TechCrunch |
- The early bird has landed — buy your in-person pass to TC Sessions: Mobility 2022 today and save
- This Week in Apps: Android’s Privacy Sandbox, Super Bowl app ads, App Annie rebrands
- Hire, then wire with a twist
- When to pivot your product, and a tale of two earnings calls
- Will rising interest rates decimate startup valuations?
- Arlan Hamilton wants to reroute how startups hire
- India’s CRED eyes investment in Amazon-backed Smallcase
- Better.com loses more senior execs as employees brace for another mass layoff
- Experts Weekly: Recruiting recruiters, crypto marketing, earned media 101
- Daily Crunch: Meta fires executive after ‘predator catchers’ interview video goes viral
| The early bird has landed — buy your in-person pass to TC Sessions: Mobility 2022 today and save Posted: 19 Feb 2022 04:09 PM PST Who's ready to mobilize and meet up in real life? And by "mobilize" we mean join more than 2,000 mobile-minded movers and shakers at TC Sessions: Mobility 2022 in San Mateo, California, on May 18-19. We're back for our fourth straight year, and can't wait to see you in person for two days dedicated to exciting, new and emerging technologies designed to move people and packages from Point A to Point B. Action reaps rewards: Early-bird pricing is now in effect, and that means keeping more money in your wallet. Buy an early-bird pass and you'll save $300. Your all-access pass includes breakout sessions, networking, access to our expo area and videos on-demand following the live event. Whether you're an early- or late-stage founder, an investor, engineer or builder, or you're focused on the policies and ethics of rolling out new mobility technologies across cities and towns, this event is meant for you. During panel discussions, one-on-one interviews and smaller, more intimate breakout sessions and topic-driven roundtable discussions, you'll hear from and engage with top mobility leaders, experienced VCs, government regulators and subject-matter experts. Walk away with fresh perspectives and actionable tips that can help drive your business to the next level. Why is TC Sessions: Mobility 2022 worth stowing your sweatpants and meeting people face-to-face? Here's how Karin Maake, senior director of communications at FlashParking, described her IRL TC Mobility experience:
Speaking of opportunities, here's an excellent way to reap even more opportunity from your TC Mobility experience. Plant your startup flag in our demo area and exhibit your mobility tech and talent directly to the industry's most influential founders, investors and media. Build your brand, attract more customers and discover new opportunities. Take advantage of early-bird pricing, buy an Early-Stage Startup Demo Package and save $200. The package includes four full-access passes, so bring your team and cover even more ground. Don't forget to check out our outdoor playground, where you can see the latest e-bikes, scooters and autonomous vehicles. Go ahead, take a test drive or two! TC Sessions: Mobility 2022 takes place on May 18-19 in San Mateo, California. Buy an early-bird pass, save $300 and get ready to learn about the latest in mobility tech and trends — live and in-person. It's a great strategy to keep your mobility business moving forward. Is your company interested in sponsoring or exhibiting at TC Sessions: Mobility 2022? Contact our sponsorship sales team by filling out this form.
