Good and bad board members (and what to do about them)

Ryan Caldbeck, co-founder and former CEO of consumer-brands-focused crowdfunding site CircleUp, recently published an email he’d written to a former director on the board of the company.

According to Caldbeck, he wrote the letter after CircleUp had bought out the investor’s firm because he wanted to provide constructive feedback, given that this individual’s “involvement was incredibly difficult for all of CircleUp and our board,” as he explained to this person, whose identity was shielded.

The saga begged questions about what happens behind the scenes at startups and about board composition specifically. But Caldbeck’s situation may be more anomalous than not, suggest some veterans of the industry who have common sense advice around how to avoid problematic board members and how to deal with them if they can’t be avoided.

First, and most obviously, get to know a potential board member as well as possible because who winds up as a director with your company can be a “life-changing decision” in both good and terrible ways, says Joel Peterson, a professor at Stanford’s business school, a former chairman of JetBlue Airways and the founding partner of Peterson Partners, a Salt Lake City-based firm that invests directly in startups and has stakes in many venture funds.

Peterson’s advice is to “interview investors just as they’re interviewing you,” including not only to get a sense for whether someone is knowledgeable and shares your same values but also to get a sense for how much time they have for your company. In his view, venture capitalists are “often the worst board members while angel investors are often really good because they really care about the entrepreneur and have a more hands-on connection with them while they’re developing the business.”

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J Good and bad board members (and what to do about them) https://ift.tt/2Tpuhu7

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Decrypted: How Twitter was hacked, GitHub DMCA backfires

One week to the U.S. presidential election and things are getting spicy.

It’s not just the rhetoric — hackers are actively working to disrupt the election, officials have said, and last week they came with a concrete example and an unusually quick pointing of blame.

On Wednesday night, Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe blamed Iran for an email operation designed to intimidate voters in Florida into voting for President Trump “or else.” Ratcliffe, who didn’t take any questions from reporters and has been accused of politicizing the typically impartial office, said Iran had used voter registration data — which is largely public in the U.S. — to send emails that looked like they came from the far-right group the Proud Boys. Google security researchers also linked the campaign to Iran, which denied claims of its involvement. It’s estimated about 2,500 emails went through in the end, with the rest getting caught in spam filters.

The announcement was lackluster in detail. But experts like John Hultquist, who heads intelligence analysis at FireEye-owned security firm Mandiant, said the incident is “clearly aimed at undermining voter confidence,” just as the Russians attempted during the 2016 election.

 

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THE BIG PICTURE

Twitter was hacked using a fake VPN portal, New York investigation finds

The hackers who broke into Twitter’s network used a fake VPN page to steal the credentials — and two-factor authentication code — of an employee, an investigation by New York’s Department of Financial Affairs found. The state tax division got involved after the hackers then hijacked user accounts using an internal “admin tool” to spread a cryptocurrency scam.

In a report published last week, the department said the hackers called several Twitter employees and used social engineering to trick one employee into entering their username and password on a site that looked like the company’s VPN portal, which most employees use to access the network from home during the pandemic.

Twitter Hack Update: We knew the attackers used the phone & pretended to be IT Support, but now we know the criminals specifically said they were calling about VPN issues, taking advantage of COVID-19 remote work strain. Sadly, these pretexts work often. https://t.co/kKe8XO3MCJ pic.twitter.com/fpE6Afcij1

— Rachel Tobac (@RachelTobac) October 20, 2020

“As the employee entered their credentials into the phishing website, the hackers would simultaneously enter the information into the real Twitter website. This false log-in generated a [two-factor authentication] notification requesting that the employees authenticate themselves, which some of the employees did,” wrote the report. Once onto the network using the employee’s VPN credentials, the hackers used that access to investigate how to access the company’s internal tools.

Twitter said in September that its employees would receive hardware security keys, which would make it far more difficult for a repeat phishing attack to be successful.

Open-source YouTube download tool hit by DMCA takedown, but backfires

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J Decrypted: How Twitter was hacked, GitHub DMCA backfires https://ift.tt/35E8WmD

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Decrypted: How Twitter was hacked, GitHub DMCA backfires

One week to the U.S. presidential election and things are getting spicy.

It’s not just the rhetoric — hackers are actively working to disrupt the election, officials have said, and last week they came with a concrete example and an unusually quick pointing of blame.

