Author : zebethcontrol

Amazon: Coming soon to your eyeballs

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 3, 2022Posted in Alexa, Amazon, Gadgets, Hardware, mojo visionNo Comments

New computing paradigms are never not going to be weird, but such uncomfortability dramatically intensifies when the human body enters into the picture. There’s a sense in which the smart contact lens feels like something of an inevitability (whether it’s produced by Mojo Vision or someone is another question altogether), but that doesn’t mean each new application won’t feel a little strange. Today Mojo announced “the first major third-party consumer application on a smart contact lens,” with the introduction of Alexa Shopping List integration. This is still very much a test — a proof of concept, really — designed to demonstrate what something like a shopping list might look like on a contact lens-based computing interface. The implementation utilizes Alexa voice computing to add or remove items to the list, which pop up in the HUD interface while shopping. The user can futher navitate through the list with their eyes — and check items off when they’re in the cart. If a family member adds an item to the list remotely, it will pop up in the Mojo interface. If nothing else, the test feature demonstrates how additional interfaces like voice computing can be used to augment the limitations of this eyeball-based computing. Attempting to enter new items using the eye sounds like a bit of a nightmare, but that interface certainly makes sense for simpler tasks, like scrolling. Amazon’s team helped Mojo implement Alexa Shpping for the test feature. “At Amazon, we believe experiences can be made better with technology that is always there when you need it, yet you never have to think about it,” Alexa Shopping List GM Ramya Reguramalingam said in a release. “We’re excited that Mojo Vision’s Invisible Computing for Mojo Lens, paired with the demonstration of Alexa Shopping List as a use case, is showing the art of what’s possible for hands-free, discreet smart shopping experiences.” Mojo Vision is still reasonably cautious around whether or not such functionality is actually arriving. The company notes in the release, “The test integration shows how Mojo Vision could integrate the Alexa voice AI with Mojo Lens’ unique and powerful eye-based interface.” A demo of the technology debuted onstage today at a Wall Street Journal event in Southern California. Amazon: Coming soon to your eyeballs by Brian Heater originally published on ZebethMedia

Life360 to now integrate its service with Tile, following last year’s acquisition • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 3, 2022Posted in airtag, bluetooth trackers, Gadgets, Hardware, life360, tile, trackersNo Comments

Following last year’s $205 million acquisition of AirTag competitor Tile by family locator service Life360, the two companies today will now integrate their products and services. With an update arriving soon to Life360’s app, members will be able to see the location of the Tile Bluetooth trackers on the same in-app map where they also track their family members’ locations. In addition, Life360’s over 42 million members will also have the option to join Tile’s Finding Network, going forward. The Tile Finding Network is what makes it possible for people to locate their lost items when their Tiles are out of Bluetooth range. Unlike Apple’s AirTag, Tile doesn’t have a network of iPhones sold worldwide to tap into. So instead, it relies on the Tile app installed by its own customer base. When any Tile customer is in the presence of a missing item with a Tile tag attached, that information is shared across the network to allow the item’s owner to locate their missing item. Image Credits: Life360 If all Life360 members opted in to join this network, it would increase by 10x, the company says. That would make it the largest cross-platform finding network across both iOS and Android. (AirTag don’t work as a tracker with Android, so Life360 isn’t counting them here. Apple’s trackers, however, can be scanned by Android devices, because they include an NFC chip so they’re technically cross-platform in that way.) Tile members who want to track their items in the Life360 app will have to go through a few steps to get started. They’ll need to link their Tile trackers to their account in order for their “Circle” of family and trusted friends (like caregivers, emergency contacts, etc.) to be able to see the location of the Tiles on the map. They’ll also be able to track Tile-enabled products that have Tile’s functionality built-in, like various laptops and headphones. When an item goes missing or is misplaced, users can then tap “Find” in the Life360 app, which rings the item if it’s nearby. If it’s further away, users can select “Notify when Found,” to tap into the Tile network to be alerted to its location. Life360 sees the potential in tying Tile’s trackers to its broader family locator service as the small trackers are often used by families — to track kids’ backpacks, a teen driver’s keys, a parent’s wallet, a family pet, and so on. The company said the new functionality will roll out to its app over the next few weeks.

