European early-stage VC firm ‘Project A’ on Europe’s startup scene taking the next step

Project A, the Berlin-based VC, just raised a new $200 million fund (€180 million) to continue backing European startups at Seed and Series A stage.

In addition, the firm — whose investments include WorldRemit, Catawiki, Voi and Uberall — announced it will now have a presence in London and Stockholm in order to put people on the ground in what it says are “two of its favorite ecosystems.”

What better time, therefore, to catch up with the team at Project A, where we talked investment thesis, why Stockholm and London, and the increasing interest in Europe from U.S. LPs and VCs. Other subjects we touched on include diversity in venture, and, of course, Brexit!

TechCrunch: You last raised a fund in 2016, totaling €140 million, what changes have you noticed since then with regards to the types of companies you are seeing and the European ecosystem as a whole?

Uwe Horstmann: Entrepreneurs definitely matured a lot over the last few years. We see more and more of serial founders who combine drive with experience delivering great results. We also noticed an increase in more tech / product-centric and in B2B models.

This doesn’t come as a surprise as the market for consumer-oriented models started developing much earlier and is now reaching its limits after a few years. Many entrepreneurs gained experience in the Old Economy or have been consulting companies for a few years, learned about the struggle with products and processes first-hand and developed solutions specifically tailored to the industry’s needs.

We also notice a rise in professionalism in company setups and a higher ambition level in founding teams. This is probably also due to a more professional angel and micro fund scene that has developed in Europe.

TC: I note that you have U.S. LPs in the new fund, which I think is a first for Project A, and more broadly we are seeing a lot more interest from U.S. VCs in Europe these days. Why do you think that is, and how does this change the competitive landscape for deal-flow and the ambition of European founders?

Thies Sander: Having our first U.S. LPs on board makes us proud. LPs have noticed that European VC returns have really picked up during recent fund cohorts.


Source: Tech Crunch

Microsoft OneDrive Personal Vault rolls out worldwide, launches expandable storage

Earlier this summer, Microsoft introduced an extra layer of security to its Dropbox competitor, OneDrive. The security features, called OneDrive Personal Vault, allow users to protect their files with two-step verification, like a fingerprint or facial recognition, PIN code or a one-time code sent through email, SMS or Microsoft Authenticator. At the time of launch, however, the feature was only available to select markets. Today, it’s rolling out worldwide and introducing new features, including expandable storage.

The company said OneDrive Personal Vault would initially be available to Australia, New Zealand and Canada, but would reach all OneDrive users by the end of the year.

With today’s expansion, it’s a little ahead of schedule, as it’s just now the end of September.

Personal Vault is available to all OneDrive users, with some limitations.

For those using OneDrive’s free or standalone 100GB storage plan, you’re able to store up to three files in Personal Vault. Office 365 subscribers can store as many files as they want, up to their storage limits.

Stronger authentication is the key selling point for Personal Vault, but it also comes with additional security measures. This includes “Scan and Shoot,” which lets you scan documents or shoot photos directly to Personal Vault, bypassing your device storage, like the camera roll. Personal Vault will also automatically lock files after a period of inactivity, restrict sharing on the files saved to prevent accidental shares and automatically sync files to a BitLocker-encrypted area of the hard drive on Windows 10 PCs.

ba2d0566 5e67 43ce 998a fa1aa6517dbeIn addition to the global launch of Personal Vault, Microsoft also today introduced new storage options for One Drive, plus new features like PC Folder backup and dark mode.

Starting today, OneDrive users will now be able to add storage to their plans in 200GB increments, starting at $1.99 per month.

Meanwhile, PC Folder backup will allow OneDrive to back up your desktop, documents and picture folders from your Windows PC to the cloud, similar to rival desktop apps from Dropbox and Google Drive, for example. This option is available to Windows 7, 8 and 10 PCs. On Windows 10, it’s integrated so users can even opt to enable it during Windows setup or updates.

And OneDrive will now support a dark mode on iOS 13.

Personal Vault is live globally, as of today.


Source: Tech Crunch

Daily Crunch: Facebook faces VR challenges

The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here.

1. Not all is predictable on Facebook’s social Horizon

Last week, Facebook unveiled Horizon, a massively multiplayer VR world that’s scheduled to launch in 2020. This might seem to play to Facebook’s software strengths, but Lucas Matney argues that the social networking giant may not actually have much of an advantage against smaller game studios.

