Headless commerce startup Swell raises $3.4M

While new headless commerce platforms are emerging all the time, Swell CEO Eric Ingram told me that it remains “really hard to do something new in e-commerce.”

Specifically, he told me that most headless platforms (which offer back-end infrastructure separate from the front-end shopping experience) allow businesses to build a faster shopping experience, but they’re largely designed for marketplaces where you search, browse and purchase from a traditional product catalog.

“The most interesting ideas in e-commerce aren’t just another catalog,” Ingram said.

Swell, which is announcing that it has raised $3.4 million in seed funding, was designed to offer more flexibility when it comes to the underlying business models. Ingram (who founded the company with Stefan Kende, Dave Loneragan, Joshua Voydik and Mark Regal) described it as the “future-proof backend” for e-commerce companies, which can grow and adapt with them as their business models evolve.

“Typical catalogs” have been built on the platform, he said, but it also supports Spinn‘s marketplace of independent coffee roasters, B2B vacuum pump marketplace Nowvac and ethical direct-to-consumer diamond retailer Great Heights.

Chord, a headless commerce startup led by former Glossier execs, raises $18M

 

In fact, Voydik described Swell as “infinitely flexible.” Among other things, the company says it achieves this flexibility by offering API access to every component, as well as native subscription support and an unlimited number of product attributes.

“Every store on Swell effectively has their own database SaaS platform,” Ingram added.

Overall, he said the platform offers the flexibility that you’d normally get from an open source approach without the technical headaches: “No one wants to maintain their own code base and their own database.”

He continued, “You don’t need to be technical, you don’t need to have developers to leverage this. A lot of our customers are developers, but a lot of them are just regular marketers and ops people who know a bit of development concepts and want to have control over the systems.”

The startup’s new funding was led Jim Andelman of Bonfire Ventures, with participation from Willow Growth Partners, Andreas Klinger of Remote First Capital, Vercel CEO Guillermo Rauch, GitHub CTO Jason Warner and former Salesforce Commerce Cloud CTO Mike Micucci.

‘Headless’ e-commerce platform Fabric raises $43M

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Vibrant raises $7.5M for a drug-free mechanical pill to treat constipation

Vibrant, a medical technology company that’s developed a disposable vibrating pill to treat chronic constipation, today announced its Series E for $7.5 million. The company is based in Tel Aviv and is lead by Lior Ben-Tsur, a startup veteran. Since its founding in 2007, the company has raised a total of $25 million. This round is being led by Unorthodox Ventures, with participation by Sequoia.

Vibrant, which is going through its third and final round of Food and Drug Administration (FDA) testing, plans to launch in the U.S. in the next year. The capsules are about the size of a multi-vitamin, Ben-Tsur said.

“Patients are used to taking drugs day in and day out, so this wouldn’t be a different experience in that regard, but this pill doesn’t have any medication,” Ben-Tsur said. While Ben-Tsur is not a founder, he was brought on about 10 years ago to serve as the company’s CEO.

According to a study published in the American Gastroenterological Association, about 16% of American adults suffer from constipation, and the number jumps to 33.5% in adults between the ages of 60-101. Also, constipation is 1.5 times more common in women than in men.

The most common way to treat constipation is through the use of over-the-counter or prescription drugs, most of which target the nerves in the colon, which in turn prompt a bowel movement. The Vibrant Capsule, however, “once swallowed, kickstarts the natural impulses of your intestinal wall to contract, relax and get things moving again — without the use of chemicals,” the company said in a statement.

In addition to being medication-free, the value of Vibrant over laxatives, according to the company, is that the bowel movements are more controlled, whereas laxatives can cause unexpected diarrhea and long-term side effects. Also, while laxatives are meant to be taken on a daily basis, the disposable capsule can be used anywhere from 2-5 times per week. The capsules connect to an app that automatically records when you take a pill, and upon having a bowel movement, the person notes it in the app, which then sends a monthly report to the patient’s doctor, allowing them to monitor and adjust the treatment protocol as necessary.

In a 2019 human trial organized by Vibrant, 250 patients were enrolled in a double-blind study (Vibrant Capsule = 133, placebo = 117). The results showed that those who took the Vibrant Capsule were more likely to experience a bowel movement within three hours. The trial details and the results were published in the journal of Neurogastroenterology and Motility.

