Month: August 2018

Grab’s acquisition of Uber’s Southeast Asia business in May has been embroiled in regulatory scrutiny, but the ride-hailing firm has some positive news after the Philippines’ regulator gave the deal the all-clear. It did so, however, whilst laying out terms to prevent the company from becoming overly dominant.

Singapore’s watchdog said in July that competition concerns may see it unwind the deal, which saw Grab pick up and then shutter Uber’s ride-hailing and food delivery business while the U.S. got a 27.5 percent stake in its recent. Competition is also a concern in the Philippines, but the Philippine Competition Commission (PCC) ruled today that Grab will submit to “service quality and pricing standards” in order to ensure consumers are treated fairly.

Singapore and the Philippines have been the most staunch investigators of the deal, so today’s news is a significant boost for Grab, which recently scored $2 billion in funding from Toyota and a range of other investors. Despite the okay, the PCC is keeping a firm eye on the situation after it concluded that “Grab operates as a virtual monopolist.”

The commission said that, post-Uber, Grab has committed to a series of terms that include more consistent and transparent pricing, the removal of exclusivity deals for drivers, and more.

Here is the full list of clauses from the PCC website:

• Service Quality Commitment: Grab shall commit to bring back market averages for acceptance and cancellation rates before the transaction, and response time to rider complaints.
• Fare Transparency Commitment: Grab will revise its trip receipt to show the fare breakdown per trip, including distance, fare surges, discounts, promo reductions, and per-minute waiting charge (if reinstated by LTFRB).
• Commitment on Pricing: Grab shall not have prices that have an “extraordinary deviation” from the minimum allowed fares. Grab will be penalized equivalent to 5% of Grab’s commissions, or up to P2 million, in the identified trips with extraordinary deviation that do not have sufficient justification.
• Removal of “See Destination” Feature: Grab will remove “see destination” feature for drivers with low ride acceptance rate.
• Driver/Operator Non-Exclusivity Commitment: Grab shall not introduce any policy that will result in drivers and operators being exclusive to Grab. Current Grab drivers/operators are allowed to register/operate under other Transport Network Companies (TNCs) through a multi-homing scheme.
• Incentives Monitoring Commitment: Since incentives may result in drivers remaining exclusive to Grab, and thus affect its competitors’ conditions of entry and the ability to expand, the Commission shall monitor and evaluate Grab’s incentives on the basis of mandatory quarterly reports.
• Improvement Plan Commitment: Grab will implement the following: (1) enhance driver performance standards, (2) adopt a Driver Code of Conduct, (3) establish a Grab Driver Academy; (4) adopt an emergency SOS feature, help center, and passenger no-show feature; (5) adopt a Passenger Code of Conduct; (6) maintain dedicated service lines subject to prevailing labor regulations; (7) adopt a Driver Welfare Program; and (7) implement a Driver Rewards Program.

The PCC said it will appoint a third-party to monitor Grab’s progress in adhering to these terms, which it hopes will hold the company to account in the same way Uber’s competition did.

“The PCC’s Commitment Decision holds Grab to a standard as if Uber were present in the market. In effect, while Grab operates as a virtual monopolist, the commitments assure the public that quality and price levels that would prevail are those that had been when they still faced competition from Uber. Moreover, the commitments ensure that the merger will not make it more difficult for new players to enter and grow,” PCC Chairman Arsenio M. Balisacan said in a statement.

The pricing component is particularly important.

Since Uber’s departure many users, particularly those in the Philippines, have complained about rising prices on Grab since the exit of Uber. The company previously brushed that concern aside, claiming that it hasn’t increased prices but the differences between its costs and Uber’s are down to an alternative pricing model. In Grab’s case, the company told TechCrunch it has “always maintained a competitive per KM fare with 2.0 surge max.” Uber’s surge, it said, could reach 4X.

That’s been dismissed by many users but those in the Philippines can at least take hope from the fact that their regulator is pushing the issue.

