Author : zebethcontrol

Neoplants bioengineers houseplants to use them as air purifiers • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 27, 2022Posted in Climate, lab grown, Neoplants, pollution, StartupsNo Comments

Meet Neoplants, a French startup that is designing genetically modified houseplants so that they can absorb air pollutants. The startup’s first plant, the Neo P1, works hand in hand with the company’s own microbiome located in the soil near the plant roots. Neoplants targets specifically a group of indoor air pollutants that can’t be efficiently captured by traditional air purifiers. Most air purifiers focus on particulate matters. But it’s harder to tackle volatile organic compounds (VOCs). That’s why Neoplants focuses on two categories of VOCs — formaldehyde (HCHO), and benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and xylene (BTEX). These pollutants come from outdoor pollution, but also from materials that are used in construction, such as paints, coatings and chemicals. Cooking and smoking can also foster indoor pollution. “Our plant can capture the four main components that cause air pollution at home. But it can also turn it into something useful as it can become plant matter,” co-founder and CEO Lionel Mora told me. Plants usually metabolize CO2. But the Neo P1 has been modified at the DNA level so that it produces new enzymes that can also metabolize air pollutants. For instance, it turns formaldehyde into fructose, and it turns BTEX compounds into an amino acid that the plant can use to produce proteins later. While genetically modified organisms aren’t new, the company says that applying these methods on houseplants is new. “We had to sequence and annotate the genetic structure of this plant,” co-founder and CTO Patrick Torbey told me. Image Credits: Neoplants But the plant also needs some bacteria to remediate VOCs. The startup selected the most efficient group of bacteria against toluene and benzene across multiple rounds of directed evolution. In other words, Neoplants customers also have to add some proprietary powerdrops regularly to make sure that the combination of the plant and the microbiome-enhanced soil keep working well. After four years of research, Neoplants will start pre-orders at some point during the first quarter of 2023. The company creates its own plant shoots. It has partnered with industrial companies in the gardening industry so that they can grow these plants in their production sites. Neoplants will sell the Neo P1 package with the plant itself, a plant pot with a basket inside designed for maximum air intake and three months of microbiome for $179. The company raised $20 million from True Ventures, Heartcore, Entrepreneur First, Collaborative Fund and various business angels, such as Niklas Zennström. Up next, Neoplants aims to use the same processes with other plant varieties and other properties. It wants to start working on carbon capture and storage next year. Image Credits: Neoplants

Countdown to compliance as EU’s Digital Services Act published • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 27, 2022Posted in Commerce, Digital Services Act, DSA, Government & Policy, online regulationNo Comments

The European Union’s flagship reboot of long-standing ecommerce rules — aka the Digital Services Act (DSA) — has now been published in the bloc’s Official Journal. You can find the full (and final) text of DSA here. Le Digital Services Act (#DSA) est publié aujourd’hui au Journal Officiel! 📖 Ce texte majeur fera d’Internet un espace plus sûr pour tous les citoyens européens. Retour sur son adoption dans un délai record — un sprint en 7⃣ étapes 🧵 pic.twitter.com/8dMogdUYvV — Thierry Breton (@ThierryBreton) October 27, 2022 Tech firms’ in-house legal teams will be poring over the detail in the coming months as they figure out how to adapt their policies and procedures to ensure compliance and dodge penalties that can scale up to 6% of global turnover for the more egregious breaches. The rules are intended to drive accountability online by streamlining how platforms and marketplaces must tackle illegal content, goods and services, as well as bringing in specific provisions for larger platforms that are aimed at increasing transparency around powerful algorithms. As per EU process, the DSA regulation will enter into force in 20 days’ time (so in mid November). That’s not the real start date though as there’s still a delay before provisions become applicable to allow for a period of adaptation and alignment for businesses. The bulk of the DSA provisions will apply from January 1, 2024, per the Commission. But a subset of obligations — for so-called VLOPs (aka, very large online platforms) — will start to apply next year as the EU has stipulated that application for VLOPs and very large online search engines (aka VLOSEs) will begin four months after they are designated as entering the category. So a swathe of larger tech firms and Big Tech giants will likely have compliance requirements bearing down on them from early next year. For more on the rules digital firms will have to abide by in the EU under the new DSA regime, check out our earlier coverage. A sister regulation, the Digital Markets Act — which exclusively targets Big Tech for ex ante regulation — will also start to apply from early next year. So it’s all change and soon!

