Sunday, October 31, 2021

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ShipBlu bags $2.4M for its e-commerce and fulfilment service in Egypt

Posted: 31 Oct 2021 04:16 AM PDT

African e-commerce fulfilment startups backed by Y Combinator seem to be piquing investors' interest this year for their niche e-commerce play.

Summer batch graduate ShipBlu is the latest on that list and confirmed to TechCrunch that it has raised $2.4 million in seed funding.

The company, founded by Ali Nasser, Ahmed ElKawass, Abdelrahman Hosny in 2020, operates a delivery and fulfilment model. It delivers packages of all kinds for merchants and retailers — ranging from mom and pop stores and social media to fashion retailers who make thousands of shipments and international brands — to customers in Egypt.

On the fulfilment side, ShipBlu stores merchants' products in warehouses it leases. Then it connects with merchants' online stores and monitors orders via a dashboard, so when they come in, ShipBlu picks and packs the orders from the warehouse and sends them to the customers.

ShipBlu charges its customers per package, depending on two standard sizes, destination and shipping speed.

While these three factors are common in e-commerce and fulfilment, CEO Nasser said shipping speed is not prioritized the same way as the other two in Egypt.

According to him, ShipBlu is one of the few e-commerce fulfilment companies that offers that service to customers in the country.

"We let the merchant decide: Do they need to get that product to their customer overnight, and therefore, pay or charge the customer for overnight fees?" Nasser said to TechCrunch in an interview.

"Or are they willing to for a more budget-friendly option and would like to ship that package in three to five days? We offer that option to merchants, who in turn can decide to offer that to customers. So it could be the customer's choice or the merchants' choice."

ShipBlu only fully launched this August. Per its YC profile, ShipBlu signed on more than 40 merchants during its first month. And since then, the company has managed to double its clientele while tripling revenues in the same period, said Nasser without stating hard numbers.

Within the next couple of months, Nasser says he wants ShipBlu's network and infrastructure to reach 99% of Egypt's population.

"Whether you're living in a small village or a large town or a large city, we want to be able to get to you and have the infrastructure in place to get to your delivery to you," the CEO remarked.

The idea behind such a daring move — which appears to be a bit of a stretch considering the timeline — comes from the founders' ambition to change an industry that has lagged behind other regions in the wider GCC, such as Saudi Arabia and the UAE, in terms of e-commerce penetration.

Over 100 million people live in the North African country compared to Saudi Arabia's 30 million+ people, yet the e-commerce market in Egypt is a third of Saudi Arabia's.

A significant reason this gap has always existed is that the infrastructure needed to facilitate the process of e-commerce in Egypt is abysmal. It runs deep even on an elementary level where zip codes are barely accurate or non-existent, presenting many challenges to last mile or delivery providers.

The zip codes were one of the issues Nasser observed from Egypt's fragmented e-commerce and fulfilment market during his return from the US to the country months before the pandemic broke out.

As online payments boomed globally and in Egypt and upon finding out via research that the market size for last-mile delivery in MENA stands at over $3.1 billion annually, Nasser and his co-founders ElKawass, Abdelrahman Hosny got together to start ShipBlu.

"It was that period that it hit us and we realized how much more can be done for delivery services in the standard of service and the features that are available today. Compared to Europe and the US and other parts of the world, there was just so much more that we could bring to the market."

But Egypt is an entirely different market compared to these developed regions. For instance, 40% of deliveries fail in the country, while the global benchmark for the latter is about 8%. The high rate of delivery failure makes the operating costs for over 150 providers in Egypt generally high. ShipBlu, differentiating itself from the market, says it has developed AI and ML algorithms to "reduce costs, meet delivery constraints, and refine its operating assumptions."

The CEO says ShipBlu's end goal is to make customers choose a three-hour delivery window for their packages and know what date to expect them, which contrasts how most traditional e-commerce fulfilment companies function.

"Roughly 56% of the time when someone in Egypt places an order online, they don't even have a delivery date. After you place your order and you get an email confirmation, it's complete silence until, on a random day, you're going to get a call from the agent who's on your on their way to you asking if you are available to pick up the package. We're changing that," he said.

ShipBlu has competition with the likes of Flextock and Bosta in Egypt. And following the completion of its seed round, the company now has a mutual investor with Flextock in Flexport, the billion-dollar freight and logistics company YC backed in 2014. The unicorn also invested in Nigerian e-commerce fulfilment startup Sendbox this year.

Nama Ventures led ShipBlu's seed round with participation from 1984 Ventures; Orange Ventures, the venture capital arm of Orange Telecom; Starling Ventures and other VC funds and angel investors. The company says the investment will help grow its service offering and coverage across Egypt.

This YC Summer batch features the largest group of African startups yet

Every startup has a tipping point. How do you recalibrate?

Posted: 30 Oct 2021 11:01 AM PDT

Welcome to Startups Weekly, a fresh human-first take on this week's startup news and trends. To get this in your inbox, subscribe here.

I spent the past month interviewing current and former employees at Ro, a health tech unicorn, about rising tensions within the company as it struggles to grow into its $5 billion valuation. Many employees, who joined for Ro's mission, said that the company's execution began to struggle after raising a $500 million Series D. The co-founders began to amplify a new focus for the company: Become the “Amazon of healthcare.” Ro CEO and co-founder Zachariah Reitano, who was not made available for comment on my story, released a statement in response to my piece.

While my story gets into the specific problems that Ro is dealing with, from stagnating ARR to race-to-the-bottom competition, I want to focus on what other startups could learn from this story.

