Year: 2018

Betsie Larkin spent the first ten years of her professional career as an EDM artist. She released two solo albums, toured five continents and worked with the likes of Armin van Buuren and Ferry Corsten. But after being constantly frustrated by shapewear she wore under her stage outfits, she felt compelled to try her hand at a new industry.

That’s how HoneyLove was born.

HoneyLove, backed by Y Combinator, aims to disrupt the traditional shapewear market by making an affordable, high-quality product that actually works.

In her research before starting HoneyLove, Larkin identified two big problems with shapewear. The first is that it tends to bunch up, causing constant readjustment, and the second is that it tends flatten out everything, even the curves people want to show off. That’s why Larkin developed HoneyLove Sculptwear.

HoneyLove uses supportive structures in side the seams of the garment, similar to the flexible boning used in old-school corsettes, and encases those structures in a soft channel of protective fabric. This simple enhancement ensures that the garment doesn’t bunch up around the legs or waistband.

HoneyLove also inserts its patent-pending BoostBands, made from a combination of compression fabric and a flat elastic panel, in the back of the legs of the garment to accentuate the natural curve between the bottom and the upper legs, according to Larkin.

The company manufactures at a gold-certified responsible (WRAP) factory that is dedicated to shapewear in the Guangdong province of China.

HoneyLove first started out on Kickstarter in February, and raised a whopping $300,000 in pre-orders after posting a $30,000 goal. The product is now available via the HoneyLove website for $89, which sits right in the middle of the larger market, where you can find cheap shapewear for as little as $35 and high-end shapewear for as much as $150.

Startup founders don’t usually pitch their ideas by admitting that they’re solving a “boring” problem, but it seems to work for RevenueCat‘s Jacob Eiting.

In fact, Eiting alternately described his startup (which is part of the current class at accelerator Y Combinator) as handling “boring work” and solving a “boring problem.” RevenueCat helps developers manage their in-app subscriptions, which Eiting said “is just boring — developers don’t want to do it.”

And yet it can be crucial for their business. After all, Eiting and his co-founder Miguel Carranza both worked at brain training app Elevate (where Eiting was CTO and Carranza was director of engineering), and he said shifting Elevate’s business model from one-off purchases to recurring subscriptions “saved the company.”

Eiting left Elevate more than a year ago, ultimately deciding to build a startup around “this weird skill I have.” RevenueCat offers an API that developers can use to support in-app subscriptions on iOS and Android, which means they don’t have to worry about all the nuances, bugs and updates in how each platform handles subscriptions.

Eiting said this is the kind of thing that “holds a lot of companies back — maybe not forever, but it’s usually at a time when a company shouldn’t be worrying about this.”

The API also allows developers to bring all the data about their subscription business together in one place, across platforms. Ultimately, he wants to turn RevenueCat into a broader “revenue management platform,” allowing developers to try out strategies like offering different prices to different customer segments.

More broadly, Eiting suggested that subscriptions offer a way out of the current “race to the bottom in how software is sold” — particularly in mobile app stores, where many of us expect everything to be free or dirt cheap. Obviously, that’s not a great situation for someone hoping to make money by selling software, but Eiting pointed out that it can be bad for the consumer too, because it means the developer has less financial incentive to support and update the app.

“Someone who pays for your 99-cent app once, they think they own your time,” he said. “You want to be helpful, you don’t want to let down a paid user, but your incentives aren’t really aligned.”

Subscriptions, even if they’re just for 99 cents a month, can re-align those incentives — Eiting has described this as a system of app patronage: “You want this thing to stay working, you need to pony up some money to developers.”

He also acknowledged that as more apps shift to this model, there’s a risk of subscription fatigue, which could lead to “maybe not a harsh backlash, but there might be a secondary correction.”

But in Eiting’s view, that’s less a problem for individual developers, more for the mobile platforms, which should be building better tools for consumers to manage all their subscriptions in one place.