Several years ago a group of doctors and engineers performed a test in a live pig’s colon, and accidentally pinched the side of the colon wall. As a result, they noticed that the pig promptly had a bowel movement. The test was actually about something totally unrelated to constipation, and the results were a random discovery. To replicate the effects, the team created a vibrating belt that when worn for about three hours, would also cause a bowel movement.

“The problem is no one wants to shake for three hours to have a bowel movement,” said Ben-Tsur. With this information in hand, the group set out to develop a treatment for constipation in humans that would produce similar results but where the vibrations couldn’t be felt. There were other mechanical capsules already on the market, such as the Smart Pill, a mechanical diagnostic capsule that reports on generalized motility through the entire digestive tract and aids doctors in diagnosing motility disorders, so the team knew that people could safely swallow and excrete capsules.

8 VCs agree: Behavioral support and remote visits make digital health a strong bet for 2021

According to Ben-Tsur, there hasn’t been any development in the treatment of constipation in the last 20 years — the treatment protocol has continued to focus on medication. When he learned about the market size, the lack of innovation in the space and the potential, he was convinced that he wanted to lead Vibrant.

Vibrant plans on using this round of funding to take the capsule to market in the U.S. — its first market. The company is currently speaking with healthcare providers and insurance companies so that the capsule will be covered by insurance starting at the time of launch. The Smart Pill, while only used once as a diagnostic test, is still not covered and costs, on average, about $1,400 out of pocket. Ben-Tsur and his team aim to offer a product that is accessible. “From day one we were on a mission to build something that wouldn’t be more expensive than existing drugs,” he said.

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https://ift.tt/eA8V8J Vibrant raises $7.5M for a drug-free mechanical pill to treat constipation https://ift.tt/3w0R69A

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Google backs one-year-old Indian startup DotPe in $27.5 million fundraise

Google’s latest investment in India is a startup that is helping businesses come online.

One-year-old DotPe, a Gurgaon-based startup, said on Friday it has raised $27.5 million in its Series A financing round. The round was led by PayU, with participation from existing investor Info Edge Ventures and Google.

The young startup, now valued at about $90 million, helps brick and mortar stores sell to customers online and collect payments digitally.

It’s a problem that scores of startups in India are solving today, but DotPe has some additional hooks. It helps merchants scan their inventories and quickly establish a log online.

Once the catalog is ready, a business can then make it available on WhatsApp and reach customers there. WhatsApp is the most popular smartphone app in India, with more than 450 million users. DotPe says it also helps businesses get visibility on Google Search.

The startup, co-founded by Shailaz Nag, formerly co-founder and managing director of PayU, also enables neighborhood stores to collect payments from walk-in customers and features tools to offer loyalty points and discounts to customers to boost engagement.

“This new partnership will empower businesses to be more discoverable, expand business avenues and conduct commerce like never before,” said Nag. “Pandemic or not, we are here to reimagine the way offline businesses work and bring the digital revolution to the doorstep of every entrepreneur.”

Image Credits: DotPe

DotPe says its platform, which doesn’t require businesses to install an app, has amassed over 5 million merchants in the last six months. These merchants are seeing over 38% of daily orders from repeat customers, the startup said.

“In a very short time, DotPe has acquired a promising merchant base with its impeccable product experience and innovation,” said Anirban Mukherjee, CEO, PayU India.

Sanjay Gupta, VP and Country Head of Google India, said in a statement that the company’s investment in DotPe is illustrative of Google’s belief in “working with India’s start-up ecosystem towards the goal of building a more inclusive digital economy that will benefit everyone.”

Google announced a $10 billion fund for India last year, its biggest market by users. The Android-maker has invested in several startups in the country, including hyperlocal delivery firm Dunzo, InMobi Group’s Glance and DailyHunt.

DotPe said it will deploy the fresh capital to reach more merchants in India and scale its technology stack to meet the growing demand.