Let's be clear: It's not abnormal for a startup to go through trials and tribulations, especially in pursuit of profit and a moonshot of a vision. After all, every startup has a tipping point in which leadership has to take a step back and see what went wrong to avoid failure. The current and former employees that I spoke to for the story — as well as the more than dozen that reached out post-publication — felt like Ro needs a recalibration to truly get past its growing pains. The common solutions that came up? Transparency, more balance and openness to addressing failure so that lessons can be extracted for the future.

Here's how one former employee put it:

"The first year that I was there, I was like the happiest person on earth," a recently resigned employee said. "The piece that needs to be recalibrated is ‘what is the end vision?’ What do you mean when you say ‘a vertically integrated, patient-centered health system?’ And are the actions moving you toward that? And that's ultimately why I left, because I didn't feel like what was being said externally was actually happening internally."

As more startups get ballooned by venture capital and the incentives that come alongside with it, an industrywide recalibration between the Big Pitch and the actual product strategy of companies feels imminent.

Founders should prepare to have conversations about distributed work's impact on culture and venture capital's impact on priorities. Investors will have to question the pressure they put on portfolio companies and show value through navigating ups and downs. Press will need to go deeper than the funding round story and poke holes in the narratives that decision-makers craft. And employees, more emboldened than ever, will have to make choices on balance and the importance of self-advocacy.

This shift fits squarely into a perspective that I've leaned heavily on through the pandemic: It's okay to change your mind about what's important and unlearn what you thought was non-negotiable.

In the rest of this newsletter, we'll talk about the future of VC, the AWS of crypto and the future of farming. As always, you can follow me on Twitter @nmasc_ or reach me on Signal (DM for number).

Even PR is getting into VC

VSC, a public relations firm that has helped the likes of startups such as ClearCo, Poshmark, Tonal and Tile craft their stories, has raised millions to invest in the companies they work with. The move is further validation of a trend we've been on about in this newsletter for months: Venture is going full stack and one of the most in-demand services is storytelling.

Here's what to know: While VSC's move feels warranted, it's somewhat unprecedented. Despite the blending of media and venture, PR firms may have avoided going down this route because their clients — other startups — need them as a shoulder, not an investor. In other words, one could argue that founders may feel less incentivized to be vulnerable with a PR firm about struggles if they are also their investors, the same people they are incentivized to impress.

"Because we're not the lead investor, we don't ever put that kind of peer pressure on them," Chattha said. "We have enough skin in the game to be honest and vulnerable with them, but not so much that we're going to guide them into the wrong for their business."

Staying meta (not that kind of meta):

And the startup of the week is…

Image Credits: Getty Images

Alchemy! As Mary Ann Azevedo reports, exactly six months after raising $80 million at a $505 million valuation, the blockchain and Web3 development SaaS startup has raised $250 million in a Series C funding round that values the company at $3.5 billion.

Here's what to know: It's the backbone of many of the major crypto platforms, including MakersPlace, OpenSea, Nifty Gateway, SuperRare, CryptoPunks, Dapper Labs and Axie Infinity. As we discussed on Equity, Alchemy is positioned especially well to ride the crypto wave considering the portfolio that it's a part of.

Honorable mentions:

The Bowery TC-1

Image Credits: Nigel Sussman

For many researchers, activists and entrepreneurs, vertical farms have been the answer to growing worries about our climate crisis and its impact on food production. To understand a leader in the space, the inimitable Brian Heater took us all on a 12,000-word, vertical-farming rabbit hole with his Bowery Farming TC-1.

Here's what to know: Bowery Farming, which raised nearly $500 million in venture capital to date, wants to bring indoor farming to the masses in the United States. This requires the company to collect data to optimize flavor, balance environmental benefit with technology and fight with an unlikely foe: the production section at your local grocery store. 

For more where this came from, subscribe to The Actuator:

Across the week

Seen on TechCrunch

Facebook changes its corporate branding to Meta

Company formerly known as Facebook unceremoniously kills off 'Oculus' brand

Thrasio, the Amazon aggregator, raises $1B in fresh funding at a valuation of up to $10 billion

LinkedIn rolls out its freelance services marketplace globally after picking up 2M users in smaller US beta

Tesla surpasses $1 trillion market value

Seen on TechCrunch+

Since Big Tech came to Denver, investors can't buy enough local startups

Balancing risk: Modern architecture's role in the BNPL playbook

Quick observations on Udemy's unicorn edtech IPO

How 2 companies leveraged organic and inorganic growth

Crafting a pitch deck that can't be ignored

Have a spooky, and safe, weekend

N 

This Week in Apps: SharePlay arrives, Android Dev Summit wraps, Snap and TikTok go to Congress

Posted: 30 Oct 2021 10:45 AM PDT

Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the weekly TechCrunch series that recaps the latest in mobile OS news, mobile applications and the overall app economy.

The app industry continues to grow, with a record 218 billion downloads and $143 billion in global consumer spend in 2020. Consumers last year also spent 3.5 trillion minutes using apps on Android devices alone. And in the U.S., app usage surged ahead of the time spent watching live TV. Currently, the average American watches 3.7 hours of live TV per day, but now spends four hours per day on their mobile devices.

Apps aren't just a way to pass idle hours — they're also a big business. In 2019, mobile-first companies had a combined $544 billion valuation, 6.5x higher than those without a mobile focus. In 2020, investors poured $73 billion in capital into mobile companies — a figure that's up 27% year-over-year.

This Week in Apps offers a way to keep up with this fast-moving industry in one place with the latest from the world of apps, including news, updates, startup fundings, mergers and acquisitions, and suggestions about new apps and games to try, too.

