Startups

Terzo lands $16M to extract key data from contracts • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 17, 2022Posted in AI, Enterprise, funding, Robotics & AI, startup, StartupsNo Comments

Contract governance is the steps taken to make sure agreed-upon terms between a company and its suppliers are met. It’s an essential part of doing business, and the consequences for getting it wrong can be steep. McKinsey estimates that poor contract governance can cost organizations up to 9% of their total revenue, which equates to $1.4 trillion for the Fortune 500 alone and $6.4 trillion across all enterprise business-to-business companies. Challenges around contract governance have fueled the rise of startups like Icertis, which recently secured $150 million at a $3.2 billion valuation to build out its contracting tools. LinkSquares in April landed $100 million for its AI-powered contract analysis platform, while ContractPodAi, a close competitor, has raised tens of millions to digitize contract reviews. A relatively new entrant in the space is Terzo, which was co-founded by Brandon Card, Al Giocondi and Pradeep Thangavel in 2020. A suite of contract processing software, Terzo uses AI to extract data in contracts related to a company’s spend and revenue across their supplier and customer relationships. In a sign investor interest in contract management startups hasn’t waned, Terzo today closed a $16 million Series A round led by Align Ventures with participation from TYH Ventures, Engage Ventures, Human Capital and other unnamed institutional investors. The proceeds bring the company’s total raised to more than $18f million, and Card, who serves at Terzo’s CEO, says they’ll be put toward Terzo’s sales and marketing initiatives as well as enhancing the platform’s AI capabilities. “As our technology evolves, we aim to deliver advanced insights around financials and budgeting,” Card said. “Contract systems were built for legal use cases and legal teams to focus on drafting and clauses. There are no analytics or financial insights for leaders to make smarter decisions. Terzo was founded to solve that problem.” Image Credits: Terzo Card says his experiences at Microsoft, where he was an enterprise portfolio manager at Microsoft Cloud, inspired him to co-found Terzo. Giocondi came from account manager roles at Oracle and IBM. As for Thangavel, he spent nearly seven years on the engineering side at Freshworks prior to joining alongside Card and Giocondi. Card says that Terzo’s AI was trained using real-world business contracts to extract data such as inventory and costs, supervised by a quality assurance team to ensure baseline accuracy. Terzo integrates with enterprise resource platforms like SAP and Oracle to track contractual obligations and expiration dates, including metrics related to environmental, social and governance policies. “Terzo is valuable to the IT audience because it allows them to see data faster,” Card said. “We’ve created a platform that combines data management, automation and AI, but also keeps people in the loop.” VCs see promise in contract management legal tech like Terzo’s, perhaps in part because of the high customer adoption rate. According to a 2020 Bloomberg Law survey, more than half (56%) of in-house lawyers said that they’re using contract management programs. (That’s despite the fact that the legal industry is notoriously slow to adopt new tech.) If the current trend holds, Markets and Markets predicts the contract management life cycle market will grow from $1.5 billion in 2019 to $2.9 billion by 2024. Card says that Terzo has “over a dozen” customers, including a Fortune 50 retailer and the largest financial transaction processor in the world. The plan into the next year is to drive revenue at over 50% of Terzo’s overall expenses, he says, and to break even in 2024. “We are positioned to be a profitable business by 2025,” Card added. “Both the pandemic and current tech slowdown has taught us how to run a lean business that is focused on efficient growth. The current downturn has caused our customers to prioritize spending and budgeting so we look at this as a positive tailwind heading into 2023.”

Namecoach raises cash to teach users how to correctly pronounce names • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 17, 2022Posted in AI, Enterprise, funding, Robotics & AI, startup, StartupsNo Comments

