Yearly Archives: 2021

News: 6 tips for establishing your startup’s global supply chain

• August 31, 2021
• by:   
• in:  Blog 
• note:  no comments 

A global supply chain is, well, global. Each region, supplier and subcontractor in your chain needs to work in harmony with each other, because a single snag can ruin the whole process.

Startups are hard work, but the complexities of global supply chains can make running hardware companies especially difficult. Instead of existing within a codebase behind a screen, the key components of your hardware product can be scattered around the world, subject to the volatility of the global economy.

I’ve spent most of my career establishing global supply chains, setting up manufacturing lines for 3D printers, electric bicycles and home fitness equipment on the ground in Mexico, Hungary, Taiwan and China. I’ve learned the hard way that Murphy’s law is a constant companion in the hardware business.

But after more than a decade of work on three different continents, there are a few lessons I’ve learned that will help you avoid unnecessary mistakes.

Expect cost fluctuations, especially in currency and shipping

Shipping physical products is quite different from “shipping” code — you have to pay a considerable amount of money to transport products around the world. Of course, shipping costs become a line item like any other as they get baked into the overall business plan. The issue is that those costs can change monthly — sometimes drastically.

At this time last year, a shipping container from China cost $3,300. Today, it’s almost $18,000 — a more than fivefold increase in 12 months. It’s safe to assume that most 2020 business plans did not account for such a cost increase for a key line item.

Similar issues also arise with currency exchange rates. Contract manufacturers often allow you to maintain cost agreements for any fluctuations below 5%, but the dollar has dropped much more than 5% against the yuan compared to a year ago, and hardware companies have been forced to renegotiate their manufacturing contracts.

As exchange rates become less favorable and shipping costs increase, you have two options: Operate with lower margins, or pass along the cost to the end customer. Neither choice is ideal, but both are better than going bankrupt.

The takeaway is that when you set up your business, you need to prepare for these possibilities. That means operating with enough margin to handle increased costs, or with the confidence that your end customer will be able to handle a higher price.

Overorder critical parts

Over the past year, many businesses have lost billions of dollars in market value because they didn’t order enough semiconductors. As the owner of a hardware company, you will encounter similar risks.

The supply for certain components, like computer chips, can be limited, and shortages can arise quickly if demand increases or supply chains get disrupted. It’s your job to analyze potential choke points in your supply chain and create redundancies around them.

News: Extra Crunch roundup: Toast and Freshbook S-1s, pre-pitch tips, flexible funding lessons

• August 31, 2021
• by:   
• in:  Blog 
• note:  no comments 

The digital transformation currently sweeping society has likely reached your favorite local restaurant. Since 2013, Boston-based Toast has offered bars and eateries a software platform that lets them manage orders, payments and deliveries. Over the last year, its customers have processed more than $38 billion in gross payment volume, so Alex Wilhelm analyzed the company’s

The digital transformation currently sweeping society has likely reached your favorite local restaurant.

Since 2013, Boston-based Toast has offered bars and eateries a software platform that lets them manage orders, payments and deliveries.

Over the last year, its customers have processed more than $38 billion in gross payment volume, so Alex Wilhelm analyzed the company’s S-1 for The Exchange with great interest.

“Toast was last valued at just under $5 billion when it last raised, per Crunchbase data,” he writes. “And folks are saying that it could be worth $20 billion in its debut. Does that square with the numbers?”

---

Full Extra Crunch articles are only available to members.
Use discount code ECFriday to save 20% off a one- or two-year subscription.

---

Airbnb, DoorDash and Coinbase each debuted at past Y Combinator Demo Days; as of this writing, they employ a combined 10,000 people.

Today and tomorrow, TechCrunch reporters will cover the proceedings at YC’s Summer 20201 Demo Day. In addition to writing up founder pitches, they’ll also rank their favorites.

Even remotely, I can feel a palpable sense of excitement radiating from our team — anything can happen at YC Demo Day, so sign up for Extra Crunch to follow the action.

Thanks very much for reading; I hope you have an excellent week.

Walter Thompson
Senior Editor, TechCrunch
@yourprotagonist

How Amazon EC2 grew from a notion into a foundational element of cloud computing

In August 2006, AWS activated its EC2 cloud-based virtual computer, a milestone in the cloud infrastructure giant’s development.

“You really can’t overstate what Amazon was able to accomplish,” writes enterprise reporter Ron Miller.

In the 15 years since, EC2 has enabled clients of any size to test and run their own applications on AWS’ virtual machines.

To learn more about a fundamental technological shift that “would help fuel a whole generation of startups,” Ron interviewed EC2 VP Dave Brown, who built and led the Amazon EC2 Frontend team.

3 ways to become a better manager in the work-from-home era

Most managers agree that OKRs foster transparency and accountability, but running a team effectively has different challenges when workers are attending all-hands meetings from their kitchen tables.

