vertical.

We have different verticals to choose: manufacturing, legal, pharma… so then we were like, okay, which area is the biggest that is not transformed yet? And do we see decision makers aware of the of the need to do something? And do they have money?

The insuretech world is of course making a lot of pressure, all the new insurance companies like Lemonade, WeFox, Coya, because they claim to settle a claim in minutes. So the big guys like Alliance, they got nervous. And on the other hand you see, on the technology side, improvements in the areas of computing power, way more access to data, more flexible models. So we thought, the industry is ready, the technology’s ready, I was ready to build a big company. It’s my fourth company and I was like, this time I’ll build something huge. So everything fell into place.

---

They don’t call them legacy industries for nothing, though. These domains, and some companies, that have existed for decades or even a century or more. That means legacy systems and legacy people, to put it kindly, that may not be amenable to change. Emily had some surprising stats on that, while Sofie advocated an AI-like approach to classifying and selecting clients.

Emily: Some of them are more ready than others, and I think the ones who aren’t ready need to really catch up, because we got to critical mass really quickly. We’re only three and a half years old, but we’ve got 185 law firms around the world signed up. The interesting thing was the most ready people were the law firms outside of the UK, outside of the US. It was European law firms, APAC-based law firms, South and Central American law firms who got on board first. They were more ready because to be honest, the commercial pressure was greater. And then the pressure on the US and UK law firms came from them.

This is something I can really recommend for every startup trying to transform an industry from scratch: classifying your customers. We had 16-17 criteria, how we defined the companies we really want to spend time with.

Sofie: We thought, cool, the transformation is happening already. But after a while, 2018, we were like, okay, this market is not moving as fast as we thought . We looked at our proof of concept, our pilots we did with insurance companies and were like, wow, every big insurance company in Europe wants to have an AI pilot project but who’s really ready to start with AI full production?

And this is something I can really recommend for every startup trying to transform an industry from scratch: classifying your customers. Who is a laggard, who is an early adopter, who is early mainstream, is an innovator? Then we decided together with the board, okay, we’ll only focus on innovators and early adopters, and the rest should wait, or we can both wait for each other — but we cannot waste our time.

https://ift.tt/38VXKm9 Luminance and Omnius are bringing AI to legacy industries https://ift.tt/2EHTZCW

Read More

Should you pay $50K for your pitch deck? Yes, why the hell not?

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. Such as it was for Primary Ventures investor Jason Shuman, who commented on the recent prices for pitch deck advice in the Valley today:

Founder friend just told me that SF deck designers have quoted him between $20K to $40K + the right to invest up to $250K…my mind is officially blown

— Jason Shuman (@BoatShuman) December 20, 2019

You can almost hear that plaintive scream, “My mind is officially blown” (Shuman doesn’t scream, mind you). And indeed, in a world where more and more founders are worried about a bubble; assets are more, let’s say, Notionally expensive than ever before; and everything just seems a little bit crazy these days, it seems downright, fucking insane to think that a PowerPoint file and some “thoughts” are worth tens of thousands of dollars, and a goddamn term sheet to boot.

But they are.

Or at the very least, they can be. And I say that as the guy who wrote an article last week entitled, “How to avoid the startup trap of the parasitic consultant.”

How to avoid the startup trap of the parasitic consultant

For sure, not every pitch deck consultant is worth top dollar, any more than not every croissant in New York’s West Village is worth $10. But some are, and certainly an elect chosen set of consultants are worth every penny they demand.

The best consultants are not luxuries to plaster on your WeWork’s walls, but critical tools to invest in your startup. Framing a startup’s thesis, product, team, and market exactly right is a qualitative skill that can’t be learned from reading a book or scanning through a founder friend’s deck or two. Get a single slide wrong, or hell, a single bullet point wrong and the whole thing can blow up in a pitch meeting in thirty seconds or less.

Trust me. As a former VC investor, I have gotten hung up on single sentences before. A founder has put their life’s work into a company, synoptically condensed it to a handful of slides, and I am stuck on eight words. But those eight words make no sense, and once something doesn’t make sense, the whole edifice of excitement and confidence comes crashing down. Eight words — one badly chosen verb and adjective.

A good pitch deck consultant may barely move the needle on a fundraise, while a superstar may not just get you a better term sheet, they may fundamentally transform the entire course of your startup’s trajectory. Those are the stakes.

And of course, it’s not just pitch deck consultants who can do this. The right PR consultants can potentially get you traction that no one else can. The right sales consultants may lock in those critical early design customers that represent the difference between an orderly liquidation and a massive Series A. The right product marketing specialists or pricing experts may be what drives conversions and eliminates churn.

What’s so hard today for founders is that the Valley has indeed matured, and all these consultants and more are available. There are the hucksters and the tricksters, the bon vivants thriving on naive capital, the idiot clowns cloaked in their own compelling pitch decks.

But as the market has expanded for these services, at least some superstars are emerging from the marketplace, people who can offer more value for you in a week or two than the mediocrities can in a year.

Your job as founder is to constantly probe and find those diamonds, and get them working on your idea at any cost — even costs that might at times seem insane.

The thing with tech startups today is that they are built upon strata of superstardom. Superstar talents lead to superstar products, superstar VC capital, and ultimately, superstar exits. Superstar momentum is real. Yes, yes, yes, not every time, and every stage in the pipeline is multiplied by a stochastic chance of failure, for sure. But idiocy has rarely been a path to success.

And so as with all parts of innovation, it’s all about making the right investments in the right people and the right ideas. $50K or even $500K for a consultant won’t do anything if they are the wrong person working on the wrong idea — parasites are parasites after all. But leverage that early seed capital into the right people working on the right problems, and that’s where the magic happens.

And so I can understand some of the outrage over these figures, as well as the lingering presumption behind them that VCs care more about a startup’s deck than the underlying startup itself. Those frustrations are palpable and not insane, but let’s not avoid the tough question: everything has some value attached to it. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that top experts in their fields, who understand their own leverage, would take advantage of their expertise and drive their own prices higher.

Paying tens of thousands of dollars for a pitch deck consultant isn’t a prerequisite for securing a venture capital round. There are founders whose entire skill is securing capital for their companies who have never paid a penny for this skill.

