Monthly Archives: May 2021

News: Two weeks left to score a $99 pass to TC Disrupt 2021

  • May 3, 2021
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Building and sustaining a startup is as challenging as it is fulfilling. Doing it during a global pandemic takes unprecedented (oy, there’s that word again) ingenuity, support and expert insight. You’ll find all of that and more at TC Disrupt 2021 on September 21-23. A shut-the-front-door moment: Want to access all the expert advice, networking,

Building and sustaining a startup is as challenging as it is fulfilling. Doing it during a global pandemic takes unprecedented (oy, there’s that word again) ingenuity, support and expert insight. You’ll find all of that and more at TC Disrupt 2021 on September 21-23.

A shut-the-front-door moment: Want to access all the expert advice, networking, community connection and potential growth opportunities for less than $100? Heck yeah. You have just two left weeks to score the super early-bird price. Buy your pass to Disrupt 2021 before the deadline expires on May 13, 11:59 pm (PST).

Every TC Disrupt features one-on-one interviews, presentations and breakout sessions with tech titans, fascinating founders, top-tier VCs and countless other subject-matter experts spanning the tech ecosystem. We’re building a righteous roster of speakers, and we’ll be announcing them in the coming weeks.

Here’s one example we can share today. Luis von Ahn co-founded Duolingo, a gamified language-learning app used by hundreds of millions around the world. And get this — von Ahn debuted Duolingo on the Disrupt stage nine years ago. He might have a few helpful hints, amirite?

Show of hands — who can’t wait for Startup Battlefield? If you think you have what it takes to win this famously epic global pitch competition, apply right here. Take your shot and you might just walk away with $100,000. Every competing team benefits from intense media and investor exposure. Not ready to throw down? That’s cool — you can learn a lot just by watching the pitches and hearing the questions posed by leading VC judges.

Speaking of Startup Battlefield judges. So far, we’ve tapped Sydney Thomas (Precursor Ventures), Alexa von Tobel (Inspired Capital) and Terri Burns (GV) — with more to come. These folks know their stuff, so get ready to impress the best.

Don’t forget about Startup Alley. We’ve supercharged the exposure opportunities for exhibitors in our virtual expo, including a chance to participate in Startup Alley+ — read about the new Startup Alley benefits and opportunities. Beat the super early bird deadline (only two weeks left!) and you’ll save $100 on a Startup Alley Pass.

Why should you attend Disrupt? Rachael Wilcox, a creative producer at Volvo Cars, tells us why she keeps coming back.

I love Disrupt because it features incredible companies. My work exposes me to lots of companies all over the world but, inevitably, I run across startups at Disrupt I haven’t heard of yet. It’s always fascinating to explore opportunities and find ways to work together.

TC Disrupt 2021 takes place on September 21-23. Come find the inspiration, opportunities and expert information you need to drive your business forward. And you’ll find it for less than $100 — if you buy your pass before May 13, 11:59 pm (PST).

Is your company interested in sponsoring or exhibiting at Disrupt 2021? Contact our sponsorship sales team by filling out this form.

News: Equity Monday: TechCrunch goes Yahoo while welding robots raise $56M

  • May 3, 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. This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest private market news, talks about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. You

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 private market news, talks 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.

This morning was a notable one in the life of TechCrunch the publication, as our parent company’s parent company decided to sell our parent company to a different parent company. And now we’re to have to get new corporate IDs, again, as it appears that our new parent company’s parent company wants to rebrand our parent company. As Yahoo.

Cool.

Anyway, a bunch of other stuff happened as well:

We’re back Wednesday with something special. Chat then!

Equity drops every Monday at 7:00 a.m. PST, Wednesday, and Friday at 6:00 AM PST, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts!

News: Clubhouse begins externally testing its Android app

  • May 3, 2021
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Clubhouse, the voice-based networking app that’s now being knocked off by every major tech platform, is bringing its service to Android. The company announced during its weekly Townhall event that its Android version has entered beta testing with a handful of non-employees who will provide the company with early feedback ahead of a public launch.

Clubhouse, the voice-based networking app that’s now being knocked off by every major tech platform, is bringing its service to Android. The company announced during its weekly Townhall event that its Android version has entered beta testing with a handful of non-employees who will provide the company with early feedback ahead of a public launch.