On Wednesday night, Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe blamed Iran for an email operation designed to intimidate voters in Florida into voting for President Trump “or else.” Ratcliffe, who didn’t take any questions from reporters and has been accused of politicizing the typically impartial office, said Iran had used voter registration data — which is largely public in the U.S. — to send emails that looked like they came from the far-right group the Proud Boys. Google security researchers also linked the campaign to Iran, which denied claims of its involvement. It’s estimated about 2,500 emails went through in the end, with the rest getting caught in spam filters.

The announcement was lackluster in detail. But experts like John Hultquist, who heads intelligence analysis at FireEye-owned security firm Mandiant, said the incident is “clearly aimed at undermining voter confidence,” just as the Russians attempted during the 2016 election.

 

---

THE BIG PICTURE

Twitter was hacked using a fake VPN portal, New York investigation finds

The hackers who broke into Twitter’s network used a fake VPN page to steal the credentials — and two-factor authentication code — of an employee, an investigation by New York’s Department of Financial Affairs found. The state tax division got involved after the hackers then hijacked user accounts using an internal “admin tool” to spread a cryptocurrency scam.

In a report published last week, the department said the hackers called several Twitter employees and used social engineering to trick one employee into entering their username and password on a site that looked like the company’s VPN portal, which most employees use to access the network from home during the pandemic.

Twitter Hack Update: We knew the attackers used the phone & pretended to be IT Support, but now we know the criminals specifically said they were calling about VPN issues, taking advantage of COVID-19 remote work strain. Sadly, these pretexts work often. https://t.co/kKe8XO3MCJ pic.twitter.com/fpE6Afcij1

— Rachel Tobac (@RachelTobac) October 20, 2020

“As the employee entered their credentials into the phishing website, the hackers would simultaneously enter the information into the real Twitter website. This false log-in generated a [two-factor authentication] notification requesting that the employees authenticate themselves, which some of the employees did,” wrote the report. Once onto the network using the employee’s VPN credentials, the hackers used that access to investigate how to access the company’s internal tools.

Twitter said in September that its employees would receive hardware security keys, which would make it far more difficult for a repeat phishing attack to be successful.

Open-source YouTube download tool hit by DMCA takedown, but backfires

from Social – TechCrunch https://ift.tt/eA8V8J Decrypted: How Twitter was hacked, GitHub DMCA backfires Zack Whittaker https://ift.tt/35E8WmD
via IFTTT

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Hubilo raises $4.5 million, led by Lightspeed, to focus on virtual events

Earlier this year, the founders of event analytics platform Hubilo pivoted to become a virtual events platform to survive the impact of COVID-19. Today, the startup announced it has raised a $4.5 million seed round, led by Lightspeed, and says it expects to exceed $10 million bookings run rate and host over one million attendees over the next few months.

The round also included angel investors Freshworks chief executive officer Girish Mathrubootham; former LinkedIn India CEO Nishant Rao; Slideshare co-founder Jonathan Boutelle; and Helpshift CEO Abinash Tripathy.

Hubilo’s clients have included the United Nations, Roche, Fortune, GITEX, IPI Singapore, Tech In Asia, Infocomm Asia and Clarion Events. The startup is headquartered in San Francisco, but about 12% of its sales are currently from Southeast Asia, and it plans to further scale in the region. It will also focus on markets in the United States, Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Event discovery network IRL raises $16M Series B after refocusing on virtual events

Vaibhav Jain, Hubilo’s founder and CEO, told TechCrunch that many of its customers before the pandemic were enterprises and governments that used its platform to help organize large events. Those were also the first to stop hosting in-person events.

In February, “we knew that most, if not all, physical events were getting postponed or cancelled globally. To counter the drop in demand for offline events, we agreed to extend the contracts by six more months at no cost,” Jain said. “However, this was not enough to retain our clients and most of them either cancelled the contracts or put the contract on hold indefinitely.”

As a result, Hubilo’s revenue dropped to zero in February. With about 30 employees and reserves for only three months, Jain said the company had to chose between shutting down or finding an alternative model. Hubilo’s team created a MVP (minimum viable product) virtual event platform in less than a month and started by convincing a client to use it for free. That first virtual event was hosted in March and “since then, we’ve never looked back,” said Jain.

This means Hubilo is now competing with other virtual event platforms, like Cvent and Hopin (which was used to host TechCrunch Disrupt). Jain said his company differentiates by giving organizers more chances to rebrand their virtual spaces; focusing on sponsorship opportunities that include contests, event feeds and virtual lounges to increase attendee engagement; and providing data analytic features that include integration with Salesforce, Marketo and Hubspot.