From India’s richest man to Amazon and 100s of startups: The great rush to win neighborhood stores

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Early Stage is the premier “how-to” event for startup entrepreneurs and investors. You’ll hear firsthand how some of the most successful founders and VCs build their businesses, raise money and manage their portfolios. We’ll cover every aspect of company building: Fundraising, recruiting, sales, product-market fit, PR, marketing and brand building. Each session also has audience participation built-in — there’s ample time included for audience questions and discussion. Use code “TCARTICLE” at checkout to get 20% off tickets right here.

https://ift.tt/2P1nZTe Google backs one-year-old Indian startup DotPe in $27.5 million fundraise https://ift.tt/3lPQf7a

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UiPath’s IPO filing suggests robotic process automation is booming

Robotic process automation platform UiPath added its name to the list of companies pursuing public-market offerings this morning with the release of its S-1 filing. The document details a quickly growing software company with sharply improving profitability performance. The company also flipped from cash burn to cash generation on both an operating and free-cash-flow basis in its most recent fiscal year.

Companies that produce robotic process automation (RPA) software help enterprises reduce labor costs and errors. Instead of having a human perform repetitive tasks like data entry, processing credit card applications and scheduling cable installation appointments, RPA tools employ software bots instead.

The phrase that matters most when digesting this IPO filing is operating leverage, what Investopedia defines as “the degree to which a firm or project can increase operating income by increasing revenue.” In simpler terms, we can think of operating leverage as how quickly a company can boost profitability by growing its revenue.

The greater a company’s operating leverage, the more profitable it becomes as it grows its top line; in contrast, companies that see their profitability profile erode as their revenue scales have poor operating leverage.

Among early-stage companies in growth mode, losing money is not a sin — after all, startups raise capital to deploy it, often making their near-term financial results a bit wonky from a traditionalist perspective. But for later-stage companies, the ability to demonstrate operating leverage is a great way to indicate future profitability, or at least future cash-flow generation.

So, the UiPath S-1 filing is at once an interesting picture of a company growing quickly while reducing its deficits rapidly, and a look at what a high-growth company can do to show investors that it will, at some point, generate unadjusted net income.

There are caveats, however: UiPath had some particular cost declines in its most recent fiscal year that make its profitability picture a bit rosier than it otherwise might have proven, thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic. This morning, now that we’ve looked at the big numbers, let’s dig in a bit deeper and learn whether UiPath is as strong in operating leverage terms as a casual observer of its filing might guess.

And then we’ll dig into four other things that stuck out from its IPO filing. Into the data!

Operating leverage, cost control and COVID-19

To avoid forcing you to flip between the filing and this piece, here’s UiPath’s income statement for its fiscal years that roughly correlate to calendar 2019 and calendar 2020:

From top-down, it’s clear UiPath is growing rapidly. And we can see that its gross profit grew more quickly than its overall revenue in its most recent 12-month period. As you can imagine, that combination led to rising gross margins at the company, from 82% in its fiscal year ending January 31, 2020, to 89% in its next fiscal year.

That’s super good, frankly; given that UiPath has a number of business lines, including a services effort that doubled in size during its most recent 12 months of operations, you might expect its blended gross margins to fade. They did not.

But it’s the following section, the company’s cost profile, that leads us to our first real takeaway from the UiPath S-1:

UiPath’s operating leverage looks good, even if COVID helped

Every operating expense category at the company fell from the preceding fiscal year to its most recent. That’s an impressive result, and one that is key when it comes to understanding where UiPath’s recent operating leverage came from. But how the declines came to be is just as important to understand.

https://ift.tt/3m2c5o8 UiPath’s IPO filing suggests robotic process automation is booming https://ift.tt/3rlJ1Zz

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WeWork lines up for a second run at the public markets

At this point, if you aren’t going public via a direct listing, traditional IPO or SPAC, are you even a growthy business?

Every CEO I talk to at a startup that’s doing more than Series B-level revenue tells me that SPACs are circling, hungry for a deal so they won’t have to return collected capital to their original backers. There’s an old joke: If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Except this time, if all you have is a blank-check company, every erstwhile startup looks like a public company in waiting.

