Technet: February 2022

Monday, February 28, 2022

Asian and Hispanic e-grocer Weee! bags $425 million Series E

Monday, February 28, 2022 • By Alex Wilhelm

Hello and welcome to Daily Crunch for Monday, February 28, 2022. Today we are bringing exclamation points back. Because it's Monday, we need the boost, and a startup whose name includes a "!" just raised north of $400 million in a single round. 2022! It's a whole thing. – Alex

Image Credits: Weee! /

The TechCrunch Top 3

Technology and Ukraine: As you can imagine, the Russian invasion of Ukraine is in part a technology story. For example, Ukraine is accepting crypto donations, which TechCrunch covered here. And Ukrainian citizens are turning to encrypted messaging tools, and even offline maps during the war. But there's even more going on at the corporate-level, including Twitter marking tweets tied to the Russian state, going as far as limiting their reach. Russia is angry with American social media companies limiting its reach, but, frankly, too bad.
What's your BNPL startup really worth? News of a deal between Zap and Sezzle in the BNPL market had us crunching numbers to figure out what smaller buy now, pay later (BNPL) companies are worth. Why do we care? Because a huge number of startups are building companies around the consumer and business credit model. The news is not great.
Wee! Weee! has raised a huge round! SoftBank's Vision Fund 2 has led a $425 million Series E into Weee!, which provides a way for consumers to buy ingredients for different cuisines, so if you need to find pieces of different "Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Filipino, Indian and Latin" dishes, well, it probably has them. The deal doubles the value of the startup to more than $4 billion, and indicates that SoftBank is still a risk-on operation.

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Startups/VC

Speaking of huge venture rounds at high prices, OneCard is in talks to raise what we've heard is nine-figures worth of capital at a unicorn valuation. Our piece, by our ace India reporter Manish Singh, also notes that the new round comes just a month after FPL Technologies, the company behind OneCard, last announced new capital.

Catching you up, OneCard is a consumer credit card startup in India that also provides credit scoring services.

Moving along, Y Combinator's push to fund startups around the world is paying off. Data from the well-known startup accelerator indicates that one in six, or about 16% of the companies it has incubated that are now worth $150 million or more – some 267 now – are headquartered outside of the United States.

I'm not surprised at the ratio, and the rising tally of international companies that it implies. My question is how quickly the portion of high-value Y Combinator-backed startups moves towards being majority international.

Stämm Biotech raises $17M: Have you heard of bioreactors? They are new to me, but are apparently a key piece of kit in the biomanufacturing world. Stämm, which is based in Buenos Aires, just raised a large Series A for its bioreactor product. It looks something like a big, expensive gaming PC. Regardless, if there is enough market demand for a startup to raise to build more bioreactors, I presume that biology is going to be lit in the coming years.
The Conductor team are building a company around the project: It's a tale as old as time. A company creates a tool, and later open-sources it. Then some folks build a hosted version of the product as a startup. In this case, the tool is Conductor, which Netflix built. The team that wrote the code at the streaming giant have now cleaved off to build Orkes, which offers, you guessed, a hosted version of Conductor.
Robin.io sells to Rakuten telco arm: A few things are going on here. First, Rakuten has a telco-focused business called Rakuten Symphony. It's pretty recent. Also, the group has purchased Robin.io, which TechCrunch describes as a "startup that offers a Kubernetes platform optimized for storage solutions and complex network applications."
TikTok raises video length limit: TikTok is owned by Bytedance, which is technically still a private company. So, I guess, TikTok news belongs in this part of the newsletter. Regardless, you can now make 10-minute TikToks. Which, idk, does seem a bit counter to what the service is known for. Perhaps everything becomes YouTube in the end.
Oribi sells to LinkedIn for $80M-$90M: Another deal for your eyes today, this time involving Oribi, which we write is "a Tel Aviv startup that specializes in marketing attribution technology." LinkedIn, of course, is a portal where folks in the sales industry can workshop their slam poetry.
Flashfood is a good startup name: What does Flashfood do? It sells food that is nearly expired, to help combat food waste. Remember flashmobs? The idea was that they were quickly forming gatherings, back when Twitter was New and Cool. Anyway, between flashmobs, and flashfreezing, we can add flashfood to the flash- category. The company just raised $12.3 million.

