2021 – Page 85 – Digital Pulse

News: With $55M third fund, Scout Ventures is funding veterans ready to tackle the hardest technical challenges

September 9, 2021
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When it comes to people pushing the frontiers of science, few institutions can match the talent of the Department of Defense, the intelligence agencies, and the U.S. national laboratory system. With ample budgets and flexible oversight under that aura of national security, ambitious scientists and engineers are working on everything from quantum computing to next-generation

That wealth of talent is often left behind in the frenetic product development and fundraising world of Silicon Valley. Langley, Arlington, and Los Alamos are a far cry from Palo Alto or New York City. Even more challenging is the career transition: the government is, well, the government, and the private sector is, well, the private sector. Moving from one to the next can be quite jarring.

Scout Ventures wants to act as the bridge between the startup world and that vast science and technology workforce, with a particular focus on veterans of the military, intelligence agencies, and national labs. Founded about a decade ago in 2012 by Brad Harrison, the firm raised two funds and invested in several dozen companies at the earliest stages, including identity verification platform ID.me (now valued at $1.5 billion), men’s subscription service Bespoke Post, and youth sports management platform LeagueApps. It also incubated companies like health services company Unite Us.

The firm announced this morning that is has raised a $55 million third fund, which will continue its focus on backing veterans while centering its investment thesis on frontier tech in areas like machine learning, robotics, drones, physical security, quantum computing and space (that said, the firm does not invest in weapons).

Harrison, who has been a long-time angel investor prior to forming Scout Ventures and is a West Point grad and army airborne ranger, said that when he started to look at the track records of the most successful founders he backed, many of them happened to be veterans. So he started doubling down on that thesis, eventually hiring Wes Blackwell who graduated from the Naval Academy and Sam Ellis in Brooklyn from West Point as his co-partners.

Scout Ventures partners Wes Blackwell, Brad Harrison and Sam Ellis. Image Credits: Scout Ventures.

Scout is a traditional seed stage fund, and Harrison said that the firm targets roughy a deal per month, with a typical check between $500,000 and $1 million targeting 10% ownership. The firm also reserves $2-3 million in capital for follow-on investments.

One of the firm’s unique differentiators is taking advantage of ample non-dilutive funding from government programs and locking that in for its portfolio companies. Harrison said that the firm typically can secure three dollars of such funds for each dollar it invests, allowing its portfolio companies to grow faster for longer and with less dilution. “We’re seeing the most active money flowing through Air Force number one, Army number two, and then you are seeing some money flowing through the Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation,” Harrison said.

In terms of companies, the target is so-called dual-use startups that have applications that can be used by both the public and private sectors. These are “core, disruptive technologies that we believe are going to bring a shift change, so they inherently have applications to the DoD and the commercial sector,” he said. “They are hard to find, and that is why we talk to so many companies.”

As examples of startups within this thesis, Harrison pointed to four companies in quantum computing and others in electronic warfare, where applications can be as important to the NSA as to telecoms like Verizon and T-Mobile. He also pointed out companies like De-Ice, which is using electromagnetic technology to make deicing of planes and other equipment faster and safer. Such technology could improve operations for the Air Force as well as civilian carriers.

Ultimately, Scout hopes that its unique network and focus will allow it to access these “hard-to-reach” founders who are “really distrustful of most VCs,” Harrison said. “That makes us competitive.”

Among the LPs of the new fund are the New Mexico State Investment Council (home of the Los Alamos National Laboratory), former Citigroup chairman Richard Parsons, Auctus Investment Group, restaurateur and brewer David Kassling, and Michael Loeb.

News: Shared micromobility can help build communities residents deserve

September 9, 2021
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One of the most surprising yet impactful roles that shared micromobility has filled recently is that of a supporter of racial justice initiatives and events.

Samantha Herr
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Samantha Herr is the executive director of the North American Bikeshare & Scootershare Association and has been working in the shared micromobility space since 2012.

Destinie Hammond
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Destinie Hammond is the communications manager for the North American Bikeshare & Scootershare Association and previously served as a community engagement manager for JUMP by Uber.

Twenty years ago, many of us had never heard of shared micromobility, let alone contemplated it as a tool for developing healthier, more equitable communities.

But as of 2020, more than 200 cities in North America have at least one shared micromobility system in operation with a combined 169,000 vehicles. As the industry has grown, so too has the realization that something as seemingly small as the way people get from place to place can significantly impact their quality of life.

One of the most surprising yet impactful roles that shared micromobility has filled recently is that of a supporter of racial justice initiatives and events.