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Enter WeWork. Yes, the company famous for torching a mountain of cash that would rival the Ever Given in sheer bulk is going public via a SPAC. This morning we’re going through its investor presentation, asking ourselves questions like, “Is this as nasty a business as it was a few years ago?” and “Why, oh God, why do we have to talk about WeWork again?”

But that’s not all. Axios, the rare media startup that appeared positioned for a good run, could merge with The Athletic and go public via a SPAC. At least per WSJ reporting.

It’s possible to summon arguments in favor of the deal. The Athletic has what Axios lacks and vice versa, so perhaps combining the former’s subscription base with the newsletter-and-ads prowess of the latter would make for an attractive company. Maybe.

But the main gist of this morning is that private investors in companies of all stripes are trying to get their money out while it’s still possible. That’s why we’ve seen eleventy-seven LIDAR and electric-vehicle SPACs. These aren’t usually companies that are ready to go public; they’re companies with investors that are ready to cash out.

The same momentum applies to the WeWork deal and the possible Axios combo-and-SPAC, I reckon.

Today, greed isn’t really good, to quote an old movie. It’s been good for so long among the tech-and-money class that quoting a film about a corrupt financier is too boring to warrant even warmed-over ennui. Instead, greed is god, and we’re all watching its ascension.

Now let’s digest the latest sacrifices.

WeWork

First, is WeWork a recovered company that has shown an ability to grow while losing less money? Not really.

https://ift.tt/2YAJc8v WeWork lines up for a second run at the public markets https://ift.tt/3tVug1p

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Benitago Group raises $55M in combined debt and equity to buy and grow Amazon brands

Benitago Group, a startup looking to build a big portfolio of Amazon brands, is announcing that it has raised $55 million in new funding — most of it in the form of credit lines to fund acquisitions, plus an equity investment.

“We want to take these brands and growth them and run them a lot more efficiently,” said co-founder Santiago Nestares.

Other startups have also raised big rounds to roll up Amazon FBA (Fulfillment by Amazon) businesses, but Nestares told me that Benitago is different because it’s not just focused on “financial arbitrage.” Instead, it has created a detailed, repeatable blueprint to continue growing these business.

Nestares and his co-founder Benedict Dohmen (they each gave the company a few syllables for its name) started Benitago while students at Dartmouth, with the back pain brand Supportiback. The company has subsequently expanded into categories like beauty, maternity and nutrition, but Nestares said they funded that growth with revenue, without raising much outside capital before now.

As a result, team members may not have been experts in, say, orthopedics, but they’ve succeeded because they’re “hyper-focused” on how brands can grow on Amazon, becoming what Nestares described as “Amazon natives.”

Crossbeam raises $25M to back startups built on ‘platform economies’

The process usually starts with a comprehensive look at the competitive landscape and what customers are saying in their reviews. Then, Nestares said, “We design everything around Amazon, from the feature selection to the way we create the colors in the packaging [to] the way the product fits in an Amazon box.”

The company said that when it acquires brands, the process only takes a few weeks, and that the previous owners retain a financial stake in the brand’s continued growth.

“This isn’t a passive financial play, it’s an an impact growth play,” Nestares added.

Amazon is unlikely to lose its e-commerce dominance anytime soon, but Nestares acknowledged that building Benitago’s business on a single platform is its “biggest risk.” At the same time, he suggested that the startup is very different from, say, companies who might be threatened any time Google changes its search algorithm.

“I think Amazon is different, because Amazon has the same goal as you: To sell to the customer as much as they can,” he said.

Benitago currently operates five brands with more than 100 total products. With the new funding, that number could increase dramatically — Nestares said there are 12 new brands in development, while he’s also hoping to acquire another 25 or more brands by the end of the year.

CoVenture led the equity funding and provided one of the credit lines.

E-commerce startup Heroes raises $65M in equity and debt to become the Thrasio of Europe

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J Benitago Group raises $55M in combined debt and equity to buy and grow Amazon brands https://ift.tt/3ss6YQf

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You can only invest if you promise not to read the fine print, ok?

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

Natasha and Danny and Alex and Grace were all here to chat through the week’s biggest tech happenings. News was right back up to a dull roar this week, so we did our best to trim and hone and just bring you the most important things.

