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News: As edtech evolves, LatAm reskilling platforms raise millions to bring outcomes into the mix

  • August 5, 2021
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As Latin America attracts record-breaking venture capital totals, education technology startups in the region are given new opportunities to grow. In the past week, Coderhouse, a live cohort-based learning platform, and Crehana, an on-demand skills development service for the enterprise, both announced financing rounds. The back-to-back raises are a reminder that edtech’s relevance in LatAm isn’t

As Latin America attracts record-breaking venture capital totals, education technology startups in the region are given new opportunities to grow. In the past week, Coderhouse, a live cohort-based learning platform, and Crehana, an on-demand skills development service for the enterprise, both announced financing rounds.

The back-to-back raises are a reminder that edtech’s relevance in LatAm isn’t just growing in classrooms, but also within organizations across LatAm. It’s a sign that both consumers and employers believe in the importance of reskilling in today’s new, ever-changing future of work.

Broad but better

Coderhouse, founded in 2014 by Christian Patiño, is a platform for LatAm professionals to take live, online cohort-based courses in topics such as data, coding, design and marketing.

Patiño explained how the original online education platforms, also known as MOOCs, are “super accessible,” with low completion rates. The response to this then became boot camps, which he deems are “way more effective” but inaccessible due to low acceptance rates and high costs. With both sides of the spectrum in mind, he wants Coderhouse to sit somewhere in the middle, combining the affordability of MOOCs (massive open online course providers) and the engagement of bootcamps.

At $100 per course, Coderhouse offers small-group classes led by instructors and teacher assistants, with curriculum designed through partnerships with top companies.

The company announced this week that it has raised a $13.5 million Series A round led by Monashees, along with Reach Capital, David Velez from Nubank, Guillermo Rauch from Vercel, Hugo Barra (former head of VR at Facebook) and the founders of Loggi, Rappi, Wildlife Studios, Méliuz, MadeiraMadeira, Cornershop, Bitso, Casai, Clara, RunaHR and Belvo.

It’s Coderhouse’s first venture capital check after bootstrapping for years. Since 2019, Coderhouse has grown revenue 10x year over year, and has reached a $12 million run-rate. Now, with formal backing, the founders are focused on growing that total by offering more services in Latin America. Patiño said that 80% of their revenue comes from Argentina, and the capital resources will help them grow their 21,000 student base to other countries.

The startup serves a variety of students, including people who are looking for new jobs, people who want to get promoted within their current companies and entrepreneurs and freelancers who want to master a business-imperative skill such as marketing or copywriting. The broadness in early adopters could make it hard for the company to provide outcomes at scale — someone looking to be promoted has very different needs than someone who is looking for a new job — but for now, it’s helping the early-stage company find its voice.

The round was the first LatAm investment for Reach Capital, a U.S.-based edtech firm. Partner Esteban Sosnik explained how Coderhouse’s strategy is a response to LatAm’s talent bottleneck, as digital momentum in the region continues and roles change. He believes the broadness of Coderhouse’s offering makes it “tough to define one definition for outcomes.”

Sosnik thinks that graduation rates are a good proxy for impact and student satisfaction. So far, 90% of users who pay for Coderhouse graduate from their course, and of that cohort, 80% of students claim that salaries increase post-graduation. Down the road, he could see Coderhouse offering more data on the long-term economic impact of how taking a course can impact job trajectory two to four years down the line.

Coderhouse UX. Image Credits: Coderhouse

The company has no filters that limit students from taking courses, so it maintains quality by rigorous vetting of teachers. The founder estimates that only 8% of teachers are accepted to teach on Coderhouse’s platform, resulting in nearly 2,000 active teachers with the company today.

A challenge for the startup will be scaling its teacher assistant [TA] to student ratio. Right now, there are 20 students to one TA, and Patiño wants to introduce more peer-to-peer work and grading to limit how labor intensive a class is for instructors.

As Coderhouse figures out how to be an affordable bootcamp for aspiring and current employees, Crehana is finding its stride in going straight to the companies that employ them.

Centralize it all

Crehana is a one-stop shop for employers to retrain their employees. Where it goes niche in clientele focus, it goes broad in services: It wants to do the “entire value chain” of learning, from assessing skill gaps to offering content to address weak spots to tracking progress. Right now, there are more than 400 instructors/mentors that teach over 700 courses across 100,000 techniques and competencies needed for jobs.

Crehana announced today that it has raised a $70 million Series B just months after a $13 million Series A extension round. Per CEO Diego Olcese, the round will lead to “aggressively scaling” an offering that now accounts for half of Crehana’s revenue: Crehana for Business.

