Ideaforge

A year ago, at a demo day south of San Francisco, we watched a number of recently formed startups pitch investors on their companies. One that stood out to us at the time was Zubale, a Mexico City-based outfit whose founders were looking to connect big corporations with Latin Americans eager to address tasks on their behalf. A person could conduct on-the-ground market research for a brand, for example, then earn mobile phone credits or other redeemable digital rewards.

Fast forward and Zubale, which had 10 employees at the time, now has 40 full time employees, and it has completed 170,000 tasks on behalf of the consumer brands on which it is squarely focused — and for two reasons.

First, according to Zubale cofounder Allison Campbell, the retail industry across Latin America is a generating $2 trillion per year, but companies are also shelling out $40 billion on “super painful and high spend” that includes employees who complete in-store tasks like stocking shelves, checking prices, and building displays.

Campbell says Zubale can save — even make — these companies money by crowdsourcing the same tasks to independent contractors who can choose from an inventory of similar jobs near to them.

Campell and her cofounder, Sebastian Monroy, also know a few things about retail in emerging markets. Before heading to HBS, Campbell spent nearly eight years with Walmart, as a merchandise manager, then as a  director of international strategic initiatives, roles that placed her in Gurgaon India, then Shanghai and Shenzhen, China. Monroy’s path has been a similar one; he spent more than seven years working in a variety of sales roles for Proctor & Gamble in Mexico before heading to Harvard, where he met Campbell on their first day of business school. (“We realized we were wearing the same exactly glasses and took a picture together,” she says with a laugh. They decided to team up on Zubale a a year later.)

Indeed, though one could see Zubale using its platform to crowdsource any number of tasks, a la TaskRabbit, the opportunity is so massive in catering to retailers that the startup plans to stay in its lane for the foreseeable future.

If anything, says Campell, Zubale — which plans to eventually expand from Mexico into other countries, including Brazil, Chile, and Peru — may end up offering the contractors more in the way of financial services products, given that there remains a dearth of these and that these individuals are constantly checking the app anyway.

It makes sense. While 85 percent of Mexico’s population of 125 million now has a smart phone — giving rise to more app-driven startups like Zubale — only 10 percent have a credit card, and only 35 percent have a checking account. It’s for that reason that many of the people who work for Zubale still choose to earn mobile phone credit and other digital rewards that they can redeem through making online purchases.

They “love us,” too, says Campbell, because they can “increase their income by 40 percent” by performing work for Zubale. In fact, she suggests Zubale hasn’t had to do much in the way of marketing, thanks to Facebook Groups where the company is discussed, as well as through other word of mouth, including workers’ friends who want more jobs and find it easier to find and complete jobs in 30-minute increments at the same store location rather than run from store to store or job to job. (On average, she adds, they complete 20 jobs for the company per week.)

Certainly, investors like the company. Campell and Monroy say they had a lot of inbound interest when they began seeking seed funding more recently. They chose the venture firm NFX to lead the $4.4 million round, given its expertise in marketplaces and network-effects driven businesses. Other participants in the round include Industry Ventures, Joe Montana’s Liquid 2 Ventures, and XFactor Fund, along with individual investors Jonathan Swanson (who is the chairman of Thumbtack), Sergio Romo (the CEO of Grow Mobility), and Bob White (the founder and a former managing director of Bain Capital).

Meanwhile, the company’s very first check came from the seed-stage firm Pear, which had hosted that demo day.

Source: Tech Crunch

Shondaland, the production company founded by “Scandal” and “Grey’s Anatomy” creator Shonda Rhimes, has signed a deal to create a new slate of podcasts for iHeartRadio over the next three years.

As part of the deal, Shondaland is launching a new division called Shondaland Audio, with executive Sandie Bailey in charge of day-to-day operations. Rhimes will be involved as well, overseeing the development of the new podcasts.

While Shondaland is known for its TV shows, it has already been moving into podcasting with Katie’s Crib, a show about motherhood from actress Katie Lowes. (The announcement says new episodes of Katie’s Crib will be part of the Shondaland Audio slate.)

This partnership seems particularly noteworthy since Rhimes helped to kick off the current wave of huge streaming deals for content creators when she signed with Netflix two years ago. There haven’t been quite as many eyebrow-raising deals in the podcasting world — but the Obamas did sign with Spotify a few months ago.

“Podcasting continues to see tremendous growth and I’m excited to partner with iHeartMedia as Shondaland expands its storytelling journey into this medium which has seemed to usher in a unique sense of boldness, intimacy and connection,” Rhimes said in a statement. “With iHeartMedia we aim to share stories that are engaging, insightful, and reflect a robust world-view while staying true to the authentic storytelling voice that has become synonymous with Shondaland.”

iHeartRadio’s parent company iHeartMedia has also shown a growing interest in podcasting, most notably with the acquisition of HowStuffWorks last year. And it’s also starting to play podcasts on its terrestrial radio stations.

