Venture

Bitwise, Paradigm and Perkins Coie talk regs at TC Sessions: Crypto

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 3, 2022Posted in bitwise investments, Crypto, cryptocurrencies, Securities and Exchange Commission, TC Sessions: Crypto, TC Sessions: Crypto 2022, TechCrunch Events 2022, VentureNo Comments

Crypto entities ranging from major exchanges to small projects are on the road to stateside regulation. Whether it comes through the Securities and Exchange Commission or the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, many actors in the space are looking for concrete future guidance on how to build compliant businesses in an emerging sector while navigating rules built for traditional finance. And, while crypto founders and investors know regulation is inevitable, they’re also looking to find the sweetest deal possible as they try to influence policymakers. It’s a challenging balance — enough regulation to protect retail investors from a hostile environment but not so much that it stifles the crypto sector’s growth and future innovation in the space. This regulatory tug-of-war is just one reason why we’re thrilled that Katherine Dowling, general counsel and chief compliance officer at Bitwise Asset Management; Sarah Shtylman, partner at Perkins Coie; and Justin Slaughter, policy director at Paradigm, will join us for a session called, “Is Crypto Regulation Ready” at TC Sessions: Crypto in Miami on November 17. We’ll discuss whether or not there’s been an increase in institutional adoption and how the regulatory framework might impact adoption going forward. Given the frustration over the lack of clarity in regulatory guidance, we’ll ask Dowling, Shtylman and Slaughter how legal crypto firms and counsels advise clients to navigate the present landscape while still operating in a compliant way. Dowling brings a unique perspective to the table, having experience working both in private equity firms and as a federal prosecutor in the Economic Crimes Unit of the U.S. Attorney’s Office. Shtylman brings deep knowledge of fintech and blockchain and Slaughter brings legal and advisory experience in both the public and private sectors. We’ll dive into the latest insights on how emerging regulatory frameworks will affect the digital asset industry and get their take on whether we can expect to see clarity on this in the U.S. by the end of the year. Prior to joining Bitwise, Dowling served in general counsel, CCO and COO roles at several financial and private equity firms. She also co-founded Luminate Capital Partners, where she held positions as GP, managing director and COO. A Harvard Law graduate, Dowling spent more than a decade as a federal prosecutor, most recently in the Economic Crimes Unit of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California, where she worked with the FBI, SEC, IRS and other agencies to prosecute insider trading, fraud and money laundering cases, among others. She also serves on the boards of two nonprofit organizations. As a partner at Perkins Coie, Sarah Shtylman focuses on the fintech and blockchain industries. The clients she advises range from entrepreneurs and startups to big tech and regulated financial institutions. Shtylman counsels on a variety of regulatory, commercial, compliance and product development projects — including NFTs, regulated digital asset platforms, in-game currencies and payment services integrations. Shtylman has advised clients through the application and compliance processes for state and federal trust charters, money transmission licensing and registration and lending licenses. She has engaged directly with state and federal regulators to discuss the applicability of various financial services regulatory regimes to emerging blockchain technology platforms and protocols that her clients are developing. Prior to Perkins Coie, Shtylman served as in-house regulatory counsel at Coinbase and has experience with cryptocurrency network development and launches, asset-backed digital tokens (including stablecoins), peer-to-peer lending, corporate governance, Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) compliance, Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) arbitration and financial services litigation. Prior to joining Paradigm, Justin Slaughter was director of the office of Legislative and Intergovernmental Affairs and senior advisor to Acting Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Allison Herren Lee. He has also served as chief policy advisor and special counsel to former Commissioner Sharon Bowen at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and general counsel to Senator Edward J. Markey. Slaughter has also served as a consultant in private practice focusing on fintech and smaller technology companies, and he began his career as a law clerk to Judge Jerome Farris on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Justin has a B.A. from Columbia University and a J.D. from Yale Law School. Take advantage of our early bird pricing and save $150 on General Admission passes. Buy your pass today, and then join the blockchain, crypto, DeFi, NFT and web3 communities at TC Sessions: Crypto on November 17 in Miami. Is your company interested in sponsoring or exhibiting at TC Sessions: Crypto? Contact our sponsorship sales team by filling out this form.