We’ve all been faced with a name that’s difficult to pronounce. But not everyone considers the consequences of their mispronunciations. In a piece for Fast Company, Madhumita Mallick, the head of inclusion, equity and impact at Carta, recalls how her name became a source of anxiety even when she was a grade-school student. Studies have indeed found that when peers and teachers incorrectly pronounce or change the names of students of color, those students participate less in class and becoming socially withdrawn to avoid associating with their name. As the co-authors of one wrote in 2012: “actions and attitudes [students] experienced in K-12 schools highlight a type of cultural ‘othering’ that contradicts our goals for multicultural school environments .. even just stumbling over a name they had never seen before, the tone set by a teacher about a student’s name [is] something significant.” Praveen Shanbhag, the CEO of Namecoach, heard a speaker at his sister’s alma mater flub her name during her college graduation. That, along with his experiences as a first-generation immigrant to the U.S., inspired him to co-found Namecoach, which develops name pronunciation tools that can be embedded in existing platforms like Salesforce, Canvas and Gmail. “We are on a mission to make name mispronunciation a thing of the past for everyone,” Shanbhag told ZebethMedia via email. Shanbhag started dabbling in programming while working on his Ph.D. in philosophy at Stanford. He decided to code an app that would collect recordings of students saying their names and deliver them to name readers for graduation, which became Namecoach. By 2016, Shanbhag says that hundreds of schools were using Namecoach’s software and services. Namecoach — which eventually broadened its customer base to client brands — isn’t alone in the market. NameShouts offers a robust set of name pronunciation tools, as does Facebook, Slack and LinkedIn. But Shanbhag tells me that early on, he sought to differentiate Namecoach by investing heavily in AI and integrations. Image Credits: Namecoach For example, Namecoach uses an AI system to predict the correct pronunciation when someone’s name has multiple correct pronunciations based on factors like nationality, ethnicity, gender and location. Another of the platform’s systems synthesizes speech in situations where an audio recording of a name isn’t available. At a high level, Namecoach shows name pronunciations both user-generated and drawn from a database of audio name pronunciations. When asked about the system’s accuracy and whether users can remedy mistakes that might make their way onto the database, Shanbhag said that Namecoach consults with linguistic experts and offers a submission form for corrections. It’s not yet live, but Shanbhag says that Namecoach is developing a AI to provide pronunciations that take the speaker’s native language into account — not just the name-owner’s language. “Your name is central to your identity, and accurate pronunciation sets the tone for a positive interaction for both parties,” he said. Namecoach’s platform works out-of-the-box with services including Microsoft Teams, Outlook and Google Workspace and offers an API and software development kit to let third parties build Namecoach’s functionality into their products. But the focus over the next few months will be the startup’s first-ever consumer app, Shanbhag says, which will be made available as a Chrome extension next year. Namecoach — which today closed an $8 million Series A round led by Impact America Fund with participation from Authentic Ventures, Metaplanet, Engage.VC, Founders Fund, Bisk Ventures and others — also plans to ramp up its sales and marketing efforts and expand the platform’s collection of connectors. Shanbhag hinted at capabilities beyond pronunciation guidance coming down the pipeline, including prompts to enable warm interactions in sales scenarios and feedback to help users improve their conversations more generally. Leaning into sales applications makes sense given Namecoach’s marquee customers — Salesforce, Netjets and PwC. Beyond those three, the 30-person startup claims to have more than 300 education and corporate clients worldwide. “The Series A funding enables us to accelerate our goal of integrating novel voice technology into every communication workflow to solve name pronunciation across a wide spectrum of use cases during any voice interaction,” said Shanbhag, who wouldn’t Namecoach’s disclose revenue figures when asked. “Namecoach has customers across a very wide range of verticals, use cases and organization size, which means that we are not reliant on any subsegment to thrive in a downturn.” To date, Palo Alto-based Namecoach has raised $15 million in venture capital.

Investors are looking for market opportunity, not just size • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 17, 2022Posted in Column, EC Column, pitch deck, Startups, Total Addressable Market, VentureNo Comments

Bill Reichert Contributor More posts by this contributor Interest Rates, Unicorns And What The Fed Means To Silicon Valley Every pitch deck needs to have a “Market” slide. Unfortunately, most entrepreneurs get the market slide wrong. That’s not necessarily their fault. The fault lies in the pitch coaching industry that insists that every deck include a slide with TAM, SAM and SOM. (total addressable market, serviceable addressable market, serviceable obtainable market or variations on these terms.) You can find templates for this slide all over the internet. Almost always, the template has three bubbles. Sometimes they appear side by side, like the porridge bowls of the three bears, and sometimes they are elegantly nested within one another, like a matryoshka doll. The mythical market size claim It’s amazing how this three-bubble market size slide has spread. It seems that everywhere I go on the planet, from Stockholm to Shenzhen, entrepreneurs are using a similar slide. Typically, entrepreneurs claim, “Our global TAM is $X billion, but we are going to start out in a certain part of the world, where our SAM is $Y billion. And we conservatively project that our SOM is $Z billion.” At times, they also show a very precise compound annual growth rate (“with a CAGR of 17.65%”) to demonstrate their analytical rigor. The typical market-size slide is obsolete. It’s clear why entrepreneurs try to pump up their market size. They’ve been told that venture capital investors are only interested in unicorns, and so they assume that the best way to become a unicorn is to go after the largest market possible. Presumably, the thinking is that it is easier to get 2% of a very large market than it is to get 20% of a smaller market. So, they earnestly search for market data that allow them to claim that their TAM is perhaps $56 billion, or $256 billion, or even better, $2.5 trillion. When this slide appears, most investors chuckle (or weep). Not only are the numbers always exaggerated, they are also irrelevant. Market size vs. market opportunity

