Year: 2018

Dropbox isn’t necessarily the sexiest tech tool in the world, but it is a critically important tool for more than 500 million people.

The company launched back in 2007 and founder and CEO Drew Houston has spent the last decade growing Dropbox to the behemoth it is today.

During that time, Houston has had to make some tough decisions.

A few years ago, Houston decided to move the Dropbox infrastructure off of AWS. In 2014, Houston chose to raise $500 million in debt financing to keep up pace with Box, which was considering an IPO at the time. And in March 2017, Dropbox took another $600 million in debt financing from JP Morgan.

Houston also reportedly turned down a nine-figure acquisition offer from Apple.

All the while, Houston led Dropbox to be cash-flow positive and grew the company to see a $1 billion revenue run rate as of last year.

And, of course, we can’t forget the decision to go public early this year.

Dropbox is now one of the biggest tech companies in the world, with 1,800 employees across 12 global offices.

Interestingly, Houston first told his story to a TechCrunch audience at TC50 in 2008 as part of the Startup Battlefield.

At Disrupt SF in September, we’re excited to sit down with Houston to discuss his journey thus far, the process of going public, and the future of Dropbox.

The show runs from September 5 to Septmeber 7, and for the next week, our super early bird tickets are still available.

The European Union’s executive body, the EC, has taken a first pass at drawing up a strategy to respond to the myriad socio-economic challenges around artificial intelligence technology — including setting out steps intended to boost investment, support education and training, and draw up an ethical and legal framework for steering AI developments by the end of the year.

It says it’s hoping to be able to announce a “coordinated plan on AI” by the end of 2018, working with the bloc’s 28 Member States to get there.

“The main aim is to maximise the impact of investment at the EU and national levels, encourage cooperation across the EU, exchange best practices, and define the way forward together, so as to ensure the EU’s global competitiveness in this sector,” writes the Commission, noting it will also continue to invest in initiatives it views as “key” for AI (specifically name-checking the development of components, systems and chipsets designed to run AI operations; high-performance computers; projects related to quantum technologies; and ongoing work to map the human brain).

Commenting on the strategy in a statement, the EC VP for the Digital Single Market Andrus Ansip said: “Without data, we will not make the most of artificial intelligence, high-performance computing and other technological advances. These technologies can help us to improve healthcare and education, transport networks and make energy savings: this is what the smart use of data is all about.

“Our proposal will free up more public sector data for re-use, including for commercial purposes, driving down the cost of access to data and helping us to create a common data space in the EU that will stimulate our growth.”

Below is a breakdown of what the Commission is proposing in the various areas it’s focusing on.

Regional industry bodies’ response statements to the plan include the usual mix of welcoming platitudes combined with calls for “a cautious approach to regulation” to “allow AI to have the space to grow”, as tech advocacy association, the CCIA, puts it.

While consumer advocacy group, BEUC, criticizes the Commission for postponing what it dubs “hard decisions to later” — calling for it to make a clear commitment to update the bloc’s product safety and liability rules to ensure they are fit for the risks of the AI age.

Target of €20BN+ into AI research by end of 2020

On the investment front the Commission says its target is to increase investments in “AI research and innovation” in the bloc by at least €20BN between now and the end of 2020 — across both public and private sectors.

To support that it says it will increase its investment to €1.5BN for the period 2018-2020 under the Horizon 2020 research and innovation program — and is expecting this to trigger an additional €2.5BN of funding from existing public-private partnerships, such as on big data and robotics.

“[This] will support the development of AI in key sectors, from transport to health; it will connect and strengthen AI research centres across Europe, and encourage testing and experimentation,” it writes.

The EC also says it will support the development of an “AI-on-demand platform” to “provide access to relevant AI resources in the EU for all users”.

And it says it intends to use the European Fund for Strategic Investments to provide companies and start-ups with “additional support” to invest in AI — aiming to, as it puts it, “mobilise more than €500M in total investments by 2020 across a range of key sectors”.

Push to open up public sector data-sets

The Commission is also eyeing a range of ways to open up access to data — as a strategy to stimulate AI developments.

On this it’s proposing legislation to open up more data for re-use, including public sector data — proposing a review of the rules that govern this (aka the PSI Directive) — along with a package of other measures geared towards making data sharing easier; including a new set of recommendations for sharing scientific data; and guidance for the private sector on data sharing collaborations with the private sector; and for business-to-business data sharing (it says it will come out guidance to help companies on this front, and also says it will call for proposals to set up a support center this year, funded via the Connecting Europe Facility).