Instead of just discussing key metrics before board meetings or performance reviews, make them part of the day-to-day culture, recommends Jeremy Epstein, Gtmhub’s CMO.

“Strengthen your team by creating authentic workplace transparency using numbers as a universal language and providing meaning behind your team’s work.”

The pre-pitch: 7 ways to build relationships with VCs

Many founders must overcome a few emotional hurdles before they’re comfortable pitching a potential investor face-to-face.

To alleviate that pressure, Unicorn Capital founder Evan Fisher recommends that entrepreneurs use pre-pitch meetings to build and strengthen relationships before asking for a check:

“This is the ‘we actually aren’t looking for money; we just want to be friends for now’ pitch that gets you on an investor’s radar so that when it’s time to raise your next round, they’ll be far more likely to answer the phone because they actually know who you are.”

Pre-pitches are good for more than curing the jitters: These conversations help founders get a better sense of how VCs think and sometimes lead to serendipitous outcomes.

“Investors are opportunists by necessity,” says Fisher, “so if they like the cut of your business’s jib, you never know — the FOMO might start kicking hard.”

Lessons from COVID: Flexible funding is a must for alternative lenders

FischerJordan’s Deeba Goyal and Archita Bhandari break down the pandemic’s impact on alternative lenders, specifically what they had to do to survive the crisis, taking a look at smaller lenders including Credibly, Kabbage, Kapitus and BlueVine.

“Only those who were able to find a way through the complexities of their existing capital sources were able to maintain their performance, and the rest were left to perish or find new funding avenues,” they write.

Inside Freshworks’ IPO filing

Customer engagement software company Freshworks’ S-1 filing depicts a company that’s experiencing accelerating revenue growth, “a great sign for the health of its business,” reports Alex Wilhelm in this morning’s The Exchange.

“Most companies see their growth rates decline as they scale, as larger denominators make growth in percentage terms more difficult.”

Studying the company’s SEC filing, he found that “Freshworks isn’t a company where we need to cut it lots of slack, as we might with an adjusted EBITDA number. It is going public ready for Big Kid metrics.”

News: Kai-Fu Lee and Chen Qiufan will share their vision of our AI-powered future at Disrupt

• August 31, 2021
• by:   
• in:  Blog 
• note:  no comments 

We’ve had visionary investors onstage before, and we’ve had science fiction authors onstage — but never at the same time, let alone a pair who collaborated on a unique book of stories and essays that make an optimistic prediction of our AI-infused future. Sinovation founder Kai-Fu Lee and author of “Waste Tide” and others Chen

We’ve had visionary investors onstage before, and we’ve had science fiction authors onstage — but never at the same time, let alone a pair who collaborated on a unique book of stories and essays that make an optimistic prediction of our AI-infused future. Sinovation founder Kai-Fu Lee and author of “Waste Tide” and others Chen Qiufan will join us at Disrupt (September 21-23) for a discussion of the fiction and fact of today’s hottest technology.

Lee, born in Taiwan, attended CMU and obtained a PhD in computer science, working initially on speech recognition before working for Apple, SGI and Microsoft, then establishing Google China as its president. His research and investment company, Sinovation (originally Innovation Works) has been his focus since its founding in 2009, and he has grown to become a leading mind and influential figure in AI.

When we last spoke with Lee, at Disrupt SF 2018, he emphasized that China was catching up to the U.S. on AI research, and had surpassed it in some ways. And certainly his own investments have contributed to that. Since then, as someone who thinks frequently about what the future holds, he has found a kindred spirit in Chen Qiufan.

Qiufan is a Chinese author whose 2013 novel “Waste Tide” propelled him to literary fame, though like many authors, that wasn’t enough to make him quit his day job until a few years later (Wired only just ran a profile on him). But by that time he had attracted the attention of Lee, who proposed a novel project: a collaborative book where the two would put their heads together to create a fictitious future informed by fact and realistic extrapolation.

The result is “AI 2041”: 10 stories by Qiufan set in the titular year, all over the world, with people from all walks of life encountering AI in the many ways that the authors speculate it may come to shape society over the next two decades. Each is followed by an explanatory essay by Lee that goes into the technical aspects and why they might lead to that future.

I’ll be posting a full review of the book ahead of the event, but I can certainly say that it’s unlike any collection I’ve read before. Each story is independent but takes place in something like a shared world, and each illustrates a potential application, conflict or change in thinking that AI could lead to. And, importantly, the AI is recognizable as descended directly from existing technologies.

For instance, one story concerns a talented deepfake creator working out of Lagos, one who knows the ins and outs of generative adversarial networks, image inspection, media pathways and so on. He’s tasked with creating a video of a long-dead celebrity that fools not just people watching it but the hosting service’s automated scanners, the government’s facial recognition algorithms and all the rest — but he begins to suspect there’s an unsavory motive behind it all (I won’t spoil the rest).

