Startups

Bootstrapping basics, fintech’s future, tech employers gain advantage • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 15, 2022Posted in EC roundup, Fintech, immigration law, Startups, tech layoffs, Venture, venture capitalNo Comments

Are you planning to play League of Legends during your next investor pitch? (If so, reading this probably isn’t a good use of your time.) For founders who are interested in building on their own, maintaining control and staying off the fundraising treadmill for as long as possible, investor/entrepreneur Marjorie Radlo-Zandi sets out five basic principles for bootstrapped founders in her latest TC+ article. It’s not for everyone: self-funded companies will ask more from their employees than larger operations that offer free lunches and other perks. At one bootstrapped startup where I worked, I was asked to defer part of my salary — after I was hired. Full ZebethMedia+ articles are only available to membersUse discount code TCPLUSROUNDUP to save 20% off a one- or two-year subscription Radlo-Zandi covers the basics with regard to hiring, managing expenses and shaping company culture, but she also urges self-funders to tamp down expectations and take a measured approach: “Don’t be tempted to hop on a plane at a moment’s notice to meet potential customers in glamorous locations or for meetings in far-flung locations,” she writes. “Your bootstrapped business likely will not survive such big, optional financial outlays.” Bootstrapped founders face longer odds, but if they can drive growth and reach product-market fit, “fundraising will be that much easier.” Thanks very much for reading, Walter ThompsonEditorial Manager, ZebethMedia+@yourprotagonist The power pendulum is swinging back to employers, isn’t it? Image Credits: AOosthuizen (opens in a new window) / Getty Images More than 120,000 tech workers have lost jobs so far this year, according to layoffs.fyi. And with more than a fifth of those layoffs taking place in November, many from well-capitalized public companies, it’s easy to see why Continuum CEO Nolan Church believes this is the beginning of a wave. “Over the last 12 years, the pendulum between who has power between employees and employers has drastically swung toward employees,” he said last week on the ZebethMedia Equity podcast. “Now, we’re in a moment where the pendulum is swinging back.” Answers for H-1B workers who’ve been laid off (or think they might be) Group of young adults, photographed from above, on various painted tarmac surface, at sunrise. Sophie Alcorn, an immigration law attorney based in Silicon Valley, estimates that 15% of the people recently laid off from Bay Area startups are immigrants, 90% of whom are H-1B holders. If you’re a visa holder who’s been laid off, your first priority is to “figure out your last day of employment, because that’s when you need to start counting the 60-day grace period,” says Alcorn. “You either get a new job, you leave, or you figure out some other way to legally stay in the United States, but you have to take some action within those 60 days.” Nearly 80% of venture funds raised in just two states as US LPs retreat to the coasts Image Credits: Bryce Durbin / ZebethMedia After the pandemic began, there was a lot of buzz about how venture capital was shifting away from its roots in San Francisco and New York to make inroads into the Midwest. But after an extended slump in public markets led so many investors to sit on the sidelines, data show that “most funds outside of the two largest startup hubs… are feeling the frost from potential LPs,” reports Rebecca Szkutak. “So far this year, 77% of capital has been raised in just California and New York. In 2021, those states raised 68% of the year’s totals.” Preparing for fintech’s second decade: 4 moves your firm must make now Image Credits: Emilija Manevska (opens in a new window) / Getty Images According to consultant Grant Easterbrook, fintech startups that hope to succeed over the next few years must be prepared to go up against: Major banks and financial service providers with loyalty programs and “super apps.” Emerging DeFi protocols “that can offer financial products that involve real-world assets.” Banking, invoicing, lending, payments, accounting packaged as “embedded financial products.” Multiple countries issuing their own Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC). “Your firm will need a very strong value proposition to compete with all four types of competitors,” writes Easterbrook, who shares his ideas for navigating the next decade of fintech in a TC+ guest post.

More fertility benefits • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 15, 2022Posted in digital health, kate ryder, maven, Startups, women's healthNo Comments

