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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.

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.”

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.

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).

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.

“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.

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.

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.

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.

News: DotCom Therapy raises $13M to provide therapy for kids, in and out of school

• September 9, 2021
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DotCom Therapy, a pediatric teletherapy company, just closed a $13 million series A round. It’s far from the only teletherapy company looking to capitalize on a boom in venture capital investment in mental health startups, but it’s operating in a hyper-specific sphere: therapy for kids.  DotCom Therapy was originally co-founded in 2015 by Rachel Mack

DotCom Therapy, a pediatric teletherapy company, just closed a $13 million series A round. It’s far from the only teletherapy company looking to capitalize on a boom in venture capital investment in mental health startups, but it’s operating in a hyper-specific sphere: therapy for kids. 

DotCom Therapy was originally co-founded in 2015 by Rachel Mack Robinson, who, at the time, was a practicing pediatric therapist at a neurology clinic in Missouri, and Emily Purdom, also a speech language pathologist. Purdom is no longer involved with the company. 

The pair noticed a pattern that still holds true in 2021: about one in five children in the US experience a mental disorder (like ADHD, or anxiety or depression for example), but just 20 percent receive treatment from a mental healthcare provider, per the CDC. 

DotCom Therapy’s bet is that teletherapy can close that gap. 

In the company’s infancy, Robinson called school districts across the country asking to pilot a teletherapy program. Her first greenlight was a district in rural Alaska, where Robinson delivered a combination of in-person and teletherapy.

Today, the company provides fully online speech, occupation and behavioral therapy and has still focused on partnering with schools and other youth programs, like Little League (the company provided mental health services for the Little League World Series Tournaments). DotCom Therapy has partnered with over 400 schools (in over 100 districts) in 38 states, so far. 

With this most recent round of funding, the company plans to expand operations beyond school districts, and scale up their service to reach kids both in and out of school. The program for families specifically is called Zesh, an online therapy platform that matches kids with therapists, schedules visits and hosts video calls. 

“Our main customer base was K-12 school districts. We have the core of our business rocking and rolling with our education market,” says Robinson. “But we know that we are wanting to expand our footprint, enter into health systems and also offer services for private patients through working different health plans,” she says. 

This Series A was led by New Capital Partners – a firm with a history of success in the telemedicine space. New Capital Partners were early investors in Teladoc, a virtual healthcare company founded in 2002. Teladoc went public in 2015 at an enterprise value of $620 million. The round was flushed out with investment from LRVHealth and OSF Ventures. 

Will Cowen, general partner of LRVHealth, Stan Lynall, the vice president of investments for OSF Ventures, and James Outland, managing partner of New Capital Partners will join DotCom Therapy’s board. In total, the company has raised $14 million in funding. 

Before the pandemic, Robinson says the greatest barrier to success  would have been hooking school districts and families on teletherapy. The pandemic has changed that outlook significantly. 

In response to COVID-19, restrictions on reimbursement for telehealth services, as well as geographic requirements for telehealth services were loosened. Use of telehealth services peaked in April 2020, but has since stabilized at about 38 times pre-pandemic usage, according to a July 2021 McKinsey report. 

With a move outside of school-based partners, DotCom Therapy will be entering into the wider sphere of mental health and telehealth, where there’s a significant amount of competition. Those range from unicorns like TalkSpace to other startups. 

At least in Robinson’s view, a specific focus on kids’ telehealth, and the specific disciplines of occupational and speech therapy will help to set DotCom apart in an increasingly crowded space. 

“The majority of our competitors, I like to think, are the Teladocs, or the Gingers. But for them, the main focus has been on the adult population,” she says. 

DotCom Therapy does have general research backing the idea that online speech and occupational therapy for kids works. One systematic review of seven studies on telehealth-delivered speech and language therapy made significant improvements in children’s language skills that were comparable to in-person therapy – though the research is still limited. 

