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Showing posts from November, 2020

Singapore-based mental health app Intellect reaches one million users, closes seed funding

Theodoric Chew, co-founder and chief executive officer of mental health app Intellect Intellect , a Singapore-based startup that wants to lower barriers to mental health care in Asia, says it has reached more than one million users just six months after launching. Google also announced today that the startup’s consumer app, also called Intellect, is one of its picks for best personal growth apps of 2020 . The company recently closed an undisclosed seed round led by Insignia Ventures Partners. Angel investors including e-commerce platform Carousell co-founder and chief executive officer Quek Siu Rui; former Sequoia partner Tim Lee; and startup consultancy xto10x’s Southeast Asia CEO J.J. Chai also participated. In a statement, Insignia Ventures Partners principal Samir Chaibi said, “In Intellect, we see a fast-scaling platform addressing a pain that has become very obvious amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. We believe that pairing clinically-backed protocols with an efficient mobile-f
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Cyber Monday scams? Fakespot says it can identify fraudulent reviews and sellers online

The pandemic has made it all but impossible for a retail company without an online presence to survive. Yet while companies heavily dependent on foot traffic like J.Crew and Sur la Table have filed for bankruptcy this year, companies that are expert in e-commerce have thrived, including Target and Walmart. Amazon alone now attracts roughly one quarter of all dollars spent online by U.S. shoppers. Unfortunately, as more shopping moves online, fraud is exploding, too. The problem is such that startups working with enterprises — flagging transactions for banks, for example — are raising buckets of funding . Meanwhile, one New York-based startup, Fakespot , is taking a different approach. It’s using AI to notify online shoppers when the products they’re looking to buy are fake listings or when reviews they’re reading on marketplaces like Amazon or eBay are a fiction. We talked earlier today with Kuwaiti immigrant Saoud Khalifah about the four-year-old business, which got started in h
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Vista acquires Gainsight for $1.1B, adding to its growing enterprise arsenal

Vista Equity Partners hasn’t been shy about scooping up enterprise companies over the years, and today it added to a growing portfolio with its purchase of Gainsight . The company’s software helps clients with customer success, meaning it helps create a positive customer experience when they interact with your brand, making them more likely to come back and recommend you to others. Sources pegged the price tag at $1.1 billion. As you might expect, both parties are putting a happy face on the deal, talking about how they can work together to grow Gainsight further. Certainly, other companies like Ping Identity seem to have benefited from joining forces with Vista. Being part of a well-capitalized firm allowed them to make some strategic investments along the way to eventually going public last year . Gainsight and Vista are certainly hoping for a similar outcome in this case. Monti Saroya, co-head of the Vista Flagship Fund and senior managing director at the firm, sees a company
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Infogrid raises $15.5M from Northzone to retrofit buildings with ‘smart’ IoT

Infogrid , an IoT startup which can retrofit an existing building to make it “smart”, has raised $15.5 million. The Series A funding round was led by Northzone, with participation from JLL Spark, Concrete VC, The Venture Collective, Jigsaw VC, an unnamed real estate investment group and an unnamed large international asset owner, although one report speculated that it is Starwood Capital, the property-focused investor. Infogrid’s platform combines IoT sensors with proprietary AI analysis and has had some success re-vamping facilities management (FM) for some of the world’s largest FM providers, such as global banks, supermarkets, restaurant chains and the NHS. Infogrid also has an “impact-style” mission to enable businesses to reduce the environmental and social cost of their buildings while simultaneously benefitting their bottom line and asset values. Infogrid’s system can detect when refrigerated products are being kept outside the required temperature range, measure air quality
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Strike first, strike hard, no mercy: How emerging managers can win

TX Zhuo Contributor Share on Twitter TX Zhuo is the managing partner of Fika Ventures , focusing on fintech, enterprise software and marketplace opportunities. More posts by this contributor A COVID-19 resilience test for B2B companies Discovering that deckhands make great waiters — and why this matters Huston Collins Contributor Share on Twitter Huston Collins is an investor at Fika Ventures . He was previously an associate at Greenspring Associates where he started the firm’s machine learning platform. Like many of us during COVID-19, I’ve found myself watching a bit more TV than I’m typically accustomed to. My latest binge? “The Karate Kid” series continuation “Cobra Kai” on Netflix. A long-time fan of “The Karate Kid,” I find my style’s a bit more Miyagi-Do , but, in reflecting upon my last few years as a founding GP at a young VC firm, I see some parallels between what it takes to win as an emerging manager and the mantras by which the Cobra Kai s
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5 reasons you don’t want to miss out on TC Sessions: Space 2020