Apple Business Chat, Apple’s new platform for allowing companies and brands to communicate with customers over iMessage, is expanding. In addition to Dish becoming the first TV provider to support Business Chat, Apple says it has also added four other brands, Aramak, Four Seasons, Harry & David, and American Express, in addition to five new technology platforms businesses can integrate with.

The platforms that now support Apple Business Chat include Cisco, eGain, Kipsu, Lithium and Quiq. They allow the brands to develop their Business Chat systems with a variety of features, integrate them with their own apps and services, track activity through reporting, and more.

The new brand partners represent a variety of use cases for Business Chat, from real-time ordering to shopping to general customer service.

As noted last week, Dish will now allows its pay TV customers to reach a live agent with their questions over iMessage, make account changes, schedule an appointment, and even order pay-per-view.

Meanwhile, the Four Seasons will allow guests to search for any Four Season property and engage with “Four Seasons Chat,” a multi-lingual service that will connect guests with the hotel’s team for any need.

Harry & David will help customers shop over Business Chat, by allowing them to ask questions about products and services and get help from a gift concierge. When customers are ready to buy, they can check out with Apple Pay – as they can with 1-800-Flowers, an existing Business Chat partner.

Aramak is piloting a 10-game “Brew2You” program at Citizens Bank Park, the home of the Philadelphia Phillies. Fans will be able to scan a QR code on their seat back in three sections to order beer or water over iMessage, and have it delivered right to their seat.

And American Express is piloting a program for card members to allow them to get their account information, including their balance, payment due dates, and points balance over Business Chat. They’ll also be able to ask for a card replacement, dispute a charge, or get information about card benefit.

In addition to the five new brand partners, Business Chat also powered the official concierge service for the Cannes Lions festival in June, with LivePerson, notes Apple.

Launched into beta in March with the release of iOS 11.3, Business Chat offers companies an alternative to using social media platforms, like Facebook and Twitter, to reach their customers.

It arrives at a time when messaging is becoming an important means of addressing the needs of consumers, including the millennial audience, analysts claim.

According to Gartner, support requests over consumer messaging apps will exceed those coming in from social media by 2019. And Nielsen says that 56% of consumers prefer messaging to calling, with 67% expecting to message more over the next two years.

Research from Sapio says that 63% of consumers cite satisfaction when reaching out to brands via messaging to resolve their issues. And digital natives (aka millennials) turn to direct messaging to first reach out to brands 40% of the time.

To some extent, businesses may prefer Apple’s Business Chat system, as it allows them to get closer to their customers – their chats live right in the same Messages app, alongside conversations the customer has with friends and family. Plus, they can brand their service as they like – like as Four Seasons is doing, for example – and keep their customers’ data in-house, instead of making it available to a third-party like Facebook.

Plus, Business Chat can benefit from integrations with other macOS and iOS apps and features, including Spotlight Search, Siri, Apple Maps, and Safari, and can be added to brands’ websites and apps.

However, it’s not likely that businesses will drop social media-based customer service and support for Business Chat, so it becomes another platform for them to manage and support.

 

SessionM announced a $23.8 million Series E investment led by Salesforce Ventures. A bushel of existing investors including Causeway Media Partners, CRV, General Atlantic, Highland Capital and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers also contributed to the round. The company has now raised over $97 million.

At its core, SessionM aggregates loyalty data for brands to help them understand their customer better, says company co-founder and CEO Lars Albright. “We are a customer data and engagement platform that helps companies build more loyal and profitable relationships with their consumers,” he explained.

Essentially that means, they are pulling data from a variety of sources and helping brands offer customers more targeted incentives, offers and product recommendations “We give [our users] a holistic view of that customer and what motivates them,” he said.

To achieve this, SessionM takes advantage of machine learning to analyze the data stream and integrates with partner platforms like Salesforce, Adobe and others. This certainly fits in with Adobe’s goal to build a customer service experience system of record and Salesforce’s acquisition of Mulesoft in March to integrate data from across an organization, all in the interest of better understanding the customer.