In general, a lack of platform specific validation has common critique for other mental-health telemedicine companies. DotCom Therapy has released white papers suggesting children have benefited from their teletherapy program. However, Robinson didn’t disclose any additional ongoing validation studies focused specifically on DotCom’s service. 

Instead she notes that the company has worked with two advisors Andre Ostrovsky, a former chief medical officer of Medicaid and Colleen Kraft, a past president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, to develop and track outcome metrics for each service. 

“This will include DSM-5 cross cutting measures, ASHA’s functional communication metrics & proprietary occupational therapy outcomes generated from a team of occupational therapists from masters to doctorate level,” says Robinson. 

On the business side, DotCom’s current school district based approach is a multifaceted process – it takes more than just downloading an app. In one sense, they provide a service rather than just a platform. 

DotCom Therapy aims to become embedded within school districts the company works with. If a school has about 150 students that require speech therapy, for instance, DotCom Therapy will determine how many therapists they believe a school might need.

“We have a proprietary calculator that we’re able to identify the number of therapists that we need to deploy for that specific location,” Robinson says. Overall it takes about 21 days to match therapists with students, per DotCom Therapy’s website.

DotCom Therapy will also coordinate with administrators at K-12 school districts who can be in the room while kids participate in therapy (there’s a video of how that works here), and will also handle the scheduling, and tracking of all student sessions. 

So far, DotCom Therapy has employed about 200 therapists, says Robinson, who are all employed as W-2 employees, rather than independent contractors. The company has about a 97 percent retention rate for employees, says Robinson. On the customer side, the company has retained about 90 percent of customers. 

With this Series A round, Robinson says the company is focusing on expansion into all fifty states by January, and by building out the services for private families. 

“I just feel a lot of urgency for us to grow quickly, but in a very smart way to be able to meet the demand without compromising quality. So what keeps me up at night is really making sure that we can grow at a healthy pace,” says Robinson. 

News: Affinity, a relationship intelligence company, raises $80M to help close deals

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Affinity is focused on industries like investment banking and venture capital, where there aren’t CRMs or networking platforms that cater to the specific needs of the long-term relationship.

Relationships ultimately close deals, but long-term relationships come with a lot of baggage, i.e. email interactions, documents and meetings.

Affinity wants to take what Ray Zhou, co-founder and CEO, refers to as “data exhaust,” all of those daily interactions and communications, and apply machine learning analysis and provide insights on who in the organization has the best chance of getting that initial meeting and closing the deal.

Today, the company announced $80 million in Series C funding, led by Menlo Ventures, which was joined by Advance Venture Partners, Sprints Capital, Pear Ventures, Sway Ventures, MassMutual Ventures, Teamworthy and ECT Capital Partners’ Brian N. Sheth. The new funding gives the company $120 million in total funding since it was founded in 2014.

Affinity, based in San Francisco, is focused on industries like investment banking, private equity, venture capital, consulting and real estate, where Zhou told TechCrunch there aren’t customer relationship management systems or networking platforms that cater to the specific needs of the long-term relationship.

Stanford grads Zhou and co-founder Shubham Goel started the company after recognizing that while there was software for transactional relationships, there wasn’t a good option for the relationship journeys.

He cites data that show up to 90% of company profiles and contact information living in traditional CRM systems are incomplete or out of date. This comes as market researcher Gartner reported the global CRM software market grew 12.6% to $69 billion in 2020.

“It is almost bigger than sales,” Zhou said. “Our worldview is that relationships are the biggest industries in the world. Some would disagree, but relationships are an asset class, they are a currency that separates the winners from the losers.”

Instead, Affinity created “a new breed of CRM,”  Zhou said, that automates the inputting of that data constantly and adds information, like revenue, staff size and funding from proprietary data sources, to assign a score to a potential opportunity and increase the chances of closing a deal.

He intends to use the new funding to expand sales, marketing and engineering to support new products and customers. The company has 125 employees currently; Zhou expects to be over 200 by next year.