Investor’s advice during a downturn: Don’t panic • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 3, 2022Posted in Airbase, Ramp, Ruth Foxe Blader, Startups, TechCrunch Disrupt 2022, VentureNo Comments

How to compete without losing your mind — and your runway Competing in an increasingly crowded space can be nerve-wracking. Competing in an increasingly crowded space amid a challenging fundraising environment is even more nerve-wracking. We all know that cash is not nearly as readily available in 2022 as it was in 2021. This puts startups in the position of having to compete without losing their minds — or runway. At ZebethMedia Disrupt 2022, I interviewed Ramp CEO Eric Glyman, Airbase CEO Thejo Kote and Anthemis partner Ruth Foxe Blader on the topic. Glyman and Kote shared how they’re working to preserve capital, while Blader offered up some of the advice she’s giving to her portfolio companies. And she didn’t hold back. For the unacquainted, Glyman and Kote both run startups in the spend management space. As friendly competitors, they acknowledged that while the category is not a winner-takes-all one, it’s still important to differentiate and continuously innovate. Said Glyman: “One of the things that we’ve done in our business has been to look at the cost of acquisition — to fully earn back the cost deployed — and we’ve reduced that threshold,” he said. “And so our view is that we want to grow as fast as possible, but at a much faster tolerance — in that same way where you can earn higher yield elsewhere, applying that rigorous framework to where you choose to deploy capital. We think this is the right approach for this environment.” For Kote, it’s mostly about focus. Airbase, he noted, has historically targeted the mid-market and early enterprise space. He referenced “the crazy 2021 period where there was all the insanity around investment in this space,” with investors “willing to pay 100x, 200x multiples.” Rather than frantically try to change Airbase’s model to meet expectations, Kote said the startup kept operating the way it always had. “So a silver lining from a focus perspective coming into this year for us has been, ‘You know what? None of that matters,’” Kote said. “We were very focused on subscription revenue and high-margin subscription revenue and net ARR — not gross ARR. So we have really stuck to what we have always done, which is focused on the mid-market. And that meant that we freed up resources in a bunch of ways, giving us additional runway.” Meanwhile, Blader — whose firm invests at all stages of the life cycle — shared her belief that “this is a sentiment-driven industry, and when the music’s playing, everybody dances.” “The people who danced in 2021 and raised a bunch of capital – enough capital to hit breakeven with maybe a little bit of burn cutting, are probably feeling pretty good,” she said. “And the folks who really either under-raised or didn’t raise or raised capital at a valuation where they’re really not going to be able to close the gap between where multiples were and where they are now, are slightly panicked.”

More than 70 VC firms join VCs for Repro coalition to support reproductive rights • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 3, 2022Posted in EC venture capital, Politics, roe v wade, Startups, Venture, venture capitalNo Comments

Seventy-five venture capital firms, including Bloomberg Beta, 776, and M13, are standing together to launch VCs for Repro, a coalition stating that criminalizing abortion is a violation of human rights that stifles innovation. Announced today, the group seeks to entice more financial leaders to support and vote in favor of reproductive rights come the midterm elections on November 8. “Criminalizing abortion violates human rights and is anti-innovation.This matters to the people investing in the future of our economy. Vote like it matters to you on November 8, 2022,” VCs for Repro’s statement read. The group was started by Backstage Capital general partner Christie Pitts, Synastry Capital president Janna Meyrowitz Turner, Amboy Street Ventures founding partner Carli Sapir, Coyote Ventures co-founder Jessica Karr, and VEST Her Ventures founder Erika Lucas. “There is the outdated pressure for VCs to have to toe the line … about where they stand on abortion.” Simmone Taitt, founder, Poppy Seed Health Speaking to ZebethMedia, Pitts and Turner said progressives within the investment community need to start better utilizing their economic and cultural prowess to shift and shape society. For a long time, people have been silent and afraid to speak up. Their hope is that changes today. “The venture community has a tremendous opportunity for socioeconomic impact,” Turner told ZebethMedia. “They determine which entrepreneurs and ideas get funded, which problems get to be tackled, and whose experience is centered in those business models. Our hope for the coalition is that it inspires those in positions of leadership to find their voice right now. And then to follow that with action.” Lucas added that there is little that determines a woman’s life and career trajectory more than whether she can prevent and plan pregnancies. She said that abortion restrictions hamper the nation’s talent mobility, diminish workforce participation, depress earning potential, and can even drive families into poverty. “I’m hopeful this movement puts pressure on business and civic leaders to see that restricting abortion access is not just a moral or social issue, is an economic issue,” she told ZebethMedia. Already, the reversal of Roe v. Wade is making waves throughout the startup and venture ecosystem.