Do you want This Week in Apps in your inbox every Saturday? Sign up here: techcrunch.com/newsletters

Top Stories

Apple SharePlay Arrives

Image Credits: Apple

Apple’s new FaceTime feature SharePlay wasn’t immediately available with the iOS 15 launch, as it needed a bit more polish. But with this week’s release of iOS 15.1, SharePlay — and a number of mobile app updates ready to support it — have finally arrived. The feature makes using Apple’s video calling platform more interactive and could help to potentially lock in users to Apple’s ecosystem.

As with many Apple features, SharePlay is easy to use despite the complicated technology powering the new system that runs under the hood. With the tap of a button on FaceTime’s controls, you can start sharing your device’s screen on your call or you can just switch over to the app you want to co-watch with a friend — the app alerts you upon arrival that it supports SharePlay as well as how to get started.

While screen sharing, you can view your screen or other apps together. However, you won’t have a good experience trying to co-watch videos this way due to lags. Apple also smartly blocks other viewers from seeing your incoming notifications or any kind of application pop-ups or dialogs, as they may contain sensitive information. And everything is end-to-end encrypted, so you can feel comfortable screen sharing in a business setting, not just a personal one. (And this will be further improved when SharePlay arrives on macOS Monterey later this fall.)

If anything, the biggest obstacle to using SharePlay at launch is simply availability.

Apple has a robust lineup of launch partners for the new addition — but unless you’ve happened across the App Store’s editorial round-up of SharePlay-enabled apps (do a search for “shareplay” to find it), you may not know if your favorite app is “SharePlay ready” as of yet.

Initially, SharePlay is rolling out to apps, including Apple TV+, Apple Fitness, TikTok, NBA: Live Games & Scores, Paramount+, Showtime, Kahoot!, Cameo, SmartGym, Flow, Moon FM, MUBI, Digital Concert Hall, Piano with Friends, Relax Melodies, LookUp, Heads Up!, CARROT Weather, Apollo, Night Sky and others. Disney+ will soon support SharePlay, as will ESPN, HBO Max, Hulu, MasterClass, Twitch, Pluto TV and more.

While that’s pretty decent right out of the gate, it is missing one key player: Netflix.

You have to wonder what’s going there — is it in the works? Being held back as a negotiating tactic? Is Netflix…just not interested? As you might recall, Netflix was one of the few streamers that didn’t add a native co-watching feature (or at least officially partner with another software maker) during the pandemic, while everyone else was busy building remote social experiences. Competitors like Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, Plex, HBO and others rolled out co-viewing experiences. But Netflix sat out the trend, despite the growing popularity of third-party co-viewing apps like Netflix Party. With Netflix’s more recent slower growth following the pandemic’s peak, you would think the company would see SharePlay as a potential source of new user acquisition.

After all, SharePlay can be used to offer a free user without an account a way to co-watch with a paid subscriber, if that’s what the developer wants. This, in turn, could then be used to push the free user to buy a subscription after some time has passed — like after they got hooked on some exclusive shows, perhaps. It seems like a no-brainer to offer support for this sort of thing — but perhaps Netflix is building out its own version where it can collect more data as a first-party experience. Time will tell.

In the meantime, the SharePlay feature could appeal to younger people who already use FaceTime the way older people use the Phone app, and who are comfortable multi-tasking on their devices.

In-App Events Go Live

Image Credits: Apple

A whole new way to market apps has now appeared on the App Store. On Wednesday, the first in-app events began appearing on the App Store, giving users a new way to find out what’s happening inside their favorite apps and games right now. At launch, Rise of Kingdoms and Pokémon GO are promoting Halloween special events, for example, as are others. But in-app events could also be used to promote things like movie premieres or live sports in the future. When users tap a new event card on the App Store (in iOS 15 or iPadOS 15), they’ll be taken directly to the event taking place. They can also tap “Notify Me” to get alerts when upcoming events go live, share events with friends or add them to their calendar app.

Other games adopting the feature include Call of Duty: Mobile, PUBG Mobile, Clash Royale and Genshin Impact and soon, so will apps like Tinder, TikTok, Disney+, Hulu, Paramount+, HBO Max and ESPN.

Weekly News

Platforms: Apple

  • Apple released iOS 15.2 and iPadOS 15.2 beta 1, as well as watchOS 8.3. One of the biggest new features to arrive in the iOS/iPadOS beta is the App Privacy Report. First announced at WWDC, the report will show users what apps are up to — that is, which sensitive data they request, which sensors they’re using and which domains they’re contacting to possibly share that information further. Other new features include an updated Emergency SOS call feature; and an easier to read, card-style Notification Summary.
  • Apple released iOS 15.1 and iPadOS 15.1 to the general public, bringing support for SharePlay, ProRes video capture, the ability to disable automatic camera switching to Macro mode, support for COVID vaccination cards and test results in Wallet and many other improvements.
  • Apple also released iOS 14.8.1 and iPadOS 14.8.1, with several critical security updates, making good on its promise to keep people on older software up to date with necessary fixes.
  • Apple now lets you review more of its default apps, including Phone, Messages, Photos and Safari, among others, including default Watch apps. The company had earlier rolled out a selection of its apps as standalone downloads with support for ratings and reviews, to put Apple on a more even playing field with regard to competitors amid regulatory scrutiny over its App Store. Most of the new apps are doing well in reviews so far, as people seem to appreciate the functionality provided by Apple’s default experiences.
  • Apple refreshed its set of design resources for iOS 15 on a revamped website that makes it easier to find the things you need, like templates or fonts. The site includes new templates, libraries, fonts and other iOS 15-specific resources and components.
  • The company also opened Apple Entrepreneur Camp applications for one of three newly announced online cohorts for Black, Hispanic/Latinx, or female founders starting late January 2022.