Yet ultimately, all early-stage startups face the same challenge: too many activities, too little time. Something, somewhere is going to have to get outsourced today and the quality of that external work is largely going to be determined by how much you are willing to pay for it. What you choose to spend whatever capital you have will determine the trajectory of your startup. So whether it is pitch decks or another activity, never blink from those top dollars. It may very well be what gets you the top dollar in the end.

https://ift.tt/2O3Tw3k Should you pay $50K for your pitch deck? Yes, why the hell not? https://ift.tt/2Sm5GHD

Read More

TikTok’s national security scrutiny tightens as U.S. Navy reportedly bans popular social app

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.

It’s just the latest example of the challenges facing the extremely popular app. Recently, Congress led by Missouri senator Josh Hawley demanded a national security review of TikTok and its Sequoia-backed parent company ByteDance, along with other tech companies that may share data with foreign governments like China. Concerns over the leaking of confidential communications recently led the U.S. government to demand the unwinding of the acquisition of gay social network app Grindr from its Chinese owner Beijing Kunlun.

The intensity of criticism on both sides of the Pacific has made it increasingly challenging to manage tech companies across the divide. As I recently discussed here on TechCrunch, Shutterstock has actively made it harder and harder to find photos deemed controversial by the Chinese government on its stock photography platform, a play to avoid losing a critical source of revenue.

In wake of Shutterstock’s Chinese censorship, American companies need to relearn American values

We saw similar challenges with Google and its Project Dragonfly China-focused search engine as well as with the NBA.

From the NBA to Sequoia to TikTok and more, a week of national security concerns with China

What’s interesting here though is that companies on both sides are struggling with policy on both sides. Chinese companies like ByteDance are increasingly being targeted and stricken out of the U.S. market, while American companies have long struggled to get a foothold in the Middle Kingdom. That might be a more equal playing field than it has been in the past, but it is certainly a less free market than it could be.

While the trade fight between China and the U.S. continues, the damage will continue to fall on companies that fail to draw within the lines set by policymakers in both countries. Whether any tech company can bridge that divide in the future unfortunately remains to be seen.

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J TikTok’s national security scrutiny tightens as U.S. Navy reportedly bans popular social app https://ift.tt/2ri1zRJ

Read More

TikTok’s national security scrutiny tightens as U.S. Navy reportedly bans popular social app

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.

It’s just the latest example of the challenges facing the extremely popular app. Recently, Congress led by Missouri senator Josh Hawley demanded a national security review of TikTok and its Sequoia-backed parent company ByteDance, along with other tech companies that may share data with foreign governments like China. Concerns over the leaking of confidential communications recently led the U.S. government to demand the unwinding of the acquisition of gay social network app Grindr from its Chinese owner Beijing Kunlun.

The intensity of criticism on both sides of the Pacific has made it increasingly challenging to manage tech companies across the divide. As I recently discussed here on TechCrunch, Shutterstock has actively made it harder and harder to find photos deemed controversial by the Chinese government on its stock photography platform, a play to avoid losing a critical source of revenue.

In wake of Shutterstock’s Chinese censorship, American companies need to relearn American values

We saw similar challenges with Google and its Project Dragonfly China-focused search engine as well as with the NBA.

From the NBA to Sequoia to TikTok and more, a week of national security concerns with China

What’s interesting here though is that companies on both sides are struggling with policy on both sides. Chinese companies like ByteDance are increasingly being targeted and stricken out of the U.S. market, while American companies have long struggled to get a foothold in the Middle Kingdom. That might be a more equal playing field than it has been in the past, but it is certainly a less free market than it could be.

While the trade fight between China and the U.S. continues, the damage will continue to fall on companies that fail to draw within the lines set by policymakers in both countries. Whether any tech company can bridge that divide in the future unfortunately remains to be seen.

from Social – TechCrunch https://ift.tt/eA8V8J TikTok’s national security scrutiny tightens as U.S. Navy reportedly bans popular social app Danny Crichton https://ift.tt/2ri1zRJ
via IFTTT

Read More

2019’s 10 defining moments in venture capital

Every year, the tech industry experiences moments that serve as guideposts for future entrepreneurs and investors looking to profit from the wisdom of the past.

In 2017, Susan Fowler published her heroic blog post criticizing Uber for its culture of sexual harassment, helping spark the #MeToo movement within the tech industry; 2018 was the year of the scooter, in which venture capitalists raced to pour buckets of cash into startups like Bird, Lime and Spin, hoping consumer adoption of micro-mobility would make the rushed deals worth it.

These last twelve months have been replete with scandals, new and interesting upstarts, fallen CEOs and big fundraises. Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes finally got a court date, SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son admitted defeat (see: “In the case of WeWork, I made a mistake”), venture capitalist Bill Gurley advocated for direct listings and denounced big banks’ underwriting skills, sperm storage startups battled for funding and Away’s dirty laundry was aired in an investigation conducted by The Verge.

The list of top moments and over-arching trends that defined this year is long. Below, I’ve noted what I think best represent the largest conversations that occurred in Silicon Valley this year, with a particular focus on venture capital, followed by honorable mentions. As always, you can email me (kate.clark@techcrunch.com) if you have thoughts, opposing opinions, strong feelings or relevant anecdotes.

SoftBank Group Corp. chairman and CEO Masayoshi Son speaks during a press conference on November 6, 2019 in Tokyo, Japan. (Photo by Alessandro Di Ciommo/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

1. SoftBank admitted failure: We’ll get to WeWork in a moment, but first, let’s talk about its multi-billion-dollar backer. SoftBank announced its Vision Fund in 2016, holding its first major close a year later. Ultimately, the Japanese telecom giant raised roughly $100 billion to invest in technology startups across the globe, upending the venture capital model entirely with its ability to write $500 million checks at the flip of a switch. It was an ambitious plan and many were skeptical; as it turns out, that model doesn’t work too well. Not only has WeWork struggled despite billions in funding from SoftBank, several other of the firm’s bets have wavered under pressure. Most recently, SoftBank confirmed it was selling its stake in Wag, the dog-walking business back to the company, nearly two years after funneling a whopping $300 million in the then-three-year-old startup. Wag failed to accumulate value and was struck by scandal, leading to SoftBank’s exit. Why it matters: ditching one of its more high profile bets out of the monstrous Vision Fund wasn’t even the first time this year SoftBank admitted defeat. Once an unstoppable giant, SoftBank has been forced to return to reality after years of prolific dealmaking. No longer a leader in VC or even a threat to other top venture capitalists, SoftBank’s deal activity has become a cautionary tale. Here’s more on SoftBank’s other uncertain bets.

