Yearly Archives: 2021

News: Luminate aims to make hair loss from chemotherapy a thing of the past

Hair loss resulting from chemotherapy is one of the most recognizable side effects in all of medicine, and for many is an unwanted public announcement of their condition and treatment. Luminate Medical may have a solution in a medical wearable that prevents the chemical cocktail from tainting hair follicles, preventing the worst of the loss

Hair loss resulting from chemotherapy is one of the most recognizable side effects in all of medicine, and for many is an unwanted public announcement of their condition and treatment. Luminate Medical may have a solution in a medical wearable that prevents the chemical cocktail from tainting hair follicles, preventing the worst of the loss and perhaps relegating this highly visible condition to the past.

When Luminate CEO Aaron Hannon and his co-founder Bárbara Oliveira were asking patients and doctors about areas of cancer treatment that they could perhaps innovate in, “we were just astonished at how much hair loss dominated the conversation,” said Hannon. “So from then on out we’ve just been laser focused on making that something that doesn’t exist any more.”

When a patient is undergoing chemotherapy, the cancer-inhibiting drugs course through their entire body — anywhere the blood goes. This has a variety of side effects, like weakness and nausea, and on a longer time scale hair loss occurs as the substances affect the follicles. Luminate’s solution, developed in partnership with the National University of Ireland Galway, is to prevent the blood from reaching those cells in the first place.

Image of a woman wearing the Luminate headset.

Image Credits: Luminate

The device that effects this is a sort of mechanized compression garment for the head. If that sounds a bit sinister, don’t worry — the pressure comes from air bladders and pads pressing against the scalp, not screws or plates; Hannon says that it isn’t uncomfortable and pressure is carefully monitored.

There’s also no risk of damage from lack of blood flow in those cells. “Compression therapy has been really well studied,” he said. “There are years of literature around how long you can apply these therapies without damaging the cells. There’s a certain amount of mechanical engineering involved in making it both comfortable and effective.”

The patient wears the cap during and after the whole chemo session. By restricting blood flow to the skin of the scalp only, it allows the drugs to flow unimpeded to wherever the tumor or cancer site is while saving the hair follicles from damage.

Tests have been done on animals, which saw hair retention of around 80 percent with no adverse effects — and while full human trials are something that will need some time and approval to set up, initial tests of the headset’s bloodflow-blocking effects on healthy patients showed that it works exactly as expected on people as well.

“We’re really excited about the efficacy of this therapy because it works with lots of hair types,” said Hannon. That’s a real consideration, since a tech that only worked with short hair, straight hair, or some other subset of hairstyles would exclude far too many people.

Luminate's app showing how long is left in therapy for the user.

Image Credits: Luminate / Wild Island Pictures

As for competition, although there are some new treatments that cool the scalp instead of compressing it, Hannon noted that the most money is spent by far on wigs. An average of a thousand dollars per patient who opts for a wig means there’s considerable leeway for a device in that neighborhood.

Although hair loss is considered a medical condition by many insurance companies and other methods of reimbursement, and wigs are often covered, it will take time and lots of evidence to get Luminate’s device approved for those processes. But the team is confident that at around $1,500, the device is within the means of many as long as other costs are being picked up by insurance. People do, after all, spend that much and more not just on wigs but on other hair retention products and methods. If there was a checkbox for “don’t lose hair” on the chemo forms with a $1,500 price tag, a whole lot of people would check it without a second thought.

Cofounders Bárbara Oliveira (left) and Aaron Hannon.

Image Credits: Luminate

Ultimately, however, Luminate wants to be able to offer the device also to those who can’t afford the cost out of pocket, so they are progressing towards FDA approval and a U.S. launch, with Europe and others to come.

 

So far Luminate, just graduating from Y Combinator’s Summer 2021 batch, has been lucky enough to operate on funds provided through grants from the Irish government, which are of course non-dilutive. While more capital will almost certainly be required come time for scaling and international launch, right now the team is focused on getting the device into the hands (and onto the heads) of its first set of patients.

News: TikTok owner ByteDance buys a top virtual reality hardware startup

TikTok parent company ByteDance seem to be looking to one-up Facebook anywhere it can. After taking over the mantle of most-downloaded social media app in the world with TikTok, ByteDance is coming for Facebook’s moonshot, buying up its own virtual reality headset maker called Pico. The deal first reported on by Bloomberg last week was

TikTok parent company ByteDance seem to be looking to one-up Facebook anywhere it can. After taking over the mantle of most-downloaded social media app in the world with TikTok, ByteDance is coming for Facebook’s moonshot, buying up its own virtual reality headset maker called Pico.

The deal first reported on by Bloomberg last week was confirmed by the company on Monday, though ByteDance didn’t disclose a price tag for the deal. Pico had raised some $62 million in venture funding from Chinese firms including a $37 million Series B in March. Like Oculus, they create both hardware and software for their VR devices. Unlike Oculus, they have a substantial presence in China. Pico may not hold the same name recognition as Oculus or HTC, but the company is a top VR hardware maker, selling to consumer audiences in China and enterprise customers in the Western world.