Here’s the rundown:

• David Dobrik stepped down from Dispo, the photo-sharing app he co-created, this past week after allegations came out about him. We talked about the venture capital angle, since early-stage investors in the app reactively distanced from their investments. Could this set precedent or have a chilling effect on celebrity-startups?
• Robinhood filed privately to go public! So, it’s happening everyone. At long last, one of Silicon Valley’s hottest companies is kicking off its IPO process. We’re hype, you’re hype, and we had some jokes.
• And in other mega-unicorn news, it appears that Microsoft is tempted to plonk down $10 billion for Discord. Why, you ask? Well why not. It’s just $10 billion from Microsoft’s $1,780 billion valuation. Or around half a percent.
• Sticking to the $10 billion-and-greater category, Plaid could be raising $600 million at a valuation of $10 billion to $15 billion. That’s a lot of money. Danny, however, has some doubts.
• Also, Plaid has announced the inaugural cohort of its FinRise accelerator, a program focused on helping fintech startups led by underrepresented founders.
• And then there were a few rounds to chat about. Namely the intensely interesting Bevy deal, and Ro raising $500 million at a $5 billion  valuation.
• And to wrap, Natasha and Alex shared their favs from TechCrunch’s massive Y Combinator demo day coverage. Which you can read here, and here.

Let’s all get some rest!

Equity drops every Monday at 7:00 a.m. PST, Wednesday, and Friday at 6:00 AM PST, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts!

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J You can only invest if you promise not to read the fine print, ok? https://ift.tt/3lXdQD4

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Crypto boom continues as Chainalysis raises $100M, doubles valuation to over $2B

Chainalysis, a blockchain analysis company, announced Friday it has closed on $100 million in Series D financing, doubling its valuation to over $2 billion.

The round comes just four months after the company secured a $100 million Series C round at a $1 billion valuation. Paradigm led the latest funding event while existing backers Addition and Ribbit doubled down on their investment in the company. TIME Ventures, Marc Benioff’s investment fund, also participated in the latest financing, which brings Chainalysis’ total raised to $265 million.

This latest round marks Chainalysis’ fourth raise in less than two years. Previous backers in the company also include Accel and Benchmark.

Chainalysis was founded in 2014 as the official investigators into the hack of Mt. Gox, then the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange. Today, the New York-based company provides data, software, services and research to government agencies, exchanges, financial institutions and insurance and cybersecurity companies in more than 60 countries. Among its 400 customers are fintechs such as Square, financial institutions like Barclays and cryptocurrency businesses like Gemini, Bitstamp and BitPay.

Co-founders Michael Gronager and Jonathan Levin; Image courtesy of Chainalysis

Chainalysis’ self-described mission is “to build trust in blockchains to promote more financial freedom with less risk.”

The company says its data platform powers investigation, compliance and risk management tools “that have been used to solve some of the world’s most high-profile cyber criminal cases and grow consumer access to cryptocurrency safely.”

Chainalysis operates under the belief that eventually every company will use the blockchain to conduct their business, according to co-founder and CEO Michael Gronager.

“We’ve collected more information about what happens on blockchains than anyone in the cryptocurrency industry,” he said. “That information enables our customers to make better data-driven decisions.”

Over the past year, the company says it has achieved the following:

• Increased its annual recurring revenue (ARR) by more than 100% year-over-year
• Doubled its client base to include government agencies in over 30 countries and private sector businesses in over 60 countries
• Grown its support to cover over 100 digital assets across 10 native blockchains, encompassing an estimated approximate 90% of cryptocurrency economic activity
• Doubled its number of employees over the past year to 233 today
• Expanded its partnership program, which now consists of more than 50 companies, including Fireblocks and Flashpoint
• Looking ahead, Chainanalysis said it plans to hire hundreds over the course of 2021; it also plans to use its new funds primarily to expand its enterprise data offering

Is rising usage driving crypto’s recent price boom?

“We’ll continue to invest in investigations and compliance software, but we’ll also build out new data products both for our existing customer base and new audiences,” Gronager said.

The company is particularly focused on building out its presence in the Asia-Pacific region.

“Cryptocurrency is global, and so is Chainalysis,” said Gronager.

To Chainalysis, cryptocurrencies present unprecedented transparency.