Crehana for Business is an enterprise solution packaged for a specific company looking to up-skill a portion of their staff. Crehana will continue to offer individual seats on its learning platform, but Crehana for Business illustrates what Olcese sees as the future: the centralization of education as a focus within companies.

“We’re building this so companies can understand the end-to-end process of employee development in the company, from the onboarding process to when an employee gets promoted in their job,” he said. “We are centralizing that management for HR teams.”

Diego Olcese, founder of Crehana. Image Credits: Crehana

It’s a big bet, one that Udemy has been working on for years. The San Francisco-based platform launched an enterprise product that now has over 7,000 customers, hitting near $200 million in annual recurring revenue. Crehana didn’t disclose specifics around revenue, but did say that it had 10x year over year growth in Crehana for Business, with the overall business hitting 4x year over year growth; both metrics are between 2019 to 2020.

Olcese said that Crehana’s biggest difference from Udemy is in how it handles content. Crehana produces, designs and publishes all content on its site, and selects which teachers will instruct on which topics. Comparatively, Udemy has a more open marketplace that allows anyone to start teaching after their identity is verified.

Crehana’s hands-on content strategy makes sense, but is hard to scale; and content isn’t competitive forever. This tension is why the company thinks its future looks more like Crehana for Business, which uses content as part of a broader infrastructure on how employees are skilled, instead of looking like a content provider.

As it works toward becoming an education infrastructure layer, Crehana is experimenting with technology that would allow companies to create their own content that isn’t just localized to geography, but is tuned into personalities, management structures and more.

As for if it ever wants to become a company that would help Nubank, a LatAm fintech darling valued at $30 billion, create its own mini-university to train and up-skill employees, the founder was clear: “It’ll be better than a university,” he said.

The Venn diagram in between them both

Generally speaking, Crehana and Coderhouse’s pair of financings show that investors see LatAm’s digital transformation having a fundamental, long-tail impact on edtech adoption within regional companies. The question then becomes, which is the best way to serve a newly hungry group of learners, and what is the easiest answer for employers’ biggest stresses: unqualified candidates.

The two companies differ in strategy. Coderhouse, for example, believes in delivering education en masse and through affordable chunks. By using cohort-based methodology, the startup helps consumers work on specific skills that can help in a variety of different scenarios, from promotions to finding new jobs. Meanwhile, Crehana believes that going in-house with institutions could be the sweet spot needed to make true change. It is focusing on localized content as an initial moat, but long-term it thinks that employers need a simple way to track employees as they learn, retain and engage with new skills. The company may look more like a learning infrastructure than a content provider.

While the strategies look different in sales, both build off of current strides in edtech, not limited to but including the ability to learn online, the understanding that lifelong learning is a key competitive advantage for professionals.

News: Octane raises $52M at a $900M+ valuation to help people finance large recreational purchases

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Most of the time when people get loans, it’s for big life purchases such as a house or a car. But not every big purchase is a necessity. Some are more for fun, and the financing options for those types of buys — such as motorcycles and ATVs — are more limited. Today, Octane Lending,

Most of the time when people get loans, it’s for big life purchases such as a house or a car.

But not every big purchase is a necessity. Some are more for fun, and the financing options for those types of buys — such as motorcycles and ATVs — are more limited. Today, Octane Lending, a company that embarked seven years ago on remedying that, announced it has raised $52 million in a Series D round of funding that values the company at over $900 million.

The company, which offers “instant” financing for large recreational purchases, boasts impressive financials in a startup world whose inhabitants are mostly unprofitable. For one, Octane is both net income and operating cash flow positive, and expects to originate more than $1 billion in the next 12 months. It has been doubling revenue annually, and CEO and co-founder Jason Guss projects that the company will see “over $100 million in revenue” this year. Its valuation is now “more than double” what it was at the time of its July 2020 $25 million raise, according to Guss.

Progressive Investment Company Inc., a member of the Progressive Insurance group, led its latest financing, which included participation from existing backers Valar Ventures, Upper90, Contour Venture Partners, Citi Ventures, Third Prime and Parkwood, as well as new investors Gaingels and ALIVE. 

With the latest round, New York-based Octane has now raised more than $192 million in total equity funding since its 2014 inception.

Octane launched with the goal of “making lending better in overlooked markets,” according to Guss. Specifically, Octane initially set out to build a lender marketplace to streamline retail financing in the powersports category. Put more simply, it wanted to help people who want to buy things like motorcycles, snowmobiles, jet skis and ATVs get the financing they need to do so.