With Pico finding its home now at ByteDance, two of the world’s largest virtual reality brands now reside inside social media companies. Ironically, many of the company’s North American customers I’ve chatted with over the years seem to have at least partially opted for Pico headsets over Oculus hardware due to general weariness of Facebook’s data and ads-dependent business models which they fear Oculus will eventually become a larger part of.

It’s no secret that the virtual reality market has been slow out of the gate, but Facebook has blazed the trail for the technology dumping billions of dollars into an ecosystem that traditional investors have largely seemed uninterested in, in recent years.

Without knowing broad terms of the deal (I’m asking around), it’s hard to determine whether this is a moment of resurgence for VR or another sign of a contracting market. What seems most likely to me is that ByteDance is indeed interested in building out a consumer VR brand and is aiming to follow in Facebook’s footsteps closely while learning from their missteps and capitalizing on their contributions to the ecosystem. Whether the company solely focuses on the consumer markets in China or loosely pursue enterprise clients stateside as well is a big question ByteDance will have to address.

News: Apple buys classical music service, Primephonic

In a bid to expand its classical music offering, Apple today announced that it has Primephonic. The Amsterdam-based service, which launched in 2014, will bring a laser focus on a music genre that’s been sorely lacking in Apple Music’s generalized approach to streaming. The service will effectively be discontinued as a standalone offering, as it’s

In a bid to expand its classical music offering, Apple today announced that it has Primephonic. The Amsterdam-based service, which launched in 2014, will bring a laser focus on a music genre that’s been sorely lacking in Apple Music’s generalized approach to streaming.

The service will effectively be discontinued as a standalone offering, as it’s absorbed into the broader Apple Music platform. On September 7, Primephonic will shut down for good, while Apple readies the 2022 launch of a classical music app based on its own streaming service.

“Artists love the Primephonic service and what we’ve done in classical, and now we have the ability to join with Apple to deliver the absolute best experience to millions of listeners,” Primephonic co-founder and CEO Thomas Steffans said in a release issued by Apple. “We get to bring classical music to the mainstream and connect a new generation of musicians with the next generation of audience.”

According to an interview with Primephonic’s CTO published last year, the service has launched in 150 countries. It also appears to have an older demographic than more generalized streaming services.

“Most of our users are age 55 plus and are highly educated and relatively well off,” Henrique Boregio told Mixpanel in 2020. “We joke in the office that we don’t know whether you start liking classical music and then you become wealthy, or if it’s the other way around.”

Apple notes of the upcoming offering, “Apple Music Classical fans will get a dedicated experience with the best features of Primephonic, including better browsing and search capabilities by composer and by repertoire, detailed displays of classical music metadata, plus new features and benefits.”

While the new classical service is being built out, the company is offering an olive branch to existing Primephonic users in the form of six free months of Apple Music.

News: Instagram will require users to provide their birthday

Instagram will begin prodding users to share their birthday with the service, if they haven’t already done so. The company today announced it will now start popping up a notification that asks you to add your birthday to “personalize your experience.” But the prompt can only be dismissed a handful of times before becoming a

Instagram will begin prodding users to share their birthday with the service, if they haven’t already done so. The company today announced it will now start popping up a notification that asks you to add your birthday to “personalize your experience.” But the prompt can only be dismissed a handful of times before becoming a requirement. The move is a part of Instagram’s larger goal to create new safety features aimed at younger users, the company explains. This includes the teen privacy protections introduced earlier this year, as well as Instagram’s longer-term plan to launch a version of its service aimed at users under the age of 13.

This March, Instagram rolled out new features that made it more difficult for adults to contact teens through its app. Then in July, the company announced a larger series of changes to the default settings for new users under the age of 16. It will now default these users’ accounts to “private” and limit their accounts from being suggested elsewhere in the app. It also now restricts adults whose accounts are flagged as “potentially suspicious” from being able to reach out to other minors or interact with their posts.

Starting this week, Instagram says users who have not yet shared their birthday will begin to see pop-up notifications when they open the Instagram app.

These notifications will appear a handful of times, but at some point, users will no longer be able to dismiss the message by tapping “Not Now.” Instead, everyone will ultimately be required to share their birthday to continue to use Instagram.

The company will also now request you to share your birthday information when you come across a post with a warning screen. These screens, which hide content that’s flagged as sensitive or graphic, are not new. But Instagram has never before asked for a user’s birthday before displaying the hidden content.

Image Credits: Instagram

The birthday entry form itself is not complex. You simply scroll to choose the month, day and year of your birthday.

Of course, kids are commonly known to lie on these entry forms in order to bypass restrictions when signing up for apps. On this front, Instagram has developed A.I. technology to help it identify accounts were kids may have lied. For instance, it may be able to infer someone’s birthday based on comments left on “Happy Birthday” posts, where the user’s age may be referenced. The company also hints at further plans in this area, noting how it will later require users to verify their age when Facebook’s technology determines a mismatch between the age the user submitted and what appears to be their real age, based on other signals.