In its release notes, Clubhouse referred to this test as involving a “rough beta version” that’s in the process of being rolled out to a group of “friendly testers.” That means there’s not a way for the broader public to sign up for the Android app just yet.

The lack of an Android client combined with its invite system initially gave Clubhouse an aura of exclusivity. You had to know someone to get in, and then you would need an iOS device to participate. But the delay to provide access to Android users also gave larger competitors time to catch up with Clubhouse and court users who were being left behind. One of the largest of the rivals, Facebook, recently challenged Clubhouse across all its platforms and services, in fact.

Facebook announced a full audio strategy that included a range of new products, from short-form audio snippets to a direct Clubhouse clone that works across Facebook and Messenger. It also announced a way for Instagram Live users to turn off their video and mute their mics, similar to Clubhouse. Even Facebook’s R&D division tested a Clubhouse alternative, Hotline, which offers a sort of mashup between the popular audio app and Instagram Live, with more of a Q&A focus.

Meanwhile, Twitter is continuing to expand its audio rooms feature, Twitter Spaces, and there are Clubhouse alternatives from Reddit, LinkedIn, Spotify, Discord, Telegram, and others, in the works, too.

For Clubhouse, that means the time has come to push for growth — especially as there are already some signs its initial hype is wearing off. According to app store intelligence firm Apptopia, Clubhouse has seen an estimated 13.5 million downloads on iOS to date, but the number of daily downloads has been falling, mirroring a decline in the number of daily active users.

Image Credits: Apptopia

Apptopia’s data shows that Clubhouse’s daily active users are down 68% from a high in February 2021, though that doesn’t necessarily mean that Clubhouse is over — it’s just becoming less of a daily habit. However, if the company is able to build out its creator community and establish a number of popular shows, which it’s aiming to do via its accelerator, it could still see users tuning in on a weekly and monthly basis. And those sessions would be longer in comparison with some other social apps, as Clubhouse users often tune into shows that run over an hour — even leaving the app open as they do other tasks.

Plus, Clubhouse is taking aim at the challenges around re-engaging people whose usage may have dwindled in recent days. Also during its Townhall, the company announced it would introduce a bell icon for events that will allow users to be notified about the events they’ve RSVP’d to. This will be important for creators who are advertising their events, as well.

Clubhouse didn’t give a specific timeframe as to when its Android app would reach more testers or the wider public, only noting that it’s looking forward to welcoming more Android users in the “coming weeks.” In March, Clubhouse had said the Android launch would take a couple of months.

 

News: In the race towards Web 3 financial privacy, Secret Network attracts backing from key players

  • May 3, 2021
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In the real world – the world on which the global economy runs – we don’t expose every aspect of our financial activity in public. We want to be able to select which parties can access our financial data and under what circumstances – for example, our credit history or bank transactions. The problem with

In the real world – the world on which the global economy runs – we don’t expose every aspect of our financial activity in public. We want to be able to select which parties can access our financial data and under what circumstances – for example, our credit history or bank transactions. The problem with the blockchain world is that this financial privacy doesn’t really exist. This has led to pretty bad abuses, such as the practice of front-running’ where a nefarious person can take advantage of you immediately after seeing your transaction on a public blockchain. What’s required is a real infrastructure improvement to this problem, for, without it, the Crypto ‘Shangri-la’ of ‘DeFi’ (decentralized finance) will never have a hope of taking off.

It’s therefore significant that some well-known organizations in the realm of blockchain financing are investing the equivalent of $11.5 million into SCRT, the native coin of the Secret Network blockchain. The investment was led by Arrington Capital and Blocktower Capital and also include Spartan Group, and Skynet Trading.

Previous investors in in Secret includs Outlier Ventures, Fenbushi Capital, and Hashed, as well as Secret Foundation and Enigma MPC, and node operators such as Figment and Staked.

Tor Bair, founder of Secret Foundation said: “The addition of these valuable and experienced partners to the Secret ecosystem marks a significant inflection point for Secret Network as we concentrate on expanding and supporting our fast-growing application layer.”

Secret, which used to be called Enigma before a pivot, claims to have been the first privacy-first smart contract platform. (The first version of this blockchain was called the “Enigma Mainnet,” but this branding was changed to Secret Network via a governance vote in summer 2020).

So far in 2021, the Secret Network ecosystem has launched several native applications, including SecretSwap, a “front-running resistant”, cross-chain AMM with privacy protections. It is also developing Secret NFTs.

