Monthly Archives: January 2021

News: Sirenum, a platform for managing shift and gig workers, raises a $2.7M Series A

• January 29, 2021
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Sirenum, a platform for remotely managing a shift-based workforce across industries such as railway, aviation, construction, and the gig economy, has raised a $2.7 million Series A funding round from new investors including former Tesco CEO Sir Terry Leahy, Intrinsic Capital founding partner Mark Horrocks and investment manager Bill Currie. Sirenum says its subscription model

Sirenum, a platform for remotely managing a shift-based workforce across industries such as railway, aviation, construction, and the gig economy, has raised a $2.7 million Series A funding round from new investors including former Tesco CEO Sir Terry Leahy, Intrinsic Capital founding partner Mark Horrocks and investment manager Bill Currie.

Sirenum says its subscription model platform simplifies the process of managing shift workers, including rostering and managing schedules, monitoring and engaging staff, and processing key financial processes including payroll. Its clients include Randstad, Impellam, Manpower and GI Group as well as specialist agencies like TES.

The issue with shift workers is that they need to be in the right place at the right time and paid the right amount. Obviously. Sirenum says it allows staff to manage their own time by accepting or rejecting shifts and check their payroll at any time through a mobile app. The platform handles shift management, payroll, compliance, and scheduling. The app also tracks the fatigue of workers based on the UK’s Health and Safety guidelines, meaning employers can track the wellness of employees and adhere to compliance.

The product came about when Sirenum founder Benjamin Rubin ran a staffing agency in London. He was on honeymoon with his wife when he received a call that one of his employees had been hit by a train.

Thankfully, the employee was fine, but Rubin realized that to avoid being in that same situation again, he needed a tool to be able to manage his staff safely at multiple locations. He developed the Sirenum product as a solution for his agency and in 2012 won the contract to staff the Olympic Stadium. In 2014 Sirenum became a standalone product. It now claims to have nearly 400,000 workers on the platform.

Its competitors include TempBuddy (owned by Bullhorn), Shiftboard, and WorkN. Shiftboard has raised $16.9 million to date.

News: Chefclub raises $17 million to expand its food media brand beyond social networks

• January 29, 2021
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French startup Chefclub announced earlier this week that it has raised a $17 million funding round led by First Bridge Ventures. SEB Alliance, the venture arm of kitchen appliance maker Groupe SEB, Korelya Capital and Algaé Ventures are also participating. Chefclub has been building a major media brand on social media platforms. It has attracted

French startup Chefclub announced earlier this week that it has raised a $17 million funding round led by First Bridge Ventures. SEB Alliance, the venture arm of kitchen appliance maker Groupe SEB, Korelya Capital and Algaé Ventures are also participating.

Chefclub has been building a major media brand on social media platforms. It has attracted a huge audience that doesn’t look bad next to well-funded media brands Tastemade and Tasty.

I already covered the company at length, so I encourage you to read my previous profile of the company:

Chefclub is an interesting lesson in sales funnel. It has a huge top of the funnel with 100 million followers YouTube, Snapchat, Instagram and TikTok. Overall, they generate over 1 billion views per month.

The company leverages that audience to create new products. It starts with cooking books, obviously. Chefclub has sold 700,000 books so far. As those books are self-published, the company gets to keep a good chunk of the revenue.

More recently, the startup has launched cooking kits for kids with colorful measuring cups, cooking accessories and easy-to-understand recipes. 150,000 people have bought a product for children.

Chefclub now wants to display its brands in stores thanks to partnerships. That’s why having Groupe SEB as an investor makes sense. You can imagine co-branded items boosted by promotion on Chefclub’s accounts.

Finally, the startup plans to enter a new market — consumer-packaged goods. That’s the same thinking behind it, except that we’re talking about food. It’s interesting to see that Chefclub doesn’t think online ads represent the future of the company. And it seems like a smart decision during the current economic crisis.