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| This Week in Apps: Android’s Privacy Sandbox, Super Bowl app ads, App Annie rebrands Posted: 19 Feb 2022 11:15 AM PST 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 number of downloads and consumer spending across both the iOS and Google Play stores combined in 2021, according to the latest year-end reports. App Annie says global spending across iOS, Google Play and third-party Android app stores in China grew 19% in 2021 to reach $170 billion. Downloads of apps also grew by 5%, reaching 230 billion in 2021, and mobile ad spend grew 23% year-over-year to reach $295 billion. In addition, consumers are spending more time in apps than ever before — even topping the time they spend watching TV, in some cases. The average American watches 3.1 hours of TV per day, for example, but in 2021, they spent 4.1 hours on their mobile device. And they're not even the world's heaviest mobile users. In markets like Brazil, Indonesia and South Korea, users surpassed five hours per day in mobile apps in 2021. Apps aren’t just a way to pass idle hours, either. They can grow to become huge businesses. In 2021, 233 apps and games generated over $100 million in consumer spend, and 13 topped $1 billion in revenue, App Annie noted. This was up 20% from 2020 when 193 apps and games topped $100 million in annual consumer spend, and just eight apps topped $1 billion. 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 StoriesGoogle introduced a “Privacy Sandbox” for Android Image Credits: Bryce Durbin / TechCrunch Google this week introduced its take on Apple’s App Tracking Transparency system with the reveal of the Privacy Sandbox for Android. The system is based on the Privacy Sandbox initiative for Chrome, but isn’t going live anytime soon. Instead, Google says its current system will remain active for at least two more years while it runs tests. Google — which makes a majority of its revenue from advertising let’s not forget — is going in a different direction than Apple did. Google even took a bit of a swipe at Apple when announcing the news, noting that “other platforms have taken a different approach to ads privacy, bluntly restricting existing technologies used by developers and advertisers.” It says this sort of approach is “ineffective” and leads to “worse outcomes” for user privacy and developers. Google then touted its system as one where it will work with the industry and developer community to balance the need for user privacy with businesses’ needs. (Not to mention Google’s own.) The system, broadly, will involve phasing out the Advertising ID tracking feature, while still allowing advertisers to show personalized ads to groups of users with similar interests. This is based on Google’s work developing “Topics,” which offers users more control and transparency over the ads they see. It will also offer some level of attribution reporting to advertisers and a developer SDK. (A technical run-through is here.) Already, the system has support from Snap, Rovio, Activision Blizzard, Duolingo and others. Google’s decision to engage in dialogue, rather than rolling out a policy change that disrupts the existing ecosystem, makes sense for the company because so many Android apps are free and ad-supported, compared with apps on iOS. Plus, Android serves as a gateway to serve ads, which benefits Google’s bottom line. In addition, Google pointed out that Apple’s approach can lead advertisers to turn to other, less visible means of tracking users which is bad for users, too. In fact, it says this is already happening, pointing to a study by ex-Apple engineers that backed up this opinion. The study showed how trackers built features to circumvent Apple’s ATT rules, making ATT something that only gives the illusion of privacy in the long run. But critics have slammed Google’s plans as “toothless,” as an optional system for advertisers, and others noted that Google can’t even really do anything to prevent its competitors from running “effective ads on Android” since it’s already facing antitrust accusations of being an ad monopolist — which limits its ability to change things in this space. Then there’s the fact that Google’s announcement was more of a plan to create a plan (after much discussion) than it was any sort of definitive step forward. In the end, there isn’t much detail as to how all this works because there just aren’t details yet — they’re TBD. Meanwhile, Android user privacy remains unimpacted. Crypto apps’ Super Bowl ads paid off Image Credits: Sensor Tower The Super Bowl ad spots paid off for a number of tech companies, not just in terms of exposure, but also app installs, a new report indicates. But Coinbase's viral ad — which just bounced a QR code around on a black screen like the old DVD screensaver — outperformed the group, with installs jumping 309% week-over-week after the ad's airing Super Bowl Sunday, February 13, and it continued to climb by another 286% the following day, according to Sensor Tower data. Among the top five apps whose ads delivered strong download growth, three were crypto apps. In addition to Coinbase, crypto trading platform eToro grew app installs