According to the North American Bikeshare & Scootershare Association’s 2020 Shared Micromobility State of the Industry Report, agencies and operators provided free or discounted trips for demonstrators to get to events, while many systems donated or fundraised for racial justice nonprofits.

Importantly, the increased attention on diversity, equity and inclusion further brought to light our shortcomings and led to organizational change throughout the industry. For example, 71% of shared micromobility systems stated that diversity was part of every hiring decision in 2020, and 69% reported that women and people of color are represented at all levels of the organization.

Of course, we collectively recognize that we are not where we want or should be. However, these metrics demonstrate intention and mark progress toward improved equity, diversity and inclusion in shared micromobility.

We in the shared micromobility industry are continually adapting our policies and practices as we work to fit the needs of the communities we serve, whether providing discount programs for lower-income residents or making adaptive vehicles available for persons of different abilities, we understand that mobility is a right for everyone.

Even more than that, agencies and operators recognize the importance of providing active modes of mobility for people and communities to build healthier habits, which ultimately can have positive economic, social and environmental impacts.

In 2020, North Americans gained an additional 12.2 million hours of physical activity and offset approximately 29 million pounds of carbon dioxide by utilizing shared micromobility.

Additionally, researchers at Colorado State University calculated that in an average year, bike-share users saved the U.S. healthcare system more than $36 million, while another study concluded that scooter users accounted for $921 of unplanned spending per scooter at food and beverage establishments.

Shared micromobility must be considered a part of public transportation networks to maximize the community benefits and build truly functional cities. Multimodal commuting is becoming more commonplace and sought for by urban travelers. In 2020, 50% of riders reported using shared micromobility to connect to transit, and 16% of the 83.4 million shared micromobility trips taken in the same year were for connecting to public transit. Increased use and requirement of the General Bikeshare Feed Specification (GBFS), an open data standard for shared micromobility, clarifies the growing importance of an integrated trip planning user experience.

Shared micromobility is a powerful tool, when fully taken advantage of, that helps transform our cities for the better. As cities, states, provinces and nations face equity, social and climate challenges, now is a critical time to engage shared micromobility as a critical component of change.

News: iRobot’s poop problem

September 9, 2021
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I’m all for encouraging more young people to enter STEM, to explore engineering and perhaps ultimately pursue a career in robotics. It’s a field whose importance will only grow with time, as more of the world looks toward automated solutions. And it probably goes without saying that one of the most effective ways to bolster

That said, there’s really no point in sugarcoating most of this. If you think the day to day realities of becoming a roboticist involve standing onstage while one of your employees does Daft Punk cosplay to Skrillex, I’ve got some unfortunate news for you. A heck of a lot more out there are currently making 3D models of dog poop. Remember, there are no number twos in binary code.

You see, iRobot had a poop problem. There are dozens if not hundreds of YouTube videos documenting the phenomenon, as a Roomba approaches a pile of fresh dog droppings, hovers over it a bit, and then makes a snail-like trail of fecal smears across the hardwood or carpet. It’s honestly probably among the most widespread and unintentionally hilarious (depending on your point of view) consequences of mainstreaming robots.

People’s imaginations tend to project the worst-case scenarios with robots. Any time we post a Boston Dynamics video, I get dozens of responses from people recalling that one Black Mirror episode they saw that one time — it has temporarily supplanted Skynet jokes. But the truth of the matter is that a vast majority of robots have no intention of killing you. But that doesn’t mean they’re not going to unintentionally smear dog crap up and down your linoleum.

Image Credits: Bryce Durbin/TechCrunch

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In preparation for the latest Roomba, however, the company spent a lot of time with pet poop. Like a lot a lot of time. Arguably an unhealthy amount of time studying the stuff, modeling it, taking pictures.

“The glorious career of roboticists may not have been fully realized when we were sending people home and creating hundreds of models of poo,” CEO Colin Angle recently told me. “Sending people around to photograph and create synthetic models of poo. I don’t know how many tens of thousands of images of all different shapes and sizes of synthetic images were required, but this is not demo code, clearly.”

It was among the weirder homework assignments for the Bedford, Massachusetts-based 1staff. One employee apparently got so into the work she got extremely excited when her dog had an accident on the floor. At least she got some good photos out of the deal.

When real-world animal droppings were harder to come by, the company generated fake poop in order to approximate a wide range of sizes, shapes and consistencies.

“You imagine it, we probably attempted it to grow a large enough database with both real images, images of fake poo and synthetic images that were manufactured of poop to serve as a training model for our robot,” Angle adds.