2. WeWork pulled its IPO. The biggest story of 2019 was WeWork. Another SoftBank portfolio, in fact the former star of its portfolio, WeWork filed to go public in 2019 and gave everyone full access to its financials in its IPO prospectus. In August, the business disclosed revenue of about $1.5 billion in the six months ending June 30 on losses of $905 million. The IPO was poised to become the second-largest offering of the year behind only Uber, but what happened instead was much different: WeWork scrapped its IPO after ousting its founding CEO Adam Neumann, whose eccentric personality, expensive habits, alleged drug use, desire to become Israel’s prime minister and other aspirations led to his well-publicized ouster. There’s a lot more to this story, click here for more coverage of the 2019 WeWork saga. Why it matters: WeWork’s unforgiving IPO prospectus painted a picture of a high-spending company with no path to profit in sight. For years, Silicon Valley (or New York, where WeWork is headquartered) has allowed high-growth companies to raise larger and larger rounds of venture capital, understanding that eventually their revenues would outgrow their expenses and they would achieve profitability. WeWork, however, and its fellow ‘unicorn,’ Uber, made it all the way to IPO without carving out a strategy of reaching profitability. These IPOs ignited a wide-reaching debate in the tech industry: does Wall Street care about profitability? Should startups prioritize profits? Many said yes. Meanwhile, the threat of a downturn had startups across industries cutting back and putting cash aside for a rainy day. For the first time in years, and as The New York Times put it, Silicon Valley began trying out a new mantra: make a profit.

3. A whole bunch of CEOs stepped down: Adam Neumann wasn’t the only high profile CEO to move on from their company this year. In a move tied to The Verge’s investigation, Away co-founder and CEO Steph Korey stepped down from the luggage company, instead becoming its executive chairman. Lime’s CEO Toby Sun stepped down, shifting to another role within the company. On the public end of the ecosystem, McDonald’s, REI, Rite Aid and many others replaced their leaders. According to CNBC, nearly 150 CEOs left their post in November alone, setting up 2019 to break records for CEO departures with nearly 1,500 recorded already. Why it matters: All of these departures were caused by varying factors. I will focus on WeWork and Away, which took center stage of the startups and venture capital universe. The recent Away debacle reinforces the role of the tech media and its ability to present well-reported facts to the public and enact significant change to business as a result. Similarly, much of Adam Neumann’s ouster came as a result of strong reporting from outlets like The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg and more. From facilitating a toxic, cutthroat culture to paying millions in company dollars for an unnecessary private jet, Away and WeWork’s situations proved standards for startup CEOs has shifted. Whether that shift is here to stay is still up for debate.

Ah the list we've all been waiting for. pic.twitter.com/PndSjQf8yt

— Kate Clark (@KateClarkTweets) December 3, 2019

4. The IPO market was unforgiving to unicorns: WeWork never made it to the stock markets, but Uber, another scandal-ridden unicorn, did. The company (NYSE: UBER), previously valued at $72 billion, priced its stock at $45 apiece in May for a valuation of $82.4 billion. It began trading at $42 apiece, only to close even lower at $41.57, or down 7.6% from its IPO price. Not stellar, in fact, quite bad for one of the largest venture-backed companies of all time. Uber, however, wasn’t the only one to struggle with its IPO and first few months on the stock market. Other companies like Lyft and Peloton had disappointing results this year confirming the damage inflated valuations can cause startups-turned-public companies. Though a rocky IPO doesn’t mark the end of a company, it does tell you a lot about Wall Street’s appetite for Silicon Valley’s top companies. Why it matters: 2019’s tech IPOs illustrated a disconnect between the public markets and venture capitalists, whose cash determines the value of these high-flying companies. Wall Street has realized these stocks, which NYT journalist Erin Griffith recently described as “Publicly Listed Unicorns Miserably Performing,” are far less magical than previously assumed. As a result, many companies, particularly consumer tech businesses, may delay planned offerings, waiting until the markets stabilize and become hungry again for big-dreaming tech companies.

https://ift.tt/2rdNTae 2019’s 10 defining moments in venture capital https://ift.tt/35Vuda4

Read More

Hardware IPOs continue to struggle

Now that the final technology IPOs of 2019 have touched down, it’s a good time to start looking back at what happened during the year. We’re hunting for trends as the clock winds down. Here’s one that’s obvious: Hardware startups are still struggling.

It’s cliché to note in startupland that hardware is hard. Everyone knows it. Making hardware is difficult by itself, but as all tech hardware requires software, hardware shops wind up needing wider domain expertise than pure-software startups. And that’s hard.

But even if a nuts-and-bolts tech company hits scale, it seems difficult to keep that momentum up.

This year we saw Peloton, a hybrid hardware and digital services company, go public and struggle. Despite a recent public market resurgence, the company is slipping back toward its IPO price. Today its equity is trading down about 6% to around $30 per share. The company’s IPO price of $29 is uncomfortably close to its current value.

2019’s IPO crop also included EHang, a late entry to the market (more here on its debut) that quickly began to lose altitude after it started to float. EHang traded up today, but the firm is still worth less than its IPO valuation, a reduced figure that was dinged during the China-based drone company’s march toward the public markets.

So, Peloton is about flat and EHang is down. That’s not a great mix of results for a year’s IPO class of hardware companies. Looking back in time, things don’t get much better.

NIO, a China-based electric car company (despite making this thing of beauty), has deleted about two-thirds of its value since its late-2018 U.S.-listed IPO. After going public at $6.25, shares of NIO are worth just $2.70 today.

Sonos also went public in the United States in 2018. It traded above its IPO price of $15 at first. Then it fell under $10 per share as 2018 came to a close. The smart speaker and stereo company spent 2019 recovering. It’s now worth its IPO price again, closing trading today worth about $14.80 per share.

If you go back to 2017, however, Roku has kicked ass. After pricing at $14 per share, the TV hardware and digital services firm is trading for $137 per share, a nearly 10x gain. But Roku was moving away from hardware at the time of its IPO, making it a somewhat poor example. Hardware revenues for Roku were just 31% of revenue in its most recent quarter, for example. That figure was 42% in the year-ago quarter. It will continue to fall.

