Year: 2018

In Silicon Valley, venture firms with a track record of success find themselves awash in money thanks to the growing number of institutions that want to invest more of their capital in tech. In March, an SEC filing showed that General Catalyst had closed a $1.375 billion fund, the biggest vehicle in its 18-year history. Battery Ventures also closed on two funds earlier this year that are the 35-year-old firm’s biggest to date. Sequoia Capital, meanwhile, is reportedly out raising $12 billion across a series of funds, a move that’s unprecedented for the firm — or any U.S.-based venture firm, for that matter.

Fifteen-year-old Emergence Capital could easily follow the same path. Emergence funds early stage ventures that are focused on enterprise and SaaS applications, and it does this very well. Its bets include the storage company Box (now public), the social networking company Yammer (sold for $1.2 billion to Microsoft in 2012), and Veeva Systems, the company that’s generally known for its customer relations software for the life sciences and pharmaceutical industries, though envious investors see Veeva as the company that produced a more than 300x return for Emergence when it went public in 2013. (Emergence had invested just $6.5 million in the outfit and owned 31 percent of it going into the IPO. It was also Veeva’s sole venture backer.)

Still, when it came time to raise its fifth fund, Emergence did not raise a billion-dollar fund, as it surely could have. Instead, the San Mateo, Ca., firm, which closed its fourth fund with $335 million in 2015, opted to increase the fund by 30 percent, closing its new vehicle this past Friday with $435 million.

We talked the other day with firm cofounder Jason Green, who is one of four general partners, about the firm’s trajectory. Specifically, we asked why — like almost every other firm in Silicon Valley — it didn’t close its newest fund with exponentially more in capital commitments than its last fund. The answer, said Green: “Our sweet spot is on early market fit, with a core team we can work around.” Because that hasn’t changed, neither has the size of the funds it raises, he said.

There have been some changes. In 2016, Emergence promoted Joe Floyd to partner three years after Floyd had joined the firm from Kaufman Fellows, which is a two-year development program for venture capitalists. As notably, cofounder Brian Jacobs will not be helping to invest this new fund. Asked if Jacobs is leaving to do crypto investing (a popular move at the moment), Green said Jacobs is moving “toward more philanthropic activities” instead.

Emergence, whose first investment was in Salesforce and whose other wins include the sale of ServiceMax to GE for $915 million in 2016 and Intacct’s sale to Sage Group for $850 million last year, only invests in five to seven new companies each year. Before we let Green go, we asked how the firm decides which handful of companies to pursue at any one time.

He said that Emergence is very “thematic oriented” and that it picks a couple of themes for every new fund then tries to find the best companies and founders within those themes. Though it has been SaaS and cloud and horizontal applications and industries from the outset, Green says that going forward, it plans to focus on a couple of related but more specific areas. The first of these he called “coaching networks,” which is another way of describing machine learning applied to the enterprise. Seattle-based Textio, for example, an Emergence portfolio company, uses AI-powered tools to augment business writing. Another portfolio company, Chorus, analyzes voice recordings of sales interactions to give sales teams real-time feedback about what’s working or not. Green says he sees these as “coaching networks” because they’re making people better at their jobs, rather than aiming to replace them.

Emergence is also focusing on the deskless workforce, meaning the 80 percent of the global workforce that doesn’t sit in front of a desk. It’s not a new trend, concedes Green, but he calls it “early innings,” with related technologies just “starting to infuse the operations of teams around the globe.” (An early investment in the fast-growing video conferencing company Zoom could probably be tucked into this category.)

Green dodged a question about what size checks the firm likes to write. He did say that like most traditional VCs, the firm looks to own 20 percent or more of the companies it backs, and it typically supports companies at the “Series A, all the way through” to an eventual exit.

Asked if Emergence allowed any new investors into its newest fund, Green said the firm “hand selected a handful of new LPs who we felt strongly were going to use the returns for good — foundations and endowments that we feel are doing really great work.”

It has “become more rare,” not raising a giant fund in today’s climate, Green said on our call. “It does take a lot of restraint. It’s very easy right now to raise lots of capital and spread your wings, and I’m proud that we’ve been able to maintain our focus and discipline.”

It “gets back to what you enjoy,” he continued. “We’re not just trying to place bets. We really do love getting our hands dirty.”

You’d be forgiven for thinking that Chinese bike-sharing startup Mobike, which was recently acquired in a $3 billion deal, was already present in India. The company went on an aggressive global expansion spree in 2017, India wasn’t on the radar then but that’ll soon be rectified with a launch expected in early June.

Mobike has bold plans for India, where it freely admits that there isn’t currently a strong culture of biking. The goal is to work with municipal governments and town planners to do what Mobike (and rival Ofo did in China) which is to help cut down city congestion and provide new last-mile transit options.

“We’ve had great responses from many cities around how they see bike sharing in general and Mobike specifically,” Sujith Nair, Mobike India’s Chief Business Officer, told TechCrunch in an interview.

Ofo landed in India earlier this year and local Uber rival Ola started a service on a small scale last year so Mobike isn’t the first mover here. Nair said the company plans to launch its service in early June — or potentially before the end of May — but for now he isn’t saying which cities will be first.

“We’re talking to all the big cities, such as Bangalore and Delhi,” he added. “Our intent is to grow rapidly and we’re looking at partnerships to help accelerate that.”

While there have been infamous photos of piles of bikes in China, and stories of bikes dumped in trees or canals in other parts of the world, Nair said that the government agencies he’s spoken to haven’t expressed concern at a deluge of cycles. Instead, he said, conversations has focused around the practical potential of easing congestion and enabling short trips.

“It’s a great way to jump-start a sustainable transport ecosystem,” he said. “With the local government throwing in advocacy and communication to drive awareness. They’re investing in cycling tracks and infrastructure… we can always deal with excess later, it’s not a huge concern.”

Nair suggested that Mobike will look to grow to 10-12 cities in India over the next 18 months but the company “aspires” to grow even more rapidly than that since there are over 25 cities with a population of over one million people.

Initially, the focus is on the core dockless bike service, which — in most countries — lets a customer get a ride for around $1 after they scan a vacant bike’s QR code via the Mobike app. Mobike has spoken very publicly about its desire to get into other verticals, based around its bike fleet and adjacent transportation verticals too, and Nair said he expects to have “opportunities to look at other options” for the India-based business once that core service is up and running at some scale.

To help grease the wheels, Mobike is aiming to strike partnerships with major payment players. Typically, Mobike users worldwide bind a credit or debit card to their app to enable payment, but Nair suggested Mobike will have deals to integrate India’s mobile wallet services and the government-backed UPI payment initiative to help make its bikes open to as many of the population as possible.

Ofo, Mobike’s key ally, tied up with Paytm to go beyond payments and help drive users to its service, but it doesn’t seem like Mobike has a similar strategy in mind.

The Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s meeting with elected representatives of the European Union’s ~500 million citizens will be livestreamed after all, it was confirmed today.

MEPs had been angered by the original closed door format of the meeting, which was announced by the EU parliament’s president last week. But on Friday a majority of the political groups in the parliament had pushed for it to be broadcast online.

This morning president Antonio Tajani confirmed that Facebook had agreed to the 1hr 15 minute hearing being livestreamed.

A Facebook spokesperson also sent us this short statement today: “We’re looking forward to the meeting and happy for it to be live streamed.”

When is the meeting?

The meeting will take place on Tuesday May 22 at 18.15 to 19.30CET. If you want to tune in from the US the meeting is scheduled to start at 9.15PT /12.15ET.

Tajani’s announcement last week said it would start earlier, at 17.45CET, so the meeting appears to have been bumped on by half an hour. We’ve asked Facebook whether Zuckerberg will meet in private with the parliament’s Conference of Presidents prior to the livestream being switched on and will update this story with any response.

Where to watch it online?

According to Tajani’s spokesperson, the meeting will be broadcast on the EU parliament’s website. At the time of writing it’s not yet listed in the EPTV schedule — but we’re expecting it to be viewable here.

Who will be meeting with Zuckerberg?

The Facebook founder will meet with EU parliament president Tajani, along with leaders of the parliament’s eight political groups, and with Claude Moraes, the chair of the EU parliament’s Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE) committee.

It’s worth noting that the meeting is not a formal hearing, such as the sessions with Zuckerberg in the US Senate and Congress last month. Nor is it a full Libe committee hearing — discussions remain ongoing for Facebook representatives to meet with the full Libe committee at a later date.

What will Zuckerberg be asked about?

In the wake of the Cambridge Analytica data misuse scandal, MEPs are keen to discuss concerns related to social media’s impact on election processes with Zuckerberg.

Indeed, the impact of social media spread online disinformation is also the topic of an ongoing enquiry by the UK parliament’s DCMS committee which spent some five hours grilling Facebook’s CTO last month. Although Zuckerberg has thrice declined the committee’s summons — preferring to meet with EU parliamentarians instead.

Other topics on the agenda will include privacy and data protection — with Moraes likely to ask about how Facebook’s business model impacts EU citizens’ fundamental rights, and how EU regulations might need to evolve to keep pace, as he explained to us on Friday.

Some of the political group leaders are also likely to bring up concerns around freedom of expression as pressure in the region has ramped up on online platforms to get faster at policing hate speech.

Startups, TechCrunch Tel Aviv 2018 is coming for you in just 2 weeks! As you may know, we’re hosting our  first inaugural day long conference at the Tel Aviv Convention Center on 7 June. The event will feature TechCrunch’s signature stellar programming on Mobility, and we will also have new expo area called Startup Alley, where hundreds of rockstar startups from ALL verticals demo their products to attendees. Check out the current list of startups that will be at the event! 

Want to be part of this awesome lineup of startups? For 1700 ILS, you’ll get one full day to exhibit, two tickets to TechCrunch Tel Aviv 2018, a demo table, wifi, power, linens, and a branded table-top sign. You can secure your exhibit spot here.

Remember, TechCrunch events are the ideal place to show off your company to prospective customers, gain media attention, meet investors, and take your startup to the next level. If you’re a pre-Series A, early-age startup, we want to see you on our showcase floor.

Buy yours before we run out — space is limited, and feel free to email startupalley@techcrunch.com if you have any questions. Hope to see you in a few weeks!

Whisk, the U.K. startup that has built a B2B data platform to power various food apps, including making online recipes ‘shoppable’, has acquired Avocando, a competitor based in Germany.

The exact financial terms of the deal remain undisclosed, although TechCrunch understands it was all-cash and that Whisk is acquiring the tech, customer base, integrations, and team. Related to this, Avocando’s founders are joining Whisk.

“The team is joining Whisk to help scale a joint global vision to help leading businesses create integrated and meaningful digital food experiences using cutting-edge technology,” says Whisk in a statement.

To that end, Whisk’s “smart food platform” enables app developers, publishers and online supermarkets/grocery stories to do a number of interesting things.

The first relates to making recipes shoppable i.e. making it incredibly easy to order the ingredients needed to cook a recipe listed online or in an app. Specifically, Whisk’s platform parses ingredients in a recipe, and matches it to products at local grocery stores based on user preferences (e.g. “50g of butter, cubed” matched to “250g Tesco Salted Butter”). It then interfaces with the store to fill the users basket with the needed items.

The second is recipe personalisation. Based on user preferences (e.g. disliked ingredients, diet, previous behaviour, deals at a favourite store, and trending recipes based on location), Whisk is able to create personalised recipe feeds, search results, and meal plans.

The third aspect is an Internet-of-Things play. This is seeing Whisk’s data power experiences that connect IoT devices with different parts of a user’s journey. Think: smart fridges connected to recipes.

“As the e-commerce grocery market quickly accelerates across Europe, players are increasingly looking for ways to connect recipe content to grocery retailers and provide consumers with personalized nutrition, planning and purchase options right from the comfort of their kitchen,” says the startup.

Whisk says its platform powers experiences for over 100,000,000 monthly users through the applications of its clients. They include retailers like Walmart, Amazon, Instacart, and Tesco who use Whisk to enable online grocery shopping via recipes. On the IoT front, Samsung is using Whisk to build smart food applications that take user preferences, what’s in their fridge, what offers are in the supermarket, and recommends recipes. Other customers include publishers, such as the BBC, and food brands like McCormick, Nestle, Unilever, and General Mills.

Meanwhile, Whisk says it is currently focused on the U.S., U.K. and Australia, and with today’s acquisition will expand services across Europe. “Together, Germany, France and Spain represent a larger e-commerce grocery market than both the U.S. and U.K. individually, with the largest online recipe usage per capita figures in the world,” adds the company.

While the cryptocurrency world continues to swirl around in a daze of troughs and highs, startups are continuing to make use of the fundamental underlying strengths of blockchain technology.

A new entrant in this race is Tradeshift, a leading players in supply-chain payments and marketplaces, which is today launching its new service which enables supports blockchain-based finance, or writing all transactions to a public ledger in order to create transparency and securing a record.

While this doesn’t involve the use of currencies like actual Bitcoin or Ethereum, “having the transactions on a public ledger ensures full transparency and the ability for companies to prove that they have legit transactions,” says CEO and cofounder Christian Lanng.

SO what this all means is that Tradeshift’s cloud platform will bring supply chain payments, supply chain finance, and blockchain-based early payments together into one unified end-to-end solution, called “Tradeshift Pay”.

They are aiming at a $9 trillion problem, which is the capital trapped in “accounts receivable” as a result of old-fashioned payment practices and the disconnection between large business buyers and their suppliers.

In other words, this could be a boon for small suppliers who find it hard to get paid when their invoices aren’t mapped to a ledger as strong as a blockchain.

With this single unified wallet, buyers can use several payment options, including virtual card payments of invoices and purchase orders, dynamic discounting, supply chain finance through bank partners, or blockchain-based payments.

Hey, this message goes out to all you early-stage startup founders with the drive and determination to take your company all the way to the land of the unicorns. Now’s the time to apply to TechCrunch’s Startup Battlefield competition — the world’s best start-up pitch competition going down at Disrupt San Francisco 2018 on September 5-7. If you require incentive, consider this: we bumped the top prize this year to a very cool $100,000. That sure would help your bottom line, now wouldn’t it?

If you’re not tuned in to how Startup Battlefield works, we’ll break it down for you. Seasoned TechCrunch editors review all applications in a highly-competitive vetting process. How competitive? The acceptance rate ranges from 3 to 6 percent. Factors that influence the decision include the team, the product and the market potential. Anywhere from 15-30 pre-Series A startups will make the final cut. This is a good time to point out that competing in Startup Battlefield doesn’t cost a thing, and that TechCrunch does not charge startups any fees or take any equity.

All competing teams receive free expert pitch training from the Startup Battlefield team who, trust us, have seen it all when it comes to startup pitch competitions. You’ll be primed and ready for round one where you’ll deliver a six-minute pitch and demo to a panel of expert judges — and then answer any questions they may have. The cream of the crop — roughly five teams — will advance to round two for a repeat pitch performance in front of a fresh set of judges.

Every exciting, heart-pounding minute takes place in front of a live audience numbering in the thousands, and we live-stream it to the world on TechCrunch.com, YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. And it’ll be available later on-demand.

But the benefits of competing go far beyond winning the $100,000 cash prize. More than 400 media outlets will attend Disrupt SF’18, and an intense media spotlight will shine brightly on all Startup Battlefield contestants. Just making it into the initial Startup Battlefield cohort can draw significant investor interest. Aircall, a cloud-based call center solution, stands as a prime example.

The French startup competed in round one of Startup Battlefield SF 2015. It didn’t make the finals, but the company just received another round of funding to the tune of $29 million. Since its debut at Startup Battlefield three years ago, the company has gone on to raise a total of $40.5 million. Not too shabby for an “also-ran.”

All startups who compete will join the ranks of the Startup Battlefield alumni community. This impressive group of over 800 companies has collectively raised more than $8 billion in funding and produced more than 100 exits. Companies like Mint, Dropbox, Yammer, Fitbit, Getaround and Cloudflare — just to drop a few names. Networking as part of this community has its advantages.

So many reasons to apply, and we haven’t even talked about all the other fabulous happenings at Disrupt SF. More than 10,000 attendees will stream through Startup Alley, home to more than 1,200 of the best early-stage startups around. Twelve different tech tracks, four stages of unique programming, speakers, Q & A Sessions, after parties and world-class networking — made even easier with CrunchMatch, our curated investor-to-startup matching platform.

Disrupt San Francisco 2018 takes place on September 5-7 at Moscone Center West. Apply to Startup Battlefield. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain.

TechCrunch is headed to Germany yet again to host Disrupt Berlin 2018 on November 29-30. We simply love this city’s startup scene, one of the most innovative and fastest-growing in Europe. If you’re a founder, investor, hacker or tech leader, you can’t afford to miss Disrupt Berlin. You also can’t afford to miss our limited-time offer on Innovator passes: two for €695. Sign up for our newsletter, and we’ll notify you when we release them into the wild.

What can you expect at Disrupt Berlin? We pack a lot of amazing programming into our two-day conference. For starters, there’s Startup Alley, the exhibition floor where, last year, more than 400 early-stage startups displayed an incredible array of tech products, services and talent. With more than 2,600 attendees passing through the Alley, you won’t find a better way to get your company in front of investors, potential partners, customers and the media. Who knows, attendees might even choose your startup as a WildCard company, which means you get to compete in the Startup Battlefield.

You know Startup Battlefield, right? That’s where you go head-to-head against 15-30 pre-Series A startups and compete for the coveted Disrupt Cup, bragging rights, massive media exposure, investor attention and, oh yeah, a $50,000 equity-free grand prize. Keep checking our site or — even better — sign up for our newsletter so you’ll know the minute we open applications to compete in Startup Battlefield at Disrupt Berlin.

We’re in the process of building out our roster of speakers and, as always, it promises to be an exciting array of European and international tech luminaries, VC experts, movers, makers and shakers determined to push the boundaries of technology. Want to recommend someone as a speaker or a judge? Check out our speaker nomination page.

What do you get with a Disrupt Berlin Innovator pass? We’re so glad you asked. You’ll have access to three distinct stages of content: The Main Stage, the Next Stage and the Q&A Stage. You’ll have full use of the Disrupt attendee list and be able to contact attendees via the Disrupt Mobile App. Plus, you can attend interactive workshops, explore Startup Alley and cut loose (or get down to fun networking) at our TC After Party. And, after the event, you’ll have access to our library of event video content.

Disrupt Berlin takes place on November 29-30, 2018 at the Arena Berlin. We’re releasing a very limited number of two-for-one Innovator passes for €695, but that special price won’t stick around for long. If you want to get the best deal, sign up for the newsletter and we’ll let you know when these passes become available. Come join us in Berlin!

Our sponsors help make Disrupt happen. If you are interested in learning more about sponsorship opportunities, please contact our sponsorship team here.

Microsoft announced today that it has acquired Semantic Machines, a Berkeley-based startup that wants to solve one of the biggest challenges in conversational AI: making chatbots sound more human and less like, well, bots.

In a blog post, Microsoft AI & Research chief technology officer David Ku wrote that “with the acquisition of Semantic Machines, we will establish a conversational AI center of excellence in Berkeley to push forward the boundaries of what is possible in language interfaces.”

According to Crunchbase, Semantic Machines was founded in 2014 and raised about $20.9 million in funding from investors including General Catalyst and Bain Capital Ventures.

In a 2016 profile, co-founder and chief scientist Dan Klein told TechCrunch that “today’s dialog technology is mostly orthogonal. You want a conversational system to be contextual so when you interpret a sentence things don’t stand in isolation.” By focusing on memory, Semantic Machines’ AI can produce conversations that not only answer or predict questions more accurately, but also flow naturally.

Instead of building its own consumer products, Semantic Machines focused on enterprise customers. This means it will fit in well with Microsoft’s conversational AI-based products, including Microsoft Cognitive Services and Azure Bot Service, which are used by one million and 300,000 developers, respectively, and virtual assistants Cortana and Xiaolce.

Microsoft announced today that it has acquired Semantic Machines, a Berkeley-based startup that wants to solve one of the biggest challenges in conversational AI: making chatbots sound more human and less like, well, bots.

In a blog post, Microsoft AI & Research chief technology officer David Ku wrote that “with the acquisition of Semantic Machines, we will establish a conversational AI center of excellence in Berkeley to push forward the boundaries of what is possible in language interfaces.”

According to Crunchbase, Semantic Machines was founded in 2014 and raised about $20.9 million in funding from investors including General Catalyst and Bain Capital Ventures.

In a 2016 profile, co-founder and chief scientist Dan Klein told TechCrunch that “today’s dialog technology is mostly orthogonal. You want a conversational system to be contextual so when you interpret a sentence things don’t stand in isolation.” By focusing on memory, Semantic Machines’ AI can produce conversations that not only answer or predict questions more accurately, but also flow naturally.

Instead of building its own consumer products, Semantic Machines focused on enterprise customers. This means it will fit in well with Microsoft’s conversational AI-based products, including Microsoft Cognitive Services and Azure Bot Service, which are used by one million and 300,000 developers, respectively, and virtual assistants Cortana and Xiaolce.