When it comes to using data like this, especially with the advent of GDPR in the EU in May, Albright recognizes that companies need to be more careful with data, and that it has really enhanced the sensitivity around stewardship for all data-driven businesses like his.

“We’ve been at the forefront of adopting the right product requirements and features that allow our clients and businesses to give their consumers the necessary control to be sure we’re complying with all the GDPR regulations,” he explained.

The company was not discussing valuation or revenue. Their most recent round prior to today’s announcement, was a Series D in 2016 for $35 million also led by Salesforce Ventures.

SessionM, which was founded in 2011, has around 200 employees with headquarters in downtown Boston. Customers include Coca-Cola, L’Oreal and Barney’s.

SessionM announced a $23.8 million Series E investment led by Salesforce Ventures. A bushel of existing investors including Causeway Media Partners, CRV, General Atlantic, Highland Capital and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers also contributed to the round. The company has now raised over $97 million.

At its core, SessionM aggregates loyalty data for brands to help them understand their customer better, says company co-founder and CEO Lars Albright. “We are a customer data and engagement platform that helps companies build more loyal and profitable relationships with their consumers,” he explained.

Essentially that means, they are pulling data from a variety of sources and helping brands offer customers more targeted incentives, offers and product recommendations “We give [our users] a holistic view of that customer and what motivates them,” he said.

To achieve this, SessionM takes advantage of machine learning to analyze the data stream and integrates with partner platforms like Salesforce, Adobe and others. This certainly fits in with Adobe’s goal to build a customer service experience system of record and Salesforce’s acquisition of Mulesoft in March to integrate data from across an organization, all in the interest of better understanding the customer.

When it comes to using data like this, especially with the advent of GDPR in the EU in May, Albright recognizes that companies need to be more careful with data, and that it has really enhanced the sensitivity around stewardship for all data-driven businesses like his.

“We’ve been at the forefront of adopting the right product requirements and features that allow our clients and businesses to give their consumers the necessary control to be sure we’re complying with all the GDPR regulations,” he explained.

The company was not discussing valuation or revenue. Their most recent round prior to today’s announcement, was a Series D in 2016 for $35 million also led by Salesforce Ventures.

SessionM, which was founded in 2011, has around 200 employees with headquarters in downtown Boston. Customers include Coca-Cola, L’Oreal and Barney’s.

Cogito announced a $37 million Series C investment today led by Goldman Sachs Growth Equity. Previous investors Salesforce Ventures and OpenView also chipped in. Mark Midle of Goldman Sachs’ Merchant Banking Division, has joined Cogito’s Board of Directors

The company has raised over $64 million since it emerged from the MIT Human Dynamics Lab back in 2007 trying to use the artificial intelligence technology available at the time to understand sentiment and apply it in a business context.

While it took some time for the technology to catch up with the vision, and find the right use case, company CEO and founder Joshua Feast says today they are helping customer service representatives understand the sentiment and emotional context of the person on the line and give them behavioral cues on how to proceed.

“We sell software to very large software, premium brands with many thousands of people in contact centers. The purpose of our solution is to help provide a really wonderful service experience in moments of truth,” he explained. Anyone who deals with a large company’s customer service has likely felt there is sometimes a disconnect between the person on the phone and their ability to understand your predicament and solve your problem.

He says using his company’s solution, which analyzes the contents of the call in real time, and provides relevant feedback, the goal is to not just complete the service call, but to leave the customer feeling good about the brand and the experience. Certainly a bad experience can have the opposite effect.

He wants to use technology to make the experience a more human interaction and he recognizes that as an organization grows, layers of business process make it harder for the customer service representative to convey that humanity. Feast believes that technology has helped create this problem and it can help solve it too.

While the company is not talking about valuation or specific revenue at this point, Feast reports that revenue has grown 3X over the last year. Among their customers are Humana and Metlife, two large insurance companies, each with thousands of customer service agents.

Cogito is based in downtown Boston with 117 employees at last count, and of course they hope to use the money to add on to that number and help scale this vision further.

“This is about scaling our organization to meet client’s needs. It’s also about deepening what we do. In a lot of ways, we are only scratching the surface [of the underlying technology] in terms of how we can use AI to support emotional connections and help organizations be more human,” Feast said.

Cogito announced a $37 million Series C investment today led by Goldman Sachs Growth Equity. Previous investors Salesforce Ventures and OpenView also chipped in. Mark Midle of Goldman Sachs’ Merchant Banking Division, has joined Cogito’s Board of Directors

The company has raised over $64 million since it emerged from the MIT Human Dynamics Lab back in 2007 trying to use the artificial intelligence technology available at the time to understand sentiment and apply it in a business context.

While it took some time for the technology to catch up with the vision, and find the right use case, company CEO and founder Joshua Feast says today they are helping customer service representatives understand the sentiment and emotional context of the person on the line and give them behavioral cues on how to proceed.

“We sell software to very large software, premium brands with many thousands of people in contact centers. The purpose of our solution is to help provide a really wonderful service experience in moments of truth,” he explained. Anyone who deals with a large company’s customer service has likely felt there is sometimes a disconnect between the person on the phone and their ability to understand your predicament and solve your problem.

He says using his company’s solution, which analyzes the contents of the call in real time, and provides relevant feedback, the goal is to not just complete the service call, but to leave the customer feeling good about the brand and the experience. Certainly a bad experience can have the opposite effect.

He wants to use technology to make the experience a more human interaction and he recognizes that as an organization grows, layers of business process make it harder for the customer service representative to convey that humanity. Feast believes that technology has helped create this problem and it can help solve it too.

While the company is not talking about valuation or specific revenue at this point, Feast reports that revenue has grown 3X over the last year. Among their customers are Humana and Metlife, two large insurance companies, each with thousands of customer service agents.

Cogito is based in downtown Boston with 117 employees at last count, and of course they hope to use the money to add on to that number and help scale this vision further.

“This is about scaling our organization to meet client’s needs. It’s also about deepening what we do. In a lot of ways, we are only scratching the surface [of the underlying technology] in terms of how we can use AI to support emotional connections and help organizations be more human,” Feast said.

As increasing numbers of electric vehicles are expected to hit the streets, thanks to new models from big automakers soon hitting the market, charging networks like Volta Charging are raising new cash to meet the expected demand. 

The company today said it raised $35 million from investors led by the Invenergy Future Fund, the technology investment arm of renewable energy project developer Invenergy and Activate Capital (a relatively new $200 million investment fund raised by clean tech veterans including Raj Atluru, Michael DeRosa, Anup Jacob, and David Lincoln). 

The San Francisco-based company combines outdoor digital advertising with charging stations to give electric vehicle owners free power. It has already rolled out a network of 1,000 charging stations that are open for sponsorship, and hopes to reach 2,000 by the end of 2018, according to a statement from the company.

There’s probably nothing more 2018 than ad-supported electric vehicle charging, but Volta may be sitting at the intersection of a few trends that could give the company a charge. Outdoor advertising is one of the only growth markets in the ad-business that’s not online, and it’s one that investors are beginning to sink dollars into (I wrote about AdQuick, which is another startup looking to take advantage of the newfound interest).

Meanwhile, a study published jointly by the International Energy Agency, the Clean Energy Ministerial and the Electric Vehicles Initiative predicts that the number of electric light-duty vehicles on the road will reach at least 125 million by 2030. More optimistic figures could boost those numbers to 220 million, the study says.

That’s a lot of cars that are going to need a lot of charging stations.

Volta rolled out its initial charging stations in Hawaii, but now has expanded its network to include the top 10 media markets in the U.S. (valuable real estate for any would-be advertiser). So far the company’s sponsored charging stations have given away 22 million miles worth of juice, or the equivalent of 9 million pounds of carbon dioxide emissions.

“Volta distills the surrounding complexity and accelerates the market by executing on consumer preferences that won’t change: free charging in premier convenient locations,” said John Tough, a partner at the Invenergy Future Fund in a statement.

That sentiment was echoed across the company’s investor base, which has grown with the $35 million Series C round to include a slew of new investors including: GE Ventures, Orsted Venture, Nautilus Venture Partners, and Idinvest all join as new investors.  

Initial investors Virgo Investment Group and Autotech Ventures, also returned to put capital into the company. In all Volta has raised $60 million since it was founded in 2010. 

“Volta brings us an opportunity to elegantly advance the intersection of two of our most important sectors – energy and transportation,” said Anup Jacob, Managing Director, Activate Capital.  “By leveraging sponsorship to underwrite free charging and infrastructure, Volta has created a unique model to accelerate the future of mobility.”

As increasing numbers of electric vehicles are expected to hit the streets, thanks to new models from big automakers soon hitting the market, charging networks like Volta Charging are raising new cash to meet the expected demand. 

The company today said it raised $35 million from investors led by the Invenergy Future Fund, the technology investment arm of renewable energy project developer Invenergy and Activate Capital (a relatively new $200 million investment fund raised by clean tech veterans including Raj Atluru, Michael DeRosa, Anup Jacob, and David Lincoln). 

The San Francisco-based company combines outdoor digital advertising with charging stations to give electric vehicle owners free power. It has already rolled out a network of 1,000 charging stations that are open for sponsorship, and hopes to reach 2,000 by the end of 2018, according to a statement from the company.

There’s probably nothing more 2018 than ad-supported electric vehicle charging, but Volta may be sitting at the intersection of a few trends that could give the company a charge. Outdoor advertising is one of the only growth markets in the ad-business that’s not online, and it’s one that investors are beginning to sink dollars into (I wrote about AdQuick, which is another startup looking to take advantage of the newfound interest).

Meanwhile, a study published jointly by the International Energy Agency, the Clean Energy Ministerial and the Electric Vehicles Initiative predicts that the number of electric light-duty vehicles on the road will reach at least 125 million by 2030. More optimistic figures could boost those numbers to 220 million, the study says.

That’s a lot of cars that are going to need a lot of charging stations.

Volta rolled out its initial charging stations in Hawaii, but now has expanded its network to include the top 10 media markets in the U.S. (valuable real estate for any would-be advertiser). So far the company’s sponsored charging stations have given away 22 million miles worth of juice, or the equivalent of 9 million pounds of carbon dioxide emissions.

“Volta distills the surrounding complexity and accelerates the market by executing on consumer preferences that won’t change: free charging in premier convenient locations,” said John Tough, a partner at the Invenergy Future Fund in a statement.

That sentiment was echoed across the company’s investor base, which has grown with the $35 million Series C round to include a slew of new investors including: GE Ventures, Orsted Venture, Nautilus Venture Partners, and Idinvest all join as new investors.  

Initial investors Virgo Investment Group and Autotech Ventures, also returned to put capital into the company. In all Volta has raised $60 million since it was founded in 2010. 

“Volta brings us an opportunity to elegantly advance the intersection of two of our most important sectors – energy and transportation,” said Anup Jacob, Managing Director, Activate Capital.  “By leveraging sponsorship to underwrite free charging and infrastructure, Volta has created a unique model to accelerate the future of mobility.”

A UK government backed drone innovation project that’s exploring how unmanned aerial vehicles could benefit cities — including for use-cases such as medical delivery, traffic incident response, fire response and construction and regeneration — has reported early learnings from the first phase of the project.

Five city regions are being used as drone test-beds as part of Nesta’s Flying High Challenge — namely London, the West Midlands, Southampton, Preston and Bradford.

While five socially beneficial use-cases for drone technology have been analyzed as part of the project so far, including considering technical, social and economic implications of the tech.

The project has been ongoing since December.

Nesta, the innovation-focused charity behind the project and the report, wants the UK to become a global leader in shaping drone systems that place people’s needs first, and writes in the report that: “Cities must shape the future of drones: Drones must not shape the future of cities.”

In the report it outlines some of the challenges facing urban implementations of drone technology and also makes some policy recommendations.

It also says that socially beneficial use-cases have come out as an early winner over of cities to the potential of the tech — over and above “commercial or speculative” applications such as drone delivery or for carrying people in flying taxis.

The five use-cases explored thus far via the project are:

• Medical delivery within London — a drone delivery network for carrying urgent medical products between NHS facilities, which would routinely carry products such as pathology samples, blood products and equipment over relatively short distances between hospitals in a network
• Traffic incident response in the West Midlands — responding to traffic incidents in the West Midlands to support the emergency services prior to their arrival and while they are on-site, allowing them to allocate the right resources and respond more effectively
• Fire response in Bradford — emergency response drones for West Yorkshire Fire and Rescue service. Drones would provide high-quality information to support emergency call handlers and fire ground commanders, arriving on the scene faster than is currently possible and helping staff plan an appropriate response for the seriousness of the incident
• Construction and regeneration in Preston — drone services supporting construction work for urban projects. This would involve routine use of drones prior to and during construction, in order to survey sites and gather real-time information on the progress of works
• Medical delivery across the Solent — linking Southampton across the Solent to the Isle of Wight using a delivery drone. Drones could carry light payloads of up to a few kilos over distances of around 20 miles, with medical deliveries of products being a key benefit

Flagging up technical and regulatory challenges to scaling the use of drones beyond a few interesting experiments, Nest writes: “In complex environments, flight beyond the operator’s visual line of sight, autonomy and precision flight are key, as is the development of an unmanned traffic management (UTM) system to safely manage airspace. In isolation these are close to being solved — but making these work at large scale in a complex urban environment is not.”

“While there is demand for all of the use cases that were investigated, the economics of the different use cases vary: Some bring clear cost savings; others bring broader social benefits. Alongside technological development, regulation needs to evolve to allow these use cases to operate. And infrastructure like communications networks and UTM systems will need to be built,” it adds.

The report also emphasizes the importance of public confidence, writing that: “Cities are excited about the possibilities that drones can bring, particularly in terms of critical public services, but are also wary of tech-led buzz that can gloss over concerns of privacy, safety and nuisance. Cities want to seize the opportunity behind drones but do it in a way that responds to what their citizens demand.”

And the charity makes an urgent call for the public to be brought into discussions about the future of drones.

“So far the general public has played very little role,” it warns. “There is support for the use of drones for public benefit such as for the emergency services. In the first instance, the focus on drone development should be on publicly beneficial use cases.”

Giving the combined (and intertwined) complexity of regulatory, technical and infrastructure challenges standing in the way of developing viable drone service implementations, Nesta is also recommending the creation of testbeds in which drone services can be developed with the “facilities and regulatory approvals to support them”.

“Regulation will also need to change: Routine granting of permission must be possible, blanket prohibitions in some types of airspace must be relaxed, and an automated system of permissions — linked to an unmanned traffic management system — needs to be put in place for all but the most challenging uses. And we will need a learning system to share progress on regulation and governance of the technology, within the UK and beyond, for instance with Eurocontrol,” it adds.

“Finally, the UK will need to invest in infrastructure, whether this is done by the public or private sector, to develop the communications and UTM infrastructure required for widespread drone operation.”

In conclusion Nesta argues there is “clear evidence that drones are an opportunity for the UK” — pointing to the “hundreds” of companies already operating in the sector; and to UK universities with research strengths in the area; as well as suggesting public authorities could save money or provide “new and better services thanks to drones”.

At the same time it warns that UK policy responses to drones are lagging those of “leading countries” — suggesting the country could squander the chance to properly develop some early promise.

“The US, EU, China, Switzerland and Singapore in particular have taken bigger steps towards reforming regulations, creating testbeds and supporting businesses with innovative ideas. The prize, if we get this right, is that we shape this new technology for good — and that Britain gets its share of the economic spoils.”

You can read the full report here.