That technology is still in the “early stages,” says Instagram, but will involve a menu of options that will allow someone to verify their age.

The need to have users’ birthdays on hand isn’t only meant to power the recently launched teen protection features. Instagram is also working to bring its app to younger users — a decision that’s been met with a hostile response from legislators and consumer advocacy groups alike. In addition, age remains an important data point for ad targeting. Even as Instagram pulled back on the ability for marketers to target teens using interest data or their activity on other apps, it will continue to allow ad targeting based on age, gender and location across age groups.

The company is now one of several to have rolled out added protections for younger teen users, ahead of regulations that would force them to do so. Over the course of this year, TikTok, YouTube, and Google have also announced changes to how younger teens can use their services and how they can be targeted by ads, in anticipation of a regulatory crackdown. While each has crafted its own set of teen safety features independently, the changes have largely addressed making the default settings for new teenage users more restrictive.

Instagram says the new birthday pop-up notifications will begin to appear this week on the mobile app and will continue to roll out over the weeks ahead to reach more users.

News: Elon Musk’s Loop gets Autopilot — and an intruder

Less than two weeks after its official launch, The Boring Company’s Loop system in Las Vegas had its first security breach. On June 21, the morning of the final day of the International Beauty Show, an “unauthorized vehicle” joined the system’s fleet of Tesla taxis underground, emails between the Loop’s operations manager and a Clark

Less than two weeks after its official launch, The Boring Company’s Loop system in Las Vegas had its first security breach.

On June 21, the morning of the final day of the International Beauty Show, an “unauthorized vehicle” joined the system’s fleet of Tesla taxis underground, emails between the Loop’s operations manager and a Clark County official show. The emails were obtained by TechCrunch under public records laws.

The emails provide new insight into the operations of the Loop beyond the intrusion, including the system’s surprising reliance on a non-Tesla electric vehicle, plans to allow Tesla vehicles to use its Autopilot driver assistance system and confirmation within company ranks that the technology is not autonomous.

The Boring Company (TBC) called the Las Vegas Metro Police to handle the intrusion. “The driver of the unauthorized vehicle was cooperative and eventually escorted out of the system,” reads one email.

While there were no injuries or fatalities as a result of the security breach, the incident could be embarrassing for TBC, which has touted the security and safety of its $53 million system to the LVCC.

According to a management agreement between TBC and the LVCC, the system is supposed to have “physical barriers [to] guard against entry of accidental, rogue, or otherwise unauthorized vehicles into the tunnels.” These include security gates on roadways into the system, and dozens of concrete bollards surrounding its ground-level stations.

Neither TBC nor LVCC responded to inquiries about the incident. TechCrunch will update the article if either party responds to questions.

Autopilot gets a chance

The emails obtained by TechCrunch provide more than the exploits of a thrill-seeking trespasser.

The emails also detail plans by TBC to increase the number of Tesla vehicles in the LVCC Loop from 62 to 70, and to allow the use of Tesla Autopilot technologies. Until now, TBC has had to disable all driver assistance technologies on its vehicles, which are operated by human drivers.

The new scope of operations will require the use of seven active safety technologies — automatic emergency braking, front and side collision warnings, obstacle-aware acceleration, blind-spot monitoring, lane departure avoidance, emergency lane departure warning as well as two “full Autopilot” technologies: lane centering and traffic aware cruise control.

TBC’s justification for using Autopilot was set out in a letter to the Clark County Department of Building & Fire Prevention in June, obtained by TechCrunch along with the emails.

TBC president Steve Davis wrote that disabling the features “actively removes a layer of safety,” from a “proven, road-legal technology.” Davis quoted Tesla’s Safety Report for the first quarter of 2021 that claims Tesla drivers operating with Autopilot experienced crashes at less than a quarter the rate of Tesla drivers operating without Autopilot or active safety features, per mile driven. “As demonstrated… disabling these features in Tesla vehicles increases the likelihood of an accident,” wrote Davis.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), however, last week opened a formal safety probe into the technology, following a number of crashes.

Jerry Stueve, the director of the building and fire protection in Clark County, replied in an email: “We will take this under consideration, although it may help in our evaluation of this request if you can better define the term ‘autodrive’ and what it entails.”

“Agreed that the term ‘Autopilot’ is often unclear and can mean many different things depending on the vehicle and scenario,” replied Davis. (In this, he apparently disagrees with his boss, Elon Musk, who has called criticism of the Autopilot name as misleading “idiotic.”)

“Agreed that the term ‘Autopilot’ is often unclear and can mean many different things depending on the vehicle and scenario.” – Steve Davis, TBC

“These are not ‘autonomous’ nor ‘self-driving’ vehicles,” continued Davis. “The use of Tesla Autopilot and active safety features adds additional layers of safety while operating the vehicle, however the use of the features still requires a fully attentive driver who is ready to take over the wheel at any moment.”