With so many events going virtual that “Zoom fatigue” and “webinar fatigue” have now become catchphrases, event organizers have to not only convince people to buy tickets, but also keep them engaged during an event.

Hubilo “gamifies” the experience of attending a virtual event with features like its Leaderboard. This enables organizers to assign points for things like watching a session, visiting a virtual booth or messaging someone. Then they can give prizes to the attendees with the most points. Jain said the Leaderboard is Hubilo’s most used feature.

Spotify is developing a ‘virtual events’ feature

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J Hubilo raises $4.5 million, led by Lightspeed, to focus on virtual events https://ift.tt/2HzpbZK

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This startup wants to fix the broken structure of internships

Internships are an opportunity for students to experiment with new career paths and land a full-time offer ahead of graduation. For companies, the weeks-long programs help recruit and train job-ready hires.

While the stakes are high, the coronavirus-spurred office closures and market volatility made a number of tech companies slim down or cancel their internship programs. Similar to remote schooling, the startups that kept their programs had a huge hurdle to face: How do you teach and train students across the world about your company?

That’s where Symba, a Techstars alum, comes in. The 12-person startup created a white-label software tool to help companies, including Robinhood and Genentech, create an online space to communicate and collaborate with their now-distributed interns.

Tech’s coveted internships are getting canceled due to COVID-19

“Every year, organizations are reinventing the wheel and starting their internship program from scratch,” Ahva Sadeghi, CEO of Symba, said. “It’s like, you’re spending so much money, this is a core part of your recruitment, but you’re not invested in an infrastructure to make sure it’s sustainable.”

Symba sells a plug-and-play workspace for both interns and managers. Interns sign into Symba through a branded landing page and are brought into a workspace. They can then toggle between feedback, community, profiles and projects. There’s also an entire area for onboarding tutorials and company history.

Interns are brought to a workspace upon login. Image via Symba.

Sadeghi is joined by co-founder and CTO Nikita Gupta, who built the entire site from scratch.

Symba was built with a big focus on creating channels for feedback between interns and managers. There is a tab dedicated solely to feedback, where managers can consistently rank their direct reports on a five-star rating scale across various skills. Interns are also able to request feedback.

Each user is invited to create a profile so other interns can reach out and learn about their cohort. While Symba wants to be where interns live during their internship, there’s no direct messaging mechanisms within the web-based platform. Instead, Symba has embedded a Slack integration for users who want to talk directly.

The community board allows interns to meet other interns and chat. Image via Symba.

Managers, on the other hand, are able to log in, assign tasks and check on progress for their direct reports. Feedback is also tracked during the entirety of the internship, to help see who has made progress and deserves a potential return offer.

Because interns come in for only eight to 12 weeks, she says the traditional internship onboarding process — which includes bringing them all onto a company’s full-time tech stack — could create chaos for the organization. Symba wants to be a low-lift alternative.

Sadeghi says that customers have been attracted to the alumni features in their platform, which allow managers to engage interns after the program is complete. The applicant-tracking system works to keep potential hires in the fold of the company.

So far, Symba is optimistic that the tool is working. Users log into the product an average of six to nine times per day, and there have been more than 15,000 intern-projects created on Symba.

The company declined to disclose revenue, citing the stage of its business, but said that it charges companies $30 to $50 per user per month for the product. The average size of a Symba cohort is 80, but they have had customers who bring more than 2,000 interns onto the product. It only works with companies who pay their interns.

Founders don’t need to be full-time to start raising venture capital

A hurdle of Symba will be the seasonality of its revenue. Because most internships are in the summer, Symba will likely find most growth opportunities during that three-month period.

Symba’s early growth is directly related to the pandemic, as the fear of the virus closed offices, and, in turn, shuttered internship programs. Symba’s success will hinge on if the team can convince companies that an online workspace for interns is a necessary product even when offices reopen.

Beyond translating into a post-pandemic world, Symba wants to be a solution for clients such as bootcamps, accelerators or fellowships. If it’s able to land year-round clients, it will be able to balance the seasonality of its current revenue of summer internships.

The success so far is promising: Early momentum has helped Symba raise $750,000 from a number of investors, including 1517 Fund, January Ventures and Hustle Fund.

https://ift.tt/3kvoCP7 This startup wants to fix the broken structure of internships https://ift.tt/34zAAC5

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What would Databricks be worth in a 2021 IPO?