What follows the story is Lee’s essay on GANs, facial recognition and deepfakes that explains the concepts in an understandable but not patronizing way, then explores the risks and benefits in a non-narrative way. It helps ground the stories as real possibilities, not just imagined situations.

With both Qiufan and Lee onstage (virtually this time), the discussion of the book and the issues it brings up should be a lively one — not least because it will be moderated by yours truly. But to catch this session, you’ll need to grab a pass to attend Disrupt happening September 21-23. Get yours today for less than $100 for a limited time!

News: TikTok’s new Creator Marketplace API lets influencer marketing companies tap into first-party data

• August 31, 2021
• by:   
• in:  Blog 
• note:  no comments 

TikTok is making it easier for brands and agencies to work with the influencers using its service. The company is rolling out a new “TikTok Creator Marketplace API,” which allows marketing companies to integrate more directly with TikTok’s Creator Marketplace, the video app’s in-house influencer marketing platform. On the Creator Marketplace website, launched in late

TikTok is making it easier for brands and agencies to work with the influencers using its service. The company is rolling out a new “TikTok Creator Marketplace API,” which allows marketing companies to integrate more directly with TikTok’s Creator Marketplace, the video app’s in-house influencer marketing platform.

On the Creator Marketplace website, launched in late 2019, marketers have been able to discover top TikTok personalities for their brand campaigns, then create and manage those campaigns and track their performance.

The new API, meanwhile, allows partnered marketing companies to access TikTok’s first-party data about audience demographics, growth trends, best-performing videos, and real-time campaign reporting (e.g. views, likes, shares, comments, engagement, etc.) for the first time.

They can then bring this data back into their own platforms, to augment the insights they’re already providing to their own customer base.

TikTok is not officially announcing the API until later in September, but it is allowing its alpha partners to discuss their early work.

One such partner is Capitv8, which tested the API with a NRF top 50 retailer on one of their first TikTok campaigns. The retailer wanted to discover a diverse and inclusive group of TikTok creators to partner with on a new collaboration and wanted help with launching its own TikTok channel. Captiv8 says the branded content received nearly 10 million views, and the campaign resulted in a “significant increase” in several key metrics, which performed about the Nielsen average. This included familiarity (+4% above average), affinity (+6%), purchase intent (+7%) and recommendation intent (+9%).

Capitv8 is now working with TikTok’s API to pull in audience demographics, to centralize influencer offers and activations, and to provide tools to boost branded content and monitor campaign performance. On that last front, the API allows the company to pull in real-time metrics from the TikTok Creator Marketplace API — which means Capitv8 is now one of only a handful of third-party companies with access to TikTok first-party data.

Another early alpha partner is Influential, who shared it’s also leveraging the API to access first-party insights on audience demographics, growth trends, best-performing videos, and more, to help its customer base of Fortune 1000 brands to identify the right creators for both native and paid advertising campaigns.

One partner it worked with was DoorDash, who launched multiple campaigns on TikTok with Influential’s help. It’s also planning to work with McDonald’s USA on several new campaigns that will run this year, including those focused on the chain’s new Crispy Chicken Sandwich and the return of Spicy McNuggets.

Other early alpha partners include Whalar and INCA. The latter is currently only available in the U.K. and its integration stems from the larger TikTok global partnership with WPP, announced in February. That deal provided WPP agencies with early access to new advertising products marketing API integrations, and new AR offerings, among other things.

Creator marketplaces are now common to social media platforms with large influencer communities as this has become a standard way to advertise to online consumers, particular the younger generation. Facebook today offers its Brands Collabs Manager, for both Facebook and Instagram; YouTube has BrandConnect; while Snapchat recently announced a marketplace to connect brands with Lens creators. These type of in-house platforms make it easier for marketers to work with the wider influencer community by offering trusted data on metrics that matter to brands’ own ROI, rather than relying on self-reported data from influencers or on data they have to manually collect themselves. And as campaigns run, marketers can compare how well their partnered creators are able to drive results to inform their future collaborations.

TikTok isn’t making a formal announcement about its new API at this time, telling TechCrunch the technology is still in pilot testing phases for the time being.

“Creators are the lifeblood of our platform, and we’re constantly thinking of new ways to make it easy for them to connect and collaborate with brands. We’re thrilled to be integrating with an elite group of trusted partners to help brands discover and work with diverse creators who can share their message in an authentic way,” said Melissa Yang, TikTok’s Head of Ecosystem Partnerships, in a statement provided to select marketing company partners.

 

News: This YC Summer batch features the largest group of African startups yet

• August 31, 2021
• by:   
• in:  Blog 
• note:  no comments 

African startups also increased from 10 in the winter batch to 15 this time around, a record for African startups in a single YC cohort.

