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Featured 2

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Featured 3

Curabitur et lectus vitae purus tincidunt laoreet sit amet ac ipsum. Proin tincidunt mattis nisi a scelerisque. Aliquam placerat dapibus eros non ullamcorper. Integer interdum ullamcorper venenatis. Pellentesque habitant morbi tristique senectus et netus et malesuada fames ac turpis egestas.

Featured 4

Curabitur et lectus vitae purus tincidunt laoreet sit amet ac ipsum. Proin tincidunt mattis nisi a scelerisque. Aliquam placerat dapibus eros non ullamcorper. Integer interdum ullamcorper venenatis. Pellentesque habitant morbi tristique senectus et netus et malesuada fames ac turpis egestas.

Featured 5

Curabitur et lectus vitae purus tincidunt laoreet sit amet ac ipsum. Proin tincidunt mattis nisi a scelerisque. Aliquam placerat dapibus eros non ullamcorper. Integer interdum ullamcorper venenatis. Pellentesque habitant morbi tristique senectus et netus et malesuada fames ac turpis egestas.

Saturday, June 20, 2020

Startups Weekly: Which investor wrote the first check?

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

Which startups investors are actually first to backing the best companies? If you know this information before fundraising, you can avoid pitching investors who were always going to tell you that you’re “too early” anyway. The problem is that everyone claims credit for success, and by the time you pick through databases, investor sites, blogs, tweets and news clippings, you have no real idea who made what call when.

That’s why our solution is to just ask founders about who really made it happen. Our new product, The TechCrunch List, will feature the investors who wrote the first checks, to help any founder find the help they need when they need it. Here’s more, from Arman Tabatabai and Danny Crichton:

Over the next few weeks, we’re going to be collecting data around which individual investors are actually willing to write the proverbial “first check” into a startup’s fundraising round and help catalyze deals for founders — whether it be seed, Series A or otherwise (i.e. out of your Series A investors, the first person who was willing to write the check and get the ball rolling with other investors). Once we’ve collected, cleaned and analyzed the data, we’ll publish lists of the most recommended “first check” investors across different verticals, investment stages and geographies, so founders can see which investors are potentially the best fit for their company….

In all, The TechCrunch List will publish the most recommended “first check” writers across 22 different categories, ranging from D2C & e-commerce brands to space, and everything in between. Through some data analysis around total investments in each space, we believe our 22 categories should cover the entirety or majority of the venture activity today.

To make this project a success and create a useful resource for founders, we need your help. We want to hear from company builders and we want to hear from them directly. We will be collecting endorsements submitted by founders through the form linked here.

(Photo by Steven Damron used under Creative Commons).

Valley dealflow has continued through the pandemic

Despite much discussion about investors pulling back en masse from startup investing, a new survey out from Silicon Valley tech law firm Fenwick & West about activity in the region over April says that valuations went up, markdown rounds did not grow as a percentage of deals, and the overall pace of deals actually increased. The catch, Connie Loizos writes for TechCrunch, is that much of this was due to later-stage rounds, and of course, it is generalized across industries that have been variously propelled or pummeled by the pandemic.

Alex Wilhelm then looks at a couple additional reports for Extra Crunch, from Docsend and NFX. They appear to show ongoing investor activity growth since April, as well as growing founder optimism — but early stage did in fact appear to be more turbulent, as, ahem, one might expect if one has experience in early-stage fundraising. He separately notes that the latest tracking data sources appear to show a decline in startup layoffs. Both are, by the way, written as part of The Exchange, his new daily column about the latest trends in the startup world for EC subscribers (use code EXCHANGE to get 25% off a subscription).

Image Credits: Klaud Vedfelt (opens in a new window) / Getty Images (Image has been modified)

Beyond Valley dealflow (and its problems)

Juneteenth has been celebrated since 1866 to mark the end of slavery after the American Civil War. But this year, it is being taken up by tech companies as an official holiday to help show their concern for structural discrimination in the wake of the George Floyd killing and ensuing global protests. What does it really mean though? Here’s Megan Rose Dickey for TechCrunch:

Recognition of such a historic day is good. But the way these companies are publicly announcing their plans, seeking press as they do, suggests their need for some affirmative pat on the back. It’s perfectly acceptable to do the right thing and not get credit for it. It shows humility. It shows that a company is more interested in doing right by its workers than it is in saving face….

Instead, as Hustle Crew founder Abadesi Osunsade has said, tech companies need to go beyond one-off actions and form habits around racial justice work. Forming habits around hiring Black people, promoting Black employees, paying Black employees fairly, funding Black founders and making room for Black people in leadership positions is what will lead to concrete change in this industry.

Meanwhile, given the ongoing issues in fundraising, Delali Dzirasa of Fearless writes about other resources Black entrepreneurs can use to get their companies off the ground, including equity crowdfunding, mentor programs, 8(a) programs, SBA resources, and your local commercial banker.

Image Credits: PipeCandy

Online winners and also-rans during the pandemic

Two marketing experts shared fresh data on what categories are winning and losing during the pandemic for Extra Crunch this week, perhaps revealing where some of the founder and investor enthusiasm is coming from? First, here’s Ethan Smith of Graphite, who provides an overview of how money is being spent online during the pandemic using data from Branch through mid-May:

The good news for vendors overall is that people are still shopping online, but they’re buying different things and in different volumes than they used to. Kid/pet-oriented mobile activity and associated purchases have skyrocketed. We’ve also seen spikes in the purchase of activewear, fashion items, shoes and arts and crafts items, as people wait out the lockdown and prepare for what they hope will be a summer of freedom.

To dig into the direct-to-consumer category in more detail, here’s Ashwin Ramasamy of PipeCandy, who uses a mix of data sources to look at subcategory trends versus what the year might have looked like without a pandemic:

Kids, cookware and kitchen tools, apparel, fine jewelry, fashion, women’s health, mattresses, furniture and skincare actually deviated negatively from the forecast. This is not to say that these categories declined. We are actually saying that these categories didn’t keep up with the growth trends they orchestrated in 2019. That said, the devil is in the details. For instance, within furniture, there is a category of D2C brands that sell shelves and office furniture. Consumers did invest in them heavily, presumably to allow participants in the Zoom call to absorb more the titles of the books stacked in those shelves than from the calls themselves. Wine/spirits, grocery, fitness, baby care, pets and nutraceuticals did better than anticipated. Basically, anything that helped numb the reality (alcohol), sweeten the reality (food), distract from the reality (baby care and pets), survive the reality (fitness) or hallucinate an alternative reality (nutraceuticals) did well. I will leave you with another interesting conclusion we arrived at, through further research that is currently underway: The spotlight category in e-commerce is not direct to consumer — it is the mid-market and large pure-play e-commerce companies. It is one segment where the compounded quarterly growth rate of active companies is better than the 2019 average.