So why is this at all significant?

Why should we care? It’s simply because, without privacy, DeFi is highly unlikely to go mainstream.

Without privacy in transactions, the traditional economic system won’t bother taking any notice of crypto and blockchain, outside of noting whether the price of bitcoin goes up or down.

Admittedly, Secret is not the only player tackling this area. It is playing in the same arena as blockchain projects such as Phala (not yet on mainnet, and built on Polkadot), Oasis, and Aleo, which recently just fundraised via Andreessen Horowitz.

What these projects all have in common is this race towards what’s known as the Web3 ‘application privacy’ space. Once again, they are trying to reproduce the kind of financial privacy that we have all come to expect from the traditional financial system, but which remains elusive in the blockchain world.

However, this approach should not be confused with privacy coins like Monero and Zcash. These are coins, and therefore not the same at all as the above-named projects, which are aiming at what’s known as ‘programmable privacy’.

Bair told me: “Transactional privacy [via privacy coins] just means hiding simple aspects of transactions from other parties – a narrow form of privacy. Smart contract privacy – what we call ‘programmable privacy’ – is a much more powerful idea, allowing developers to build complex decentralized and permissionless applications that also protect data privacy, with big consequences for Web3 security and usability. As an analogy – imagine trying to build a decentralized Facebook. Normal blockchains expose all data by default, a much worse outcome for user privacy and security. Only smart contract privacy allows you to build these types of complex applications without compromising the user experience and threatening their safety.”

Front-running is often described as getting a transaction first in line before a known future transaction occurs. Bair claims Secret protects against this at the protocol level because all interactions with smart contracts are encrypted and cannot be viewed even by the network validators, “so all DeFi applications built on Secret network are front running resistant by default” he told me.

That said, Secret will still have to compete with the myriad privacy projects already on – for instance – Ethereum, such as Automata. The Secret Network is a standalone blockchain and would still require a developer community to be successful, versus Ethereum and Polkadot, which technically have a head start, of sorts. But these blockchains are public by default. So Secret’s hyper-focus on the issue of privacy may yet make Secret a major player in this realm.

Bair commented: “Only programmable privacy can give users and developers this level of control in the DeFi world. Without programmable privacy, DeFi will never achieve mass adoption outside of purely speculative activity. Secret Network intends to become the foundation for new types of DeFi applications that better protect users while also allowing traditional institutions to participate securely, with protections for sensitive data. Also, blockchains don’t need thousands of developers to succeed in the short term – they need the right developers who build the early critical applications.”

Furthermore, Secret has in its favor the fact that due to the whole nature of decentralization of the blockchain space isn’t nearly as much a ‘winner-take-all’ environment as the general Internet has become due to the growth of the large BigTech platforms – that would be counter to the point of decentralization. As Bair told me: “Secret’s vision is to become a data privacy hub for all public blockchains, collaborating more than competing with networks like Ethereum (to which we already have a live bridge with over $100M in assets locked).”

Secret Network claims it was one of the first blockchains to feature privacy-preserving smart contracts, which it launched on mainnet in September 2020. It says this means all decentralized applications built on Secret Network have data privacy by default. The Secret Network blockchain itself is based on Cosmos SDK / Tendermint, giving it its own independent consensus, on-chain governance, and features like slashing and delegation. It is secured by the native coin Secret (SCRT), which must be staked by network validators and is used for transaction and computation fees as well as governance, said the foundation.

Commenting on the investment, Michael Arrington, founder of Arrington Capital said: “Secret is the first blockchain ecosystem to prioritize privacy. Financial privacy is critical to individual freedom, and Arrington Capital has long been committed to financial privacy and censorship resistance. The rapid expansion of Decentralized Finance makes solutions like Secret Network a timely addition to the DeFi ecosystem.” (Arrington Capital was established by Arrington, who was also previously the founder of TechCrunch, but who has no involvement in the title these days).

Jamie Burke, founder of Outlier Ventures in the UK and a Secret backer, told me: “Privacy will be essential to the security and adoption of Web3, from DeFi to NFTs and beyond. Secret Network brings new and unique privacy functionality to the space, and as a result we believe it will be foundational to the next generation of successful Web3 applications.”

Secret is also getting support from DeFi players such as the Sienna Network. Monty Munford, Chief Evangelist and Core Contributor to the privacy DeFi company told me: “Of all the networks in all the world, we chose Secret because it was a yes-yes-yes brainer. They understand privacy and we understand DeFi; it’s a match made in heaven.”