The lack of VC funding to women is a Western societal shortfall • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 27, 2022Posted in EC DEI, EC venture capital, Europe, Startups, Venture, venture funding, womenNo Comments

The issue of women startup founders not receiving equitable venture funding is a shortfall of the West: It’s here, everywhere in the U.S., and over there, all throughout Europe. It’s hard to say that some of these metrics represent investors simply pulling back when data shows the bias has historical precedence. Even in 2008, all-women U.S. founding teams raised 1.2% of all venture capital, according to PitchBook data. In 2012, they raised 1.8%, then 1.7% in 2016. If anything, 2021 was the anomaly, which saw 2.3% of venture dollars allocated to all-female U.S. teams. Today, that number is tracking at 1.9% so far, which is nearly on par with what, typically, always has been. That the solution is so simple — cutting more checks to women — highlights the discriminatory ideological strongholds that our society continues to impose on us. In Europe, the story is quite similar, although 2020 was the standout year that saw women raise 2.4% of all venture capital on the continent. Last year paints a more realistic picture: All-women teams raised only 1.1% of all venture funds in Europe, a number on par with what they raised in 2017, 2018, and 2019, which saw these teams pick up 1.5%, 1.8%, and 1.5% of all venture capital, respectively, as previously reported by ZebethMedia. The inequality gap is failing to move in a meaningful direction. It’s no coincidence that our societies, with frameworks and ideological mores hand-crafted with sexism and misogynoir, have made little progress toward equitable change. There are two concurrent narratives here: In one, the data reflects how investors, the men in charge, truly feel about economic gender equality. At the same time, the numbers are a byproduct of our Western society, one that is still beholden to excluding and devaluing women, one that relishes their treatment as second-class citizens, rendering their dreams irrelevant.

Personal carbon-cutting app Joro raises $10M Series A from Sequoia, Jay-Z’s Arrive • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 27, 2022Posted in carbon offsets, Climate, climate change, Joro, sequoia capitalNo Comments

Cutting your own carbon footprint isn’t easy, even for the most motivated person. Tracking, tallying, investigating, researching. For Sanchali Pal, though, that was part of the fun. Pal, who had been working in international development, wanted to start trimming her footprint. “I started building an Excel spreadsheet of the carbon emissions in my life, starting with food, and I ended up becoming this massive spreadsheet and ended up using it over six years to lower my emissions by about 30%.” Pal knew, though, that not everyone would go to those lengths. “I found it incredibly satisfying, but I’m a very particular kind of person.” Even still, she said the process was still “difficult and frustrating.” That’s what got Pal started on what would eventually become Joro, an app that helps people track and reduce their carbon footprints. Founded in 2018, Pal raised a $1 million pre-seed in 2019 and another $2.5 million in a 2020 seed round. Sequoia participated in both, leading the second round. Image Credits: Cayce Clifford Those investments have helped Joro triple its monthly active users over the past few months, reaching an average compound monthly growth rate of 25%. Now, ZebethMedia has exclusively learned that Joro raised a $10 million Series A led by existing investors Sequoia Capital and Amasia. They were joined by Norrsken, Nest co-founder Matt Rogers’ Incite, Jay-Z’s Arrive, and Mike Einziger, the lead guitarist of Incubus. The new funding will not only help build the Joro team, but it’ll also help continue the company’s shift from helping people track their footprints to helping them take action on what they learn. While Joro users can get general advice on how to cut their carbon footprint, the real power of the app happens when the user connects their financial records, synced via Plaid. From there, Joro works to estimate their carbon footprint by studying payments and amounts, like how much spending happens at gas stations or on airfare, for example. From there, it offers more personalized suggestions for how the user might cut their own carbon footprint. (Pal said that Joro never sells this data outside the platform “and never will.”) Sometimes those cuts are simple, like eating less meat, while others can be more challenging. For users with family scattered across the country, for example, eliminating air travel would be a difficult thing to ask. In that case, Joro then offers users the ability to offset their emissions. For a fee, users can offset part or all of their emissions. To make it simple, Joro offers a subscription. For users on a budget, they can set a ceiling on how much they’re willing to pay per month. Most people using the app pay about $30 per month, Pal said. Some pay as little as $10, while others with more extravagant lifestyles pay as much as $1,000 per month. Joro takes 17% of monthly subscription fees to help pay for the app’s services and — more importantly from the user’s perspective — for vetting offsets. Finding high-quality offsets is incredibly challenging for individuals. I went down that path years ago and eventually gave up because the ones that I felt were suitably additional, verifiable and permanent were only available to large buyers. I didn’t want to be throwing my money after questionable offsets, so I didn’t buy any. Because Joro aggregates its purchases across users, it can buy the types that I couldn’t access on my own. Pal said that Joro evaluates offsets every few months to ensure they’re living up to the company’s standards. In addition to the usual requirements — additionality, verifiability and permanence — the team also looks for what Pal calls “transformative potential.” “How does this affect local ecosystems? Environmental justice considerations? Especially as a consumer, as a person, if you’re buying into offsets, things you might care about more than a company.” The offsets cost Joro anywhere from $12 to $600 per metric ton. Some are nature-based solutions, while others are technological. The entire portfolio is balanced at an average of $25 per metric ton, Pal said. The startup will use its new funding to build its team and continue the shift from tracking carbon footprints to helping people take action to reduce them. The new focus not only satisfies a frequent request from users — it also should open new opportunities. “We think it could be another path to revenue, where people are actually changing things, switching to lower-carbon vendors or to lower-carbon ways of living. That’s a really great alignment of our impact model and our revenue model,” Pal said, saying that it would likely take the form of affiliate relationships between Joro and the vendors it features in the app. Pal is optimistic that the new infusion of cash and recent growth trends will help broaden Joro’s impact. Already, though, she’s stunned by how the landscape has changed recently. “Even three years ago, it was really hard to explain to people what Joro was,” she said. “The concept of climate tech barely existed, right? There was clean tech, and there was software. But software for climate? It’s been incredible to see how quickly it’s happened.”