Image Credits: (Photo by Kimberly White/Getty Images for TechCrunch)

All of this leads us to Pet Owner Official Promise (P.O.O.P.), which guarantees a free return for the new j7+ if the Roomba runs into (and over) a poop problem. For the time being, however, iRobot is strictly adhering to the old adage about letting yellow mellow. “We can’t do pee,” says Angle. “It has to have some 3D aspects to it.”

The poop problem was far from iRobot’s only struggle over the past year, of course. While the pandemic has ultimately served to accelerate much of the industry, the early days of global shutdowns came with their share of issues for the Roomba maker. In the early days, the company laid off 70 employees and indefinitely halted production of its long-awaited robotic mower.

Says Angle:

The past year and a half has been an extraordinary rollercoaster. At the beginning of the pandemic, it seemed like the world was ending and 60% of our sales was coming from retail stores, which were being closed. It was a really terrifying time as we tried to figure out how to navigate. Then what happened was people were working from home. When you’re spending a lot of time at home, things get dirtier faster. If you’re used to cleaning while your kids are at school, suddenly your kids are not at school anymore. Families were tearing their hair out just to survive and keep things under control. So work from home created a significant acceleration of interest in assistive technologies.

Image Credits: Tortoise/Albertsons

Meanwhile, robotic delivery service Tortoise is about to get a pretty big boost as last-mile logistics company AxleHire announced plans to employee 100 of its robots across the U.S. AxleHire operates in the package delivery space, including perishables from meal kit companies like Blue Apron and HelloFresh. No word on precisely which markets we’re talking about here, but Rebecca notes that the company currently operates in Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, New York, Phoenix, Seattle and Portland, Oregon.

And then, of course, there’s the matter of the Robotic Unicorn. I find that nine times out of 10, tech companies’ claims of being “first” are dubious, at best, but XPeng Robotics’ note that this is “its first ridable robot unicorn” seems to check out. It does, however, already have some competition in the broader rideable robotic unicorn category. Forgot the overall rideable unicorn category. You can’t swing a narwhal around without hitting a rideable unicorn these days.

Honestly, it’s tough to say whether this is a stunt, given the extremely CG nature of the video here. XPeng is apparently using the big toy robot as a way to test the waters for a broader entry into the robotics category.

News: LinkedIn doubles down on development with new learning hub, free courses and new search fields for hybrid working

September 9, 2021
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The wider world of employment has seen a huge shift in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. Looking for a job, finding someone to fill a role, or simply developing professionally are just not the same as they used to be for many of us. So it’s no surprise to see companies that have built business models catering to these areas changing, too: today, LinkedIn, Microsoft’s social networking platform for the working world, announced a wave of news aimed at moving ahead with the times.

It’s launching a new Learning Hub aimed at organizations to provide professional development and other training to employees. And it’s making 40 courses free of charge to LinkedIn members specifically to address some of the changes afoot, such as how to adapt to hybrid working, how to be a better manager in the new normal, and how to return to the office, and run facilities when they are spread beyond a building to also include people’s private homes. Lastly, it’s also starting to tweak details that people can use to list and search for job openings to account for these kinds of working conditions, and more.

The Learning Hub was first previewed back in April of this year and has been running in a limited beta. Today, as part of a bigger event hosted by Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and LinkedIn CEO Ryan Roslansky where they are discussing new trends in the world of work, the Hub is being rolled out more widely.

For some context, LinkedIn has been long on education for years, with acquisitions like the remote learning platform Lynda back in 2015 bolstering its own education strategy and position as a go-to platform for professional development; partnerships to bring in significant amounts of third-party content (for example, when it added some 13,000 courses via third parties in 2018); and efforts to tie together the concept of skills development with professional profiles, running research and building interactive tools for its users.

The free courses that are being launched today (and will remain free until October 9) are a timely set of videos to help companies as some of them start to make (or think about) the transitions from remote to in-office environments, but the bigger product launch, The Learning Hub, is not exactly an altruistic endeavor in that longer journey. It is being sold as a premium service for businesses — existing LinkedIn Learning Pro users will be able to use it for free until July 2022, potentially longer, it said. In addition to being a salient business, it is also connected to the company’s bigger efforts to bring in more businesses-focused services, and more engagement from HR departments, to bolster one of its other main revenue drivers, recruitment.