Y Combinator’s summer batch of 2021 features 377 startups from 47 countries. It’s the 33rd Demo Day of the well-known accelerator and holds the largest cohort yet. YC S20 had 198 startups, so that’s a 90% increase from last year.

About half of the companies represented are based outside the U.S. The countries with the most representatives (aside from the U.S.) include India, with 33 startups; the U.K., with 18 startups; Mexico with 17; Singapore with 12; and Canada and Brazil, 11 each.

While the Demo Day for this year’s winter batch was held in a day, it’s two days for this summer batch. Today, 189 companies will pitch, while the rest will pitch tomorrow.

African startups also increased from 10 in the winter batch to 15 this time around, a record for African startups in a single YC cohort.

“This is the largest batch we have ever funded and it’s about 50% international. As a result, it is not surprising that this is the largest cohort from Africa,” Y Combinator managing director and group arptner Michael Seibel told TechCrunch when asked if any extra factor contributed to the rise in accepted African startups.

Another valid reason for the uptick could be that YC is getting more applications from Africa due to the recent success stories of Paystack and Flutterwave. At least, that’s the view shared by Kat Mañalac, the head of Outreach at YC.

“Alumni are always the best spokespeople and representatives for YC. A lot of African founders (and future founders) I’ve spoken to were encouraged by seeing Paystack do so well and get acquired. The success of a lot of our African alumni are inspiring more African teams to apply,” she told TechCrunch.

Nigeria leads the way again with five startups, while Egypt has four, Morocco has two, and Kenya, Ghana, Zambia and South Africa each have one. Here’s the list of African startups that made it to YC S21 in alphabetical order.

Amenli (Egypt)

Africa has the lowest insurance penetrations globally. In Egypt, the insurance penetration rate stands at a minuscule 1%.

Amenli, founded by Shady El Tohfa and Adham Nauman in 2020, is addressing an untapped $2 billion market, being the first licensed online insurance broker in the country.

Chari (Morocco)

A wave of disruption of digitizing informal retail stores is sweeping across emerging markets this year, and Chari is joining in on the action.

Sophia Alj and Ismael Belkhayat founded Chari in 2020. The company allows traditional retailers in Morocco and some parts of North Africa to order consumer goods via its platform and handles free delivery to their stores. Chari has a fintech side by providing these retailers with credit.

Fingo (Kenya)

Neobanks have taken the world by storm and Africa is the last frontier for this brand of fintech innovation. Fingo is providing an alternative brand of banking to African millennials, starting from Kenya.

Founded by Kiiru Muhoya Gitari Tirima James da Costa and Ian Njuguna in 2020, the digital bank claims to offer fees 90% cheaper than traditional banks in Kenya, among other services.

FloatPays (South Africa)

In South Africa, up to 5 million employees borrow money to meet their monthly needs when they exhaust their salaries. However, the lending options for these employees come with outrageous interest rates.

Simon Ward founded FloatPays in 2019 as an on-demand wage access platform to help employees access, spend, save and manage their money.

Freterium (Morocco)

Managers of delivery businesses handle hundreds or thousands of delivery points every day. With a fleet made up of many trucks or vans, there’s a need to drop a delivery plan for each at different locations daily. How do they optimize for costs and efficiency at the same time?

Enter Freterium. The company allows contractors, manufacturers, distributors and logisticians to plan and optimize their B2B or B2C shipments while providing a cloud platform for real-time visibility of shipments, logistics infrastructure and seamless collaboration that breaks down traditional organizational silos. Omar El Kouhene and Mehdi Cherif Alami founded Freterium in 2018.

Infiuss Health (Nigeria)

A large number of Africans are exempt from clinical research studies due to time constraints. Per reports, it can take up to ten months to conduct such studies in these climes.

Infiuss Health says it is building a decentralized platform for remote research and clinical trials in Africa. How? By connecting researchers directly to patients who want to participate in clinical research studies in less than a week.

The company was founded by Melissa Bime and Mbah Charles in 2020.

Lemonade Finance (Nigeria)

There are millions of African immigrants in Europe and North America. Some have established businesses in both these regions and also in Africa.

In another digital banking play, Lemonade Finance provides multi-currency accounts for these migrants to enable seamless transactions and banking. The company was founded by Rian Cochran and Ridwan Olalere in 2020

Mecho Autotech (Nigeria)

Repairing one’s vehicle can be a painstaking process in Africa due to pricing and quality issues. The latter is because many of these professionals (mechanics) are unvetted.

Ayoola Akinkunmi and Olusegun Owoade started Mecho Autotech in 2021 as an on-demand auto maintenance and repairs platform. Mecho Autotech has created a network of vetted mechanics, and via an app, car owners can book and pay for their services.