News: Zoomo raises $12 million expand e-bike subscription offerings

  • May 3, 2021
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Zoomo, the Australian startup with a mission to electrify delivery fleets through e-bike subscriptions, announced a $12 million interim capital raise on Monday. The company made a name for itself through partnerships with UberEats and DoorDash to help delivery workers access e-bikes through weekly subscriptions at discounted rates. Zoomo then grew to offer monthly subscriptions

Zoomo, the Australian startup with a mission to electrify delivery fleets through e-bike subscriptions, announced a $12 million interim capital raise on Monday.

The company made a name for itself through partnerships with UberEats and DoorDash to help delivery workers access e-bikes through weekly subscriptions at discounted rates. Zoomo then grew to offer monthly subscriptions to corporate partners in Australia, the U.S. and London for last mile delivery, with a fleet that has expanded beyond 10,000 units globally.

Now, the startup hopes to expand its service outward towards continental Europe and other states across the U.S. It currently operates in New York City, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Philadelphia. Zoomo also wants to build up its consumer model, which mainly serves couriers but is extending to commuters, and will invest in the development of its next generation of vehicle offerings.

“We initially built our products to service the demands of gig workers in the food delivery industry,” Mina Nada, Zoomo CEO and co-founder said in a statement. “Their expectations for quality commercial vehicles, on demand service, flexible financing and tech enabled security features spurred us to innovate. We’re now seeing enterprises and fleet managers benefiting from the platform we have built. Enterprise fleet managers looking for clean and efficient vehicles are choosing us.”

Zoomo’s focus on e-bikes for food delivery makes it unique in the electric bike rental space. Its business model offers a full-stack e-bike, from the hardware and software to same-day servicing and financing options, which especially helps big business partners deploy and manage large fleets of vehicles at scale. It’s a tall order, and Zoomo’s strategy could be leading a new trend in micromobility of being a one-stop-shop that promises quick scalability.

German mobility software provider Wunder Mobility recently announced its efforts to offer a souped up e-moped that’s been co-designed with Chinese consumer manufacturer Yadea for the dockless sharing market. It also launched a new subsidiary to finance the vehicles, along with its software, to shared micromobility providers. Wunder Mobility plans to offer e-scooters and e-bikes for financing in the future, but it doesn’t design its own vehicles or sell them outright. While the business models and target customers don’t perfectly align, the blueprint is the same: Corner a market, provide top quality hardware and software and make it as accessible as possible.

Coronavirus spurred a demand for delivery in all industries, and we can see companies like FluidTruck and Rivian stepping up to the plate to meet the needs of eco-conscious e-commerce giants with their electric delivery vans. The online food delivery industry is no different with a market that’s expected to reach $192.16 billion in 2025 at a compound annual growth rate of 11%. But for delivery within cities, e-bikes offer a smarter solution for meeting climate change goals while dodging traffic congestion.

Zoomo’s custom designed bikes can bear more than 200 kilograms of load via various cargo options, according to a Zoomo spokesperson. For enterprise customers, like health food company Cornucopia, e-cargo delivery vehicles like a Trailer Trike or a Covered Trike are used to deliver goods sustainably. Gorillas, an on-demand grocery delivery company, and Just Eat Takeaway, acquirer of Grubhub and Seamless, are also clients of Zoomo’s.

“At Just Eat Takeaway.com, we want to build a sustainable future for food delivery, and are committed to doing our bit to help keep carbon emissions to a minimum, as well as providing an efficient customer experience from order to delivery,” said a Just Eat Takeaway spokesperson in a statement. “E-Vehicles are an integral part of the Scoober model and we are pleased to work in cooperation with Zoomo.”

Zoomo’s newest funding round, led by Australian VC AirTree, follows an $11 million Series A raised in August 2020, with support in both rounds from the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, Maniv Mobility and Contrarian Ventures. Withrop Square and Wisdom VC, mobility and clean tech-focused investors, also joined this round.

News: Only four more days to save $100 on passes to TC Sessions: Mobility 2021

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The only thing happening faster than tech mobility right now is the speed at which our early bird price for TC Sessions: Mobility 2021 will disappear. You have just four days left to save $100 to our June 9 deep-dive exploration into the current and future state of mobility and transportation. Buy your pass to

The only thing happening faster than tech mobility right now is the speed at which our early bird price for TC Sessions: Mobility 2021 will disappear. You have just four days left to save $100 to our June 9 deep-dive exploration into the current and future state of mobility and transportation.