Around TechCrunch

Founders can reap long-term benefits after exhibiting in Disrupt’s Startup Alley

Extra Crunch Live: Join Superhuman’s Rahul Vohra for a live discussion of email, SaaS and buzzy businesses

Learn how to give your brand a distinct voice from Slack’s Head of Brand Communications Anna Pickard at TC Early Stage

New sessions announced at TC Early Stage from Dell, Perkins Coie and SVB

HappyFunCorp’s Ben Schippers and Jon Evans will talk tech stacks at TC Early Stage

Across the week

TechCrunch:

Where are all the robots?

Despite pandemic setbacks, the clean energy future is underway

TikTok explains how the recommendation system behind its ‘For You’ feed works

Chris Sacca advises new fund managers to strike right now

Extra Crunch:

What’s next for space tech? 9 VCs look to the future

How Liberty Mutual shifted 44,000 workers from office to home

Superhuman’s Rahul Vohra says recession is the ‘perfect time’ to be aggressive for well-capitalized startups

Investors based in San Francisco? That’s so 2019

How Reliance Jio Platforms became India’s biggest telecom network

4 months into lockdown, Eventbrite CEO Julia Hartz sees ‘exciting signs of recovery’

#EquityPod

From Alex:

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

Your humble Equity team is pretty tired but in good spirits, as there was a lot to talk about this week…

  • Epic Games is looking to raise a huge stack of cash (BloombergVentureBeat) at a new, higher valuation. We were curious about how its lower-cut store could help it gain inroads with developers big and small. That part of the chat, the take-rate of the Fortnite parent company on the work of others was very cogent to the other main topic of the day:
  • Apple vs. DHH. So Hey launched this week, and the new spin on email quickly overshadowed its product launch by getting into a spat with Apple about whether it needs to add the ability to sign up for the paid service on iOS, thus giving Apple a cut of its revenue. DHH and crew do not agree. Apple is under fire for anti-competitive practices at home and abroad — of varying intensity, and from different sources — making this all the more spicy.
  • Upgrade raises $40 million for its credit-focused neobank.
  • Degreed raises $32 million for its upskilling platform.
  • And, at the end, our take on the current health of the startup market. There have been a sheaf of reports lately about what is going on in startup land. We gave our take.

And that’s that. Have a lovely weekend and catch up on some sleep.

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



https://ift.tt/310K2wL Startups Weekly: Which investor wrote the first check? https://ift.tt/3144Qn0

Startup Battlefield bonus: Application deadline extended one week

This one goes out to all the early-stage startup founders. Whether you’re overwhelmed by the state of the world, overworked — or procrastination is simply an intrinsic part of your DNA — it matters not. Here’s reason to smile. We’re giving you an extra week to apply to compete in Startup Battlefield during Disrupt 2020. Fill out your application before the new deadline expires on June 26 at 11:59 pm (PT).

This is your moment to grab a double fistful of opportunity and step into a global spotlight. The virtual Disrupt 2020 represents our largest viewing audience and our biggest launch platform ever — more investors, more media and more, well, everything. If you’re chosen to compete in our premier pitch-off, you’ll go up against some of the best early-stage startups around the world.

Here’s what’s at stake: Massive exposure that can — whether you win the battle or not — change the trajectory of your startup, a launch article on TC.com, a 6 week mini-training program with TC editorial, all the perks of a Digital Disrupt Digital Pro pass (and then some) and a shot at $100,000, the Disrupt cup and all the bragging rights.

You’re eligible to apply if your company is early stage, has an MVP with a tech component (software, hardware or platform) and hasn’t received much, if any, major media coverage. Note: TechCrunch does not charge any application or participation fees or take any equity. We accept founders from all backgrounds, geographies and industries.

Veteran TechCrunch Battlefield editors (such a picky bunch) review every application and select startups that meet their discerning standards for innovation and growth potential. The virtual competition takes place during Disrupt 2020, which runs from Sept. 14 – 18.

Feel that flop sweat building up? Don’t stress. All competing founders receive weeks of free expert coaching from TechCrunch. Your pitch, demo and business model will shine like never before on game day.

Startup Battlefield consists of two rounds. Each team has six minutes to pitch and demo to our panel of TC editors, expert VCs and top entrepreneurs. Each team also faces a six-minute Q&A. Out of the original cohort, a handful of teams will move to the finals — on the last day of Disrupt — and pitch again to a new set of judges. They’ll choose one team to take home the title, the cup and the $100,000 prize.

Let’s take a peek at what other opportunities Battlefield competitors enjoy.

  • Exhibit in Digital Startup Alley and demo your product to hundreds of people
  • Network with CrunchMatch, our AI-powered platform. Use it to set up virtual 1:1 meetings with investors, media, potential customers or any other startup influencers
  • Exclusive access to Leading Voices Webinars: Hear top industry minds share their strategies for adapting and thriving during and after the pandemic
  • A launch article featuring your startup on TechCrunch.com
  • A YouTube video promoted on TechCrunch.com
  • Free subscription to Extra Crunch
  • Free passes to future TechCrunch events

You’ll also join the likes of Vurb, Dropbox, GetAround, Mint, Yammer, Fitbit and other members of the Startup Battlefield Alumni community. This impressive group, comprised (so far) of 902 companies, has collectively raised $9 billion and generated 115 exits.

Rejoice, you have one extra week to apply to compete in Startup Battlefield at Disrupt 2020. The new deadline expires on June 26 at 11:59 pm (PT). Don’t wait another minute. Make the most of this extended opportunity.