Odiggo (Egypt)

Like its predecessor on this list, Odiggo connects car owners with mobile mechanics in the Middle East. On the platform, car owners can also access extra services, which include car washing and maintenance.

Although Odiggo lists as a Dubai-based company on the YC database, it has origins in Egypt and launched operations first in the North African country.

Payhippo (Nigeria)

Access to credit is still very much a problem to the millions of small and medium businesses in Nigeria, which make up most of the country’s businesses.

Founded by Zach Bijesse, Uche Nnadi and Chioma Okotcha in 2019, Payhippo provides loans to businesses that couldn’t ordinarily get loans or credit cards from banks or other financial institutions.

Pylon (Egypt)

Water and electricity distribution companies face losses from leakages and thefts when opening new revenue streams in emerging markets.

Pylon acts as an infrastructure management platform for these distribution companies and helps to reduce these losses. It was founded in 2017 by Ahmed Ashour and Omar Radi.

ShipBlu (Egypt)

When merchants start to grow their e-commerce businesses, it can be difficult to manage the end-to-end delivery and fulfilment needs. In Egypt, several platforms are already offering solutions to this ever-growing need, and ShipBlu is adding to that list.

Founded by Ahmed ElKawass, Abdelrahman Hosny and Ali Nasser in 2020, ShipBlu claims to offer a full suite of delivery services for e-commerce merchants from overnight to delivery to five- to seven-day delivery.

Suplias (Nigeria)

Another digitizing-informal-retail-stores play, this time from Nigeria. Suplias is a B2B marketplace where mom-and -op stores in Africa buy inventory directly from manufacturers using a mobile app.

The company was founded by Stephen Igwue, Michael Adesanya and Sefa Ikyaator in 2019.

Union54 (Zambia)

African fintechs are in the business of providing virtual and physical cards to their customers. However, it doesn’t come easy and cheap when done in partnership with banks.

Union54 is an alternative and provides an API for them to issue debit cards cheaper and faster. It was founded by Alessandra Martini and Perseus Mlambo in 2021.

Yemaachi Biotechnology (Ghana)

Yaw Attua-Afari, Yaw Bediako, David Hutchful and Joyce Ngoi founded Yemaachi Biotechnology in 2020. The startup’s idea is to diversify precision cancer diagnostics and treatments across the continent, starting with Ghana.

An estimated 752,000 new cancer cases, 4% of the world’s total, occurred in sub-Saharan Africa in 2018. Yemaachi is working to lower the burden cancer causes by creating molecular diagnostics optimized for all Africans.

News: Inside Freshworks’ IPO filing

• August 31, 2021
• by:   
• in:  Blog 
• note:  no comments 

Let’s dig into the company’s historical growth, track Freshworks’ changing profitability profile and check to see if its revenue quality is improving over time.

Freshworks, a customer engagement software company with roots in both California in the United States and Tamil Nadu in India, is going public. Its S-1 filing paints the picture of a company scaling rapidly, with improving profitability as it matures. However, to understand the company’s numbers, we’ll have to peel away certain costs for a clear picture.

The Exchange spoke with Freshworks CEO Girish Mathrubootham a few weeks ago about the future of his company, a conversation that in hindsight we timed rather well. We’ll lean on notes from the call as we parse Mathrubootham’s IPO filing.

---

The Exchange explores startups, markets and money.

Read it every morning on Extra Crunch or get The Exchange newsletter every Saturday.

---

Quite a lot of venture capital is riding on Freshworks’ IPO going well. The company raised hundreds of millions of dollars while private, per Crunchbase data, including a $150 million Series H in late 2019 that valued the company at around $3.5 billion. Its investor list includes Accel, Tiger, Sequoia and Capital G.

This morning, let’s dig into the company’s historical growth, track Freshworks’ changing profitability profile and check to see if its revenue quality is improving over time.

Quick notes on product

Before we dive into the numbers, let’s discuss Freshworks’ historical product work.

The company started life with a single piece of software called Freshdesk. Freshdesk was born after the company’s CEO struggled with poor customer service when trying to return a broken television.

Per Mathrubootham, he felt like there were more avenues than ever for customers to reach companies, and that the business market was evolving in a way that gave customers more clout in how brands were perceived. So, Freshdesk brought together a host of customer contact methods, including social media, which at the time was a more nascent market category.

Freshworks later noticed that some of its customers were using its customer service software to offer IT support to their own employees. From that observation, the company built Freshservice, a version of its original product, but tuned for internal use. The company later built out sales tools and, more recently, a unified database for customer data. The latter allows companies using Freshworks software to have a single record for each customer across marketing and sales interactions, which it intends to extend to support communications as well.