Maven, a women’s health clinic and benefits platform, has had no shortage of macroeconomic plot twists: from investors questioning its market size to the still on-going pandemic to, most recently, the startling overturn of Roe v. Wade. But CEO and founder Kate Ryder stays optimistic. “This is a massive industry that’s full of entrenched interests and misaligned incentives and then there’s the government and the regulators. But I think that the change is afoot,” she said in an interview with ZebethMedia. “There’s a lot of stuff to be done here, but I think employers are actually recognizing it for the first time, we see it being prioritized – because we wouldn’t be growing if not.” Indeed, the startup’s growth is impressive: Maven’s employer-paid benefits suite currently covers 15 million people, five times as many people that it covered since August 2021. Amid an environment where many late-stage companies are struggling, Maven’s user growth has unsurprisingly attracted fresh investor interest. The company announced yesterday that it has raised a $90 million Series E led by General Catalyst, which just announced a $670 million healthcare focused fund over the summer. Other investors in the round include CVS Health Ventures, La Famiglia, and Intermountain Ventures, as well as existing investors Sequoia, Oak HC/FT, Icon Ventures, Dragoneer Investment Group, and Lux Capital. Investors also increased Maven’s valuation from $1 billion to $1.35 billion. Lux Capital’s Deena Shakir said that Maven’s financing, “despite the current macro environment” reflects an “extraordinary long-term potential.” “Regardless of Roe-related regulatory or recessionary reservations, one thing is clear: women’s health is population health, and companies like Maven have a more important role than ever to play in helping to advance human health and health equity through technology,” Shakir told ZebethMedia. Ryder notes that the $90 million round is definitely not being put “aside for a rainy day,” saying that “one one hand, we’re having more rigor in our budgeting and spending process like every company, but the new capital we’re investing in growth.” Maven declined to share what new products are in the works, but Ryder did hint that they are building for the market demand for a better fertility and maternity bundle of benefits; “not only on the reimbursement side but also the clinical outcomes.” Maven is also working to support the Medicaid side of its business, and is continuing to invest in health equity that “attacks from of the social determinant issues.” Maven launched its first Medicaid population this year. For example, Maven launched with Arkansas Blue Cross Blue Shield this year and it is able to be offered as a free benefit to families who are enrolled in the plan. Scale has brought the ability to spin up programs with fast impact. For example, within six weeks of launching a menopause program, over 1.2 million lives were covered across 150 employers. Additionally, Maven’s network of providers offer on average 5,100+ appointment slots every week; all factors that help play into the reason that the startup has a 96% client retention rate. The challenge ahead of Maven, similar to any digital health clinic looking to have the biggest impact, is its ability to serve the most complex medical issues for high-risk, diverse patients. Ryder notes that the whole industry is getting more into value-based contracts – a model in which providers only get paid based on patient health outcomes – which means that startups need to continue to deliver and put the money where their mouth is. In this case, let’s see how a new round at a higher valuation helps Maven do exactly what they say the industry wants.

YC, Khosla-backed Atmos lands $12.5M to design custom dream homes • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 15, 2022Posted in Atmos, Khosla Ventures, real estate, Startups, VentureNo Comments

Atmos, a startup which has built an online marketplace that teams up homebuyers with builders and land developers to design and build custom homes, has emerged from stealth today with $12.5 million raised in Series A funding round led by Khosla Ventures. Founded in 2018, San Francisco-based Atmos touts that with its tech, homebuyers are able to select land, design a home within their budget and approve the design using 3D tech. It then teams up buyers with a “vetted builder partner.” The startup aims to give buyers more options as the nation faces a persistent housing shortage and during a time when mortgage interest rates have more than doubled since last year. Atmos claims it can also help builders by providing them with ready-to-go buyers as opposed to building on spec (without committed customers) in an uncertain market. It also says it can help land developers by allowing them to go direct-to-consumer. Existing backers Bedrock, JLL Spark, YC and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman participated in the financing along with new investors real estate brokerage Keller Williams, Duke Angel Network, Bain Capital co-chairman Stephen Pagliuca and Figma CEO and co-founder Dylan Field. The company previously raised nearly $2 million in March 2020. It participated in Y Combinator’s summer cohort that same year, and then raised an additional $4 million led by Khosla. “On Demo Day, we got a term sheet from Khosla,” said Nicholas Donahue, CEO and co-founder of Atmos. “Within two weeks, we’d accepted it.” Atmos says its technology allows buyers to see “exactly what can be built on any specific lot depending on the size, shape and development requirements.” First, it assists buyers with getting a survey and soil test, and then designing a home based on their individual preferences. Once a builder is solidified, construction can begin. “We’re trying to put more of the design process online,” Donahue said. “We also onboard partners as well as gather certain local data such as zoning requirements and typography.” It also checks to make sure construction would not violate any HOA restrictions before a buyer wastes too much time on a project. The average cost of building a home through Atmos is about $225/square foot. So for a 1,500-square-foot home, that comes out to about $337,500. That’s cheap or expensive, depending on which market you’re building in. Certain selections such as whether a buyer chooses to build a one-story ranch home or a two-story house can impact costs, Donahue adds. So far, the startup has built six homes and is “working on a few dozen more,” he said. It makes money by charging a 5% service fee on the cost of construction to homebuyers “for due diligence, design, and project management.” It also charges a $20,000 flat fee to builders for finding, vetting and servicing a client, as well as handling any of the pre-construction services they would otherwise have to handle. Eventually, Atmos has its sights on what it describes as other emerging tech markets such as Denver, Austin, Portland and Salt Lake City. Unlike fellow Khosla portfolio company Homebound, which raised $70 million earlier this year and describes itself as a “tech-enabled homebuilder,” Donahue says Atmos is focused more on the pre-construction of a home. “We’re more design-oriented, and focus more on the process that someone goes through to create the house,” he told ZebethMedia. “My belief is that more people would build if it was just simpler and less ambiguous, and they had the ability to design a home that is unique to them.” He believes Atmos’s biggest differentiator compared to other startups in the space like Welcome Homes is that it offers “more flexibility” and freedom in the design phase. Interestingly, unlike most startups that raise capital, 26-person Atmos does not plan to use its new funds to hire in this market, according to Donahue. It’s focusing on building out its marketplace. “You have all of these, like builders and developers that are functioning in a very hot environment … that ended up purchasing tons of land on which they usually choose to go spec instead of working with a client to build custom,” he said. “We see opportunity to help them unload some of their over-leveraged assets.” Khosla Ventures partner and DoorDash co-founder Evan Moore gained experience in the real estate space having helped the Opendoor team pre-launch to lead product. He told ZebethMedia via email that in his prior work, he spoke with many families buying tract homes, which are “the massive subdivisions of homes that all look the same.” “Many wanted to build a home custom to their own needs, but couldn’t figure out where to start, and couldn’t get certainty of timeline or price,” Moore said. “It was clear to me then that if someone could provide a trustworthy, transparent process, more people would build custom homes… I think in the coming years it’ll seem obvious that one should be able to find available lots, design homes that work on those lots per local regulation, and start your build — all online.”