Source: Tech Crunch

Volvo Cars used the unveiling of the XC40 Recharge, its first electric vehicle, to lay out an ambitious business strategy that includes introducing out a new EV every year through 2025 and slashing the carbon footprint of the lifecycle of every car and SUV it builds by 40%.

All of the changes are aimed at Volvo Cars’ target to become a climate neutral company by 2040.

The goals laid out by Volvo Car Group President and CEO Håkan Samuelsson during a press conference Wednesday to launch the XC40 Recharge, will change the structure of the company and affect its supply chain.

“We made safety a part of our brand and part of our company, we should do exactly the same with sustainability,” Samuelsson said Wednesday during the press conference.

Volvo plans to reach its goal by producing and selling electric and plug-in electric vehicles, cutting the carbon footprint of the lifecycle of its vehicles by 40% between 2018 and 2025 and spinning out its combustion engine unit.

Electrifying every model

A critical piece to hitting its target will be making more EVs available. The automaker plans to launch an all-electric car every year over the next five years. By 2025, it wants all-electric vehicles to represent 50% of global sales with the rest compromised by hybrids.

As of this year, every new Volvo launched will be electrified, which means it could be a hybrid, plug-in electric (PHEV) or all-electric (BEV) vehicle.

To hit this target, every Volvo model will include a Recharge option. This means a plug-in hybrid or all-electric version will be available, according to the company. To further encourage electric driving, every Volvo Recharge plug-in hybrid model will come with free electricity for a year, provided through a refund for the average electricity cost during that period.

Volvo also plans to triple its manufacturing capacity and is now quickly ramping up its production globally, Björn Annwall, head of global commercial operations at Volvo, said during the press conference. Volvo is aiming for plug-in hybrid cars to make up 20% of total sales in 2020.

Carbon footprint

The company’s bid to reduce the carbon footprint of the lifecycle of its cars 40% between 2018 and 2025 will affect every aspect of how these vehicles are made as well as its suppliers.

Today, the supply chain makes up for one-third of the total carbon footprint throughout the lifecycle of a new vehicle, according to CTO Henrik Green. But switching to electrified vehicles to reduce tailpipe emissions increases the total lifecycle footprint of vehicles by two thirds primarily due to battery cell manufacturing.

“This is an industry challenge,” Green said, adding that lawmakers, utilities, automakers and battery cell manufacturers need to collaborate.

Volvo is targeting its supply chain to help it hit its goal as well as moving more towards renewable energy for its power. Reducing waste and standardizing materials to support recycling, are also key to making the company more sustainable, according to Green.

Gas-powered spinout

Volvo isn’t ditching combustion engines completely. But it’s distancing itself from them by spinning it out.

Volvo Cars and its Chinese parent company Geely Holdings will merge their existing combustion engine operations into a standalone business. The move will “clear the way for Volvo Cars to focus on the development of its all-electric range of premium cars,” Samuelsson said.

“So we believe we will bring sustainability into our company, not as something to add on, because it’s good or something that is expected for us,” Samuelsson said. “We bring it into the company because we think it’s really good for our business. It will make our company grow faster it will make our company stronger exactly as safety made Volvo stronger.”

Source: Tech Crunch

YouTube is partnering with Merchbar on a new integration that will allow artists to sell their official merchandise to their worldwide fans from a shelf just below the video.  The addition is the latest deal focused on helping video creators make more money from their videos, beyond the revenue brought in through advertisements and subscriptions.

Last year, YouTube announced a series of enhancements to the platform which focused on revenue generation, including channel memberships, premieres, merchandise, and more.

The merchandise feature was one of the more notable additions, as it lets creators put a shelf beneath their video where they can sell directly to fans. For example, they could sell their branded apparel like shirts and hats and other items.

At launch, YouTube had partnered with custom t-shirt maker Teespring on the effort. Earlier this year, the Merch shelf gained several more partners, including Crowdmade, DFTBA, Fanjoy, Represent and Rooster Teeth.

The company claimed at the time that “thousands” of channels had more than doubled their revenue as a result of Merch shelf and other integrations, like Super Chat and Channel Memberships.

With this new Merchbar partnership, YouTube is now focused on serving its artist community.

Merchbar today carries over 1 million items from 35,000 artists, making it one of the largest music merchandise aggregators worldwide. Now, YouTube artists who have an Official Artist Channel on the platform will be able to promote their merchandise right beneath their music videos. (Marshmello, never one to shy away from a marketing opportunity, made a soccer jersey exclusively for Merchbar and YouTube.)

As with prior merchandise integrations, the new Merchbar shelf will sit directly under videos on both desktop and web. Users can also click through from the shelf to the artist’s Merchbar website. In prior merchandise partnerships, YouTube took a small cut of transactions on items sold through its site. It didn’t say what sort of deal it has with Merchbar, however.