Platforms: Google

  • Google held its annual Android Dev Summit this week, where it announced a series of updates for developers. The summit included over 30 Technical Talks to help developers build apps that run across devices and learn about the latest in developer tools.
  • Google announced the 12L, an OS designed for large screens, along with a set of tools, at the Dev Summit event.
  • The company also released the first alpha of Compose Material 3, which offers “Material Design 3 styled components and theme, enabling Material You personalization features like dynamic color.” Google also released the first beta version of Jetpack Compose 1.1, which has features like “stretch overscroll for Android 12, improved touch-target sizing, experimental lazy layout animations,” and others. And Compose for Wear OS is now in developer preview.

Augmented Reality

Image Credits: Snap

  • Snapchat rolled out Halloween AR Lenses, including those for finding a Halloween costume through AR in partnership with Walmart, a Halloween World Lens, one with The Home Depot’s 12-foot Skeletons, a transforming “Werewolf Lens,” a Lens for decorating your home in AR, a spooky fashion Lens, and others with candy brands like Mars-Wrigley, Skittles, Starburst and Reese’s.

Fintech

  • Robinhood reported a revenue miss for its third-quarter earnings, sending the stock down 8% in after-hours trading on Tuesday. The company reported total net revenue at $365 million, versus the $431.5 million Wall Street expected. Revenues were up 35% year over year but were below the second quarter's revenue of $565 million.

Social

Image Credits: Instagram

  • Instagram will now allow all users to share links in their Instagram Stories via the new Link Stickers, making the final move away from the “swipe up to read” gesture. The feature was previously limited to select creators.
  • TikTok is testing a new direct tipping feature with select creators. The feature lets fans tip favorite creators outside of TikTok LIVE streams where gifting is already available.
  • TikTok brings its Video Kit feature to desktop, web and consoles, in addition to its previous support for mobile apps. The expansion will allow professional creators and others to use a variety of editing and collaboration tools to make their TikTok videos, which they can then publish directly using the “Share to TikTok” functionality provided by the SDK. Early adopters include Clipchamp, Combo, Grabyo, Kapwing, Mobcrush and LG U+.
  • Twitter’s subscription service Blue adds a “Labs” feature that provides early access to tools Twitter is considering for the premium service. The first two Labs features include the ability to pin favorite DM conversations on iOS to the top of your DM inbox and support for longer video uploads (up to 10 mins.) on desktop.
  • Twitter said it added 5 million users in its third quarter, to reach average monetizable DAUs (its own metric) of 221 million, up 13% year-over-year. Revenue increased 37% to $1.28 billion, as the company noted Apple’s privacy changes with ATT only had a “modest impact” on its business.
  • Snapchat now has 100 million MAUs in India, and is partnering with Flipkart and Android smartphone vendors to increase adoption.
  • Facebook reported a miss on revenue, citing Apple’s privacy changes as one cause, ahead of its big announcement about a shift to focus on its metaverse and VR products and a rebranding of the company to “Meta.” Facebook reported $29 billion in total revenue and earnings per share of $3.22, calculated on a diluted basis. Investors had expected revenues of $29.58 billion and earnings per share of $3.19.

Messaging

Streaming & Entertainment

  • Spotify says its service is now used more by U.S. podcast listeners than Apple Podcasts. The company made the announcement during its Q3 earnings, citing its own internal data and Edison Research (where it’s a client). It did not say how many podcast listeners it had, but noted MAUs overall grew 19% year-over-year to reach 381 million in the quarter, up from 365 million last year. Premium subscribers also grew 19% to reach 172 million, up from 165 million last year. Spotify revenue was $2.9 billion in the quarter, up 27% year-over-year, with ad sales rising 75% to reach $374 million, at the top end of its guidance.
  • Clubhouse added a new Pinned Links feature that allows room creators and moderators to share URLs at the top of the room’s pages, similar to how Twitter Spaces users can add tweets to their live audio sessions.
  • Amazon is working on a Clubhouse competitor codenamed Project Mic, The Verge reported. The new app would let anyone make and distribute live radio shows that include music, which users can listen to through Audible, Amazon Music, Twitch and Alexa devices.

Dating

  • Match-owned dating app Hinge introduces a new “Voice Prompts” feature that gives users a new way to interact, by answering a prompt through a 30-second recording. The company hopes the voice feature will give users a peek into someone’s personality and hint at what a first date might be like.
  • Chinese dating app Lesdo, designed for lesbian women, announced it was shutting down. This specific niche of online dating has failed to scale and make a profit in the country, despite a potential audience of 10 million in China. Contributing to the problem of scale is a hostile environment for the LGBTQ+ community, as Beijing has pressured charities not to work with queer activists and WeChat deactivated queer groups’ public accounts, Protocol reported.
  • Tinder continued to lead the dating app market with the highest number of paid subscribers, followed by Match.com, according to new data shared by Bloomberg’s Second Measure.

Image Credits: Bloomberg Second Measure

Gaming

  • Google Stadia rolls out a free, 30-minute game trial to woo people to its service. The option is being made available on its exclusive title Hello Engineer as a test, but Google confirmed it would expand the feature to other games in the next couple of months.
  • Amazon Luna’s game streaming service announced plans to add new titles in November, including Carrion, Gris and Mortal Shell: Enhanced Edition on the Luna+ Channel, and PHOGS! on the Family Channel. It also recently rolled out Alien Isolation, Amnesia: Rebirth, Far Cry 6, Olija, Riders Republic and others.