English-learning startup ELSA launches Speech Analyzer to help people gain conversational confidence • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 27, 2022Posted in Asia, elsa, English learning, ESL, Southeast Asia, Speech analzyer, Startups, vietnamNo Comments

ELSA, the English-language learning app known for its speech recognition technology, is launching a new product called the Speech Analyzer. The assessment platform plugs into communication tools like Zoom and analyzes conversational speech to suggest areas for improvement, including pronunciation, pacing and vocabulary. It is meant to act like a language coach to help people prepare for tests, presentations, interviews or just gain more confidence when speaking English. Like ELSA’s learning app, which has more than 40 million users, the Speech Analyzer provides tutorials, along with projected scores of how users might perform on major English language exams including IELTS. Based in San Francisco and Ho Chi Minh City, ELSA’s investors include Google’s AI-focused fund Gradient Ventures. Founder and CEO Vu Van told ZebethMedia the Speech Analyzer was developed after ELSA received feedback that users’ English improved while using the app, but they still felt nervous when dealing with face-to-face conversations and Zoom calls. Corporate users are often encouraged to join speaking clubs or Toastmaster to improve their speaking fluency, but lacked the time. “Recognizing those major pain points among our customers, as well as seeing the world is gravitating towards a more flexible, hybrid and remote working environment where working professionals spend hours on online meeting platforms, we felt that the need for stronger English spoken skills has become more important,” Vu said. Speech Analyzer was built as an expansion to ELSA’s learning app, to make it easier for people to get access to communication coaching. Speech Analyzer integrates with Outlook and Gmail calendars, and can be used with Zoom, Slack, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams and other platforms. It only records the voice of the user and voice recordings can also be uploaded to it. ELSA is based on mid-Western American English as the standard most often used in business, education and everyday settings, Van said, and uses major English speaking exams like TOEFL, IELTS, TOEIC, CEFR and Pearson as benchmarks. The Speech Analyzer is free to use and monetizes by charging for more advanced features and analysis. It is also available in a premium bundle with an ELSA membership.