Leverage early investors when raising a Series A, says DeepScribe's Akilesh Bapu

While raising a Series A for AI-powered medical transcription platform DeepScribe, CEO and co-founder Akilesh Bapu set clear timelines for the investors he approached.

Index Ventures partner Nina Achadjian received Bapu’s pitch deck while she was still on vacation, but the founder wouldn’t let her schedule a meeting for the following week.

As it turned out, Bapu’s instincts served him well. “When I walked out of the meeting, I went immediately to one of my partners, and was like, ‘Finally, I found the company that is following the right approach,” said Achadjian.

Leverage early investors when raising a Series A, says DeepScribe's Akilesh Bapu image

Image Credits: Index Ventures / DeepScribe

Big Tech Inc.

Apple will accrete Dutch fines until the heat death of the universe: That's our takeaway from the news that Apple has been hit with a sixth penalty from the country's government over a ruling regarding in-app payments, and dating apps inside its borders. Apple, an American company, is seemingly blasé at the Dutch Authority for Consumers & Market charging it another €5 million. It now owes the country some €30 million, and the fines could stretch to €50 million. Apple might have too much money, I think.
Google disables live traffic data in Ukraine: The Russian invasion of Ukraine is unearthing a host of interesting technology situations, including how some are using live traffic data to track troop movements. Google has cut off certain maps data in the country, though directions will remain accessible.
The EU wants to ban Russian media: Sputnik and Russia Today are under the ban-hammer in the European Union. TechCrunch writes that that particular regulatory choice means that "social media firms face pressure to act" in a similar fashion.
Cruise founder back at the wheel: After a GM exec left the CEO role, Cruise co-founder Kyle Vogt is back in charge. And he's also the CTO, so expect him to be a little busy in the coming quarters. Self-driving is nearing the point of commercialization, so it will be interesting to see how Cruise evolves from technology to business.

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Friday, February 25, 2022

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State-sponsored hackers target private email addresses of Ukrainian military

Friday, February 25, 2022 • By Alex Wilhelm

Hello and welcome to Daily Crunch for Friday, February 25, 2022. It has been a challenging week, so I hope you’re safe and in good spirits (if possible) when this letter reaches you. Toward a more fair and just world. – Alex

Image Credits: Pavlo Gonchar / SOPA Images / Getty Images

The TechCrunch Top 3

Storm clouds for late-stage startups: To close out a cheery week on a high note, TechCrunch dug into late-stage valuations in light of public market declines. In short, it appears that a host of startups raised new capital last year when valuations – and therefore revenue multiples – were hot. In a changed world, how will those companies manage to raise more cash and avoid a downround at the same time?
The latest from Ukraine: TechCrunch continues to cover the Russian invasion of Ukraine when it lands in our remit. Today, we have a story about hacking efforts that are impacting the Ukrainian defense and a piece discussing internet restrictions in Russia as they relate to U.S. social networking services.
"It was destined to be a weird MWC by any measure," writes our own Brian Heater, diving into the state of the smartphone industry. MWC, or Mobile World Congress, is a yearly tech confab that has become, Heater notes, "the smartphone show." But with innovation seeming to slow in the smartphone market, what MWC may look like in the future could be up for debate.

The Future of Fitness Coaching Is Here

Startups/VC

We have three sections of startup news today, starting with mobility, continuing with venture fund news, and closing with a neat startup round. To work!

From the mobility front:

Beam raises $93M, proves that the e-scooter market is not kaput: Beam, a Singapore-based company, rents out e-scooters and other electric personal transport machines. In the wake of valuation declines at Bird and Lime, you might think that investors were over putting capital into the shared personal mobility game. And yet Beam's latest raise attests to the very opposite.
Can Taur make e-scooters cool? One issue with the electric scooters and bikes is that they still carry a whiff of dweeb about them. Perhaps this is because tech workers have long been a key customer base of the products. Regardless, Taur Technologies of London thinks "it's time to separate scooter sharing from scooters as vehicles." If this works out, I wouldn't mind. I hate driving, so if scooting became cool, well.