News & Reading

  • Apple News expanded its local news coverage to Charlotte, Miami and Washington, D.C., giving users access to numerous publications such as Axios Charlotte, the Charlotte Observer, Eater Miami, the Miami Herald, DCist, Washingtonian, The Washington Post and others. The company also said it’s expanding Fitness+ and its Apple One Premier subscription bundle to 17 more countries on November 3.

Health & Fitness

  • Apple rolled out support for COVID-19 vaccination cards and test results in Wallet with the release of iOS 15.1. Vaccination and test result records are downloaded in a verifiable format that’s digitally signed by a vaccine or test result provider, Apple says.

Government & Policy

Committee Chairman Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) speaks during a Senate Subcommittee on Consumer Protection, Product Safety, and Data Security hearing on Protecting Kids Online: Snapchat, TikTok, and YouTube on October 26, 2021 in Washington, DC.

Image Credits: Samuel Corum/Getty Images

  • This week, reps from TikTok, Snap and YouTube faced Congress to talk about how their apps are addressing kids and online safety as the U.S. considers legislation that would require tech companies to offer a safer environment for kids online. One of the highlights from the hearing was listening to senators try to get the companies on the record as to whether or not they support specific legislation, like the upcoming COPPA revamp, which only TikTok fully said “yes” to. When asked about the KIDS Act, which would prevent manipulative marketing (like undisclosed influencer marketing), there was less support. Companies said they would be happy to “look” at the details as if the Act was new, and not something that had already been around for a while.
  • TikTok dodged questions about its plans for biometric data collection during its first-ever Senate hearing. In an update to the company's U.S. privacy policy in June, TikTok added a new section that noted the app "may collect biometric identifiers and biometric information" from its users' content, including things like "faceprints and voiceprints." The company was questioned by multiple lawmakers on this matter during a hearing conducted by the Senate Subcommittee on Consumer Protection, Product Safety, and Data Security, which was focused on social media's detrimental impacts on children and teens.
  • The lawmakers also asked YouTube and Snap to defend their apps’ age ratings on the app stores, where they were sometimes rated 13 and up or 17 and up, depending on the platform. Snap was also pressed on whether its content was even appropriate for younger teens, given the app’s Discover page contained content that Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) deemed “wildly inappropriate” for a child, like “recommendations for…an invite to play an online sexualized video game that's marketed itself to people who are 18 and up; tips on, quote, 'why you shouldn't go to bars alone;' notices for video games that are rated for ages 17 and up; and articles about porn stars,” he said.
  • The senators also asked TikTok, Snap and YouTube how they handled eating disorder content, after Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen's document leaks exposed Facebook's knowledge that Instagram could be dangerous for teenage girls with body image issues.
  • In non-hearing news, Apple is “very likely” going to face a DOJ antitrust lawsuit, The Information reported this week, citing sources with knowledge of the matter.

Security & Privacy

  • Malware-laden “Squid Game”-themed apps have been found in the Google Play Store, including an app for Squid Game wallpaper that infected phones with Joker malware, allowing hackers to sign up the user for premium services they profit from.

Funding and M&A (and IPOs)

💰 Barcelona-based mobile keyboard software maker Fleksy raised $1.6 million in Series A led by Spanish asset management firm Inveready. The funds will be used to help the company pivot to B2B for its white-label SDK for iOS and Android.

💰 Social networking app OneRoof, aimed at connecting people in residential buildings, raised $1.2 million in seed funding led by General Catalyst. The app offers a Slack-like hub for messaging with neighbors and is now live in around 400 buildings in NYC.

📈  Indian payments app Paytm is planning to raise as much as $2.4 billion in what could be the country’s biggest IPO, valuing the business at $20 billion. The startup has raised more than $3 billion over the past decade and was last valued at $16 billion.

🤝 Celeb video app Cameo announced its first acquisition. The company is buying marketing and merch company Represent, which helps brands and celebs set up their own individualized storefronts and already has clients like Jennifer Lopez, Ed Sheeran, Leonardo DiCaprio, Matthew McConaughey and Kendall Jenner. Deal terms were not revealed, but Cameo plans to offer “gift bundles” that will allow users to pair videos with related merch.

💰 Neobanking app Zolve raised $40 million in Series A funding led by DST Global, valuing the startup at $210 million. The app offers a bank account, and debit and credit cards for Indian users working in the U.S., or planning to.

📈  Brazilian neobank Nu (aka Nubank) filed to go public. According to its filing, Nu plans to list in the U.S. with intent to "negotiate a program of Brazilian Depositary Receipts" in its home country. In June, Nu raised a $750 million round led by Berkshire Hathaway at a $30 billion valuation.

💰 Brazilian startup Gringo, which helps drivers monitor and perform services related to their documents and vehicles, raised $8 million in new funding led by Kaszek. The app is used to manage and pay for things like driver licenses, registration and taxes, and now has 2.5 million users.

💰 Digital physical therapy app Hinge Health raised $400 million in Series E funding led by returning investors Tiger Global and Coatue Management, valuing the startup at $6.2 billion. The app helps people treat chronic musculoskeletal (MSK) conditions, like back and joint pain, and now serves more than 575 enterprise customers.

💰 Early-stage startup Groopit raised $2 million in pre-seed funding led by Ascend.vc to help companies crowdsource data from the information supplied by employees working in the field. The product can be customized for the individual businesses to gather the kinds of data it needs — and works across mobile and web.