For example, the team at Against Gravity has already built a network inside VR called Rec Room that’s been maturing over the past few years, with rich environments and toolsets for multiplayer interactions. (Extra Crunch membership required.)

2. Spotify now lets you add podcasts to playlists

Users can create their own custom playlists of their favorite podcasts, or even those that combine music and audio — similar to Spotify’s newly launched playlist “Your Daily Drive.”

3. Kickstarter darling EcoFlow Delta battery generator is not what it seems

The EcoFlow Delta is a new battery generator available on Kickstarter with incredible features claimed. Most are true, some are not.

4. YouTube TV is now available on Fire TV devices

Earlier this year, Google and Amazon reached an agreement to bring their streaming video apps to each other’s platforms. The YouTube app launched on Fire TV in July, and now Google is adding its live TV streaming service.

5. Amboss, the knowledge platform for medical professionals, scores €30M Series B

Launched in 2014 as a study platform for medical students, Amboss has since evolved to offer what it claims is the “most comprehensive and technologically-advanced” knowledge platform for medical professionals.

6. Learn everything you can about mobility at Disrupt SF

We’re bringing some of the industry’s leaders onstage at Disrupt SF — including Bird founder and CEO Travis VanderZanden, Kitty Hawk CEO Sebastian Thrun and Zoox CEO Aicha Evans.

7. This week’s TechCrunch podcasts

The latest episode of Equity kicks off with the reemergence of the much-criticized startup Bodega, which is now known as Stockwell and has raised a total of $45 million in funding. Meanwhile, Original Content reviews “Between Two Ferns: The Movie” on Netflix.


Source: Tech Crunch

Verizon picks up the assets of Disney-backed VR startup Jaunt

After raising $100 million, virtual reality content startup Jaunt has been in a precarious position for a few years now. It seems like the saga has finally come to a close as the startup announced that Verizon has purchased the company’s technology.

The studio rode the wave of VR hype following Facebook’s acquisition of Oculus, but after years of trying to find a business in immersive entertainment, spanning software and camera hardware, the company has spent its past year trying to sell off its VR assets while pursuing a business focused on augmented reality and what it calls the “distribution of volumetric video of humans.”

A deal with Spinview Global to purchase the company’s VR tech that was reported last year never happened, a spokesperson tells TechCrunch. Verizon is walking away with Jaunt’s technology assets here, which is inclusive of their VR tech and their newer AR efforts. It doesn’t sound like any employees are coming onboard as part of the transition, but there will be some Jaunt folks helping to bring the tech onboard for a brief period.

The company’s spokesperson opted not to comment when asked whether the startup was winding down following the deal.

Why does Verizon want these assets? Verizon Media (of which TechCrunch is apart of) already has some assets in the VR space, including the virtual reality content studio RYOT, which has been playing around with 360 content and general AR/VR content. The company’s Envrnmnt arm is basically focusing on making AR and VR apps run more efficiently on mobile, which is something Jaunt has had to be mindful of as they’ve tried to focus on broadcasters that need to deal with bandwidth strains.

We don’t have a price tag on the deal, but the startup raised $100 million from investors, including GV and Disney. In October of last year, the company laid off a “significant portion of its employees” and by the end of the year they were auctioning off office furniture.


Source: Tech Crunch

Google brings its Jacquard wearables tech to Levi’s Trucker Jacket

Back in 2015, Google’s ATAP team demoed a new kind of wearable tech at Google I/O that used functional fabrics and conductive yarns to allow you to interact with your clothing and, by extension, the phone in your pocket. The company then released a jacket with Levi’s in 2017, but that was expensive, at $350, and never really quite caught on. Now, however, Jacquard is back. A few weeks ago, Saint Laurent launched a backpack with Jacquard support, but at $1,000, that was very much a luxury product. Today, however, Google and Levi’s are announcing their latest collaboration: Jacquard-enabled versions of Levi’s Trucker Jacket.

These jackets, which will come in different styles, including the Classic Trucker and the Sherpa Trucker, and in men’s and women’s versions, will retail for $198 for the Classic Trucker and $248 for the Sherpa Trucker. In addition to the U.S., it’ll be available in Australia, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the U.K.