Payload raises $4.7M for its developer-first headless CMS • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 15, 2022Posted in content management, developers, Enterprise, funding, headless CMS, seed round, StartupsNo Comments

Payload, which develops a headless open-source content management system (CMS), today announced that it has raised a $4.7 million seed round led by Google’s AI-focused Gradient Ventures. Other investors include MongoDB Ventures, Y Combinator, SV Angel, Grand Ventures and Exceptional Capital, in addition to a number of angel investors. Unlike most CMS tools, Michigan-based Payload puts its emphasis on developers. Bootstrapped since 2021, the team behind the platform argues that typical app frameworks give developers the tools to create their backends but not the CMS-style user interfaces they would need to manage apps and their content. Image Credits: Payload “To devs, ‘content management system’ is usually a swear word. If an engineer gets assigned a CMS project, it’s less than thrilling. They want to avoid roadblocks, write code and build things they’re proud of — but existing CMS’s get in the way of that left and right,” said CEO James Mikrut, who co-founded the company together with Dan Ribbens (COO) and Elliot DeNolf (CTO). “We’re not competing with Webflow or Squarespace — rather, we’re going to give talented engineers a tool they can trust to build critical content infrastructure.” Instead of building another no-code CMS, the team went in the exact opposite direction and built something more akin to a framework than ‘just’ a pure headless CMS. To get started, developers describe their configuration for Payload in TypeScript and the service creates a Mongo database, sets up REST and GraphQL APIs, handles file storage, authentication and access control — and, of course, creates the admin UI, which defaults to a clean, minimalist look. The company is currently in the middle of its first launch week, a concept that seems to be making the rounds among startups these days. Earlier this year, the team also launched version 1.0 and now that it has raised its first funding round, the plan is to expand the team and invest in the open-source community around Payload. And like most open-source startups, the company plans to launch a managed service, Payload Cloud, to power its monetization strategy and function as a hub for deploying Payload apps.

Yahaha raises $40M more for its user-generated, low-code immersive gaming platform • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 15, 2022Posted in China, Gaming, metaverse, Startups, yahahaNo Comments