Solo GP secures $140M for fifth seed, third opportunity funds • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 27, 2022Posted in Enterprise, solo GP, streamlined ventures, Ullas Naik, VentureNo Comments

Streamlined Ventures, led by Ullas Naik, secured $140 million in new capital commitments for its two newest funds. This brings the total funds managed to eight with the assets under management reaching about $325 million. Institutional investors, family offices and high net worth individuals pumped $102 million into the firm’s fifth seed fund, which targets startups focused on data science, AI, software automation, APIs and Web 2.5. The second is $36 million into a third opportunity fund that invests in mid-stage financings of seed-stage companies from prior seed funds. Naik is a solo general partner who started Streamlined Ventures in 2011, but prior to starting his own firm, had been in both angel investing and venture capital for more than 25 years. He was also a co-founder of the investment firm Cota Capital and spent a large chunk of time at Globespan Capital. In the past 11 years, Streamlined has had its hand in the seed financings of such companies as DoorDash, AppLovin, Forge, Rigetti and Rappi. Naik told ZebethMedia that 16 companies crossed $1 billion in value, with three of them over the $10 billion valuation mark. He has already deployed some of the capital from the new seed fund in companies, including Ratio, byCore, fun.xyz, Haystacks.ai, Precog and FenixCommerce. He intends to invest in 30 to 35 companies with this new fund. Naik sat down with me to talk about the new funds, the fundraising environment and why he decided to go it alone — he did admit that it was difficult for limited partners to initially embrace the idea. However, it’s clear that changed, enabling him to start with $33 million for his first fund and make his way up to $102 million with this latest one. The following was lightly edited for clarity and length. ZebethMedia: A lot of solo GPs start off that way, but don’t intend to stay that way. Why have you decided that was best for you? Naik: Part of the reason I started off as a solo GP is because I’ve been in partnerships in the past. This is my third venture firm that I’m helping build. The other two I did with partners, and so I understand the pluses and minuses that come with having a partnership. I was moving with a certain velocity and assumed that having a partner in the mix would just slow me down, and it actually has been the case. We have built this platform at such a velocity over the span of 10 years, and I don’t think that would be possible if I had a partnership that was imposing “checks and balances” on my instincts. Now, if I was a new entrant into venture, the idea of having partners makes complete sense because you do want checks and balances on your behavior because your instincts haven’t been honed yet. In my case, I felt comfortable and confident in my instincts that it made sense to actually stay solo and accelerate, which is exactly what we did, and so far it’s been wonderful. What was the fundraising environment like for you raising these two funds? We closed the seed fund in May or June, but the bulk of it got raised when things were still relatively good. I think I’d already started to see the environment tighten, even when we were raising our seed fund, and so I think we may have been one of the last few that kind of made it through, but we definitely felt it on the opportunity fund. We were raising $40 million and we would have gone up to $50 million. I could sense that limited partners were having a harder time and were hurt by what’s happening in the public markets. It was just a question of rebalancing, where to allocate capital and everybody was in “risk off” mode. What were some of the concerns from LPs this time around? There is no doubt that innovation and disruption will continue with software, and I don’t think that anybody doubted that. Where they were more concerned is what happens with the current monetary policy. With inflation, a potential recession, implications for earnings and implications for the ability of our software companies to sell into our customers, which are mostly B2B businesses. The only way to address that is to say, “well, that is fair, but that’s probably not the likely scenario.” Valuations are ultimately coming down, and that’s why we’re buying low. However, we’ll be selling probably in four or five years. This environment is not going to persist. In about two or three years, all this will have been a memory, a bad memory, but a memory. Are you looking at founders in a different way at all given the current fundraising environment? There’s a temptation to solve for more traction, which of course we look at, but at the end of the day, we’re betting on big market opportunities with founders who think in an uncapped manner. Almost every company we’ve invested in has that mix of things. Are you doing anything different with these funds that you have previously done? We generally tend to be the first money into those companies, but in today’s environment, I don’t have to be the first money. I can wait for a seed extension round and invest in the seed extension at the prior valuations. Now we get a lot more traction for the same valuation. You invest mainly in data science, AI, software, etc. Are there industries that you are shying away from or staying away from? In terms of vertical markets, like fintech, insuretech or health tech, we’re looking at everything, and we still continue to. We’re doing this speculative phase on web3. We invested in a few web3 companies, but only in companies where we saw true value transfer, like in gaming or DeFi. The bar is kind of high around web3 and it’s an area where I’m sort of deploying dollars much slower. How

HealthJoy raises $60M to make benefits easier to navigate • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 27, 2022Posted in Biotech & Health, health benefits, health care, healthcare, HealthJoy, StartupsNo Comments