We don’t need to go over what happened to Fitbit and GoPro, I don’t think.

Hardware can make a lot of money. Samsung and Apple make oceans of money from their hardware. Microsoft has managed to make Surface into a real business, with billions of dollars in yearly revenue. Amazon has a big hardware business with both consumer reading gadgets and consumer surveillance devices. Even Google is taking its new phone seriously enough to buy out a chunk of the NBA’s ad slots (I think it’s this one), according to my extensive in-market testing. Facebook is the laggard of the group.

But for smaller hardware companies going public, unless I’m missing a number of recent of IPOs — and I don’t think that I am — it’s a tough world out there.

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J Hardware IPOs continue to struggle https://ift.tt/34IPqCW

Read More

F5 acquires Shape Security for $1B

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. banks, the majority of the largest airlines, similar kinds of profiles with major retailers, hotel chains, government agencies and so on. We specifically protect them against automated fraud and abuse on their consumer-facing applications — their websites and their mobile apps.”

F5 President and CEO, François Locoh-Donou sees a way to protect his customers in a comprehensive way. “With Shape, we will deliver end-to-end application protection, which means revenue generating, brand-anchoring applications are protected from the point at which they are created through to the point where consumers interact with them—from code to customer,” Locoh-Donou said in a statement.

As for Shape, CEO Derek Smith said that it wasn’t a huge coincidence that F5 was the buyer, given his company was seeing F5 consistently in its customers. Now they can work together as a single platform.

Shape launched in 2011 and raised $183 million, according to Crunchbase data. Investors included Kleiner Perkins, Tomorrow Partners, Norwest Venture Partners, Baseline Ventures and C5 Capital. In its most recent round in September, the company raised $51 million on a valuation of $1 billion.

F5 has been in a spending mood this year. It also acquired NGINX in March for $670 million. NGINX is the commercial company behind the open source web server of the same name. It’s worth noting that prior to that F5 had no made an acquisition since 2014.

It was a big year in security M&A. Consider that in June, 4 security companies sold in one 3-day period. That including Insight Partners buying Recorded Future for $780 million and FireEye buying Verodin for $250 million. Palo Alto Networks bought two companies in the period: Twistlock for $400 million and PureSec for between $60 and $70 million.

This deal is expected to close in mid-2020, and is of course, subject to standard regulatory approval. Upon closing Shape’s Smith will join the F5 management team and Shape employees will be folded into F5. The company will remain in its Santa Clara headquarters.

Shape Security hits $1B valuation with $51M Series F

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J F5 acquires Shape Security for $1B https://ift.tt/2Q9J3mX

Read More

Negotiate for ‘better’ stock in equity-funded acquisitions

Timothy R. Bowers Contributor

Timothy R. Bowers is the Managing Partner of VLP Law Group LLP.

Andrew P. Dixon Contributor

Andrew P. Dixon serves as Counsel with VLP Law Group LLP.

For many founders, building and selling a successful venture-backed company for cash is the ultimate goal. However, the reality is that some companies will instead receive an equity-funded acquisition proposal in which equity of another private venture-backed company, rather than cash, represents all or a significant portion of the purchase price.

Because all equity is not created equal, it is important for founders to understand how to negotiate for better equity in the context of such an acquisition proposal. This article explores what better equity looks like and some strategies founders can use to negotiate for that equity.

What is “better” equity?

To know what “better” equity is for the seller, it is necessary to understand what the “worst” and “best” stock is in the context an equity-funded acquisition by a private company buyer. The “worst” stock is plain common stock which does not enjoy any special rights and is subject to contractual restrictions which diminish its liquidity profile. Common stock sits at the bottom of the priority stack (after debt and preferred equity) in the event the company dissolves or is sold — thus, it is least valuable. Variations of transfer restrictions (e.g., a prohibition on private secondary sales) may further diminish the desirability of common stock by making it difficult or impossible for the holder to achieve liquidity outside of an M&A event or initial public offering (IPO).

In contrast, the “best” stock is (1) the acquirer’s most senior series of preferred stock, coupled with (2) additional contractual rights enhancing such stock’s liquidity profile. For our purposes here, we’ll call this “enhanced preferred stock.” All things being equal, founders and VCs should have a strong preference for enhanced preferred stock in an equity-funded acquisition for several reasons:

• Usually, the most senior series of preferred stock will enjoy a liquidation preference ensuring that a certain amount of proceeds (commonly equal to invested capital) from a sale of the company flow to stockholders of that series before proceeds are distributed to junior preferred and common stockholders.
• Unique contractual rights not shared by common stockholders, like special voting rights with respect to major events and transactions, unique information rights, pro rata investment rights with respect to future financings, rights of first refusal and co-sale rights, increase the stock’s relative value.
• Beyond the standard set of rights that are usually enjoyed by all preferred stockholders, additional contractual rights of and reduced restrictions on enhanced preferred stock make it more likely that the holder of such equity will achieve liquidity of some or all of its holdings prior to an M&A event or IPO. Such additional rights may include one or more of the following: time or event-based redemption rights (i.e., the right to force the acquirer to redeem equity at a specified price in the future), other liquidity rights tied to future financings or commercial transactions (e.g., the right to sell stock to the investors in the next equity financing), covenants of the acquirer to permit and support private secondary sales and registration rights (i.e., the right to force the acquirer to register stock with the SEC, thereby allowing for unrestricted resale by the holder).

“Better” stock lies somewhere on the continuum between the common stock and enhanced preferred stock poles, with the type of stock and bundle of rights associated with such equity determining its precise location. Additional contractual rights and reduced restrictions may significantly improve the desirability of common stock and perhaps place the holder in a better position than it would have been as a preferred stockholder. For example, a seller able to negotiate the right to sell a certain amount of common stock to investors in the acquirer’s next preferred stock equity financing could be more favorably positioned than the holder of senior preferred stock without any enhanced preferred rights.

Negotiating for better stock. With a framework for understanding what better stock means, below are several strategies sellers can employ in M&A negotiations to obtain better stock than that initially offered by the buyer.