The idea here is simple and hasn’t changed since the original launch: a dongle in your jacket’s cuff connects to conductive yarns in your jacket. You can then swipe over your cuff, tap it or hold your hand over it to issue commands to your phone. You use the Jacquard phone app for iOS or Android to set up what each gesture does, with commands ranging from saving your location to bringing up the Google Assistant in your headphones, from skipping to the next song to controlling your camera for selfies or simply counting things during the day, like the coffees you drink on the go. If you have Bose noise-canceling headphones, the app also lets you set a gesture to turn your noise cancellation on or off. In total, there are currently 19 abilities available, and the dongle also includes a vibration motor for notifications.

2019 09 30 0946 1

What’s maybe most important, though, is that this (re-)launch sets up Jacquard as a more modular technology that Google and its partners hope will take it from a bit of a gimmick to something you’ll see in more places over the next few months and years.

“Since we launched the first product with Levi’s at the end of 2017, we were focused on trying to understand and working really hard on how we can take the technology from a single product […] to create a real technology platform that can be used by multiple brands and by multiple collaborators,” Ivan Poupyrev, the head of Jacquard by Google told me. He noted that the idea behind projects like Jacquard is to take things we use every day, like backpacks, jackets and shoes, and make them better with technology. He argued that, for the most part, technology hasn’t really been added to these things that we use every day. He wants to work with companies like Levi’s to “give people the opportunity to create new digital touchpoints to their digital life through things they already have and own and use every day.”

What’s also important about Jacquard 2.0 is that you can take the dongle from garment to garment. For the original jacket, the dongle only worked with this one specific type of jacket; now, you’ll be able to take it with you and use it in other wearables as well. The dongle, too, is significantly smaller and more powerful. It also now has more memory to support multiple products. Yet, in my own testing, its battery still lasts for a few days of occasional use, with plenty of standby time.

jacquard dongle

Poupyrev also noted that the team focused on reducing cost, “in order to bring the technology into a price range where it’s more attractive to consumers.” The team also made lots of changes to the software that runs on the device and, more importantly, in the cloud to allow it to configure itself for every product it’s being used in and to make it easier for the team to add new functionality over time (when was the last time your jacket got a software upgrade?).

He actually hopes that over time, people will forget that Google was involved in this. He wants the technology to fade into the background. Levi’s, on the other hand, obviously hopes that this technology will enable it to reach a new market. The 2017 version only included the Levi’s Commuter Trucker Jacket. Now, the company is going broader with different styles.

“We had gone out with a really sharp focus on trying to adapt the technology to meet the needs of our commuter customer, which a collection of Levi’s focused on urban cyclists,” Paul Dillinger, the VP of Global Product Innovation at Levi’s, told me when I asked him about the company’s original efforts around Jacquard. But there was a lot of interest beyond that community, he said, yet the built-in features were very much meant to serve the needs of this specific audience and not necessarily relevant to the lifestyles of other users. The jackets, of course, were also pretty expensive. “There was an appetite for the technology to do more and be more accessible,” he said — and the results of that work are these new jackets.

IMG 20190930 102524

Dillinger also noted that this changes the relationship his company has with the consumer, because Levi’s can now upgrade the technology in your jacket after you bought it. “This is a really new experience,” he said. “And it’s a completely different approach to fashion. The normal fashion promise from other companies really is that we promise that in six months, we’re going to try to sell you something else. Levi’s prides itself on creating enduring, lasting value in style and we are able to actually improve the value of the garment that was already in the consumer’s closet.”

I spent about a week with the Sherpa jacket before today’s launch. It does exactly what it promises to do. Pairing my phone and jacket took less than a minute and the connection between the two has been perfectly stable. The gesture recognition worked very well — maybe better than I expected. What it can do, it does well, and I appreciate that the team kept the functionality pretty narrow.

Whether Jacquard is for you may depend on your lifestyle, though. I think the ideal user is somebody who is out and about a lot, wearing headphones, given that music controls are one of the main features here. But you don’t have to be wearing headphones to get value out of Jacquard. I almost never wear headphones in public, but I used it to quickly tag where I parked my car, for example, and when I used it with headphones, I found using my jacket’s cuffs easier to forward to the next song than doing the same on my headphones. Your mileage may vary, of course, and while I like the idea of using this kind of tech so you need to take out your phone less often, I wonder if that ship hasn’t sailed at this point — and whether the controls on your headphones can’t do most of the things Jacquard can. Google surely wants Jacquard to be more than a gimmick, but at this stage, it kind of still is.