TechCrunch recently covered Databricks’ financial performance in 2020, contrasting its recent performance to some historical 2019 data that the company shared.

The data-and-analysis-focused unicorn grew its annual run rate 75% to $350 million, compared to its year-ago quarter, meaning that the firm is growing well at scale. TechCrunch described it as “an obvious IPO candidate” at the time, a little under two weeks ago.

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Since that point, Bloomberg reported that Databricks is indeed charging ahead with an IPO, a transaction that could come as soon as the first half of 2021, writing that it “has held talks with banks but has yet to hire underwriters” for its flotation.

That is enough news for us to have fun with. So, this morning let’s collate all that we know about the company’s financial performance, mix in some current market valuation metrics, and do some light projecting of Databricks’ growth. Our question? What might the company be worth at the end of Q1 or Q2 next year.

Of course, there are some worrying signs on the horizon that the stock market is about to shift lower, but, hey, there’s no need to be a pessimist this early on a Monday morning. Let’s get into the math.

Databricks’ potential IPO valuations

Starting with some history, Databricks was worth $6.2 billion after its September, 2019 Series F round of capital. The company raised $400 million in the transaction, its largest round to-date by $150 million. That capital should get the company to an H1 2020 IPO, provided that its spending didn’t go all old-school Dropbox.

https://ift.tt/37CXSXp What would Databricks be worth in a 2021 IPO? https://ift.tt/3jt9joL

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Water quality and distribution monitoring software Ketos raises $18 million

Water quality and logistics monitoring software Ketos has raised $15 million from a group of investors to take advantage of the growing demand for better water management tools and technologies.

The potential for more stringent regulatory oversight of industrial water use and wastewater management from local, state and federal government, coupled with increasing consumer and investor demands for better corporate environmental stewardship, is driving an unprecedented adoption of technology and services aimed at increasing conservation and reducing waste across industries.

Water monitoring can also provide relevant information to public officials about the potential for disease outbreaks and other health-related issues in a population.

Recently, monitoring wastewater streams has been used to detect outbreaks of the virus that causes COVID-19.

The renewed attention on water is one reason why an investment arm of the banking giant Citi joined lead investor Motley Fool Ventures and Illuminated Funds Group to come as new investors into Ketos. They joined existing backers like Ajax Strategies, Better Ventures, Broadway Angels, Plum Valley Ventures and Rethink Impact.

Silicon Valley Bank provided the company with $3 million in debt financing.

The company said it would use the funding to develop new capabilities for its combined hardware and software service that provides information into water quality and the existence of potential damage to water pipes for distribution and disposal of water.

“Creating one of the largest centralized data lakes of water quality insights — with information on heavy-metal toxins, coupled with location-based mapping and potential contamination sources — the potential for what machine learning and artificial intelligence can achieve is limitless,” said Meena Sankaran, the company’s founder and chief executive.

One other selling point is the company’s use of machine learning to predict where problems with water systems might arise — avoiding the need for more costly investments into infrastructure.

“KETOS is truly disrupting the water intelligence industry with the data it captures autonomously (remotely controlled) and makes available to its customers for forecasting water management issues, which is even more top of mind as the world battles COVID,” said Ollen Douglass, managing director of Motley Fool Ventures, in a statement. “For the first time, it is possible to use predictive modeling and much needed mission-critical insights with $0 capital infrastructure investments, to build, take action and make informed decisions about a water network.”

Microsoft commits to putting more water than it consumes back into the ecosystems where it operates by 2030

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J Water quality and distribution monitoring software Ketos raises $18 million https://ift.tt/2TsS4cR

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Ant Group could raise as much as $34.5B in IPO in what would be world’s largest IPO

The long-anticipated IPO of Alibaba-affiliated Chinese fintech giant Ant Group could raise tens of billions of dollars in a dual-listing on both the Shanghai and Hong Kong exchanges.

Shares for the company formerly known as Ant Financial are expected to price at around HK$80, or roughly 68 to 69 Chinese Yuan. The company is selling around 134 million shares in the Hong Kong portion of its debut, worth around $17.25 billion American dollars at HK$80 apiece.

Given that the share sale is expected to raise a similar amount of money from its Shanghai listing, the company’s IPO could raise as much as $34.5 billion. That tally would make the debut the largest in history, besting the recent Aramco IPO that raised around $29.4 billion.

Alibaba owns a 33% stake in Ant Group. At its currently expected share price, Ant Group would be worth as much as $310 billion, according to the New York Times, or $313 billion per CNBC.