To date, the company’s platform has analyzed over 18 trillion emails and 213 million calendar events and currently drives over 500,000 new introductions and tracks 450,000 deals per month. It also has more than 1,700 customers in 70 countries, boasting a list that includes Bain Capital Ventures, Kleiner Perkins, SoftBank Group, Nike, Qualcomm and Twilio.

Tyler Sosin, partner at Menlo Ventures, said he met Zhou and Goel at a time when the firm was looking into CRM companies, but it wasn’t until years later that Affinity came up again when Menlo itself wanted to work with a more modern platform.

As a user of Affinity himself, Sosin said the platform gives him the data he cares about and “removes the manual drudgery of entry and friction in the process.” Affinity also built a product that was intuitive to navigate.

“We have always had an interest in getting CRMs to the next generation, and Affinity is defining itself in a new category of relationship intelligence and just crushing it in the private capital markets,” he said. “They are scaling at an impressive growth rate and solving a hard problem that we don’t see many other companies in the space doing.”

 

News: Twitter users in Turkey can now emoji-react to tweets

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Starting today, Twitter is testing Tweet Reactions in Turkey for a limited time. Users in the region will be able to react to tweets using  ,  ,  , , in addition to . But if you can’t remember the chaos that ensued when the heart react replaced the favorite star in 2015… brace yourself. Last year, Twitter added

Starting today, Twitter is testing Tweet Reactions in Turkey for a limited time. Users in the region will be able to react to tweets using  ,  ,  , , in addition to . But if you can’t remember the chaos that ensued when the heart react replaced the favorite star in 2015… brace yourself.

Last year, Twitter added emoji reactions to DMs, but this isn’t the same set of emojis. This announcement comes after Twitter surveyed users in March about how they’d react (ha) if the platform were to adopt a Facebook-like way to engage with tweets, and what emojis they’d want to communicate with. In the survey, some of the proposed emoji sets included “agree” or “disagree” buttons, a dislike button, or Reddit-like upvotes and downvotes. But Twitter found from its survey that users were concerned about getting negative emoji feedback.

“Although ‘frustration’ and ‘anger’ are also common emotions people feel while reading Tweets, and some people want to express disagreement with Tweets, we’re not incorporating these as emoji reactions right now,” Twitter said in a press release. “Our goal is always to support healthy public conversation and we want to see how our current set of emoji will impact conversations.”

Unlike Facebook, which added reactions in 2015, Twitter isn’t testing an “angry” reaction, which was proposed in its survey. This is likely due to users’ hesitancy around negative responses, but still — if you’ve never been on the receiving end of an ill-intended “ha ha” react… Good for you! And it’s not as though arguments don’t happen on Twitter without emoji reactions.

Twitter says that it wants emoji reactions to give people an easier way to show how they feel, which would — in a perfect world — lead to improved expression and participation in public conversation.

This test is only the latest feature that Twitter has tinkered with in the last week. You may also notice interest-based communities, full-width photos and videos, and new safety features cropping up on your feed. With this particular experiment, Twitter said that it will continue to consider community feedback as it tests additional emoji reactions. Based on user responses, it may expand the test’s availability to other regions.

Users in Turkey can experiment with this feature on iOS, Android, and web, which will roll out across the country in the coming days.

News: Varo Bank raises massive $510M Series E at a $2.5B valuation as it eyes the public markets

• September 9, 2021
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Varo Bank, which last year became the first U.S. neobank to be granted a national bank charter, announced this morning it has raised a staggering $510 million in a Series E funding round at a $2.5 billion valuation. The massive “oversubscribed” financing comes nearly seven months after the fintech startup raised $63 million in a

Varo Bank, which last year became the first U.S. neobank to be granted a national bank charter, announced this morning it has raised a staggering $510 million in a Series E funding round at a $2.5 billion valuation.

The massive “oversubscribed” financing comes nearly seven months after the fintech startup raised $63 million in a round led by NBA star Russell Westbrook, who also joined the startup as an advisor focused on the direction of Varo Bank’s programs aimed at underserved communities, including communities of color. 