With fresh capital, Symend aims to build a better debt collection system • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 17, 2022Posted in BDC Growth Venture Co-Investment Fund, BDC Women in Technology Fund, debt collection, EDC, Fintech, funding, Growth Venture Co-Investment Fund, Impression Ventures, iNovia Capital, Mistral Venture Partners, Plaza Ventures, Robotics & AI, startup, Startups, symend, Women in Technology FundNo Comments

Squeezed by the recessionary COVID-19-era economy and the rising prices of everyday goods, some consumers are increasingly turning to lines of credit to make ends meet. According to a September 2021 survey from Bankrate.com, 42% of U.S. adults with credit card debt increased their balances since the pandemic began in March 2020. A more recent report from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York estimates that total household debt in Q3 2022 reached $16.51 trillion, $2.36 trillion higher than at the end of 2019. The New York Fed’s study also showed that the share of current debt becoming delinquent climbed for nearly all debt types, from mortgages to auto loans. But even before the pandemic and crippling inflation struck, the U.S. had a delinquent debt problem. A 2016 whitepaper from the Association of Credit and Collection Professionals International found that debt rose from $150 billion to over $600 billion in the previous five years. During the same timeframe, collection agencies — who take between 20% to 50% of money recovered — had an annual success rate of 7%. To solve it — an ambitious goal, to be sure — Hanif Joshaghani and Tiffany Kaminsky co-founded Symend, a company that employs AI and machine learning to automate processes around debt resolution for telcos, banks and utilities. Symend today announced that it raised $42 million in a Series C round led by Inovia Capital with participation from Impression Ventures, Mistral Venture Partners, BDC’s Growth Venture Co-Investment Fund, BDC Capital’s Women in Technology Fund, Plaza Ventures and EDC. While substantially smaller than Symend’s once-extended Series B round ($95 million), Joshaghani, Symend’s CEO, noted that it’s “all equity” and brings the company’s total capital raised to date to $140 million. “We have maintained and continue to maintain a very conservative balance sheet profile,” Joshaghani told ZebethMedia in an email interview. “This latest injection of growth capital allows us to meet the growing demand for our behavioral engagement technology around the world. While this is not an optimal time for many businesses to turn to funding, for Symend, this was an ideal time as our product demand rises and the realities of the market create a deepening white space for us to capture.” Joshaghani hails from the financial industry, having worked as a corporate finance manager and investment banking association. Kaminsky’s background is marketing — prior to co-founding Symend, she was the head of sales and marketing strategy at Frog3D, a CNC fabrication business. Examples of messages customers might see from brands working with Symend. Both Joshaghani and Kaminsky personally experienced the negative impact of debt, they say. Joshaghani grew up in a household frequently targeted by calls from debt collectors, and Kaminksi ran into trouble with collections with her first credit card as a young adult. “To this day, I remember the anxiety I felt when receiving calls from collections and knew there had to be a better way — both for customers and businesses,” Joshaghani said. “We founded Symend to help consumers like us and as we’ve grown over the past six years, that mission has remained the same — our vision is to transform the science of engagement on a global scale.” Symend identifies when customers are having trouble paying bills and provides analytics and tools aimed at helping companies develop debt remediation programs. Via the platform’s workflows, businesses can engage with nearly-delinquent customers at points likeliest to drive turnaround. For example, they can configure Symend to create payment plans and limited-time payment discounts for certain segments of customers, or they can have the platform connect at-risk customers with financial planning tools, resources and credit rehabilitation programs. As Joshaghani explained to me, Symend works with a company’s existing systems to “optimize engagement” with customers falling behind on bills due to illness, job loss, family trouble and other foreseen and unforeseen circumstances. The platform allows a business to send “hyper-personalized” messages via a customer’s preferred channels (e.g. text and email) while providing that business access to playbooks for various debt collection scenarios (e.g., delinquent credit card). “Our clients continue to use general-purpose engagement platforms to manage their broad-based customer communications but deploy Symend specifically to solve complex challenges around their past-due customer base,” Joshaghani said. “Our ability to productize behavioral science is one of three key innovation areas of our technology, which uses AI, machine learning and data science to develop proven behavioral engagement playbooks to deliver impact out-of-the-box for companies in various industries.” Symend is rather vague about the functionality and technical underpinnings of its platform — its website prefers jargony buzzwords to plain-English descriptions. But that hasn’t scared away customers, it’d seem; Joshaghani claims that Symend is currently serving financial institutions, alternative lenders, utility companies and the majority of telecom providers in North America, including Telus. No doubt, the rise in buy now, pay later (BNPL) services — which let users split up purchases into equal installments over a fixed short-term period — is driving new business to Symend. A recent U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau report found that delinquencies on BNPL services are rising sharply as vendors approve more customers for loans. “As with many businesses right now, the current market conditions and economic uncertainty has led to us seeing clients with tighter budgets and streamlined decision-making,” Joshaghani added. “However, this latest funding highlights the market need, growing consumer demands for an empathetic, personalized approach as consumers face financial stress, and investor confidence in the company’s proven track record with some of the largest financial institutions and telecommunications providers during a time where every dollar and customer has become more important than ever.”