All that’s to say that Freshworks has a product that it can sell to small companies that may need a single piece of its larger product mix, and lots more software that it can upsell to those customers. And it has a product suite it can sell to larger companies as well.

So how has the company performed in the market? Let’s find out.

News: Osana Salud raises $20M to build API-connected infrastructure for the LatAm healthcare industry

• August 31, 2021
• by:   
• in:  Blog 
• note:  no comments 

Osana Salud, which aims to transform the healthcare infrastructure in Latin America, has closed on a $20 million Series A round of funding led by General Catalyst. The Argentina-based, yet fully remote, startup was founded in 2019 — just a few months before the pandemic. Since launching less than a year ago, Osana says it

Osana Salud, which aims to transform the healthcare infrastructure in Latin America, has closed on a $20 million Series A round of funding led by General Catalyst.

The Argentina-based, yet fully remote, startup was founded in 2019 — just a few months before the pandemic. Since launching less than a year ago, Osana says it has secured contracts with health insurance firms and providers that collectively serve more than 6 million patients in the region. For example, it is working with Sanatorio Güemes and PAMI, which has a network of 5 million patients, among others.

Quiet Capital, Preface Ventures, FJ Labs, AforeVC and K50 Ventures also put money in the latest round, which brings Osana’s total raised over its lifetime to $26.5 million. Lee Fixel’s Addition is also an investor.

CEO Andre Lawson told TechCrunch he was inspired to start Osana Salud because an estimated 50% of Latin America does not have access to quality healthcare. So he teamed up with COO Jorge Lopez to found the company to help change that. President Charu Sharma (the only staffer who is U.S.-based) and CTO Hugo Martin joined at a later date.

“Our vision is to enable affordable and accessible healthcare for every person in Latin America by leveraging technology,” Lawson said.

Specifically, Osana Salud is building an API-connected infrastructure to help the region’s healthcare industry offer a patient experience that offers “greater convenience, outcomes and value,” Lawson told TechCrunch. Its initial focus is on building solutions for telehealth, pharmacy and diagnostics. 

For example, he said, Osana wants to make it faster and cheaper for healthcare players to build solutions that are “safe, secure and interact well” with other health systems. With that in mind, the company has tapped doctors and engineers to design that infrastructure.

“The goal is to empower the next generation of healthcare providers in building patient-centric solutions with the potential to positively impact the healthcare experiences and outcomes for hundreds of millions of people,” Lawson said.

In the past eight months, Osana has grown from four to about 50 people, and it expects to have over 250 employees in the next year. Despite not quite being two years old, the startup believes it’s already grown to be Latin America’s biggest telehealth company.

Sharma told TechCrunch that despite living in Silicon Valley, she was drawn to the company’s mission and found the potential to “massively transform healthcare for a whole continent” appealing.

“In the U.S. tech ecosystem, we focus on first-world problems a lot, but an emerging market like LatAm gave me the opportunity to make a meaningful impact at a very basic human need level,” she said. “As the saying goes, talent is equally distributed but opportunity is not.”

In fact, as evidence that remote work will never be the same after COVID, neither Sharma nor Martin have met Lawson or Lopez in person.

The new capital will in part go toward accelerating the company’s product roadmap, Lawson said, and helping it expand to Brazil and Mexico, where it has seen “strong inbound interest.” But primarily, it will be used for hiring.

The timing of the company’s inception was good. The pandemic shed light on the fractures of the healthcare system in Latin America, Lawson believes. It also gave the industry the opportunity to show the benefits of a “virtual first” approach, he added. And once people got a taste of it, they wanted more.

As a result, Osana says it has seen a big bump both in the number of clients and in the usage of its technology platform amongst existing ones.

“Furthermore, COVID-19 created urgency for healthcare providers, which resulted in very short sales cycles for us,” Lawson said.

Hemant Taneja of General Catalyst said the startup’s thesis aligns “perfectly” with his firm’s thesis around healthcare. Taneja himself is also a co-founder and executive chairman of San Francisco-based Commure, a venture-backed startup which is also building software infrastructure aimed at transforming the healthcare space.

“The healthcare infrastructure landscape in Latin America is highly fragmented,” he told TechCrunch. Most software vendors are small or medium-sized local vendors, who have not crossed into other Latin American geographies, Taneja pointed out.

“Osana has a variety of solutions for providers, payors and the pharmaceutical industry that are customizable and modular to create truly personalized experiences — regardless of the region in Latin America,” he said. “They can be an important unifier in a really fractured marketplace.”

News: Compounds Foods brews up $4.5M to make coffee without beans

• August 31, 2021
• by:   
• in:  Blog 
• note:  no comments 

Compound Foods uses synthetic biology to create coffee without coffee beans by extracting molecules.

Maricel Saenz, founder and CEO of Compound Foods, is among the over 80% of Americans who love a cup of coffee daily. And she also loves the environment.