Dataloop secures cash infusion to expand its data annotation tool set • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 3, 2022Posted in AI, data labeling, Enterprise, machine learning, Robotics & AI, startup, StartupsNo Comments

Data annotation, or the process of adding labels to images, text, audio and other forms of sample data, is typically a key step in developing AI systems. The vast majority of systems learn to make predictions by associating labels with specific data samples, like the caption “bear” with a photo of a black bear. A system trained on many labeled examples of different kinds of contracts, for example, would eventually learn to distinguish between those contracts and even extrapolate to contracts that it hasn’t seen before. The trouble is, annotation is a manual and labor-intensive process that’s historically been assigned to gig workers on platforms like Amazon Mechanical Turk. But with the soaring interest in AI — and in the data used to train that AI — an entire industry has sprung up around tools for annotation and labeling. Dataloop, one of the many startups vying for a foothold in the nascent market, today announced that it raised $33 million in a Series B round led by Nokia Growth Partners (NGP) Capital and Alpha Wave Global. Dataloop develops software and services for automating aspects of data prep, aiming to shave time off of the AI system development process. “I worked at Intel for over 13 years, and that’s where I met Dataloop’s second co-founder and CPO, Avi Yashar,” Dataloop CEO Eran Shlomo told ZebethMedia in an email interview. “Together with Avi, I left Intel and founded Dataloop. Nir [Buschi], our CBO, joined us as third co-founder, after he held executive positions [at] technology companies and [lead] business and go-to-market at venture-backed startups.” Dataloop initially focused on data annotation for computer vision and video analytics. But in recent years, the company has added new tools for text, audio, form and document data and allowed customers to integrate custom data applications developed in-house. One of the more recent additions to the Dataloop platform is data management dashboards for unstructured data. (As opposed to structured data, or data that’s arranged in a standardized format, unstructured data isn’t organized according to a common model or schema.) Each provides tools for data versioning and searching metadata, as well as a query language for querying datasets and visualizing data samples. Image Credits: Dataloop “All AI models are learned from humans through the data labeling process. The labeling process is essentially a knowledge encoding process in which a human teaches the machine the rules using positive and negative data examples,” Shlomo said. “Every AI application’s primary goal is to create the ‘data flywheel effect’ using its customer’s data: a better product leads to more users leads to more data and subsequently a better product.” Dataloop competes against heavyweights in the data annotation and labeling space, including Scale AI, which has raised over $600 million in venture capital. Labelbox is another major rival, having recently nabbed more than $110 million in a financing round led by SoftBank. Beyond the startup realm, tech giants, including Google, Amazon, Snowflake and Microsoft, offer their own data annotation services. Dataloop must be doing something right. Shlomo claims the company currently has “hundreds” of customers across retail, agriculture, robotics, autonomous vehicles and construction, although he declined to reveal revenue figures. An open question is whether Dataloop’s platform solves some of the major challenges that exist in data labeling today. Last year, a paper published out of MIT found that data labeling tends to be highly inconsistent, potentially harming the accuracy of AI systems. A growing body of academic research suggests that annotators introduce their own biases when labeling data — for example, labeling phrases in African American English (a modern dialect spoken primarily by Black Americans) as more toxic than the general American English equivalents. These biases often manifest in unfortunate ways; think moderation algorithms that are more likely to ban Black users than white users. Data labelers are also notoriously underpaid. The annotators who contributed captions to ImageNet, one of the better-known open source computer vision libraries, reportedly made a median of $2 per hour in wages. Shlomo says it’s incumbent on the companies using Dataloop’s tools to affect change — not necessarily Dataloop itself. “We see the underpayment of annotators as a market failure. Data annotation shares many qualities with software development, one of them being the impact of talent on productivity,” Shlomo said. “[As for bias,] bias in AI starts with the question that the AI developer chooses to ask and the instructions they supply to the labeling companies. We call it the ‘primary bias.’ For example, you could never identify color bias unless you ask for skin color in your labeling recipe. The primary bias issue is something the industry and regulators should address. Technology alone will not solve the issue.” To date, Dataloop, which has 60 employees, has raised $50 million in venture capital. The company plans to grow its workforce to 80 employees by the end of the year.