by 132% week-over-week on February 13, and by 82% on February 14. Meanwhile, Cryptocurrency exchange FTX, whose ad featured "Curb Your Enthusiasm" star Larry David, saw a 130% boost in downloads week-over-week on February 13, followed by 81% growth the next day. Collectively, Coinbase, eToro and FTX saw their U.S. installs grow by a collective 279% on February 13 compared to the week prior. This continued into the following day, when week-over-week download growth reached 252%. Other apps that did well during the big game were sportsbook apps — but they may have seen downloads pop anyway! App Annie rebrands to data.ai…for reasonsThe company announced this week the new name will reflect its “vision to drive comprehensive digital performance with products and partnerships.” Arguably, it will also unlink the old brand name from the embarrassing news last fall which saw both the firm and its co-founder charged with securities fraud. App Annie and former CEO Bertrand Schmitt had to pay more than $10 million to settle the fraud charges related to its deceptive practices and making material misrepresentations about how its data was derived. The firm had used non-anonymized data to alter its estimates, and even directed engineers in China to manually update its estimates at times, before automating those adjustments to better match up with the actual — and confidential — revenue and download figures it had from clients. Oops! The new company name implies those days are behind it, as it references how it will fuel its digital insights using the power of artificial intelligence (AI). Related to this news, data.ai also announced a new reseller agreement with Similarweb that will allow the firm to offer a unified mobile and web market data set. Weekly NewsPlatforms: Apple/iOS
Platforms: Google/Android
 Image Credits: Microsoft Augmented Reality
Crypto
Social
Messaging
Dating
Gaming
Health & Fitness
Government & Policy
Security & Privacy
Funding and M&A Image Credits: Rainbow
DownloadsShortwave Image Credits: Shortwave TechCrunch’s Frederic Lardinois took a look at a new startup called Shortwave, which aims to pick up where Google Inbox (RIP) left off. The email app is available on desktop (as a PWA), iOS and Android (beta). It’s designed to function as a “smarter” Gmail client that offers tools for turning messages into to-dos, pinning emails to the top of the inbox, grouping and categorizing conversions, replying to emails with GIFs, reactions, emoji, snoozing messages and more. The app is available for free but will target business users. It offers a Slack-like monetization feature, where users who want access to more than 90 days of email history will have to pay. Obscura 3 Image Credits: Obscura The popular Obscura camera app released its latest version this week, which includes a number of new camera features, a refreshed design, improved performance and other changes. The apps’ exposure and focus controls are now controlled entirely by gestures, while haptics provide feedback to let you feel the control without having to look. The app’s capture modes have been updated to reflect the iPhone’s improved camera system, and now offers five separate modes. These include Photo (for fast shooting), Pro Photo (where you can control every aspect like focus, white balance, shutter speed and more), Depth (Portrait effect), Live Photo and an all-new Video mode — the first time the app has supported video capture. The app also added support for alternative aspect ratios, more white balance controls, manual exposure controls and other features. The new app is double the price of the prior version at $9.99, but also ships with a Watch companion, support for connecting controllers and will soon offer Widgets and support for iPad.
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| Posted: 19 Feb 2022 11:00 AM PST 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. Since launching the venture firm Backstage Capital in 2015, Arlan Hamilton has invested millions in more than 195 companies led by underrepresented founders, from a duo taking on auto insurance to a team rethinking how we virtually learn. Despite the breadth in the business, Hamilton says she is consistently asked two questions by her portfolio companies: "Can you help us raise money? And, "Can you help us with hiring?" While Hamilton's fund is a response to the former, her latest bet — built by Hamilton herself — is a startup that explores the latter. Runner is a labor marketplace that connects startups with operations people looking for part-time work. It seeks to combat some of the largest tensions in early-stage startup building, such as deciding when it's time to hire your first head of talent, or figuring out what to contract out, or what to build in-house when it comes to staffing. It's launching with an explicit focus on operations roles. "There are so many places you can go if you want to learn how to code or if you want to get a job as in the more technical side of things," Hamilton says. "But where do you go right now if you want to be someone's right hand, the COO, etc. … it's sort of an afterthought for most [companies]." Conceptually, Runner isn't contrarian. Upwork