We’re just about two weeks away from launching TC Sessions: Space 2020 , our first focused foray into early-stage space startups and the essential satellite industries that support them. Buy your pass and join us on December 16 – 17 for two days packed with all the right stuff, including untapped opportunity. Still looking for a reason to initiate your launch sequence? We’ll go you four better. Here are five stellar reasons to attend TC Sessions: Space 2020 . 1. Top innovators in the space scene You’ll hear from and engage with the top minds, makers and investors in the space community. We’re talking the leaders of public, private and government agencies; the people making it happen and looking to share their expertise and insight with you — the up-and-coming minds and makers. A quick for instance includes General Jay Raymond (U.S. Space Force), Lisa Callahan (Lockheed Martin), Jim Bridenstine (NASA), Peter Beck (Rocket Lab) and investors like Chris Boshuizen (Data Collective DCV
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HungryPanda raises $70M for a food delivery app aimed at overseas Chinese consumers

Food delivery apps have been a big deal this year both for consumers stuck at home and unable (or unwilling) to go to restaurants or grocery stores, and for investors who are eyeing the opportunity to back rising stars to help them grow. Today came the latest development in that story: HungryPanda , which makes a Mandarin-language app specifically targeting Chinese consumers outside of China, has raised $70 million to continue its global expansion in delivering food from Chinese restaurants and Asian grocery stores targeting the Chinese diaspora. Estimates put the number of Chinese people living abroad (counting students and first-generation immigrants, and counting those living outside of the Mainland, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau) at around 50 million , with most of them concentrated in other Asian countries, so that is a specific target for the startup. Longer term, there are tens of millions more people if you consider second, third and further generations of people, although that
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C3.ai’s initial IPO pricing guidance spotlights the public market’s tech appetite

On the heels of news that DoorDash is targeting an initial IPO valuation up to $27 billion , C3.ai also dropped a new S-1 filing detailing a first-draft guess of what the richly valued company might be worth after its debut. C3.ai posted an initial IPO price range of $31 to $34 per share, with the company anticipating a sale of 15.5 million shares at that price. The enterprise-focused artificial intelligence company is also selling $100 million of stock at its IPO price to Spring Creek Capital, and another $50 million to Microsoft at the same terms. And there are 2.325 million shares reserved for its underwriters as well. The total tally of shares that C3.ai will have outstanding after its IPO bloc is sold, Spring Creek and Microsoft buy in, and its underwriters take up their option, is 99,216,958. At the extremes of its initial IPO price range, the company would be worth between $3.08 billion and $3.37 billion using that share count. Those numbers decline by around $70 and $80 m
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Salut raises $1.25M for its virtual fitness service

This morning Salut , an app-based service that allows fitness trainers to host classes virtually, announced that it has raised $1.25 million in a new financing event. The round was led by Charles Hudson , an investor at Precursor Ventures . Founder Matthew DiPietro , formerly of Twitch, told TechCrunch that Salut soft-launched in mid-September, with a wider release coming today. DiPietro thought up the concept behind Salut before the pandemic hit, he said during an interview, but after COVID-19 appeared the idea took on new urgency. The company put together what DiPietro described as a no-code alpha version of the service in May to test the market, allowing the then-nascent startup to validate demand on both sides of its marketplace — it’s famously difficult to jumpstart two-sided marketplaces, as demand tends to follow supply, and vice-versa. The test allowed the company to get to confidence on demand existing from both trainers and exercise fans, and in its initial economic model
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Curio Wellness launches $30M fund to help women and minorities own a cannabis dispensary

“We think of diversity as a keystone issue for the cannabis industry,” said Curio WMBE Fund managing director Jerel Registre in a conversation with TechCrunch. Registre’s conviction around this program is obvious as he explains the problem the fund is addressing. The new fund, started by the Maryland-based medical cannabis company Curio Wellness , aims to help underserved entrepreneurs entering the cannabis market. With $30 million to invest, the Curio WMBE Fund is looking to invest in up to 50 women, minority and disabled veterans seeking to open and operate a Curio Wellness franchise with a path to 100% ownership in three years. Registre tells TechCrunch the goal is to create more diverse ownership through a proven business model. Participants of this program gain access to capital and operational resources. Curio made a name for itself in Maryland, where it’s the largest cannabis cultivator by market share. Founded in 2014, the family-owned business operates dispensaries rooted
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Dozens of tech companies sign ‘Tech for Good Call’ following French initiative

A couple of years ago, French President Emmanuel Macron initiated the Tech for Good Summit by inviting 50 tech CEOs to discuss the challenges in the tech industry and make some announcements. Usually, tech CEOs meet ahead of Viva Technology , a tech event in Paris. This year, Viva Technology had to be canceled, which means that tech CEOs couldn’t get together, take a group photo and say that they want to make the world a better place. In the meantime, dozens of tech CEOs have chosen to sign a common pledge. Despite the positive impact of some technological breakthroughs, they collectively recognize that everything is not perfect with the tech industry. “Recognizing that such progress may be hindered by negative externalities, including unfair competition such as abuse of dominant or systemic position, and fragmentation of the internet; that, without appropriate safeguards, technology can also be used to threaten fundamental freedoms and human rights or weaken democracy; that, unl
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Materialize scores $40 million investment for SQL streaming database