Avoiding dire situations and preserving leverage. Leverage matters in every negotiation and any strategy that ignores this reality is doomed to fail. To state the obvious, the first strategy to negotiate for better stock in an equity-funded acquisition is the first strategy in preparing for any M&A event: companies should do all they can to avoid being in a dire fire sale situation when a buyer comes knocking on their door. If the seller is a failing company seeking a sale as a last ditch effort to avoid shutting its doors, even the best strategies may be useless in negotiation since as soon as the buyer says “no”, the seller will likely fold its hand and agree to the deal offered.

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J Negotiate for ‘better’ stock in equity-funded acquisitions https://ift.tt/2EDoTfF

Read More

Coral raises $4.3M to build an at-home manicure machine

Coral is a company that wants to “simplify the personal care space through smart automation,” and they’ve raised $4.3 million to get it done. Their first goal? An at-home, fully automated machine for painting your nails. Stick a finger in, press down, wait a few seconds and you’ve got a fully painted and dried nail. More than once in our conversations, the team referred to the idea as a “Keurig coffee machine, but for nails.”

It’s still early days for the company. While they’ve got a functional machine (pictured above), they’re quite clear about it being a prototype.

As such, they’re still staying pretty hush hush about the details, declining to say much about how it actually works. They did tell me that it paints one finger at a time, taking about 10 minutes to go from bare nails to all fingers painted and dried. To speed up drying time while ensuring a durable paint job, it’ll require Coral’s proprietary nail polish — so don’t expect to be able to pop open a bottle of nail polish and pour it in. Coral’s polish will come in pods (so the Keurig comparison is particularly fitting), which the user will be able to buy individually or get via subscription. Under the hood is a camera and some proprietary computer vision algorithms, allowing the machine to paint the nail accurately without requiring manual nail cleanup from the user after the fact.

Also still under wraps — or, more accurately, not determined yet — is the price. While Coral co-founder Ramya Venkateswaran tells me that she expects it to be a “premium device,” they haven’t nailed down an exact price just yet.

While we’ve seen all sorts of nail painting machines over the years (including ones that can do all kinds of wild art, like this one we saw at CES earlier this year), Coral says its system is the only one that works without requiring the user to first prime their nails with a base coat or clear coat it after. All you need here is a bare fingernail.

Coral’s team is currently made up of eight people — mostly mechanical, chemical and software engineers. Both co-founders, meanwhile, have backgrounds in hardware; Venkateswaran previously worked as a product strategy manager at Dolby, where she helped launch the Dolby Conference Phone. Her co-founder, Bradley Leong, raised around $800,000 on Kickstarter to ship Brydge (one of the earliest takes on a laptop-style iPad keyboard) back in 2012 before becoming a partner at the seed-stage venture fund Tandem Capital. It was during some industrial hardware research there, he tells me, when he found “the innovation that this machine is based off of.”

Vankateswaran tells me the team has raised $4.3 million to date from CrossLink Capital, Root Ventures, Tandem Capital and Y Combinator. The company is part of Y Combinator’s ongoing Winter 2020 class, so I’d expect to hear more about them as this batch’s demo day approaches in March of next year.

So what’s next? They’ll be working on turning the prototype into a consumer-ready device, and plan to spend the next few months running a small beta program (which you can sign up for here.)

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J Coral raises $4.3M to build an at-home manicure machine https://ift.tt/2MgNbjR

Read More

Do more startups die of indigestion or starvation?

Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the grey space in between.

Today, we’re weighing a standard bit of startup wisdom that recently reemerged against some surprising, contrasting evidence. Does too much money hurt a startup more than it helps, or is that standard view actually mistaken? We’ll start with the traditional view, which was re-upped this month by venture capitalist Fred Wilson, along with some supporting arguments proffered by a Boston-based venture firm.

Afterwards, we’ll dig into a grip of contrasting data that should provide plenty to chew on over the holidays. Ready?

Fit to burst

Union Square Ventures‘ Fred Wilson wrote earlier in December (citing an excellent Crunchbase News piece by occasional TechCrunch contributor Jason D. Rowley) that he was curious if startups that raise huge ($100 million and greater) early-stage rounds do better or worse than their cohorts that raised only smaller sums.

Underpinning his question is Wilson’s belief that “performance of VC backed companies is inversely correlated to how much money they raise.” This makes good sense. And if anyone has enough anecdotal evidence to support the view, it’s Wilson who has been a venture capitalist since the late 1980s.

The idea that too much money is bad for startups isn’t hard to understand: startups need to focus and run fast; too much money can lead to both bloated operations, diffuse product direction and useless dalliances in cruft.

Startups also die when they have too little money, of course. But the concept that there is a midpoint between insufficient funds and an ocean of capital that is optimal has lots of credibility amongst the venture class. (I believe this is my favorite phrasing of the concept, that “more startups die of indigestion than starvation.”)

A 2016-era TechCrunch article written by some of the folks from Founders Collective makes the point plainly:

By examining the technology IPOs of the past five years, we found that the enriched (well capitalized) companies do not meaningfully outperform their efficient (lightly capitalized) peers up to the IPO event and actually underperform after the IPO.

Raising a huge sum of money is a requirement to join the unicorn herd, but a close look at the best outcomes in the technology industry suggests that a well-stocked war chest doesn’t have correlation with success.

In the spirit of fairness, I’ve long agreed with the above views.

My views on the question of too much money ruining organizations came from a different field, but are worth sharing for context. My father once told me an analogous story about a small poetry magazine, a publication that operated on the proverbial shoestring and was always weeks away from shutting down. But it limped along, barely keeping the lights on as it produced brilliant work.

Then, someone died and left the magazine a pile of money in their will — but the sudden influx of capital wrecked the publication and it eventually shut down.

In many cases, raising too much money too early can hurt a team or cause it to lose track of its mission. But for tech startups, on average, is that really correct?

Maybe not

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J Do more startups die of indigestion or starvation? https://ift.tt/2PLqdDL

Read More

Burst adds a super high-tech dental floss to its dental care offerings

Burst, the subscription dental care service, with the pretty, pretty toothbrushes, has now added a sleek dental floss product to its monthly kits.

The Los Angeles-based dental hygiene company, which has raised at least $20 million in financing from the growth capital investment firm Volition Capital, takes a different approach to reaching consumers than competitors like Quip.

Burst works hand-in-hand with a network of dental hygienists and dental professionals both as a channel to sell through and a sounding board for new product development. The company’s dental health professionals who are part of its sales channel now totals more than 20,000 people. Burst shares profits with these channel partners and has distributed about $3.5 million through the program.