Yahaha, a Helsinki- and Shanghai-based immersive, user-generated, low-code gaming platform founded by a group of Chinese gaming vets, made a splash in January when it announced a cumulative $50 million in funding ahead of its alpha launch in April. Now, with 100,000 creators and hundreds of thousands of players, it’s raised a further $40 million to continue building out its product — specifically to bring in monetization features and more social hooks — as well as to hire more talent and for business development. Yahaha is describing this as an extension to its previous round, specifically a “Series A+.” We are asking for an updated valuation, but for some context, when it announced funding 11 months ago, I was told that the valuation was a “few hundred million” (so in the wide range of $300-500 million). The raise and valuation both stand out against a backdrop of slim fundraising, especially for consumer startups. Yahaha styles itself as a dual-headquartered company, but its investors in this latest raise are all out of China and greater Asia. Singapore’s Temasek and Chinese internet giant Alibaba are co-leading this investment, with another Chinese company, 37 Interactive Entertainment, also participating. Previously the company had raised funding from 5Y Capital, HillHouse, Coatue, ZhenFund, Bertelsmann Asia Investments, BiliBili and Xiaomi. The company said it now has more than 150 employees, with offices in Helsinki, Seoul and Shanghai. LinkedIn, which shut down operations in China last year, notes that about half of the company’s employees registered on its platform identify as based out of Shanghai. “Metaverse” as a concept has seen a lot of hype, especially earlier this year — spearheaded in no small part by one of the biggest consumer internet businesses of our time, Facebook, rebranding itself as “Meta” and going all-in on the concept. A lot of that has not come to much so far, one big bellwether being Meta itself knocking back an own-goal in its own efforts. However, most universally agree that gaming has been one of the few highlights, with gamers willing to pay for and use hardware and software to improve the immersive-ness of their experiences. Yahaha is tapping into that opportunity and coupling it with another couple of big trends. User-generated content has long been a popular aspect of gaming and entertainment overall, but more recently it’s taken on a more sophisticated, businesslike aspect: people who in the past might have created media for fun have now become “creators” who see business opportunities in building content and and using it to connect with audiences. Not all of those creators — not many of them at all, in fact — are “technical”, so that is leading to attention (and funding) for companies that are building platforms to help creators create and spin up their business opportunities without a lot of heavy technical lifting. And that’s where Yahaha comes in. The company’s founders — Chris Zhu (CEO), Pengfei Zhang (COO) and Hao Min (CTO) — all worked together as engineers at cross-platform gaming engine Unity — indeed Yahaha has been described to me as being built in partnership with Unity — and their low-code platform aims to do all that heavy lifting behind the scenes. With an eye to creators and the businesses they are building, the new features the product will be getting will include more “monetization modules” and other commercial developments, said Zhu. “We’ve seen fantastic growth in YAHAHA throughout the Early Alpha stage, and with over 100,000 creators signing up to make content with us, we are building on a strong foundation,” Zhu said in a statement. “This round of funding signifies the next step we are taking with YAHAHA, opening up more creator experiences monetization modules. We are also continuing to pioneer by investing in key areas of the community and by building relationships with brands that share our values, aligning ourselves with experts in the fields of game development, 3D asset creation and more. With YAHAHA, we’re not just ushering in the next generation of entertainment, we’re supporting the next generation of creators and giving them the tools and the integrated virtual world platform they need to make great content. There is a litany of opportunities that await us in the virtual world, and we want to be on the cutting edge of it with YAHAHA. To do this, it’s imperative we continue investing in our team and in the community that got us to where we are right now.” The big questions will be whether those noodling around in the early version will stay with Yahaha as monetization comes in, whether that monetization works, whether games are entertaining enough to get players to engage, and of course whether metaverse establishes itself as a permanent fixture in the market, rather than a passing stage, as gamers progress to the next level.

5 sustainable best practices for bootstrapped startups • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 15, 2022Posted in bootstrapping, Column, EC Column, EC How To, startup hiring, StartupsNo Comments