There’s also very legitimate concern that Grab’s position has made it impossible for new entrants to challenge its business.

Indonesia’s $5 billion startup Go-Jek is in the process of expanding its business regionally after it went live in Vietnam this month. The Philippines and Thailand are also on its new market list for 2018. But Go-Jek has had to raise over $1 billion to get its shot, and there’s no guarantee it will replicate its dominance in Indonesia in other countries.

The fact remains that other ride-hailing rivals of scale are near-impossible to find in Southeast Asia even though Grab co-founder Hooi Ling Tan said publicly that “there’s still a lot of existing competition.” In most cases, Grab’s stiffest competition is local market taxi firms, many of which have added app-based bookings to bolster their business.

Grab said in a statement that it has made the commitments voluntarily and that it supports competition:

We are happy that the Philippine Competition Commission (PCC) has recognised the legality of Grab’s deal with Uber in Philippines and accepted Grab’s voluntary commitments. PCC’s pro-innovation approach and forward-looking decision sets a strong example for other regulators examining the Grab-Uber deal, and encourages fair competition and a level playing field that ultimately benefits consumers and drivers. As we move forward to become an everyday app that serves the daily essential needs of people in Southeast Asia, we will continue to stay focused on serving the best interests of our consumers and partners.

Aside from its new funding, which takes the company to $6 billion raised to date and gives it a valuation of $11 billion, Grab has been busy expanding its reach.

The company widened its GrabFood service across the region thanks in no small part to the UberEats, while it is rolling out a revamped version of its app that emphasizes its collection of services that include deliveries, payments and ride-hailing. Part of that strategy included the launch of a platform that allows third-parties to tap the Grab platform and bring their services into its app. The launch partner for that was food delivery service HappyFresh, which is rumored to have picked up funding from Grab.

Investment is another area where Grab is stepping up. It recently announced Grab Ventures, a division that will handle strategic investments and manage an accelerator program called ‘Velocity.’

A new startup, Workona, this week launched software designed for those who primarily do their work in a browser. The company’s goal is to become the OS for web work – and to also save web workers from the hell that is a million open tabs. To accomplish this, Workona offers smart browser windows you set up as workspaces, allowing you a place to save your open tabs, as well as collaborate with team members, search across your tabs, and even sync your workspace to different devices.

The Palo Alto-based company was founded in fall 2017 by Quinn Morgan (CEO), previously the founding product manager at Lucidpress, and Alma Madsen (CTO), previously the first employee and Director of Engineering at Lucid Software, the makers of Lucidpress.

“Last year, Alma and I decided we wanted to build something together again, and initially began working on a different startup idea,” explains Morgan, as to how Workona began. “As a remote team at the time, we were using cloud apps like Google Docs, Asana, Slack, and Zoom to stay connected. Both of us were wearing multiple hats and juggling ten different projects at once.”

“One late night, with ten windows open for each project, the idea just struck us: ‘Why doesn’t the browser – the tool that we actually do most of our work in – not have a good way to manage all of our projects, meetings, and workflows?'”

Of course, there are already browser add-ons that can help with taming the tab chaos, like OneTab, toby, Session Buddy, The Great Suspender, TooManyTabs and others.

But the co-founders didn’t want just another tab manager; they wanted a smart browser window that would save the work you do, automatically. That way, you wouldn’t have to keep all the tabs open all the time, which can make you stressed and less focused. And you wouldn’t have to remember to press a button to save your tabs, either.

With Workona, the software guides users to create workspaces for each of the projects, meetings, and workflows they’re currently working on. (Working on…Workona…get it?).

You can also take a browser window that represents one project and save it as a workspace.

These workspaces function like a folder, but instead of holding a set of files, they can save anything on the web – cloud documents, task lists, open websites, CRM records, Slack sessions, calendars, Trello boards, and more. In each workspace, you can save a set of tabs that should reappear when that workspace is re-opened, as well as set of “saved tabs” you may need to use later.