6 key metrics that can help SaaS startups outlast this downturn • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 3, 2022Posted in Column, EC Cloud and Enterprise Infrastructure, EC Column, EC How To, Enterprise, enterprise saas, growth tactics, SaaS management, StartupsNo Comments

Sudheesh Nair Contributor Sudheesh Nair is CEO of ThoughtSpot, a business intelligence company that has built an intuitive Google-like interface for data analytics. Before ThoughtSpot, Sudheesh was president at Nutanix. More posts by this contributor A blueprint for building a great startup founding team With the economy slowing and businesses tightening their belts, the coming months will be make or break for many startups. Business is shifting from a “growth at all costs” mindset to one that is more measured. This means leaders need to know where to conserve cash, where to target spend effectively and which customers are at risk of churn so they can take proactive steps accordingly. SaaS companies are in a better position than most because they have access to the data that can guide these decisions. They inherently know not only that a customer bought a product, but who is using it, how they’re using it and how often. Management teams should pay close attention to this data for signs of changing customer behavior and watch their sales pipeline for clues about where to target spend and where to cut costs. At a high level, leaders need to understand — before it becomes obvious — if the slowdown this year is affecting demand at their company and where that’s happening. The goal is to pick up on warning signs early and course-correct as you go, and those signs are often hidden in the breadcrumbs. Do you know what your customers are thinking? Not all industries are affected equally, so don’t assume your customers will cut spending this year just because the headlines are bleak. When thinking about metrics for SaaS companies, it’s helpful to look at how current customers are using your product so you can identify areas of concern and take action. You should also read the tea leaves in your pipeline to understand where to cut back and where to invest. Every CFO is looking closely at contracts to evaluate areas for cost-cutting. Only those technologies offering real value will survive, so SaaS vendors need to get ahead of this. Traditional customer satisfaction metrics like NPS are a lagging indicator and will not help you respond quickly enough. Instead, look at the following areas to be more proactive: How much are customers using your product? You can measure usage trends with points of access, number of registered users, volume of queries or some other metric depending on your product. The point is, as a SaaS company, you should not have to guess who is using your product, when, why, how much and if that’s changing. Say you have a customer that logs in and uses your product 10 times a day, and that number hasn’t increased over the last year. It’s a sign they are not adding new use cases and creating new value.

Port internal development platform gives visibility into DevOps architecture • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 3, 2022Posted in devops, Enterprise, Israeli startups, portNo Comments

In a typical large organization DevOps tasks have become so complex, and involve navigating so many tools, it has become difficult to understand the current state of affairs, and to add resources when needed. It’s gotten to the point where developers often need to submit a ticket, even for a routine operation, which is adding unnecessary friction and slowing down the entire process. Port, an early stage Israeli startup, wants to help by offering a portal of sorts where DevOps engineers can get visibility into the current state of the architecture, while deploying new resources when needed, all from a single window. Traditionally, this kind of functionality was only available to large engineering organizations like Netflix, Spotify and Lyft. Today, Port announced a $7 million seed investment to bring it to the masses. The startup has created what is called an ‘internal development platform’ with the goal of letting both developers and operations get more work done without filing tickets, says Zohar Einy, company co-founder and CEO. “We’ve built this internal development platform that essentially allows engineering to access a single interface that acts as a single pane of glass [for all DevOps information],” Einy said This actually is highly customizable and Port provides the building blocks to create a portal that makes most sense to the customer and their way of working, a lot like the portal building tools from the past, but geared specifically towards DevOps. “We took a builder-based approach that gives them a very simple tool set to build their internal platform with [low] code components that we provide them,” he said. Ultimately they can do two main things, no matter how they build it. “The first layer is the ability provides engineering with good visibility into DevOps. They can define the software catalog with all the data that engineering cares about regarding microservices, environments, cloud resources, permissions and things like that,” he said. The second piece lets them self-provision components like creating an environment or setting up a microservice. He says all of this is designed with the goal of cutting down the number of help tickets filed between developers and operations to keep development flowing more smoothly. The company just launched a year ago, but they have paying customers using the product in a proof of concept scenario. With 22 employees already, Einy says that diversity is a big priority for the company. He says to that end, they have been working with NGOs, a common method for hiring underrepresented people in Israel where the company is based. Roni Floman, who runs marketing for Port says the NGOs help the company find people from communities in Israel, who might not otherwise apply at a startup like Port. “Israel has some NGOs dealing with adding Orthodox, very religious people, or people from Israel’s Arab community and usually those NGOs help place people [from these communities] in companies because in many cases, these people don’t usually just apply for a job [at a company like this],” she explained. “[Our] plan is to connect and proactively reach out to be able to hire those people and create a more diverse workforce.” Today’s $7 million seed round was led by TLV Partners with participation from some prominent industry angels.