In a Communication entitled ‘Towards a common European data space’, the Commission writes that its intention is to build on the foundation provided by the incoming GDPR data protection framework — and move towards what it couches as “a seamless digital area with the scale that will enable the development of new products and services based on data”. So full marks for buzzwords. 

The changes it’s proposing to the PSI Directive are intended to reduce market entry barriers (especially for SMEs) by lowering charges for the re-use of public sector info; increase the availability of data by bringing new types of public and publicly funded data into the scope of the Directive (specifically the utilities and transport sectors, and research data).

It also says it wants to “minimize the risk of excessive first-mover advantage” — arguing this benefits large companies — by “requiring a more transparent process for the establishment of public-private arrangements”.

Encouraging the publication of “dynamic data” and APIs is another intention — and another strategy to ramp up business opportunities around data.

It has a factsheet on these plans here, where it also writes: “Data is of utmost importance to the European economy” — citing a study which predicts the total direct economic value of public sector information to  increase from €52BN in 2018 (across all Member States) to €194BN in 2030.

Support for eHealth research and cross-border services

Yet another Communication published by the Commission today deals with health data specifically.

On this type of data the EC says it has three priorities:

1. Citizens’ secure access to their health data, also across borders –– enabling citizens to access their health data across the EU;
2. Personalised medicine through shared European data infrastructure — allowing researchers and other professionals to pool resources (data, expertise, computing processing and storage capacities) across the EU;
3. Citizen empowerment with digital tools for user feedback and person-centred care — using digital tools to empower people to look after their health, stimulate prevention and enable feedback and interaction between users and healthcare providers.

In its eHealth communication the Commission enthuses about the potential for digital solutions to transform healthcare before lamenting: “Market fragmentation and lack of interoperability across health systems stand in the way of an integrated approach to disease prevention, care and cure better geared to people’s needs” — i.e. as a result of Member States retaining control over their own national healthcare systems. 

Hence it’s focusing efforts here on encouraging Member States to “improve the complementarity of their health services cross-border”; putting money into “research and innovation in digital health and care solutions” (via the Horizon 2020 program); and “assist[ing] Member States in pursuing the reforms of their health and care systems”. 

Ethical guidelines for AI development coming this year

On the legal and ethical framework front, the Commission says it intends to publish ethical guidelines on AI development by the end of the year — which it says will be based on the EU’s Charter of Fundamental Rights, “taking into account principles such as data protection and transparency, and building on the work of the European Group on Ethics in Science and New Technologies“.

In the UK the upper house of parliament recently published its own report into the economic, ethical and social implications of artificial intelligence — which urged action to avoid biases being baked into algorithms and recommended a cross-sector AI Code to try to steer AI developments in a positive, societally beneficial direction.

To draw up EU-wide guidelines, the EC says it will “bring together all relevant stakeholders in a European AI Alliance“.

“As with any transformative technology, artificial intelligence may raise new ethical and legal questions, related to liability or potentially biased decision-making. New technologies should not mean new values,” it also writes.

But it’s waiting until mid-2019 before issuing AI-related guidance on the interpretation of the EU’s Product Liability Directive — leaving consumers without legal clarity in the case of defective products for at least another year.

Training schemes and business-education partnerships

In terms of socio-economic prep for AI-fueled transformations coming to the job market the Commission says it’s encouraging Member States to “modernise their education and training systems and support labour market transitions, building on the European Pillar of Social Rights“.

More specifically it says it will support business-education partnerships to attract and keep more AI talent in Europe; set up dedicated training schemes with financial support from the European Social Fund; and support digital skills, competencies in STEM, entrepreneurship and creativity.

“Proposals under the EU’s next multiannual financial framework (2021-2027) will include strengthened support for training in advanced digital skills, including AI-specific expertise,” the Commission also adds.

So nothing very revolutionary on this front as yet, with the opportunity to expand available finance support for skills being put on ice until the bloc’s next major financing framework.

In another factsheet on its proposals the Commission flags some existing skills initiatives, such as the Digital Opportunity traineeship — saying this will provide cross-border traineeships for “up to 6,000 students and recent graduates as of summer 2018”. Although this is more broadly aimed at digital skills gaps.

The AI strategy comes in the same week as a group of EU-based scientists have warned in an open letter that the region is falling behind North American and China on AI research — proposed establishing a European AI research institute, linked to industry, to attract and retain AI talent, also arguing that “the distinction between academic research and industrial labs is vanishing”.