However, when the Costa Rican-born entrepreneur, now living in the Bay Area, saw how climate change was affecting coffee growers around the world — coffee is the fifth-most polluting crop in the value chain — she wanted to create a coffee product that tasted good, but was also sustainable.

“Temperatures are rising and combined with erratic rains are leading to lower crop yield,” Saenz told TechCrunch. “The same crop can’t grow in the same place anymore, or it will be a lower quality product. Farmers in Costa Rica are having to sell their land or go higher up the mountain. Experts predict that 50% of farmland will be unsuitable in the next couple of decades.”

Founded in 2020, Compound Foods uses synthetic biology to create coffee without coffee beans by extracting molecules. Saenz said the company spent a lot of time examining what makes coffee, well coffee, and then trying to correlate flavors and aromas in certain ways.

And yes, the company can still call it “coffee” even if it doesn’t contain coffee beans because there is no official regulatory definition, she said.

They use food science to recreate a base formula using sustainable ingredients that also don’t use a lot of water — she said it takes 140 liters of water along the coffee growth chain to make one cup of coffee. The company is also working toward a goal of being able to recreate coffee inspired by flavors that you would get from different areas of the world, like Costa Rica, but also the chocolate notes from a cup of Brazilian coffee.

Compound Foods announced $4.5 million in seed funding to give it total funding of $5.3 million to date. Backers of the company include Chris Sacca’s climate fund Lowercarbon Capital, SVLC, Humboldt Fund, Collaborative Fund, Maple VC, Petri Bio and angel investors like Nick Green, CEO of Thrive Market.

Saenz intends to use the new funding to improve the formulation and scale up the brand as the company works toward a soft launch by the end of the year.

There are a few competitors in the space doing different technology, including Seattle-based Atomo, which said it makes its coffee from “other fruits and plants that had seeds similar to coffee beans.”

Compound Foods is hiring coffee lovers to help build out its technology and to expand its marketing, product and business teams.

Saenz is clear that the company is not competing with coffee.

“We love coffee and know the farmers, and we are providing an alternative solution,” she added. “We want to recreate it, and even drink it on Mars one day, and we want to bring the coffee farmers and the industry with us on the journey.”

 

News: Pandemic-driven liquid oxygen shortage threatens ULA, SpaceX launches

• August 31, 2021
• by:   
• in:  Blog 
• note:  no comments 

The ongoing reverberations from the COVID-19 pandemic are continuing to make themselves felt in the most unlikely of places: spaceflight. On Friday, NASA took the unexpected step to ground a September satellite launch due to pandemic-related shortages of liquid oxygen (LOX), and there may be more launch delays yet to come. Demand for oxygen has

The ongoing reverberations from the COVID-19 pandemic are continuing to make themselves felt in the most unlikely of places: spaceflight. On Friday, NASA took the unexpected step to ground a September satellite launch due to pandemic-related shortages of liquid oxygen (LOX), and there may be more launch delays yet to come.

Demand for oxygen has only risen with the Delta variant, which in many cities pushed hospitalization and ICU admittance rates back to where they were at the start of the pandemic. But oxygen isn’t just used in ventilators. The space industry uses LOX as an oxidizer in rocket propellant, often in combination with other gases like liquid hydrogen. (That’s why there can be so much steam during a launch – it’s the hydrogen reacting with the oxygen to form water.)

NASA and United Launch Alliance, a joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin, said the launch date for the Landsat 9 satellite will now take place on September 23.

ULA isn’t the only launch company to potentially be impacted by the LOX shortage. “We’re actually going to be impacted this year with the lack of liquid oxygen for launch,” SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell said last week during a panel at the Space Symposium. “We certainly are going to make sure the hospitals are going to have the oxygen that they need, but for anybody who has liquid oxygen to spare, send me an email.”

Elon Musk, SpaceX’s founder and CEO, was more tempered a few days later on Twitter, saying that the LOX shortage “is a risk, but not yet a limiting factor.”

This is a risk, but not yet a limiting factor

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 26, 2021

Even beyond the actual supply of oxygen, the gas shortage is also being exacerbated by widespread shipping delays as coronavirus-related disruptions continue to impact the supply chain. ULA CEO Tory Bruno added on Twitter that a contractor who handles nitrogen transportation to Vandenberg Space Force Base in California was diverted to assist with LOX delivery in Florida.

The USG contractor that transports liquid GN2 to VAFB is helping with the COVID related LOX effort in Florida. Working that situation now. https://t.co/sTyprcRA42

— Tory Bruno (@torybruno) August 25, 2021

It’s not just the space industry that’s feeling the effects of the LOX squeeze: shortly before NASA announced the launch delay, Orlando, Florida officials sent out a separate notice urging residents to conserve water, as LOX is used to treat the city’s water supply.