Is your company interested in sponsoring or exhibiting at Disrupt 2020? Contact our sponsorship sales team by filling out this form.



https://ift.tt/eA8V8J Startup Battlefield bonus: Application deadline extended one week https://ift.tt/2BncUEE

Friday, June 19, 2020

Only one week left to save on tickets to TC Early Stage

Early-stage founders, July 21 – 22 is coming up fast and that means it’s time get ready for TC Early Stage — the virtual startup conference designed with you in mind. We’ve packed this two-day event with more than 50 breakout sessions covering topics and issues early-stage startup founders need to succeed — even more so in these unprecedented times. You have just one week left to buy an early-bird ticket and save $50. Don’t wait — prices increase on June 26 at 11:59 p.m. (PT).

Early-stage founders have so much to learn. Building a startup is no mean feat under ordinary circumstances and, thanks to Covid-19, global circumstances are by no means ordinary right now. In addition to navigating a pandemic, there are plenty of other issues to keep you up at night:

How to hire the best talent? What’s the best time to raise funds? Crafting a media strategy? How to create the culture you want straight out of the gate? What the heck is wrong with my pitch deck? The questions are endless. Come to TC Early Stage and get answers to help you grow your business.

All breakout sessions feature leading experts from across the startup ecosystem. We’re adding sessions regularly to the agenda, and ticket holders receive 24-hour notice before we announce the next batch.

We’re limiting each session to about 100 people, and seats are available on a first come, first serve basis — sign up quickly to make sure you get the ones you want most.  Hot tip: If you run into a schedule conflict, you can drop a breakout session and choose another one. Plus videos of all the sessions will be available on demand to ticket holders exclusively.

Here’s a quick peek at just some of the breakout sessions.

  • How to get your first yes — Fundraising can be a bit like dominoes. Once you get one investor on board, it’s much easier to bring others along for the ride. But getting that first “yes” can be the most difficult part. Hear the do’s and don’ts of hyper early stage fundraising from Cyan Banister, venture partner  at Long Journey Ventures.
  • Hiring your early engineers — The first few employees determine a startup’s trajectory. Learn the dos and don’ts of hiring your early engineers from entrepreneur and investor Ali Partovi, founder and CEO of Neo. Hear how these hiring decisions can determine not only the type of culture you build for your employees, but also the overall success of your company.
  • How to avoid 1,000 landmines — When you’re starting your company, there are thousands of small, avoidable mistakes that can turn success into failure. Garry Tan, founder and managing partner at Initialized Capital, helps you learn how to navigate around them and maximize your chance of success.

TC Early Stage takes place on July 21 – 22, and you have just one week left to buy an early-bird ticket. Grab this rare opportunity to have your tough startup questions answered by the pros and save.

Is your company interested in sponsoring the TC Early Stage? Contact our sponsorship sales team by filling out this form.



https://ift.tt/eA8V8J Only one week left to save on tickets to TC Early Stage https://ift.tt/3fELWqR

4 months into lockdown, Eventbrite CEO Julia Hartz sees ‘exciting signs of recovery’

Eventbrite is in the unique club that nobody wants to be in,” says CEO and co-founder Julia Hartz. “Which is the first affected and one of the most directly affected businesses of the COVID-19 era.”

Hartz, who co-founded the company with her husband Kevin Hartz and Renaud Visage, joined ExtraCrunch Live recently to discuss moving forward when your core business isn’t just threatened, but wiped out completely.

“You never as a founder — at least I never — ever wondered what would happen if the whole basis of our mission was tested,” she said.

The events world was one of the first industries to feel the pandemic’s impacts and will likely be among the last to be restored. For Eventbrite, which was built on a core business of in-person events and event ticketing, it meant making swift decisions to stay afloat.

External data show some bright spots. According to an operational update from Eventbrite, paid ticket volume on its platform increased 33% in May compared to April 2020. Eventbrite is down 82% in paid tickets in May 2020 compared to the same month year ago.

“A massive market and industry dislocation and disruption. I mean, we’re a living example of that,” she said. “It’s not a victory lap. Certainly, we’re seeing some really exciting signs of recovery, but it’s still very sobering.”

Hartz offered founders at all levels advice on how to work on culture during a crisis and offered tips on communication and transparency.

We also chatted about how open consumers are to paying for virtual events, how the company curates and moderates political events and how Eventbrite plans to address racial injustice beyond, in Hartz’s words, “episodic outrage.”

We pulled out a couple of highlights for you to peruse.

How she sees events changing in the next 18 months

Structurally, events are pivoting to in-person. So it’s not just pivoting online. A good example is the Beanstalk Music Festival in Colorado, a two-day music festival that pivoted to an in-person drive-in night concert. They were wildly successful in selling tickets to this new format.

It was a testament to the strength of their community and the pent-up demand to get together and listen to great music. But what we’re seeing beyond sort of those really creative uses of new types of space and venues that are outdoors are smaller events. Classes, workshops, seminars, small meetups are starting to come back. I think that as creators start to think about how to bring their community back in person, there’s a huge element of trust that exists in this new world.

We’re helping our creators establish that trust and be very upfront about what their event goers and attendees can expect in that moment as you bring yourself together in-person again.

When she knew the business would be materially impacted  —  and what she did next



https://ift.tt/eA8V8J 4 months into lockdown, Eventbrite CEO Julia Hartz sees ‘exciting signs of recovery’ https://ift.tt/2zKGvY8

Clockwise CEO Matt Martin: How we closed an $18M Series B during a pandemic

It all started with an email from a customer: “Do you know why Bain Capital Ventures is reaching out to me about Clockwise?”

That email would mark the beginning of a journey toward closing $18 million in new funding that will dramatically accelerate my company, Clockwise. It would require getting to know a partner in lockdown, long nights assembling a pitch deck and many bleary-eyed Zoom calls with some of the best VCs in the world.

Here’s how Ajay Agarwal from Bain Capital Ventures and I established trust online, how I made high-stakes decisions in extreme economic uncertainty and how we were able to turn the pandemic’s constraints into opportunities.

Let’s start at the beginning.

Building momentum: 2016 to 2020

Clockwise was founded in late fall of 2016. We realized that, as personal as time is, our schedules inside modern work environments are intertwined by a network of calendar events and attendees. People schedule meetings without considering the preferences of colleagues by simply hunting for any available “white space” (read: time to do real work). The net effect is that our most valuable resource, time, is easy to take and almost impossible to protect.