News: Xiaomi teases over-the-air wireless charging, but it’s not coming to its devices this year

• January 29, 2021
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Xiaomi, the world’s third largest smartphone maker, today unveiled “Mi Air Charge Technology” that it says can deliver 5W power to multiple devices “within a radius of several metres” as the Chinese giant invited customers to a “true wireless charging era.” The company said it has self-developed an isolated charging pile that has five phase

Xiaomi, the world’s third largest smartphone maker, today unveiled “Mi Air Charge Technology” that it says can deliver 5W power to multiple devices “within a radius of several metres” as the Chinese giant invited customers to a “true wireless charging era.”

The company said it has self-developed an isolated charging pile that has five phase interference antennas built-in, which can “accurately detect the location of the smartphone.”

A phase control array composed of 144 antennas transmits millimeter-wide waves directly to the phone through beamforming, the company said, adding that “in the near future” the system will also be able to work with smart watches, bracelets, and other wearable devices.

A company spokesperson said Xiaomi, which has previously introduced 80W and 120W wireless charging tech, won’t be deploying this new system to consumer products this year.

Here’s how the company has described the mechanics of its new tech:

On the smartphone side, Xiaomi has also developed a miniaturized antenna array with built-in “beacon antenna” and “receiving antenna array”. Beacon antenna broadcasts position information with low power consumption. The receiving antenna array composed of 14 antennas converts the millimeter wave signal emitted by the charging pile into electric energy through the rectifier circuit, to turn the sci-fi charging experience into reality.

Currently, Xiaomi remote charging technology is capable of 5-watt remote charging for a single device within a radius of several meters. Apart from that, multiple devices can also be charged at the same time (each device supports 5 watts), and even physical obstacles do not reduce the charging efficiency.

News site XDA-Developers reported on Friday that a Motorola executive also demonstrated a prototype remote charging system that appears to deliver power over the air. No word on when its tech will hit consumer devices either.

News: Stock trading app Trade Republic expands to France

• January 29, 2021
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German startup Trade Republic is rolling out its app and service in France this week. This is a significant expansion move as Trade Republic has only been available in Germany and Austria so far. Trade Republic lets you buy and sell shares or exchange-traded funds (ETFs) from your phone with low, transparent fees. The company

German startup Trade Republic is rolling out its app and service in France this week. This is a significant expansion move as Trade Republic has only been available in Germany and Austria so far.

Trade Republic lets you buy and sell shares or exchange-traded funds (ETFs) from your phone with low, transparent fees. The company charges €1 ($1.21) in fees per order, whether you’re buying a single share worth €100 or allocating €10,000 of your savings on an ETF. The company promises that it doesn’t add any commission on top of that €1.

The startup lets you buy European shares as well as stock in Asian or American companies. Overall, there are 7,500 shares and ETFs available in the app. While the service is relatively new, Trade Republic has been working on its infrastructure for several years.

Behind the scenes, the company has partnered with Solarisbank, a German banking-as-a-service platform regulated by German authorities. It means that your deposits are covered up to €100,000 ($121,000) in case of bankruptcy. When you’re submitting an order, Trade Republic works with LS Exchange and HSBC Transaction Services to handle those shares.

Trade Republic wants to position itself differently from Robinhood. The company thinks there are currently two options when it comes to trading.

You can open a trading account with your bank or a legacy broker, but they’ll charge a lot of money. Or you can use a mobile-first broker, but they’ll push you toward risky assets and day-trading. And we’ve seen this week with the GameStop saga that the second option can lead to some backlash.

Trade Republic is promoting a third way — low fees and low risk. The company wants to promote savings plans for instance. Those plans let you buy shares progressively, which should protect users against volatility.

The company raised a €62 million funding round ($75.22 million at today’s rate) last year. The Series B round was co-led by Accel and Founders Fund.

As for French users, don’t forget that you have to declare that you have a foreign bank account when you file your taxes. Foreign brokers also don’t necessarily send information to tax authorities to pre-fill your tax reports. But if you’re fine with that, Trade Republic is most likely cheaper than your bank.