From venture land:

$200M for Hack VC's crypto fund: The hack.summit() team, which put on what TechCrunch describes as "the world's largest blockchain programmer event," has put together a crypto fund. Why not! Everyone has a fund these days, and given the amount of market enthusiasm to fund blockchain projects, we're not shocked to see another.
Day One Ventures adds climate-focused partner: TechCrunch is building out its climate desk this year because we think that startups in that market are going to really matter. So we want to be prepared to write about them. Day One Ventures agrees with our general vibe, adding ClassPass co-founder Sanjiv Sanghavi as a climate-focused investor to its staff.
Do university degrees still matter in Silicon Valley? An essay on TechCrunch argues that they do. Some folks won't agree, but if you check the employee records of most tech workers, they do share something in common. And it's not a shared history of not finishing higher education.

And, finally from our startups coverage today, Peru-based Leasy just raised $17 million – in a mix of cash and debt – to provide car loans to ride-hailing drivers in Latin America.

Why I'm using a credit facility to grow my startup

Investors are eternally on the lookout for an opportunity, but alternative financing is a viable option for founders who want to accelerate growth and retain more of their equity.

When Torpago CEO Brent Jackson wanted to expand his company’s offerings, the company secured $77 million in funding, “of which $75 million was a revolving credit facility and the remaining was in equity,” he says.

Doing so permitted the company to extend lines of credit to customers “and incorporate that debt into our capital stack in a way that minimizes the long-term cost of capital.”

(TechCrunch+ is our membership program, which helps founders and startup teams get ahead. You can sign up here.)

Why I'm using a credit facility to grow my startup image

Image Credits: Henrik Sorensen / Getty Images

Big Tech Inc.

SEC 👀 the Musk brothers: Perhaps all those Elon tweets had something behind them. It turns out that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is taking a look at both Elon and Kimbal concerning potential insider trading. The last thing that Tesla needs, we reckon.
Carvana buys Adesa's US auction business: Carvana is best known for its huge car vending machine installations, rapid value appreciation in 2021, and rapid decline in value during the final weeks of last year and the start of 2022. Today its stock is perking up following its earnings report and the fact that it has "agreed to buy Kar Global's Adesa U.S. auction subsidiary for $2.2 billion in cash."

TechCrunch Experts

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Thursday, February 24, 2022

Overnight, Russia's invasion puts Ukrainian tech industry on a war footing

Thursday, February 24, 2022 • By Alex Wilhelm

Hello and welcome to Daily Crunch for Thursday, February 24, 2022. No peppy intro from me today; I am a little consumed with news outside our orbit. Now, to work. – Alex

Image Credits: Daniel Leal / Getty Images

The TechCrunch Top 3

How tech is responding to Russia's invasion of Ukraine: The technology world is a global industry, which means that when geopolitical conflicts arise, it impacts the world that TechCrunch covers directly. We have notes up on cyberattacks and companies in Ukraine. Obviously war is not our editorial remit, but we'd be remiss to not note how it impacts the world we cover.
VCs are bullish on European innovation: Continuing our look into the deep tech in Europe, venture investors remain optimistic about where the continent is heading. As we noted previously, deep tech investment in Europe had a very strong 2021.
A headless, cloth unicorn: Fabric, which builds APIs for e-commerce, is now a unicorn. The company's "'modular and headless commerce" products include some 300 APIs, it turns out. It just raised $140 million at a $1.5 billion valuation. The round goes to show that the nine-figure venture market is still getting deals done, despite some public comment from investors that things are slowing down in 2022.