As a learning experience platform (often described as LXPs), LinkedIn’s relaunch of its own learning hub will bring it into closer competition with the likes of 360Learning, Coursera for Business, Workday, Cornerstone, and the many other platforms used by organizations to manage their own in-house and third-party professional training content. In addition to this, LinkedIn says it will be using its own data on employment trends, plus AI, to personalize content for organizations and users. The fact, however, that it’s also a platform whee those HR teams can also list jobs and source candidates makes it a significantly stickier experience, and one that might feel more cohesive at a time when so much else might be more fragmented.

The new fields that LinkedIn is bringing into its recruitment service are also notable in that regard. It will now let recruiters indicate whether a job is remote, hybrid or onsite; and soon those looking for jobs will also be able to indicate which of these it’s looking for in a new role. Companies will also be able to start indicating more details on their own company status as it relates to things like vaccination requirements, and to let the world (employees, partners, customers, interested others) know whether your physical offices are open for business or not.

These new fields may sound a little trivial, or at least very specifically related to concerns and circumstances that we live with today, but I think they are more notable than this. They speak to what LinkedIn sees (and what many of us feel) are strong priorities in how we view jobs today. That opens the door to how and if LinkedIn might consider other kinds of details in company and personal profiles, as well as details that could be used in recruitment. This is something the company has also been working on for a little while already: in June it started to give users the option of adding pronouns to their profiles. All of this is pretty important, considering that there are a lot of smaller companies and calls for someone to knock LinkedIn off its pedestal. As LinkedIn dabbles with new formats and sunsets others, it’s all signals that it’s attempting to be more adaptable to counteract that.

News: Wisetack closes on $45M to bring ‘buy now, pay later’ to in-person services

September 9, 2021
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Buy now, pay later is growing globally — with various companies expanding to, and in, different parts of the world, such as Africa, Latin America and Asia. Here in the U.S., Affirm and Klarna are big players, and Square recently announced plans to acquire Afterpay, which also is eyeing growth here. Traditional buy now, pay

Buy now, pay later is growing globally — with various companies expanding to, and in, different parts of the world, such as Africa, Latin America and Asia.

Here in the U.S., Affirm and Klarna are big players, and Square recently announced plans to acquire Afterpay, which also is eyeing growth here.

Traditional buy now, pay later (BNPL) gives consumers the opportunity to pay in installments at the point of sale, either online or, increasingly, in person as well. But even domestically, the ability to pay in installments is branching out beyond e-commerce and retail.

Wisetack is a startup that brings buy now, pay later to in-person services. And it just raised $45 million in a Series B funding round led by Insight Partners.

Existing backers Greylock Partners and Bain Capital Ventures also participated in the financing, bringing the company’s total raised to $64 million since its 2018 inception. The latest round comes just six and a half months after Wisetack announced it had raised $19 million across its seed and Series A rounds, which were both led by Greylock.

Wisetack raises $19M as its buy-now-pay-later service for IRL services scales

In a nutshell, the San Francisco-based startup helps in-person businesses offer financing to consumers. Wisetack is not the first company to do this, but what makes it different, according to co-founder and CEO Bobby Tzekin, is that it actually embeds financing options into software platforms that businesses have already built out and are using in their operations.

Its focus is on service-based businesses, such as HVAC contractors or plumbers. For example, if your AC unit goes out and costs thousands to replace, you could have the option of paying for it in installments if the contractor has Wistack’s API embedded into its site.

So far, Wisetack has been able to grow rapidly by partnering with vertical SaaS businesses such as Housecall Pro and Jobber. Those companies offer consumer financing to their respective customer base, which include tens of thousands of home services professionals.

Wisetack clearly seems to be filling a gap. So far in 2021, it has grown its revenue and loan volume “over 10x” compared to 2020. And it works with thousands of merchants, according to Tzekin.

The executive left his job in 2018 to start Wisetack because he felt there was “clearly a massive need,” teaming up with Liz O’Donnell and Mykola Klymenko (who was co-founder and CTO at VaroMoney, the holding company of Varo Bank).

With its new capital, Wisetack plans to expand into other service-based verticals, such as auto repair, elective medical, dental and veterinary and legal services. It also plans to double its team of 40 over the next year.

To Tzekin, the opportunity is huge.

Most service businesses are SMBs, which have historically been harder to serve than large e-commerce players. Americans spend more than $400 billion a year on residential renovations and repairs alone, according to this Harvard report. And the United States automotive repair and maintenance services market is projected to reach $250 billion by 2026, up from $201 billion in 2020.

And while the average BNPL online transaction is a few hundred dollars, purchases made to service-based businesses average closer to $4,000 to $5,000, according to Tzekin.