Autopilot versus autonomous driving

This distinction is key, as it appears to contradict what TBC has promised LVCC since it first pitched the Loop system. In its land use application in May 2019, prior to signing the construction construct, TBC wrote: “Tesla Autonomous Electric Vehicles (AEVs) will carry passengers in express, underground tunnels to three underground stations.”

A planning document in July 2019 stated: “Utilizing autonomous electric vehicles in underground tunnels is a unique transportation solution that will minimize disruptions and conflicts to existing buildings and transportation systems.” It has used similar language in applications ever since, including for a proposed Vegas-wide Loop with dozens of stations.

In January, TechCrunch obtained a management agreement between LVCC and TBC that stated: “[The LVCC] procured the People Mover System, in part, because of the ability for People Mover System vehicles to operate autonomously … The Agreement recognizes the intent for the System to move from drivers in the vehicles to autonomous operations and provides for a fee renegotiation, no later than December 31 2021, incorporating this expected transition in operations.”

That deadline now seems almost certain to be missed. In June, Stueve told Davis: “As stated early in the project, the approval of autonomous operation will require extensive scrutiny, testing and validation. This process could take a significant amount of time.”

In reply, Davis wrote: “I want to make sure that it is clear that we are not asking for autonomous or self-driving features/operations.”

Humans in the Loop

The problem is two-fold. One is that Tesla’s Autopilot system may not be able to operate completely without a driver for some time to come. The second, arguably more serious, challenge is that the Loop is heavily reliant on its drivers to meet the safety requirements for underground transportation systems, laid out in national standards. Passengers of such systems, whether monorails, subways or using electric cars, must be safe in the event of power outages, fires, floods and other emergencies.

The LVCC Loop’s basis of design document, obtained by TechCrunch along with the emails, states: “[Our] trained drivers serve as the system’s key layer of safety. In the event of an emergency, actions taken by drivers to direct passengers in the proper and safe directions are the primary risk mitigating responses.”

Other documents obtained by TechCrunch from BFP confirm this. In the case of fire, the driver will “assist with deboarding passengers, and guide passengers on foot to the closest exit. Driver issues verbal instructions and may physically assist passengers.” As the driver leads passengers by walking ahead of them, they must “consistently look back to ensure every passenger is following closely behind.”

Drivers are responsible for assessing and responding to unruly or misbehaving passengers, and, in fact, for supervising the performance of the Autopilot itself, says TBC. “The [Loop] will have drivers, ensuring that there is always someone overseeing the use of active safety features who is ready to take over braking and steering as needed,” wrote Davis in June.

None of the dozens of documents or hundreds of emails obtained by TechCrunch, including those detailing the LVCC Loop’s future expansion, describe a path or timetable for TBC to move toward fully autonomous operation.

In response to a questionnaire on how the Loop will meet the American Society of Civil Engineers’ safety principles for autonomous systems, TBC responded: “Criteria specific to autonomous operation are not applicable to the [LVCC Loop], as the system will have drivers to operate vehicles.”

Only time will tell whether what TBC is telling Clark County, or what it is telling LVCC, is closer to how the Loop will operate in the future.

In the meantime, if the Loop vehicles are not yet driverless, can the LVCC at least expect them all to be the latest Tesla models? Perhaps not.

Another requirement for the Loop is that it complies with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). In an email to Clark County officials in July, a TBC executive noted that it was going to buy a non-Tesla ADA electric vehicle for the LVCC Loop.

Although the email did not specify the model, it has a low-range lead-acid battery with the same specification as the Tropos Motors Able electric utility vehicle. Neither Tropos nor TBC responded to inquiries.

News: Heimdal pulls CO2 and cement-making materials out of seawater using renewable energy

One of the consequences of rising CO2 levels in our atmosphere is that levels also rise proportionately in the ocean, harming wildlife and changing ecosystems. Heimdal is a startup working to pull that CO2 back out at scale using renewable energy and producing carbon-negative industrial materials, including limestone for making concrete, in the process, and

One of the consequences of rising CO2 levels in our atmosphere is that levels also rise proportionately in the ocean, harming wildlife and changing ecosystems. Heimdal is a startup working to pull that CO2 back out at scale using renewable energy and producing carbon-negative industrial materials, including limestone for making concrete, in the process, and it has attracted significant funding even at its very early stage.

If the concrete aspect seems like a bit of a non sequitur, consider two facts: concrete manufacturing is estimated to produce as much as eight percent all greenhouse gas emissions, and seawater is full of minerals used to make it. You probably wouldn’t make this connection unless you were in some related industry or discipline, but Heimdal founders Erik Millar and Marcus Lima did while they were working in their respective masters programs at Oxford. “We came out and did this straight away,” he said.

They both firmly believe that climate change is an existential threat to humanity, but were disappointed at the lack of permanent solutions to its many and various consequences across the globe. Carbon capture, Millar noted, is frequently a circular process, meaning it is captured only to be used and emitted again. Better than producing new carbons, sure, but why aren’t there more ways to permanently take them out of the ecosystem?