Marjorie Radlo-Zandi Contributor Marjorie Radlo-Zandi is an entrepreneur, board member, mentor to startups and angel investor who shows early-stage businesses how to build and successfully scale their businesses. More posts by this contributor You’ve sold your company. Now what? The art of the pivot: Work closely with investors to improve your odds No matter how successful your startup is, you’ll always need to pay bills and ensure healthy future cash flows. Times of plenty can lull you into thinking funds will always flow into your bank account, because that’s been your reality so far, but the cruel reality is that capital sources can dry up overnight with no warning. To weather uncertainty and maintain emotional equilibrium, it’s good to temper your exuberance and confidence with a dose of realism. One way to do this is through bootstrapping. Bootstrapping is a double-edged sword: Because you have little or no dependence on investors or stakeholders, you won’t give up much of your company in exchange for money, but the downside is that you have less money to invest in growth. There’s also a hybrid model that gets less attention and bears mentioning. An investment colleague of mine in the life science genomics space received $150,000 in angel funding. She later sold her business for hundreds of millions of dollars. She could pull off this extraordinarily successful exit because after the initial angel round, sales of her unique DNA sequencing and genomic services funded the business. With the success of her technology, she was able to rapidly scale the business within the U.S. If you decide bootstrapping is the best choice for your situation, you should first figure out if you’ll self-fund or seek small amounts from angels. Don’t be tempted to hop on a plane at a moment’s notice to meet potential customers in glamorous locations or for meetings in far-flung locations. These five key business strategies and principles will set you up for success: Pick team members wisely Establish your business model and go-to -market strategy to generate cash quickly Adopt a frugal mindset: always watch expenses and negotiate costs Be prepared to take on many roles, including those you feel are menial. Only outsource what’s absolutely essential, such as legal and accounting Pick your team wisely Your first employees are among the most important stakeholders in your business. It’s critical to select people who are invested in the mission and success of your business. They should want to work for a bootstrapped business, as not all will. Look for people who want to be part of the business rather than someone for whom it’s just another job. The right hires will indicate they want to be part of a sustainable business model. You should offer equity vesting over time as a key financial incentive. Because your team will earn this incentive over their tenure with the company, each individual will likely be even more invested in your business’ success. Select employees who can wear many hats, and seek out talent from diverse backgrounds to bring in varied perspectives. I built and ran a startup in food safety diagnostics that I sold to a multi-billion dollar S&P 500 company. We had people across ages, sexes, ethnic backgrounds, education, and geographies. This diversity was critical to our success, because we were doing business in 100 countries. It required us to have a deep understanding of the marketplace and cultural dynamics of each country.

AI-driven fashion platform Shoptrue constantly learns its users shopping habits • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 15, 2022Posted in Commerce, e-commerce, Fashion, online shopping, StartupsNo Comments

An A.I.-powered online fashion marketplace, Shoptrue, is launching its website into beta today with plans for a public release early next year. The site blends artificial intelligence and personalized recommendations with taste-driven shopping, the company says, which helps give users a source for style inspiration as well as the ability to create and share outfit ideas with others. Rather than the typical algorithmic approach such as Amazon, which ranks items based on a strong sales history, Shoptrue is A.I.-driven and continually improves its product recommendations based on purchase behaviors and user engagement. That way, users can have more say on what items they see on their curated feeds. The site offers a “One Stop Personal Shop” for the user, which gives fashion suggestions based on their style preferences. Users can eliminate the items they dislike and purchase items directly on Shoptrue through its unified checkout process. Romney Evans, the founder of Shoptrue, told ZebethMedia, “Instead of being a top-down recommendation system, where the user is passive, it’s putting the user in the driver’s seat, back into personalization, giving them the controls.” Image Credits:Shoptrue Shoptrue’s individualized shopping experience begins with an onboarding quiz, which includes questions about your style personality, favorite brands, and color preferences– similar to other personalized e-commerce sites, like Stitch Fix. Shoptrue users can then browse a large selection of merchandise from over 2,000 merchants that range from high-end brands like Alexander Wang, Christian Louboutin, Gucci, and Dolce & Gabbana, to affordable retailers like Ross, Kohls, Nordstrom Rack, H&M, and Forever 21. There are also “Shops,” or collections created by Shoptrue’s team of editors, that users can explore for inspiration. For instance, the “Girl’s Night Out” lookbook features trendy miniskirts, strappy heels, tanks, graphic pants, and handbags. Users will soon get to create and share their own Shops, Shoptrue says. Peer-generated Shops will also roll out when Shoptrue officially launches out of beta. Image Credits: Shoptrue Shoptrue will also soon launch the ability to pre-filter size and fit specifications, so shoppers only see the products in stock that are in their size. This is a natural step for the company as Evans is also the co-founder of True Fit, the personalization company that built a data platform to help online shoppers find the correct sizes for apparel and footwear. Within the next year or so, Shoptrue users will be able to create a True Fit profile that helps determine what size they are for specific items, Evans explained to ZebethMedia. As Shoptrue evolves, the company plans to add features based on customer feedback. “We invite shoppers everywhere to join us on this journey. It will take time, but today begins our rollout of an exciting stream of innovation and distinctive experiences that will make it easy to get only what you love. We aspire to delight shoppers and earn their trust as we improve their shopping experience every month and every quarter through innovation, trial and error, and by listening to their feedback,” Evans said. With the launch of Shoptrue, Evans has brought on a team of technology and fashion experts, including Brandon Holley, a Condé Nast veteran with over 25 years of experience in fashion, and former Netflix data scientist John Lashlee. Holley is also the founder and CEO of Everywear, a technology platform that’s now incorporated into Shoptrue and helps with custom recommendations and foreseeing purchase behaviors. The startup raised $6 million in seed funding in 2021 to help build, test, and launch its beta. Investors included Signal Peak Ventures, Pelion Venture Partners, and Peterson Ventures. The company expects to raise additional funding in 2023. Founder of Shoptrue Romney Evans (left), Chief Fashion Officer Brandon Holley (middle), VP of Data Science John Lashlee (right) Shoptrue’s business model is typical for online marketplaces. When a user completes a transaction with a merchant via Shoptrue, the company takes a commission on those sales. Shoptrue declined to share the commission range but said it was standard for most fashion marketplaces. (Note that Poshmark’s and ASOS Marketplace’s commission is 20%.) There is no fee for brands to participate on Shoptrue. Social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok are becoming increasingly responsible for influencing the shopping habits of young consumers—especially Gen Z. Shoptrue hopes that Gen Z and Millenials will feel empowered to share their Shops and fashion favorites on social media, get help from Shoptrue’s style experts and find other users and influencers that use the platform. Shoptrue’s launch is another example of how AI technology is transforming the e-commerce industry. In June, Pinterest acquired the AI-powered shopping platform The Yes, which builds a personalized fashion feed and continually learns about a user’s style as they shop. Pinterest said the deal would help the company become the home for taste-driven shopping. “We are making it easier for people to find only the things they’re going to love, and then give them the tools to organize and share their style POV with the world,” Shoptrue’s Chief Fashion Director Brandon Holley said in an announcement. “Anybody’s shop has the potential to set off a chain reaction of fashion inspiration that can surprise and delight you from any direction.”