and Fiverr have built solid businesses atop the freelancer economy. What's different about the startup, though, is in who it targets — operations folks in tech — and how it employs them. Every "runner," or part-time professional who is looking to get a new gig, is employed by the company under a W-2 classification. Around 200 runners are on the platform today. And Hamilton tells TechCrunch the approach has attracted $1.5 million in pre-seed backing weeks before Runner is set to launch on the app store. For the entire story, including how one cohort of investors in the company is raising an interesting set of questions, read my story on TechCrunch: Arlan Hamilton wants to reroute how startups hire. In the rest of this newsletter our heart will Flutter, and then it will ride the wild wave of crypto. We'll also get into the latest in SEC filings and notes from my calls throughout the past week. As always, you can support me by sharing this newsletter, following me on Twitter or subscribing to my personal blog. Deal of the weekAs a result of its latest financing event, Flutterwave is now the highest valued startup in Africa. The cross-border payments platform beat out OPay and Chipper Cash with its savvy API approach. Here's why it's important: Africa's tech scene may see a whole lot of consolidation. As Tage Kene-Okafor reports, "in the future, Flutterwave will look at acquisitions that will further consolidate its authority in the fintech space. And as the payments giant continues to deepen its influence in the SMB and consumer fintech space, we can speculate that smaller startups — including those it has backed, like CinetPay — may become acquisition targets." Honorable mentions:
Do you want your paycheck in crypto?In our latest episode of Equity, we chatted through Deel's recent launch, which gives businesses the option to run their payroll in crypto. As reported by our own Mary Ann Azevedo: "Specifically, companies that hold their money in USDC can make a payment directly to Deel via their Coinbase account to cover payroll and payments for their global team. Once the business has paid the money into Deel, contractors can withdraw in over 150 currencies, including crypto." Here's why it's important: This is yet another step in the mainstreamification — if that's actually a word — of crypto. Also, India going back and forth in a matter of weeks is volatile, sure, but it's also a signal that the asset is being taken seriously enough to have debate. Which is different from where it was just a few years ago. When even a turbulent tide lifts all boats:
In the DMs
Across the weekWe get to hang out in person! Soon! Techcrunch Early Stage 2022 is April 14, aka right around the corner, and it's in San Francisco. Join us for a one-day founder summit featuring GV's Terri Burns, Greylock's Glen Evans and Felicis' Aydin Senkut. The TC team has been fiending to get back in person, so don't be surprised if panels are a little spicier than usual. Here's the full agenda, and grab your launch tickets here. Also, Equity, the tech news podcast I co-host alongside Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo, is going live! Join us for a virtual, live recording of our show this upcoming Thursday, February 24th – tickets are free, puns will come at the cost of our producers' sanity. Our bestie pod, Found is also joining the live circuit, so listen to them endlessly to prepare. Seen on TechCrunch Meta axes head of global community development after he appears on video in underage sex sting AI acquires the power to manipulate fusion, but wait, it's actually good news New York's Thrive Capital closes its eighth fund with a whopping $3 billion Still managing engineers remotely? Okay has a performance dashboard for that When the founder becomes the story Seen on TechCrunch+ Did venture capitalists undervalue startups for decades? How to find a job as a scout for a VC firm Unit's Itai Damti explains how the company fundraises using culture and value Dear Sophie: Should we seek a K-1 visa or marriage-based green card? 10 fintech investors discuss what they're looking for and how to pitch them in Q1 2022 Until next time, |
| When to pivot your product, and a tale of two earnings calls Posted: 19 Feb 2022 10:10 AM PST Welcome 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. Oh yeah, y'all, it's the weekend and it's a long one here in the United States as we have Monday off. As you read this I am – hopefully – napping on the couch with three dogs festooned around me, all four of us drooling while we snooze. But! First! There's much to do, so let's dive into one startup's pivot from earlier in the week and, yes, talk a little about money. Jukes, pivotsThe esports world is a pretty fragmented place. Built atop different games, forums, tournament series, platforms, chat apps, and websites, it can be a legit effort to figure out what the hell is going on, even in your favorite game. So, Juked.gg set out to build a centralized news hub for all things esports back in 2020. The company saw some early success, raising a seven-figure round that we covered back in early 2021. But according to co-founder Ben Goldhaber, the service had a period of