“We quickly learned that the buying journey in powersports markets was broken beyond just financing,” Guss told TechCrunch. “We elevated our goal to build an end-to-end buying solution including editorial content, consumer pre-qualification tools, instant full-spectrum financing and digital deal closing.”

Image Credits: Octane

Because lending is involved in about 80% of powersports purchases and about 80% of lending happens in the dealership, Octane focused first on building a lending platform for dealerships and consumers. Then in 2016, it launched Roadrunner Financial, a wholly owned-and-operated lender, so that it could offer full spectrum lending, “expand access to credit and speed up transactions through digitization and automation.” Today, the company is partnered with 3,800 dealers.

With an anchor in dealerships, Octane then expanded its scope. Last year, it acquired Cycle World and UTV Driver, along with five other brands from Bonnier with a goal “to inspire and inform powersports enthusiasts across the nation.” Also last year, it launched Octane Pre-qual, which enables consumers to instantly prequalify for financing on OEM and dealership websites with a soft credit pull. With that offering, Octane aims to help direct consumers to a dealership, close their loan and complete their purchase in one place.

“We are growing dramatically because we make transactions faster and simpler to close for consumers and dealerships,” Guss said. “We are the only platform to offer end-to-end purchasing benefits in the markets we play in.”

Looking ahead, Octane plans to use its new capital to expand to adjacent “other passion purchase” markets and continue to launch customer engagement tools as well as buying solutions for consumers shopping for powersports vehicles online. It also wants to continue to add dealership, OEM and brand partners, which today include BRP, Suzuki and Triumph Motorcycles.

“We define a passion purchase as a major discretionary purchase that brings people joy,” Guss said. “Most innovation and investment is focused on large, marquee markets such as small business, auto and homes.” As people spent less toward travel and eating out once the COVID-19 pandemic hit, the powersports market got a boost, growing double digits last year, noted Guss.

“Our core customer base was not significantly impacted by COVID economically so consumer demand and loan performance remained strong,” he said.

Andrew Quigg, chief strategy officer at Progressive Insurance, believes that technology and consumers’ needs continue to evolve.

“Octane’s point-of-sale loan origination platform provides benefits to consumers and dealerships in a specialty segment of the lending market,” he said. “We like to partner with innovative, forward-thinking companies and believe that our investment in Octane aligns very well with this strategy.” 

Octane describes itself as a remote-first workplace that has offices in New York and Dallas. It has grown its team by 50% in the last year, from 213 to 336 employees.

News: Early Affirm employees raise $70M for SentiLink, an identity verification startup

  • August 5, 2021
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SentiLink, an identity verification technology startup, has raised $70 million in a Series B funding round led by Craft Ventures. Felicis Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) and NYCA also participated in the financing, which brings the company’s total raised to $85 million since its 2017 inception. The company declined to reveal at what valuation the money

SentiLink, an identity verification technology startup, has raised $70 million in a Series B funding round led by Craft Ventures.

Felicis Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) and NYCA also participated in the financing, which brings the company’s total raised to $85 million since its 2017 inception. The company declined to reveal at what valuation the money was raised, saying only it was “at a very high multiple” of its 2019 $15 million Series A led by a16z.

Naftali Harris and Max Blumenfeld founded SentiLink in mid-2017 after their experience working as data scientists at Affirm, where they built out the company’s risk function. At one point during their tenure at the installment loan provider, they came across a “peculiar” fraud case, where 12 identities applied for loans using the same name and date of birth but 12 different Social Security numbers. 

The pair was surprised to discover that all 12 of the identities had real credit reports with 750+ credit scores despite not being real people. It was then they realized how big a problem identity verification was and how poorly it was done, and founded SentiLink with Affirm CEO and founder Max Levchin’s blessing and investment.

San Francisco-based SentiLink aims to help banks, lenders and financial institutions detect fraud at the point of application through a real-time API. Specifically, those APIs detect fake and stolen identities for new account applications. For example, before a bank issues a new credit card, it will send the application information to SentiLink. SentiLink’s models and technology assess the credit card application for various fraud risks, including identity theft and synthetic fraud. If SentiLink detects the application as high risk, the bank will ask for more information or reject the application. 

SentiLink works with more than 100 financial institutions, including three of the top 10 banks in the U.S. It has verified several hundred million applications to date, and saw its revenue grow by “5x” over the last year, according to Harris.

Craft Ventures co-founder and general partner David Sacks said SentiLink’s growth trajectory is “one of the fastest” he’s ever seen.

“Their traction with companies from new startups to major U.S. banks is impressive,” he added. “All of this stems from the team’s deep understanding of fraud and identity. I learned about fraud attacks I didn’t even think were possible from talking with Naftali and Max.”