“They are the first global payment systems outside of any one organization’s control, but their blockchains create public, permanent records of all transactions, including illicit activity,” Gronager told TechCrunch.

Blockchain analysis comes in by helping people interpret those public blockchain ledgers. Chainalysis tools aim to help government agencies, cryptocurrency businesses and financial institutions understand which real-world entities transact with each other.

“For example, we can show that a given transaction took place between two different cryptocurrency exchanges, or between a cryptocurrency exchange and an illicit entity, such as a darknet market or a sanctioned organization,” Gronager said.

Paradigm co-founder Fred Ehrsam said his firm was drawn to the way Chainalysis provides key data infrastructure and software for the cryptocurrency ecosystem.

“The team knows the regulatory landscape better than anyone, has been refining their tools for years, and deeply know what their customers want. This is not an overnight success story – rather a team that has built with a long run vision, through multiple crypto cycles, that has created a market leading position for themselves, with the opportunity to compound,” he added. “As cryptocurrency adoption grows, so will demand for Chainalysis offerings.”

As further evidence of a cryptocurrency boom, BlockFi earlier this month announced it closed on a massive $350 million Series D funding at a $3 billion valuation. The financial services company for crypto market investors offers a retail and institutional-facing suite of products.

Notably, BlockFi is also a Chainalysis customer. In a written statement, CEO and co-founder Zac Prince said that Chainalysis provides BlockFi with data “that delivers insights beyond compliance that can help inform our business development activities, tailor our offerings, and identify new revenue streams.” 

BlockFi lands a $350M Series D at a $3B valuation for its fast-growing crypto-lending platform

https://ift.tt/3m1AlGY Crypto boom continues as Chainalysis raises $100M, doubles valuation to over $2B https://ift.tt/3rpga6P

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A first look at UiPath’s IPO filing

This morning, well-known robotic process automation (RPA) unicorn UiPath has filed to go public.

The company’s S-1 filing comes after it raised billions of dollars while private, making it amongst the best-funded startups in history. Over the last year, for example, the company’s rapid-fired fundraising included its Series E and Series F rounds of capital, both of which came inside the last 12 months.

UiPath’s filing details a rapidly growing company. From its fiscal year ending January 31, 2020, to its fiscal year ending January 31, 2021, UiPaths’s revenues grew from $336.2 million to $607.6 million, which translates to just under 81% growth. That top-line expansion brought with it GAAP net income of –$519.9 million in its year ending in early 2020, and -$94.7 million in the year ending January 31 2021.

UiPath was valued privately at $10.2 billion in mid-2020, and $35 billion in early 2021.

For the company’s 27 known investors, the IPO filing is a critical moment. If UiPath can defend its rich private valuation, its IPO could be viewed as a success. However, investors in that final round — Alkeon Capital and Coatue, the investors that also led its Series E — will want to see its market value appreciate.

If UiPath can reach a public valuation of more than $35 billion remains to be seen.

COVID-19 is driving demand for low-code apps

The company’s financials paint the picture of a high-growth company that got its costs in line after a very expensive fiscal year ending January 31, 2020. UiPath cut its sales and marketing costs, its research and development spend, and even its general and administrative budget in its most recent fiscal year. The result is that its gross profit scaled against a smaller cost base. And the result of that was dramatically improved profitability, and cash generation.

As the S-1 notes: “[UiPath’s] operating cash flows were $(359.4) million and $29.2 million and our free cash flows were $(380.4) million and $26.0 million in the fiscal years ended January 31, 2020 and 2021, respectively.” That’s a massive turnaround, perhaps one that’s even more impressive than the company’s improving GAAP net margins.

There’s more to come from UiPath, namely a dive into its quarterly results, which the company says will come in a “subsequent amendment to [its] prospectus.”

All told, UiPath’s most recent fiscal year shows material operating leverage — something that not every software company going public can brag about.