IMG 20190930 104137IMG 20190930 104137


Source: Tech Crunch

Kickstarter darling EcoFlow Delta battery generator is not what it seems

The Delta EcoFlow is a new battery generator available on Kickstarter with incredible claimed features. Most are true, some are not.

Device like the Delta offer incredible battery storage capacity. Designed for more than just recharging phones and tablets, these can run refrigerators, pumps, power tools and medical equipment. They’re great for emergencies, camping and general use where power is not available. Similar devices have been on the market for some years so I was eager to verify EcoFlow’s claims.

The EcoFlow Delta can recharge from a wall outlet to 80% in an hour. It’s amazing. The GoalZero Yeti battery of a similar size takes 25 hours. This capability means the Delta can be used and then reused more than competitors.

The device is currently on Kickstarter where it quickly acquired over $2 million from over 2,000 backers. The device’s features listed on the Kickstarter page are clear, but after testing a pre-production unit, I found several of these advertised capabilities and features misleading or false.

The Delta is the latest product from EcoFlow. The company’s founder, Eli Harris, says it’s “The world’s strongest battery generator.” I found the Delta to be a competent battery generator with similar capabilities to competitors but it’s hampered by loud fans.

In short, if you need a battery generator that can recharge much faster than others, the Delta is a great option. Otherwise, the GoalZero Yeti makes more sense for most people.

Battery generators are a safe and more portable option than their gas counterparts. There are no harmful fumes or fuel allowing them to be used indoors, nearer the appliances or tools. Most often (though not with the Delta) they’re silent, too, making them perfect for a camping or hunting companion.

In real-world operation, this quick recharge time could come in handy. Say, on a construction site or in an emergency incident where power is still available, but out of reach of an extension cord — situations where loud gas generators are generally used. While the Delta is louder than other battery generators, it is not as loud as a gas generator.

The Delta battery comes packaged with a warning that the battery must be fully charged before use. I generally ignore warnings, but I followed this one and immediately plugged it in. Instantly, fans whirled to life and the screen popped on displaying the current charge levels and how long it would take to get to 100%. The Delta was at 30% and would take 45 minutes to fully recharge. It worked as advertised and 45 minutes later the battery was at 100%.

Recharging the Delta battery was a noisy affair. The fans are loud and continue to run after the battery is fully charged. Compared to a GoalZero Yeti, this was a shock. The Yeti is silent where the Delta is not. I keep a Yeti 1400 in my basement, plugged in and ready to use. But with the Delta, even when the battery is fully charged, loud fans still run presumably to keep the unit cool. EcoFlow says the shelf life on the Delta is over a year where the GoalZero Yeti is six months. To me, I would rather have the battery constantly plugged into power so I know it’s ready to go when needed.

The Delta recharges without an AC power inverter (a power brick); it uses the same sort of cable as a desktop PC. The company says by passing through the inverter directly, the Delta can increase charging speed to more than 10 times the traditional AC to DC adapter cable. This also means it’s easier to replace a lost charging cable.

The Delta is much lighter than competing products and its design makes it easier to move. EcoFlow says it’s rugged, and it feels the part. Even my pre-production sample feels tough and ready to go to work. Large rubber pads keep the battery in place and the tough plastic feels more durable than competing products.

There are a handful of plugs and outlets around the device, including USB, USB-C and six AC outlets. It’s a lot and similar in capacity to large gas generators. Most battery generators have much fewer AC outlets, though I’ve often supplemented the capability with small power strips.

IMG 0544
Kickstarter Beware

The Delta is currently on Kickstarter for pre-order and exceeded its goal. I fear a good amount of backers will be upset to learn several notable advertised features are false or misleading.

The Delta is not silent. Under operation, either recharging a cell phone or running a power tool, loud fans run on both sides of the battery. These fans run when recharging the battery, too — even when the battery is fully charged. The Kickstarter page and video lists throughout that the Delta produces no noise.

ecoflow delta

These fans detract from the appeal of the Delta battery. They’re loud. You have to raise your voice to speak over them. Because of these fans, I wouldn’t take the Delta camping or use it in the backyard for a quiet get-together. During power outage situations, I wouldn’t want to sleep near it. But I would use it for power tools — like EcoFlow does in one of its demo videos.

Only one of the four videos on the Kickstarter page allows potential owners to hear the Delta battery. The third video on the page shows the battery powering a hammer drill. Six seconds into the video, the drill stops running, and the battery’s fans are audible.