Indeed, it was through the network of experts that the company arrived at the design for its dental floss.

“While there was a clear gap in the market for an affordable but effective electric toothbrush, our incredibly strong partnership with dental professionals has been key to the success of Burst,” said Brittany Stewart, COO of Burst. “From development and testing, to sharing our products with their network, Burst’s Ambassadors have been part of the team every step of the way. We’re proud to have fueled a grassroots movement of independent dental professionals who are just as passionate as we are about modernizing a tired industry.” 

The new product is a $12.99 mint-eucalyptus-flavored, charcoal-coated dental floss that expands between teeth. Burst’s floss comes in a case for replacement bobbins, which can be delivered to a customer’s door for $6.99 per month.

“When we first met the founders of Burst, we immediately recognized they were tapping into something special in an industry that was ripe for disruption,” stated Larry Cheng, managing partner and co-founder of Volition Capital. “We were inspired by their vision and wanted to support the growth trajectory they were already on, capitalizing on their key strengths, such as product development and the Ambassador network, while identifying further opportunities.” 

 

https://ift.tt/2PFUjII Burst adds a super high-tech dental floss to its dental care offerings https://ift.tt/2rUIq8N

Read More

St. Louis-based Summersalt raises $17.3 million for its direct-to-consumer clothing line

The Midwest may not be known as the fashion capital of the world (or even the U.S.), but its place in the consumer retail firmament is secure through L Brands and its Victoria’s Secret and Bath & Body Works subsidiaries.

Now, venture investors are investing $17.3 million to establish another tent-pole clothing brand in the region, with a new commitment to the St. Louis-based clothing brand Summersalt.

Founded by a former Washington University design professor and swimwear designer, Lori Coulter, and a marketing and branding consultant, Reshma Chattaram Chamberlin, Summersalt launched in 2017 with a line of direct-to-consumer swimwear.

In the past two years, the company has expanded beyond its $95 swimsuits to include cashmere sets, packable jackets and wrinkle-free pants.

Initially backed by the Rise of the Rest Seed Fund, backed by AOL founder Steve Case’s Revolution investment fund, the company has gone on to attract capital from Founders Fund, Lewis and Clark Ventures and Victress Capital.

The latest round was led by Mercato Partners, a Utah-based venture capital firm.

“We could not be more thrilled with the opportunity to lead Summersalt’s latest funding found, and partner with two passionate founders who have a clear vision, are mission driven and have a track record for accelerated performance,” said Joe Kaiser, a director with Mercato Partners, in a statement. “The product, brand, team and the incredible consumers make for a winning combination.”

Summersalt calls its line of clothing “travel wear” and used its footprint in the swimsuit market to expand its reach with other items that could be taken on trips to less-sun-drenched parts of the world.

“We are building a generation defining travel brand that goes beyond swimwear and apparel to create a community of curious women who love to explore,” said Coulter, the company’s president and chief executive in a statement. “Our unparalleled experience in apparel, deep supply chain expertise and fit-technology will  be at the foundation as we continue to scale and build a brand with highly profitable unit economics.”

https://ift.tt/35CQ46d St. Louis-based Summersalt raises $17.3 million for its direct-to-consumer clothing line https://ift.tt/38ZEvIg

Read More

SoftBank Vision Fund invests $275M in India’s Lenskart

Lenskart, an omni-channel retailer in India that sells eyewear products, said on Friday that it has raised $275 million in a new financing round from SoftBank Vision Fund as it looks to expand its business in the nation.

As part of the new financing round — dubbed Series G — some of the nine-year-old startup’s existing investors are selling their stake, said Peyush Bansal, founder and chief executive of Lenskart in an interview with TechCrunch. He did not name the investors, though.

SoftBank Vision Fund’s investment pushes Lenskart’s all-time raise to $456 million. A person familiar with the matter told TechCrunch that the new round values Lenskart at over $1.5 billion.

The nine-year-old startup, which began as an e-commerce service to sell spectacles, contact lenses and eye care products, has expanded to brick and mortar stores in recent years. Today, the startup has presence in over 500 stores across more than 100 cities in India, it said. Online sales still account for more than 60% of the startup’s overall revenue, however.

Bansal said the startup will use the fresh capital to improve its technology infrastructure and supply chain. “We are thrilled to have SoftBank Vision Fund with us in our journey. Their understanding of consumer and technology will help us build the next edition of Lenskart,” he said.

According to industry estimates, more than half a billion people in India are affected by poor vision and need eyeglasses, but only 170 million of them have opted to get their vision corrected.

Lenskart said it sees immense potential in growing within India, especially in smaller towns and villages that don’t have many trained optometrists. To reduce the friction, it offers free eye inspection tests to all potential customers. It also lets users book a couple of glasses and try them at home before committing a purchase. On its website, the startup uses a 3D AI model to allow users to check how different pairs of glasses would look on their face.

According to research firm Euromonitor International, India’s eyewear market is worth $4.6 billion — much of which remains unorganized.

https://ift.tt/34I75L4 SoftBank Vision Fund invests $275M in India’s Lenskart https://ift.tt/34H4YH6

Read More

Ripple raises $200 million to improve global payments

Ripple has raised a $200 million Series C funding round. Tetragon is leading the round, with SBI Holdings and Route 66 Ventures also participating. According to Fortune, the company is now valued at $10 billion.

“We are in a strong financial position to execute against our vision. As others in the blockchain space have slowed their growth or even shut down, we have accelerated our momentum and industry leadership throughout 2019,” Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse said in the announcement.

The startup has been focused on improving cross-border payments and other money transmitting activities using XRP, a cryptocurrency that has its own blockchain, the XRP Ledger. The total market capitalization of XRP tokens is currently the third-largest cryptocurrency market capitalization behind bitcoin and Ethereum.

It is currently worth $8.4 billion according to CoinMarketCap. While XRP is a decentralized cryptocurrency, Ripple controls a significant chunk of the total market cap. That reserve is valuable by itself. During the third quarter of 2019, Ripple sold $66.24 million in XRP tokens.

Ripple believes that cryptocurrencies (and XRP in particular) could be a great way to facilitate cross-border transactions. It has the potential to be both cheaper and faster than traditional foreign exchange solutions.