MotherDuck secures investment from Andreessen Horowitz to commercialize DuckDB • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 15, 2022Posted in a16z, data analytics, Enterprise, funding, redpoint, startup, StartupsNo Comments

Jordan Tigani — a founding engineer at Google BigQuery, Google’s fully managed data analysis platform — was working as the chief product officer at SingleStore when he noticed that the vast majority of database workloads were small (less than 10GB in size) and low-bandwidth. While vendors were building for massive data sets, the term “big data” was becoming a misnomer thanks to recent advances in hardware, the way Tigani saw it. Around the same time, Tigani got in touch with Hannes Mühleisen, the co-creator of the lightweight database platform DuckDB, to toss ideas for a paid service back and forth. Seeking to launch a product for developers with light database requirements, Tigani — with Mühleisen’s blessing — began building a DuckDB-based cloud service. The service became the cheekily named MotherDuck, a startup independent of the original DuckDB that’s focused on commercializing open source DuckDB packages. “Users want easy and fast answers to their questions — they don’t want to wait for the cloud,” Tigani told ZebethMedia via email. “The fact is that a modern laptop is faster than a modern data warehouse. Cloud data vendors are focused on the performance of 100TB queries, which is not only irrelevant for the vast majority of users, but also distracts from vendors’ ability to deliver a great user experience.” It’s a classic playbook — take an open source tool and build a service on top of it. But while it might not be original, Tigani’s plan has already paid dividends. MotherDuck today announced that it raised $47.5 million across seed and Series A rounds, valuing the company at $175 million post-money. Redpoint led the seed while Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) led the Series A — other investors include Madrona, Amplify Partners and Altimeter. Tigani says that MotherDuck wasn’t planning to raise the Series A so soon after the seed, but did so at the urging of LPs — and for the opportunity to work with a16z. “With this funding, MotherDuck is able to build out their world-class engineering team and add a go-to-market function to provide a cloud analytics platform for organizations that want to use DuckDB in an evolved way,” Tigani said. “At the same time, it allows DuckDB to continue to be a vehicle for academic research.” Tigani claims that MotherDuck’s service — powered by DuckDB, which HackerNoon once described as “mutant offspring of SQLite and Redshift” — allows practitioners to start answering questions from data faster than most existing tooling. It uses local computing resources in concert with the cloud, driving data analytics and other data-heavy workloads. That’s in contrast to typical data warehouse systems that offer reporting and tools almost exclusively for enterprise-scale analytics. As Madrona’s Jon Turow explains in a forthcoming blog post (ZebethMedia got a sneak peak), MotherDuck uses a “hybrid execution” technique to query a data set that’s spread across multiple places. Some of the data might be on a developers laptop, some in the cloud instance and the rest in a different cloud, but MotherDuck makes it possible for a dev to query the combination of these sources. “The platform intelligently decides where to operate upon each bit of data to minimize the costs of compute and data transfer,” Turow writes. The data warehouse concept has existed since the ’80s, but it’s risen to prominence in recent years as companies shift their workloads to the cloud. There’s startups like Firebolt and Hydra, which aim to become the open cloud data warehouse of choice for large companies. Panoply, another player in the data warehouse space, has taken a different approach, developing tools that make it easier for businesses to analyze their data with standard database queries. While Tigani sees MotherDuck as a competitor in the data analytics market alongside data warehouse vendors, he positions the platform as the technological superior alternative. “The high efficiency of DuckDB will allow MotherDuck to be cost-competitive, while also being more performant for most data workloads,” Tigani asserted. “Advances in CPU, memory, disk performance and networks are making existing architectures obsolete. Large distributed analytics clusters are no longer necessary due to these advances. Single-node DuckDB can often be much faster, cheaper and simpler than these distributed systems.” The DuckDB team is involved to a degree with MotherDuck, which in turn is a member of the DuckDB Foundation, the nonprofit that holds much of DuckDB’s IP. DuckDB’s own commercial arm, DuckDB Labs, is a shareholder in the company and contributed code to the cloud platform. Tigani assures me that DuckDB will continue to be freely available under a permissive MIT license and that the original DuckDB team will build, maintain and promote the core DuckDB codebase going forward. Fueled by the fresh capital, MotherDuck plans to expand its small workforce from 13 people to 18 by the end of the year. When asked, he declined to answer questions about the size of the startup’s customer base or revenue, saying it’s too early.