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J A first look at UiPath’s IPO filing https://ift.tt/3ddJ3hn

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“Link-in-bio” company Linktree raises $45M Series B for its social commerce features

If you browse Instagram, you are probably familiar with the term “link in bio.” Links aren’t allowed in post captions, and users are only allowed one URL in their bios, so many create a simple website with multiple links for their followers. Linktree, one of the most popular “link in bio” services with more than 12 million users, announced today it has raised $45 million in Series B funding. The round was co-led by Index Ventures and Coatue, with participation from returning investors AirTree Ventures and Insight Partners.

Coatue chairman Dan Rose will join Linktree’s board of directors. The Sydney, Australia-based startup’s last round was a $10.7 million Series A announced in October 2020. Linktree’s latest funding will be used on tools that make social commerce easier.

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

Linktree says about a third, or 4 million, of its users signed up within the last three months. This is in partly because people have been spending more time on social media and e-commerce shopping during the pandemic.

Founded in 2016, Linktree now competes with a roster of “link in bio” services, including Shorby, Linkin.bio and the recently launched Beacons.

Beacons debuts a ‘link in bio’ mobile website builder that helps creators make money, not just list links

“When we launched Linktree, we created an entirely new category. We were first to market and, with over 12 million users globally, still hold 88% of market share,” founder and chief executive officer Alex Zaccaria told TechCrunch. “Inevitably we’ve seen plenty of competitors pop up as a result, but part of the uniqueness of Linktree is its deceptively simple design.”

Zaccaria added that one of Linktree’s differentiators is its adoption by users in a wide range of categories, including health and wellness, real estate, sports, music, politics, publishing and food. It’s used for bio links by Shopify, Facebook, TikTok, YSL, HBO and Major League Baseball, and celebrities like Jonathan Van Ness, Jamie Oliver and Pharrell.

“We might have started as a link-in-bio tool, but over time Linktree has evolved and the platform has become a social identity layer of the internet. Our vision for how the platform will sit at the intersection of digital self-expression and action means we’re thinking boldly when it comes to our roadmap.”

Streamlabs launches a ‘link in bio’ website builder that includes tipping

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J “Link-in-bio” company Linktree raises $45M Series B for its social commerce features https://ift.tt/31m7OlK

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YC-backed Homebase is an alternative to traditional mortgages for home buyers in Vietnam

Homebase co-founders Phillip An and Junyuan Tan

The home ownership rate in Vietnam is about 90%, but many millennials are struggling to join that number. Rising property prices in cities, coupled with a lack of financing options, mean more people have to delay buying their first homes unless they have family support.

Part of Y Combinator’s latest batch, Homebase was founded in 2019 to give prospective buyers in Vietnam an alternative to traditional financing. Homebase acts as a co-investor, buying a share of property with customers, who then have the option of purchasing equity from Homebase until they take full ownership, or selling the property for their portion of the proceeds. In the meantime, buyers pay rent to Homebase that corresponds to the company’s stake, and have full usage rights to the home, so they can live in or rent it.

Our favorite companies from Y Combinator’s W21 Demo Day: Part 1

Co-founders Junyuan Tan and Phillip An originally started Homebase in Singapore, but decided to focus on Vietnam because Tan had lived there while working on his previous startups, RePrice Technologies and Atlantis Lab. Tan wanted to buy a home, but found bank mortgages charged high interest rates even on short-term loans.

“If you look at the whole of Southeast Asia, compared to Europe or the U.S., there are really no other solutions, like government schemes or rent-to-own financing solutions,” Homebase chief operating officer Phillip An told TechCrunch.

Its model is similar to Divvy Homes and ZeroDown in the United States and, in fact, leaders from both startups have invested in Homebase (Divvy Homes co-founder Brian Ma and ZeroDown’s former COO Troy Steckenrider). Homebase’s other backers include VinaCapital Ventures, Class 5 Global, Pegasus Technology Ventures, 1982 Ventures, Antler and Darius Cheung, the founder and CEO of 99.co.

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Most of Homebase’s transactions are currently in Ho Chi Minh City and Saigon, and it plans to expand into Hanoi and Danang by the end of this year. Ultimately, Homebase’s goal is to enter other Southeast Asian markets where home owners also face a dearth of financing options, like Singapore, Thailand and Indonesia.