Healthcare benefits are great, but navigating them often isn’t. HealthJoy wants to make the experience more seamless for employees, while helping HR departments reduce the number of underutilized benefits. The Chicago-based company announced today it has raised $60 million in Series D funding, led by Valspring Capital with participation from Endeavor Vision and CIBC Innovation Banking. Returning investors U.S. Venture Partners, GoHealth founders Brandon Cruz and Clint Jones, Health Velocity Capital, Nueterra Capital and Epic also joined the round. ZebethMedia last covered HealthJoy when it raised its Series C. The latest funding brings its total raised to $108 million. Founder Justin Holland told ZebethMedia that HealthJoy’s client base has doubled to more than 1,000 employers, covering more than 500,000 employees and dependents, since its Series C funding. It integrates with every benefit in an employer’s package (including medical, dental, vision, savings accounts, clinics and wellness initiatives) and has a live 24/7 concierge. The platform expanded its virtual care suite to be more comprehensive, including a partnership with telemedicine provider Teladoc, which Holland says is an example of how HealthJoy is helping HR and brokers deal with additional major claim categories like cancer and cardiometabolic disease by making it easier for people to get preventative care. “Our belief is access has to be simple and seamless for employees to drive engagement,” he said. HealthJoy also introduced a new feature called “automated steerage” that guides members to lower cost and more efficient solutions in the app. In addition to Teladoc, it also has partnerships with services for medical and prescription claims, utilization management data and virtual care resolutions. “As we continue to invest in data partnerships, we’re building out a comprehensive member profile and engagement engine. That will enable us to engage members earlier and more often in the course of their healthcare journey,” Holland said. “Ideally, we are able to be more proactive than reactive to their personal needs.” HealthJoy sees a 60% activation rate after 30 days and 25% of its employee base logs into its app every month. “When we have the engagement, we use technology to drive utilization across all benefits. We know that members have healthcare needs, but they don’t always think about how their benefits programs can support these needs,” Holland says. An examplee of how HealthJoy helps them find these benefits include virtual assistant tech that automatically guides members to online options when they’re looking for the doctor. It also helps them compare costs for treatments and procedures when recommending providers and facilities, which Holland says saves members on average $2,000 in out-of-pocket costs. In a statement, Aneesha Mehta, co-founder of Valspring and a former partner at Bain Capital Ventures, said, “As users of healthcare technology ourselves, we genuinely identified with a core issue that HealthJoy fights: a serious lack of benefits awareness that leads to under-utilization by employees. Offering a solution that simplifies benefits is a key differentiator in the talent war the market currently finds itself in. We look forward to amplifying HealthJoy’s solutions as we’ve seen the value they bring firsthand.”

It’s time to admit self-driving cars aren’t going to happen • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 27, 2022Posted in autonomous vehicles, self-driving cars, TransportationNo Comments

A couple caveats for those going apoplectic over the headline: I mean self-driving isn’t going to be a thing A) in our lifetimes and B) with any kind of omnipresent scale. So in terms of the daily lived experience of most people reading this, truly autonomous vehicles just aren’t going to happen. The evidence pointing to this has been mounting for years now, if not decades, but it’s now tipped the balance to where it’s hard to ignore for a reasoned observer – even one like myself who has previously been very optimistic about self-driving prospects. My decision to make this call is mostly predicated on one big event from Wednesday: Scooped by our very own Kirsten Korosec, Ford announced that it would be winding down Argo AI, the company backed by itself and fellow automaker Volkswagen focused on developing full level 4 autonomous driving technologies. Ford explained their justification in doing so when they released their Q3 earnings a few hours later, noting that not only were they shutting down Argo, but they were also essentially deprioritizing L4 technologies altogether, to instead focus on advanced driver assistance (ADAS) systems with internal resources. Ford CEO Jim Farley justified this by saying that “profitable, fully autonomous vehicles at scale are a long way off and we won’t necessarily have to create that technology for ourselves” on the company’s earnings call Wednesday evening. The sentiments echoed those of a much younger and more tech-forward automaker CEO from just last week at our Disrupt conference in San Francisco. While Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe did say the company was eventually aiming to introduce Level 4 autonomy, he also said that the plan is to focus first on L2 and L3 ADAS, with its existing shipping vehicles capped at L3 given their current hardware limitations. He did say that he believes L4 is actually currently possible for companies with the proper advanced hardware kit on cars – with the caveat that those be geofenced to a specific location. That brings us to the companies who are currently operating driverless vehicles on actual public roads, Waymo and GM’s Cruise. Surely, if two (ostensibly) for-profit companies are already out there doing it, then it’s going to happen, right? The fact is that these existing services are extremely constrained in terms of geography and operating hours (though the latter is arguably a regulatory issue) and that seems unlikely to change at a pace that would make them ubiquitous in any reasonable timeframe. Plus, the existing services face consistent, vocal criticism from residents who have to share the road with them. At least Cruise and Waymo’s vehicles are tuned for extreme caution – possibly to a fault. Tesla on the other hand seems much more intent on hard-charging into a future where its so-called ‘Full Self-Driving’ technology actually lives up to its name, with an expanding pool of beta users employing the tech on public streets and frequent software iterations that on at least one occasion have done more harm than good. Musk is also intent on stripping out as many sensors as possible from the Tesla autonomy hardware kit, probably in search of margins, under the misguided belief that compute, AI and optical input will improve and combine to act as a cure-all. Musk strives to justify Tesla’s approach on the regular, but it looks like he may have to do that explaining in more granular detail to the U.S. Department of Justice if they proceed with any action resulting from an ongoing criminal investigation the government branch is pursuing. With even early pioneers striking a skeptical note, the time to consider the opportunity costs of shovelling money into the autonomy engine on autopilot is now. Argo AI was considered a leader with solid technological fundamentals by most experts in the field, so its shuttering is a strong signal not to be ignored. Meanwhile, I barely even scratched the surface on regulatory and public acceptance of any true ubiquitous self-driving, which will necessarily lag technological development — and likely by a lot, not a little.

