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As Amazon and others offer ever speedier delivery, the climate benefits of e-commerce disappear due to reduced fuel efficiencies and increased warehouse space — With its acceleration of Prime shipping from two days to one, Amazon established a new normal.
Microchips Are Mostly Composed Of What? |
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PayPal COO Bill Ready, who joined the company in 2013 when it acquired Braintree, is leaving the company at the end of 2019 — PayPal Chief Operating Officer Bill Ready is leaving the company at the end of the year, PayPal announced via a statement issued on Thursday.
iRobot has acquired Root Robotics, which makes a $199 educational robot that can be programmed to draw, respond to touch and sound, play music, and more — Bedford, Massachusetts-based iRobot, the robotics company perhaps best known for its iconic Roomba autonomous home vacuum cleaners …
Airbus partners with Microsoft to sell custom apps for HoloLens to aerospace companies, starting with an app for airline maintenance workers and cabin crews — After four years using Microsoft's HoloLens internally, aerospace giant Airbus is partnering with the tech company …
How COPPA came about 20 years ago, making 13 years the internet's age of adulthood, as a bipartisan COPPA 2.0 bill seeks to raise the age to 16 — The inside story of COPPA, a law from the early days of e-commerce that is shaping a generation and creating a parental minefield
This week, a young, New York-based startup called Alma raised $8 million in funding to expand its “co-practicing community of therapists, coaches, and wellness professionals,” which it first launched from a space on Madison Avenue last fall.
As CNN was first to report, the company is charging psychiatrists, psychologists, clinical social workers and acupuncturists $165 per month to become Alma members, which comes with services like billing and scheduling and even a matchmaking service that purports to connect professionals with patients. They also pay an hourly rate to book identically outfitted rooms that can be used interchangeably.
CNN called the company a WeWork for therapists, but Alma and its venture backers are hardly alone in seeing promise in more specialized co-working spaces, which have proliferated as their best-known peer in the co-working craze, WeWork, has itself set up all over the globe. According to one estimate, the number of global coworking spaces, thought to be around 14,000 in 2017, is expected to reach 30,000 by 2022.
Among the best known of these newer outfits and backed early on by WeWork itself, is The Wing, a nearly three-year-old startup that describes itself as a members-only community full of work and community spaces designed for women. (It dropped its practice of not admitting men as members or guests after a Washington, D.C. man brought a gender-discrimination lawsuit against the firm that sought damages of up to $12 million.) Though the outfit has critics who worry that it advances certain women only — those who can afford to pay a few hundred dollars per month for a membership — investors have already given it nearly $120 million in funding.
They’re betting that women want to work and share ideas and see powerful female speakers alongside other women who are members. But investors and entrepreneurs are betting on broader trends, too. For one thing, it’s clear that commercial real estate owners need new ways to occupy underutilized space as our lives move increasingly online. More and more people are also becoming freelance workers, a trend that shows no signs of stopping. According to the Freelancers Union, 3.7 million more people started freelancing between 2014 and 2018 for an estimated total of 56.7 million America freelancers. That’s a huge segment of the working population.
Perhaps it’s no wonder that Spacious, a three-year-old, New York-based company that turns restaurants into co-working spaces during the afternoon, is backed by some of the best investors in the business, including Baseline Ventures. (Other companies taking advantage of underused space include Breather and Flexe.)
It’s also not surprising that more founders are building out spaces for specific groups of people. Therapists is just the newest that we’ve heard, but there are plenty of others. L.A. alone is home to numerous specialized co-working spaces, and the city’s Los Angeles Magazine recently pointed out. Among them is Glitch City, a 24-hour co-working space near Culver City that caters to indie game developers; The Hatchery Press, for writers; and Paragon Spaces, for those working in the cannabis industry.
Elsewhere, it’s possible to find with co-working spaces for people in the construction industry, and spaces for tech companies with on-demand workforces, and spaces for people committed to a zero-waste lifestyle.
It’s probably too early to say whether the spaces are any more sticky than more general co-working spaces like the fashionable workspaces that WeWork offers. Having been part of a long-standing, not-for-profit writers’ collective in San Francisco for roughly a decade — and knowing that many of my former office mates continue to be a part of that community — this editor suspects so.
Still, the much bigger question — for WeWork and these many smaller, more focused startups — is whether enough people can justify the cost of working in their spaces when the economy invariably hits the skids. It’s easier to imagine this happening with communities of doctors or other professionals who, by sheer dint of working together, can defray their costs and generate more business for themselves.
For the rest, only time will tell. But VCs have a lot of money to put to work, and plenty of them are willing to gamble that right now, at least, are no limits on where the trend can go.
NASA’s Curiosity Rover has detected high levels of methane output during its mission on the Martian surface, the New York Times reports. The discovery, found during a measurement taking on Wednesday by the robot and observed by NASA researchers, could indicate that microbial lifeforms may have taken up residence underground on Mars.