News: Huawei’s struggles hurt overall smartphone shipments in China, but rivals like Apple found new opportunities

• January 29, 2021
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The impact of United States government sanctions on Huawei is continuing to hurt the company and dampen overall smartphone shipments in China, where it is largest smartphone vendor, according to a new report by Canalys. But Huawei’s decline also opens new opportunities for its main rivals, including Apple. Canalys says Apple’s performance in China during

The impact of United States government sanctions on Huawei is continuing to hurt the company and dampen overall smartphone shipments in China, where it is largest smartphone vendor, according to a new report by Canalys. But Huawei’s decline also opens new opportunities for its main rivals, including Apple.

Canalys says Apple’s performance in China during the fourth-quarter of 2020 was its best in years, thanks to the iPhone 11 and 12. Its full-year shipments returned to its 2018 levels, and it reached its highest quarterly shipments in China since the end of 2015, when the iPhone 6s was launched.

Overall, smartphone shipments in China fell 11% to about 330 million units in 2020, with market recovery hindered by Huawei’s inability to ship new units. Even though demand in China for Huawei devices remains high, the company has struggled to cope with sanctions imposed by the U.S. government under the Trump administration that banned it from doing business with American companies and drastically curtailed its ability to procure new chips.

In May 2020, Huawei rotating chairman Guo Ping said even though the firm can design some semiconductor components, like integrated circuits, it is “incapable of doing a lot of other things.”

This left Huawei unable to meet demand for its devices, but gives its main rivals new opportunities, wrote Canalys vice president of mobility Nicole Peng. “Oppo, Vivo and Xiaomi are fighting to win over Huawei’s offline channel partners across the country, including small rural ones, backed by huge investments in store expansion and marketing support. These commitments brought immediate results, and market share improved within mere months.”

Apple benefited from Huawei’s decline because the company’s Mate series is the iPhone’s main rival in the high-end category, and only 4 million Mate units were shipped in the fourth quarter. “However, Apple has not relaxed its market promotions for iPhone 12,” wrote Canalys research analyst Amber Liu. “Aggressive online promotions across ecommerce players, coupled with widely available trade-in plans and interest-free installments with major banks, drove Apple to its stellar performance.”

During the fourth-quarter of 2020, smartphone shipments in mainland China fell 4% year-over-year to a total of 84 million units. Even though it held onto its number one position in terms of shipments, Huawei’s total market share plummeted to 22% from 41% a year earlier, and it shipped just 18.8 million smartphones, including units from budget brand Honor, which it agreed to sell in November.

Canalys’ graph showing shipments by the top five smartphone vendors in China

Huawei’s main competitors, on the other hand, all increased their shipments at the end of 2020. Oppo took second place, shipping 17.2 million smartphones, a 23% increase year-over-year. Oppo’s closest competitor Vivo increased its quarterly shipment to 15.7 million units. Apple shipped more than 15.3 million units, putting its market share at 18%, up from 15% a year ago. Xiaomi rounded out the top five vendors, shipping 12.2 million units, a 52% year-over-year increase.

Huawei’s decision to sell Honor means the brand may rapidly gain market share in 2021, since it already has brand recognition, wrote Peng. 5G is also expected to help smartphone shipments in China, especially for premium models.

News: Hong Kong startup ICW eyes supply chain diversification demand amid trade war

• January 29, 2021
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For American importers, finding suppliers these days can be challenging not only due to COVID-19 travel restrictions. The U.S. government’s entity list designations, human rights-related sanctions, among other trade blacklists targeting Chinese firms have also rattled U.S. supply chains. One young company called International Compliance Workshop, or ICW, is determined to make sourcing easier for

For American importers, finding suppliers these days can be challenging not only due to COVID-19 travel restrictions. The U.S. government’s entity list designations, human rights-related sanctions, among other trade blacklists targeting Chinese firms have also rattled U.S. supply chains.