Buy your pass to TC Sessions Mobility 2021 before the price increase goes into effect on Thursday, May 6 at 11:59 pm (PT).

The event is virtual (thanks a bunch, you nasty pandemic), but the information you’ll glean and the worldwide connections you’ll make are very real. The global nature of the opportunities waiting for you to find is a big democratizing benefit of going virtual.

The day comes jam-packed with presentations, one-on-one interviews and breakout sessions with the top founders, investors and makers in mobility. Don’t stress about missing out over a schedule conflict — your pass includes access to video-on-demand once the event ends.

Here’s what Rachael Wilcox, a creative producer at Volvo Cars, told us about her experience at TC Sessions: Mobility 2020.

“I was impressed with the virtual platform. It was easy to navigate and a great format for asking questions. Combining live-stream and VOD options provided schedule flexibility, which let me be more focused and attend more presentations than I could at a live event.”

Let’s take a quick look at just some of the topics and the people who will cover them. Check out the agenda here and plan your strategy.

  • Will Venture Capital Drive the Future of Mobility? Clara Brenner, Quin Garcia and Rachel Holt will discuss how the pandemic changed their investment strategies, the hottest sectors within the mobility industry, the rise of SPACs as a financial instrument and where they plan to put their capital in 2021 and beyond.
  • Equity, Accessibility and Cities: Can mobility be accessible, equitable and remain profitable? We have brought together community organizer, transportation consultant and lawyer Tamika L. Butler; Remix by Via co-founder and CEO Tiffany Chu and Revel co-founder and CEO Frank Reig to discuss how (and if) shared mobility can provide equity in cities, while still remaining a viable and even profitable business. The trio will also dig into the challenges facing cities and how policy may affect startups.
  • EV Founders in Focus: We sit down with the founders poised to take advantage of the rise in electric vehicle sales. This time, we will chat with Kameale Terry, co-founder and CEO of ChargerHelp! a startup that enables on-demand repair of electric vehicle charging stations.

If you’re into mobility, you can’t afford to miss the information, trends, networking and connection opportunities you’ll find at TC Sessions: Mobility 2021. You also can’t afford to miss out on the early bird price. Buy your $95 pass before Thursday, May 6 at 11:59 pm (PT), and you’ll save $100.

Is your company interested in sponsoring or exhibiting at TC Sessions: Mobility 2021? Contact our sponsorship sales team by filling out this form.

News: Dell dumps another big asset moving Boomi to Francisco Partners and TPG for $4B

  • May 3, 2021
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It’s widely known that Dell has a debt problem left over from its massive acquisition of EMC in 2016, and it seems to be moving this year to eliminate part of it in multi-billion chunks. The first step was spinning out VMware as a separate company last month, a move expected to net close to

It’s widely known that Dell has a debt problem left over from its massive acquisition of EMC in 2016, and it seems to be moving this year to eliminate part of it in multi-billion chunks. The first step was spinning out VMware as a separate company last month, a move expected to net close to $10 billion.

The second, long expected, finally dropped last night when the company announced it was selling Boomi to a couple of private equity firms for $4 billion. Francisco Partners is joining forces with TPG to make the deal to buy the integration platform.

Boomi is not unlike Mulesoft, a company that Salesforce purchased in 2018 for $6.5 billion, although a bit longer in tooth. They both help companies with integration problems by creating connections between disparate systems. With so many pieces in place from various acquisitions over the years, it seems like a highly useful asset for Dell to help pull these pieces together and make them work, but the cash is trumping that need.

Providing integration services is a growing requirement as companies look for ways to make better use of data locked in siloed systems. Boomi could help and that’s one of the primary reasons for the acquisition, according to Francisco executives.

“The ability to integrate and connect data and workflows across any combination of applications or domains is a critical business capability, and we strongly believe that Boomi is well positioned to help companies of all sizes turn data into their most valuable asset,” Francisco CEO Dipanjan Deb and partner Brian Decker said in a statement.