Snapchat now lets you share your Strava activities in snaps and stories • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 3, 2022Posted in Apps, Snapchat, Social, StravaNo Comments

Snapchat is partnering with activity and fitness tracking platform Strava to launch a new Lens that lets users share their fitness journey on Snapchat. The new Strava Activity Lens works by connecting directly to your Strava profile, giving you access to stats and activity maps from your recent workouts. Each time you a workout, it will be automatically loaded into Snapchat. To share your activity from Strava to Snapchat, you need to open the Strava app and find your profile. From there, you have to select the “Activities” tab and scroll to the workout you want to share. Shareable activities must be visible to “Everyone” or “Followers only” on Strava and include a visible map. On Snapchat, you can find the Strava Lens in the app’s Lens Explorer or on Strava’s public profile. Your most recent workout will automatically appear, or you can toggle through different activities to pick one to share. Once you’ve chosen a workout to share, you can create a snap or story. The post will include a link back to your Strava workout so your friends and family can learn more through the Strava app. You can also share a slideshow from your camera roll by tapping “Memories” to access photos from your workout. Snapchat notes that you can press and slide the capture button to the left to lock and record hands free. You also have the option to narrate while you go through photos from workout. The new Lens is available globally to all Strava and Snapchat users on iOS and Android. The launch of the new partnership comes a day after Snapchat announced that it’s partnering with Amazon to give Snapchat users the ability to digitally try on eyewear styles from a range of popular brands. The new partnership will see brands including Maui Jim, Persol, Oakley, Ray-Ban, Costa Del Mar and others made available for virtual try-on.

Loop lassos ex-Uber talent and money to finally fix freight invoicing • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 3, 2022Posted in Fintech, Founders Fund, logistics, Loop, payments, Startups, UberNo Comments

Matt McKinney was a data science manager at Uber, helping launch Uber Freight, along with software engineer Shaosu Liu. One of the main problems the pair saw there was that while they were able to grow the top line, they found it difficult to grow the bottom line because they were “losing a bunch of money” to bad debt and late payments. When digging in to understand why, the duo realized that “there’s so much complexity in a single freight bill.” For example, they found out that 20% of all freight invoices have an error. They also discovered it takes 50 days on average to process and pay a single invoice. “A lot of people in this business aren’t like Uber — they don’t have 250 engineers working on problems to figure this out,” McKinney explains. “So Joe’s Trucking in Cincinnati, Ohio, for example, probably has very similar billing and payment problems as Uber Freight.” In speaking to about three dozen shippers, carriers and brokers in the industry, McKinney and Liu kept hearing the same thing: “It’s hard for us to get paid and it’s hard for us to pay.” “So as an entrepreneur, when you hear that pain described so vividly verbatim 35 different times, you kind of, you know that the pain is your opportunity to build a product that doesn’t exist in the market,” he told ZebethMedia in an interview. So the pair spent nights and weekends building a prototype for Loop, a startup that sits at the intersection of logistics and payments, before leaving Uber in May of 2021 to focus full time on the business. Soon after, they raised a $6 million seed round co-led by Susa Ventures and 8VC. And then earlier this year, they raised a $24 million Series A round led by Founders Fund. Both financings were not previously publicly announced. During their exploratory phase, three of the 35 companies — unnamed large enterprises — they talked to told them if they built a tool to help solve the problem that they would help test out the prototype and be its first customers. Since then, the company has developed open APIs that it says “ingest data and streamline shipment document capture.” More specifically, the company said it uses natural language processing (NLP) and computer vision to digitize workflows and reconcile payments and that its technology “accommodates the lack of standardization and is able to extract data from a variety of document types and data sources to validate invoice accuracy, so that invoices and payments can be cleared in close to real-time,” or even to real time, depending on when the user wants to release their funds. Loop goes as far as to claim that its tech can reduce the lag time between the time an invoice is received and paid from 50 days to 3 days, as well as reduce invoice errors to “near 0%.” The startup’s target customers are shippers that manufacture or distribute goods (think Walmart, Pepsi, Coca-Cola and Nike). They also can work with brokers, or 3PLs, who broker a transaction between a truck driver and shipper. Loop launched its product offering in March and in its first month, did $25 million in booked total payment volume. Today, it’s doing over $1 billion in total payment volume. Image Credits: Loop One of the tailwinds that helped Loop, believes McKinney, is the COVID pandemic-driven secular shift of paper to electronic methods of payments. Also, geopolitical issues and the pandemic exposing vulnerabilities in the global supply chain have led to a surge in freight costs, which means that shippers “are looking for every way to cut costs,” he said. Loop’s aim is to help these companies minimize cost and be more efficient. And, McKinney claims, it can bring payments down Loop makes money by taking a percentage of total payments volume. It’s a fixed percentage based on tier, and as a company advances tiers, the percentage they pay goes down. A consumption-based revenue model was important to the pair, McKinney told ZebethMedia. “We want to align incentives so that if you’re getting value out of the product, you’re going to be using it more,” he said. “And that’s how we should get paid.” The company today has 35 employees, with engineers hailing from Uber, Google, Meta and Flexport. In fact, one senior software engineer from Flexport cold emailed Loop about a job. When he told Flexport founder and then-CEO Ryan Peterson that he was leaving for Loop, Peterson reached out. “He said, ‘You just stole one of our No. 1 engineers,’” McKinney said. “I want to know what you’re doing and I want to invest.” And so he did. Also showing no hard feelings in backing the company are Uber co-founders Garrett Camp, through his venture firm, Expa, and Ryan Graves, through his family office, Saltwater Capital. And more than 10 of Loop’s 35 employees came from Uber. Other investors include FourMore Capital, Lineage Ventures, Nichole Wischoff, 9Yards Capital, McVest Co, Mark Pincus and OEL Ventures. “We’re simplifying logistics payments but we’re also generating data and that data, and the quality of the data, is what differentiates us from a lot of the competition as well,” McKinney said. Founders Fund principal John Luttig, who led the Loop investment, told ZebethMedia via email that his firm was drawn to the startup because it is using a tech-first approach to eliminate friction for all parties in the supply chain “while competitors are simply throwing more people at the problem.” “As the domestic logistics renaissance continues and more companies look to reshore U.S. manufacturing, Loop’s technology will only become more valuable,” he added.