More than two years later, in June of 2019, we launched Clockwise to the public. After years of experimentation and refinement, we delivered to the world an intelligent calendar assistant that frees up your time so you can focus on what matters. Workers soon confirmed our hunch that they’re hungry for a tool that gives them more productive hours in their day. Our rapid user growth carried throughout 2019.

By January of 2020, we were on fire. Since January 1, our user base has grown by more than 90%, expanding at a clip of well over 5% week-over-week. As people sought remote tools during shelter-in-place, our rate of growth accelerated even further.

Our growth, incredible team, top-tier existing investors (Accel and Greylock) and strong cash position meant we didn’t need to raise additional capital until the fall of 2020. While COVID-19 certainly sent shock waves through the community, I was in regular communication with a few highly engaged investors who still seemed eager to invest in the future of productivity. I felt cautiously confident more capital could wait.

But, you know, best-laid plans.

Establishing trust while sheltering in place



https://ift.tt/eA8V8J Clockwise CEO Matt Martin: How we closed an $18M Series B during a pandemic https://ift.tt/2ATM6Mh

Germany tightens online hate speech rules to make platforms send reports straight to the feds

While a French online hate speech law has just been derailed by the country’s top constitutional authority on freedom of expression grounds, Germany is beefing up hate speech rules — passing a provision that will require platforms to send suspected criminal content directly to the Federal police at the point it’s reported by a user.

The move is part of a wider push by the German government to tackle a rise in right wing extremism and hate crime — which it links to the spread of hate speech online.

Germany’s existing Network Enforcement Act (aka the NetzDG law) came into force in the country in 2017, putting an obligation on social network platforms to remote hate speech within set deadlines as tight as 24 hours for easy cases — with fines of up to €50M should they fail to comply.

Yesterday the parliament passed a reform which extends NetzDG by placing a reporting obligation on platforms which requires them to report certain types of “criminal content” to the Federal Criminal Police Office.

A wider reform of the NetzDG law remains ongoing in parallel, that’s intended to bolster user rights and transparency, including by simplifying user notifications and making it easier for people to object to content removals and have successfully appealed content restored, among other tweaks. Broader transparency reporting requirements are also looming for platforms.

The NetzDG law has always been controversial, with critics warning from the get go that it would lead to restrictions on freedom of expression by incentivizing platforms to remove content rather than risk a fine. (Aka, the risk of ‘overblocking’.) In 2018 Human Rights Watch dubbed it a flawed law — critiquing it for being “vague, overbroad, and turn[ing] private companies into overzealous censors to avoid steep fines, leaving users with no judicial oversight or right to appeal”.

The latest change to hate speech rules is no less controversial: Now the concern is that social media giants are being co-opted to help the state build massive databases on citizens without robust legal justification.

A number of amendments to the latest legal reform were rejected, including one tabled by the Greens which would have prevented the personal data of the authors of reported social media posts from being automatically sent to the police.

The political party is concerned about the risk of the new reporting obligation being abused — resulting in data on citizens who have not in fact posted any criminal content ending up with the police.

It also argues there are only weak notification requirements to inform authors of flagged posts that their data has been passed to the police, among sundry other criticisms.

The party had proposed that only the post’s content would be transmitted directly to police who would have been able to request associated personal data from the platform should there be a genuine need to investigate a particular piece of content.

The German government’s reform of hate speech law follows the 2019 murder of a pro-refugee politician, Walter Lübcke, by neo nazis — which it said was preceded by targeted threats and hate speech online.

Earlier this month police staged raids on 40 hate speech suspects across a number of states who are accused of posting “criminally relevant comments” about Lübcke, per national media.

The government also argues that hate speech online has a chilling effect on free speech and a deleterious impact on democracy by intimidating those it targets — meaning they’re unable to freely express themselves or participate without fear in society.

At the pan-EU level, the European Commission has been pressing platforms to improve their reporting around hate speech takedowns for a number of years, after tech firms signed up to voluntary EU Code of Conduct on hate speech.

It is also now consulting on wider changes to platform rules and governance — under a forthcoming Digital Services Act which will consider how much liability tech giants should face for content they’re fencing.



from Social – TechCrunch https://ift.tt/eA8V8J Germany tightens online hate speech rules to make platforms send reports straight to the feds Natasha Lomas https://ift.tt/37J9ic2
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5 resources Black entrepreneurs can leverage to build and grow

Building a business is hard; about 50% of businesses fail in the first five years. The early years of an entrepreneur’s journey can be difficult and lonely. When starting my digital services firm Fearless, I convinced my wife to rent out our home and move in with my mother so we could have an extra income while I built Fearless in my mother’s basement.

That was 10 years ago — Fearless now has over 115 employees.

That story of struggling to build a tech company and working out of a basement or garage until you “make it” is pretty common, but the barriers facing Black entrepreneurs make it harder to find success and support.

Research by the University of California, Santa Cruz states that minority-owned startups have access to less capital than their white counterparts. The right investors can offer more than just funding to early-stage companies; the connections those in the venture capitalist world have can bring an entrepreneur the new business, mentorship and employees needed to grow.

Venture capital firms like Harlem Capital and Black Angel Tech Fund are focused on changing the faces of entrepreneurship by diversifying their portfolio, but traditional venture capitalist funding is not the only way to grow your business.

There are other avenues and opportunities to get the support, financial and otherwise, to help build a successful company:

Equity crowdfunding: Similar to crowdfunding campaigns like GoFundMe or Kickstarter, equity crowdfunding allows nontraditional investors to support businesses and receive equity. Enabled through Title III of the 2012 JOBS Act’s Regulation CF, equity crowdfunding allows all companies to sell securities, whether in the form of equity in the company, debt, revenue shares, convertible notes and more. Equity crowdfunding platforms include WeFunder and LocalStake.

Mentor programs: Fearless was lucky enough to be accepted into the DoD Mentor-Protégé program early in our growth. As the oldest continuously operating federal mentor-protégé program in existence, the DoD program helped us establish and expand our footprint in the federal government contracting space. NewMe and Black Girl Ventures are two programs that specialize in mentorship for early-stage companies.

Become 8(a) certified: The federal government has a goal of awarding at least 5% of all federal contracting dollars to small, disadvantaged businesses each year. These businesses fall under the 8(a) classification. To qualify for the program, you must be a small business with 51% of ownership and control from U.S. citizens who are economically and socially disadvantaged and the owner’s adjusted gross income for three years is $250,000 or less.