Service 1st Financial sells ‘home comfort as a service,’ gets $20 million in funding from Series B, debt • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 17, 2022Posted in Climate, EC Food Climate and Sustainability, heat pumps, hvac, leasing, StartupsNo Comments

Let’s face it: Most people aren’t early adopters, especially when it comes to their homes. Take the kitchen, for example, where many people still buy gas cooktops despite induction’s superiority. It’s not because everyone’s busy charring peppers over an open flame — it’s because they’re slow to adopt changes. When it comes to heating and cooling, that’s a problem for the climate. Together, they account for about half of all energy use in U.S. homes. Heating is a particular challenge since only 40% of homes use electricity; the rest burn natural gas, propane or some other fossil fuel. When the old furnace is dying, its replacement is usually more of the same. To reduce reliance on fossil fuels, switching to electric heat pumps is going to be key. “If your trusted contractor — who you call to come into your home to help figure out what to do with your system — doesn’t offer a heat pump, you’re just not going to buy one, right?” said Anuj Khanna, founder and CEO of Service 1st Financial. That gap between what contractors offer and what’s needed to electrify households is part of the reason Khanna founded Service 1st Financial, which offers what he calls “home comfort as a service.” The company is announcing a $5.85 million Series B today that includes a $15 million subordinated debt facility, ZebethMedia has exclusively learned. Khanna said he expects the Series B to close “before year end.” The equity investment was co-led by S2G Ventures, which also led the subordinated debt facility. Other investors were not disclosed.

Zennström calls the end of high-valuations era, says founders and VCs must remove stigma of downrounds • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 17, 2022Posted in niklas zennstrom, Startups, VentureNo Comments