As you would expect, Boomi’s CEO Chris McNabb put a positive spin on the deal about how his new bosses were going to fuel growth for his company. “By partnering with two tier-one investment firms like Francisco Partners and TPG, we can accelerate our ability for our customers to use data to drive competitive advantage. In this next phase of growth, Boomi will be in a position of strength to further advance our innovation and market trajectory while delivering even more value to our customers,” McNabb said in a statement.

All of this may have some truth to it, but the company goes from being part of a large amorphous corporation to getting absorbed in the machinery of two private equity firms. What happens next is hard to say.

The company was founded in 2000, and sold to Dell in 2010. Today, it has 15,000 customer, but Dell’s debt has been well documented, and when you string together a couple of multi-billion deals as Dell has recently, pretty soon you’re talking real money. While the company has not stated it will explicitly use the proceeds of this deal to pay off debt as it did with the VMware announcement, it stands to reason that this will be the case.

The deal is expected to close later this year, although it will have to pass the typical regulatory scrutiny prior to that.

News: Gatheround raises millions from Homebrew, Bloomberg and Stripe’s COO to help remote workers connect

  • May 3, 2021
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Remote work is no longer a new topic, as much of the world has now been doing it for a year or more because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Companies — big and small — have had to react in myriad ways. Many of the initial challenges have focused on workflow, productivity and the like. But

Remote work is no longer a new topic, as much of the world has now been doing it for a year or more because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Companies — big and small — have had to react in myriad ways. Many of the initial challenges have focused on workflow, productivity and the like. But one aspect of the whole remote work shift that is not getting as much attention is the culture angle.

A 100% remote startup that was tackling the issue way before COVID-19 was even around is now seeing a big surge in demand for its offering that aims to help companies address the “people” challenge of remote work. It started its life with the name Icebreaker to reflect the aim of “breaking the ice” with people with whom you work.

“We designed the initial version of our product as a way to connect people who’d never met, kind of virtual speed dating,” says co-founder and CEO Perry Rosenstein. “But we realized that people were using it for far more than that.” 

So over time, its offering has evolved to include a bigger goal of helping people get together beyond an initial encounter –– hence its new name: Gatheround.

“For remote companies, a big challenge or problem that is now bordering on a crisis is how to build connection, trust and empathy between people that aren’t sharing a physical space,” says co-founder and COO Lisa Conn. “There’s no five-minute conversations after meetings, no shared meals, no cafeterias — this is where connection organically builds.”

Organizations should be concerned, Gatheround maintains, that as we move more remote, that work will become more transactional and people will become more isolated. They can’t ignore that humans are largely social creatures, Conn said.

The startup aims to bring people together online through real-time events such as a range of chats, videos and one-on-one and group conversations. The startup also provides templates to facilitate cultural rituals and learning & development (L&D) activities, such as all-hands meetings and workshops on diversity, equity and inclusion. 

Gatheround’s video conversations aim to be a refreshing complement to Slack conversations, which despite serving the function of communication, still don’t bring users face-to-face.

Image Credits: Gatheround

Since its inception, Gatheround has quietly built up an impressive customer base, including 28 Fortune 500s, 11 of the 15 biggest U.S. tech companies, 26 of the top 30 universities and more than 700 educational institutions. Specifically, those users include Asana, Coinbase, Fiverr, Westfield and DigitalOcean. Universities, academic centers and nonprofits, including Georgetown’s Institute of Politics and Public Service and Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, are also customers. To date, Gatheround has had about 260,000 users hold 570,000 conversations on its SaaS-based, video platform.

All its growth so far has been organic, mostly referrals and word of mouth. Now, armed with $3.5 million in seed funding that builds upon a previous $500,000 raised, Gatheround is ready to aggressively go to market and build upon the momentum it’s seeing.

Venture firms Homebrew and Bloomberg Beta co-led the company’s latest raise, which included participation from angel investors such as Stripe COO Claire Hughes Johnson, Meetup co-founder Scott Heiferman, Li Jin and Lenny Rachitsky. 

Co-founders Rosenstein, Conn and Alexander McCormmach describe themselves as “experienced community builders,” having previously worked on President Obama’s campaigns as well as at companies like Facebook, Change.org and Hustle. 

The trio emphasize that Gatheround is also very different from Zoom and video conferencing apps in that its platform gives people prompts and organized ways to get to know and learn about each other as well as the flexibility to customize events.

“We’re fundamentally a connection platform, here to help organizations connect their people via real-time events that are not just really fun, but meaningful,” Conn said.