The two founders envisioned a new linear process that takes nothing but electricity and CO2-heavy seawater and produces useful materials that permanently sequester the gas. Of course, if it was as easy that, everyone would already be doing it.

Heimdal founders Marcus Lima (left) and Erik Millar sitting by a metal gate on stone steps..

Image Credits: Heimdal

“The carbon markets to make this economically viable have only just been formed,” said Millar. And the cost of energy has dropped through the floor as huge solar and wind installations have overturned decades-old power economies. With carbon credits (the market for which I will not be exploring, but suffice it to say it is an enabler) and cheap power come new business models, and Heimdal’s is one of them.

The Heimdal process, which has been demonstrated at lab scale (think terrariums instead of thousand-gallon tanks), is roughly as follows. First the seawater is alkalinized, shifting its pH up and allowing the isolation of some gaseous hydrogen, chlorine, and a hydroxide sorbent. This is mixed with a separate stream of seawater, causing the precipitation of calcium, magnesium, and sodium minerals and reducing the saturation of CO2 in the water — allowing it to absorb more from the atmosphere when it is returned to the sea. (I was shown an image of the small-scale prototype facility but, citing pending patents, Heimdal declined to provide the photo for publication.)

A diagram describing Heimdal's carbon extraction process

Image Credits: Heimdal

So from seawater and electricity, they produce hydrogen and chlorine gas, Calcium Carbonate, Sodium Carbonate, and Magnesium Carbonate, and in the process sequester a great deal of dissolved CO2.

For every kiloton of seawater, one ton of CO2 is isolated, and two tons of the carbonates, each of which has an industrial use. MgCO3 and Na2CO3 are used in, among other things, glass manufacturing, but it’s CaCO3, or limestone, that has the biggest potential impact.

As a major component of the cement-making process, limestone is always in great demand. But current methods for supplying it are huge sources of atmospheric carbon. All over the world industries are investing in carbon reduction strategies, and while purely financial offsets are common, moving forward the preferred alternative will likely be actually carbon-negative processes.

To further stack the deck in its favor, Heimdal is looking to work with desalination plants, which are common around the world where fresh water is scarce but seawater and energy are abundant, for example the coasts of California and Texas in the U.S., and many other areas globally, but especially where deserts meet the sea, like in the MENA region.

Desalination produces fresh water and proportionately saltier brine, which generally has to be treated, as to simply pour it back into the ocean can throw the local ecosystem out of balance. But what if there were, say, a mineral-collecting process between the plant and the sea? Heimdal gets the benefit of more minerals per ton of water, and the desalination plant has an effective way of handling its salty byproduct.

“Heimdal’s ability to use brine effluent to produce carbon-neutral cement solves two problems at once,” said Yishan Wong, former Reddit CEO, now CEO of Terraformation and individually an investor in Heimdal. “It creates a scalable source of carbon-neutral cement, and converts the brine effluent of desalination into a useful economic product. Being able to scale this together is game-changing on multiple levels.”

Terraformation is a big proponent of solar desalination, and Heimdal fits right into that equation; the two are working on an official partnership that should be announced shortly. Meanwhile a carbon-negative source for limestone is something cement makers will buy every gram of in their efforts to decarbonize.

Wong points out that the primary cost of Heimdal’s business, beyond the initial ones of buying tanks, pumps, and so on, is that of solar energy. That’s been trending downwards for years and with huge sums being invested regularly there’s no reason to think that the cost won’t continue to drop. And profit per ton of CO2 captured — already around 75 percent of over $500-$600 in revenue — could also grow with scale and efficiency.

Millar said that the price of their limestone is, when government incentives and subsidies are included, already at price parity with industry norms. But as energy costs drop and scales rise, the ratio will grow more attractive. It’s also nice that their product is indistinguishable from “natural” limestone. “We don’t require any retrofitting for the concrete providers — they just buy our synthetic calcium carbonate rather than buy it from mining companies,” he explained.

All in all it seems to make for a promising investment, and though Heimdal has not yet made its public debut (that would be forthcoming at Y Combinator’s Summer 2021 Demo Day) it has attracted a $6.4 million seed round. The participating investors are Liquid2 Ventures, Apollo Projects, Soma Capital, Marc Benioff, Broom Ventures, Metaplanet, Cathexis Ventures, and as mentioned above, Yishan Wong.

Heimdal has already signed LOIs with several large cement and glass manufacturers, and is planning its first pilot facility at a U.S. desalination plant. After providing test products to its partners on the scale of tens of tons, they plan to enter commercial production in 2023.

News: 5 takeaways from Toast’s S-1 filing

Startup founders, take a minute to track Toast’s revenue growth per category over time. Sometimes diversified offense is functional defense, it turns out.

Welcome back to IPO season.