As the world moves into economic head-winds and geopolitical uncertainty, European founders must get used to taking tough decisions to ensure the survival of their startups. This will include getting used to ‘flat’ or ‘downrounds’ of funding, after experiencing the high valuations of the last couple of years. That was the message today at the Slush conference in Helsinki from Niklas Zennström, the iconic Skype co-founder, Atomico CEO, and one of Europe’s most famous tech players. In a keynote address Zennström gave a blunt assessment of the economic environment, while unpacking how he failed several times in his own career during tough economic conditions. Talking about how he had to wind down two of his own businesses prior to Skype, he said today’s entrepreneurs would now need to turn their attention to the long term success of their companies, and survival, rather than the ‘good times of the bull market’ and the high valuations of the past, and that this would mean tough choices. Zennström said despite the bad reputation of downrounds (a financing in which a company sells shares of its capital stock at a price per share that is less than the price per share it sold shares for in an earlier financing) or a flat round (a funding round in which a startup issues shares at the same post-money valuation as during its previous fundraising round, effectively meaning that the value of the company has gone down), startup founders may have to accept these as the price to pay for keeping their companies alive for the longer term. “There’s a stigma. We’ve turned the down round into a worst case scenario. We’re embarrassed about what it might say about our business, that it’s worth less now than it was a year ago,” he said. He pointed to data from Pitchbook showing an uptick in down rounds in Q3 this year, with almost 19% of all European VC funding now fitting this criteria. This is up from 12% in Q2, and the trend is continuing into Q4. But he challenged Slush attendees to think about down rounds differently and not to take it personally: “Firstly, ‘down rounds’ are just a function of the broader market. It’s the reality we’re facing right now. People aren’t willing to pay what they were a year ago for shares in a technology company. Technology investment in Q3 is around 30% down on the same period in 2021. At series A, pre-money valuations have fallen as much as 50 percent from their highs earlier this year. In this environment a lower valuation is no reflection on you. It’s market dynamics.” He added that startup founders currently in fund-raising mode should raise right away: “The biggest issue with down rounds is that people leave them so late. It’s easy to hope the market will improve. I’ve seen founders tempted to put off the raise waiting for things to change. For a company that is pre-profit, that means eating into future runway. And the less runway a business has, the riskier that company becomes.” The alternative after 6 months could mean “a rescue financing littered with aggressive liquidation preferences and exit clauses.. Don’t let that be you,” he said. Lastly, he said down and flat rounds “are really about growth. Raising money strategically, before the point of no return, could prove a masterstroke. Any founder with the courage to raise money early, on clean terms, can continue to scale at a time when others are slowing down and losing talent. This may be the single best time to hire great people away from the competition. Whether the market changes in one or three years, these firms won’t have stood still.” Reflecting on his own experience as a founder, Zennström said he had founded and folded a couple of companies prior to Skype, which was painful, but “in reality, it wasn’t as big a deal as I thought. My team had great experience and got amazing new jobs. And I brought the best people with me to the next idea. The only thing that crashed was my dream… and maybe my ego. But once it was over, I had the opportunity to start afresh. I was even more motivated to prove I could build a successful company.” Ending on a positive note he said: “I started Kazaa in 2000 and Skype a few years later – just after stocks crashed 80% in the dotcom bust. And at first I thought – wow, I missed the boat!… But then a funny thing happened. We managed to find a way through. As our bank balance dwindled, we became more scrappy & cost efficient. What I realised was more resilient and enduring companies come from downturns. And based on what I saw then, and I’m experiencing now, I’ve never been more excited about what Europe is building…” Following the speech, I asked Zennström if he thought it self-serving for a VC to be putting a glossy view of downrounds. He said: “Atomico hasn’t led many down rounds, so this is about my personal experience as an entrepreneur and from situations I’ve seen talented founders struggle with years after Atomico’s initial investment. When a down round comes later, we’re then in the same boat as the founder – we both experience any decrease in value.” He said data doesn’t suggest this funding environment is going away anytime soon, and the current cohort of companies will experience more down rounds: “The problem we have is that a combination of misplaced embarrassment and blind hope that the situation will change is preventing founders from raising at all. That means these founders stop building, and technology stops being developed. This could stop some amazing technologies in their tracks if we don’t kill the stigma. That would be very wrong when Europe has such an amazing toolkit for success in the long-term.” Next month Atomico will publish its annual State of European Tech 2022.

Elephantech wants to create circuit boards that are kinder to the environment • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 17, 2022Posted in Asia, Environmentally Friendly, Hardware, Japan, pcb, printed circuit boards, Startups, VentureNo Comments