Methane is often present in higher concentrations in the air on Earth due to output from living creatures, which is why researchers are going to take a closer look and see if they can find any more corroborating evidence to back up the theory that the gas is due to output from subterranean Martian microbes. If all goes to plan, we should find out more about these follow-up observations as early as Monday, when researchers expect Curiosity to return the results of its new investigatory procedure.
Any measurable amount of methane detected by Curiosity would be a tripwire for Mars researchers, since the gas would likely have to have been produced recently by an organism if the reading is accurate, because otherwise it would’ve naturally broken down in a relatively short timespan into its component parts. That said, it’s worth noting that methane can be produced without any living organisms, and it could be gas long-buried and escaping to the surface through tiny cracks from underground reservoirs.
The NYT notes that this isn’t the first time researchers have detected traces of methane on Mars, but it is the highest concentration yet detected, and the Rover’s readings have been backed up by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, at least provisionally. Remember this isn’t the first time we’ve had potential evidence of life beyond Earth, but so far, nothing definitive has been discovered that indicates Earth isn’t unique in supporting living organisms.
This year at Disrupt SF, we will be hosting a special Extra Crunch stage focused on the issues that confront startup founders in building their companies.
I am pleased to announce that Ray Dalio of Bridgewater fame will be sitting down for a fireside chat on the Extra Crunch stage to discuss his Principles, and how to build a startup culture. Building a strong culture early on is the hallmark of almost all successful startups, and it is great to have such a leading figure to chat on this critical topic.
For tickets and more information, head over to our Disrupt SF event page.
Niantic dominated the mobile gaming world with its Pokémon Go augmented reality game. Now, the company is coming back for round two with the launch of its wizards-and-Hogwarts-themed game, Harry Potter: Wizards Unite.
Welcome back to this week’s transcribed edition of Equity.
This week, TechCrunch’s Danny Crichton filled in for co-host Alex Wilhelm – who was out in preparation for his wedding this weekend – joining Kate to cover the big news of the week.
Kate and Danny dive straight into Slack’s IPO and the implications of its direct listing strategy, before shifting gears to discuss the launch of Facebook’s new ‘Libra’ cryptocurrency and the VCs backing the initiative.
The duo then took a look at Lime’s latest fundraising efforts and the potential headwinds facing scooter companies with an appetite for capital. Lastly, Kate and Danny talk about underappreciated tensions for founders, including getting pushed out of their own companies and handling their own salaries.
Crichton: Talking about founders and compensation, our correspondent, Ron Miller, talked to a bunch of VCs to ask how are founders paying themselves today? Obviously, the cost of living in the Bay Area, in New York and other startup hubs has increased dramatically. So VCs have had to become acutely aware of their founders’ financial means.
One of the things that really came out of this survey though, from my perspective, was just how high the numbers are. We surveyed small number. We put it out in the interviews. It came out to post-Series A people are starting to get paid around 200K. But the numbers, even a couple of years ago, I seem to recall was like $120 was the magic number around the Series A, $90K if you had a serious seed fund and like $60 to $80 if you are just getting started.
But the numbers that we saw out of this were significantly higher. I think that shows a lot about how the cost of living has just continued to creep up in San Francisco and in New York.
Clark: Yeah. I think the point is made in the story. If you live in San Francisco and you’re paying a mortgage and you have kids, of course, you need to make six figures really to get by, which is just an unfortunate reality. I can’t say I was surprised by how those salaries looked. Seeing $125K for a founder, if anything, I thought was maybe a little low.
But it reminded me of, nearly a year ago at this point, when I wrote something on how much VCs are paid. I had written it based off data that was provided to me from a consulting firm. People were just up in arms at what I had written because, and I understand looking back, I think it grouped VCs together as VCs who work at really big funds who are getting the 2% carry out of a multi-billion dollar fund and who are paid a lot more.
And there are of course VCs who run seed funds or any kind of fund. There are many different sizes of VC funds. Some VCs actually don’t have a salary at all and are up against the same challenges, if not even more difficult challenges, of a startup founder.
Want more Extra Crunch? Need to read this entire transcript? Then become a member. You can learn more and try it for free.
Kate Clark: Hello, and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast. My co-host, Alex, is getting married this weekend so he’s not with us today, unfortunately. But we’ve got TechCrunch editor, Danny Crichton on the line. Danny, how are you?
Hello and welcome back to Startups Weekly, a newsletter published every Saturday that dives into the week’s noteworthy venture capital deals, funds and trends. Before I dive into this week’s topic, let’s catch up a bit. Last week, I noted my key takeaways from Recode + Vox’s Code Conference. Before that, I explored the bull versus bear arguments in regards to Peloton’s upcoming IPO.
Remember, you can send me tips, suggestions and feedback to kate.clark@techcrunch.com or on Twitter @KateClarkTweets. If you don’t subscribe to Startups Weekly yet, you can do that here. 
Now, for some quick thoughts on what I’ll call the scooter funding desert. For months, electric scooter businesses were securing large rounds at even larger valuations. So much so that the venture capital funding extravaganza in e-scooters defined Silicon Valley in 2018.