One young company called International Compliance Workshop, or ICW, is determined to make sourcing easier for companies around the world as it completed a fresh round of funding. The Hong Kong-based startup has just raised $5.75 million as part of its Series A round, boosting its total funding to around $10 million, co-founder and CEO Garry Lam told TechCrunch.

ICW works like a matchmaker for suppliers and buyers, but unlike existing options like Alibaba’s B2B platform or international trade shows, ICW also vets suppliers over compliance, product quality, and accreditation. It gathers all that information into its growing database of over 40,000 suppliers — 80% of which are currently in China — and recommends them to customers based on individual needs.

Founded in 2016, ICW’s current client base includes some of the world’s largest retailers, including Ralph Lauren, Prenatal Retail Group, Blokker, Kmart, and a major American pharmacy chain that declined to be named.

ICW’s latest funding round was led by Infinity Ventures Partners with participation from Integrated Capital and existing investors MindWorks Capital and the Hong Kong government’s $2 billion Innovation and Technology Venture Fund.

Supply chain shift

In line with the ongoing shift of sourcing outside China, in part due to the U.S.-China trade war and China’s growing labor costs, ICW has seen more customers diversifying their supply chains. But the transition has limitations in the short run.

“It’s still very difficult to find suppliers of certain product categories, for example, Bluetooth devices and power banks, in other countries,” observed Lam. “But for garment and textile, the transition already began to happen a decade ago.”

In Southeast Asia, which has been replacing a great deal of Chinese manufacturing activity, each country has its slight specialization. Whereas Vietnam abounds with wooden furniture suppliers, Thailand is known for plastic goods and Malaysia is a good source for medical supplies, said Lam.

When it comes to trickier compliance burdens, such as human rights sanctions, ICW relies on third-party certification institutes to screen and verify suppliers.

“There is a [type of] qualification standard that verifies whether a supplier has fulfilled its corporate social responsibility… like whether the factory fulfills the labor law, the minimum labor rights, or the payroll, everything,” Lam explained.

ICW plans to use the fresh proceeds to further develop its products, including its compliance management system, product testing platform, and B2B sourcing site.

News: Why calendar invites are worth $3B

• January 28, 2021
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Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. Natasha and Danny and Alex and Grace hopped online for our weekly show, sans Gamestop news (which you can find here) to talk about all the other busy news happening in startup world right now. Here’s a taste of what we got into:  Qualtrics

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

Natasha and Danny and Alex and Grace hopped online for our weekly show, sans Gamestop news (which you can find here) to talk about all the other busy news happening in startup world right now.

Here’s a taste of what we got into:

•  Qualtrics IPO pricing, and the future of major acquisition pricing schemes. This company’s path to the public markets has been a long-time coming, so we had plenty to say.
•  How Atlanta’s Calendly turned a scheduling nightmare into a $3 billion company. This story was not only neat, but also operated as a sort of palate cleanser for the team.
•  Rhino‘s interesting insurtech play, and how it is pre-IPO pretty damn early. Revenue questions, the power of insurtech, and public markets impacting startups? This story had it all!
•  Alex talks about how Fast is raising fast money ($102 million to be exact). Even more, the Fast story fits into a broader narrative of online checkout startups raising a zillion dollars in recent weeks.
•  A boom in food delivery and restaurant startups, and why Danny is bearish on a plastic-free play. Natasha is in favor. Alex gets a company’s model mixed up with Spoon Rocket.
•  Natasha explains how Clubhouse isn’t the first company to raise millions off of millions of users with no known near-term monetization plan. Her piece on ClassDojo illustrates how a quiet edtech giant finally turned its 51 million users into a profitable base. There’s also a new edtech investor survey for you to check out (Discount code: EQUITY).
• TCV’s record fund, and a female-focused angel fund coming out of Africa.

As always, it was a ton to get through because there is just so much going on. More Monday morning, until then stay cool!