Harris said the company was a few months away from profitability before its Series B but decided the opportunity was “too big to grow slowly.” So it opted to put off profitability so it could expand more “aggressively.” 

With the slew of companies in the space out there, it can be hard to differentiate what makes one unique compared to others.

To Harris, the biggest differentiation in SentiLink’s approach is how much it emphasizes “deep understanding of fraud and identity in our models.”

“We have a team of fraud investigators that manually review applications every day looking for fraud, and we use their insights and discoveries in our fraud models and technology,” he told TechCrunch. “This deep understanding is so important to us that every Friday the entire company spends an hour reviewing fraud cases.”

SentiLink, Harris added, focuses on “deeply” understanding fraud and identity, and then using technology to productionalize these insights.  Those discoveries include the deterioration of phone/name match data and uncovering “same name” fraud. 

“This deep understanding is so important that SentiLink employs a team of risk analysts whose full time job is to investigate new kinds of fraud and discover what the fraudsters are doing,” the company says. 

SentiLink, like so many other startups, saw an increase in business during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The various government assistance programs were rife with fraud. This had a cascading effect throughout financial services, where fraudsters that had successfully stolen government money attempted to launder it into the financial system,” Harris said. “As a result we’ve been very busy, particularly with checking and savings accounts that until now have had relatively little fraud.”

The startup plans to use its new capital to build out its product suite and do some hiring. Today it has 25 employees, with five accepted offers, and expects to end the year with a headcount of 45-50.

“Identity verification has so many aspects to it and approaches, and so we plan to significantly expand our product suite beyond the scoring API that we’ve started with,” Harris told TechCrunch. “Part of this will include continuing to invest heavily in our product team, part of this will involve partnering with other companies, and it may also include acquisitions.” 

At the end of September, for example, the company plans to launch a KYC (“Know Your Customer”) solution.   

Mike Marg, a principal at Craft, said Harris and Blumenfeld’s experience at Affirm “was a clear sign they were experts on this subject.”

“We love it when founders have an earned secret or insight around a massive problem that outsiders don’t understand, and SentiLink is a perfect example of this,” he said. “Their fast growth only validated that the problem they were solving for customers was urgent and painful.”

Other companies in the identity verification space that have recently raised money include Persona and Socure.

 

News: Nigerian digital freight provider MVX lands $1.3M to help shippers move cargoes faster

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In Africa, chartering vessels and processing ocean freight can be challenging. The sector is largely inefficient and fragmented. Merchants also struggle to access finance to perform cross-border trade in the continent. A couple of digital freight companies are tackling this problem, like Nigerian-based MVX. The company today is announcing its $1.3 million seed round to

In Africa, chartering vessels and processing ocean freight can be challenging. The sector is largely inefficient and fragmented. Merchants also struggle to access finance to perform cross-border trade in the continent. A couple of digital freight companies are tackling this problem, like Nigerian-based MVX. The company today is announcing its $1.3 million seed round to bolster its efforts.

Tonye Membere-Otaji thought about the idea for MVX in 2016. Having worked in the maritime industry (running his family business and in a professional capacity building apps and websites for companies), Membere-Otaji was intrigued by how no online marketplace for vessels existed. 

“I decided to figure out how to solve that problem of finding vessels because there were too many intermediaries, which made processes difficult,” he told TechCrunch. However, a few issues relating to not having the right team to build out the product stalled the company’s progress. In 2019, Membere-Otaji finally launched the company with CTO Tobi Amusan after securing a $100,000 pre-seed investment from Oui Capital, a pan-African VC firm.

The company was called MVXchange at first. Its business model revolved around providing a support vessel booking platform that matched vessel chartering requests made by operators with available Offshore Support Vessels (OSVs). 

But in March 2020, the company made a sharp pivot and tweaked its model. CEO Membere-Otaji cites uncertainty of oil prices and the pandemic as reasons behind the decision. 

“We couldn’t see ourselves doing vessel chartering for the long term because the demand for fossil fuels will definitely reduce over the next few decades. We wanted to do something scalable, something that was impactful, and something that we could be proud of in the next 20 years,” he added.

What followed was the launch of MVXtransit, a digital freight booking platform, helping cargo owners find deals on moving containers across Nigeria. This April, the company launched MVXpay, a finance and payment solution to provide trade finance for freight operators. However, both offerings are now rolled into one: MVX.

According to the CEO, MVX wants to make freight shipping and trade finance easier for African businesses by bringing booking and deployment processes online. The startup has expanded beyond Nigeria and claims that merchants from the West African country, as well as Kenya, South Africa, Ghana and Rwanda, can use its platform to move freight in and out of their countries.