No, we won’t call it hot liquidity summer, but after an August lull, the public-offering cycle is back upon us. Last week we saw filings from Warby Parker, Toast and Freshworks. We’ve dug into Warby already. This week, we’re tackling the details of the latter two debuts, starting with Toast.


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Why do we care about Toast? It’s a technology startup. It’s a unicorn. And it raised more than $900 million while private, per Crunchbase data. And the company is a leading constituent of the Boston startup scene.

Even more, the software-and-payments company combines subscription incomes, transaction fees, hardware revenues and lending earnings. Its business is complex — in a good way — and may help us better understand what happens to software companies when they build more financial capabilities into their original applications.

It’s an interesting company, one that was initially impacted heavily by the COVID-19 pandemic. Let’s go over the company’s overall financial performance, dig into how COVID affected the company’s business, consider how its revenue mix is changing over time, discuss how important fintech incomes are for the company and what it might be worth. This will be good fun. Let’s go!

Toast’s growth is accelerating

We’ll carve more deeply into how the company generates revenues shortly. For now, just keep in mind that the company has a number of revenue streams, each of which has a different gross-margin profile. So, we’re not only discussing high-margin software revenues in the following.

Here’s Toast’s topline performance for 2019, 2020, and the first half of both 2020 and 2021, taken from its S-1 filing:

Image Credits: Toast S-1

We can quickly see that the company grew from 2019 to 2020, albeit at a moderate clip. More recently, observing the two columns on the far right, we can see much more rapid growth from the company. In year-on-year comparative terms, Toast grew 24% in 2020 and 105% in the first half of 2021.

Thinking about how COVID-19 hit the food business, observing modest growth at the company in 2020 feels somewhat strong; despite huge market chop, Toast still grew nicely. And the company’s H1 2021 results indicate that the product work that Toast engaged in during the global pandemic has worked well, allowing it to accelerate growth by a factor of four in the last two quarters when compared to 2020’s overall pace of revenue expansion.

The above data also helps us better understand why Toast is going public now. After pushing through 2020, the company’s current portrait is one of accelerating growth leading to massive top-line accretion. Toast looks more than strong. And there’s no better time to go public than when you have numbers to brag about.

News: Eight Sleep raises $86M as its smart mattress and ‘sleep fitness’ technology approaches $500M valuation

The venture world is — quite literally — waking up to the potential of applying artificial intelligence to a wider variety of real-world, consumer-driven problems, and today comes the latest development on that front: Eight Sleep, which makes “smart” mattresses and mattress covers for regular mattresses that use machine learning and other artificial intelligence-based algorithms

The venture world is — quite literally — waking up to the potential of applying artificial intelligence to a wider variety of real-world, consumer-driven problems, and today comes the latest development on that front: Eight Sleep, which makes “smart” mattresses and mattress covers for regular mattresses that use machine learning and other artificial intelligence-based algorithms to improve your sleep both by changing temperature and monitoring other physical parameters to provide an overall picture of your health, has raised $86 million in a Series C round of funding.

Valor Equity Partners — the firm that has backed the likes of Tesla, SpaceX, GoPuff and many other big tech firms — is leading this latest investment, with SoftBank, Khosla Ventures, Founders Fund, and General Catalyst also participating, along with a lot of high-profile individuals who are also users for the product, athletes Alex Rodriguez, Kris Bryant and J.D. Martinez; celebs Kevin Hart; and tech figures Sophia Amorouso, Naval Ravikant and Kyle Vogt.

This Series C brings the total raised by Eight Sleep to $150 million, and the startup has confirmed to me that its valuation is now close to $500 million.

Matteo Franceschetti, Eight Sleep’s CEO, said in an interview that the funding will be used in a few ways.

First, the plan is to double down on building out more technology. Today, Eight’s Pod technology can detect your temperature, heartbeat and breathing and heat or cool a bed accordingly. Tomorrow, that could also include more physical products, additional ambient factors like lighting, and other diagnostics related to you, the sleeper.

Second, Eight Sleep wants to expand internationally, with plans to sell New York-based Eight Sleep products across Europe and the UK by the end of this year. After all, it’s not just people in the U.S. who could use a better night of sleep.

Franceschetti — who co-founded the company with Massimo Andreasi Bassi, Andrea Ballarini, and Alexandra Zatarain — told TechCrunch that he came to think about sleep and the need to improve it by way of having been an avid and active sports enthusiast.

“I was into the idea of sleep as recovery,” he said. “That is how we came up with the idea of sleep fitness.” Sleep he said, “is not just a waste of time.” Extrapolating that, it’s not just important for athletes, but everyone, to have better quality sleep.

“The vision for us is to compress your sleep and save your life,” he said. A good six hours, he added, “are better than eight hours that are not.” The company’s original name, Eight, was in reference to those fabled eight hours. Eight Sleep claims that when people use its products, they fall asleep 40% faster, get up to 20% more deep sleep, experience 30% fewer mid-night wake ups, and up to 30% fewer tosses and turns.