The full definition of what counts as being economically and socially disadvantaged can be found in Title 13 Part 124 of the Code of Federal Regulations. Fearless has been classified as an 8(a) company for several years and we have been able to secure several contracts through the certification.

Tap into Small Business Administration resources: More than a million users visit SBA.gov to utilize tools like the SBA Business Guide and Lender Match site. By using the SBA website and reaching out to your local SBA office, you can make full use of the programs available and connect with business owners who can offer advice and mentorship.

Identify supportive bankers: Your business is your top priority and the people you engage with should view your company as a priority too. You need someone vested in your success who will advocate for you when you need them. If you meet with a banker and get a sense that you would be an account number instead of a person, then find another one. If you don’t have your banker’s personal cell phone number, and they aren’t willing to visit you at your business, then take a pass and find a true partner who supports you.

A call to action for business owners

I am putting the call out to business owners and entrepreneurs who are further along in their journey to mentor and invest in Black-owned businesses. Think back on the support you received, and be that model for someone else. Or be the mentor that you wished you had when you were starting out. Take time to invest in other Black-owned tech companies or fund the programs that do. Share your knowledge and experience with Black tech leaders.

If there isn’t a resource hub for Black entrepreneurs in your city, create one. Fearless is a small company and we have still managed to help 13 new companies get off the ground through our accelerator program, Hutch.

Hutch is an intensive 12-month program that gives entrepreneurs a blueprint for building successful digital service firms, by empowering them with the tools, mentorship and peer support they need to have a lasting impact. We think of this program kind of like a home base for our entrepreneurs, providing them with a foundation of support so they can grow without getting lost amongst bigger companies in the industry.

Help create the spaces in your community that will foster innovation and business growth.



https://ift.tt/eA8V8J 5 resources Black entrepreneurs can leverage to build and grow https://ift.tt/3fBTCKD

It’s not just about e-mail, stupid

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

Your humble Equity team is pretty tired but in good spirits, as there was a lot to talk about this week. But, first, three things to start us off:

All that said, here’s what we talked about on the show:

  • Epic Games is looking to raise a huge stack of cash (Bloomberg, VentureBeat) at a new, higher valuation. We were curious about how its lower-cut store could help it gain inroads with developers big and small. That part of the chat, the take-rate of the Fortnite parent company on the work of others was very cogent to the other main topic of the day:
  • Apple vs. DHH. So Hey launched this week, and the new spin on email quickly overshadowed its product launch by getting into a spat with Apple about whether it needs to add the ability to sign up for the paid service on iOS, thus giving Apple a cut of its revenue. DHH and crew do not agree. Apple is under fire for anti-competitive practices at home and abroad — of varying intensity, and from different sources — making this all the more spicy.
  • Upgrade raises $40 million for its credit-focused neobank.
  • Degreed raises $32 million for its upskilling platform.
  • And, at the end, our take on the current health of the startup market. There have been a sheaf of reports lately about what is going on in startup land. We gave our take.

And that’s that. Have a lovely weekend and catch up on some sleep.

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



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How Reliance Jio Platforms became India’s biggest telecom network

{rss:content:encoded} How Reliance Jio Platforms became India’s biggest telecom network https://ift.tt/2ARGXEr https://ift.tt/3ddNTJq June 19, 2020 at 01:18PM

It’s raised $5.7 billion from Facebook. It’s taken $1.5 billion from KKR, another $1.5 billion from Vista Equity Partners, $1.5 billion from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund$1.35 billion from Silver Lake, $1.2 billion from Mubadala, $870 million from General Atlantic, $750 million from Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, $600 million from TPG, and $250 million from L Catterton.

And it’s done all that in just nine weeks.

India’s Reliance Jio Platforms is the world’s most ambitious tech company. Founder Mukesh Ambani has made it his dream to provide every Indian with access to affordable and comprehensive telecommunications services, and Jio has so far proven successful, attracting nearly 400 million subscribers in just a few years.

The unparalleled growth of Reliance Jio Platforms, a subsidiary of India’s most-valued firm (Reliance Industries), has shocked rivals and spooked foreign tech companies such as Google and Amazon, both of which are now reportedly eyeing a slice of one of the world’s largest telecom markets.

What can we learn from Reliance Jio Platforms’s growth? What does the future hold for Jio and for India’s tech startup ecosystem in general?

Through a series of reports, Extra Crunch is going to investigate those questions. We previously profiled Mukesh Ambani himself, and in today’s installment, we are going to look at how Reliance Jio went from a telco upstart to the dominant tech company in four years.

The birth of a new empire

Months after India’s richest man, Mukesh Ambani, launched his telecom network Reliance Jio, Sunil Mittal of Airtel — his chief rival — was struggling in public to contain his frustration.

That Ambani would try to win over subscribers by offering them free voice calling wasn’t a surprise, Mittal said at the World Economic Forum in January 2017. But making voice calls and the bulk of 4G mobile data completely free for seven months clearly “meant that they have not gotten the attention they wanted,” he said, hopeful the local regulator would soon intervene.

This wasn’t the first time Ambani and Mittal were competing directly against each other: in 2002, Ambani had launched a telecommunications company and sought to win the market by distributing free handsets.

In India, carrier lock-in is not popular as people prefer pay-as-you-go voice and data plans. But luckily for Mittal in their first go around, Ambani’s journey was cut short due to a family feud with his brother — read more about that here.

Thursday, June 18, 2020

Trump shared a deceptive video blaming ‘fake news.’ Twitter just labeled it as fake

The same day that Facebook removed a set of Trump campaign ads for violating the company’s rules against hate symbols, the president continued to push the envelope with his social media presence. On Thursday night, Trump shared a crudely edited video of two children with a fake CNN chyron reading “Terrified todler [sic] runs from racist baby.” Ironically, the video goes on to declare “America is not the problem, fake news is.”

The video, which had 7.9 million views at the time of writing, quickly earned Twitter’s “manipulated media” warning label, indicating just under the tweet itself that the content is not what it seems. Clicking through the warning label leads to a page fact-checking the tweet, including links to the original CNN share of the video of the two kids with the framing “These two toddlers are showing us what real-life besties look like.”