MVX charges a commission for the services provided, including trucking, warehousing, shipping, and cargo stuffing.

“We make it easy and convenient for businesses. Instead of trying to do everything themselves, which can be chaotic and cause distraction from their core businesses, we handle everything because we have all these service providers in one platform. So as shippers work with us, MVX works with like seven to 10 other service providers,” said Membere-Otaji.

The market for cross-border logistics services is said to hit revenues of $32 billion by 2025. Multiple companies are needed for the market to reach its full potential. That has been the case, and investors are noticing too. For instance, Ghana’s Jetstream offers a similar service and raised $3 million two months ago. SEND is another example; YC backs the startup.

However, what stands out for MVX, according to Membere-Otaji, is that the company also sees itself as a trade finance company.

The concept brings together the best of both worlds of fintech and trade. So the way it works is that with merchants looking to move shipments from Africa to the U.S. or China, some lack adequate capital to pay for freight or supply. With MVX, they can proceed to request credit. MVX passes it over to its financial partners, who lend to the consumers if they meet the minimum requirement. Next, MVX takes care of the shipment and delivers it abroad. Once the transaction is done, the merchant pays back, with all partners taking commissions.

“Our job really is to empower trade in Africa, and freight is a means to that. From every step involved in that process, from providing trade and finance to warehousing to payments processing, we want to play in all that space. There aren’t a lot of companies with that trading finance element doing that like us. And also, we see a huge potential in the offline market. Right now, the reason why we have this problem is that transactions are offline. Our strategy in capturing offline markets is also key.”

The pan-African freight company has already recorded more than 300 shipments this year but plans to end with 1,500. Per revenue and traction, the CEO claims the company has surpassed its 2020 numbers.

MVX raised money for its seed round from Africa-focused firms Kepple Africa, The Continent Venture Partners, Founders Factory, Launch Africa, and Capital Oak. Some angel investors in the U.S., Japan, Nigeria, and South Africa also participated. The two-year-old startup will use the investment to scale its operations, hire staff and improve its technology. MVX is also talking to investors to raise more money, most likely debt, for its trade financing product.

In a statement, Satoshi Shinada, general partner at Kepple Africa, said, “The trade sector in Africa is one that we believe is ripe for disruption. MVX is building a game-changing technology and platform to revolutionize how businesses in Africa move shipment and trade around the world.”

News: Dataiku gets $400M at a $4.6B valuation, led by Tiger Global

  • August 5, 2021
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Data science platform Dataiku announced today it has raised a $400 million Series E, bringing its valuation to $4.6 billion. The round was led by Tiger Global, with participation from returning investors like ICONIQ Growth, CapitalG, FirstMark Capital, Battery Ventures, Snowflake Ventures and Dawn Capital. New investors included Insight Partners, Eurazeo, Lightrock and Olivier Pomel,

Data science platform Dataiku announced today it has raised a $400 million Series E, bringing its valuation to $4.6 billion. The round was led by Tiger Global, with participation from returning investors like ICONIQ Growth, CapitalG, FirstMark Capital, Battery Ventures, Snowflake Ventures and Dawn Capital.

New investors included Insight Partners, Eurazeo, Lightrock and Olivier Pomel, the chief executive of Datadog.

Dataiku’s last round of funding was a $100 million Series D in 2020.

Founded in 2013, Dataiku is used by data scientists, but also designed for business analysts and other people with less technical backgrounds. The platform lets companies design and deploy AI and analytics apps, turn raw data into advanced analytics and design machine learning models. It’s been used for a wide array of use cases, including fraud detection, customer churn prevention and supply chain optimization.

The company now has about 450 enterprise clients, including Unilever, Merck, GE, Ubisoft and NXP.

In June, Dataiku launched a fully managed version of the platform called Dataiku Online, which means the company takes care of setup and infrastructure. Co-founder and CEO Florian Douetteau told TechCrunch at the time Dataiku Online is focused on getting more startups and SMBs onto the platform.

In a statement about the investment, Tiger Global partner John Curtius said, “We’ve seen that executing an AI strategy in which data is part of day-to-day operations can have large-scale impact for organizations across sectors and sizes, and Dataiku is well-positioned to continue to help the enterprise realize this potential value given both the strength of their technology and the team.”