News: Daily Crunch: Robinhood restricts GameStop trading

• January 28, 2021
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The GameStop stock saga continues, Apple releases more details about its privacy changes and Qualtrics goes public. This is your Daily Crunch for January 28, 2021. The big story: Robinhood restricts GameStop trading Robinhood has responded to an upsurge in retail investors buying shares in companies like GameStop, AMC and Blockbuster by restricting trading on

The GameStop stock saga continues, Apple releases more details about its privacy changes and Qualtrics goes public. This is your Daily Crunch for January 28, 2021.

The big story: Robinhood restricts GameStop trading

Robinhood has responded to an upsurge in retail investors buying shares in companies like GameStop, AMC and Blockbuster by restricting trading on “certain securities” to “position closing only,” meaning that users can no longer buy more of the companies’ stocks. (It says it will allow “limited buys” tomorrow.)

This comes after the current buying spree — targeting stocks shorted by institutional investors and spurred by the WallStreetBets forum on Reddit — took Robinhood and Reddit to the top of the app charts.

Now, Robinhood is being hit with numerous 1-star reviews, and the move also attracted criticism from politicians on both sides of the aisle, with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez describing it as “unacceptable” and Senator Ted Cruz tweeting, “Fully agree.”

The tech giants

Apple’s App Tracking Transparency feature will be enabled by default and arrive in ‘early spring’ on iOS — The plan is to launch these changes in early spring, with a version of the feature coming in the next iOS 14 beta release.

Qualtrics prices IPO at $30 per share, above its upgraded target range — The company sold 50.4 million shares in the process.

Twitter is already working on integrating newsletters on its site, following its Revue acquisition — It appears “Newsletters” will soon be the newest addition to Twitter’s sidebar navigation.

Startups, funding and venture capital

Workday acquires employee feedback platform Peakon for $700M — Peakon says companies have used its platform’s weekly surveys to ask more than 153 million questions since inception six years ago.

Fintech darling Nubank raises blockbuster $400M Series G at $25B valuation — The fintech company now has 34 million customers.

Flowhaven raises $16M to evolve brand licensing management beyond emails and spreadsheets — The media licensing business is a massive market, but much of the work involved is still handled manually through emails and spreadsheets.

Advice and analysis from Extra Crunch

Thirteen investors say lifelong learning is taking edtech mainstream — As learners become more multi-layered and nuanced, so have the edtech companies that back them.

Talent and capital are shifting cybersecurity investors’ focus away from Silicon Valley — Solving the cybersecurity problem will take more time and resources than we are currently allocating.

Mind the gap: E-commerce marketers should revise their TAM and SAM estimates — 2021 is going to be another glorious year for e-commerce.

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

Everything else

Smartphone sales slowed decline in Q4, with a big assist from Apple — The past year was, of course, a major blow to an industry already suffering a slide.

GM pledges to be carbon neutral by 2040 with zero tailpipe emission vehicles by 2035 — It’s a big step for a company whose products are responsible for a large percentage of global greenhouse gas emissions.

UCLA is building a digital archive of mass incarceration with a new $3.6M grant — The “Archiving the Age of Mass incarceration” effort is being led by Kelly Lytle Hernandez, director of the university’s Bunche Center for African American Studies.

The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 3pm Pacific, you can subscribe here.

News: SoftBank earmarks $100 million for Miami-based startups

• January 28, 2021
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Miami, an emerging startup hub, has a new check-writer in town: SoftBank. The Japanese multinational conglomerate announced plans today to invest $100 million, drawn from across its funds, into Miami-based startups. Notably, SoftBank’s $5 billion Latin America fund is headquartered in Miami, as well. The initiative is led by SoftBank CEO Marcelo Claure. The fund

Miami, an emerging startup hub, has a new check-writer in town: SoftBank. The Japanese multinational conglomerate announced plans today to invest $100 million, drawn from across its funds, into Miami-based startups. Notably, SoftBank’s $5 billion Latin America fund is headquartered in Miami, as well.