Ant Group’s huge IPO fits its own epic scale. As TechCrunch reported in July, Ant had around 1.3 billion annual active users in March of this year, a number that could have risen in recent quarters. Ant’s Alipay competes with Tencent’s WeChat Pay in the huge and lucrative Chinese market.

The Ant Group IPO could be viewed as a moment in which the United States stock markets showed weakness. When Alibaba went public back in 2014, it did so via the New York Stock Exchange. The Chinese tech giant later dual-listed on the Hong Kong exchange. To see Ant Group dual-list on the Hong Kong and Shanghai indices without a float in New York shows what is possible outside of the United States when it comes to capital financing.

Fintech startups have broadly seen their fortunes rise during 2020, as the global pandemic changed consumer behaviour and moved more commerce and payments into the digital realm. And IPOs have generally performed strongly as well, meaning that Ant Group could find a few tailwinds for its equity when it begins to trade.

Ant has not been content to stick to its knitting, keeping itself busy by investing in other startups. The company took a small stake in installment-payment service Klarna earlier this year, for example.

At a valuation of more than $310 billion, Ant Group would be worth about as much as JPMorgan Chase, the most valuable American bank today. It would also best U.S.-based digital payments leader PayPal, which is currently valued at $236 billion, as well as Square, which is valued at $77 billion.

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J Ant Group could raise as much as $34.5B in IPO in what would be world’s largest IPO https://ift.tt/3mhS0ca

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Equity Monday: SAP’s warning, and IPO updates for both Airbnb and Databricks

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

This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest big news, chats about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. You can follow the show on Twitter here and myself here — and don’t forget to check out last Friday’s episode that includes some high-quality Quibi jokes, if I recall correctly.

This was a busy morning, with lots to talk about it. Here’s what we got into:

• Headlines this morning that caught our eye included falling global stock markets in the wake of rising COVID-19 cases; SAP torched tens of billions of market cap by missing earnings expectations and cutting its forecast; and Ant Group will raise a bajillion dollars in its impending IPO.
• In unicorn news, Databricks is prepping an IPO that we already know a lot about. And Airbnb’s shares are splitting ahead of its own IPO, a deal that we are expecting any day now.
• The PrimaryBid round was super cool, with TechCrunch covering the $50 million deal. I spoke with the company’s CEO last week about the deal, sharing some of those notes on the show. And VSPN raised nearly $100 million in an esports round that was more than cool.
• On the SAP front, here’s the question: Is the earnings miss and forecast miss a one-off, or something that a number of tech companies are going to suffer from? If the former, it’s not that big of a deal. If the latter, SAP could be the harbinger of a reset in tech valuations.

Shoutout Lewis Hamilton and that G2 series. Ok, chat Thursday!

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

Why VCs are dumping money into insurance marketplaces

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J Equity Monday: SAP’s warning, and IPO updates for both Airbnb and Databricks https://ift.tt/3jwkrl0

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Linktree raises $10.7M for its lightweight, link-centric user profiles

Simple, link-centric user profiles might seem might not seem like a particularly ambitious idea, but it’s been big enough for Linktree.

The Melbourne startup says that 8 million users — whether they’re celebrities like Selena Gomez and Dua Lipa or brands like HBO and Red Bull — have created profiles on the platform, with those profiles receiving more than 1 billion visitors in September.

Plus, there are more than 28,000 new users signing up every month.

“This category didn’t exist when we started,” CEO Alex Zaccaria told me. “We created this category.”

Zaccaria said that he and his co-founders Anthony Zaccaria and Nick Humphreys created Linktree to solve a problem they were facing at their digital marketing agency Bolster. Instagram doesn’t allow users to include links in posts — all you get is a single link in your profile, prompting the constant “link in bio” reminder when someone wants to promote something.

Meanwhile, most of Bolster’s clients come from music and entertainment, where a single link can’t support what Zaccaria said is a “quite fragmented” business model. After all, an artist might want to point fans to their latest streaming album, upcoming concert dates, an online store for merchandise and more. A website could do the job in theory, but they can be clunky or slow on mobile, with users probably giving up before they finally reach the desired page.

Linktree founders Anthony Zaccaria, Alex Zaccaria and Nick Humphreys

So instead of constantly swapping out links in Instagram and other social media profiles, a Linktree user includes one evergreen link to their Linktree profile, which they can update as necessary. Selena Gomez, for example, links to her latest songs and videos, but also her Rare Beauty cosmetics brand, her official store and articles about her nonprofit work.