The CEO believes that buy now, pay later can be more attractive than paying for such purchases with a credit card, for a few reasons. For one, consumers have the option of paying in installments for anywhere from three months to 60 months.

“This often means it’s more affordable to buy the better piece of equipment since they can spread the costs over time,” he said.

Also, just how much they will be paying over time will be made clear at the time of purchase, whereas when paying with a credit card, the amount could vary depending on interest rates and how long it takes to pay the money back, Tzekin added.

The company makes money by charging a processing fee to merchants, as well as charging interest to consumers — which can be anywhere from 0% to 29%, “depending on how good their credit is,” Tzekin said.

“But credit cards charge compounded interest, whereas we charge simple interest,” he added.

Insight Partners Principal Rebecca Liu-Doyle describes Wisetack as “a standout in the industry.”

“Wisetack has a differentiated platform for embedded BNPL that is purpose-built to address use cases that are both more complex and less well-served than e-commerce,” she wrote via email.

Note: The article headline was updated post-publication to reflect the accurate funding amount

As BNPL startups raise, a look at Klarna, Affirm and Afterpay earnings

News: Dispo launches a test to gauge user interest in selling their photos as NFTs

September 9, 2021
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The photo-sharing app that emulates disposable cameras, Dispo started rolling out a test yesterday that will record user interest in selling photos as NFTs. Some users will now see a sell button on their photos, and when they tap it, they can sign up to be notified when the ability to sell Dispo photos launches.

CEO and co-founder Daniel Liss told TechCrunch that Dispo is still deciding how it will incorporate NFT sales into the app, which is why the platform is piloting a test with its users. Dispo doesn’t know yet what blockchain it would use, if it would partner with an NFT marketplace, or what cut of sales Dispo would take.

“I think it’s safe to say from the test that there will be an experience native to the Dispo app,” Liss said. “There are a number of ways it could look — there could be a native experience within Dispo that then connects through an API to another platform, and in turn, they’re our partner, but to the community, it would look native to the Dispo app.”

Image Credits: Dispo

This marks a new direction for the social media app, which seeks to redefine the photo-sharing experience by only letting users see the photos they took at 9 AM the next morning. From Dispo’s perspective, this gimmick helps users share more authentically, since you take one photo and then you’re done — the app isn’t conducive to taking dozens of selfies and posting the “best” image of yourself. But though it only launched in December 2019, Dispo has already faced both buzzy hype and devastating controversy.

Until about a year ago, the app was called David’s Disposables, named after co-founder and YouTuber David Dobrik. The app was downloaded over a million times in the first week after its release and hit number one on the App Store charts. In March 2021, the app dropped its waitlist and relaunched with social network features, but just weeks later, Insider reported sexual assault allegations against a member of Vlog Squad, Dobrik’s YouTube prank ensemble. In response, Spark Capital severed ties with the company, leading to Dobrik’s departure. Other investors like Seven Seven Six and Unshackled Ventures, who contributed to the company’s $20 million Series A round, announced that they would donate any profits from their investments in Dispo to organizations working with survivors of sexual assault.

Liss told TechCrunch in June, when the company confirmed its Series A, that Dobrik’s role with the company was as a marketing partner — Liss has been CEO since the beginning. In light of the controversy, Liss said the app focused on improving the product itself and took a step back from promotion.

According to data from the app analytics firm SensorTower, Dispo has reached an estimated 4.7 million global installs to date since launch. Though the app saw the most downloads in January 2020, when it was installed over 1 million times, the app’s next best month came in March 2021, when it removed its waitlist — that month, about 616,000 people downloaded Dispo. Between March and the end of August, the app was downloaded around 1.4 million times, which is up 118% year over year compared to the same time frame in 2020 — but it should be expected that this year’s numbers would be higher, since last year, the app’s membership was exclusive.

Image Credits: Dispo

Now, with the announcement that Dispo is pursuing NFTs, Liss hopes that his company won’t just change how people post photos, but what the relationship will be between platforms and the content that users create.

“Why NFTs? The most powerful memories of our lives have value. And they have economic value, because we created them, and the past of social media fails to recognize that,” Liss told TechCrunch. “As a result, the only way that a creator with a big following is compensated is by selling directly to a brand, as opposed to profiting from the content itself.”

Adding NFT sales to the app offers Dispo a way to profit from a cut of user sales, but it stands to question how adding NFT sales could impact the community-focused feel of Dispo.

“I think there is tremendous curiosity and interest,” Liss said. “But these problems and questions are why we need more data.”