The altered video tags @carpedonktum in the lower right-hand corner, signaling that it was made by the infamous meme-making Trump fan whom uses that pseudonym. Carpe Donktum, a.k.a. Logan Cook, attended the White House’s social media summit, a largely anecdotal exercise in airing unsubstantiated complaints of social media’s anti-conservative bias last year.

Trump has shared viral pro-Trump videos originating with Cook before, including a clip showing Joe Biden sneaking up behind himself and giving his own shoulders a squeeze. Cook, who runs a site called Meme World, was suspended from Twitter for a short period of time last year in the fallout from a video by a Meme World contributor depicting Trump murdering his critics in the media.



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Somehow, Twitter does not have a team dedicated to accessibility

Twitter does not have a team dedicated to accessibility, the company confirmed after a developer alluded to the fact. It’s a baffling omission for a company that employs some 4,000 people and a CEO who is often heard talking about doing the right thing.

This is not to say that Twitter is a wasteland for accessibility features, though like any major platform it has a lot of room for improvement. But features that make a site easier for everyone to navigate — not just people who use screen readers or captions — require more than part-time input from concerned employees.

That Twitter has no accessibility team was brought to broader attention in a tweet from Andrew Hayward, a Twitter developer who has himself done a lot of work on features for people with disabilities.

When people criticized Twitter’s new audio tweet feature for not having any kind of captioning, the official Twitter Support account said that it was an “early version of this feature” and that the company would be “exploring” ways to make it accessible, which didn’t help.

Hayward chimed in to say that he and the other “volunteers behind accessibility at Twitter” were “frustrated and disappointed” at the lack of consideration for people with disabilities, prompting astonishment that there is no dedicated team. He clarified that they are paid employees (not outright volunteers) but that “the work we do is notionally on top of our regular roles.” So the work he and everyone else has done has essentially been in their spare time.

A full time accessibility team may feel like a luxury at smaller companies, but Twitter can hardly claim to be small, new, or unaware of the importance of these features. So it’s difficult to understand why it would have no team — even a handful of people — whose sole responsibility they are.

I asked Twitter to confirm that the company has no dedicated accessibility team. In lieu of comment, the company offered a link to this trio of tweets: A mea culpa, a quick fix for a basic accessibility issue, and the assurance that Twitter is “looking at how we can build a dedicated group to focus on accessibility, tooling, and advocacy across all products.”

In other words, no: There’s no team, and only the very beginnings of a plan to build one. We’ll follow up with Twitter soon to see how that’s going.



from Social – TechCrunch https://ift.tt/eA8V8J Somehow, Twitter does not have a team dedicated to accessibility Devin Coldewey https://ift.tt/2AFPv1p
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Implement DevSecOps to transform your business to IT-as-code

Conduct an online search and you’ll find close to one million websites offering their own definition of DevSecOps.

Why is it that domain experts and practitioners alike continue to iterate on analogous definitions? Likely, it’s because they’re all correct. DevSecOps is a union between culture, practice and tools providing continuous delivery to the end user. It’s an attitude; a commitment to baking security into the engineering process. It’s a practice; one that prioritizes processes that deliver functionality and speed without sacrificing security or test rigor. Finally, it’s a combination of automation tools; correctly pieced together, they increase business agility.

The goal of DevSecOps is to reach a future state where software defines everything. To get to this state, businesses must realize the DevSecOps mindset across every tech team, implement work processes that encourage cross-organizational collaboration, and leverage automation tools, such as for infrastructure, configuration management and security. To make the process repeatable and scalable, businesses must plug their solution into CI/CD pipelines, which remove manual errors, standardize deployments and accelerate product iterations. Completing this process, everything becomes code. I refer to this destination as “IT-as-code.”

Why is DevSecOps important?

Whichever way you cut it, DevSecOps, as a culture, practice or combination of tools, is of increasing importance. Particularly these days, with more consumers and businesses leaning on digital, enterprises find themselves in the irrefutable position of delivering with speed and scale. Digital transformation that would’ve taken years, or at the very least would’ve undergone a period of premeditation, is now urgent and compressed into a matter of months.

The keys to a successful DevSecOps program

Security and operations are a part of this new shift to IT, not just software delivery: A DevSecOps program succeeds when everyone, from security, to operations, to development, is not only part of the technical team but able to share information for repeatable use. Security, often seen as a blocker, will uphold the “secure by design” principle by automating security code testing and reviews, and educating engineers on secure design best practices. Operations, typically reactive to development, can troubleshoot incongruent merges between engineering and production proactively. However, currently, businesses are only familiar with utilizing automation for software delivery. They don’t know what automation means for security or operations. Figuring out how to apply the same methodology throughout the whole program and therefore the whole business is critical for success.



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Bellman raises $4.5 million for its property management platform

French startup Bellman has raised a $4.5 million (€4 million) seed extension round led by Lakestar with existing investors Connect Ventures and Financière Saint-James also participating. Bellman is focused on improving residential building management.

But the startup doesn’t think you can replace this job with software altogether. Instead, Bellman thinks it can greatly improve the experience by building a tech platform and hiring in-house property managers.

In France, most residential buildings are managed by private companies specialized in property management. They handle all the relationships with third-party companies, from utilities to construction work, cleaning, insurance and more.

But most of those companies rely on emails and letters to send information. If you’re looking for some details on a change in your building, you’re going to waste a ton of time looking for that info.

That’s why Bellman has built a tech platform for both property managers and landlords. The startup’s property managers use it to centralize everything, from contact info to bills, while co-owners get email updates and a central repository with everything related to their building.

Eventually, Bellman wants to automate some of the most repetitive tasks so that property managers become more efficient. They can spend more time renegotiating contracts and working on long-term issues. This isn’t about undercutting the competition, but more about improving the experience.

When I first covered Bellman, the startup was just getting started with a dozen buildings under management. It is now working with 100 buildings, representing 2,500 people paying a monthly fee.

With today’s funding round, the company wants to do more of the same — Bellman is going to hire more in-house property managers and more people on the software development team. Right now, the startup is still focusing on the Paris area.



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DroneBase nabs $7.5 million in a slight down round to double down on its work in renewable energy

DroneBase, a Los Angeles-based provider of drone pilots for industrial services companies, has raised $7.5 million during the pandemic to double down on its work with renewable energy companies.