Downloads

Pikmin Bloom

Niantic’s attempt to once again replicate the success of Pokémon GO, in a way that Harry Potter: Wizards Unite has not really been able to, arrived this week. The company announced the launch of a new AR game Pikmin Bloom in collaboration with Nintendo. The game, like Pokémon GO, encourages users to go outside and explore — but now, instead of capturing Pokémon, they’ll collect seedlings and a squad of “Pikmin” — a sort of plant-animal hybrid creature. As you walk, you’ll leave AR trails of flowers behind you. The game will also later host monthly “Community Days” for Pikmin so users can plant and play together. Overall, the game seems less competitive than Pokémon GO and may be aimed at someone who wants more casual gameplay. The game initially rolled out to Singapore and Australia, then the U.S., and will continue to roll out globally.

Matterport 3D Capture (Android)

Matterport brought its 3D capture app to Android users, which allows customers to digitize their home, office or hotel with any compatible Android device, for free. Homeowners can use the app to create a digital appraisal of their property and everything in it for insurance, space planning or just peace of mind. Meanwhile, builders can plan and manage their construction projects along with designers, contractors and clientele. And real estate agents and rental property managers can quickly capture and publish 3D virtual experiences online, then share them across websites and social networks. The Matterport App for Android is available now on Google Play and can be used with a free account.

How VCs are adapting to meet an increasingly global startup market

Posted: 30 Oct 2021 10:02 AM PDT

Welcome back to The TechCrunch Exchange, a weekly startups-and-markets newsletter. It's inspired by the daily TechCrunch+ column where it gets its name. Want it in your inbox every Saturday? Sign up here. 

Good morning my dear friends, I trust you are well. It's the weekend! Here's hoping you are going to consume more sugar in the next few days than your doctor would approve of. After all, we all die in the end. And on that encouraging note, let's get to work!

TechCrunch's recurring coverage of venture capital trends has taken on an increasingly global tilt as the startup market has expanded to fill every geography. Hence our ramping coverage of India's startup scene, not to mention our increasing focus on the startups coming out of the African continent.

With so many startups raising so very much money, it can be hard to keep it all straight. But we're not the only organization with its eyes on upstart technology companies busy adapting to the new global startup reality. Venture capitalists are as well.

We've seen VCs shake up their operations to better suit a flat world for technology innovation in recent years. Larger funds with more partners to spread focus, for example, or the creation of country- or region-specific funds.

White Star is one such firm with an increasingly broad focus. The venture group recently closed its third fund, a $360 million vehicle, and TechCrunch caught up with founder Eric Martineau-Fortin a few days back. But instead of chatting about valuations, or sectors, we mostly talked about geographies.

Martineau-Fortin lives in Guernsey, a small island that sits roughly between France and the United Kingdom. Residing between two major landmasses is fitting for the investor, as his firm's first fund focused on the United States and Europe, roughly splitting investments between the two.

White Star's second fund expanded its geographical purview to include a modest Asia focus as well. The group's third fund will split roughly 40/40/20 between America, Europe and Asia, Martineau-Fortin said.

Notably, the group doesn't actively pursue the Indian market. Which stood out, given how much capital is flowing into the country, but White Star keeps its focus more on the South Korean and Japanese markets, so it can invest in Asia more broadly while not putting India atop its list.

I riffed with Martineau-Fortin about other markets. He had rather positive things to say about Brazil's startup scene — not a huge surprise with Nubank's IPO in the offing — and Mexico. More simply, the Latin American venture capital market is respected even by investors that don't have a focus there.

The world's venture market remains uneven, despite some flattening. The United States saw $72.3 billion in total VC activity in Q3 2021, per CB Insights data. Asia as a whole saw $50.2 billion. Europe managed $24.2 billion, and Latin America just $5.3 billion. That means that there's likely arbitrage out there for the investor willing to add new time zones to their mix.

Looking ahead, White Star could split its investment focus into thirds among the U.S., Europe and Asia. I wonder if that will become a normal split in time. After all, the internet is everywhere at once — sans North Korea, China and a few other markets — so why not put capital into companies, well, everywhere?

The future of consumer investing

Taking a hard right turn this morning, let's talk about consumer investing in the United Kingdom.

I promise I am going somewhere with this!

The Exchange caught up with Freetrade this week, auspicious timing as our call came in the wake of Robinhood's poor earnings report. As a reminder, Robinhood shares fell after the company announced a sharp sequential-quarterly revenue decline, falling active users and slim figures on total funded accounts.

The short answer to what happened from Q2 2021 to Q3 2021 at Robinhood is that crypto trading fell off a cliff on its platform, leading to a lackluster revenue result. The company's Q4 is forecasted to be even smaller than its Q3. Not good!

I expected the Robinhood results to prove indicative of what Freetrade was seeing amongst its own user base. But, per the company's CEO Adam Dodds, nothing of the sort. Indeed, the company recently announced that it has reached one million users, but more importantly that it has secured 110,000 new funded accounts thus far in October. That's a huge portion of the company's aggregate user base in a single month!

That hardly bearish fact in hand, Dodds doesn’t see Freetrade's core market of the U.K. as nearly tapped out, and the company has expansion plans involving Canada, Australia and more coming in the next few months. Along with, yes, crypto trading.

The other difference of note between Robinhood and Freetrade, apart from their presently disparate user growth figures, is that the latter company doesn't engage in payment for order flow. Instead, Dodds explained, the company makes money from subscriptions, a small slice of FX transactions and interest on held user cash.

The subscription element is key to the company's long-term value, I reckon. Why? Because recurring software revenues are investor catnip, and Dodds said that something akin to a quarter of folks opt to pony up for the paid version of its service.

If that ratio holds up — or merely experiences modest declines — Freetrade could build a huge software business. Given just how much more penetration the startup anticipates in its home market, let alone foreign shores, there's money to be made. More when Freetrade raises again.

— Alex

Internet shutdowns are a political weapon. It’s time to disarm.