There are a handful of competing batteries that operate without noisy fans. I’ve taken GoalZero’s Yeti batteries camping and they’re great despite their heft. They’re truly silent and can still recharge from solar panels and car batteries. I’ve used battery generators from Jackery, too, and those are also silent.

I spoke with Ecoflow CEO and Founder Eli Harris during the run-up of this review. He was clear that Ecoflow’s main competitor is not other large batteries, but rather small gas generators available from Honda and others. And that makes a lot of sense. Those are the best selling generators available and widely used for emergency and convenience. These small generators are loud, and the Ecoflow Delta is quieter than those options while still offering most of the power capabilities.

When asked why the Kickstarter page is misleading, he said “that fallacy has never been called out” and he would check with his team about the use of “superlatives and blanket statements.” Three days later, the Kickstarter page still lists the false claims.

EcoFlow claims the Delta battery can run a variety of power tools, including drills, circular saws, power washers and welders. I found this capability hit or miss. Despite some tools being under the claimed amperage and wattage of the Delta battery, the battery wouldn’t power my small or large circular saw or power washer. EcoFlow also claims the battery can recharge a Tesla; it doesn’t recharge my Chevy Volt.

Many tools require extra power when starting up, and I found most of these surge requirements to exceed the capabilities of the Delta battery. This is the same with other batteries like the GoalZero Yeti. In fact, I couldn’t find one tool in my workshop that the Delta powered and the Yeti did not; they worked the same for me, and I have a lot of tools.

Don’t mistake what I’m saying. The EcoFlow Delta has impressive capabilities mainly around its recharge capabilities. This makes it an attractive option for the right use. It’s compact and solid. It has a lot of outlets and is easy to move. This could be a lifesaver in emergency situations where a person still has access to power.

The Delta has some downsides just like other battery generators. It doesn’t offer a dramatic increase in electrical output over competitors so don’t expect this battery to power larger devices. Don’t expect a silent operation, either. This massive battery is loud though, I admit, that’s a relative term. It’s louder than other battery generators but less loud than a gas generator.

I would rather have a silent battery generator that recharges slowly versus a noisy, fast-recharging battery. I use my battery generators camping and around the house when the power goes out. The Delta makes sense on a construction site or on the scene of a natural disaster. I just can’t get over the loud fans.


Source: Tech Crunch

Why is Dropbox reinventing itself?

According to Dropbox CEO Drew Houston, 80% of the product’s users rely on it, at least partially, for work.

It makes sense, then, that the company is refocusing to try and cement its spot in the workplace; to shed its image as “just” a file storage company (in a time when just about every big company has its own cloud storage offering) and evolve into something more immutably core to daily operations.

Earlier this week, Dropbox announced that the “new Dropbox” would be rolling out to all users. It takes the simple, shared folders that Dropbox is known for and turns them into what the company calls “Spaces” — little mini collaboration hubs for your team, complete with comment streams, AI for highlighting files you might need mid-meeting, and integrations into things like Slack, Trello and G Suite. With an overhauled interface that brings much of Dropbox’s functionality out of the OS and into its own dedicated app, it’s by far the biggest user-facing change the product has seen since launching 12 years ago.

Shortly after the announcement, I sat down with Dropbox VP of Product Adam Nash and CTO Quentin Clark . We chatted about why the company is changing things up, why they’re building this on top of the existing Dropbox product, and the things they know they just can’t change.

You can find these interviews below, edited for brevity and clarity.

Greg Kumparak: Can you explain the new focus a bit?

Adam Nash: Sure! I think you know this already, but I run products and growth, so I’m gonna have a bit of a product bias to this whole thing. But Dropbox… one of its differentiating characteristics is really that when we built this utility, this “magic folder”, it kind of went everywhere.


Source: Tech Crunch

WeWork proves that (venture) capitalism works

What’s the lesson of WeWork?

Here’s a startup that has been a darling of Silicon Valley investors for years, whose offices and CEO have been stunningly painted across the covers of major trade magazines and strategically deployed across major tech conference stages, including our very own. At its peak, the company commanded a valuation of tens of billions of dollars and was supposed to be on course for the stratosphere, joining companies like Google and Facebook.

And then it all came crashing down, in literally a handful of days.