After creating a workspace, you can use Workona to re-open it at any time. What that means is you can close the browser window, and later easily pick up where you left off without losing data.

A list of workspaces will also appear in the left-side navigation in the Workona browser tab. Within this tab, you can click to open a workspace, switch between workspaces in the same browser window, search for tabs or workspaces from the included search bar, or open workspaces from their URL.

In a shared workspace, you can also collaborate with others on things the team is working on – like everything needed for a project or meeting.

“Our vision is to build the missing OS for work on the web and workspaces are just the start,” says Morgan.

The company is currently working on making the workspaces and its search features more powerful, he adds.

Workona will be sold as a freemium product, with a free tier always available for moderate use. Pro accounts will be introduced in the future, removing the limit of 10 workspaces found in the free version.

The company has been beta testing with users from tech companies like Twitter, Salesforce and Amazon, as well as NASA.

The company is still pre-seed stage, with funding from K9 Ventures.

Traditional OS’s spent a lot of time and effort in designing the ‘desktop experience’ and switching between applications. But in a browser, all we have is tabs,” said K9 Ventures’ Manu Kumar, as to why he invested. “There are tab managers but none of them really solved my problem well enough, and none of them allowed me to maintain a shared context with other people that I’m collaborating with,” he added.

Workona is available for Chrome as a plugin you download from its website.

Open source is everywhere now, so maybe it’s no surprise that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (yes, the organization behind the Oscars) today announced that it has partnered with the Linux Foundation to launch the Academy Software Foundation, a new open source foundation for developers in the motion picture and media space.

The founding members include a number of high-powered media and tech companies, including Animal Logic, Blue Sky Studios, Cisco, DreamWorks, Epic Games, Google, Intel, SideFX, Walt Disney Studios and Weta Digital.

“Open Source Software has enabled developers and engineers to create the amazing effects and animation that we see every day in the moves, on television and in video games,” said Linux Foundation CEO Jim Zemlin.” With the Academy Software Foundation, we are providing a home for this community of open source developers to collaborate and drive the next wave of innovation across the motion picture and broader media industries.”

The Academy Software Foundation’s mission statement notes that it wants to be a neural forum “to coordinate cross-project efforts; to provide a common built and test infrastructure; and to provide individuals and organizations a clear path to participation in advancing out open source ecosystem.”

According to a survey by the Academy, 84 percent of the industry uses open source software already, mostly for animation and visual effects. The group also found that what’s holding back open source development in the media industry is the siloed nature of the development teams across the different companies in this ecosystem.

“The creation of the Academy Software Foundation is an important and exciting step of the motion picture industry,” said Nick Cannon, the chief technology officer of Walt Disney Animation Studios. “By increasing collaboration within our industry, it allows all of us to pool our efforts on common foundation technologies, drive new standards for interoperability and increase the pace of innovation.”

The fact that even Hollywood is now embracing open source and its collaborative nature is yet another sign of how the world of software development has changed in recent years. Over the last few years, traditional enterprises realized that whatever technology they developed to run their software infrastructure isn’t what actually delivers value to their customers, so it made sense to collaborate in this area, even with their fiercest competitors  — and the same, it seems, now holds true for the Hollywood studios, too (or at least for those that have now joined the new foundation).

Apple’s been on a tear lately. Say what you will about some of the company’s programming decisions (see: Carpool Karaoke), at least it’s building a portfolio that’s got a little something for everyone.

Earlier this week, word got out that it ordered a series based on Min Jin Lee’s novel, Pachinko. And according to a report in Variety, it’s also added new comedy by a couple of members of the It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia gang.

The half-hour scripted sitcom will be penned by Rob McElhenney and Charlie Day, with McElhenney taking the lead as an employee at a video game studio. Along with RCG (the pair’s production company) and Lionsgate, the show will also, fittingly, be co-produced by Ubisoft, which should add a bit of authenticity to the thing — and hopefully not too much product placement.