Mattilda wants to take over payment collection for Latin America’s private schools • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 27, 2022Posted in Fintech, FinTech Collective, mattilda, Mexico, Startups, VentureNo Comments

Digital payments are gaining momentum in Latin America, and startups like Mexico-based mattilda are putting their spin on streamlining financial and administrative processes for private schools while also offering credit backed by future school fees. The company was founded in 2022 by José Agote, Jesús Lanza, Juan Pablo Bravo, Adrián Garza and Ileana Gómez. Agote, Lanza and Bravo all previously worked together at Lottus Education, a university-focused educational platform in Mexico. It’s forecasted that cashless payments in Latin America will double by 2030. Debit cards are used a majority of the time, with cash a close second, according to reports. Most schools accept bank transfers and debit card payments, but are not set up for those to be made other than by driving over to the school with a card in hand. Schools also do not have an easy way to see who was still missing payments, CEO Agote said. It was while at Lottus that they saw how difficult it was for private schools to perform collections and get financing. In the United States, most private schools charge per semester. Parents can take out loans to pay for school in advance and the bank will assume the risk rather than the school. In Latin America, many of the payments are month to month, and if payment is not made, the school is the one to spend time contacting parents to collect that payment. “There is a fault in the system with schools nowadays and they’re painfully aware of it,” Agote told ZebethMedia. “The main problem is that these collection cycles are much longer than what people expect.” He explained what ends up happening is that, on average, 20% of the parents don’t pay by the due date and the school spends the next part of the month, if not more, trying to collect. For example, a school with 300 students will send 300 invoices then have to send out 300 follow-ups while also reconciling 300 payments each month. Here’s where mattilda comes in: the company provides a SaaS tool that enables parents to get a personalized payment link via email or WhatsApp and can then make tuition payments in a number of ways, including debit cards, credit cards, bank transfers and flexible credit lines, in seconds. Mattilda also manages communication with students’ families while also offering a hub for parents to easily access relevant documents and information pertaining to payments. In addition, it offers loans to schools based on their future school fees. “It’s hard for schools to get loans because banks will never execute on those assets,” Agote said. “There’s a lot of opportunity for investment in education, and no one is providing capital to these institutions, or if they are, they’re charging ridiculous rates like 30%.” Rather, Agote said mattilda is comfortable advancing the tuition payments, which means the company takes on the risk if payment is not made, but gets compensated through the advancement when they do. It is also charging cheaper lending rates, around 18% to 20%, than the banks. In addition, the company makes money on the receivables, which it buys for below face value, he added. So far, mattilda is working with 17 schools accounting for some 9,000 students, which Agote said will become 24 schools and close to 14,000 students as of November 1. Schools using mattilda average an 85% collection rate, versus the market standard rate of 70%, which he attributed to the removal of barriers to make the payment. Helping private schools with their payments is an area where startups are blooming across Latin America. Earlier this month, we reported on Argentina-based Fidu, which raised $5 million and is working with 1,000 schools. Its approach, as Natasha Mascarenhas reported, is to “build a new operating system for LatAm schools so that institutions can digitally manage everything from finances to school-wide announcements.” The company is also the latest to secure capital, raising $10 million in seed funding led by FinTech Collective. Also participating in the round was a group of investors including DILA Capital, QED Investors, GSV Ventures, Picus Capital, Emerge Education, SMP and Xochi Ventures. Carlos Alonso-Torras, head of emerging markets at FinTech Collective, told ZebethMedia via email that he heard about mattilda through an angel investor friend that had been one of the first checks in. What stood out to him initially was the “quality of the founding team.” He decided to invest when he saw how well the team was able to recruit some key hires and were responsive to recommendations on how to improve in skillset areas where they were weaker. “On the back of Lottus Education’s success, they have a unique level of nuance in their understanding of the education space, and a powerful network that can result in partnerships conducive to hyper scaling in Spanish-speaking Latin America — several are already in place,” Alonso-Torras said. “Furthermore, they are very knowledgeable of the higher education space, which opens a frontier, so to speak, that other models in LatAm within this vertical haven’t successfully tapped into yet.” Mattilda intends to deploy the new funds into expansion into other Spanish-speaking countries in Latin America, lending to schools and development of new products. Agote said there are more than 5 million students in Mexico accounting for $15 billion in tuition, so the company has a long way to go as it works to target over 30,000 schools. There are also plans for creating a marketplace so schools can find better prices for items like laptops, uniforms lab and sports equipment and even desks and blackboards. “We’re still scratching the surface in terms of penetration in Mexico and the marketplace,” he added. “We have those two different verticals we are targeting for the future of the company, and I think we can pursue both at the same time.”