Varo declined to reveal any hard revenue figures but did note that in the 13 months since obtaining its bank charter, the company has doubled its number of opened accounts to four million and tripled its revenue. The latest financing brings the San Francisco-based startup’s total raised to $992.4 million since its 2015 inception, meaning that this round alone effectively amounts to nearly $30 million more than what the company has raised over its lifetime. Varo has previously never disclosed valuation, but it did note that the $2.5 billion valuation figure is up “5x” since May of 2020.

At the time of its last raise, in February, Varo touted 3 million opened accounts. Doing the math we can deduce that the startup has added one million new accounts over the past seven months. At the time of its $241 million Series D last June (that included participation from U2’s Bono), Varo counted nearly 2 million banking and savings accounts.

New investor Lone Pine Capital led the latest round, along with “dozens” of additional new backers, including Declaration Partners, Eldridge, Marshall Wace, Berkshire Partners/Stockbridge and funds and accounts managed by BlackRock. They joined existing investors Warburg Pincus, The Rise Fund, Gallatin Point Capital and HarbourVest Partners. 

Last year, Varo announced it had been granted a national bank charter from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) and secured regulatory approvals from the FDIC and Federal Reserve to open Varo Bank, N.A. — effectively becoming a “real” bank but with no physical branches.

CEO and founder Colin Walsh told TechCrunch that the move had a significant impact on his company’s growth. First off, it effectively eliminated an intermediary.

“Being in the regulated system loop has allowed us to expand our margins considerably,” he said. “We also now have direct access to the payment network so our ability to generate substantial value both to our consumers as well as to our shareholders is becoming more and more apparent.”

Walsh also said that Varo is not yet profitable, but is on its way there. He predicts that Varo will achieve profitability in about two years, or three years after becoming a bank.

“One of the nice things that the charter affords us is that we can actually pursue growth and profitability at the same time,” Walsh said. “It’s very much within that three-year window of when we became a bank.”

Also in the last 13 months, Varo has nearly doubled its employee count to nearly 800 today and expanded into a third hub in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Walsh admits that the raise was not necessarily in the company’s plans.

“We didn’t set out to raise this much money. It was coming in fast and furious and we were at like $510 [million] and I finally said, ‘Ok, enough,’ ” he said. “But the fact that we were able to raise this money without even really trying is evidence of the fact that there’s something happening that is just very culturally relevant in this moment and our success to me is very much about having that kind of impact at scale.”

The executive added that the choice of lead investor did tie in to its eventual plans to go public.

“They’re a very reputable sophisticated crossover investor that invests in high-growth, high-potential private market companies and ultimately work with them to go public,” Walsh told TechCrunch. “It’s definitely on the roadmap for us as I think there’s a ton of value we can create as a public company when the time is right.”

Existing investors, he added, aren’t putting pressure on Varo for that to happen. And so, Walsh predicts any move in that direction will only take place sometime “in the next couple of years.”

He also said that down the line, it’s possible that Varo would explore a global expansion.

Varo launched in 2017 with a mission to become “an all digital, mission-driven, FDIC insured bank designed around the modern American consumer,” Walsh said. Today, the company’s core product offerings include “premium” bank accounts that have no minimum balance requirement or monthly account fee and high-interest savings accounts combined with a suite of “tech-first features” designed to help people save and manage their money.

It recently launched Varo Advance, a short-term line of credit that gives qualifying customers a way to secure a cash advance of up to $100 within its app “in seconds” and Varo Perks cashback rewards. The company also has plans to launch Varo Believe, a credit building credit card program designed to help Varo customers “safely build or repair their credit,” with a flexible security deposit and without fees. 

The new capital will go toward continued investment in its products, risk platform and design, according to Walsh. Varo’s goal is to scale to “tens of millions” of consumers and to become a “loved brand recognized for its social impact mission,” he added.