News: Quicken, one of the ‘first fintechs,’ is being sold again

September 9, 2021
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Five and a half years after being acquired by a private equity firm, personal finance software company Quicken is announcing that it is being acquired by another private equity firm. In April 2016, an affiliate of H.I.G. Capital acquired Quicken from Intuit Inc. for an undisclosed amount. Today, Menlo Park, California-based Quicken is announcing that

Five and a half years after being acquired by a private equity firm, personal finance software company Quicken is announcing that it is being acquired by another private equity firm.

In April 2016, an affiliate of H.I.G. Capital acquired Quicken from Intuit Inc. for an undisclosed amount. Today, Menlo Park, California-based Quicken is announcing that Aquiline Capital Partners will be acquiring a majority stake in the company — also for an undisclosed amount.

In an exclusive interview with TechCrunch, Quicken CEO Eric Dunn did share some other details about Quicken’s performance since that last transaction, as well as its plans for the future. Dunn has a history with the company, so can speak pretty comfortably about where it’s been, and where it’s going.

While he took over as CEO of Quicken in 2016, he first joined previous parent company Intuit as employee No. 4 in 1986 when Quicken was its only software product. During his tenure at Intuit, he served as the CFO through the 1993 IPO and merger with ChipSoft (now known as TurboTax). While he was CFO, Dunn was also a software developer who worked on almost all of the early versions of Quicken, and was the first VP/general manager of the business.

Since the H.I.G. buy, it appears that Quicken has grown quite a lot. It currently has 2 million active users, which Dunn said is “significantly higher” than what it had at the time of its spinoff from Intuit. The executive declined to reveal hard revenue figures but he did share that the company is profitable and has seen a 50% increase in annual sales volume over the five-year period, (or double-digit growth if you annualize it).

“We’re strongly profitable and have been consistently profitable since the time of the spinoff. We’re a very successful company, revenue-wise — far above what it ever was in the Intuit years,” he told TechCrunch. “More importantly, we’re a successful business that has succeeded in modernizing and improving quality for our customers.”

For example, according to Dunn, Quicken has seen an NPS gain of 25 points over a five-year period. (NPS stands for Net Promoter Score, a customer loyalty and satisfaction measurement).

Private equity, a SPAC and an IPO walk into a bar

H.I.G., Dunn added, invested alongside the Quicken management team to improve product quality, bring Quicken to a cloud platform and launch a digitally native product in its personal finance app, Simplifi.

Image Credits: Quicken

“H.I.G. is not a growth-oriented expansion firm. They felt their work was done, and they did what they had set out to do,” Dunn said, “which is to carve out an asset with a lot of potential from a parent company which had neglected it.”

Justin Reyna, managing director at H.I.G. Capital, said the results of its investment in Quicken have been “outstanding.”

In recent years, the number of financial technology companies (and potential competitors to Quicken) has exploded. But, Dunn maintains, Quicken in fact was “the first fintech.”

“It was one of the founding fintechs, the only software product at Intuit when it launched in 1983,” he told TechCrunch. “It started with the idea of automating personal finances to customers as a software tool living only on desktops.”

Moving forward, Dunn said Quicken plans to explore partnering with fintechs as it continues to evolve its model. It’s not ruling out acquisitions, but it’s also not an area of emphasis.

No layoffs are planned with the new ownership. In fact, Dunn expects the company will only continue to hire and add to its 150-person staff (not including 250 contracted “customer care agents).

He said the company will simply focus on continuing the modernization of its Quicken product and bringing more functionality to its web and mobile offerings.

“We’ll also continue to add to our Simplifi product, which is only about 18 months into its life,” he said. “It has a great feature set but there’s lots more we need to do.”

It will also focus on integrated financial services, such as allowing for money movement from account to account in the product as opposed to going to an external site.

Aquiline is a New York- and London-based private investment firm with $6.9 billion in assets under management. Its president, Vincenzo La Ruffa, says he is a Quicken user himself.

“Quicken is trusted by millions of customers, who rely on it to lead healthy financial lives,” he said in a written statement. “As a longtime Quicken user myself, I’ve seen firsthand the work Eric and the team at Quicken have put into building a compelling suite of products and services. I am confident in the growth trajectory ahead as we work with the company to expand the range of innovative solutions it offers in the personal financial management space.”

There has been a flurry of interest in fintechs focused on personal finance as of late. For example, in June, personal finance startup Truebill raised a $45 million Series D funding round led by Accel.