The company has been trying to convince financial institution to switch to RippleNet as the back-end currency for international payments.

RippleNet now has 300 customers. In particular, Ripple took a 10% stake in MoneyGram to help them switch to RippleNet, at least in part.

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J Ripple raises $200 million to improve global payments https://ift.tt/2Z8l9fH

Read More

Centaurs, centurions, centipedes: the $100M ARR CLUB

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.

This week Kate was in SF, Alex was in Providence, and there was a mountain of news to shovel through. If you’re here because we mentioned linking to a certain story in the show notes, that’s here. For everyone else, let’s get into the agenda.

We kicked off with a look at three new venture funds. In order:

• Tusk Ventures: Tusk’s new fund, worth $70 million, is an effective doubling of its prior fund’s $36 million size. The politically-savvy firm has put money into Coinbase, and other companies that deal with regulated industries.
• Sapphire Ventures: SAP’s former corporate venture fund Sapphire Ventures announced a whopping $1.4 billion fundraise this week. Sapphire may be one of, or the most successful CVC spinouts to date.
• Moxxie: Katie Jacobs Stanton, known for co-founding #ANGELS, just closed her debut fund on $25 million. Kate had chatted with her about her experience fundraising her very own fund, some of her previous investment and her plans for Moxxie Ventures so there was plenty to unpack here.

From there we turned the gender imbalance in the world of venture capital. This year, companies founded by women raised only 2.8% of capital. These not-so-stellar statistics are always worth digging into.

After we took a quick look at two different venture rounds, including ProdPerfect’s $13 million Series A and Pepper’s smaller $5.6 million round. ProdPerfect’s round was led by Anthos Capital (known for investing in Honey which sold for $4 billion). The company has $2 million in ARR and is growing quickly. Pepper, formed by former Snap denziens is working to help other startups lower their CAC costs in-channel. Smart.

And finally, Alex wanted to bring up his series on startups that reach the $100 million ARR threshold. A first piece looking into the idea led to a few more submissions. There seem to be enough companies to name the grouping with something nice. Centurion? Centipede? Centaur? We’re working on it.

Equity drops every Friday at 6:00 am PT, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J Centaurs, centurions, centipedes: the $100M ARR CLUB https://ift.tt/2Q8Zpwd

Read More

Curve, the ‘over-the-top’ banking platform, launches “Curve Send” for P2P payments in 25 currencies

Curve, the so-called “over-the-top” banking platform that lets you consolidate all of your bank cards into a single Curve card and app, is launching new feature to make it possible to send money to friends and contacts.

Dubbed “Curve Send,” the feature lets you send money from any of your bank accounts (via the debit cards you have linked to Curve) to any other account in over 25 different currencies. It does this by utilising the APIs of Visa and Mastercard, essentially turning the card networks into a single money transfer network via Curve as the intermediary.

“Curve Send instantly solves people’s problem of financial fragmentation by consolidating all their cards into one, eliminating the lengthy money transfer process experienced by most customers when they want to send money to their friends or peers using multiple bank accounts or multiple currencies,” says the London-based fintech.

To transfer money via Curve Send, you simply open the Curve app, choose a contact and amount, and then select which of your linked bank cards you want to send the money from. The recipient will then get notified and be asked to take a photo of their bank card, and Curve will send the money directly to their bank via the card network.

Curve says it doesn’t charge fees for sending or receiving payments via Curve Send. It will also handle FX, too, at a claimed “mid-market” rate with no fees (capped at £500 per month for Curve users on its free plan, and unlimited for Curve Black and Curve Metal).

In a brief email exchange with Curve founder and CEO Shachar Bialick, he said that “Curve is basically operating like an exchange” in that it brings Visa and Mastercard together, with Curve powering communication between the two card networks for peer-to-peer payments. “We’ve done tests for the past two months and people love it,” he says.

Adds Diego Rivas, Curve’s Head of OS Product, in a statement: “Customers want to send money to their friends and family with just a few touches. But with so many different options and the rise of challenger banks, the process is unnecessarily complicated and customers end up having 3-4 apps just to send money. We wanted to make this whole process ten times easier for our customers. Now they have one simple, smart platform which can move money from any account to any account, securely and fee free”.

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J Curve, the ‘over-the-top’ banking platform, launches “Curve Send” for P2P payments in 25 currencies https://ift.tt/2sIYBpE

Read More

The unbrandening

Josh Gross Contributor

Josh Gross is the managing partner at digital product studio Planetary and its child company, Regular, the low-cost, high quality studio for small businesses.

Do you remember as a kid going to the grocery store with your parents and being just totally overwhelmed by the bright, loud packaging of products on shelf after shelf, aisle after aisle?

I certainly do. Each product had a brand — you’d recognize the Kix by its bright red box and Tide by its loud orange bottle. Every package screamed its brand name at you.

Branded packaging as we know it hasn’t been around that long. While people have been packaging goods for millennia, trademarked printed boxes, tins and shrink-wrapped containers were only invented in the late 1800s — less than 150 years ago, beginning with Uneeda Biscuits around 1896.

When branded packaging was invented, and up until very recently, its purpose and value to nearly every industry made a ton of good sense. The average consumer would shop in a catalog, browsing ads and offerings, or in a store, perusing shelves of products. The more a product stood out and set itself apart, the more memorable it would be and the more likely it would be purchased. Good packaging made products easy to recommend and spread by sharing visually.

And then, the internet came along.

Our team recently launched our new studio product, Regular, a service directed at small businesses hitting their growth inflection point. As we began to design our own website and work on branding, we did a lot of research into branding trends for consumer packaged goods, and what we uncovered was surprising.

We found was that there is a surprising movement towards “unbranding” — specifically choosing not to create a strong association between a product and its maker. Instead of bright packaging, large logos and stamped products, many companies are now going the other direction by operating without logos and offering minimal (or no) packaging.

Pens from MUJI (Photo: Michael/Flickr)

One of the earliest companies to adopt this mindset was Japanese home goods store MUJI, whose name literally means “No Brand” (it doesn’t get more literal than that). Most of its products come unpackaged with just a small price tag, or in minimal packaging with a single informational label (e.g., “lotion,” “body soap”) to identify its contents.