rapid growth, what he described as "up and to the right" in graph form, before seeing its active user count plateau last year. What happened? According to Goldhaber, who also goes by the gamertag "FishStix," Juked wound up serving the top 1% of esports fans, but wasn't reaching a larger audience. So, the nascent company did the smart thing of asking its users about its service and what they thought of it. From those conversations, Goldhaber said that users brought up issues endemic to esports like community toxicity, spam, and hot takes. So, Juked decided to pivot slightly and build the social network that its users were effectively asking for – a less toxic place to be an esports fan. The product launched Thursday after a period in a closed alpha after having tested it with around 750 users before making it more generally available. According to information from AppAnnie (now Data.ai, apparently), the service did chart among iOS users in the United States this week, albeit only in the social networking category. We'll check back with the company in a few months to see how downloads shake out. Big questions remain, including how the service intends to combat toxicity at scale — I had to agree to a pretty strong set of terms to sign up. Juked intends to use human moderation with AI in the future, and requires users to sign up with a phone number. All good ideas, but untested for the company at mass scale. I dig what Juked has been working on because I am an esports fan. But I am also not precisely in the market for a new social network. Let's see how the startup's in-market juke can help it score more points. (And probably raise money, since it's been a year since its equity crowdfunding round, so we wouldn't fall over in shock if the company worked to pick up more cash in the coming quarters.) A tale of two earnings callsThis week brought with it another sheaf of earnings calls from tech companies. And as always, we've had our eyes tuned into the market for hints about what's ahead for startups. Most of our work is here, in our dive into just how important forward guidance is for tech companies today. Trailing results appear to be far less important to investors than what they see ahead. So when Amplitude got whacked by public-market investors, we took notes. There were other companies that took similar knocks, including Meta, so don't think that we're pointing a finger at the recently public Amplitude. (It direct-listed last year, recall.) But there was another side to the coin, namely Appian's earnings. The low-code automation company has been a quieter public-market story than most tech debuts. That's not a diss, mind; its CEO Matt Calkins told me as much this week when discussing the company's results. How so? It boils down to Calkins' definition of what innovation is, and it's not just building something. Telling TechCrunch that his company has long been an engineering-led organization, he told us that it's not enough to make something cool. If the company doesn't market a new feature, sell it, and get it used, then it hasn't actually innovated. Innovation, he said, is an experience, not a product. The final result of innovation, he added, is a customer testimonial of a new feature – when someone will go on record and say that a new thing really is good. Which requires people to, well, know that something exists so that they can give it a whirl. I like his perspective. It helps explain why much of the so-called innovation in the blockchain world seems less like real innovation than the creation of a collection of hypotheses; yes, some of the more esoteric web3 products that are in the market today will have real impact, but most are more coding tricks than useful tools. A little more before I let you go. The staffing crunch that companies are feeling in the United States is not merely driving up the cost of hiring, it's helping companies like Appian. The company is seeing demand from customers to automate more of their work because employees don't want to do it. And unhappy employees bounce. Finally, Appian's growth has been accelerating for a little while now. And it had an earnings report that led not to a share-price collapse, but a gain. Returning to our entry point for this conversation, that's the bar that companies have to clear today to grind out a few hundred basis points of market cap extension. It's a far harder market than a few quarters ago. Which is why, I think, the IPO window is kaput for some time yet. Hugs, and I hope your weekend is restful! |