It’s easy to point to WeWork’s potentially 75%+ valuation drop, its looming layoffs, the firing of its CEO, and the seeming compression of a whole heck of a lot of investors and employee equity as a sordid disaster tale of capitalism, and venture capitalism in particular. VCs — none more so than Masayoshi Son at SoftBank — constantly overbought, oversold, and overcommitted to a company that had pretty much no business fundamentals whatsoever.

So what’s the lesson of WeWork for venture capital? In a word, nothing.

Venture capitalism is about investing in bold bets with huge, outsized returns. It’s meant to be risk-adjusted, both at the valuation scale but also at a portfolio scale. VCs should be buying equity at the right price to take into account every individual startup’s risk profile while also constructing a portfolio that selects each of those risks for the best overall return.

For WeWork, much of those dollars were driven by SoftBank’s Vision Fund, which seemed to double down again and again on the company, even at loggerheads with its own limited partners. The Vision Fund made a bet, seemingly with reasonable access to internal information, and that bet turned out to be wrong.

But a bet it was.

Many bets in venture turn out to be duds. Sometimes you lose some of your money. Sometimes you lose all of it.

And then sometimes you make it in spades. SoftBank’s Son once invested $20 million into a fledging Chinese ecommerce company called Alibaba. That stake is worth around $100 billion today, excluding an $11 billion stock sale a few years ago that was recognized on SoftBank’s financials earlier this year.

This is the math that Son sees in venture: 111,000,000,000 / 20,000,000 = 5,550x. There is no other asset class on the planet that will turn a dollar into thousands of dollars like venture capital.

WeWork’s woes don’t change this base formula. Nor does the continual drop of Wag, which received $300 million from the Vision Fund and looks to be going through tough challenges.

In any portfolio, there are going to be losses. The infamous J-curve in venture, where losses materialize far faster than gains in the early years of a fund, is alive and well — even at the growth stage.

And WeWork isn’t even dead yet — it still has cash, and it will rebuild. Will it be the largest startup turnaround in history? Possibly. Could it go straight to bankruptcy? Sure. Will the Vision Fund make money? Well, it really depends on that preference stack and a thousand other variables to be determined in the coming weeks, months, and years.

It’s all so early. My guess is that we still have about five years to go before we really start to get sufficient information to evaluate the Vision Fund’s ambitions.

Along this line thoughI don’t think I just need to defend venture capitalism though, but capitalism itself.

Matt Stoller, who has made it his mission to target big companies including Big Tech, summarizes the WeWork situation as emblematic of “counterfeit capitalism,” a system of founding story myths and fake growth charts underwritten by venture capitalists trying to build long-term, sustainable monopolistic companies using predatory pricing to kill off competitors.

Yet, that narrative totally misses the point of what capital does, and what investment means. Very, very few companies (venture-backed or not) are profitable from day one. Opening a restaurant requires buying equipment and signing a lease well before any customer walks in through the front door. Ditto for software startups, which need to actually build software before a user will pay for it. Capital investment is the bridge between plans to execution and launch.

The question is how long should a company be unprofitable to goad sales and drive revenues? A decade or two ago, it used to be that companies needed to be profitable to IPO. But why? Why precisely then should a company slow down its investment and clean up its cash flows? Why not earlier? Why not later?

In fact, something great has happened in the last few years in the credit markets: at least some investors are increasingly positioning their portfolios for growth rather than cash flows. They are willing to wait for profits, sometimes for years.

Or, in other words, more and more investors are thinking long-term about the ultimate potential worth of a business.

WeWork could be profitable today. It could shutter its most recently opened locations, condense down to a handful of locations in major cities, and roll around in its positive cash flow. Of course the Vision Fund understands this. But why lock in small gains today when there is so much more potential lurking out there?

We should be cheering this behavior, and not castigating it, even if WeWork itself might turn out to be a dud. The lesson of this whole saga isn’t that capitalism isn’t performing. In fact, it’s precisely the opposite: (venture) capitalism is performing better than ever to invest in future, long-range growth.


Source: Tech Crunch

Badass millennial women are supercharging startup investments

Across the political, social and economic stage, women’s issues are finally receiving heightened attention and priority.

There are more women than ever seeking political officefunding for female-founded startups is reaching record levels (even if they still have a long way to go to reach gender parity); a sizable cohort of female-founded and led companies have achieved billion-dollar unicorn valuations; and several women-led companies, including PagerDutyThe RealReal, and Eventbrite, have entered the public markets with successful IPOs.

What’s driving so much positive change?