Truebill raises $45 million for its personal finance app

News: Tinder adds a new home for interactive, social features with launch of Tinder Explore

September 9, 2021
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Tinder is redesigning its app to put a larger emphasis on its social, interactive features with the launch of “Explore,” a new section that will feature events, like the return of the popular “Swipe Night” series, as well as ways to discover matches by interests and dive into quick chats before a match is made. Combined, the changes help to push Tinder further away from its roots as a quick match-based dating app into something that’s more akin to a social network aimed at helping users meet new people.

This shift could resonate better with a younger generation that may feel like traditional online dating has lost its novelty. Today, these users are turning to apps marketing themselves as places to meet new friends, while newcomers to the dating app industry are experimenting with other means of connecting users — such as with short, TikTok-like videos, as in Snack, or even audio, as in SwoonMe. For Tinder, these market shifts may have represented an existential threat to its own business. But instead, the company has doubled down on interactivity as being core to the Tinder experience, as means of maintaining its dominant position.

At launch, Tinder Explore will include a handful of existing features alongside a new way to meet people. The latter allows users to connect with others based on interests — like Foodies, Gamers, Music Lovers, Social Causes, Entrepreneurs, and more. Over time, more interests will be added which will allow Tinder members to find someone based on what they’re like, rather than just what they look like.

Image Credits: Tinder

Explore will also be home to Tinder’s “Swipe Night,” the interactive series that launched in 2019 as an in-app “choose your own adventure” story which helped to boost Tinder engagement as it gave users a reason to relaunch the app at a specific time. Tinder hailed “Swipe Night” as a success, saying the feature attracted over 20 million users during its first run and led to a 26% increase in matches. In November, the series will return — this time, with new characters and a new “whodunit”-style storyline. It will now also leverage the “Fast Chat” feature that powers Tinder’s “Hot Takes” experience, which allows unmatched users to chat.

“Hot Takes” will also appear in Tinder Explore, which the company describes as a more low-stakes way to match with other users. As a timer counts down, users who are chatting can choose if they want to match. If the timer expires, they meet someone new — similar to an online version of speed dating. Since launching this summer, millions of Tinder users have tried “Hot Takes,” which is only available from 6 pm to midnight local time.

However, the bigger story about Tinder Explore isn’t just what sort of features it will host now, but what the company has in store for the future. Earlier this year, Tinder parent Match bought the Korean social networking company Hyperconnect for $1.73 billion — its largest acquisition to date. And it’s preparing to use Hyperconnect’s IP to make the online dating experience even more interactive than it is today, having announced plans to add audio and video chat, including group live video, to several of its top dating app properties, Tinder included.

Tinder Explore provides a platform where features like this could later be added — something Tinder hints towards, noting that the section is designed to offer users access to “a growing list” of social experiences with “many more to follow.”

“A new generation of daters is asking for more from us in the post-Covid world: more ways to have fun and interact with others virtually and more control over who they meet on Tinder,” said Tinder CEO Jim Lanzone, in a company announcement. “Today’s launch of Explore is a major step in creating a deeper, multi-dimensional, interactive experience for our members that expands the possibilities of Tinder as a platform,” he added.

Tinder Explore began rolling out to major English-speaking markets on Wednesday, Sept. 8, and will be available globally by mid-October.

News: Better.com acquires UK-based Property Partner ahead of SPAC close

September 9, 2021
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The deal could give Better a way to augment its lending business with the potential to enable fractional ownership of properties in the U.S. and other markets.

Online mortgage company Better.com has acquired U.K.-based startup Property Partner as it seeks to expand into new markets and offer new product lines. The deal could give Better a way to augment its lending business with the potential to enable fractional ownership of properties in the U.S. and other markets.

Better plans to go public later this year through its planned merger with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) in a deal that values it at $7.7 billion. In the meantime the company has been active in the M&A market, acquiring two U.K.-based companies in the lead up to the deal’s close.

In July, Better announced its acquisition of Trussle, a digital mortgage brokerage in the U.K. that was widely seen as its first step to international expansion. But with the purchase of Property Partner, Better could gain technology capabilities to expand its feature set in the U.S. and other markets.

Launched in 2015, Property Partner enables fractional ownership of “buy to let” properties throughout the country. Through its platform, users could invest in individual properties or in a portfolio of properties and earn a portion of the rental income generated by those assets. It also created a resale market, enabling users to sell off their shares to other users.

The startup claims more than 9,000 investors on its property crowdfunding market and £140 million of assets under management. With the Better acquisition, the company expects to be able to expand both its investor base and properties to invest in.