News: Nubank co-leads $45 million investment in Indian neobank Jupiter

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Industry veteran Jitendra Gupta’s neobank for consumers in India has raised $45 million in a new financing round as the Bangalore and Mumbai-based startup gears up for Jupiter’s public launch in about a month. The new financing round, a Series B, was co-led by Brazil-based Nubank, Global Founders Capital, Sequoia Capital and Matrix Partners. Mirae Assets

Industry veteran Jitendra Gupta’s neobank for consumers in India has raised $45 million in a new financing round as the Bangalore and Mumbai-based startup gears up for Jupiter’s public launch in about a month.

The new financing round, a Series B, was co-led by Brazil-based Nubank, Global Founders Capital, Sequoia Capital and Matrix Partners. Mirae Assets Venture also joined the round and existing investors including Addition Ventures, Tanglin VC, Greyhound, 314 Capital and Beenext, also participated.

The new round values the two-year-old Indian startup, which has raised $70 million to date, at over $300 million.

Jupiter has built a neobank for consumers in India. The startup, which launched its eponymous platform in beta in June, is attempting to bring “delight” to the banking experience.

“We believe that a bank account should be a smart account, where it gives you insight, shares personalized tips and guides you through attaining some financial discipline,” said Gupta — who co-founded CitrusPay (sold to Naspers’ PayU) and served as managing director of PayU — in a recent interview with TechCrunch.

The startup, which employs over 110 people, has developed a number of products including a savings account bundled with features that aim to simplify money management.

The platform, which positions itself as a “100% digital bank” also offers the ability to buy now and pay later on UPI, a standard developed by a coalition of banks in India that has become the most popular way people in the country transact online.

“Nubank and Jupiter share the mission of making banking the best experience possible for our customers, putting an end to all the bureaucracy and the pain in the current system. The Indian and Brazilian markets have many similarities and through this investment, we aim to support Jupiter in their growth path. We see a lot of potential and are excited about joining them so early on their journey,” said David Vélez, founder and chief executive of Nubank, in a statement.

More to follow…

News: Oh, Facebook changed its privacy settings again

  • August 4, 2021
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Ever considerate of its users, Facebook has determined that its privacy settings needed a bit of a shuffle to keep things clear and easy to find. To that end they’ve taken the “privacy settings” settings and scattered them mischievously among the other categories. “We’ve redesigned our entire settings menu on mobile devices from top to

Ever considerate of its users, Facebook has determined that its privacy settings needed a bit of a shuffle to keep things clear and easy to find. To that end they’ve taken the “privacy settings” settings and scattered them mischievously among the other categories.

“We’ve redesigned our entire settings menu on mobile devices from top to bottom to make things easier to find. Instead of having settings spread across nearly 20 different screens, they’re now accessible from a single place,” writes Facebook in a blog post announcing the changes.

Oh, sorry — that’s from 2018, when they centralized privacy settings to make them easier to find. This is the one from today about decentralizing them into a bunch of different places.

“Settings are now grouped into six broad categories, each containing several related settings: Account, Preferences, Audience and Visibility, Permissions, Your Information, and Community Standards and Legal Policies … We’ve unbundled the Privacy Settings category and moved the settings previously contained within it into other categories.”

Facebook unbundling its privacy settings (but the image is actually a guy sprinkling salt in the wind)

Pictured: Facebook unbundling its privacy settings into new categories.

Under which of those categories do you think privacy settings belong? Facebook “renamed them to more closely match people’s mental models,” so it should be obvious. Just use your mental model.

If your answer is “all of them, conceivably,” congratulations, you got it! Now if you want to update your privacy settings, all you need to do is visit all of these new categories and subcategories individually. Any one of them might have a crucial toggle inside — it’s like a treasure hunt!

Facebook’s settings page, from oldest to newest. Which do you prefer? Image Credits: TechCrunch

We joke, but Facebook did also make the “Privacy Checkup” item much more prominent in this update. This “guided review” may give the company opportunities to employ dark patterns that lure users away from less desirable (for the company) privacy choices, but does certainly go through many of the more important settings and let people change them.

“We’re confident this new settings page will make it easier for people to visit their settings, find what they came for, and make the changes they want,” Facebook writes. We’ll all find out one way or another later today when the redesign rolls out for iOS, Android, mobile web and FB Lite.

News: Uber CEO calls Massachusetts gig economy ballot measure the ‘right answer’

  • August 4, 2021
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Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi expressed his support Wednesday for a ballot initiative in Massachusetts that would keep gig economy workers classified as independent contractors, fulfilling a promise he made nearly a year ago to push for laws that preserve its business model. “In the state of Massachusetts, we think the right answer is our IC+

Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi expressed his support Wednesday for a ballot initiative in Massachusetts that would keep gig economy workers classified as independent contractors, fulfilling a promise he made nearly a year ago to push for laws that preserve its business model.