Albeit several of the academics who signed the letter also hold positions with tech giants — including Uber’s chief scientist, Zoubin Ghahramani; Google’s head of machine learning research, Olivier Bousquet; and Amazon’s director of machine learning, Ralf Herbrich.

Snapchat wants to let you play its augmented reality Lenses, not just play dress-up. Today it launched Snappables — AR games that use your touch, motion, and facial expressions to compete for high scores in literal head-to-head multiplayer matchups. Snappables live alongside Snapchat’s other lenses and are rolling out globally this week. New games will be released each week while favorites will stick around.

These are Snapchat’s first collaborative or shared Lenses that let you interact with another friend on their own phone, which could open up new opportunities for the app in the future. Some of the first Snappables previewed by Snapchat include an Asteroids-style space shooter, a bubble gum popping contest, a weight lifting one you play by straining your forehead, a kiss-blowing game, a dance party.

The Killer Features blog first spotted Snappables in Snapchat’s code, though originally thought it was a collaborative Snap creation option. Snapchat acquired game engine PlayCanvas last month but it’s unclear if that contributed to the Snappables experience. The games look similar to Tribe’s multiplayer selfie video chat games we wrote about this month and predicted Snapchat would copy.

These aren’t Snapchat’s first selfie games, though. Back in 2016, it tried a Kraft Mac & Cheese noodle catching game, and a holiday elf skiing game that used your face. It’s also worked with partners like Gatorade to build ads the open up to interactive experiences that live inside Snapchat, like a Serena Williams tennis game.

To play Snappables, you select one of the game Lenses from the Snapchat camera and then follow the on-screen instructions. Some you play solo and try to get the highest score, while others let you invite friends. You can send a Snap of you playing to a friend, which they can use to jump in and play too.

Snapchat could use Snappables to strengthen growth after years of battling Instagram for users, and a big redesign that’s received harsh reviews. Of course, Instagram probably won’t be far behind in offering games inside Stories.

Here’s more video and photos showing off Snappables:

Along with today’s big reveal of the redesigned version of Gmail, Google also more quietly introduced a new app that ties into its suite of productivity applications: Google Tasks. The app, as the name implies, offers you a dedicated place to create, view and edit your task list and to-do’s, including those created from within the new Gmail or from Google Calendar.

While Gmail had before supported task creation, it was more buried in its user interface. With the revamp, however, Tasks gets a bigger billing – it, along with Google Keep notes and Google Calendar – can be popped up right in Gmail’s sidebar with just a click.

With the influx of new users coming from Gmail, it makes sense to create a dedicated Google Tasks app, as well. After all, to-do’s aren’t something you only access or think about while in your inbox.

The app itself is a fairly standard take on to-do lists. You can create and manage your task list in the app, and break down tasks into subtasks. The drag-and-drop interface lets you prioritize your tasks, and you can set a “due date” for reminders on those you don’t want to forget. The app keeps things simple by not allowing you to set a time to be reminded – just a the date. That’s not going to work for everyone, though – some people will want to configure things more precisely.
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On its own, none of what Google Tasks offers is that remarkable. Instead, what makes the app worthwhile is its integration with the other Google services you use, like Gmail and Calendar. Being able to access the tasks you created elsewhere is useful, as is syncing your changes back to the inbox. Plus, you’re able to trace a task back to its source email in Gmail, and view them on your Google Calendar.

The app is also now considered a part of Google’s G Suite, which means Google doesn’t consider this some sort of mobile “experiment” that it will later ditch, leaving you to find a different to-do list app yet again.

The app is available as a free download on iOS and Android.

Kubernetes has gained in popularity quickly over the last 18 months, but like many highly technical solutions it requires a level of expertise many companies are lacking. A Bangalore/San Francisco startup called Hasura hopes to simplify all of that with a managed Kubernetes solution built with developers in mind.

Today, the company announced a $1.6 million seed round led by Nexus Venture Partners with participation from GREE Ventures.

Kubernetes is a tool that helps companies running containers juggle or orchestrate them. This level of organization is required because the number of containers can grow quickly. If you think of a conductor telling the musicians when to come in and when to leave, Kubernetes plays a similar role for the container system. (For a more complete explanation of containers, see this article.)