But MUJI has been since the 1980s, so why are we talking about this now?

https://ift.tt/2EDfWTw The unbrandening https://ift.tt/38Pt9Xg

Read More

Robocall-crushing TRACED act passes Senate and heads to Oval Office

{rss:content:encoded} Robocall-crushing TRACED act passes Senate and heads to Oval Office https://ift.tt/38XRNFm https://ift.tt/2PF5uBy December 19, 2019 at 11:20PM

Somehow during all the partisan furor of the last few days, the Senate found a moment to vote some bipartisan legislation into law — presuming, of course, it survives the president’s desk. The TRACED act pushes carriers to kill robocalls before they ring, and gives the FCC some extra juice to pursue the wicked ones perpetrating them.

“We’re delighted the Senate acted quickly to pass this legislation to shutdown illegal robocalls,” wrote the bill’s co-sponsors in the House Energy and Commerce Committee, in a statement. “We’re working hard to help the American people get real relief from these relentless and illegal calls. We look forward to the President signing this overwhelmingly bipartisan legislation into law very soon.”

The House and Senate finally agree on something: Robocalls

Unlike many things called bipartisan, this one really is. Two different versions of the bill originated in the House and Senate and were passed individually with overwhelming majorities. The pertinent committees put their heads together and created a unified version of the bill they could both live with. Amazingly, that was just last month, and now the bill is off to the White House for the Executive signature.

You can read a summary of what the bill does here, but I’ll summarize further:

• Extends FCC’s statute of limitations on robocall offenses and increases potential fines
• Requires an FCC rulemaking helping protect consumers from spam calls and texts (this is already underway)
• Requires annual FCC report on robocall enforcement and allows for it to formally recommend legislation
• Requires adoption on a reasonable timeline of the STIR/SHAKEN framework for preventing call spoofing
• Prevents carriers from charging for the above service, and shields them from liability for reasonable mistakes
• Requires the Attorney General to convene an interagency task force to look at prosecution of offenders
• Opens the door to Justice Department prosecution of offenders
• Establishes a handful of specific cutouts and studies to make sure the rules work and interested parties are giving feedback

Overall it seems like a good bill and quite focused on this specific issue — no weird pork attached. Here’s hoping the TRACED act is signed into law quickly.

Read More

HaptX grabs $12 million to build a glove crammed with sensors

A company building a very high-tech glove has just gotten its hands on some new money.

HaptX is building a sensor-packed glove for VR and robotics applications that simulates haptic and resistance feedback for enterprise users.

The Seattle startup has raised $12 million in new funding from Mason Avenue Investments, Taylor Frigon Capital Partners, Upheaval Investments, Votiv Capital, Keiretsu Forum, Keiretsu Capital, NetEase and Amit Kapur of Dawn Patrol Ventures. HaptX has now raised $19 million to date.

The company says this funding will go toward the company’s next generation of glove hardware.

I got a chance to demo the company’s glove last year and there are certainly some bizarre experiences that are enabled by the product, which uses an external pneumatic box to expand and contract air pockets inside a glove form factor to make it feel like the virtual object you’re holding onto in VR is actually in your hand.

HaptX is bringing touch to VR with a pair of scary-looking gloves and a pneumatic suitcase

Needless to say at this point, the virtual reality industry’s consumer ambitions haven’t quite panned out as expected. The enterprise space has found slightly more enduring success, though much of the enterprise use hasn’t expanded too far beyond “internal innovation hubs” and pilot programs. HaptX seems to have zeroed in on the same enterprise customer base as other VR startups, with a lot of its customers using the gloves in design and visualization processes. HaptX has moved away from marketing itself as a VR-only company and has expanded into robotics, reshaping its offering into a solution framed by real-world input and real-world output.

Alongside the funding announcement, HaptX is sharing that it has partnered with Advanced Input Systems to collaborate on “product development, manufacturing, and go-to-market.”

The company is focused on enterprise and unfortunately doesn’t seem to be building a mech suit for Jeff Bezos, although they sent me a great gif of him demoing the technology earlier this year at a conference.

https://ift.tt/35EYCcP HaptX grabs $12 million to build a glove crammed with sensors https://ift.tt/2ECe9yc

Read More

Daily Crunch: Facebook acquires a cloud gaming startup

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. Facebook acquires Madrid-based cloud gaming startup PlayGiga

Facebook is building out its gaming business — earlier this year, the company added its Gaming hub to the main navigation menu. And last month, it agreed to buy Beat Games, developer of popular virtual reality title Beat Saber.

PlayGiga, meanwhile has been working with telcos to create streaming game technology for 5G. It also developed a gaming-as-a-service platform, using Intel’s Visual Cloud platform, that will enable telcos and communication service providers to offer streaming games to their customers.

2. TiVo merges with technology licensor Xperi in $3 billion deal

Earlier this year, TiVo said it was preparing to split itself into two — a product and IP business — in order to make itself more attractive to buyers. Today, the company announced those plans have been put on hold as it has instead merged with technology licensor Xperi Corporation, in a $3 billion deal.

3. Spotify prototypes Tastebuds to revive social music discovery

Tastebuds (discovered by reverse engineering master Jane Manchun Wong) is designed to let users explore the music taste profiles of their friends. It will live as a navigation option alongside your Library and Home/Browse sections.

4. Uber’s ride-hailing business hit with ban in Germany

In Germany, Uber’s ride-hailing business works exclusively with professional and licensed private-hire vehicle companies — so the court ban essentially outlaws Uber’s current model in the country.

5. Snackpass snags $21M to let you earn friends free takeout

Sending people Snackpass rewards became a new way to flirt or show gratitude at Yale. And through the Venmo-esque Snackpass social feed, users could keep up with a fresh form of gossip while discovering restaurants.

6. PayPal completes GoPay acquisition, allowing the payments platform to enter China

Though China’s payment market today is led by local players, including eWallet providers like AliPay and WeChat Pay, there’s room for PayPal to grow in a market where digital payments per year are counted in the trillions, not billions, of dollars.

7. Tesla’s record stock price shows its investment in energy storage is finally paying off

A little over a year after sparking a legal firestorm for musing that he would take Tesla private for $420, Elon Musk is probably glad he didn’t. (Extra Crunch membership required.)

from Social – TechCrunch https://ift.tt/2CoAoqu Daily Crunch: Facebook acquires a cloud gaming startup Anthony Ha https://ift.tt/2S9YQ80
via IFTTT

Read More