| Will rising interest rates decimate startup valuations? Posted: 19 Feb 2022 07:00 AM PST Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. This is Saturday, which means it’s not a usual day for us to drop an episode. But what are we if not try-hards at heart? So, we’re back today. What do we have on store for you? I brought Anshu Sharma onto the podcast — and a Twitter space, so make sure you are following the podcast, yeah? — to chat interest rates, technology growth, startup valuations, and how they all tie together. Sharma was the right person to have on the show because he’s been a big tech employee (Oracle, Salesforce), an investor (Storm Ventures, and as an angel), and he’s a founder to boot. So he’s been around not just the block, but several in the world of technology over time. TechCrunch has covered SkyFlow, his startup, a few times including its most recent fundraise. Sharma finds some of the in-market worry about rising rates harming tech stocks silly. His thesis boils down to the value of growth on a longer time-horizon than what a DCF-tuned spreadsheet might tell you. That said, rising rates will impact some startup inputs, like venture funds in the medium-term, so there was a lot to chew on. We try to keep Equity pretty high-level, and focused on discrete events. But why have a show if you can’t use it to scratch your own itches from time to time? The pod is back on Tuesday due to an American holiday this Monday. Chat soon! Equity drops every Monday at 7:00 a.m. PST, Wednesday, and Friday at 6:00 a.m. PST, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. |
| Arlan Hamilton wants to reroute how startups hire Posted: 19 Feb 2022 05:00 AM PST Since launching the venture firm Backstage Capital in 2015, Arlan Hamilton has invested millions in more than 195 companies led by underrepresented founders, from a duo taking on auto insurance to a team rethinking how we virtually learn. Despite the breadth in the business, Hamilton says she is consistently asked two questions by her portfolio companies: "Can you help us raise money? And, "Can you help us with hiring?" While Hamilton's fund is a response to the former, her latest bet — built by Hamilton herself — is a startup that explores the latter. Runner is a labor marketplace that connects startups with operations people looking for part-time work. It seeks to combat some of the largest tensions in early-stage startup building, such as deciding when it's time to hire your first head of talent, or figuring out what to contract out, or what to build in-house when it comes to staffing. It's launching with an explicit focus on operations roles. "There are so many places you can go if you want to learn how to code or if you want to get a job as in the more technical side of things," Hamilton says. "But where do you go right now if you want to be someone's right hand, the COO, etc. … it's sort of an afterthought for most [companies]." Conceptually, Runner isn't contrarian. Upwork and Fiverr have built solid businesses atop the freelancer economy. What's different about the startup, though, is in who it targets — operations folks in tech — and how it employs them. Every "runner" or part-time professional who is looking to get a new gig is employed by the company under a W-2 classification. Around 200 runners are on the platform today, including those with experience in corporate roles or those who were previously entrepreneurs who want another stream of income. Many current executives at the company first joined as runners. For example, head of customer success Melanie Jones joined the platform after spending time as a product manager at a dental network. Within a month, she was hired as an executive, alongside a number of other runners-turned-decision-makers at the company. Separately, Boeing exec Diana Moore joined as a COO just four months ago. By classifying runners as employees instead of contractors, individuals are able to get basic protections and more job stability. Bluecrew, a Y Combinator graduate, similarly launched to provide on-demand workers, but hired them as employees with benefits, albeit in roles such as bartending, event staff, security, data entry or customer support. For Hamilton, Runner is a return to an idea she's been working on before she even broke into venture. Before Backstage, Hamilton was a production coordinator and tour manager for musicians (she continues to pepper music references into her work as an investor). While in that role, she would often work with runners, or individuals with local expertise who could be a right-hand helper to make things happen while on the road. When she was building Backstage, she began using runners in her own life, hiring people for one-day help while meeting founders across the country. After the investor saw synergies between this role within the production world and tech's love for flexibility, she brewed up Runner, with a logo and everything. "We were building Backstage, we had no resources, because COVID hadn’t happened yet, people were really kind of confused by the idea of it," she said. "So it was just one of those whiteboard ideas." Now, nearly two years into a still ongoing pandemic, the market is ready. The company's business model is a 25% cut of a runner's hourly rate. Additionally, if a runner is recruited by a customer to join them full-time, the customer must pay a 10% recruitment fee of the runner's first year's salary. Unlike Backstage, which wants to upend the way venture capital is distributed and to whom, Runner isn't building under the guise of helping companies recruit underrepresented talent — a choice Hamilton made, interestingly, because she didn't want to "pigeonhole" the company. "It would have been really easy for us to just categorize ourselves as a DEI recruitment company, but we didn't want to be responsible for that — it