The launch comes at a time when Google is more heavily invested in its YouTube Music service, a Spotify and Apple Music rival designed to offer both music and videos, including content not found elsewhere like live performances or remixes. The company recently made the YouTube Music app the default music app on Android, which should boost its adoption.

Eligible artists who have a Merchbar store offering U.S. fulfillment can sign up for the new merch shelf from YouTube Studio.

The feature is launching first in the U.S., and will later expand internationally.

Source: Tech Crunch

Today, the Federal Communications Commission formally approved the merger of Sprint and T-Mobile in a 3-2 vote falling along party lines, The Verge reports.

We’ve reached out to the FCC for comment.

In April, T-Mobile and Sprint announced the proposed $26 billion deal, which unsurprisingly garnered a lot of questions around anticompetitiveness pretty much immediately. The companies argued that the two stood a better chance to compete against AT&T and Verizon (disclosure: Verizon owns TechCrunch) as a single entity. After considerable back-and-forth, the deal was approved by the Justice Department in July. With the FCC’s blessing, the only hurdle is a multi-state lawsuit that both companies have vowed to resolve before the deal closes.

The report states that Democrats Rosenworcel and Starks dissented in today’s vote, with Republicans Ajit Pai, Brendan Carr and Michael O’Rielly voting in favor.

“We’ve all seen what happens when markets become more concentrated after a merger like this one. In the airline industry, it brought us baggage fees and smaller seats. In the pharmaceutical industry, it led to a handful of drug companies raising the prices of lifesaving medications,” Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel said in a statement, noting she did not vote for the merger. “There’s no reason to think this time will be different. Overwhelming evidence demonstrates that the T-Mobile-Sprint merger will reduce competition, raise prices, lower quality, and slow innovation.”

Source: Tech Crunch

AMC Theatres announced a new service today called AMC Theatres On Demand — a marketplace where members of AMC’s Stubs loyalty program can buy or rent individual movies to watch at home.

The launch of an iTunes-style, à la carte movie marketplace seems almost quaint at a time when all the major media companies seem to be following Netflix’s lead and readying their own subscription streaming services. But it’s a noteworthy bet on a slightly old-fashioned model, and it’s also interesting as an effort by the world’s largest theatrical chain to diversify, particularly as box office numbers decline.

In the announcement, AMC Theatres President and CEO Adam Aron argued that AMC has a particular advantage, because it can use its data about the movie-going habits of Stubs members to deliver targeted offers.

“The addition of AMC Theatres On Demand, which extends our movie offerings for AMC Stubs members into their homes, makes perfect sense for AMC Theatres, for our studio partners and for our millions of movie-loving guests,” said Aron in a statement. “With more than 20 million AMC Stubs households, and with our web site and smartphone apps already being visited hundreds of millions of times annually by movie fans, AMC Theatres is in a unique position to promote specific movies with greater personalization than has ever been possible before.”

AMC Theatres On Demand has more than 2,000 films, drawn from all the major studios, available at launch. (As an extra incentive, if you buy or rent a movie distributed by Lionsgate or Paramount Pictures, you’ll get an extra three movies from the same studio.) The company says the service will be available via web, mobile apps and smart TV apps — though it doesn’t mention specific devices.

AMC has already been experimenting with new business models, responding to the popularity of the (now-defunct) MoviePass with its own theatrical subscription, Stubs A-List.

Source: Tech Crunch

For healthtech founders and funders, scientific claims and conclusions are more than policy — business models depend upon the lucid appraisal of clinical problems, evaluating inadequacies in current standards of care, a clear understanding of disease pathways, and designing superior interventions. 

At each step along this value chain, founders stand on the shoulders of the scientists that preceded them to obtain reliable evidence. When they promote their own innovations, credibility is a critical prerequisite. But where does credibility come from?

A 2012 study selecting 50 common cookbook ingredients found that 80% had publications linking their consumption to cancer risk; according to some reports, tomatoes, lemons, and celery all cause cancer. The to-and-fro of nutrition science is emblematic of a larger dynamic related to fickle research findings across disciplines. Because investigators seeking to build upon seminal studies struggle to reproduce the original findings, researchers have deemed the problem a reproducibility crisis. 

Simulations have found that up to 85% of published findings could not be replicated. In turn, tens of billions of dollars are wasted and countless patient lives are adversely impacted annually due to unreliable research. 

Historically, academic research and healthcare VC have had considerable overlap, but in recent years, this co-dependence has increased as researchers are looking more and more for financial support. Government research funding has seen a steady decline, with private sources now supporting almost 60% of the spend. Biomedical VC has been portrayed as a critical source of risk capital for early-stage research and a key engine for its translation at later stages.

Source: Tech Crunch