The company has focused on getting developers up to speed with the latest technologies quickly. “Our focus from the beginning has been making the application development super fast. How we do that is placing our APIs on top of a PostGres database to deploy any kind of code,” Tanmai Gopal, Hasura CEO and co-founder explained.

Gopal says the idea is to be more than a managed Kubernetes provider by giving developers the tooling they need to get going without having to build the underlying code for every application. “We are going to be the last mile. We’re not just managing the Kubernetes cluster for you. You should have Kubernetes to have control [over your containerized applications], but you also need developer tooling to build on top of it faster,” he said. “We want to automate the unnecessary code writing kind of grunt work. We started off by saying, ‘let’s automate this piece so you don’t have to write this code again’,” he added.

Once they wrote that piece, they realized that this is relevant because this approach enables cloud native in way that wasn’t possible before. “We suddenly realized we were in the right place at the right time, and part of it was luck,” Gopal admitted. It was also skill in providing a set of tools developers could use to build on top of Kubernetes.

Sameer Brij Verma, managing director at lead investor Nexus Venture Partners sees Kubernetes quickly becoming a foundational technology for developers and Hasura is providing a way to get up and running with little expertise. “Using Hasura’s platform, developers can now create cloud-native, portable and “elastic” applications within a few minutes without knowing anything about Kubernetes in the beginning,” Verma said in a statement.

The company launched last year and is split between Bangalore, India and San Francisco.

Rockerbox has acquired Eventable, bringing two digital marketing startups together.

Rockerbox’s technology includes attribution measurement to determine which ads are driving sales, as well as what it calls a Recency Marketing Platform, which targets advertising based on users’ most recent browsing behavior.

Eventable, meanwhile, is focused on bringing marketing to your calendar — its technology can be embedded in display ads, introducing an “add to calendar” button that allows marketers to send updates and personalized notifications to consumers who opt in.

Rockerbox founder and CEO Ron Jacobson said he connected with Eventable because both companies participated in the Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator (albeit in different years). When they started testing out ways to bring their services together, and Jacobson said it became clear this was a “one plus one equals three situation.”

“Using the calendar as a marketing channel made perfect sense,” Jacobson said. “And on the attribution side, the calendar is another touch point.”

He added that Eventable co-founders Sameen Karim and Akash Malhotra are joining Rockerbox, along with their entire team.

The plan is for Eventable to continue operating as a separate brand and product. At the same time, the team will look for ways to integrate their products and to sell Eventable customers on Rockerbox’s broader marketing suite.

“It allows us to give our customers a more complete marketing solution,” Karim said.

The financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. Eventable had raised $1.2 million in funding from investors including Alchemist Accelerator, Right Side Capital, Steelhead Ventures, Russ Holdstein and Howard Love.

Riding high on the growing consumer demand for podcasts, a startup called Castbox this morning announced the close of $13.5 million in Series B funding for its technology-fueled podcast app. The round was led by SIG China, and includes participation from existing investors IDG Capital, Qiming Venture Partners, and GSR Ventures.

To date, Castbox has raised $29.5 million.

While there are a number of podcast applications on the market today, what makes Castbox interesting is the proprietary technology it has under the hood. The platform uses natural language processing and machine learning techniques to power some of its unique features, like personalized recommendations and in-audio search.

The app is capable of making suggestions of what to listen to next, based on user’s prior listening behavior, which can help to improve discovery of podcasts people may like. Meanwhile, the in-audio search feature takes advantage of the recent leaps the industry has seen with voice recognition technology, and actually transcribes the audio content inside podcasts, indexes it, and makes it available for search within the Castbox app.

That means users no longer have to rely on things like episode titles, descriptions and show notes to find a podcast related to a topic they want to listen to – they can just search the Castbox app for any podcasts where the term was mentioned.

These differentiating features, so far, appear to be attracting users. Castbox’s app has been installed 15 million times, and today sees 1.8 million daily users, with a retention rate of 50 percent. While the company doesn’t have a way to directly correlate its features’ usage to these figures, its user ratings and reviews including a number of comments referencing them, along with compliments about the app’s overall clean user interface and experience, notes Castbox founder Renee Wang.

Wang, who previously worked at Google in Japan and Dublin, had originally created Castbox because of her own troubles in finding a player that supported different languages or gave personalized recommendations. Castbox was then further developed in response to user feedback and with a focus on improved podcast discovery.

Today, Castbox has a global user base, with only 45 percent from the U.S. But those users are most engaged. Americans spend the most time in the app, listening to an average of 113 minutes per day, says Wang. Chinese users, meanwhile, subscribe the most, with an average of 12 subscriptions per user.