Zaccaria said that after launching the product in 2016, the team quickly discovered that “a lot more people had the same problem,” leading them to fully separate Linktree and Bolster two years ago. Since then, the company hasn’t raised any outside funding — until now, with a $10.7 million Series A led by Insight Partners and AirTree Ventures. (Update: Strategic investors in the round include Twenty Minute VC’s Harry Stebbings, Patreon CTO Sam Yam and Culture Amp CTO Doug English.)

“We had the option to just continue to grow sustainably, but we wanted to pour some fuel on the fire,” Zaccaria said.

In fact, Linktree has already grown from 10 to 50 employees this year. And while the company started out by solving a problem for Instagram users, Zaccaria described it as evolving into a much broader platform that can “unify your entire digital ecosystem” and “democratize digital presence.” He said that while some customers continue to maintain “a giant, brand-immersive website,” for others, Linktree is completely replacing the idea of a standalone website.

Zaccaria added that Instagram only represents a small amount of Linktree’s current traffic, while nearly 25% of that traffic now comes from direct visitors.

Image Credits: Linktree

Black Lives Matter has also been a big part of Linktree’s recent growth, with activists and other users who want to support the movement using their profiles to point visitors to websites where they can donate, learn more and get involved. In fact, Linktree even introduced a Black Lives Matter banner over the summer that anyone could add to their profile.

Linktree is free to use, but you have to pay $6 a month for Pro features like video links, link thumbnails and social media icons.

Zaccaria said that the new funding will allow the startup to add more “functionality and analytics.” He’s particularly eager to grow the data science and analytics team, though he emphasized that Linktree does not collect personally identifiable information or monetize visitor data in any way — he just wants to provide more data to Linktree users.

In a statement, Insight Managing Director Jeff Lieberman said:

As the internet becomes increasingly fragmented, brands, publishers, and influencers need a solution to streamline their content sharing and connect their social media followers to their entire online ecosystem, ultimately increasing brand awareness and revenue. Linktree has successfully created this new “microsite” category enabling companies to monetize the next generation of the internet economy via a single interactive hub. The impressive traction and growing number of customers Linktree has gained over the last few months demonstrates its proven market fit, and we could not be more excited to work with the Linktree team as they transition to the ScaleUp phase of growth.

Tap Bio’s mini-sites solve Instagram’s profile link problem

https://ift.tt/2HumhWG Linktree raises $10.7M for its lightweight, link-centric user profiles https://ift.tt/2HsIfJH

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Linktree raises $10.7M for its lightweight, link-centric user profiles

{rss:content:encoded} Linktree raises $10.7M for its lightweight, link-centric user profiles https://ift.tt/2HsIfJH https://ift.tt/2HumhWG October 26, 2020 at 02:00PM

Simple, link-centric user profiles might seem might not seem like a particularly ambitious idea, but it’s been big enough for Linktree.

The Melbourne startup says that 8 million users — whether they’re celebrities like Selena Gomez and Dua Lipa or brands like HBO and Red Bull — have created profiles on the platform, with those profiles receiving more than 1 billion visitors in September.

Plus, there are more than 28,000 new users signing up every month.

“This category didn’t exist when we started,” CEO Alex Zaccaria told me. “We created this category.”

Zaccaria said that he and his co-founders Anthony Zaccaria and Nick Humphreys created Linktree to solve a problem they were facing at their digital marketing agency Bolster. Instagram doesn’t allow users to include links in posts — all you get is a single link in your profile, prompting the constant “link in bio” reminder when someone wants to promote something.

Meanwhile, most of Bolster’s clients come from music and entertainment, where a single link can’t support what Zaccaria said is a “quite fragmented” business model. After all, an artist might want to point fans to their latest streaming album, upcoming concert dates, an online store for merchandise and more. A website could do the job in theory, but they can be clunky or slow on mobile, with users probably giving up before they finally reach the desired page.

Linktree founders Anthony Zaccaria, Alex Zaccaria and Nick Humphreys

So instead of constantly swapping out links in Instagram and other social media profiles, a Linktree user includes one evergreen link to their Linktree profile, which they can update as necessary. Selena Gomez, for example, links to her latest songs and videos, but also her Rare Beauty cosmetics brand, her official store and articles about her nonprofit work.