Printed circuit boards (PCB), which perform essential functions in electronic devices, including displays and sensors, need a lot of energy to create. Moreover, traditional PCB manufacturing processes generate large amounts of liquid waste and high carbon emissions. Still, there are more environmentally friendly ways of producing PCBs, including additive manufacturing processes that use inkjet and laser printing, while fully biodegradable PCBs are also on the horizon. To get its slice of $90 billion PCB manufacturing pie, Tokyo-based startup Elephantech has developed an eco-friendly PCB called P-Flex, using inkjet printing-based electronic circuit manufacturing technology which it says reduces carbon emissions by 77% and water consumption by 95% compared to conventional processes. The main change Elephantech ushers in to the PCB process is that while electronic circuits are typically made through so-called “subtractive” manufacturing which involves layering an entire surface with metal before dissolving the areas that aren’t necessary, with Elephantech’s “pure additive” process, it only puts metals in place where they are needed to begin with. Nothing is subsequently removed (i.e. wasted). The company also says that its nanoparticle inkjet technology helps cut costs by 32%, through removing a number of procedures from the manufacturing process. To meet its mission “to create a sustainable world through resource-and energy-efficient manufacturing technologies,” Elephantech has secured 2.15 billion yen (~$15 million) in funding, at a 12.3 billion yen ($88 million) valuation, a company spokesperson told ZebethMedia. The new capital, which brings its total raised to approximately 7 billion yen ($50 million) since its inception in 2014, will help the startup scale its business from R&D and its current production volume, which is focused on its domestic market, to target customers globally. Regular circuit Elephantech started the mass production of its PCBs two years ago in its Nagoya facility, and while it is currently focused on single-sided flexible substrates, it plans to produce multi-layered and rigid PCBs, which constitute different layers, including a copper layer, substrate layer and silkscreen layer. The company said that its inkjet printing technology can also be used in other sectors such as healthcare, optics, and textiles. In August, the startup announced a dye removal technology called neochromato, co-developed with Japanese textile chemical company Nicca Chemical. The neochromato process supports removing print from polyester fabrics without using water, and putting new print on the textiles to reuse the material with a different design before recycling to reduce apparel waste. The outfit said the process could reduce about 48% of CO2 emissions when clothes are recycled with a different pattern compared to chemical recycling, which reduces about 20% of the carbon emissions. A number of fledgling startups are working to address and optimize different aspects of the PCB design process, including a company called Celus, which recently raised $25.6 million for a platform that automates circuit board design. Then there’s Luminovo, which secured $11 million to reduce waste in PCB manufacturing by bringing together the entire material and production costing process. So it’s clear that there is a growing impetus to optimize and improve on a technology that powers just about every electronic contraption there is, from smartphones to microwave ovens. Combined with growing environmental concerns and the role that electronics plays in that, Elephantech is perhaps in a strong position to gain traction in global markets, and its latest cash injection will go some way toward helping. Elephantech’s funding round included investments from Anri V Investment, Shin-Etsu Chemical, Nose, Shizuoka Capital, Eiwa Corporation, Nanobank, Mitsubishi Gas Chemical, Kenbishi Sake Brewing, D&I Investment, Epson, Sumimoto, East Ventures and Beyond Next Ventures.

Gravitics raises $20M to make the essential units for living and working in space • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 17, 2022Posted in gravitics, Hardware, Space, space station, Startups, type one venturesNo Comments