Since the beginning, the startup has been vocal about its intent to help boost financial inclusion with its offerings that aim to serve marginalized and underserved communities that it says have been historically excluded from traditional financial institutions. For Walsh, that remains important.

“We believe we’re on the cusp of creating what will be an iconic brand that’s doing good in the world,” he said. “I want to be like the ‘Patagonia of banking,’ like where people feel really good about the company and what we’re doing and the impact we’re having on people’s lives.”

Varo Bank competes with a growing number of all-digital banks operating in the U.S., including Chime, Current, N26, Level, Step, Moven, Empower Finance, Dave, GoBank, Aspiration, Stash, Zero and others.

Like many other fintechs, Varo saw a pandemic-related boost in business.

“It’s been a time when many re-evaluated their banking relationships and decided to switch to a digital bank that offers far better value and more convenience than a traditional bank,” Walsh said.

Lone Pine Capital’s David Craver said of his new investment: “What the Varo team has been able to achieve in such a short time in the market is truly remarkable. This is a group of trailblazers who are well on their way to building one of America’s next generation of iconic companies.

Warburg Pincus’ Todd Schell and Varo investor said from day one, his firm was aligned with Walsh’s view that the bank charter was fundamental to a long term sustainable business model.

“In Varo we saw the opportunity to radically redefine a cost structure, introduce new products across a wide variety of categories, and uniquely solve use cases which have historically been out of scope,” Schell wrote via email. “Varo today has all of the pieces to this puzzle, including a next generation banking technology stack, the license to operate and fully derive the benefits of it, and the capital to scale. Varo already serves millions of Americas, but we believe it has the potential to reinvent financial services for tens of millions of people around the world.”

News: Breakout “CRISPR platform” company Mammoth Biosciences is officially a unicorn

• September 9, 2021
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The CRISPR-based biotech startup Mammoth Biosciences is officially a unicorn, the company says.  The billion dollar valuation comes on the back of a $150 million series D round led by Redmile Group, with participation from Foresite Capital, Senator Investment Group, Sixth Street, Greenspring Associates, Mayfield, Decheng Capital, Plum Alley and NFX. Combined with a late

The CRISPR-based biotech startup Mammoth Biosciences is officially a unicorn, the company says. 

The billion dollar valuation comes on the back of a $150 million series D round led by Redmile Group, with participation from Foresite Capital, Senator Investment Group, Sixth Street, Greenspring Associates, Mayfield, Decheng Capital, Plum Alley and NFX. Combined with a late 2020 Series C round of $45 million (which included participation from Amazon), this brings the company’s total financing to $195 million. 

Mammoth Biosciences has been a major player in the CRISPR space since its founding in 2017. CRISPR, put simply, is a pair of biological scissors that can cut and replace genes in cells and living organisms, opening up the potential to perhaps permanently cure genetic disease, and perform DNA-based diagnostics. 

One of the company’s four founders is one of the original discoverers of CRISPR, Jennifer Doudna, who recently won the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry along with Emmaneulle Charpentier for their 2012 work demonstrating the CRISPR could be used to cut DNA. The company’s other co-founders are Janice Chen (CTO), Lucas Harrington (CSO), and Trevor Martin, (CEO). 

There are a handful of other CRISPR-based companies out there, including a number that are already publicly traded. This unicorn milestone stands as a sign that Mammoth’s unique approach to CRISPR could help it distinguish itself in that landscape. 

“It’s a milestone,” says Ursheet Parikh, the co-leader of Mayfield’s engineering biology investment practice. “I think the company has a long way to go from here. This round and this valuation are just signifying the promise of this stage of what the future will hold,”

Parikh says he sees Mammoth as a CRISPR “platform.” Mammoth has been discovering new types of CRISPR systems that could be used to solve specific biological problems. 

“The best analog is, before you had Intel and Microsoft, if somebody wanted to build a new application, they would have to build a whole new computer function with an operating system,” says Parikh. “You don’t have to build a CRISPR solution from the ground-up. You can work with Mammoth to find the right proteins for specific problems.” 