Zaccaria said that after launching the product in 2016, the team quickly discovered that “a lot more people had the same problem,” leading them to fully separate Linktree and Bolster two years ago. Since then, the company hasn’t raised any outside funding — until now, with a $10.7 million Series A led by Insight Partners and AirTree Ventures. (Update: Strategic investors in the round include Twenty Minute VC’s Harry Stebbings, Patreon CTO Sam Yam and Culture Amp CTO Doug English.)

“We had the option to just continue to grow sustainably, but we wanted to pour some fuel on the fire,” Zaccaria said.

In fact, Linktree has already grown from 10 to 50 employees this year. And while the company started out by solving a problem for Instagram users, Zaccaria described it as evolving into a much broader platform that can “unify your entire digital ecosystem” and “democratize digital presence.” He said that while some customers continue to maintain “a giant, brand-immersive website,” for others, Linktree is completely replacing the idea of a standalone website.

Zaccaria added that Instagram only represents a small amount of Linktree’s current traffic, while nearly 25% of that traffic now comes from direct visitors.

Image Credits: Linktree

Black Lives Matter has also been a big part of Linktree’s recent growth, with activists and other users who want to support the movement using their profiles to point visitors to websites where they can donate, learn more and get involved. In fact, Linktree even introduced a Black Lives Matter banner over the summer that anyone could add to their profile.

Linktree is free to use, but you have to pay $6 a month for Pro features like video links, link thumbnails and social media icons.

Zaccaria said that the new funding will allow the startup to add more “functionality and analytics.” He’s particularly eager to grow the data science and analytics team, though he emphasized that Linktree does not collect personally identifiable information or monetize visitor data in any way — he just wants to provide more data to Linktree users.

In a statement, Insight Managing Director Jeff Lieberman said:

As the internet becomes increasingly fragmented, brands, publishers, and influencers need a solution to streamline their content sharing and connect their social media followers to their entire online ecosystem, ultimately increasing brand awareness and revenue. Linktree has successfully created this new “microsite” category enabling companies to monetize the next generation of the internet economy via a single interactive hub. The impressive traction and growing number of customers Linktree has gained over the last few months demonstrates its proven market fit, and we could not be more excited to work with the Linktree team as they transition to the ScaleUp phase of growth.

Tap Bio’s mini-sites solve Instagram’s profile link problem

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UK’s PrimaryBid raises $50M as its retail investing platform sees a Covid-19 surge of activity

One of the biggest trends in the world of fintech in the last several years has been the emergence (and surging popularity) of startups building platforms that help more people take a more proactive role in the world of financial services. Today, one of the more promising hopefuls building an investing service in the UK is announcing a significant growth round after seeing a surge of attention this year in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.

PrimaryBid, which allows retail investors (that is, ordinary and not professional investors) the ability to invest in new shares issued by public companies, has raised $50 million in new funding of its own. The funding comes on the heels of the startup working alongside larger investment banks to get retail investors in on 41 capital raising efforts for UK publicly-listed companies and trusts since April 2020.

“The COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated the effectiveness of the public markets, with companies recapitalising quickly and efficiently,” said Anand Sambasivan, CEO of PrimaryBid, in a statement. “Our technology has allowed thousands of retail investors to participate on equal terms with institutional investors, unlocking a large and important source of liquidity and long-term share ownership for corporate issuers. The response from Boards and their advisers to our solution has been excellent: they recognise our digital solution for retail inclusion brings together both good governance and best execution.”

PrimaryBid plans to use the funds to hire more talent, invest in its tech platform, build out more partnerships and expand internationally.

Unlike the investors on its platform, this Series B is coming from a list of big-name strategic players and VCs. They include the London Stock Exchange Group, Draper Esprit, OMERS Ventures, Fidelity International Strategic Ventures and ABN AMRO Ventures, as well as previous backers Pentech and Outward Ventures.

The LSE Group might provide a clue to which geographies might be future targets for PrimaryBid: the Borsa Italiana exchange in Italy, as well as the Turquoise pan-European equities market are also part of the group’s footprint.

“This investment builds on our collaboration with PrimaryBid and is part of London Stock Exchange Group’s commitment to broadening retail investor access to public equity markets,” said Charlie Walker, Head of Equity and Fixed Income, Primary Markets at London Stock Exchange plc, in a statement. “Through PrimaryBid’s innovative offering, retail investors have been able to access capital raisings on the same terms as institutional investors, supporting the U.K.’s public companies by providing additional capital and liquidity. PrimaryBid has become an important part of the U.K.’s capital raising ecosystem and we look forward to working with them to further enhance retail investor access to capital markets within the U.K. and globally.”