Posted: 30 Oct 2021 09:05 AM PDT

Scott Carpenter Contributor
Scott Carpenter is Jigsaw's Director of Policy and International Engagement. Prior to Google, Carpenter served as the Keston Family Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and as the U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State in the Bureau of Democracy and Human Rights.

Authoritarian governments from twenty-one countries have deliberately shut down internet service at least fifty times this year, and the problem is only bound to get worse. As regimes such as Venezuela face elections and Cuba experience protests, they're finding it easier to contain dissent by curtailing digital freedoms – and are becoming increasingly brazen in doing so.

Shutting down the internet can be as easy as flipping a switch. Hosni Mubarak's Egypt took this approach in 2011, and ten years later, Myanmar's daily shutdowns lasted months – depriving hundreds of thousands of people of the means to communicate and shrinking the country's GDP by an estimated 2.5 percent. Just this week in Sudan, citizens are experiencing disruptions to internet access in the midst of an ongoing military coup.

Most governments are more nuanced, however.

Read more from the TechCrunch Global Affairs Project

The Iranian government was among the first to block websites, as it did in 2009 during the Green Movement. Others, like Tunisia, blocked only certain websites amidst protests demanding greater accountability this year. Increasingly, governments use their control over internet service providers to 'throttle', or slow down, particular domains to an unusable speed. Russia, for instance, recently throttled Twitter for refusing to remove "objectionable" content about opposition figure Alexei Navalny.

Governments provide myriad reasons for restricting internet access. Officials often cite national security or a fear of violence during public demonstrations. But as people live more of their lives online, governments' ability to restrict internet access represents a grave threat to safety, freedom and well-being.

After all, the internet's growth as a global, borderless network of networks has been a boon to human freedom, providing new ways to discover information and new channels to organize. But growing opposition to a truly global open internet from a surprising number of governments risks a mounting erosion of freedoms as more aspects of our lives shift online.

The problem of deliberate shutdowns has escalated – and UN Special Rapporteur Clement Voule recently warned that shutdowns are getting worse and more widespread. Internet shutdowns are increasingly being used as the primary tool for governments to silence dissent and control their populations without attracting the ire of the international community.

Internet shutdowns affect people far beyond restricting communication: they immobilize economies by halting commerce and trade, keep people from attending school, and endanger lives. But as covert blocking techniques like throttling have become commonplace, detection of shutdowns has become more difficult. The increasing complexity of the internet makes it difficult to determine what is happening when a government limits its citizens' access, though. And it's impossible to condemn what you can't see.

Documenting even partial internet shutdowns is a critical first step to addressing this issue globally. No government should be able to shut down the internet without the international community knowing about it. That's why Jigsaw is working with leading researchers at Access Now, Censored Planet, Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI), and others to make information available, build understanding, and mitigate the impact of shutdowns.

A number of resources can reduce the impact of internet shutdowns. Mesh networks, virtual private networks (VPNs), and shared proxy servers can provide the means to help people connect to the open web during shutdowns. Implementing internet-wide standards can make domain-level throttling more difficult.

But technology is only one part of the solution. Preventing future shutdowns requires political action: raising the cost of such action in the eyes of the international community.

Grassroots efforts to highlight internet shutdowns such as the #KeepItOn movement, a coalition of more than 240 organizations from 105 countries, provides a range of advocacy, technical support, and legal interventions to prevent future shutdowns.

Democratic governments, too, should unite in action.

As the world’s most technologically advanced democracies formalize their multilateral coordination on technology issues in groupings like the T-12 or the Quad, they should prioritize internet shutdowns as a key pillar of their agenda. Through the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the United States and other like-minded states could build on the work of the Online Freedom Coalition, a grouping of thirty-five democracies committed to online freedom, to enhance funding efforts to understand the technical aspects of the threat and develop technical and policy responses. They could ensure concerted condemnation accompanies future shutdowns and articulate 'red lines' to trigger sanctions on countries violating their commitments under international human rights law.

Despite the challenges, it is up to democracies to take up the rallying cry for a free and open internet. Only then might the promise of a universally accessible internet be fulfilled.

Read more from the TechCrunch Global Affairs Project

Neurodiversity in technology: Are businesses missing out on key talent?

Posted: 30 Oct 2021 07:15 AM PDT

Tracie Gildea Contributor
Tracie Gildea is chief marketing officer of STANLEY Security and is a vocal advocate for diversity and inclusion in the workplace.

My son was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder in the first grade. As a mother, it took an ecosystem of support from schools, counselors and family members to ensure that we understood his needs and provided support for his learning and personal development.

Through our own journey, I've seen firsthand the challenges that people with neurological variations like autism face on a daily basis, but perhaps one of the biggest hurdles is overcoming society's underestimation of this incredibly gifted population.

In my experience, people with neurodiversity are consistently underestimated for their knowledge and skills — but if my son is any indication of the value they can bring to the tech industry, then business leaders are missing out until they prioritize cognitive diversity.

Why is neurodiversity important in the technology industry?

One of the key factors in making each of us different is our neurological makeup. This difference can result in people interpreting, understanding and reacting differently in certain situations within personal and working life. And it often creates different skills and talents within people, such as heightened levels of analytical and creative processing.

The technology industry spans various roles and functions, from data scientists to developers, analysts and many more – not to mention the jobs that have yet to be created as we approach the Fifth Industrial Revolution and our world undergoes a significant digital transformation.

As an industry, we need to work harder to educate how talent can be leveraged in different ways to fulfill these roles, because employees are often a company's greatest asset.