The Electric UTV: BAM EV Hits $1.2M in Ongoing Raise

Startups/VC

Tumblr will let you pay it to eliminate ads: Yahoo once bought Tumblr, before it was itself sold to Verizon. Yahoo was merged into AOL – which Verizon had also purchased – to form Oath. TechCrunch had been owned by AOL, so we wound up at Oath. Oath was then rebranded to Verizon Media Group. Verizon Media Group sold Tumblr to Automattic, the company behind WordPress, back in 2019. Now you can pay Tumblr, by which we mean Automattic, a monthly fee to not view ads on the microblogging service. TechCrunch, in contrast, was later sold to private equity along with the rest of Verizon Media Group, where we now reside. You cannot pay TechCrunch to remove ads. Now you are caught up!
Okteto raises $15M Series A: Much like yourself, I often find myself unable to whip up new Kubernetes-based development environments while writing code. Happily for both of us, Okteto is building tools to help us do just that. And it now has Series A money via Two Sigma Ventures, Haystack and others.
Siteline is building fintech infra for the construction market: While the consumer fintech space is chock-full of tools for what feels like any and every use case, the business world is a little bit different. Siteline, which has raised more than $18 million to date, wants to speed up the pace at which money moves in the construction industry, where today it moves with what we might call glacial patience.
Promise wants to help you pay your government bills: If you don't track your checking account balance, this isn't for you. But if you do live more paycheck to paycheck, and have ever been a little bit short in any particular month, you know the worries that your power will get turned off. Promise, a startup, aims to sit between you and the government, offering more flexible payment plans for bills. I kinda dig it.
Pay your rent, build credit: That's the pitch behind Piñata, a startup that offers a service to landlords and tenants to help make the process of paying for housing while not building equity at least somewhat useful. Of course, that paying rent usually doesn't help build one's credit feels like an error in the market.
Reddit makes discovery easier: Reddit is a fun place to be if you know where to go. It has communities of all types and sorts and sizes. Finding them, however, can be tough. The social service is updating its app to make that process a bit easier.

And there was even more that went on today: Depict.ai raised $17 million for its work to provide e-commerce sites with better recommendation capabilities; a neobank in India called Niyo raised $100 million, or $4 for each of its customers; and Insight Partners raised $20 billion for its new flagship fund. Which is a sum of money I cannot really fathom.

How to strategically manage your startup advisor's compensation

Beware of advisors who demand a share of your equity (and precious cash) in exchange for help with tactical operations like startup recruiting and marketing.

“No founder is an expert in every domain, and as they undertake the journey of getting their companies off the ground, they need to have outside support,” says Matt Cohen, founder and managing partner at Ripple Ventures.

Even so, entrepreneurs still need accountability measures that protect their companies from “advisor sharks” and “grifters,” he writes.

In a guest post for TC+, Cohen shares advice for setting goals and creating equity packages that will create “a more accurate alignment of incentives.”

(TechCrunch+ is our membership program, which helps founders and startup teams get ahead. You can sign up here.)

How to strategically manage your startup advisor's compensation image

Image Credits: Velishchuk / Getty Images

Big Tech Inc.

Nikola earnings aren't awful: Troubled EV truck maker Nikola doesn't have revenues yet, but it appears to be making real progress toward them. That and slimmer-than-expected per-share losses were the good news of the day from the company.
App subscription revenue grows 41% in 2021: Want to know why Apple and Google are really not in favor of not getting a fat cut of app store incomes? Because they are large and growing. "The top 100 non-game, subscription-based apps saw their consumer spend increase 41% in 2021 to $18.3 billion, up from $13 billion in 2020," we report.
Self-driving Vegas ride-hailing? I am intent on putting self-driving news in this newsletter until I no longer have to drive. Today's item is a consortium offering self-driving rides in Las Vegas (with human backup drivers). This is cool. But what would be cooler, in fact, would be Motional and Via bringing the same service to Providence, Rhode Island. For no particular reason, I assure you.

TechCrunch Experts

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Technet

Monday, February 28, 2022

Asian and Hispanic e-grocer Weee! bags $425 million Series E

The TechCrunch Top 3

SUPER PUMPED: The Battle for UBER - Now Streaming

Sponsored by SHOWTIME

Startups/VC

Leverage early investors when raising a Series A, says DeepScribe's Akilesh Bapu

Big Tech Inc.

TechCrunch Experts

Newest Jobs from Crunchboard

Friday, February 25, 2022

Fw: Confirm address to delivery of your parcel

State-sponsored hackers target private email addresses of Ukrainian military

The TechCrunch Top 3

The Future of Fitness Coaching Is Here

Sponsored by Future

Startups/VC

Why I'm using a credit facility to grow my startup

Big Tech Inc.

TechCrunch Experts

Newest Jobs from Crunchboard

Thursday, February 24, 2022

Overnight, Russia's invasion puts Ukrainian tech industry on a war footing

The TechCrunch Top 3

The Electric UTV: BAM EV Hits $1.2M in Ongoing Raise

Sponsored by Battle Approved Motors

Startups/VC

How to strategically manage your startup advisor's compensation

Big Tech Inc.

TechCrunch Experts

Newest Jobs from Crunchboard