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

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

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

Craft Ventures leads $11.5M into meez’s culinary recipe tool • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 3, 2022Posted in Craft Ventures, Enterprise, Meez, recipe management, VentureNo Comments

Restaurant kitchens across the country are trying to manage customers while also managing labor shortages. This means it’s important to get new employees up and running faster. Josh Sharkey, chef, founder and CEO of meez, a recipe management app for chefs, started the company in 2020 so that food and beverage professionals could digitally manage and execute recipe workflow, from creation and cost to organization and training. That training pain point is one that Sharkey has continued to hear from kitchens. “Right away we can see the impact of how they can train much faster than before to make sure that when someone new comes on board, it doesn’t take them a month, but for some, only a couple of days,” Sharkey told ZebethMedia. “Anecdotally, we have several case studies where there’s almost like an 80% decrease in the time it takes to train a new employee because they embedded meez in their organization and can now just hand off things that they need to execute on.” Sharkey is not alone: other startups, like Galley, a food data company, are lending their approach to helping this industry. For Galley, it raised $14.2 million in Series A funding earlier this year to help kitchens with predictive purchasing, smart inventory and accurate food production planning. We previously profiled meez last January when the company announced a $6.5 million seed round. At the time, the company was working with around 750 customers and has increased that to 1,200 kitchens worldwide, including fine dining and fast casual restaurants, culinary schools, ghost kitchens and catering companies. It also now has tens of thousands of active users. Now meez is back with new funding, $11.5 million in Series A capital, led by Craft Ventures. Joining Craft is Struck Capital, FJ Labs, AME Cloud Ventures, Moving Capital, Max Mullen, Lenny Rachitsky, Mike Montero, Bobby Lo, Austin Rief, Louis Beryl, James Beshara, Allison Pickens and the Todd & Rahul Fund. The new investment gives meez $18 million in total funding. The company wasn’t planning to raise as soon as it did, but while working on a partnership that accelerated growth, meez began hitting milestones befitting a Series A company, and Craft Ventures preempted the round, Sharkey notes. “It was really just a smart move,” he added. “We were growing fast, had a lot more customers and felt a responsibility to make sure we could serve them.” Along with an increased customer base, meez nearly tripled its revenue since the beginning of the year and has 41 employees. It is also now offering a free version of its platform for individuals who get unlimited recipes and recipe books, recipe sharing and publishing to the web. It also has two other paid tiers for kitchen teams that start at $49 per month. Sharkey intends to deploy the new funds into product and engineering teams, marketing and new premium features. For example, chefs will be able to assess how their recipes contribute to the profitability and success of the business and then be able to adjust their menu items based on sales, demand and margin data. In addition, meez is working on a new component targeting bakers (and chefs who do a lot of R&D) that will help with percentages of ingredients. “The short term is still creating a universal recipe language that everybody in the world can use in the medium to store, create, organize and share your recipes,” he added. “The long-term vision is growth and adding more value to holistically what happens in the business to help them generate more revenue through the lens of their recipes.”

Former ButcherBox execs leverage meat shipment expertise into new D2C startup • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 3, 2022Posted in Commerce, e-commerce, Shipping, VentureNo Comments