Throughout history, we've relied on our ability as a society to think differently in order to survive and thrive. With differences in thinking, neurodiverse people can bring alternative perspectives that may not have been explored before. It's critical that businesses continue to prioritize cognitive diversity in their workforce, as every individual brings unique knowledge, experiences, and skills to the table and can help drive progress in technological innovation.

How can the tech sector recognize and recruit neurodiverse talent?

One of the first barriers to entry for someone who is neurodiverse is the interview process. Traditional interviews take into consideration things like body language and awareness of social cues that can put a neurodiverse person at a disadvantage.

Neurodiversity might affect the way that someone communicates; for example, the inability to read non-verbal social cues, resulting in limited eye contact and limited language softening. This behavior could lead to the removal of neurodiverse people from candidacy based on "cultural fit.” In reality, this is a much larger miscommunication that's likely to screen out neurodiverse talent from positions in which they could excel.

Chemistry and character-based stages of the hiring process tend to take place first, before digging into the more technical elements of a role, where neurodiverse people can display their advanced skills. This leads us to ask: Are businesses doing enough to support diversity, equity and inclusion if they aren't giving equal opportunity to neurodiverse people?

One way businesses can address this challenge is by partnering with community organizations to gain expert guidance, education, and best practices around talent acquisition and talent nurturing.

For example, across Stanley Black & Decker, we're collaborating with the National Organization on Disability and Autism Speaks to establish a hiring program that helps us recruit and retain talent of all abilities. As a leading global company, we have a responsibility to ensure our future is developed for everyone, by everyone, and that means taking steps to ensure our workforce is diverse and inclusive of people of all abilities, including neurodiverse people.

By taking steps to understand how we can all implement inclusive hiring practices, the tech industry can greatly benefit from a talent pool that might have otherwise been untapped. This could provide at least part of the solution to the technology talent shortage that continues to impact the industry.

Job mobility and career advancement within the neurodiverse community can also be explored and developed to ensure that career advancement is not limited to lower-skilled positions.

We must keep in mind the limitations on soft skills and associated characteristics stereotypically looked for in management and leadership roles, such as self-awareness and interpersonal communication.

When you look at case studies of neurodiverse teams, there is a distinct uplift in productivity, particularly in analytical roles. As such, I'd encourage leaders to identify opportunities for all talent to excel in their areas of expertise.

Addressing the cybersecurity skills gap through neurodiversity

Can the tech sector help optimize the future of the workplace for neurodiverse people?

During the past 18 months, we have seen a dramatic shift in requirements from leadership. Employees have more autonomy than ever before, and the same goes for people who are neurodiverse.

They now have the ability to request workplace accommodations that might not have been considered "essential" in the past — for example, more flexible working arrangements or the availability of choices to support alternative requirements to thrive in their working day. This could include variety in their immediate work environment and spaces for limited social interaction, noise or distraction, as well as the availability of headphones to limit auditory overstimulation.

Not only that, but the virtual world in which we're living presents an added opportunity for people who are neurodiverse because it requires fewer of the typical in-person social skills that were previously expected within the workplace. This means that now more than ever, there are many flexible processes and policies that organizations can put in place to meet employees where they are.

A great way to provide additional support to employees is by encouraging engagement in employee resource groups (ERGs). In 2018, I co-founded our Abilities Network, a global ERG committed to supporting employees with disabilities, employee family caregivers of those with disabilities and the greater global community. It provides them with an engaging environment where they can pursue advancement, bring their full selves to work and thrive.

It was my personal experience that inspired me to establish this ecosystem of support — I knew how essential it was in helping our family advocate for our son. I did this through charity partnerships such as Autism Speaks. First initiated in 2018, we wanted to provide guidance for our workforce and leverage the National Organization on Disabilities to enhance our education and progress in this area.

By developing these communities, we can open conversations around neurodiversity and create more inclusive environments in which all employees have the tools, resources and support they need to succeed.

This also allows us to support employees as the business adapts. For example, during the pandemic, we saw a large increase in employees suffering from anxiety. Therefore, the Abilities Network partnered with Understanding Anxiety to offer support and tools to employees who need it.

It's important that we bring best practices in inclusivity to all elements of the business, from hiring to marketing and everything in between.

From a marketing perspective, this means creating, for example, accessible website experiences across a company's digital platforms to ensure people of all abilities are able to access and experience the company's information. We've been successful in deploying numerous digital experiences with "accessibility by design" through the support of the Abilities Network ERG.

By tracking the progress of the employee experience through employment statistics and employee objectives in a Disability Employment Tracker, we have seen a 54% increase in talent sourcing and a 20% increase in "people, policies and practices" leading to an overall cultural accessibility increase of 105%.

My son has been a tremendous help throughout this process, acting as a sounding board to help me drive toward a more inclusive future, and I'm forever grateful for his partnership. He has been the inspiration behind my passion to ensure inclusivity remains at the heart of everything that I do.

Neurodiversity presents business opportunities

Technology changes the world and shapes the future of all industries. As leaders in this space, we have a responsibility to ensure that this future is inclusive and representative of all of us. We must ensure diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives aid not only new talent, but the neurodiverse people already within the talent pool.

My son, now 19 years old, is studying biotechnology and molecular bioscience at a technology university. When he was first diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder, we were met with low expectations for his personal and professional development — a collective underestimation of the value his unique skills could bring to the table.

This has driven my passion and efforts to ensure that we at Stanley Black & Decker — and other companies — provide inclusive opportunities for all people.

Neurodiversity presents a huge opening for leaders to bring in unique talent with different skill sets to ultimately drive progress in the tech industry and beyond. And unless we're tapping into this pool of talent, companies are missing out.

Neurodiversity and the software design dilemma
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