Retool launches Workflows to go beyond the front end • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 15, 2022Posted in automation service, backend automation, developers, Enterprise, low-code, retool, Software, StartupsNo Comments

Since its launch in 2017, Retool has made a name for itself by offering developers an easier way to build line-of-business apps for their internal users. Unlike the many low-code/no-code tools on the market today, Retool’s focus remains squarely on developers, despite its helpful drag-and-drop interface. Now, about half a year after announcing its $45 million funding round, the company is expanding its feature set by adding new tools for building backend workflows, too. Retool Workflows, as the company named this new feature, makes it easy for developers to create automated processes like cron jobs, custom alerts and standard extract, transform, load (ETL) tasks, using a similar graphical interface as the frontend tool, all while adding a lot more flexibility than tools like Zapier. “Some people try to put us in the no code-space or something. You’ll never hear us ever saying that,” Retool CEO and co-founder David Hsu told me. “The reason for that is we actually don’t believe in it really. I think if you look at tools like for example Airtable or Zapier or stuff like that, we think that’s really great if you have a simple use case or a medium-sized use case — it’s great for that. But if you want to build a really advanced use case, like an internal tool that an Amazon might build, for example, then Zapier will be able to get you 50% there very quickly, but the remaining 50% basically becomes impossible.” Image Credits: Retool Instead of going for a no-code approach, the Retool team always built its service for developers first. “We believe in the power of code,” said Hsu. He also noted that the trend he sees is that more and more people now learn how to code and that this is the trend he wants to bet on — not dumbing down the coding experience. Workflows fits right in here, he argues, because it’s very hard to build a low-code/no-code tool that allows you to build complex workflows without quickly hitting the limitations of what these tools can do without resorting to writing custom code (though we’ve seen quite a few companies try). Hsu noted that a lot of customers were already hacking the Retool app to make some of these capabilities work for them. But instead of firing off a cron job, they would write a script that would automatically click a button in a custom app at a certain time to kick off a workflow, for example (which is apparently what one of Retool’s customers did). “Developers need the flexibility of code. They want a toolset that speeds up work withoutnarrowing their options,” said Jamie Cuffe, Product Lead, Retool. “Retool Workflows aims to abstract away the tedious parts of building automations from scratch while preserving the ability to write code to solve the problem.” The Retool team argues that building regular cron jobs, with their arcane format, is both time consuming and error prone — and the final result is hard to maintain and debug. “I really think there is no developer-focused workflows product that I’m aware of. That is why we’re launching this,” said Hsu. In addition to running scripts at regular intervals, Retool Workflows can also use webhooks for a more event-driven approach. That means it could be used for alerting, in addition to more traditional lightweight ETL applications. Indeed, Hsu said that most users in the Workflows beta got started with alerting and notifications and then transitioned to ETL use cases over time. It’s worth noting that this isn’t so much an enterprise integration tool for moving data between applications but still squarely focused on getting this data into Retool-based line-of-business applications. “We needed an efficient way to translate product data in our warehouse into timely, insightfulreporting in Slack,” said Joel McLean, director of product growth at RE/MAX. “With Retool Workflows, my team can easily configure our resources in one place and focus only on writing the logic unique to our business.” The new service will be priced based on data throughput. Each Retool plan, including the free one, will come with 1GB of Workflows data for free, with overages starting at $50/GB. For now, Workflows is only available as a hosted service, but the team is already working on an on-prem version. That’s how many of Retool’s customers are already using its app building tool, including the likes of Stripe, Brex, Coinbase and Plaid, so it only makes sense for the company to do the same for Workflows.