The space industry is on the cusp of a revolution. The cost of launch, which has dramatically decreased over the past five years, will continue to drop as heavy-lift rockets like SpaceX’s Starship and Relativity’s Terran R become operational. Parallel to these developments, multiple private companies have introduced plans to build commercial space stations for science, manufacturing and even tourism. If space stations are the next phase of business in orbit, they’re going to need standard parts — and Gravitics aims to be the one making them. The startup is headed by space industry veteran Colin Doughan, who surveyed these currents and saw a gap in the market. Doughan’s career spans a nearly 20-year tenure at Lockheed Martin, where he worked as a senior finance manager dealing with large satellite constellations for government customers. He also co-founded Altius Space Machines, which was eventually purchased by Voyager Space in 2019. Private station operators “are going to need an easy LEGO brick to build in space,” he told ZebethMedia in a recent interview: versatile, modular hardware to let humanity build in space at scale. Gravitics, which emerged from stealth today following the announcement of a $20 million seed round, is calling the building block “StarMax.” (Doughan also refers to it as an SUV — a “Space Utility Vehicle.”) Notably, StarMax modules are huge: the model listed on the company’s website has a diameter of nearly 8 meters and an internal usable volume of 400 cubic meters, nearly half that of the International Space Station. Gravitics wants to position these modules as the essential base unit for living and working in space. The initiative has caught investor attention in a major way, as the seed round illustrates — further proof that space station and in-space habitat plays are getting hotter. The funding was led by Type One Ventures, with additional participation from Tim Draper from Draper Associates, FJ Labs, The Venture Collective, Helios Capital, Chicago-based Giant Step Capital, Gaingels, Spectre, Manhattan West and Mana Ventures. From an investor standpoint, Type One founding partner and Gravitics board member Tarek Waked said his firm noticed multiple underlying trends that support the company’s vision of the future. “We’re betting on launch costs coming down. We’re betting on Starship revolutionizing the industry,” he said. It’s not just Starship’s cargo capacity that excites the Gravitics team. It’s the potential for the rocket to send up many more humans into space — people who, at present, would have nowhere to stay. “There’s no infrastructure for those people to go [to], and even if we built that infrastructure today, there’s no modular or cost-effective way to get that much infrastructure up to orbit,” Waked said. “And that’s where I think Gravitics plays.” StarMax at scale. Image Credits: Gravitics Supplying the stations of the future The specific play that Gravitics is making is emphatically not as a space station operator. Blue Origin and Sierra Space’s Orbital Reef, Voyager and Lockheed’s Starlab, and a third project headed by Northrop Grumman have already received major funding from NASA under the agency’s Commercial low Earth orbit Destinations (CLD) program. Rather than compete with these companies, Gravitics wants to be their core supplier. Doughan said he anticipates a glut of demand for the product in the second half of the decade, as operators commence their initial build out. Beyond that, Gravitics is aiming to fulfill the ongoing needs of these stations once they are operational, plus meeting organic demand that the company is betting will emerge as costs for launching cargo and crew drop. StarMax will have power and propulsion onboard for delivery and docking (and indeed, the company landed Virgin Orbit’s former senior director of propulsion, Scott Macklin, as its director of engineering). “What we’re guessing is going to happen is that station demand is going to grow,” Doughan said. “They’re going to need scalability over time.” A rendering of an office on StarMax. Image Credits: Gravitics What the economy in low Earth orbit will ultimately look like is anyone’s guess, however, and from the outside it seems that StarMax’s emphasis on scalability in the design (the module has docking ports on either end) is also a hedge against the space industry’s notoriously uncertain timelines. But it also makes sense from a market perspective: Gravitics is prepared to sell the StarMax module to entities that may want to use it in a free-flyer capacity, or an operator that wants flexibility on offering short-term stays or long-term attachments to the stations; but StarMaxes can also be daisy-chained to form even larger in-space platforms as more and more people spend time in space. (opens in a new window) “Of or pertaining to gravity” For all the talk of Starship, the company isn’t putting all its eggs in that one, Musk-y basket. The suite of StarMax modules under development are being designed to be compatible on other next-gen launch vehicles, like United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan and Blue Origin’s New Glenn. While Gravitics is staying tight-lipped on how much a single StarMax might cost, Doughan said it would be competitive with a recent deal between Axiom Space and Thales Alenia for two station modules, a contract valued at €110 million ($108 million), or $54 million each. The company recently opened a 42,000-square-foot facility just north of Seattle where it has already begun constructing prototypes and preparing for early module pressure tests early next year. Gravitics is also in talks with development groups in Florida about building a larger production and integration facility right next to their customer base at Kennedy Space Center. In addition to these physical spaces, the company will also use the funds from this seed round to continue growing its team. It has already attracted notable talent, like the aforementioned Macklin and Bill Tandy, former mission architect and chief engineer for Orbital Reef. The pressure tests in the first quarter of next year are the initial step toward testing a StarMax in orbit, though Doughan declined to offer any details on that timeline. But it’s

Summer International uses social media data to launch new beauty brands • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 17, 2022Posted in Asia, beauty, Influencer Marketing, Singapore, social media, south korea, Southeast Asia, Startups, Summer International, wellnessNo Comments

If you follow #beautytok, #beautytube or any beauty content on social media platforms, you know that popular product trends are hard to keep up with. Summer International stays ahead of the game by identifying the most influential content creators, and working with them to incubate new brands. Founded in Singapore and based in Los Angeles and South Korea, Summer International announced today it has raised a $5 million seed round from investors including GDP Ventures, Teja Ventures, Gushcloud International and Singaporean angel investors Koh Boon Hwee and Shirley Crystal Tan. NYX founder and Bespoke Beauty Brands CEO Toni Ko will also join Summer International as a strategic investor. NYX was acquired by L’Oreal in 2014 for about $500 million. Summer International co-founder and CEO Xiaoski Kuik said the company’s goal is to create an ecosystem to help influencers and creators launch and sell beauty brands using consumer data and analytics. It operates in the United States, South Korea, Singapore, the Philippines and Indonesia. The company launched in 2018 along with Gushcloud International, an influencer marketing firm. Since then, Summer International has incubated brands like skincare line Baby Face with Singaporean influencer Jamie Chua, who has over 1.2 million followers, and wellness brands HANJAN, which launched in April at Coachella and recently struck a partnership with singer Nicole Scherzinger. Kuik told ZebethMedia that Summer International looks for creators and influencers who have a strong connection with their audience based on engagement rates, how active they are a video-first platforms and whether they have a strong localized community and global presence. “Many times, creators seek us out because of our reach and resources,” she said. “We have our own supply chain and we have the power to distribute brands across Asia via our social commerce and live distribution platforms. Our goal is to establish these top influencers as founders of the next-gen beauty, skincare and wellness brands and to provide them with the access and necessary resources they need to break into the market.” Other companies that also work with creators to launch brands include Pietra and Forma Brands. Ko said Summer International differentiates by owning its own distribution network and it also has a network of live commerce and social commerce distributors, mainly micro influencers based in Southeast Asia. “It gives us the ability to understand data of what consumers want and would buy and this allows us to collaborate with creators to build brands in a more cost-efficient manner,” Kuik said. Summer International’s live commerce distribution network helps it understand what brands and products consumers from different parts of Southeast Asia want to buy. It also provides data points like pricing and demographics to create new brands and market them. Summer International brands are sold through a mix of digital and offline channels, including e-commerce platforms, social and live commerce platforms and big box stores. They are also available on Summer.store, the company’s proprietary social commerce network.