With the additional funding, Castbox is adding another big differentiator to its app: original programming.

The company kicked off its efforts with “Castbox Originals,” as it original shows are called, with its first series, “Off Track with Hinch and Rossi.” The show stars Indy car drivers James Hinchcliffe and Alexander Rossi, and was made in partnership with INDYCAR. That was followed by “Heard Well Now,” an influencer-driven music podcast series in partnership with influencer music label Heard Well.

Both were designed to be niche series that would drive new audiences – specifically race car fans and teens – to podcasts.

The titles aren’t exclusive to Castbox, though – they’re also distributed through major platforms like Apple and Spotify. The shows, however, will include advertising which is how Castbox now aims to make money.

The upcoming slate of shows will also include a scripted series called “Be.Scared,” where listeners can hear tales of horror from contemporary writers, as well as a full-length true crime mockumentary for fans of “Serial,” a wrestling podcast, and a series of women-hosted podcasts.

“We’re investing a chunk of the new capital into original programming and strategic partnerships with creators,” says Wang. “Over the next two months, we’ve committed to launching more than a dozen Castbox Originals in addition to the ones we’ve already released in the past 30 days. On this front, we’ll continue identifying the right partners to work with as we expand our content strategy, which will allow us to strengthen our brand in the podcasting space,” she adds.

While the cost of launching a new show will vary based on a number of factors – like voice talent, writing, editing, music, marketing, promotion, etc. – the full process can range anywhere from a few hundred dollars to thousands.

The new funding will also be used to improve Castbox’s technology platform, including improvements to usability, content discovery, and personalization.

SIG China’s involvement speaks to Castbox’s roots – the startup initially launched in the Chinese market, but since relocated its headquarters to San Francisco, while maintaining an engineering office in Beijing. The team is now 52 full-time employees, and will continue to grow throughout the year.

“Castbox has shown consistent growth across all metrics, but more importantly, Renee and her team share great vision for the company,” said Andy Gao of SIG China, in a statement. :They’re extremely passionate about the podcasting space and their decision to share their content openly shows just how invested they are. As this new medium takes off and goes mass-market, we’re excited to see what’s next to come for Castbox.”

Castbox, of course, has fierce competition in the U.S., where there are dozens of alternative podcast players available across platforms, in addition to those from major players like Apple, and streaming services like Spotify or TuneIn. But users are always looking for the “best” app to serve their needs, and Castbox’s focus on discovery, and now, Originals, could give it the extra edge as it grows.

 

Healing America’s broken healthcare industry has been at the top of the priority list for almost every politician, entrepreneur, and inventor for at least the past forty years.

Costs continue to climb (roughly 5% this year) and spending is already 20% of the nation’s GDP. For the trillions of dollars Americans spend on healthcare they’re getting declining services, more frequent ailments and a steadily diverging standard of care for the rich and the poor in the country.

Something needs to be done — and venture capitalists and some of the biggest names in finance led by Goldman Sachs are investing $73 million in a technology startup they see as a potential solution.

The company is Doctor on Demand and its solution is video-based telemedicine.

The new funding led by Goldman Sachs and Princeville Global (with participation from existing investors including Venrock, Shasta Ventures, and Tenaya Capital) will be used to continue the company’s rapid expansion in the U.S. and abroad — and brings the company’s total financing to $160 million.

“This trend of consumerization, which we’re leading, is really going to result in much greater patient driven healthcare experiences which will save the patient a lot of money,” says company chief executive Hill Ferguson .

Ferguson knows that the arc of internet services bends towards on-demand and he says that healthcare should be no different. “Most people have no idea they can see a board-certified physician on their phone from their bed while they’re sick at two in the morning with a five minute wait time,” he says.

That’s essentially the service that Doctor on Demand provides.

While the company’s consultations aren’t a panacea for everything that ails the healthcare industry, Ferguson claims his company’s board certified staff can handle 90% of the consultations that happen every day in Urgent Care facilities and for $300 less than insurers currently pay out.

While the service started out as something that consumers had to pay out of pocket, it has now transitioned to a more seamless (and cheaper) option for customers — it’s covered by most major insurance carriers.

“We’ve shifted from being a cash pay virtual practice to more of an enterprise player. we’re driving most of our volume through health insurance plans and employers,” Ferguson says.