Google Cloud gets into web3 act with managed blockchain node service • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 27, 2022Posted in blockchain, cloud, Crypto, developer, Enterprise, google cloud, web3No Comments

Five years ago the blockchain was blossoming in the enterprise, or so many companies had us believe. Back then, companies like SAP and IBM were trying to build blockchain practices, but while the technology sounded good to solve myriad problems in the enterprise, it never really took off. Fast forward to 2022 and the blockchain comes under a new guise with the name web3 as an umbrella term and lots of VC money behind it. So perhaps it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the cloud platform companies want to get into the act. To that end, Google Cloud announced today that it’s launching Blockchain Node Engine, which it’s billing as “a fully managed node-hosting for web3 development.” Earlier this year, the company announced that it was launching a new team dedicated to digital assets, and this tool is part of what has come out of that team’s work. In a blog post announcing the new service from Amit Zavery, GM and VP of engineering and platform and James Tromans, director of cloud web3, the two wrote that blockchain nodes have to work hard, constantly exchanging the most recent blockchain data, so that all nodes stay in sync. It’s a data- and resource-intensive process. Google Cloud hopes to make it easier by offering a managed service to handle node creation, while providing a secure development environment in a fully managed product. From Google’s perspective, it’s a heck of a lot easier to let them do the heavy lifting while you concentrate on building your web3 application. In the pair’s own words, “While self-managed nodes are often difficult to deploy and require constant management, Blockchain Node Engine is a fully managed node-hosting service that minimizes the need for node operations. web3 companies who require dedicated nodes can relay transactions, deploy smart contracts and read or write blockchain data with the reliability, performance and security they expect from Google Cloud compute and network infrastructure,” they wrote in the post. This is nuts and bolts stuff, helping companies to set up a node on supported blockchains and then managing it for the user, so they don’t have to worry about all the management overhead involved. For starters, the company will support Ethereum blockchain, so developers deploying nodes on Ethereum could do it themselves or pay Google to do much of that work for them. Presumably there will be other supported blockchains in the future. While it may feel like a pure crypto play, Tromans says the service is ultimately agnostic and developers can build anything they wish. “We are building foundational primitives to help developers innovate more quickly. Accordingly, Blockchain Node Engine is focused towards [multiple] developer use cases: smart contract development, reading from and writing to the blockchain, etc. How different developers use their fully managed, dedicated blockchain node engine infrastructure will be dependent on their individual use cases,” Tromans told ZebethMedia. The product is available starting today in private preview.