But it’s 2019, and times have changed. In an effort to keep myself from falling into a scooter rabbit hole, I’ll just say this: raising capital is no longer a piece of cake for scooter companies. E-scooter companies have matured some and investors are more aware of the steep costs of building and scaling these hardware-heavy businesses.
Scoot, which recently sold to Bird, was unable to raise additional capital making an exit to Bird its only viable option, sources tell TechCrunch. Bird paid less than $25 million for Scoot, a significant decrease from Scoot’s most recent private valuation of $71 million.
A recent report from The Information suggests both Lime and Bird, the leaders in the U.S., may run out of cash if they don’t raise again soon. “Lime has raised a total of more than $1 billion in the last two years, and over the past eight months it has shuffled its executive team and put a deeper focus on how to squeeze more money out of each scooter ride. The company ran through its cash quickly last year, including a $23 million loss in one month, before raising $310 million mostly from existing investors in February,” The Information’s Cory Weinberg wrote.
Bird, for its part, is running on less than $100 million and is expected to raise again this summer.
Bird may be in a better position to secure fresh funds. The company enters VC deal talks hot off the heels of its acquisition of Scoot, which gives it access to San Francisco, a coveted market in the scooter universe. Lime, for its part, is said to be struggling. The company enters deal talks amid a number of personnel shake-ups. Multiple policy leaders at the business, including chief programs officer Scott Kubly, recently stepped down, as did Lime co-founder and CEO Toby Sun.
I’d wager that both Bird and Lime will announce mega rounds in the next few months, but at much smaller valuation step-ups than we’ve seen in the past, perhaps even at a flat valuation. It’s worth noting, however, that e-scooters are still exploding around the world. India’s Bounce, for example, closed on $72 million this week to scale its scooter rental business.
On to other news…
Slack’s big listing: It happened. Slack became a public company this week after completing a direct listing. The workplace communication software juggernaut debuted on the New York Stock Exchange up 48% Thursday, at $38.50 per share, after reports emerged Wednesday night that the business had agreed to a reference price of $26 per share. Slack, founded in 2009 as Tiny Speck, closed up 48.5% Thursday at $38.62 per share. The stock had climbed as high as $42 in intraday trading. Slack’s market cap now sits well above $20 billion, or nearly three times its most recent private valuation of $7 billion.
Facebook’s new cryptocurrency: Explained
I know, I know, Facebook isn’t a startup, but Facebook’s attempts to create a new global financial system are worth learning about. TechCrunch’s Josh Constine wrote 4,000 words to help you understand the ins and outs of the new cryptocurrency, called Libra, which will let you buy things or send money to people with nearly zero fees.
The future of diversity and inclusion in tech
Here’s my must-read of the week. TechCrunch’s Megan Rose Dickey wrote what is perhaps the most comprehensive story on the state of D&I in tech today. She interviewed many leaders in the space, including Arlan Hamilton, Ellen Pao, Freada Kapor Klein and more, to provide a realistic rundown of the progress we’ve made in making the tech industry more inclusive — and what’s left to accomplish.
Is seed investing still a local business?
According to CB Insights, the number of seed-stage funding deals in the U.S. declined for the fourth straight year in 2018, continuing a trend that has seen the number of deals steadily drop, while the average size of deals increased. It’s safe to say this is the new normal. Yet, there continues to be a huge surplus of available capital and there are more funds out there than ever before. Here are three things entrepreneurs must remember when investors come calling from abroad.
Meero raises $230M for its on-demand photo business
Postman raises $50M to grow its API development platform
Navigator, the new project from the creators of Mailbox, launches with $12M
Nigerian motorcycle transit startup MAX.ng raises $7M
Humanising Autonomy pulls in $5M to help self-driving cars keep an eye on pedestrians
Armoire gets $4M to become the everyday Rent the Runway
Probably Genetic lands VC backing to launch D2C genetic testing business
San Francisco is getting closer to banning the sale of e-cigarettes in the city in a bid to prevent minors from accessing them. The city’s Board of Supervisors voted unanimously this week to approve two proposals: legislation that would ban the sale or delivery of e-cigarettes in San Francisco and a separate proposal that would prohibit the sale, manufacturing and distribution of tobacco products, including e-cigarettes, on property owned or managed by the city. It seems designed to take aim at Juul, since the company’s headquarters are in city-owned buildings at San Francisco’s Pier 70. Juul has already started lobbying to stop the ban.
If you’ve been unsure whether to sign up for TechCrunch’s awesome new subscription service, now is the time. Through next Friday, it’s only $2 a month for two months. Seems like a no-brainer. Sign up here. Here are some of my personal favorite EC pieces of the week:
The VCs behind Libra, Facebook’s new cryptocurrency
If you enjoy this newsletter, be sure to check out TechCrunch’s venture-focused podcast, Equity. In this week’s episode, available here, TechCrunch editor Danny Crichton and I discuss Facebook’s cryptocurrency, the scooter funding desert and more. You can subscribe to Equity here or wherever else you listen to podcasts.