While chief executive Dan Burton acknowledged that the company was fundraising prior to the pandemic, the industrial lockdown actually accelerated demand for the company’s services.

Even with the increased demand, the company had to make some changes. It laid off six employees and refocused its business.

“In the past three months it’s become clear that this is a moment for drones as an industry,” Burton said. “We were really pushing hard as a company, certainly on revenue growth and harvesting all the investments we made in technology and having a clear, near-term view to profitability.”

The new round, which closed in May, was a slight down round, according to people familiar with the company’s business.

“We see raising a growth round later this year,” Burton said.

New investors in the company included Valor Equity Partners and Razi Ventures, who joined Union Square Ventures, Upfront Ventures, Hearst Ventures, Pritzker Group Venture Capital and DJI.

In all, DroneBase has raised nearly $32 million in financing, according to a company statement.

The new round will enable the company to focus on its data and analytics services that it has been developing around its core drone pilot provisioning technology — and gives DroneBase more financial wherewithal to expand its European operations under DroneBase Europe, which operates out of Germany.

“DroneBase’s expansion into renewable energy reflects our belief in the growth potential of wind and solar energy industries,” said Burton in a statement. “Since many energy companies have both wind and solar assets, we are well positioned to leverage our DroneBase Insights platform to grow our global market share in renewable energy.”  

The key application for DroneBase has been allowing wind power companies to monitor and manage their turbines, improving uptimes and spotting problems before they effect operations, the company said.

For solar power companies, DroneBase offers a network of pilots trained in infrared imaging to detect anomalies like defects or hot spots on solar panels, the company said.

“DroneBase has established themselves as the drone leader in the commercial market, and its new work in renewables will have a lasting impact on the future of energy by keeping infrastructure operational for generations,” says Sam Teller, partner at Valor Equity Partners, in a statement. “We believe DroneBase will continue to be a valuable partner in drone operations and data analysis across a multitude of industries globally.”



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Daily Crunch: Twitter rolls out audio tweets

Twitter tries to make audio tweets a thing, the U.K. backtracks on its contact-tracing app and Apple’s App Store revenue share is at the center of a new controversy.

Here’s your Daily Crunch for June 18, 2020.

1. Twitter begins rolling out audio tweets on iOS

Twitter is rolling out audio tweets, which do exactly what you’d expect — allow users to share thoughts in audio form. The feature will only be available to some iOS users for now, though the company says all iOS users should have access “in the coming weeks.” (No word on an Android or web rollout yet.)

This feature potentially allows for much longer thoughts than a 280-character tweet. Individual audio clips will be limited to 140 seconds, but if you exceed the limit, a new tweet will be threaded beneath the original.

2. UK gives up on centralized coronavirus contacts-tracing app — switches to testing model backed by Apple and Google

The U.K.’s move to abandon the centralized approach and adopt a decentralized model is hardly surprising, but the time it’s taken the government to arrive at the obvious conclusion does raise some major questions over its competence at handling technology projects.

3. Apple doubles down on its right to profit from other businesses

Apple this week is getting publicly dragged for digging in its heels over its right to take a cut of subscription-based transactions that flow through its App Store. This is not a new complaint, but one that came to a head this week over Apple’s decision to reject app updates from Basecamp’s newly launched subscription-based email app called Hey.

4. Payfone raises $100M for its mobile phone-based digital verification and ID platform

Payfone has built a platform to identify and verify people using data (but not personal data) gleaned from your mobile phone. CEO Rodger Desai said the plan for the funding is to build more machine learning into the company’s algorithms, expand to 35 more geographies and to make strategic acquisitions to expand its technology stack.

5. Superhuman’s Rahul Vohra says recession is the ‘perfect time’ to be aggressive for well-capitalized startups

We had an extensive conversation with Vohra as part of Extra Crunch Live, also covering why the email app still has more than 275,000 people on its wait list. (Extra Crunch membership required.)

6. Stockwell, the AI-vending machine startup formerly known as Bodega, is shutting down July 1

Founded in 2017 by ex-Googlers, the AI vending machine startup formerly known as Bodega first raised blood pressures — people hated how it was referenced and poorly “disrupted” mom-and-pop shops in one fell swoop — and then raised a lot of money. But ultimately, it was no match for COVID-19 and how it reshaped our lifestyles.

7. Apply for the Startup Battlefield

With TechCrunch Disrupt going virtual, this is your chance to get featured in front of our largest audience ever. The post says you’ve only got 72 hours left, but the clock has been ticking since then — the deadline is 11:59pm Pacific tomorrow, June 19. So get on it!

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.



from Social – TechCrunch https://ift.tt/2CoAoqu Daily Crunch: Twitter rolls out audio tweets Anthony Ha https://ift.tt/3hGb1nf
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Intercom announces the promotion of Karen Peacock to CEO

Three years ago almost to the day, Intercom announced that it was bringing former Intuit exec Karen Peacock on board as COO. Today, she got promoted to CEO, effective July 1st. Current CEO and company co-founder Eoghan McCabe will become Chairman.

As it turns out, these moves aren’t a coincidence. McCabe had been actively thinking about a succession plan when he hired Peacock. “When I first started talking to Eoghan three years ago, he shared with me that his vision was to hire someone as COO, who could then become the CEO at the right time and he could transition into the chairman role,” Peacock told TechCrunch.

She said while the idea was always there, they didn’t feel the need to rush the process. “We were just looking for whatever the right time was, and it wasn’t something we were expected to do in the first year or two. And now is really the right time to transition with all of the momentum that we’re seeing in the market,” she said.

She said as McCabe makes the transition away from running the company he helped found, he will still be around, and they will continue working together on things like product and marketing strategy, but Peacock brings a pedigree of her own to the new role.

Not only has she been in charge of commercial aspects of the Intercom business for the past three years, prior to that she was SVP at Intuit where she ran small business products that included QuickBooks, and grew it from a $500 million business to a hefty $2.5 billion during her tenure.

McCabe says that experience was one of the reasons he spent six months trying to convince Peacock to become COO at Intercom in 2017. “It’s really hard to find a leader that’s as well rounded, and as unique as Karen is. You know she doesn’t actually fit your typical very experienced operator,” he said. He points to her deep product background, calling her a “product nerd,” and her undergraduate degree in applied mathematics from Harvard as examples.