Details are scant otherwise, and Day, McElhenney and the rest of the Sunny gang are set to return for a 14th season of that show, which could complicate scheduling. Still, color me intrigued. It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia is among the funniest sitcoms of the past decade, and the show’s sensibilities should translate pretty well to the new setting.

As someone who’s been unable to watch Silicon Valley due to that series hitting a little too close to home at times, I’m holding out hope on the one.

The launch of Fortnite Battle Royale has left Google in a slight predicament. While Google is in no way hard up for cash, Fortnite Battle Royale for Android certainly represented the potential for a relatively big revenue stream for an app. That is, until Epic Games decided it would launch Fortnite for Android from its own website, circumventing the Play Store.

But revenue aside, there’s also the matter of Google probably not liking the idea of huge titles circumventing the Play Store as a precedent. Plus, the lack of Fortnite Battle Royale within the Play Store poses a slight security risk to users, as there are quite a few V-bucks scams and malicious clones looking to capitalize on the popularity of Fortnite.

That’s why the Google Play store now displays a message to users in response to searches for “Fortnite,” “Fortnite Battle Royale,” and other similar search queries.

“Fortnite Battle Royal by Epic Games, Inc is not available on Google Play,” reads the message.

That’s right. Google mispelled the “Royale” in Battle Royale. It was likely an honest mistake, but given the fact that Epic Games is making upwards of $300 million in revenue a month, which Google is not getting a cut of, it makes for some fun back-and-forth for us spectators.

Google lists PUBG Mobile, Fortnite’s biggest competitor, at the top of all Fortnite Battle Royale queries, but doesn’t include anything in its message around how to actually find the real Fortnite Battle Royale for Android .

While Google Play’s app review process should catch the vast majority of malicious clones, the message is at least moderately helpful for folks hearing about the Android version of Battle Royale without knowing the details around Epic’s launcher.

For what it’s worth, Fortnite for Android isn’t yet available to everyone. The game launched yesterday as a Samsung exclusive for folks with a Galaxy S 7 or higher, and will become available to all Android phone owners on August 12.

[via 9to5Google]

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.

This week Matthew Lynley and Alex Wilhelm were joined by 500 Startups CEO Christine Tsai for what turned out to be a super packed episode.

We kicked off with the latest from Slack: $400 million new dollars at a shiny, new $7 billion valuation, according to TechCrunch. The new capital comes after the firm raised a huge sum last year from SoftBank’s Vision Fund.

We dug into why the company would raise again, and what competitors it has left after the Atlassian deal.

Next up, two earnings reports. Continuing our tradition of keeping tabs on recent tech IPOs, we talked through Snap and Dropbox which reported earnings this week. Both lost ground after doing so. Ironically, they each beat financial expectations.

Snap ended up dropping value over a DAU decline, and Dropbox’s fall is still a bit undetermined. But by the time this episode ships, perhaps the market will have figured it out.

Next up we scrolled through the key reviews of the commercially available Magic Leap headset that is out at last. It’s a bit pricey, and a bit not-what-people-expected, but the well-funded startup seems to have avoided a complete miss. Its second-generation device may prove to be more impactful.

And finally, big news from China. As has become the norm on Equity, a few big Chinese rounds captivated us. This time it was the Manbang news, and what’s going on at Bytedance.

All that and we’ll be back in a week’s time. Stay cool!

There are many, many tech startups tackling the problem of diabetes. You only have to look at the TechCrunch tag to find some of the latest, and even the Apple Watch is getting in on the act.

But literally ‘reversing’ Type 2 diabetes remains a tough nut to crack. That’s not prevented UK startup OurPath from convincing investors it’s on the right… path.

This digital lifestyle change programme which aims to help patients with this disease, has now raised a $3m round of funding.

The company says it uses the latest in behavioural science and weight tracking technology to change unhealthy lifestyles and embed healthy habits. In fact, it’s worked well enough to be commissioned nationally by the NHS in the UK, which is a huge vote of confidence in an early stage startup.