The initiative is led by SoftBank CEO Marcelo Claure. The fund will back companies who are in Miami or plan to move there.

A SoftBank check is somewhat of a Silicon Valley rite-of-passage, so the firm’s involvement in the scene will likely signal to others that the growth of Miami is something to be taken seriously. The tax-free haven is attracting swathes of investors and founders from around the country looking to join the growing scene. Relocators include Keith Rabois of Founders Fund, David Blumberg of Blumberg Capital, Chris Dixon of Andreessen Horowitz and David Sacks of Craft Ventures.

Miami Mayor Francis Suarez, who has been on a Twitter tear asking techies to move to Miami, has spearheaded much of the efforts to turn the city into a startup epicenter.

Ruben Harris, founder of Career Karma, has been working with Suarez since 2018 to help people break into tech.

“Now that Softbank has made this move, we will see more funds follow their example and this is a huge win for diversity not just from a race perspective, but also from a socioeconomic perspective, and from a gender perspective,” Harris said, who is thinking about moving to the city. Career Karma is currently working with VC funds to get old laptops into its Reskill America program, to help train an emerging workforce in Miami.

Monica Black, who is behind Function, a Miami-based non-profit investor syndicate, hopes that SoftBank’s entrance “will not only increase the amount of capital going to local startups and help them grow to the Series A stage and beyond, but also attract other institutional VCs as co-investors.” Historically, she said, it’s been tough for local startups to raise capital from Silicon Valley or New York funds. The exception to this was Papa, which raised $18 million in September to connect older adults with virtual companions from Sound Ventures and Canaan.

Nico Berardi, the founder of Miami-based fund ANIMO Ventures, connected the new SoftBank initiative to the recent announcement by San Francisco’s Founders Fund to open an office in Miami.

“Both are symbolic and I think symbols matter,” Berardi said. “[They] are planting a flag here and saying look this is a viable scene.” Of his 16 portfolio companies, Berardi says only one startup is based in Miami. With more and more investors moving to the city, Berardi is optimistic that it can magnetize more talent to move, too.

“I’m hopeful that this can attract tens or hundreds of founders to build their next thing in Miami,” he said.

News: After soaring above $23B, Qualtrics’ founder and CEO reflect on a stellar debut

• January 28, 2021
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Amidst the sturm und drang of l’affaire GameStop, the cloud software vendor received a warm welcome from public investors.

Amidst all of the the sturm und drang of l’affaire GameStop, Qualtrics went public today.

After pricing its stock above its raised IPO range, the company received a warm welcome from public investors. After starting its trading life worth $41.85, Qualtrics closed the day worth $45.50, up some 51.67%.

The software company’s debut comes after a lengthy path to the public markets; Qualtrics sold to SAP on the eve of its first run at a public listing back in 2018. Now, SAP has completed spinning the company out, though the software giant remains the Utah unicorn’s largest shareholder.

That Qualtrics’ IPO might perform well was presaged in its pricing run, having prices far above its initial valuation estimates; there was evidence of strong demand even before its shares started to trade.

But did Qualtrics misprice, given its strong first-day performance? TechCrunch spoke with Qualtrics CEO Zig Serafin, and its founder and current executive chairman Ryan Smith about its public offering, hoping to learn a bit about what is next for the company.

Pricing, plans

Having spoken to myriad folks on IPO days, I’ve learned the best way to kick off is to ask about emotions. Most CEOs and other execs are tied up in what they can (and cannot) say. And they are well-trained by communications experts regarding what to repeat and emphasize. You can sometimes loosen them up a little, however, by asking them how they feel.

In response to that question, Serafin described a feeling of gratitude and Smith brought up the long game. Qualtrics, he said, had been told that it couldn’t bootstrap, that it couldn’t build in Utah, that SAP had overpaid, that SAP had messed up and so forth.