In spite of the pandemic, she’s taking over a company that’s still managing to grow. The company’s business messenger products, which enable companies to chat with customers online have become increasingly important during the pandemic with many brick and mortar businesses shut down and the majority of business is being conducted digitally.

“Our overall revenue is $150 million in annual recurring revenue, and a supporting data point to what we were just talking about is that our new business to up market customers through our sales teams has doubled year over year. So we’re really seeing some quite nice acceleration there,” she said.

Peacock says she wants to continue building the company and using her role to build a diverse and inclusive culture. “I believe that [diversity and inclusion] is not one person’s job, it’s all of our jobs, but we have one person who’s the center post of that (a head of D&I). And then we work with outside consulting firms as well to just try and stay in a place where we understand all of what’s possible and what we can do in the world.”

She adds, “I will say that we need to make more progress on diversity and inclusion, I wouldn’t step back and, and pat ourselves on the back and say we’ve done this perfectly. There’s a lot more that we need to do, and it’s one of the things that I’m very excited to tackle as CEO.”

According to a February Wall Street Journal article, less than 6% of women hold CEO jobs in the U.S. Peacock certainly sees this and wants to continue to mentor women as she takes over at Intercom. “It is something that I’m very passionate about. I do speak to various different groups of up and coming women leaders, and I mentor a group of women outside of Intercom,” she said. She also sits on the board at Dropbox with other women leaders like Condoleezza Rice and Meg Whitman.

Peacock says that taking over during a pandemic makes it interesting, and instead of visiting the company’s offices, she’ll be doing a lot of video conferences. But neither is she coming in cold to the company having to ramp up on the business side of things, while getting to know everyone.

“I feel very fortunate to have been with Intercom for three years, and so I know all the people and they all know me. And so I think it’s a lot easier to do that virtually than if you’re meeting people for the very first time. Similarly, I also know the business very well, and so it’s not like I’m trying to both ramp up on the business and deal with a pandemic,” she said.



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Brazil’s BizCapital raises $12 million for its online lending service

BizCapital, an online lender based in Brazil, has raised $12 million from a clutch of investors, including the German development finance institution, the corporate venture capital fund of MercadoLibre and existing investors Quona Capital, Monashees, Chromo INvest and 42K Investments.

“This latest round reinforces investors’ confidence in BizCapital’s ability to innovate in the Latin American credit market amid challenging circumstances caused by Covid-19,” said Francisco Ferreira, the company’s chief executive, in a statement. “We have seen four times as many business credit inquiries on our site year over year, and we are ready to serve them.” 

Founded in 2016, the company pitches itself as a fast and reliable way to access financing for working capital. It already has more than 5,000 customers across 1,200 cities in Brazil, according to a statement.

The company said it would use the money to develop new products for Brazilian small and medium-sized businesses and will expand into new distribution channels.

“With this new round of capital, we will continue to widen our product lineup, helping entrepreneurs during the entire lifecycle of their companies,” said Ferreira, in a statement. “There’s never been a more important time for innovation.” 

In a reflection of their American counterparts, Brazil’s venture capital firms had slowed down the pace of their investments, but now it seems like a slew of new deals are coming to market.

The investment reflects the long-term confidence that investors have in the increasingly central position e-commerce and technology-enabled services will have in the future of the Latin American economy.



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Geek+, the Amazon Kiva of China, lands $200 million Series C

Geek+, a Beijing-based startup that makes warehouse fulfillment robots similar to those of Amazon’s Kiva, said Thursday that it has closed over $200 million in a Series C funding round.

That bumps total capital raised by the five-year-old company to date to nearly $390 million. The new round, completed in two parts, was separately led by GGV Capital and D1 Capital Partners in the summer of 2019, and V Fund earlier this year. Other participants included Warburg Pincus, Redview Capital and Vertex Ventures.

The company said it will continue to develop robotics solutions tailored to logistics, ramp up its robot-as-a-service monetization model and expand partnerships.

Geek+ represents a rank of Chinese robotics solution providers that are increasingly appealing to clients around the world. The startup itself boasts more than 10,000 robots deployed worldwide, serving 300 customers and projects in over 20 countries.

Just last month, Geek+ announced a partnership with Conveyco, an order fulfillment and distribution center system integrator operating in North America, to distribute its autonomous mobile robots (ARMs) across the continent. Leading this part of its business is Mark Messina, the startup’s chief operating officer for the Americas who previously worked at Amazon, where he oversaw mechanical engineering for the Kiva robotics system.

Geek+’s ambitious move overseas came amid continuous pressure from the Trump administration to boycott Chinese tech players. Back home, Geek+ has worked closely with retail giants such as Alibaba and Suning to replace human pickers in warehouses.



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After IPO delays, DoorDash confirms $400M raise

DoorDash has confirmed that it is raising “approximately $400 million” in a Series H round of funding.

Earlier today, Axios reported that the company was looking for roughly $400 million round at a post-money valuation of $16 billion. DoorDash clarified in a statement provided to TechCrunch that the valuation is slightly under the $16 billion mark.

The round was expected, though the final valuation of the deal came in $1 billion higher than earlier reports had indicated.

DoorDash, the popular American food delivery company, has aggressively raised capital throughout its life including a huge Series G in late 2019 that valued it near $13 billion. According to the company, new investors Durable Capital Partners and Fidelity led the round, along with what it described as “existing investors, funds and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates.”

That DoorDash raised more capital from private investors is itself a quirk of 2020; the company privately filed to go public earlier this year, plans that were pushed back likely due to COVID-19, and the pandemic’s ensuing economic unrest. But DoorDash is nothing if not capital-hungry and raising an IPO-sized haul of cash from private investors is not-only on-brand, but essential given the nature of the company’s business.

The domestic food-delivery giant is at war with Uber’s Uber Eats service, the Postmates delivery service, and the Grubhub-Just Eat Takeaway hybrid. This highly competitive market keeps capital requirements high.

It’s not exactly clear that DoorDash actually needed to take the money or hold off on a public listing. Other companies, like Vroom, were undeterred by what looked like weak economics in their core businesses and made the jump to public markets. Perhaps DoorDash will go public soon, as well,  this new capital be damned. But if it does use its new check to hold off on going public, the question becomes what market conditions is DoorDash waiting for?



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