Homebrew Partner Hunter Walk says his firm was attracted to the company’s founder-market fit.

“They’re a really interesting combination of founders with all this experience community building on the political activism side, combined with really great product, design and operational skills,” he told TechCrunch. “It was kind of unique that they didn’t come out of an enterprise product background or pure social background.”

He was also drawn to the personalized nature of Gatheround’s platform, considering that it has become clear over the past year that the software powering the future of work “needs emotional intelligence.”

“Many companies in 2020 have focused on making remote work more productive. But what people desire more than ever is a way to deeply and meaningfully connect with their colleagues,” Walk said. “Gatheround does that better than any platform out there. I’ve never seen people come together virtually like they do on Gatheround, asking questions, sharing stories and learning as a group.” 

James Cham, partner at Bloomberg Beta, agrees with Walk that the founding team’s knowledge of behavioral psychology, group dynamics and community building gives them an edge.

“More than anything, though, they care about helping the world unite and feel connected, and have spent their entire careers building organizations to make that happen,” he said in a written statement. “So it was a no-brainer to back Gatheround, and I can’t wait to see the impact they have on society.”

The 14-person team will likely expand with the new capital, which will also go toward helping adding more functionality and details to the Gatheround product.

“Even before the pandemic, remote work was accelerating faster than other forms of work,” Conn said. “Now that’s intensified even more.”

Gatheround is not the only company attempting to tackle this space. Ireland-based Workvivo last year raised $16 million and earlier this year, Microsoft  launched Viva, its new “employee experience platform.”

News: Private equity firm Apollo to buy Verizon Media assets for $5B, will rename business ‘Yahoo’

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Following several days of negotiation and rumors, Verizon today announced that it has entered an agreement to sell its media assets to private equity firm Apollo Global Management for $5 billion. Apollo will be paying Verizon  $4.25 billion in cash, along with preferred interests of $750 million, and Verizon will keep 10% of the company.

Following several days of negotiation and rumors, Verizon today announced that it has entered an agreement to sell its media assets to private equity firm Apollo Global Management for $5 billion. Apollo will be paying Verizon  $4.25 billion in cash, along with preferred interests of $750 million, and Verizon will keep 10% of the company.

The new company, when the deal is complete, will be known simply as Yahoo, and it will continue to be led by current CEO, Guru Gowrappan.

“We are excited to be joining forces with Apollo,” said Gowrappan, CEO, Verizon Media, in a statement. “The past two quarters of double-digit growth have demonstrated our ability to transform our media ecosystem. With Apollo’s sector expertise and strategic insight, Yahoo will be well positioned to capitalize on market opportunities, media and transaction experience and continue to grow our full stack digital advertising platform. This transition will help to accelerate our growth for the long- term success of the company.”

“We are thrilled to help unlock the tremendous potential of Yahoo and its unparalleled collection of brands,” said Reed Rayman, private equity partner at Apollo, in the same statement. “We have enormous respect and admiration for the great work and progress that the entire organization has made over the last several years, and we look forward to working with Guru, his talented team, and our partners at Verizon to accelerate Yahoo’s growth in its next chapter.”

Although Verizon is retaining a stake, its divestment signifies a formal retreat for the telecoms giant, away from its expensive effort to take a stronger role in efforts to own, build and monetize content on top of its own and others’ networks.

The news today caps off days, weeks, months and arguably years of speculation about the future of the media business under Verizon. The price Apollo is paying is in line with reports of the deal in recent days, which collectively pegged the deal at around $4-5 billion.

Those figures may sound big, but not when compared to what Verizon originally paid: a combined $9 billion+ respectively first for AOL in 2015 and then Yahoo in 2017.

The former deal brought AOL and its various media holdings — including The Huffington Post, TechCrunch, Engadget — under the VZW umbrella, while the latter added the iconic Yahoo search portal along with a slate of Yahoo services and Tumblr, resulting in a curious mix of newer services skewing to younger audiences mixed with a number of legacy internet properties, plus some experimental efforts thrown into the mix. (And some of those newer efforts are still a part of the process: Verizon notes that Yahoo News is currently the fastest-growing news organization on TikTok.)

After the acquisition, the two companies were merged under the umbrella of a new brand, Oath, part of a bigger strategy that Verizon had to grow a media empire to help it take on online ad giants like Google and Facebook, with the operation run by Tim Armstrong, who had been AOL’s longtime CEO going into the Verizon acquisition.