In Vietnam, about 70% of adults are “unbanked,” meaning they don’t have a bank account, which makes it difficult to apply for mortgages. An said some of Homebase’s customers use the service because they are unbanked. Other customers have financial accounts, but see Homebase as a faster, more flexible option to bank loans.

Its contracts range from one to 10 years, and at the end, customers have the option of buying all the equity in the property or selling it with Homebase to get back their investment. The amount of equity customers buy at the start also varies. For example, home buyers who are using Homebase as an alternative to mortgages typically take an initial 20% to 30% stake in the property, while real estate investors often start with a 50% stake.

Homebase finances its stake in properties in part by working with third-party financial institutions, including private high-net worth individuals and family offices who see it as an opportunity to diversify their holdings into a new asset class. An said the company is also talking to different types of funds, including equity, hedge, real estate debt and emerging market debt, from Europe, the United States and Singapore.

To screen applicants, Homebase has an internal checklist and onboarding process, and it also works with real estate agents, developers and other partners in Vietnam.

For those third parties, Homebase serves as a value-add tool that helps them close more deals by providing a way for customers to get financing. Homebase also performs due diligence on potential properties, including examining documentation and permits, and has built an asset valuation model based on existing property data, transaction data and information from developers.

An said this valuation service, which Homebase is expanding, is a key part of the business because it provides assurance to buyers that the company’s incentives are aligned with theirs.

“We stand to risk our investment, too,” he said. “Many customers are also first-time buyers and they want more help to find a good property.”

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Brazil’s iFood outlines sustainability initiatives aiming to reduce its carbon footprint

The Brazilian-based pan-Latin American food delivery startup iFood has announced a series of initiatives designed to reduce the company’s environmental impact as consumers push companies to focus more on sustainability.

The program has two main components — one focused on plastic pollution and waste and another aiming to become carbon neutral in its operations by 2025.

Perhaps the most ambitious, and surely the most capital intensive of the company’s waste reduction initiatives is the development of a semi-automated recycling facility in São Paulo.

“We want to transform the entire supply chain for plastic-free packaging in Brazil. By controlling the national supply chain, from production to marketing and logistics, we can offer more competitive pricing for packaging to industries that already exist but do not have a scale of production and demand today,” said Gustavo Vitti, the chief people and sustainability officer at iFood. 

The company has also created an in-app option that allows customers to decline plastic cutlery when they’re getting their food delivered. 

“These initiatives will contribute to reducing the consumption of plastic items, which are often sent without being requested and end up going unused into the garbage bin,” said Vitti. “In the first tests that we did, 90% of consumers used the resource, which resulted in the reduction of tens of thousands of plastic cutlery and shows our consumers’ desire to receive less waste in their homes.”

On the emissions front, the company will work with Moss.Earth, a technology company in the carbon market, which developed the GHG inventory to offset its emissions by buying credits tied to environmental preservation and reforestation projects. 

But the company is also working with Tembici, a provider of electric bikes in Brazil, to move its delivery fleet off of internal combustion powered mopeds or scooters.

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“We know that compensation alone is not enough. It is necessary to think of innovative ways to reduce CO2 emissions. In October last year, we launched the iFood Pedal program, in partnership with Tembici, a project developed exclusively for couriers that offers affordable plans for renting electric bikes,” said Vitti. “Currently, more than 2,000 couriers are registered and are sharing 1,000 electric bikes in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro in addition to the educational aspect of program that we have contemplated. With good adherence indicators, our plan is to gradually expand the project, taking it to other cities and, thus, increase our percentage of clean deliveries.”

The Brazilian electric motorcycle company Voltz Motors is also working with iFood, which ordered 30 electric motorcycles for use by some of its delivery partners. The company hopes to roll out more than 10,000 motorcycles over the next 12 months. 

Coupled with internal-facing initiatives to improve water reuse, deploy renewable energy and develop a green roof at its Osasco headquarters, iFood is hoping to hit sustainability goals that can improve the environment across Brazil and beyond. 

“We know that we have a long way to go, but we trust that together with important partners and this set of initiatives, in addition to others that are under development, it will be possible to reduce plastic generation and CO2 emissions impact on the environment. Our relevance and presence in the lives of Brazilian families further reinforces the importance of these environmental commitments for the planet,” said Vitti.

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