Meta India head Ajit Mohan departs to join Snap • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 3, 2022Posted in ajit mohan, Facebook, india, meta, Snap, SocialNo Comments

Ajit Mohan, the head of Meta in India, has left the firm and joined rival Snap, according to sources familiar with the matter. At Snap, Mohan will serve as the President of the APAC business, two sources said. Mohan joined Meta, called Facebook then, in January 2019 as a VP and MD of the India business. During his stay at the firm, Facebook’s family of apps including Instagram and WhatsApp added over 200 million users in India and made a series of ambitious investments in the country, including cutting a $5.7 billion check to Indian telecom giant Jio Platforms and ramped up the commerce engine of WhatsApp. A McKinsey alum, Mohan rose to the stardom at Star, where he played an instrumental role in getting the entertainment conglomerate to launch a streaming service, called Hotstar. Along with Uday Shankar, Mohan also played a key part in the content strategy of Hotstar, banking on local movies and shows and sports streaming. The timely bet on online streaming and cricket helped Hotstar become a crown jewel in Disney’s portfolio after the Fox acquisition. “Ajit has decided to step down from his role at Meta to pursue another opportunity outside of the company,” Nicola Mendelsohn, Vice President of Global Business Group at Meta, said in a statement. “Over the last four years, he has played an important role in shaping and scaling our India operations so they can serve many millions of Indian businesses, partners and people. We remain deeply committed to India and have a strong leadership team in place to carry on all our work and partnerships. We are grateful for Ajit’s leadership and contribution and wish him the very best for the future.” (More to follow)

Labrador Systems deploys its first assistive elder-care robots • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 3, 2022Posted in eldercare, Hardware, labrador systems, Robotics & AINo Comments