Ultimately, it never quite played out as Verizon thought that it would, or at least not as quickly as it had hoped.

Hans Vestberg — a longtime telecoms executive who first joined Verizon as CTO in 2017 — became the CEO in June 2018. In doing so, he essentially inherited a digital media business strategy that he had no hand in building.

“Verizon Media has done an incredible job turning the business around over the past two and a half years and the growth potential is enormous,” Vestberg said in a press release. “The next iteration requires full investment and the right resources. During the strategic review process, Apollo delivered the strongest vision and strategy for the next phase of Verizon Media. I have full confidence that Yahoo will take off in its new home.”

Within six months of him taking the top role, Armstrong had left the company (to be succeeded by Guru Gowrappan); and then Verizon wrote the value of its media assets down to $4.6 billion, noting at the time that Oath “experienced increased competitive and market pressures throughout 2018 that have resulted in lower-than-expected revenues and earnings.”

And the Oath name was short lived, with Verizon adopting a far more straightforward name, Verizon Media, in January 2019.

Further moves happened in increments. In August 2019, the company sold blogging platform Tumblr to WordPress-owner, Automattic, for what was described then as a “nominal” price.

Then late last year, as the media world suffered from lack of ad revenue amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Verizon sold off HuffPost to Buzzfeed, coupled with an equity investment into the digital media company and an advertising and syndication deal. And there have been various layoffs to trim the wider media operation.

Since the HuffPost transaction, the rumors swirling around Verizon’s plans to shed its remaining media assets intensified. (Although, again, there were reports around a possible sale for years before this.)

Yet that isn’t the full story.

In spite of a rough year for online publishing, Verizon Media began to see a rebound earlier this year, marking a 12% year-over-year jump in revenue for Q1. In this morning’s release, the company cites Yahoo News’ growth on TikTok, staying that platform “continues to evolve as a key destination for finance and news among Gen Z.” It was, at very least, some short term good news that may have ultimately better positioned the telecom for a big selloff.

Founded in 1990, Apollo has a wide and diverse range of assets, including the recently purchased Venetian resort in Las Vegas and craft giant, Michael’s. It also has a pretty extensive range of holdings in the telecoms, media and tech sector, including ADT, Coinstar, radio and television conglomerate Cox Media, with some assets going private but then getting spun out as public businesses (Rackspace, another Apollo investment, is one example of that). In other words, precisely what shape a company like Verizon Media would ultimately take as part of the Apollo portfolio is still something of a question mark.

“We are big believers in the growth prospects of Yahoo and the macro tailwinds driving growth in digital media, advertising technology and consumer internet platforms,” Apollo senior partner David Sambur says in the release. “Apollo has a long track record of investing in technology and media companies and we look forward to drawing on that experience to help Yahoo continue to thrive.”

The deal is subject to the standard regulator scrutiny. It’s expected to close in the second half of the year.

News: Path Robotics raises $56M Series B for automated welding

  • May 3, 2021
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Columbus, Ohio-based firm Path Robotics today announced the completion of a $56 million Series B. The round, led by Addition (featuring Drive Capital, Basis Set and Lemnos Lab) brings the robotic welding company’s total funding to $71 million. Adding another piece to the broader automated manufacturing puzzle, the company is focused on robotic welding. The

Columbus, Ohio-based firm Path Robotics today announced the completion of a $56 million Series B. The round, led by Addition (featuring Drive Capital, Basis Set and Lemnos Lab) brings the robotic welding company’s total funding to $71 million.

Adding another piece to the broader automated manufacturing puzzle, the company is focused on robotic welding. The system uses scanning, computer vision and AI to adjust itself to different parts, understanding that sizing parts is a kind of imperfect science. Add to that the additional difficulty of working with highly reflective metals and you’ve got some interesting robotics problems to solve.

“Current industrial robotics have very little ability to understand their environment and the task at hand. Most robots merely repeat what they are told and have no ability to improve themselves,” CEO Andrew Lonsberry said in a release tied to the news. Our goal is to change this. The future of manufacturing hinges on highly capable robotics.”

The company says it’s looking to address a shortage in the welding workforce, which the American Welding Society says will experience a shortage of around 400,000 by 2024. The pandemic has also driven a number of companies to look for a more localized solution, apparently somewhat curbing the trend of offshoring the industry has seen in recent decades.

  


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