The investment was led by Connect Ventures (also in Citymapper, Typeform, and CharlieHR) and had follow-on investment from SpeedInvest and some of London’s top angels – Taavet Hinrikus (co-founder of Transferwise), Michael Pennington (co-founder of Gumtree), and Ian Hogarth (co-founder of Songkick). The investment will be used to boost marketing and accelerate their hiring plans in the UK.

The company was founded by healthcare strategy consultants and Oxbridge alumni Chris Edson and Mike Gibbs, who designed the programme to provide people with intense support in order to make lifestyle changes.

The programme combines intensive dietitian support with a digital support group and Bluetooth-connected tracking hardware. In the UK the programme is available through prescription from GPs – but also privately throughout the UK.

Chris Edson, cofounder and CEO, says: “This investment marks a change in venture capital, as the digital health market matures. The strains on the NHS are so extreme that we need a new approach, unless we’re to buckle under the weight of lifestyle diseases.”

Sitar Teli, Connect’s managing partner who will be joining OurPath’s board, says: “OurPath, with very limited resources, has developed a scalable system based on data, software and social support that helps those at risk prevent diabetes and those already afflicted potentially reverse it. I’ve had type 2 diabetes for years and OurPath has helped me significantly reduce my insulin dependency and I’m on track to reverse it.”

Here’s how it works:

VCs around the world are trying to wrap their head around crypto, and the new investment paradigm it brings. Some have made one-off deals but a few have jumped in off the deep end with dedicated crypto funds, with A16z in the U.S. the most prominent example. Now Singapore has its first from the traditional world after prominent firm Golden Gate Ventures announced a spinoff fund called LuneX Ventures.

The fund is focused on crypto and it is targeting a $10 million raise. Its announcement comes weeks after we reported the first close for Golden Gate’s new $100 million fund, its third to date, which is backed by Naver, Mistletoe and others.

Golden Gate already has some exposure to ICOs, having backed the company behind OMG, and plenty of rumors have done the rounds about its plans for a standalone fund considering the surge in ICOs, which have scooped up over $10 billion in investment this year so far.

Notably, LuneX will be the first crypto fund from a traditional investor in Southeast Asia, although Wavemaker Partners — which is backed by early Bitcoin proponent Tim Draper — does have a U.S.-based fund.

LuneX will be run by founding partner Kenrick Drijkoningen, who was previously head of growth for Golden Gate, with associate Tushar Aggarwal, who hosts the Decrypt Asia podcast. The two are assembling a small support team which will also be assisted by Golden Gate’s back office team.

Drijkoningen told TechCrunch in an interview that he believes the time is right for the fund, even though the price of Bitcoin, Ether and other major tokens is way below the peaks seen in January.

“Despite the fact that public markets are down, the amount of talent that’s moving into this space is exciting. There are young entrepreneurs who are passionate about this space and want to build an ecosystem,” he said, adding that stability on price is a good thing.

“There’s a lot of crypto funds but most of them are hedge funds,” Drijkoningen added. He explained that LuneX intends to take a longer-term approach to investments by helping its portfolio and generally doing more than shorting and quick trades.

Kenrick Drijkoningen, Founding Partner, LuneX Ventures

Drijkoningen explained the capital will be divided equally for token sales, purchasing existing tokens and equity-based investments in crypto projects. That means getting into private sales and pre-sales for ICOs, and seeing what tokens already on the market have long-term return potential. On the equity investment side, Drijkoningen is looking for what he calls “infrastructure” businesses, such as solutions for token custody, banking and more. The fund’s capital is being raised in fiat, but it is considering allowing Bitcoin, Ether and other tokens.

Although Singapore is seen by many as a ‘crypto haven’ the legal status of crypto and tokens is unclear since the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) has deferred on making these decisions. That’s in contrast to places like Malta, Gibraltar and Bermuda, which are actively wooing crypto companies with incentives and legalization frameworks, but Singapore’s status as a global financial hub and a destination for Southeast Asia’s investor capital has helped make it a destination for crypto companies all the same.