We’ve been keeping tabs on Labrador Systems since we caught a very early demo of its elder care-focused technology in a hotel suite several CESes ago. Today the California-based robotics firm announced that it’s begun deploying its Retriever Pro system to a handful of early clients, including, On Lok PACE, Nationwide Insurance, Masonic Homes of California, Western Homes Communities, Eskaton, The Perfect Companion, Presbyterian Villages of Michigan, University of Michigan Flint and Graceworks Lutheran Services. The news follows extended piloting for the system in places like senior living communities. The Retriever Pro is designed to bring a kind of assistive freedom to people living on their own with mobility limitations. It’s a clever technology that effectively amounts to a semi-autonomous mobile shelving system that can be used to deliver objects they might otherwise have issues carrying. “The burden on caregivers is growing at a rate that is simply not sustainable. Organizations are already experiencing major caregiver shortages, and in the coming years there will be significantly more people in my parents’ age group (85+) with fewer people to help take care of them,” CEO Mike Dooley said in a release tied to the news. “Our mission is to provide relief on both sides of that equation, empowering individuals who need care to do more on their own while extending the impact of each caregiver’s visit well beyond the time they are physically present.” Image Credits: Labrador The world of elder-care robotics is still fairly nascent in the U.S. Japan may have the largest head start in the category due, in part, to its aging population, but the concept has been growing in acceptance. A number of firms working to design more all-purpose systems have pointed to living assistance as a potential application, but currently the robotic market isn’t exactly flush with this tech. The company says it also “continues to move forward with development and testing” of its more consumer-focused system, the Retriever. Dooley clarified the difference between the two in a comment to ZebethMedia, noting: The key added features for the Pro are for bringing caregivers and staff into the loop and overall supporting the care provider on their mission. A portion of that is on the software side, with integration with enterprise grade solutions for care management. So for example, caregiving organizations could have multiple users log on to set schedules for the robot, check activity reports and remotely assist with the robot operation. On the hardware side, we’d have more options for carrying and powering a 3rd party tablet or other screen device that the care organization may already be using, to move that device through the home. The Pro will also have provisions for supporting cellular connectivity as an upgrade.

Quinio’s $40M equity, debt raise shows LatAm is strong market for e-commerce aggregators • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 3, 2022Posted in Commerce, e-commerce aggregator, latin america, Quinio, VentureNo Comments

Quinio, an e-commerce aggregator that acquires, operates and builds consumer packaged e-commerce brands across Latin America, secured a $40 million boost in both equity and debt. It’s an interesting time for e-commerce aggregators. Over the past year, the market went from hot, hot, hot to cool, though some aggregators still held on and were even able to close on venture capital deals. For example, OpenStore closed on $32 million in September, while secondhand apparel aggregator Gently took in $2 million of pre-seed dollars and Una Brands bagged $30 million to acquire APAC brands. Quinio’s co-founder and CEO Juan Gavito said via email that he witnessed similar changes this year, calling 2022 “an atypical year for e-commerce” as consumers’ shopping habits shifted back to in-person after two years of purchasing largely online. “This shift created a more challenging environment for e-commerce aggregators who benefited strongly from the rapid acceleration seen during 2020 and 2021,” he told ZebethMedia. “We expect the market to settle down a bit during this year and get back to pre-COVID growth rates for 2023.” Gavito started Quinio in 2020 with his brother, Santiago Gavito, and Iker Garay. We previously profiled the company in December 2021 when it raised $20 million in seed funding, also a mix of equity and debt. The company focuses on brands in the areas of home and kitchen, beauty and personal care, baby, health and household items. It already owns and operates several brands that have a presence in Mexico, Colombia, Chile and the U.S. Over the past year, Gavito also saw the growth environment become more challenging, which led to industry peers “struggling to fulfill their projections.” Many of Quinio’s competitors also “struggled with fundraising and/or decided to reduce the pace of acquisitions, creating an interesting opportunity for us to find well-positioned brands at attractive valuations.” By “well-positioned,” he noted that the company doubled down on business development and M&A rather than cutting both as other aggregators have had to do. And although Latin America’s e-commerce market continues to be one of the fastest-growing regions in the world, and is expected to grow over 50% by 2025, Quinio also added some protections into its process for seeking out companies to acquire. That included implementing new criteria filters when evaluating new brands so that the company increases its probability of acquiring a successful brand. The company is also more product-centered and is betting more on technology than when it started, Gavito said. The strategy seems to have paid off so far. Quinio is a profitable company with over 100 employees and growing rapidly, he said. Meanwhile, Gavito expects to end 2022 with over $50 million in annual recurring revenue, and its brands are reporting solid growth while gaining a regional presence. The new funding gives the company over $60 million in total equity and debt financing. The split related to the new $40 million was not disclosed. The equity portion was led by Northgate Capital, which was joined by existing and new investors, including Cometa, Dila Capital, AlleyCorp, Western Technology Investment, Alchimia Investments and a group of strategic individual investors. Quinio’s debt financing details were also not disclosed at this time. Big plans for the capital include continuing to acquire, operate and boost brands in Latin America. “We have learned a lot since our first acquisition and therefore feel better prepared to tackle new opportunities going forward,” Gavito added. “Our tech tools have allowed us to reduce employee non-strategic tasks time, have more accurate projections on revenue and costs, be smarter on catalog expansion and product development and optimize marketing return on investment.”