Property Partner sent a message to users late last week to inform them of upcoming changes as a result of the deal. The startup announced it was temporarily pausing trading on the resale market while promoting some of Better’s plans as a result of the deal.

Under the new ownership, Property Partner said it would be able to reduce fees, grow its investor base, and dramatically expand investment opportunities by adding properties in the U.S. and other international locations to its platform.

For Better, the deal adds a new income stream in the short term while enabling the company to completely reimagine homeownership over a longer time horizon. Over the years Better has sought to augment its core mortgage lending business with additional products and services, including real estate agents, title and homeowners insurance, and the ability to make all-cash offers in certain markets in which it operates.

But in an interview with TechCrunch last month, Better CEO Vishal Garg previewed a vision for how fractional ownership could reduce friction and enable more freedom for the home-owning public:

You have a large population in this country that is composed of retirees and they don’t have a current income, so they cannot actually refinance their mortgage and they’re still paying interest at 6%. They’d like to move to a warmer climate. Well, they can’t, it’s gonna cost them 6% to sell their house, then it’s gonna cost them 6% to buy the other house.

Why can’t they set it up so they sell 1% of their house in Connecticut every year and establish an income stream that qualifies them to go get a cheap mortgage and sell that house in Connecticut over a period of time, to someone who wants to live there and buy a piece of property in Florida.

There are all these frictions and it’s honestly just a simple data-matching problem. There’s no reason you need to own 100% of your home. What if we could give you the ability to sell 10% a year or 3% of your home or 2% of your home to people who want to buy a home in your neighborhood and are not ready yet because they’re renting.

For a more detailed overview of Better’s upcoming SPAC and its product plans once it goes public, check out our feature on ExtraCrunch.

News: Anatomy of a SPAC: Inside Better.com’s ambitious plans

September 9, 2021
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“We aren’t so easily categorized,” said Better CEO Vishal Garg.

When executives at online mortgage company Better.com decided to take their company public earlier this year, they elected not to go the traditional IPO route or direct listing. Instead, Better will hit the public markets by merging with blank-check company Aurora Acquisition Corp in a SPAC deal that values it at $7.7 billion.

While the stock performance of post-merger SPAC companies has been shaky at best this year, the team at Better believed they were getting a preferable deal through their combination with Aurora (and additional investment by SoftBank) than if they decided to pitch bankers and institutional investors through a traditional IPO roadshow.

“When an investment bank signs up to sell your stock to the public, there’s no guarantee of a price or no certainty of execution,” said Better CEO Vishal Garg. “We just were not confident that the investment bankers were going to be able to execute.”

You can hardly blame Better’s leadership for that lack of confidence. In the past year, two other online mortgage lenders — Rocket Companies and loanDepot — were listed through traditional IPOs that priced below range due to lackluster demand from institutional investors.

The same thing happened to real estate brokerage Compass, which lowered its target range on the day of its IPO and has seen its stock price continue to slide since going public.

“A traditional public offering makes sense for a story that your traditional investment banker can understand and categorize,” Garg said. “If you can be easily categorized as an enterprise SaaS company or a payments company, then a public offering makes sense.”

But the team at Better has bigger ambitions than just being seen as a mortgage lender and compared with other financial services companies. With mortgage lending at its core, Better has added a number of additional products and services, including realtors, title insurance and homeowners insurance.

In the second half of this year, Better plans to begin offering home services and improvement loans, and eventually will expand to other finance and insurance products like personal, auto and student loans, as well as life and disability insurance.

“We aren’t so easily categorized,” Garg said.

Making mortgages cheaper, faster and easier

Like many digital disruptors seeking to upend established industries, Better was borne out of one person seeking to solve a problem for himself. Sometime around 2012 Vishal Garg, founding partner of One Zero Capital and founder of the online student lending company MyRichUncle, was hoping to buy his “dream home” but got hung up during the process of securing a mortgage and lost out on the bidding to a buyer who could close the deal faster.

As the apocryphal founding story goes, there were few options available for someone looking to apply for and secure a mortgage online — or even get a mortgage pre-approval letter. So Garg set out to build it.

“The original vision was to make the process of going from being a renter to a homeowner. cheaper, faster and easier,” Garg said. “We built a product that let you get a pre-approval letter online in five minutes, instead of five days or five weeks.”

According to Sarah Pierce, who joined the company as one of its first 30 employees and now runs all sales and operations, Better was able to fulfill the goal of getting approved for a mortgage faster by using its technology to assess borrower risk.

Yearly Archives: 2021