(But can it get me to stop worrying about Covid, the economy and societal collapse, whether my kids will be happy in life, and if we remembered to lock the door downstairs? Or maybe all of those just seem less serious when you are actually comfortable in bed…)

While Eight has definitely had a lot of traction with athletes — some 100 big names use it today — it’s hoping that the big boom in quantified self technology — hardware and software built to measure our blood pressure, heart rate, how much we sleep, how much we walk or do other activities, and much more — will mean that it can ultimately have a mass market appeal.

Indeed, we are living in a world with wearable tech that tracks our every movement is nothing new. And, as computing and communications technologies have become smaller and more portable, and infinitely more powerful, and cloud technology and advances in big data analytics has made the gathering of data and the ability to parse it more sophsiticated, we have only seen the possibilities for how that can be used to measure (and potentially “improve”) our lives increase.

Within that, sleep has been a large category of opportunity both for startups and tech companies. Earlier this year, Oura raised $100 million for its fitness and sleep tracking rings; others like Zeit have been exploring how to use wearable technology to address more acute sleep-related issues like sleep strokes.

Larger tech companies are not asleep at the wheel, either. Google recently updated its Nest Hub to track sleep; and even Apple has acquired a sleep tech company, Beddit (that deal was back in 2017, however, and it has been years since that hardware was updated: that could be one sign that Apple was more interested in using some of the technology in some of its other health-related efforts).

All this points to many more developments in a sleep tech market estimated to be worth some $30 billion. Within that Eight Sleep has been on a roll, with revenues for 2021 currently on track to triple versus 2020 on the back of two main products, a mattress that retails for $2,500 and a smart cover that sells for $1,500. (The company does not disclose user numbers but Franceschetti said that the figures are in the “several thousands,”)

2021 revenue is on track to more than triple vs. 2020. The funds will be used to accelerate the company’s innovation and technology roadmap and grow the size of the team.

“The sleep tech market is only in its infancy. The opportunity is limitless, as we spend up to a third of our lives asleep. Consumers are increasingly focused on sleep fitness as the understanding of how deeply important sleep is to overall health becomes more widely known,” said Antonio Gracias of Valor Equity in a statement.

Gracias founded Valor and is joining the board with this round, and as with other investors, he seems to have been won over in part by becoming a user: “The first night I slept on the Pod I knew we had to get involved,” he said. “We’ve seen this in our portfolio many times – Eight Sleep’s products and technology are disrupting the sleep market, and its rapid innovation is outpacing the competition as it builds a new sleep fitness focused category that delivers results.”

News: Ryan Reynolds is coming to Disrupt

Ryan Reynolds is America’s sweetheart, despite being both Canadian and somewhat irreverent. The actor, producer, screenwriter and entrepreneur has been nominated for a Golden Globe and Grammy for his work on the Deadpool franchise. But it wasn’t just his acting that made Deadpool a record-breaking, billion-dollar franchise. Reynolds is one of the world’s greatest when

Ryan Reynolds is America’s sweetheart, despite being both Canadian and somewhat irreverent. The actor, producer, screenwriter and entrepreneur has been nominated for a Golden Globe and Grammy for his work on the Deadpool franchise.

But it wasn’t just his acting that made Deadpool a record-breaking, billion-dollar franchise. Reynolds is one of the world’s greatest when it comes to fast-vertising, which he’s leveraged into his production company and marketing firm Maximum Effort, which ran some of the cheapest, and most impactful marketing for Deadpool from the start.

Maximum Effort is also responsible for some of the best ads of the past few years. It would be hard to forget his campaigns for Aviation Gin (remember how quickly he turned a terrible Peloton ad into an hilarious Aviation Gin ad) or the devilishly funny Match.com spot.

His creative chops are impressive, but come with some clever entrepreneurial grit. Reynolds is an owner of Aviation Gin, which sold for more than $600 million in 2020, and an owner of Mint Mobile, a fast-growing MVNO. Reynolds has brought his marketing expertise to Mint Mobile, too, without becoming the joke.

Obviously, we’re thrilled to have him join us at Disrupt (Sept 21-23) for a fireside chat to talk about how he leverages both his creativity and his platform in the world of entrepreneurialism, and pick his brain on how startups can use fast-vertising to have a maximum impact on a minimum budget.

We’ll also get a feel for his investment appetite in the world of startups.

Reynolds joins a whole host of amazing speakers at Disrupt, including Canva CEO Melanie Perkins, investor Chamath Palihapitiya, Calendly CEO Tope Awotona, and Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield. Get your ticket now for under $100 for a limited time!

News: A majority of tech workers support antitrust legislation enforcement

The survey asked professionals: Do you believe antitrust legislation should be used to break up Big Tech companies like Amazon and Google?

Matt Sunbulli
Contributor

Matt Sunbulli is a co-founder and CEO of Fishbowl, a workplace social network bringing together professionals during the new era of remote work.