Clearly, broadened awareness of gender and power issues, largely due to #MeToo, as well as an increase in the number of female investors, thanks to groups like All Raise, are all contributing catalysts. In addition, women now outnumber men in collegea majority of American moms are in the workforce, and in 40 percent of households those women are the breadwinners. But it’s more than that; I believe that there’s a profound generational shift afloat, and that this first wave of female-led unicorns is just the tip of the NASDAQ iceberg.

Unlike previous generations who may have either looked at self-investment as self-indulgence or who simply didn’t have the resources or technology available to make supplementary investments in themselves, today’s badass millennial women are unapologetic about their desire to invest in their own success and well-being. Determined to succeed without compromising their values or physical and mental wellness, these uber-empowered millennial women are making viable a new generation of startups to help them realize their dreams and feel comfortable in their skin. I refer to this economic wave as She-conomy 2.0.

For decades now there have been tech companies, which I refer to as She-conomy 1.0, catering to traditional and homogeneous identities of women primarily as shoppers and caregivers. In contrast, these new modern She-conomy 2.0 brands address latent, historically unmet, often un-discussed and under-served needs that speak to the multitude of other facets of our identities.

These companies have less to do with what women buy and more to do with their willingness to invest in themselves — in their careers and in their physical and emotional health and well-being. They are seeking and are willing to pay for products and services that help them advance their careers, feel comfortable about their bodies, and provide the physical and emotional support they’re seeking.

The founding members of Allraise (Image courtesy of Allraise)

Women are taking control of their careers and supporting each other.

More than two decades ago, when I had my first child, I joined a mom’s group at Stanford Hospital. We were all working moms trying to juggle career and motherhood. It was a truly challenging time for each of us. The group provided such helpful support that we met every Monday evening for five years until our kids were in kindergarten. Why Mondays? Because Mondays are especially hard for working parents, marking yet another week in search of balance. We realized that meeting on Monday evenings provided us with the support we needed to make it through the work week. Perhaps even more critically, it gave us something about Mondays to look forward to.

There’s something incredibly empowering about experiencing a major transition like a new job or new parenthood as part of a cohort. Sheryl Sandberg famously sought to institutionalize this kind of support for working women with her non-profit Lean In. It has dramatically raised awareness around working women’s struggles. However, individual Lean In group leaders are usually volunteers running these sessions on the side while working and shouldering life’s endless list of other responsibilities.

Now a new generation of organizations is offering this support — for a fee. As for-profit organizations, they’re doing so in a scalable, consistent and reliable way. Women don’t have to worry about whether the organizer will be able to carve out time to orchestrate a meeting because doing so is the organizer’s job. ChiefDeclare, The Assembly*The Wing and The Riveter are all examples of companies that are growing and thriving because they’re offering valuable space, support and services that women are willing to pay for. Most of these organizations initially targeted millennials, but women of all generations are benefiting and participating.

A look inside one of The Riveter’s Seattle co-working spaces.

Women are changing the narrative around previously taboo topics and promoting inclusiveness and acceptance of oneself.

It wasn’t long ago that mannequins, much like cover models, only came in one size. Now mainstream brands not only sell broader offerings; they increasingly showcase them in magazines, catalogs, stores and the runway. For example, Nike’s flagship store in London featured both plus-sized mannequins and para-sport mannequins for people with physical and intellectual abilities, and Rhianna’s new inclusive lingerie line regularly presents both plus-size and pregnant models.

Millennials (like all of us) don’t want to feel shamed; they want to feel empowered and beautiful. Instead of settling for frumpy, ill-fitting clothing or outdated product design, millennials are using their social media megaphones to tell the market what they want. Traditional companies like Victoria’s Secret have moved at a molasses-like pace to evolve from treating women as objects of fantasy to celebrating their right to feel great about themselves. Their antiquated practices have created the opportunity for new startups to create brands centered on body positivity. Some companies are filling largely underserved market needs by catering exclusively to larger and specialty sizes, and others are addressing previously taboo topics like body hair, which also contribute strongly to feelings around body positivity. Eloquii offers extended clothing sizes, Ruby Ribbon* and Third Love provide a wide sizing range of under garments and bras, and Fur addresses body hair and grooming.

Women are dedicating more attention to their own health and relationships.