The startup is not disclosing its valuation with this round, which follows a Series A in September 2019 of $8.6 million. This latest Series B has been the subject of rumors since this summer (and most recently a report last night that the round had finally closed),

PrimaryBid’s growth comes at a time when a number of startups have been building investment services targeting niche opportunities, and services for those who are underserved. Rally last month demonstrated that there is definitely money and opportunity in providing a way to invest in (not buy) collectibles; Yieldstreet has built a platform to introduce investors to new investment classes too like shipping; and companies like Stash, Revolut and Robinhood are also bringing trading and investing to a new class of consumers.

That doesn’t mean that new entrants focusing on smaller investors and niche opportunities in the investment market are without their own challenges. Revolut has faced controversies around the conduct of executives (however, these appear to have been resolved: it’s still raising hundreds of millions of dollars). YieldStreet recently sued (and won) a case against a ship recycling company, but at the same time it appears to be under investigation for some of its practices. And Robinhood indefinitely postponed its plans to launch in the UK after putting its expansion plans on hold earlier this year.

PrimaryBid’s recent growth has come on the back of a choppy year in the public markets and the world of investment.

Just as Covid-19 disrupted other aspects of our life, the early months of the pandemic saw a major freeze descend on the world of trading. With many unsure of how future months might play out in terms of local and global economics, the IPO market all but dried up and trading slowed down.

Then, things began to thaw, with activity picking up gradually and effectively under new terms: for now, everything is remote. And what’s more, the new playing field means a new opportunity for new players.

This is where PrimaryBid has been stepping in. The startup has built a platform that makes it easier for retail investors to participate in new share issues, and it has been around since 2016, but it has found its groove at a time when companies raising money might be looking to cast their nets a bit wider than usual.

The startup led a big campaign in April to highlight the role that retail investors can play in helping getting the stock market back to active levels. And the companies that have provided access to their new share issuances since the start of the pandemic have included the Compass Group, Ocado, Taylor Wimpey and Segro.

Retail investors are, in essence, a long-tail play. While individually they will invest considerably less than high net-worth individuals or institutional investors, collectively they account for a substantial amount of activity. The latest figures from the UK’s office of national statistics, from 2018, estimate that retail investors account for some 13.5% of the UK’s share capital, although within the FTSE 250 that is closer to 20% and in some AIM companies it can be as high as 30% or more, according to PrimaryBid.

There are a number of other platforms for ordinary people to buy and trade shares, but what is different with PrimaryBid is its focus on new share issuances, not sells and trades in existing shares. In theory, a company could also allocate shares to be sold on via PrimaryBid for IPOs, but, as a spokesperson described it, “The real innovation is getting retail involved in ‘accelerated’ follow-on raises (which are around five times the size of IPOs in equity issuance terms), and which have never been open to retail (whereas some IPOs have historically).”

It’s a forumula that has resonated with investors and strategic partners.

Vinoth Jayakumar, Partner at Draper Espirit, said: “Our investment in PrimaryBid aligns with part of our wider investment thesis to democratise retail investors access to public markets as well as modernise market infrastructure software. For us, both our companies are anticipating the direction of travel of the future of finance.”

OMERS Ventures, the investment arm of the prolific pension fund out of Canada, said it’s part of the groups focus on fintech. “As fintech specialists it’s been impossible to ignore the rise of PrimaryBid in 2020 and its success championing retail investors in the capital markets,” said Tara Reeves, Partner at OMERS Ventures, in a statement. “PrimaryBid’s technology sits at the intersection of powerful trends in financial services – regulation, digitalisation and democratisation – and OMERS Ventures is delighted to support the team’s mission to put individual investors on equal terms with institutions. PrimaryBid is now well integrated at the highest levels of the U.K.’s capital raising ecosystem, and we look forward to helping the team realize their ambitions internationally.”

“We are excited to be partnering with PrimaryBid to enhance fairness, inclusivity, and transparency in capital markets,” said Michael Sim, Vice President, Fidelity International Strategic Ventures, in a statement. “Anand and the team have built unique technology infrastructure that is redefining the way issuers access capital markets; seamlessly connecting everyday retail investors with public companies. As the economy roils from the impact of coronavirus, it is imperative retail investors get a seat at the table as companies recapitalise and the process of economic recovery begins.”

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