As ButcherBox’s former head of logistics, Juan Meisel knows how to get perishable items from A to Z, and now he wants to do the same for Grip, a perishable shipping company he is bringing out of stealth mode with $2 million pre-seed funding. Dubbed a “smart logistics engine,” Grip’s technology sits on top of customers’ existing order management systems and manages the shipment process using real-time network conditions, like weather events and temperature, carrier on-time delivery and box performance. Founder Juan Meisel told ZebethMedia that other shipping software uses “flat shipping logic and business rules for shipments, aka, the same amount of packaging, refrigerant, carrier, etc., each time for the same routes.” Instead, Grip adjusts its shipping recommendations dynamically based on what’s going on in the shipping network. This way, businesses can use that data to proactively hold orders, let customers know of potential delays and identify areas for improvement. Meisel got the idea for Grip while he was head of logistics at ButcherBox, where he had also been trying to solve the challenge of shipping perishable items, while also reducing the damage rate and improving margins, all while operating in conditions that seemed to change minute by minute. “I was always looking for that piece of software that could help us do this internally,” Meisel said. “I failed to find something, but at the same time, I also started advising some companies on the side that would find me on LinkedIn. They got their ButcherBox in the mail and were trying to ship anything from frozen milk to chocolate, flowers and pharmaceuticals.” While advising those other companies, he realized that there needed to be software to help e-commerce companies improve the way they ship and increase the customer experience. So he came upon the idea of Grip and launched a company a few months ago, joining with Jimmy Cooper, ButcherBox’s former head of data. Customers are onboarded and can begin shipping in a matter of hours, and Grip makes money via monthly SaaS fees based on the size of the company and the complexity of integration, Meisel said. In this short period of time, the company has processed hundreds of thousands of orders and customers have seen a 25% reduction in failure rates and 30% reduction in shipping costs, Meisel said. Grip is coming into a market that is not only growing fast, but has also attracted interest by other startups and investors. It’s a big market — U.S. food and beverage e-commerce sales are expected to be around $80 billion by the end of 2022, up 20.7% from just under $65 billion last year, according to Insider Intelligence. Those sales are forecasted to nearly double by 2026. Over the past year, we’ve seen several startups also raise venture-backed capital to solve similar logistics issues, particularly around food waste as direct-to-consumer subscription meal kits gained popularity. For example, Alima is building out produce logistics in Mexico, while Full Harvest is tackling the B2B produce supply chain. Grip’s $2 million pre-seed round was backed by Soma Capital, Western Technology Investment and a group of individual investors. Though ButcherBox itself was bootstrapped, Meisel said he decided to go after venture capital for Grip largely in part because “developing technologies is expensive.” To develop the right technology and the right data processing system to add value to customers quickly required some institutional funding and industry investors. “We’re running what we call ‘fast innovation cycles,’ which means that we go from idea to product to feedback very fast,” he added. “We basically have an idea, launch a product, work very, very closely with the customer to get feedback on that product and then we go back to the idea of how we can keep improving that product. Therefore, we’re using the money to develop technology to grow fast innovation cycles and to keep adding value to investors.” The company currently has six employees, and Grip will also add to that team to develop new features and user experience as it relates to reducing waste and improving customer experience.

Dropit picks up $25M to digitize brick-and-mortar stores and unify inventories • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 3, 2022Posted in Commerce, dropit, eCommerce, Startups, VentureNo Comments