Self-help books have been around for ages, but tech is paving the way for a new generation of services to provide guidance and support that are more convenient and targeted. At the same time, women are increasingly willing to discuss health issues that were previously taboo, like menstruation, menopause and perimenopause, fertility, and depression. Advancements in technology are making health-related self-care more accessible from the convenience of our wristbands and phones. Meanwhile, people are spending a disproportionate amount of their wealth on health, making the entire healthcare industry ripe for disruption.

All of these factors are making femtech big business. Countless new companies are helping women take more active control of their sexual health, including birth control and STI testing (Pill Club and Nurx), period tracking (Flo Health), fertility and egg freezing (Kind Body and Carrot Fertility), menopause (RoryGenneve), postpartum depression and miscarriage (Maven) and even our relationships (Relish* and Bumble). In addition, no shortage of femtech companies are addressing period care, such as LolaCoraThe Flex CompanyThinx, and Sustain Natural.

These companies are only viable because so many women — beginning with millennials but expanding out to the rest of us — are now willing and able to invest in themselves. United across a shared mission of female empowerment and inclusivity, She-onomy 2.0 is making it more realistic than ever to empower us to advance our careers, feel good about ourselves and stay healthy. Hats off to the badass millennial women leading this charge; we’re all better off professionally, emotionally and even physically thanks to you!

*Denotes portfolio company for Trinity Ventures


Source: Tech Crunch

Facebook’s plan for our post-web future

Let us connect some dots. Five years ago, Facebook acquired VR pioneers Oculus for $2 billion. This week, it snapped up neural-interface pioneers CTRL-Labs for somewhere north of $500 million, and announced that its own massively multiplayer VR shared universe Horizon will launch early next year.

Oculus became (somewhat creepily named) Facebook Reality Labs, headed by Andrew Bosworth, one of the company’s first 15 engineers, who also headed the company’s transition from desktop to mobile advertising. It doesn’t take much imagination to see that he’s now in charge a much more interesting, and longer-term, transition: from the World Wide Web to whatever lies beyond.

Their big multibillion-dollar bet, the vision floating in Mark Zuckerberg’s crystal ball, is clearly that this new frontier is “cyberspace,” to use William Gibson’s term, or “the Oasis,” to borrow from READY PLAYER ONE, a copy of which was once issued to every new Oculus employee. Virtual reality, in other words, and/or maybe “mixed reality,” which combines our real world with virtual artifacts.

I can see your eyes rolling already. I admit mine are twitching skywards as well. AR/VR, like nuclear fusion and Brazil, have been the future for so long that it’s become a little hard to take that future seriously. Neuromancer was published in 1984. Jaron Lanier demo’d the first real VR headset and motion capture wearable, the EyePhone and DataGlove, more than thirty years ago. No wonder the notion of a shared global VR space increasingly feels like a retro-future.

But to Zuck’s credit, the path to change here is obvious and therefore plausible: use gaming as the bridge. Create the world’s first and best massively multiplayer online VR game. (The theory being it will be more immersive, and therefore more compelling, than Magic Leap’s mixed reality.) Use Facebook’s power, scale, and wealth to bring gamers in until there’s a thriving community of many million monthly users.

Then, transition to the larger vision, of VR slowly supplanting the Web itself; replace laptops with headsets, phones with overlays on smart glasses, and keyboards with neural interfaces. Not all at once, but bit by bit, as the Horizon gameworld gradually, over a period of years, becomes a platform for socializing and messaging and work as well as play. Then the Internet’s denizens won’t just visit Facebook’s web site, or launch its app; instead they will, literally if virtually, live in Facebook’s walled garden.

Is that vision more than a little creepy? You betcha. Is it one that’s likely to come to fruition? Well, no, I wouldn’t say likely. But I’ll concede it has a chance, one sufficiently nonzero, and sufficiently potentially spectacularly lucrative, that Facebook’s ongoing multibillion-dollar bet makes sense. Lucrative in terms of both money and implicit power. Like I said: more than a little creepy.

Of course this isn’t Facebook’s only vision of the future. It’s just one of their bets. Another is to essentially pivot from social-media advertising to messaging and transactions. You have to grudgingly admire their willingness to explore abandoning their current fantastically successful business model in favor of the untried and untested. Anything to disrupt the innovator’s dilemma.

Will this bet pay off? Will Facebook Horizon, plus VR and neural interfaces, be the gateway to “a consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions,” to quote William Gibson? While the odds are against it, it still seems to have a better chance than anything else on our collective horizon.


Source: Tech Crunch