MAS is known for engaging with crypto stakeholders, and Drijkoningen said there had been discussions although he did not elaborate further other than to say that the regulator is “quite well informed.” He clarified that the new fund is structured so that it is legally compliant while it is banking with a “crypto-friendly” bank in the U.S. since Singaporean banks to do provide services to crypto companies.

Drijkoningen said the fund’s LP base is comprised of high net worth individuals who understand crypto or are crypto-curious, as well as hedge fund managers and family offices. He said there’s been interest from projects that raised significant capital from ICOs and want to invest in the ecosystem and grow networks, as well as some long-time Golden Gate LPs.

There’s no doubt LuneX is an early mover in Southeast Asia — well, the world — but Drijkoningen believes it won’t be long before others in the traditional VC space follow suit. He revealed that already a number of other funds are “looking into” the opportunities, and expects that some will make a move “this year or next.”

As for LuneX, the plan is very much to scale this initial fund in the same way that Golden Gate has gone from a small seed fund to a $100 million vehicle in less than eight years.

“We want to get up and running, get a good return and raise a larger fund,” Drijkoningen said. He added that the fund is currently looking over half a dozen or so deals that it hopes to wrap up soon as its first investments.

Note: The author owns a small amount of cryptocurrency. Enough to gain an understanding, not enough to change a life.

Elvie, a femtech hardware startup whose first product is a sleek smart pelvic floor exerciser, has inked a strategic partnership with the UK’s National Health Service that will make the device available nationwide through the country’s free-at-the-point-of-use healthcare service so at no direct cost to the patient.

It’s a major win for the startup that was co-founded in 2013 by CEO Tania Boler and Jawbone founder, Alexander Asseily, with the aim of building smart technology that focuses on women’s issues — an overlooked and underserved category in the gadget space.

Boler’s background before starting Elvie (née Chiaro) including working for the U.N. on global sex education curriculums. But her interest in pelvic floor health, and the inspiration for starting Elvie, began after she had a baby herself and found there was more support for women in France than the U.K. when it came to taking care of their bodies after giving birth.

With the NHS partnership, which is the startup’s first national reimbursement partnership (and therefore, as a spokeswoman puts it, has “the potential to be transformative” for the still young company), Elvie is emphasizing the opportunity for its connected tech to help reduce symptoms of urinary incontinence, including those suffered by new mums or in cases of stress-related urinary incontinence.

The Elvie kegel trainer is designed to make pelvic floor exercising fun and easy for women, with real-time feedback delivered via an app that also gamifies the activity, guiding users through exercises intended to strengthen their pelvic floor and thus help reduce urinary incontinence symptoms. The device can also alert users when they are contracting incorrectly.

Elvie cites research suggesting the NHS spends £233M annually on incontinence, claiming also that around a third of women and up to 70% of expectant and new mums currently suffer from urinary incontinence. In 70 per cent of stress urinary incontinence cases it suggests symptoms can be reduced or eliminated via pelvic floor muscle training.

And while there’s no absolute need for any device to perform the necessary muscle contractions to strengthen the pelvic floor, the challenge the Elvie Trainer is intended to help with is it can be difficult for women to know they are performing the exercises correctly or effectively.

Elvie cites a 2004 study that suggests around a third of women can’t exercise their pelvic floor correctly with written or verbal instruction alone. Whereas it says that biofeedback devices (generally, rather than the Elvie Trainer specifically) have been proven to increase success rates of pelvic floor training programmes by 10% — which it says other studies have suggested can lower surgery rates by 50% and reduce treatment costs by £424 per patient head within the first year.

“Until now, biofeedback pelvic floor training devices have only been available through the NHS for at-home use on loan from the patient’s hospital, with patient allocation dependent upon demand. Elvie Trainer will be the first at-home biofeedback device available on the NHS for patients to keep, which will support long-term motivation,” it adds.