“In the state of Massachusetts, we think the right answer is our IC+ model, which is independent contractor with benefits,” Khosrowshahi said during the earnings call with investors. “Our drivers love it. Prop 22 has proven to be incredibly popular with California drivers.”

His comments come a day after a coalition of app-based ride-hailing and on-demand delivery companies, which includes Uber, Doordash, Lyft and Instacart, filed a petition for the ballot initiative that would classify app-based ride-hail and delivery workers as independent contractors and provide them with benefits such as healthcare stipends for drivers who work at least 15 hours per week. The coalition claimed that the provision would allow drivers to earn about $18 per hour in 2023 before tips. The ballot measure, if it passes legal muster and receives enough signatures, would be included in the November 2022 election.

Proposition 22, a ballot measure that kept gig workers in the state classified as independent contractors. passed in California in November last year. It also exempts gig companies like Uber from AB-5, the bill that entitles gig workers to self-classify as employees with usual labor protections that don’t apply to independent contractors, like minimum wage, sick leave, unemployment and workers’ compensation benefits.

Gig companies, which largely have yet to become profitable, spent $205 million in marketing for this ballot measure and made no secret about plans to do the same thing in other states. Which brings us back to Massachusetts.

Khosrowshahi said during the earnings call that the vast majority of drivers prefer the IC+ model over full-time employment. The Coalition to Protect Workers’ Rights disagreed, arguing that the ballot language has loopholes that would create a subminimum wage for app-based workers and that few would qualify for the healthcare support promised. It also noted that the measure would remove anti-discrimination protections, eliminates workers’ compensation rules and allows companies to cheat the state unemployment system of hundreds of millions.

“Uber has been using independence as a red herring for years,” Shona Clarkson, organizer for Gig Workers Rising, told TechCrunch. “We know that drivers do not actually have independence while driving for Uber. There is no independence in working 70+ hours a week, not being able to set your own rates, not being able to see where a ride is going and having no real control at work. The benefits promised under Prop 22 were a sham that have not materialized. As a network of over 10,000 gig workers in the state of California, we have not seen Uber drivers able to access any meaningful benefits since the implementation of Prop 22.”

Khosrowshahi said Californians voted in favor of Prop 22 because they had driver support, and he sees no reason why Massachusetts should be any different.

“We absolutely prefer a legislative outcome in Massachusetts, but if we can’t get there we’ll take it to the vote and based on what happened in California, we’re quite confident,” he said.

News: 5 factors founders must consider before choosing their VC

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At a time when we are witnessing record VC activity, founders would be well served to go back to the basics and focus on the principles of fundraising when determining who sits on their cap table.

Kunal Lunawat
Contributor

Kunal Lunawat is the co-founder and managing partner of Agya Ventures, a venture capital firm focused on proptech, travel, hospitality and the future of the built world.

Though 2021 is far from over, it’s already witnessed a record level of venture capital activity in the technology sector. With larger round sizes announced daily, founders may have their pick of term sheets — but they need to think critically and strategically about which firms to add to their cap table.

So far this year, we’ve seen $292.4 billion in venture financing across the globe, of which $138.9 billion was raised in the United States. Specific to tech companies, the capital is only accelerating: In Q2, founders raised 157% more capital compared to the same period last year, according to the latest data from CB Insights.

It’s not just that more companies are raising money — they are doing so at a higher valuation. Median seed and Series A stage valuations today stand at $12 million and $42 million, respectively, up 20% to 30% from 2020. This can be partly attributed to growing exits/M&A activity in the technology sector, a record number of IPOs and a general bullishness around technology, as well as low interest rates and liquidity in the market.

Good VCs who are aligned with a startup’s vision create more value than the dollars they bring to the table.

At a time when we are witnessing record VC activity, founders would be well served to go back to the basics and focus on the principles of fundraising when determining who sits on their cap table. Here are a few pointers for founders in that direction:

1. Value > valuation

Good VCs who are aligned with a startup’s vision create more value than the dollars they bring to the table. Typically, such value is created across a few distinct functions — product, sales, domain expertise, business development and recruiting, to name a few — based on the background of the partners of the fund and the composition of their limited partners (investors in the venture fund).

Further, the right VC can serve as an authentic, objective sounding board for CEOs, which can be an asset to have as a startup navigates uncertainty and the typical challenges that come with scaling a young company. As founders assess multiple term sheets, it’s worth thinking through whether they should optimize for VCs who offer the highest valuation, or for ones who bring the most value to the table.