Korean VC Sopoong closes $8M fund for startups focused on environmental impact • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 17, 2022Posted in Asia, Climate, climate tech, social impact, Sopoong Ventures, south korea, Startups, VentureNo Comments

Two years ago, South Korea unveiled a plan to reach carbon neutrality by 2050. Getting there will be another story. Although Korean manufacturers say they are trying to change their ways, the country’s GDP is linked to some uniquely pollutive industries, including petrochemical producers, automakers and shipbuilders. Though some businesses may never be truly sustainable, a venture firm in Seoul argues that emerging climate-tech startups will help big manufacturers do better overall. Sopoong, a social impact-focused VC, intends to support environmentally minded tech founders in South Korea and Southeast Asia, while building a bridge between Korean conglomerates and startups in the sector. Sopoong has closed on around $8 million (10.3 billion won) for its latest, sixth fund, bringing the firm’s total assets under management to approximately $22 million (28 billion won). I spoke with Sopoong chief executive Max Sang-Yeop Han, a serial entrepreneur who joined Sopoong in 2016 and acquired the firm in 2019, to learn about the VC’s plans. “It is a significant signal for large South Korean corporates participating as limited partners of environmental and climate tech-focused venture capitals like us,” Han said. “Participating LPs [Korean conglomerates] are passionate about climate technology and want to take part to address the climate and environment issue as they agree that the climate crisis is one of the urgent problems.” Korean petroleum refining company GS Holdings and chemical company Isu participated in Sopoong’s climate-focused fund as limited partners as of April, Han said, adding that they will be more like strategic partners to Sopoong. Non-profit organizations such as Asan Nanum Foundation, established by Hyundai Group, and D.Camp, as well as startup founders and executives, including the co-founder and former CEO of Krafton, Gang-Seok Kim, also joined Sopoong’s climate fund, Han continued. The early-stage VC had already set up five social impact funds and backed 81 startups since 2020, after Han acquired the firm in December 2019. Sopoong was launched in 2008 by Jaewoong Lee, who co-founded South Korea’s largest internet portal operator Daum Communication, which merged with Kakao in 2014. Now, the VC firm wants to zero in on the climate crisis and other environmental issues through its sixth fund, but other tech sectors like SaaS and IT will still be on its radar, according to Han. “Two-thirds of the fund will be invested in the environment and climate tech, including renewable energy, agri-tech, and food tech, and the rest will go to the information technology industry investment,” Han said. Its sweet spot is early-stage ventures from seed to series A stages across South Korea and Southeast Asia. Its average check size is $150,000, but the firm can go up to $600,000, Han told ZebethMedia. The sixth fund has already invested in 16 startups, including MetaTexture, a plant-based food startup; Selex, a Vietnam-based electric scooter and battery-swapping technology startup; Myorange, a platform for managing charitable donations; and Function 12, an automation tool that helps users complete coding and design files. Nine of the 16 portfolio companies are participating in Sopoong’s first accelerator program, which launched in June and runs for six months. Sopoong invests up to $350,000 into each startup via the accelerator program and offers mentorship, co-working space, administrative support and networking opportunities with experts. On top of the accelerator, the firm also launched a six-month fellowship program to foster climate tech entrepreneurship. So far, Sopoong says it has selected 13 individuals with master’s or doctoral degrees in environment-related majors, offering them $1,700 in grants per month and other support, including the accelerator program. If participating fellows succeed in founding a startup, Sopoong could make a seed investment, Han said.