With the arrival of U.S. Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan, breaking up Big Tech has reemerged as a major policy discussion in Washington. The issue seems to be bipartisan, with Republicans and Democrats alike in favor of stemming monopolistic behavior in the tech industry. Of course, the situation on the ground is more nuanced.

One month after the House Judiciary Committee voted to advance five bipartisan bills that would force Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook and Google to split up or walk away from core businesses, Republican committee members introduced new legislation to give Americans legal recourse against online censorship by Big Tech companies. The more conservative-driven policy measures also propose greater transparency into content moderation practices by Big Tech.

This sparring between lawmakers on how to regulate Big Tech is not expected to end anytime soon. But as the U.S. ushers in a new era of digital transformation accelerated by the pandemic, Congress stands firmly united in the belief that Big Tech’s power must be checked to preserve the free market.

As it stands now, small competitors and consumers alike have little choice but to be tethered to Big Tech to participate in today’s modern economic engine. And coming out of the pandemic, the five biggest tech giants are growing at breathtaking speed unseen before in the history of capitalism.

Big Tech companies have come out strongly against regulation that would break up their business operations, suggesting reform would result in the loss of research and development, impractical market fragmentation and higher service costs to consumers.

A survey commissioned by a tech industry trade group funded by Big Tech companies such as Apple, Facebook and Amazon suggests that Americans view tech regulation as a low priority for Congress. Among those listed as top priority for Americans were the economy, public health, climate change and infrastructure. The survey also revealed that Americans are more likely to oppose regulation if it were to affect offerings like free shipping on Amazon Prime products.

Perhaps this poll and the bipartisan sentiment among elected leaders signals that after COVID-19, society has become aware of its dependency on tech giants, for better or worse. For the last 18 months, American workers have adapted to remote work. They utilize programs run by Big Tech companies to communicate with other employees, to run companies, and to buy groceries and essentials. It is unlikely this dynamic will change, as many companies have announced their transition to a fully remote or hybrid work model.

This topic has raised interest among professionals, more specifically those who work in the tech industry, startups and small businesses. We at Fishbowl thought we’d ask professionals — many of whom work in the tech industry — about breaking up tech giants. Fishbowl is a social network for professionals, so conducting surveys on this and other workplace topics is a natural fit.

The survey ran from July 26-30, 2021, to determine how employees in the field feel about antitrust laws. The survey asked professionals: Do you believe antitrust legislation should be used to break up Big Tech companies like Amazon and Google?

There were 11,579 verified professionals on the Fishbowl app who participated in the survey, and they were given the option to answer either yes or no. The survey was broken down into state and professional industries such as law, consulting, finance, tech, marketing, accounting, human resources, teachers and others.

Here’s what the survey revealed:

Image Credits: Fishbowl

Out of 11,579 professionals, the majority — 6,920 (59.76%) — responded yes to the survey question.

Based on responses, we found that law professionals were the highest group responding in the affirmative to the survey, with 66.67%. Consulting professionals followed with 61.97%, while finance (60.64%) marginally beat out tech (60.03%). Conversely, teachers had the lowest percentage with 53.49%. Human resources (55.65%), accounting (58.51%) and other professional industries (58.83%) trailed behind.

The survey’s data was collected from professionals in 25 U.S. states. The highest percentage responding “yes” was Colorado with 76.83%. In second place was Washington with 73.17%, and Michigan rounded out the top three with 69.70%. Missouri (51.35%) had the lowest percentage of employees responding “yes” to splitting up Big Tech. Following closely behind were Indiana (52.59%) and Massachusetts (52.83%). Overall, the majority of the states involved in the survey agreed that they believed antitrust legislation should indeed break up Big Tech companies.

Tech had the fourth-highest percentage of professionals agreeing that Big Tech companies should be broken up. Some benefits from breaking up Big Tech companies are more opportunities for small businesses — for a tech professional or entrepreneur, this could open up opportunities to launch new products, programs and services. It could also add more jobs for highly skilled professionals. Second, it can reduce data privacy and national security concerns. But some cons of breaking up Big Tech companies include the loss of research and development — large companies provide major funding for artificial intelligence, autonomous vehicles, wearables, robots and more. Ultimately, breaking up Big Tech companies can also increase service costs for professionals and the overall public.

As policymakers continue to negotiate on how to break up Big Tech, the White House is also making moves. President Joe Biden recently named Khan, a professor at Columbia Law School, as chair of the FTC. A staunch critic of Big Tech, Khan’s main priority is to protect the public from corporate abuse and ensure merger guidelines reflect economic realities and empirical learning and enforcement. Simply put, she reviews mergers with skepticism.

And in July, Biden announced his intention to nominate Jonathan Kanter for chief of the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division. Kanter is an antitrust lawyer with over 20 years of experience who has been a leading advocate and expert in the effort to promote strong and meaningful antitrust enforcement and competition policy.

With these additional members, it is expected that there will be an aggressive approach to enforcing antitrust laws across industries, leaving it to Congress to ensure that moving forward things are different.

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