Dropit, a retail technology platform that bridges the digital divide by unifying merchants’ online and in-store inventories, has raised $25 million in a Series C round of funding. Founded in 2014, London-based Dropit counts retail brands including L’Occitane, Abercrombie & Fitch, and Estee Lauder as customers, in addition to shopping malls. At its core, Dropit is all about enabling brands to sell their in-store inventory online, essentially converting brick-and-mortar outlets into something akin to a local distribution hub — customers buy their goods digitally, with Dropit’s “smart sourcing” technology finding the nearest physical location to the customer that the goods are located, and dispatching accordingly. So even if a brand or outlet already has online inventory for specific goods, Dropit brings their offline inventory into the mix and joins all the dots to expedite delivery and minimize the impact of shipping goods from further afield. On top of that, a major selling point for retailers in shopping malls is that Dropit can also aggregate a mall’s entire brand network into a single online marketplace. This is particularly important at a time when shopping mall foot traffic has yet to fully rebound post-pandemic, as it means the mall stores can generate sales round-the-clock regardless of in-person visits, while also allowing customers to purchase from multiple outlets simultaneously. Dropit: Aggregating shopping mall stores into a single marketplace Integrated At the heart of Dropit’s platform are integrations — it can connect to any point in the sales or fulfilment chain, which is one of the reasons Dropit founder and CEO Karin Cabili says that it’s not in direct competition with any other in-house or external retail system, whether it’s Shopify or some other ecommerce platform. “Dropit has set out to solve a macro problem created by the retail industry’s duplication of inventory and lack of ability to combine local store presence with last-mile delivery,” Cabili told ZebethMedia. “One of our key strengths is unifying data and systems. In this effort, we have built integrations with many systems, including Shopify, which has done a fantastic job in the realm of ecommerce, creating a user-friendly platform that is recommended for SMBs.” Through integrations with multiple third-party couriers, Dropit allows brands and malls to offer same-day or next-day shipping spanning in-store and online transactions, though curbside pickup is offered too. It also allows merchants to consolidate their deliveries and pickups to minimize split shipments. “Dropit’s mission is to solve a core problem of efficient optimization for the retail industry, while taking care not to harm the level of service provided to the customer,” Cabili added. The Dropit platform showing courier options By way of example, a retailer wanting to use Dropit as part of its existing tech stack could deploy Dropit in between the order, warehouse, point-of-sale (POS), and ecommerce (e.g. Shopify) systems on one side, and the checkouts, payments, and couriers on the other. The retailer can decide for themselves what value they want to extract from Dropit, for example they may simply want fulfilment and capacity for pick-and-pack at a store, and curbside pickup or courier delivery. “Dropit connects to existing systems to fill gaps without the need to invest any additional capital or technological resources,” Cabilit explained. It’s worth noting that in addition to powering the backend for retailers and malls, Dropit also offers a consumer-facing mobile app for shoppers that like to shop in person, but don’t want to carry bags around with them. So they basically search for participating stores through the app, shop as normal, but when they get to the (physical) checkout, they scan a little Dropit QR code at the outlet and select where they want their bags delivered to. Dropit’s consumer app Expansion Since its launch six years ago, Dropit has been gaining steady traction across Europe and North America. And last year it was enlisted by Primaris in Canada to power Primarché, touted as the “world’s first first multi-mall, multi-brand marketplace” — essentially, it brings Primaris’ national mall network into a single online entity. This separates Dropit from something like Mall of America (MOA) in Bloomington, Minnesota, which has created a similar online marketplace but for stores in a single mall. Dropit had previously raised $25 million across two hitherto undisclosed rounds of funding in 2016 and 2018, and with a fresh $25 million in the bank, the company is well-financed to expand in its existing markets with plans to grow specifically in the U.S. where it already has an office in Austin, Texas. Dropit’s Series C round was led by Vault Investments, with participation from Tiga Investments, Axentia, Sugarbee, and others including former Macy’s CEO Terry Lundgren, who sits on Dropit’s board of directors.

Privilège Ventures launches $20M fund investing in women-led startups • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 3, 2022Posted in Privilège Ventures, Startups, Venture, venture capital, women foundersNo Comments