Commenting in a statement, Clare Pacey, a specialist women’s health physiotherapist at Kings College Hospital, said: “I am delighted that Elvie Trainer is now available via the NHS. Apart from the fact that it is a sleek, discreet and beautiful product, the app is simple to use and immediate visual feedback directly to your phone screen can be extremely rewarding and motivating. It helps to make pelvic floor rehabilitation fun, which is essential in order to be maintained.”

Elvie is not disclosing commercial details of the NHS partnership but a spokeswoman told us the main objective for this strategic partnership is to broaden access to Elvie Trainer, adding: “The wholesale pricing reflects that.”

Discussing the structure of the supply arrangement, she said Elvie is working with Eurosurgical as its delivery partner — a distributor she said has “decades of experience supplying products to the NHS”.

“The approach will vary by Trust, regarding whether a unit is ordered for a particular patient or whether a small stock will be held so a unit may be provided to a patient within the session in which the need is established. This process will be monitored and reviewed to determine the most efficient and economic distribution method for the NHS Supply Chain,” she added.

Educators already don’t get paid enough, and those that work in preschools or daycares often make 48% less. Meanwhile, parents struggle to find great early education programs where kids get receive enough attention and there’s space, but they don’t need special connections or to pass grueling admissions interviews to get in.

Any time there’s a lousy experience people have an emotional connection to and spend a lot of money on, there’s an opportunity for a startup. Enter ‘Wonderschool‘, a startup that lets licensed educators and caretakers launch in-home preschools or daycares. Wonderschool helps candidates get licensed, set up their programs, launch their websites, boost enrollment, and take payments in exchange for a 10 percent cut of tuition. The startup is now helping run 140 schools in the SF Bay, LA, and NYC where parents are happy to pay to give their kids an edge in life.

That opportunity to fill a lucrative gap in the education market has attracted a new $20 million Series A for Wonderschool led by Andreessen Horowitz. The round brings the startup to $24.1 million in total funding just two years after launch. With the cash and Andreessen partner Jeff Jordan joining its board, Wonderschool is looking to build powerful lead generation and management software to turn teachers into savvy entrepreneurs.

“Finding good childcare has become one of the most difficult experiences for families. I’ve seen parents who are making a livable wage in urban cities like San Francisco and New York still struggle to find and afford quality childcare” says co-founder and CEO Chris Bennett. “We wanted to deliver a solution for parents that also had the potential to create jobs and empower the caregiver — that’s Wonderschool.”

By spawning and uniting programs across the country, Wonderschool could scale as the way software eats preschool. But without vigorous oversight of each educator, Wonderschool is also at risk of a safety mishap at one of its franchises ruining the brand for them all.

Wonderschool started when co-founder Arrel Gray was having trouble finding childcare for his daughter close to home. “My little sister went to an in-home preschool, so I suggested he check them out” says Bennett. “But he wasn’t very satisfied with the options – the majority were full and some didn’t meet the expectations for his family. We also found that they didn’t use the internet much so they were hard to find and contact.”

The two were looking to pivot their social commerce startup Soldsie after Facebook algorithm changes had curtailed its growth. Their research led to the discovery of just how much lower preschool and daycare workers’ wages were. “When we had the idea we thought, ‘what the best way to test this?’ Why don’t we start a preschool ourselves'” says Bennett. “So we rented a home in the Berkeley Hills, hired an amazing educator, set up a school and started one. The school ended up being a huge success. Five-star reviews on Yelp. A high NPS. Parents loved the place.” It also scored the teacher a 3X higher salary than before.

With that proof, Wonderschool went on to raise $4.1 million from Josh Kopelman at First Round Capital, Omidyar Network, Cross Culture Ventures, Uncork Capital, Lerer Ventures, FundersClub, and Edelweiss. That let them flesh out the business. Wonderschool would recruit existing teachers and caregivers or guide people to get licensed so they could launch in-home schools. There, the teachers can pick whatever curriculum or format they want, like Montesori or nature-focused learning.