should be everyone's responsibility," she said. That said, today, all executives at Runner come from historically overlooked backgrounds. Before it went to the waitlist model to better deal with demand, Runner secured around 120 pilot customers at a $500,000 run rate. Its app is set to launch on March 15, 2022. As for financing, Hamilton initially bootstrapped the company and, within the first 100 days, raised a $500,000 angel round. Most recently, Runner raised a $1.5 million pre-seed round on a SAFE note at an undisclosed valuation. Backers in that round include Precursor, Lunar Startups, Freada Klein of Kapor Capital, 360 Venture Collective and Gaingels. Backstage Capital's crowd syndicate, Backstage Flex Fund II and Backstage Opportunity Fund I, also invested in the startup. It's rare to see investors pour their own fund's money into a company they started, but, as Hamilton notes, it's not unheard of when you consider Guy Oseary's Sound Ventures investing in his company, Bright, or David Sacks’ Craft Ventures investing in his audio company. Still, it can create a conflict of interest if decision-makers at the firm feel pressure to put money into a GP's company, because they are, well, the GP. Hamilton was part of the investment committee that decided to put money into Runner, but also gave each person authority to make autonomous decisions, she says. She also added that the eight-page deal memo — which gets into challenges, opportunity and gaps — was written by Backstage partner Brittany Davis, and associate Kelly Lei, without any alterations from her. The Runner team provided the pitch deck. "It’s my fiduciary duty at the firm to bring back returns, and it’s my duty as a CEO of Runner to bring in the best investment partners possible. I did both," Hamilton adds over Twitter DM. Another balance in the mix is that any Backstage portfolio company that uses Runner doesn't have to pay the 25% service fee, or the amount that goes to the company's revenue and operations. "Our goal is to have 1,000 or more learners by the end of the year making an average of $40,000," Hamilton said. "[Then] we are a half a billion dollar company." |
| India’s CRED eyes investment in Amazon-backed Smallcase Posted: 18 Feb 2022 10:57 PM PST Indian fintech CRED is in talks to back the Bengaluru-headquartered startup Smallcase, three sources familiar with the matter said, as the Tiger Global and Alpha Wave Global-backed firm looks to expand its wealth offerings to customers. CRED’s proposed investment in Smallcase values the startup in the range of $300 million to $400 million, one source said. The size of the investment is unclear and sources requested anonymity as the deliberations are ongoing, at an early stage and private. CRED declined to comment. A founder of Smallcase did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Smallcase operates a platform to help a new generation of investors participate in the Indian equity markets. The startup serves over 3 million users and connects them to an in-house team of licensed professionals who offer more than 100 portfolios of stocks and exchange-traded funds as well as access to independent investment managers, brokerages and wealth platforms. Smallcase, which counts Amazon, Sequoia Capital India, Blume Ventures and Arkam Ventures among its existing investors, works with a number of stock broker services including Kite and Upstox. An investment in Smallcase will allow CRED to broaden its wealth management offering. The startup, founded by Kunal Shah, has three marquee offerings. It rewards users for paying their credit card bill on time to help them improve their financial behavior. It also helps them pay and track their rent, education and several other bills. Its third offering is wealth management. Last year, CRED launched a peer-to-peer lending service called Mint, that offers its customers inflation-beating investment opportunity. If the deal materializes, it will be the latest of a series of investments by CRED in recent quarters. The startup, valued at $4 billion in its most recent financing round, last year backed business-to-business debt startup CredAvenue, and acquired Happay, which operates a corporate expense management platform. |
| Better.com loses more senior execs as employees brace for another mass layoff Posted: 18 Feb 2022 04:40 PM PST Things are getting worse at Better. More executives have resigned from Better.com nearly three months after the online mortgage lender laid off 900 employees via Zoom and as the company prepares for more layoffs, according to multiple sources familiar with the internal happenings at the company. Those sources include both current and former employees. The latest events at the company involve the resignations of four more top executives, including Clayton Carol, the company's VP of finance; Christian Wallace, head of real estate; Paul Tyger, general manager of purchase; and Stephen Rosen, head of sales. TechCrunch has reached out to Better.com for comment, as well as to the four individuals, but had not heard back ahead of the publication of this story. In a LinkedIn post dated February 16, Carol announced his departure, stating that he was leaving after nearly three years in his role as VP of finance. He wrote:
News of Wallace’s departure was leaked on Blind earlier this month when an internal email was shared by a verified user. According to LinkedIn, Wallace had started at Better in March 2020 as sales director before transitioning into a head of sales role and then head of real estate services in March 2021. Tyger joined the company in 2019 as director of business operations and Rosen had started at the company in December 2016 as a growth associate, and at one point was the company's chief of staff and director of sales strategy and operations. Meanwhile, multiple sources who wish to remain anonymous out of fear of retaliation tell TechCrunch that Better is preparing for a massive layoff that could affect as much as 40% to 50% of its staff. The layoffs are expected to hit sometime in March. At the time of the company's early December layoffs, Better.com had about 9,100 employees. Since then, remaining employees have reportedly been leaving in droves, with senior executives leaving one by one. The most recent departures are not entirely surprising, considering the amount of negative publicity Better.com has suffered in recent months. It's been a tumultuous 11 or so weeks since CEO Vishal Garg laid off 9% of the company's staff via a Zoom call that participants have characterized as callous in tone. In addition to losing an ongoing string of senior team members, two board members stepped down. The company's $6.9 billion SPAC has been delayed indefinitely. Disturbing details of Garg's long history of verbal abuse have also emerged. The turmoil may be impacting the outfit’s bottom line. The company disclosed in a recent SEC filing that its fourth-quarter net loss may reach $182 million, while revenue fell as much as 22% from the previous quarter. In the meantime, Bloomberg reported earlier this week, Better.com has been hiring more aggressively in India, purportedly due to the lower cost of labor. My weekly fintech newsletter is launching soon! Sign up here to get it in your inbox. |
| Experts Weekly: Recruiting recruiters, crypto marketing, earned media 101 Posted: 18 Feb 2022 03:24 PM PST Do you have recent experience recruiting talent for pre-revenue startups? If this describes you — or someone you know — please read this important announcement. Growth marketing(TechCrunch+) Create a social media punch list for cryptocurrency marketing: Facebook began allowing crypto companies to advertise on its platform last December, but marketers should be aware of the limitations. Reporter John Biggs walks readers through the basics and shares a social media punch list. (TechCrunch+) Transform your startup investors into growth marketers without them noticing: Miles Jennings, founder and COO of Recruiter.com, share tips on how founders can subtly encourage investors to become more effective advocates. For example: if you’re trying to hire an important role, ask one of your backers if they can share your job posting with their network. (TechCrunch+) How to grow your organic traffic with earned media: Amanda Milligan, head of marketing at Stacker Studio, dives into an analysis of the short-term impact of earned media, then shares tips for pitch timing, promoting content and incorporating internal linking. Software consulting |
| Daily Crunch: Meta fires executive after ‘predator catchers’ interview video goes viral Posted: 18 Feb 2022 03:15 PM PST To get a roundup of TechCrunch's biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PST, subscribe here. Hello and welcome to Daily Crunch for Friday, February 18, 2022! First, a note that much of TechCrunch is off Monday for a U.S. holiday, so some regular stuff might land a day later than usual. But we're a global team, so we will not be quiet to start next week. That's a promise. – Alex The TechCrunch Top 3
Startups/VC
And from the Equity team, do you want to get paid in crypto? How to grow your organic traffic with earned media Image Credits: Jasmin Merdan (opens in a new window) / Getty Images Few entrepreneurs are natural-born storytellers, and maybe it's unfair to expect them to do any better. Many startups are paying a PR agency a monthly retainer of $10,000 or more, but their odds of getting a story placed about their company aren't much better than spinning a roulette wheel. According to Amanda Milligan, head of marketing at Stacker Studio, startups can increase organic traffic and improve SEO by developing newsworthy content that will get picked up and shared by media outlets. In a classic TC+ how-to, she explains how to create earned media that organically boosts ranking keywords, referring domains, clicks, and other key SEO metrics. (TechCrunch+ is our membership program, which helps founders and startup teams get ahead. You can sign up here.) Big Tech Inc.
TechCrunch Experts Image Credits: SEAN GLADWELL / Getty Images TechCrunch is recruiting recruiters for TechCrunch Experts, an ongoing project where we ask top professionals about problems and challenges that are common in early-stage startups. If that's you or someone you know, you can let us know here. |
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