Materialize , the SQL streaming database startup built on top of the open source Timely Dataflow project, announced a $32 million Series B investment today led by Kleiner Perkins with participation from Lightspeed Ventures. While it was at it, the company also announced a previously unannounced $8 million Series A from last year that had been led by Lightspeed, bringing the total raised to $40 million. These firms see a solid founding team that includes CEO Arjun Narayan, formerly of Cockroach Labs, and chief scientist Frank McSherry, who created the Timely Dataflow project on which the company is based. Narayan says that the company believes fundamentally that every company needs to be a real-time company and it will take a streaming database to make that happen. Further, he says the company is built using SQL because of its ubiquity, and the founders wanted to make sure that customers could access and make use of that data quickly without learning a new query language. “Our goa
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Equity Monday: HungryPanda raises $70M, trade tensions, and cross-border VC

Hello and welcome back to  Equity , TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest big news, chats about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. You can follow the show on Twitter  here  and myself  here — and don’t forget to check out last Thursday’s edtech deep dive from our own Natasha Mascarenhas . Right, now through the first of America’s national Q4 feast days, it’s time to get back to business. Namely, the business of VC and startups. Here’s what we got into this morning: It’s Cyber Monday, which means that the Internet is going to be annoying today, but the fake-holiday is boosting ecommerce players like Etsy . That should be good news for payments processors incumbent and startup, as well as other ecommerce businesses, again large, small, and even platform-focused. Zappos foun
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DoorDash aims to add $11 billion to its valuation during public offering

This morning, DoorDash filed a new S-1 document , this time updating the market about the price it expects to command during its public offering. The food-delivery giant gave a range of $75 to $85 per share, which would revalue the company sharply higher than its final private price , set during a June Series H that valued DoorDash at $16 billion. The company intends to sell 33 million shares, raising between $2.475 billion and $2.805 billion in the process. Notably, there are no shares set aside for its underwriting banks to buy at its IPO price. The Exchange explores startups, markets and money. Read it every morning on Extra Crunch , or get The Exchange newsletter every Saturday. After the public offering, DoorDash expects to have 317,656,521 shares outstanding across various classes, giving it a valuation of between $23.8 billion and $27 billion at the two extremes of its IPO range, not counting shares that have not yet vested or are set aside for future employee compensatio
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Nikola shares drop as GM pulls plug on investment deal

GM is backing away from an agreement to take a stake in electric automaker Nikola Corp, marking the collapse of a deal that has been problematic since it was announced just two months ago. Shares of Nikola plummeted more than 20% in pre-market trading Monday morning. GM has instead signed a non-binding memorandum of understanding to supply Nikola with its Hydrotec fuel cell system. This supplier agreement replaces its previous transaction announcement made on Sept. 8, 2020 to take a 11% stake in Nikola and produce a fuel cell pickup for the company by the end 2022. The investment was valued at $2 billion at the time. Speculation that GM would pull the plug on the deal has been rampant almost from the start. Just days after GM announced the investment, a noted short-seller Hindenburg Research accused the Nikola of fraud. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission opened up an inquiry in the matter and within two weeks Nikola’s founder Trveor Milton had stepped down as executive c
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Primer, the fintech helping merchants consolidate the payments stack, raises £14M Series A

Primer , the U.K. fintech that wants to help merchants consolidate their payments stack and easily support new payment methods in the future, has raised £14 million in Series A funding. The round was led by Accel, who I understand were quite proactive in persuading Primer to take the VC firm’s money. The young company wasn’t actively fund-raising, having quietly raised £3.8 million in funding announced in May . Instead, the team was heads down building out the product and wooing potential customers by holding technical workshops and in-depth interviews over Zoom with 100 merchants — activity that didn’t go unnoticed. Also participating in the Series A are existing investors: Balderton, SpeedInvest and Seedcamp, who were joined in the round by new backer RTP Global. Sonali De Rycker, partner at Accel, will join Primer’s board. Founded by ex-PayPal employees – via PayPal’s acquisition of Braintree — Primer wants to offer one payments API to (hopefully) rule them all, with the expli
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What to make of Stripe’s possible $100B valuation

This is The TechCrunch Exchange, a newsletter that goes out on Saturdays,  based on the column of the same name . You can sign up for the email  here . Welcome to a special Thanksgiving edition of The Exchange. Today we will be brief. But not silent, as there is much to talk about. Up top, The Exchange noodled on the Slack-Salesforce deal here , so please catch up if you missed that while eating pie for breakfast yesterday. And, sadly, I have no idea why Palantir is seeing its value skyrocket. Normally we’d discuss it, asking ourselves what its gains could mean for the lower tiers of private SaaS companies. But as its public market movement appears to be an artificial bump in value, we’ll just wait. Here’s what I want to talk about this fine Saturday: Bloomberg reporting that Stripe is in the market for more money, at a price that could value the company at “more than $70 billion or significantly higher, at as much as $100 billion.” Hot damn. Stripe would become the first or sec
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