“Nationally, the demand for liquid oxygen is extremely high as the priority for its use is to save lives, which is limiting the supply that [Orlando municipal water utility] OUC is receiving,” Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer said on Facebook. “There could be impacts to our water quality if we do not immediately reduce the amount of water we need to treat.”

As early as May of last year, the nonprofit Center for Global Development called COVID-19 a “wake-up call” for ensuring an adequate supply of oxygen to hospitals.

News: Fundraising for your startup? We’ve got you covered at TechCrunch Disrupt 2021

• August 31, 2021
• by:   
• in:  Blog 
• note:  no comments 

Fundraising is a huge part of building a successful startup, and whether you’re looking for information about the latest trends, alternative funding or how to fine-tune your pitch to attract investors, you’ll find that and a whole lot more at TechCrunch Disrupt 2021 on September 21-23. Disrupt always taps the top experts, visionaries, founders, investors

Fundraising is a huge part of building a successful startup, and whether you’re looking for information about the latest trends, alternative funding or how to fine-tune your pitch to attract investors, you’ll find that and a whole lot more at TechCrunch Disrupt 2021 on September 21-23.

Disrupt always taps the top experts, visionaries, founders, investors and makers to share their insights, tips and actionable advice. This year is no different, and you can choose from more than 80 presentations, events and breakout sessions over the course of three full days.

Be disruptive: Buy your pass today for less than $100 and get ready to learn from and connect with a global startup community.

Money makes the world go around (just ask Liza Minelli), and we’re highlighting just a sampling of the fundraising-focused sessions to help you on your financial journey at Disrupt.

Ready to raise? Here’s just a sample of the fundraising knowledge you can get — you’ll find the specific days and times listed in the Disrupt 2021 agenda.

How to Raise Your First Dollars

Deciding how to go about getting your initial funding is always a tricky subject, as the wrong move could adversely impact your young company. In this session we’ll hear from Index Ventures’ Nina Achadjian, Sequoia Capital’s Luciana Lixandru and Canvas Ventures’ Rebecca Lynn — experts who’ve shepherded multiple companies from the earliest to the latest fundraises.

How to Ditch Traditional Fundraising

In 2021, venture capital has never been more plentiful, but some founders still can’t break into networks or have found that traditional fundraising isn’t the best route for their business. Fortunately, alternative fundraising techniques are gathering steam as founders find paths to raise cash that diverge from the startup success stories of the past. Join Pipe’s Harry Hurst, Accel’s Arun Mathew and Clearco’s Michele Romanow to learn more about alternative fundraising options.

You’ve Raised Your Seed Round — Now What? Preparing for Your Series A

You cleared the first hurdle: initial funding is in the bank. You’re hiring more talent, seeing the beginnings of a finished product with clear evidence of traction and experiencing the coveted growth that previously felt just out of reach. Before you know it, the decision to raise for what is arguably the most competitive round is staring you in the face. Join Samsung Next’s David Lee alongside founders Kadie Okwudili (Agapé), Andy Hoang (Aviron), and Jim Bugwadia (Nirmata) as they discuss the learnings and nuances of bridging Seed to Series A. Presented by Samsung Next.

Where to Cut and Where to Spend in First-Check Fundraising

Every time a founder raises financing, they usually have one goal: growth. But what does that actually mean? And how do you begin divvying up your new capital between the various goals your startup is barreling toward? In this panel, which includes Harlem Capital’s Henri Pierre-Jacques, Equal Ventures’ Richard Kerby, and BBG Ventures’ Nisha Dua, you will learn about how to spend your investment the best way, balancing runway with classic startup rigor.

How Circle’s $4.5B Public Listing Will Change Startup Fundraising

Circle acquired SeedInvest in 2019, as a further step toward realizing its vision of a more open, global, connected and inclusive financial system. Circle recently announced its plans to become a $4.5B public company with over $1 billion of fresh capital. In this session, Circle CEO and Co-Founder Jeremy Allaire and Ryan Feit, CEO and co-founder of SeedInvest, will break down the evolution of the two companies and how Circle and SeedInvest plan to double down on online fundraising to make it faster and easier for entrepreneurs. Presented by by SeedInvest.

Crafting a Pitch Deck that Can’t Be Ignored

Investors may be chasing after the hottest deals, but for founders selling their startup’s vision, it’s never been more important to communicate it in the clearest way possible. Our panelists of pitch deck experts — Lightspeed Venture Partners’ Mercedes Bent, Pear VC’s Mar Hershenson and Techstars’ Saba Karim — dig into what’s essential, what’s unnecessary and what could just make all the difference in your next deck.

TechCrunch Disrupt 2021 takes place on September 21-23. Buy your pass today and take advantage of these fundraising sessions and expert advice — so you can find the money to make your world go around.

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