The CRISPR system most people think of when they hear the phrase is a two part mechanism called CRISPR/Cas-9. The actual molecular scissors that cut DNA (and allow for the editing to happen) is typically the Cas-9 protein. However, there’s a whole ecosystem of Cas proteins out there that can also cut DNA, and as Mammoth’s leadership argues, can do so even better in the original depending on the application. 

Mammoth is creating a “CRISPR toolbox” or a collection of different Cas proteins. You could think of them as different types of scissors that each have their own specific use cases. 

In August 2020, for instance Mammoth discovered a family of proteins called the Casɸ family. This family is an ultra-small version of the typical Cas9 proteins that may make it easier to develop therapies in living people, and could enhance the precision of gene-editing. Mammoth has also characterized a Cas14 system, another family of ultra-small proteins that latch on to different target sequences in the genome (like landing pads that tell Cas proteins approximately where to cut) than the Cas9 proteins do. 

“Mammoth was really founded with this idea that there’s this whole universe kind of a CRISPR that goes beyond the legacy systems like Cas9,” says Martin. 

The development of a CRISPR toolkit isn’t just interesting science, it’s also a smart business move for Mammoth for another reason: intellectual property ownership. 

The original CRISPR/Cas9 system has been the subject of a patent battle  between the University of California Berkeley, and MIT’s Broad Institute, where scientists also discovered CRISPR around the same time. 

The newer Cas proteins, not part of this patent battle, allow Mammoth to completely sidestep that concern. “The patent disputes that the Broad is involved in concern legacy CRISPR-Cas9 systems. Mammoth’s systems are not Cas9-based, so they are not subject to these disputes,” Martin clarifies. 

In essence, Mammoth has been building up a collection of proprietary tools that might later be put to use. Though the possibilities are nearly limitless (genetic medicine or CRISPR-based diagnostics) many of these therapeutic products don’t exist quite yet. 

2020 was a big year for CRISPR therapeutics due to an influx of new clinical trials. That suggesting therapeutics are just beginning to work their way through the regulatory requirements – though approvals are still far off. 

Companies like CRISPR Therapeutics and Vertex Pharmaceuticals have announced promising results from trials on CRISPR-based beta thalassemia and sickle cell treatments. And this summer, Intellia Therapeutics (another company co-founded by Doudna) and Regeneron took the field a step further, showing that CRISPR-based treatments injected directly into the body were useful in silencing a gene that causes ATTR amyloidosis, a disorder where proteins produced in the liver are misfolded (this can lead to complications, like heart failure over time). 

Mammoth’s niche in the expanding world of CRISPR therapeutics, notes Martin, will be a focus on in-vivo applications (or therapies delivered in the human body) which he argues their CRISPR toolbox may enable. 

“We don’t have a timeline [for potential products] on the therapeutic side but we’ll definitely be releasing more information over the next few years and we’ve been really excited about the technical results so far,” says Martin. 

Diagnostics, however, is already an area where Mammoth could distinguish itself sooner rather than later. There, the company is already working with partners to create viable products.

In January, Mammoth earned funding through the The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to develop a point-of-care test that could detect up to 10 pathogens at once, and a larger, lab-based test that could detect up to 1,000. Mammoth has also received funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics (RADx) program to develop advanced diagnostics using CRISPR, and entered into a partnership with GSK to develop a point-of-care Covid-19 test that could detect viral RNA in about 20 minutes.

Mammoth has continued to straddle both worlds of diagnostics and therapeutics, despite “pressure” to fit into one box or the other, says Parikh. The unicorn valuation, he adds, is an additional sign that the company’s technology can operate in both worlds. 

“I think what this milestone, this round, does, is validate their approach to company building, which was really to focus on an area of expertise, rather than just putting themselves in a box, of diagnostics or therapeutics,” he says.