Contentstack raises $80M to grow its headless CMS platform for the enterprise • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 15, 2022Posted in Apps, content management system, contentstack, Enterprise, headless CMS, startup, StartupsNo Comments

The market for enterprise content management systems (CMS) is steeply growing as the need to organize and manage documents, images and other forms of digital content increases. According to Allied Market Research, the entire CMS sector combined could be worth $53.2 billion by 2030, up from $21.5 billion in 2020. While the concept of CMS has been around for decades, a relatively new innovation — so-called headless CMS — is beginning to attract both market share and the interest of investors. Headless CMS systems act primarily as content repositories, managing back-end infrastructure while affording plenty of customization on the front end. They’re similar to widgets or plug-ins on a website; a headless CMS is usually combined with a separate presentation layer that handles the design and structure elements, templates and the like. Contentstack is one of several vendors offering a headless CMS geared toward enterprise customers. The company today announced that it raised $80 million in a Series C round co-led by Georgian and Insight Partners, which also saw participation from Illuminate Ventures. Having raised $169 million to date, Contentstack plans to put the funding toward customer acquisition, geographic expansion, new partnerships and product development, CEO Neha Sampat tells ZebethMedia. “Contentstack empowers marketers and developers to deliver composable digital experiences at the speed of their imagination through automated headless CMS technology,” Sampat said via email. “Composable architectures ensure that enterprises can innovate swiftly, deploy new features rapidly, and remain agile in the face of digital disruption. Nobody gets ‘stuck’ with monolithic systems that don’t grow with the business or the world.” Contentstack, which was founded in 2018, was created on the back of fifteen-year-old consulting firm Raw Engineering and Built.io, an app development platform that Raw Engineering launched in 2013. (Closing the loop, Contentstack eventually bought the CMS division of Raw Engineering in 2018). Sampat — who co-founded Built.io — teamed up with Nishant Patel, the former VP of engineering at Software AG (which ended up acquiring Built.io) and Built.io’s second co-founder, to launch Contentstack. A look at Contentstack’s CMS platform for enterprises, which leans into workflow automation and customization. Image Credits: Contentstack Contentstack competes with headless CMS vendors, including Storyblok, which raised $47 million in May for its CMS aimed at nontechnical users, and Prismic, which recently raised $20 million to build out its fully managed CMS. (An interesting data point: VCs have invested over $118 million in CMS startups in the last year alone.) Strapi and Kontent are among the startup’s other rivals. But Sampat makes the case that Contentstack is the only CMS offering automation capabilities that don’t require code. Using the workflows in Contentstack, users can review, approve and publish content across their organization. A marketplace offers a hub for extensions, apps and integrations built by customers, partners and the company’s own engineering team. “Typically, content management requires a lot of backend development and programming skills. There is a risk that comes with that, for example, the risk of breaking other processes, enduring the cumbersome and lengthy requirements to implement the solution into the tech stack, and a lack of flexibility to change or maintain the flow of content,” Sampat said. “With Contentstack’s composable architecture, enterprises can tailor their martech stack and tools to their unique brand, team and customer experience needs quickly and easily unlocking the full potential of a composable tech stack.” Is Contentstack’s platform that much easier to use than the competition’s? Perhaps. Data shows, however, that many organizations struggle to use CMS to its full potential regardless of the vendor. In a 2021 survey released by the Content Marketing Institute, 56% of employees said that integration issues stymied their implementation of CMS while 55% blamed a lack of training. The company, which has more than 400 employees, appears to have won over enterprises regardless, though, with a client base that includes Shell, JPMorgan Chase, HP, McDonald’s and Mattel and several unnamed public sector agencies. The company claims to have doubled its customers since last summer and surpassed 50,000 users on the platform. “The pandemic and recent economic pressure has generated a major shift in the market, causing enterprises to review the performance of their existing digital investments and shift focus to efficiency. Ultimately, this means enterprises now have a higher standard for the return on investment in digital investments,” Sampat continued. “For digital strategy, having a composable architecture enables the speed to iterate and keep up with the constantly changing conditions and demands. Contentstack is well-positioned to empower these digital leaders to outperform through a ‘value- and success-based’ approach coupled with a proven path to a modern, composable architecture that will scale and adapt for the long term.”