Lugano, Switzerland-based venture capital fund Privilège Ventures just launched its fourth fund. The CHF 20 million (just over $20 million) fund is earmarked for women-led early-stage startups across Europe. “We don’t just want to support women,” Jacqueline Ruedin Rüsch, founding general partner at Privilège Ventures said in an interview with ZebethMedia. “The data shows women in the driver’s seat produce better ROI.” The firm says that its investment thesis is based on the statistical evidence that women perform better than men in leadership roles. “The numbers are staggering. It’s not just about being ethical and doing good: global GDP would grow 6% if rates of entrepreneurship were equal between men and women,” said Lucian Wagner, Privilège Ventures founding general partner in a press statement. The firm’s thesis is backed up by research from Boston Consulting Group on investment and revenue data over a five-year period. The study also showed that startups founded and co-founded by women received less than half the average investments made into companies led by men, even though the female led startups generated 10% more revenue over time. “There are very few funds worldwide dedicated to backing female founders, and despite the rapid growth in the VC industry the percentage of female or gender-diverse-led teams is falling,” said Rüsch. “I started my professional life in the banking sector in Switzerland: this was, and partially still is, a very male-driven sector. I became used to being one of the few females in big conference rooms and I didn’t even pay any more attention to it. But when I got pregnant the first reaction from my senior colleagues was, ‘When will you stop working?’ This was quite shocking, I must admit.” As Alex reported back in July, PitchBook data suggests that the percentage of venture capital deals that included at least one woman founder fell from 19.4% to 18.2%. In Europe, the numbers are even more dire. Privilège suggests that in Europe, female founders receive barely 1% of total VC investments. Privilège Ventures’ LPs are mainly high net-worth individuals and family offices, the firm says, and the fund aims to write 15-20 early-stage checks, with initial investments in the $250,000 range. “I really like to invest in founders at the very beginning of their journey. Often we meet them even before they have incorporated their company and we track them, coach them and see how they take their first steps in the entrepreneurial journey. Given our focus in seed stage, we feel it is key to be as close as possible with our companies and for this reason we have a preference for our local market, Switzerland, and the surrounding European countries,” Rüsch explains. “We are not specialized in a specific sector but we have some preferences, namely in med\tech, deep tech and in general for the digital economy. We like to enter as soon as possible, even pre-seed, and are happy to continue investing in the best companies up to Series A.” The firm says it would love to see more companies trying to solve “real” problems — solutions that can save lives, preserve the planet and products that are not just “nice to have” but are “must-have.” “Our overall portfolio already counts over 30% of companies with a female co-founder. As we aim to invest only in top-performing teams, we need to guarantee a strong deal flow and for this reason, we will look not only to Switzerland but to Europe as well with a higher focus on certain countries such as Italy, France and Germany, being closer to us,” says Rüsch, explaining why investing specifically in women continues to make sense for the fund. “Some will point to the simple fact that having different viewpoints in the room leads to more thoughtful decision-making — some will point to women having battled through a lot of hassles to get where they are. We see firsthand that women are driven to tackle problems that have been overlooked in tech — but can have a profound impact on the world. We already have startups in our portfolio with female founders or leaders working on using neurotech to improve sleep, fungicides to improve food and biomarkers to continually measure proteins and hormones to prevent and monitor health conditions, just to name a few.”

Meet Seoul-based accelerator SparkLabs’ 19th batch of startups • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 3, 2022Posted in Apps, demo day, early-stage startups, Seoul, SparkLabs Korea, Startup Accelerator, Startups, VentureNo Comments

SparkLabs Korea, a Seoul-based seed to early-stage accelerator, held a demo Day on Thursday for its 19th cohort of companies. The latest demo day marks its tenth year after SparkLabs launched its accelerator program in December 2012. The accelerator has backed more than 270 startups since its inception in 2012, co-founder and partner of SparkLabs Eugene Kim told ZebethMedia. The program has two cohorts a year — one starting in January and the other in June — Kim said, adding that the program is 16 weeks long. SparkLabs admits 10 to 15 companies per cohort and invests up to $100,000 into each startup in exchange for 6% equity. Kim noted that the investment is made either with a SAFE (simple agreement for future equity) or stock purchase agreement — a decision that is up to the startup to make. During its program, SparkLabs provides funding, mentorship and access to administrative and legal advisory support for startups. In addition, participating startups get co-working space, will attend weekly classes and have access to four to six mentors who have expertise in various industries, not just in South Korea but global regions. SparkLabs, a member of the global accelerator network (GAN), has been using international best practices for accelerators from the beginning, Kim said. He added that its partners and mentors are all former entrepreneurs and have global business experience in both the U.S. and Asia. The accelerator also operates other government-supported programs like TIPS, a tech incubator program for startups in South Korea, and manages later-stage investment funds, Kim noted. SparkLabs began in Korea to find and help local Korean startups in their seed stage and help them go global. Though the majority are based in Korea, the accelerator gets applicants from other countries looking or planning to enter Korea or Asia, according to Kim. When asked if SparkLabs Korea is a subsidiary of SparkLabs Group, Kim said it’s not a group structure. Each accelerator entity, such as SparkLabs Korea, SparkLabs Taiwan and SparkLabs Cultiv8, is a separate entity with its own accelerator fund. Kim said in an interview with ZebethMedia that as the program focuses on early-stage seed startups, some teams pivot or change their business focus as they try to find product market fit (PMF). “Not all teams end up pitching at demo day. If the teams feel they want to focus on building their traction or PMF, they can choose to pitch at a later demo day,” Kim said. Here’s the list of nine companies in the most recent cohort at SparkLabs. The 19th cohort ends with a demo day on November 3. Vetflux: A telehealth veterinary platform that provides an artificial intelligence-based chatbot for vet clinics and pet owners. It offers two apps connecting vets with their pet patients. The Vetflux app is for pet owners to get the latest information about pet care, while the other, called Vetflux +, is for vets to organize workflows. Amondycare: Amondycare’s app lets mental health therapists manage their workflows and administrative work from patient appointments to sales. YKring: A social app, Kevin’s Club, helps college students make the most of their college life outside the library or dorms. YKring says it enables users to find out what’s going on in the community to find clubs or a group of people with similar interests to do activities together. YKring, which launched its service in January, claims that it has more than 2,500 users with $35,000 in sales as of October 2022. Its monthly subscription fee is ~$20. DataBean: This startup develops a cooling system for data centers. Its service SmartBox allows for thermal management. Fasket: Fasket is a quick commerce startup that operates an instant grocery delivery business in South Korea. Gyverse: Gyverse develops a fridge for dry-aged meat using IoT and AI. Users can dry age beef at home by interconnecting Gyverse’s smart devices to its app to monitor the temperature and humidity. Moverse: A 3D motion marketplace that allows users to access and buy 3D motion data sources for the use of metaverse, games, movies, animation and augmented reality. R-Materials: R-Material’s platform, called the Hybrid-generator system, enables solar and wind to convert power sources. MyShop Cloud: An online to offline (O2O) platform that wants to digitize the value chain of dried fish, from wholesale to the retail market. Its service Dasiwoorida, which analyzes the dried fish price and transactions, recommends products for customers. SparkLabs is currently open to applications for its 20th batch program until November 11. The accelerator will finalize its selections in December and looks to start the 20th batch in January. South Korea, which attracts the third largest amount of venture capital funding in Asia — about $6.45 billion annually — following China and India, currently has 16 unicorns to date.