The company employs its own doctors and staffs its video consultation service 24-hours a day, seven days a week, Ferguson says. Despite the workload — which sees the company’s virtual doctors consult with four patients each hour on average — the company’s fourteen day readmission rate (a standard measure of effective diagnoses) is on par with brick and mortar services, Ferguson says.

Roughly 5% of the consultations involve patients who need to be referred to specialists, according to Ferguson.

The service can also refer patients to diagnostics and testing facilities to get bloodwork and other tests that can supplement an initial diagnosis.

Through its agreements with insurers, Doctor on Demand stipulates what kinds of conditions its video consultations can cover, and which ailments and maladies require immediate medical attention. Increasingly, customers are taking advantage of the company’s mental health services — an area that’s grown 240% since it was introduced, according to Ferguson.

Mental health is one growth area for the company and its testing services provide another. In all, Ferguson thinks there’s a $50 billion addressable market in the U.S. alone. A figure he says more than justifies the company’s $160 million (and counting) in funding.

 

Doctor on Demand isn’t profitable yet, and the new financing still sees the company valued under $1 billion, but Ferguson is confident about the future. “I gotta wear shades,” the chief executive said.

A recently discovered programming error can make some crypto tokens susceptible to hackers . The exploit allows a hacker to pass an unusually high value to the exchange and get a ridiculous number of tokens in exchange, a problem that has caused the Okex exchange shut down all token trading including one called BeautyChain (BEC).

What’s really interesting is how the hack worked. As you can see above a line in the smart contract creates another value – amount – by multiplying cnt and _value. The hackers made a transfer and set the value to eight vigintillion – an eight with 63 zeroes. When this value is passed, the code overflows allowing the hacker to gain a massive number of tokens. Thanks to the smart contract’s “code-is-law” principal, each of these transfers are technically legitimate.

“There is no traditional well-known security response mechanism in place to remedy these vulnerable contracts!” wrote one researcher on Medium. “With that, we further run our system to scan and analyze other contracts. Our results show that more than a dozen of ERC20 contracts are also vulnerable to batchOverflow.”

In response Okex shut down all ERC-20 tokens but there are other exchanges and tokens susceptible to the hack.

“To protect public interest, we have decided to suspend the deposits of all ERC-20 tokens until the bug is fixed. Also, we have contacted the affected token teams to conduct investigation and take necessary measures to prevent the attack,” Okex wrote.

Image via MelisaDrucker who makes some unusually cool subway token earrings.

Austin, Texas-based BigCommerce has completed a big round of funding.

The growth stage startup, which builds e-commerce sites for Sony, Toyota and 60,000 other merchants, has raised $64 million to accelerate its business. The investment was led by Goldman Sachs, with participation from General Catalyst, GGV Capital and Tenaya Capital. And it brings BigCommerce’s total raised to over $200 million since it was founded in 2009.

BigCommerce has developed a template for its customers to launch websites with manageable shipping and payments tracking. It also makes it easy to cross-sell on Amazon, eBay and Facebook. The company claims it is able to help e-tailers cut down on costs by as much as 80%.

“Every product company, brand company, physical retailer on the planet has decided they need to get serious about e-commerce,” said Jeff Richards, managing partner at GGV about why he’s invested. It’s a “huge category with a very big business that’s doing extremely well.”

BigCommerce has built a robust business in the United States and Australia, and hopes to use the capital to expand further internationally. It sees an opportunity to build out its presence in Europe.

The company also recently built an integration with Instagram to make it easier for consumers to purchase directly via the app.  BigCommerce also has partnerships with PayPal and Google and plans to double down on cross-platform opportunities.

While BigCommerce’s business resembles Shopify and Salesforce’s recently-purchased Demandware, CEO Brent Bellm says that while the former focuses on small businesses and the latter targets large enterprises, BigCommerce’s sweet spot is somewhere in between. It aims to build sites for brands with between $1 million and $50 million in revenue.

Yet BigCommerce’s own revenue numbers exceed that of the clients it is targeting. Bellm said that the company is approaching $100 million in annualized revenue.

When asked about whether that meant the company is targeting an IPO, he said that BigCommerce is “on a track where that’s possible” and that he believed this financing would be “the last round as a private company.”

If Shopify’s stock performance is any indication, public investors are hot on the space. Shares have gone up over 600% since its IPO in 2015.

Competitor Magento, on the other hand, was taken private after spinning off from eBay. Bellm believes that BigCommerce is better positioned to take advantage of a growing preference for SaaS business models.