2. A two-way street

Running an efficient fundraising process, in part, entails holding VCs accountable to their own diligence requests. While it is unfortunately common for VCs to request a lot of data upfront, startups should share information after assessing intent and appetite on the investors’ part.

For every additional data request, founders are well within their rights (and should) check with their potential investors on where the process stands and get indicative timelines for moving forward with next steps. Mark Suster said it best: “Data rooms are where fundraising processes go to die.”

News: Daily Crunch: Second-day trading surge launches Robinhood stock into meme territory

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Hello friends and welcome to Daily Crunch, bringing you the most important startup, tech and venture capital news in a single package.

To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PDT, subscribe here.

Hello and welcome to Daily Crunch for August 4, 2021. It’s been hectic: Robinhood’s stock lost its mind. Facebook made another chunk of the internet mad. And a new unicorn wants to go public? It’s been a great day for tech news.

But before we get on with it, we’re excited to announce that TechCrunch is launching another newsletter! This Week in Apps by Sarah Perez launches this Saturday morning, August 7, and is the place to go for all of your app news goodness. Be sure to sign up here. — Alex

The TechCrunch Top 3

  • Robinhood’s stock does insane things: Robinhood users were involved in the GameStop and AMC trading frenzies earlier this year. So perhaps it was inevitable that Robinhood’s own stock would get caught in a similar updraft. That’s what happened today, with shares of the newly public fintech company soaring far, far above its IPO price. So much for the Robinhood public offering being underwhelming!
  • Human Interest is now a unicorn, wants to go public: With a fresh $100 million round constructed of bricks of cash from both TPG and SoftBank, Human Interest’s SMB 401(k) service is now worth $1 billion. Per our own Mary Ann, it’s “targeting a traditional IPO sometime in 2023, with execs saying the target is to have ‘$200 million+ in run-rate revenue before going public.’” More of this sort of clear planning, please.
  • Neobanks’ improving economics could hint at future IPOs: Checking in on the recent financial performance of a few neobanks, TechCrunch discovers quite a lot to like in the numbers. There are some laggards, but the huge, global venture capital bet on the fintech banking model appears to be set to pay off.

Startups/VC

  • Denver’s Reserve Trust reloads for business payments: It takes a bit of explaining, but moving money around the world is hard without a partner bank. Reserve Trust wants to help companies move their funds directly, sans banking partners. And it just raised $30.5 million to do so. The issues of accepting and moving money online are huge problem spaces, evidence of which you can see in this section of Daily Crunch most days, it feels.
  • ispace is going to the moon: Japanese space tech company ispace has raised a fresh $46 million Series C to help it undertake a number of lunar missions in the coming years. Three missions in three years, it turns out. The new capital is to support its second and third launches which should come — take off? — in 2023 and 2024.
  • FullStory raises $103M to make digital UIs suck less: By tracking where users click in confusion, anger or frustration, FullStory wants to help companies improve their various digital interfaces. If you hate how some apps are built (and who doesn’t), FullStory could be good news. The Atlanta-based company is now worth $1.8 billion.
  • More money to buy up e-commerce brands: The global push to raise capital, buy e-commerce brands and unify them under a single aegis is a huge area of venture capital investment. Today’s round is Suma Brands, which now has $150 million to execute acquisitions. The new capital is mostly debt, it turns out.
  • tabby raises $50M Series B for Middle Eastern BNPL work: We have a new buy now, pay later round for you today. This time it’s tabby, which is based in Dubai and has a focus on its local region. Global Founders Capital and STV led the funding round, which also included a host of other venture capital firms like Mubadala Investment Capital and Raed Ventures.
  • Work-Bench closes $100M new fund: New York-based Work-Bench has raised a new fund to invest in enterprise SaaS companies. In a world of megafunds and billion-dollar deals, the firm is staying smaller than it probably could have grown. (It also dropped some research on the New York tech scene that I’m chewing on.)
  • Rounding out our startup coverage, if you are a startup and want to learn more about the world of PR, we had a few comms pros on the Equity podcast this week. Tune in here.

What Square’s acquisition of Afterpay means for startups

In his first column since returning to TechCrunch, reporter Ryan Lawler considered the potential ripples Square’s purchase of Afterpay may send across the pond of buy now, pay later startups.

For commentary and perspective, he interviewed:

  • Dan Rosen, founder and general partner, Commerce Ventures
  • Jake Gibson, founding partner, Better Tomorrow Ventures
  • TX Zhuo, partner, Fika Ventures
  • Matthew Harris, partner, Bain Capital Ventures

The investors he spoke to agreed that deferring payments helps drive e-commerce, “but scale matters and long-term margins look slim for BNPL startups,” reports Ryan.

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

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