Former Googlers raise more than $90M to scale alternative asset fintech startup • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 2, 2022Posted in Daily Crunch, Startups, Venture, venture capitalNo Comments

To get a roundup of ZebethMedia’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PDT, subscribe here. Hellooooo, guess what? It’s November! We guess it was actually November yesterday, too, but we failed to notice, because LOL what even is time, amirite. Anyway, put away your Halloween costumes and start the game of How Long Can You Avoid “Little Drummer Boy”? If you do want to play that game, you’d be well advised to not click this link, although that’s a particularly tolerable version of the song, to be fair. Onward! — Christine and Haje The ZebethMedia Top 3 And for his next act…: Manish was on a roll again today, covering some cool stories. The first is on some former Googlers rallying around their peer Caesar Sengupta, who raised $90 million to scale Arta Finance, a company that will provide individuals similar access to alternative assets that are usually reserved for the ultrawealthy. Betting on web3: Manish’s second story is on Microsoft, which is backing South Korea–based web3 game developer Wemade. Come together, right now, in the cloud: Though many companies are asking employees to come back into the office, they and others are still figuring out how to keep distributed teams working as one. Former Yext CEO Howard Lerman thinks he has created the best option with Roam, a company that came out of stealth today with $30 million in new funding, Kyle reports. Startups and VC New data from more than 200 startups show that CTOs earn higher salaries than their CEO counterparts. Mostly, co-founders make the same, but where there is a difference, the balance typically tips in the favor of the technical co-founder, Haje reports. Also, we’ve got an eclectic mix of additional news for ya: Dear Sophie: How can students work or launch a startup while maintaining their immigration status? Image Credits: Bryce Durbin/ZebethMedia Dear Sophie, I’m studying bioinformatics at a university in the U.S. What options do I have to work before and after graduation on my student visa? Do any of these options allow me to launch my own startup? — Wanting to Work Three more from the TC+ team: ZebethMedia+ is our membership program that helps founders and startup teams get ahead of the pack. You can sign up here. Use code “DC” for a 15% discount on an annual subscription! Big Tech Inc. Elon Musk met with civil rights leaders, and Amanda has all the details on what went down. Many of the leaders were concerned with content moderation, particularly dealing with increases in hate speech and undue influence on the midterm elections. Meanwhile, Natasha M writes that another Twitter executive is reportedly flying the coop. Meanwhile, Manish continues to follow the Byju’s saga. The latest is that India’s edtech giant is looking at a $1 billion IPO for Aakash, its physical tutor chain. And we have five more for you: