Month: June 2019

Transit, a company that has spent its entire life trying to make it easier to get around cities, is unveiling a new machine-learning powered estimated time of arrival prediction feature to help address one of the most annoying things about taking public transit: not knowing when the next bus is going to arrive.

Montreal-based Transit already offers in-app ETAs for arrivals in the 175 cities where it operates around the world, but the information it provides is based on either real-time data provided directly from a city itself, or crowd-sourced information provided directly by its users. The reality is that neither of these is a necessarily reliable or consistent way to offer truly accurate ETAs.

Of course, predicting when something as fickle as a city bus on city roads filled with human-driven cars will arrive is no easy task. And as Transit Communications Lead Stephen Miller explained on a call, the company also takes into account when determining what constitutes ‘accuracy’ that you’re naturally going to have a much wider margin of error when a bus is 20 minutes away vs. when it’s only a minute or two out.

That said, in Montreal where the new machine learning-generated ETA predictions are launching first, Transit’s team predicts an improvement of around 15% in the accuracy of its predictions for when the next bus operated by Montreal’s transit authority STM will arrive. That should translate into “thousands” of fewer missed buses for commuters, according to the company, and that’s the improvement people should experience on day one, with more improvements to come.

“That’s what we can do with the data that we have today, and the data exploration that we’ve done,” explained Transit’s real-time data lead Juan Borreguero. As we speak we are investigating more ways to improve the data, so for example we’re exploring weather data. We’re exploring analyzing the delays that are present in a certain moment in a city – we call that ‘recency’ – because machine learning is based on historical data, so for example if it’s Sunday and it’s 12 PM we are going to make an ETA based on historical data we have for that time, or around that time, but it can happen that there’s something happening in the neighbourhood at that very second that’s having a huge impact on ETAs, so we’re working on that.”

Borreguero also explained that the company is planning to expand to other markets as well, but that the way transit works in each city where Transit operates varies considerably. Already, the company has gleaned insights about how and why buses are delayed in Montreal vs. how they run in Rome, for instance.

But ultimately, Transit’s entire raison d’être is to improve the lives of people just trying to navigate their cities (and the cities they visit), which is why the company pursued the path of using machine learning to improve on what it’s already been doing to begin with. Relatively fresh off a funding round that includes participation from the venture arms of prominent automakers, Transit looks well-positioned to continue to make life a little easier for public transit commuters.

Even rich San Francisco residents can’t buy a home.

Sure, if your startup just went public, you might be amongst a small class of people able to put in all-cash offers over the asking price. But most people living in the Bay Area, even those with six-figure salaries, only aspire to become homeowners.

“Owning things is a pretty central idea to the American enterprise,” said Abhijeet Dwivedi, the co-founder and chief executive officer of ZeroDown, a new startup hoping to make home ownership in the Bay Area a reality for more people by combining the security of ownership with the flexibility of renting. “Anyone who has gotten rich in the last 240 years has done so by owning things.”

ZeroDown, as the name suggests, couples technology and a debt-fueled real estate fund to allow home-buyers to forgo the traditional down payment process required to purchase a home. The company, which charges a $10,000 fee per home, is a graduate of the Y Combinator startup accelerator’s winter cohort. Today, it’s announcing a $30 million round of capital from former YC president Sam Altman and consumer technology venture capital fund Goodwater Capital.

Earlier this year, ZeroDown had the VC community buzzing. At just a few months old, the San Francisco-based startup was already fielding offers from funds. Why? Because its founding team is made up of Dwivedi, the former chief operating officer of Zenefits; Laks Srini, Zenefits’ former chief technology officer; and Hari Viswanathan, a former Zenefits staff engineer.

Ultimately, the trio raised a bucket of capital at a valuation north of $70 million, sources confirm to TechCrunch, (the company declined to comment on its valuation). That’s quite the vote of confidence for a capital-intensive real estate business but the founders reputation preceded them and early backing from Altman, who invested before the company decided to enter YC, peaked the curiosity of early-stage VCs.

“Sam Altman was the first person we called to discuss the idea … and he wanted to back the team,” Dwivedi said, noting that Altman didn’t suggest the team go through YC, rather, a desire to feel like “beginners” again inspired their decision to complete the three-month program, which is more often made up of first-time founders.

Amidst all the buzz, ZeroDown skipped out on Demo Day in March, the culminating event of YC that gives startups a couple of minutes each to entice investors into supporting their big idea. ZeroDown didn’t need to make a showy pitch. Fundraising hadn’t been and wouldn’t become a difficult process.

TechCrunch noted all this in a story earlier this year highlighting how competitive investing in YC startups can be for venture capitalists. ZeroDown may have raised at the highest valuation for a startup fresh out of YC but it certainly wasn’t the only member of the winter cohort to raise significant capital before graduating from the accelerator. Catch, Overview.AI, Truora, Middesk, Glide and FlockJay, among others, had signed term sheets before the big day, for example.

Using ZeroDown

ZeroDown seems to be serving those who have an individual or combined salary of more than $200,000, stock options and some money put away — aka not exactly your average Joe.

Here’s how the service works:

1. ZeroDown determines whether a potential customer qualifies, factoring in total annual income before taxes, stock grants, recurring monthly loan payments and credit.
2. A customer picks a qualifying home, typically one priced between $550,000 and $1,750,000. ZeroDown purchases the home.
3. The customer begins leasing the home from ZeroDown.
4. The customer is given five years to pay ZeroDown the cost of the down payment.
5. Every month throughout the five-year period, the customer earn purchase-credits — similar to earning stock options at a startup — that represent a percentage of their ZeroDown home’s value. If they live in the home for at least two years, they can put those credits toward purchasing the home or they can can move out after two years and redeem the purchase-credits for cash back.
6. If a customer reaches the five-year mark and wants to stay put, they must purchase the home at that time.

The idea is to give people more flexibility and power in the home-buying process: “It gives people time to build up more savings or get a higher salary,” Dwivedi explains. “Their buying power five years out is hopefully higher than it is today.”

ZeroDown earns money from its $10,000 price tag and through a 24/7 concierge service it provides to customers. It’s partnered with Sheltr to connect ZeroDown users to services they might need as homeowners, including a babysitter or a plumber, for example.

Under the hood, ZeroDown has two businesses running simultaneously. One is a technology startup supported by the $30 million equity financing and 20 employees. The other is a real estate fund supported by a “decent sum” of debt capital (Dwivedi declined to disclose the precise amount). This unique business structure helps ZeroDown minimize risk, he said.

“The fund has to do its job to hold the assets and provide a return and the tech company has to do its job of executing very well,” Dwivedi said. “The templates to run both of these types of businesses exist independently in the market.”

Seperately, however, things get more complicated, which is why a solution like this hasn’t come out of Silicon Valley in the past.

ZeroDown is tapping into a particular pain point, one intensified in the Bay Area where 81% of homes cost more than $1 million, according to data compiled by Trulia .

For now, ZeroDown is focused on that market but in the long term, the team hopes they can expand to new geographies and assist a wider and more diverse population of potential homeowners.

“It’s meaningful to give people a place to call their homes, a place where their memories are founded, a place where they live,” Dwivedi said.

Reports published late last month indicated Brex, the fast-growing fintech startup, was raising yet another round. Today, the San Francisco-based company is confirming it’s closed on $100 million in Series C-2 funding at a valuation of $2.6 billion.

Kleiner Perkins has lead the round via former general partner Mood Rowghani, who left the fund last year to form Bond alongside Mary Meeker and Noah Knauf. Existing investors DST Global, IVP, Y Combinator and Greenoaks Capital have also participated in the round. 

The Y Combinator graduate, which provides corporate cards tailored for startups, is also announcing the launch of its third product: a card made specifically for life sciences companies. With a focus on pharmaceutical, biotech and cosmetic businesses, Brex has customized its underwriting model for the life sciences sector and crafted targeted rewards, including cash back on lab supplies and conference fees.

Brex’s funding history

March 2017: Brex graduates Y Combinator

April 2017: $6.5M Series A | $25M valuation

April 2018: $50M Series B | $220M valuation

October 2018: $125M Series C | $1.1B valuation

June 2019: $100M Series C-2 | $2.6B valuation

 

Brex’s valuation has grown significantly from $1.1 billion just eight months ago. Why? Brex co-founder and chief executive officer Henrique Dubugras cites an expanded total addressable market (TAM).

“When we raised our last round, Brex was doing well within the startup market … but there was still a question from investors of whether Brex could expand outside of startups into a broader market,” Dubugras tells TechCrunch. “[Ecommerce] did really well really quickly … What that meant for investors is that Brex could not only win at startups but we could also win at other types of businesses that are more traditional.”

In February, Brex released its second product, the credit cards made specifically for ecommerce companies referenced above. The card, which “enables online brands and retailers to bypass the problems of legacy banking systems,” has been a huge success for Brex, Dubugras said. In just a few months time, it’s multiplied Brex’s TAM and become responsible for one-third of the business’s revenue.

Since its last fundraise, Brex has also launched a rewards program for customers and closed its first notable acquisition.

Like many startups raising capital today, Brex wasn’t in need of the cash. Dubugras notes the Series C-2 was more of a “repricing event” than a necessary fundraise.

“We haven’t touched our money from the Series C yet,” he said. “For us, this round is a repricing event for the company that helps with recruiting.”

“The money will be set aside for risk management purposes in the sense that our banks — our partners — like us to have a lot of equity sitting there in case something goes wrong,” Dubugras added. “An important part of fintech is always being well-capitalized in case something goes wrong.”

Microsoft kicked things off on Sunday, and while Sony’s sitting this one out, Nintendo’s up to its old tricks. The company is once again skipping whole in-person thing in favor of its livestreamed Nintendo direct.

We don’t expect any major hardware news for the show this year, but there’s some possibility that the company may finally offer a revamped version of the Switch. More likely, however, is info on some key titles, including a new Animal Crossing game.

Mario Maker 2 and Pokemon Sword and Shield have already had their moments in the sun with their own Nintendo Direct events, so expect focus on games like the new Fire Emblem and Luigi’s Mansion 3. More information on all of the E3 2019 rumors can be found here.

Things kick off this morning at 9AM PT/noon ET.

As electric vehicle charging infrastructure grows, a nagging complexity has popped up. Each electric vehicle charging networks has its own system with memberships. For an EV owner, that translates into a handful, or more, of standalone apps or  RFID dongles used to activate and pay for charging.

ChargePoint and Electrify America have reached an agreement that aims to make it easier for drivers of electric vehicles to switch between EV charging networks.

The “roaming” partnership announced Tuesday will allow drivers to access public chargers on either the ChargePoint or Electrify America networks without having to create new memberships, registrations or payment configurations.

The plan, which begins later this year, will connect more than 30,000 Level 2 and DC fast chargers from Electrify America and ChargePoint across the United States. Electrify America, the entity set up by Volkswagen as part of its settlement with U.S. regulators over its diesel emissions cheating scandal, has said it will invest $2 billion over 10 years in clean energy infrastructure and education. The VW unit expects to have 484 electric vehicle charging stations with more than 2,000 charging dispensers installed or under construction by July 1.

“With the two largest EV charging service providers in the U.S. reaching this agreement, we can help expedite electric vehicle adoption by creating a seamless and reliable charging experience for consumers,” Electrify America president and CEO Giovanni Palazzo said in a statement.

The agreement builds on existing partnerships that ChargePoint has with FLO, EVBox and Greenlots.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk is expected to take the stage Tuesday for the company’s annual shareholder meeting following a volatile year that saw swings between profitability and wider-than-expected losses, production goals met and deliveries milestones missed, and a securities fraud charge, and subsequent settlement, with the SEC.

The board, like the company it governs, has also undergone changes in the past 12 months. In December, Tesla appointed two independent board members, Oracle founder, chairman and CTO Larry Ellison and Walgreens executive Kathleen Wilson-Thompson. Four months later, Tesla announced in regulator filings, that was reducing the board by more than one-third, to seven directors. Brad Buss, Linda Johnson Rice, Steve Jurvetson and Antonio Gracias will not stand for re-election once their terms end.

Like its earnings calls, Tesla shareholder meetings are rarely boring. If the past is a guide, the event will be run like an informal town hall meeting with Musk fielding questions from the crowd of shareholders. There will also be the requisite corporate governance duties to complete.

First, the basics. Tesla shareholder meeting is scheduled to begin at 2:30 p.m. Tuesday at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif.

You can watch the livestream via the company’s website. Or here on this YouTube channel:

While it’s impossible to predict precisely what Musk will talk about on stage, we do know there are eight items on the agenda that shareholders have been asked to voted on. The first six proposals are from Tesla. The company recommended approving the six proposals

• To re-elect directors Ira Ehrenpreis and Wilson-Thompson for a term of three years. If proposal 5, listed below, is approved, the terms will be two years.
• To approve the Tesla 2019 equity incentive plan, which would give the company the ability to issue 12.5 million new shares. Tesla wants to continue issuing stock as compensation for employees and executives. However, there is some concern from Institutional Shareholder Services, a shareholder advisory service, that this will dilute shareholders’ equity.
• To approve the Tesla 2019 Employee Stock Purchase Plan. This would continue a plan already in place that lets employees purchase stock through payroll deductions at the end of consecutive, non-overlapping six-month offering periods.
• To approve and adopt amendments to Tesla’s certificate of incorporation and bylaws to eliminate applicable supermajority voting requirements. Basically, this would mean that Tesla wouldn’t need a supermajority vote (at least 66% of the voting power of all outstanding shares) to amend its governing documents.
• To approve an amendment to our certificate of incorporation to reduce director terms from three years to two years.
• To ratify the appointment of PricewaterhouseCoopers as Tesla’s independent registered public accounting firm for the fiscal year ending December 31, 2019.

The remaining two are stockholder proposals, both of which Tesla is against.

• Jing Zhao, who owns 12 shares of Tesla stock, submitted a proposal to form a public policy committee to oversee policies including human rights, environment, domestic governmental regulations, foreign affairs and international relations affecting the company’s business.
• James McRitchie, who owns 90 shares of Tesla stock, proposes simple majority voting provisions for governing documents and eliminate the current supermajority voting requirements. Tesla is recommending voting for its own supermajority elimination proposal.

Alyce, an AI-powered platform that helps sales people, marketers and event planners give better corporate gifts, has today announced the close of an $11.5 million Series A funding. The round was led by Manifest, with participation from General Catalyst, Boston Seed Capital, Golden Ventures, Morningside and Victress Capital.

According to Alyce, $120 billion is spent each year (just in the United States) on corporate gifts, swag, etc. Unfortunately, the impact of these gifts isn’t usually worth the hassle. No matter how thoughtful or clever a gift is, each recipient is a unique individual with their own preferences and style. It’s nearly impossible for marketers and event planners to find a one-size-fits-all gift for their recipients.

Alyce, however, has a solution. The company asks the admin to upload a list of recipients. The platform then scours the internet for any publicly available information on each individual recipient, combing through their Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, videos and podcasts in which they appear, etc.

Alyce then matches each individual recipient with their own personalized gift, as chosen from one of the company’s merchant partners. The platform sends out an invitation to that recipient to either accept the gift, exchange the gift for something else on the platform, or donate the dollar value to the charity of their choice.

This allows Alyce to ensure marketers and sales people always give the right gift, even when they don’t. For charity donations, the donation is made in the name of the corporate entity who gave the gift, not the recipient, meaning that all donations act as a write-off for the gifting company.

The best marketers and sales people know how impactful a great gift, at the right time, can be. But the work involved in figuring out what a person actually wants to receive can be overwhelming. Hell, I struggle to find the right gifts for my close friends and loved ones.

Alyce takes all the heavy lifting out of the equation.

The company also has integrations with Salesforce, so users can send an Alyce gift from directly within Salesforce.

Alyce charges a subscription to businesses who use the software, and also takes a small cut of gifts accepted on the platform. The company also offers to send physical boxes with cards and information about the gift as another revenue channel.

Alyce founder and CEO Greg Segall says the company is growing 30 percent month-over-month and has clients such as InVision, Lenovo, Marketo and Verizon.

Meet Yubo, a French startup that wants to make social networks a bit more… social. Yubo is an app designed for teenagers, and it’s all about meeting people, making new friends and belonging to a community.

The app has quietly grown over the past few years and managed to attract 20 million users. There are now close to a million users who open the app every day, and the company says that it is currently growing by 10 percent month-over-month.

But what makes Yubo so special? Last year, I wrote that social networks were no longer social. And Yubo shares the exact same vision.

“Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat… everything is fake,”co-founder and CEO Sacha Lazimi. According to him, when you join one of the big social networks, you can’t do anything and you can’t just be yourself. You end up following the same top accounts with millions of followers.

It’s a passive experience that involves a lot scrolling and liking, but very few meaningful interactions. In other words, many teens feel lonely on those social networks.

Lazimi has a strong vision of what a social network should be. In many ways, Yubo feels like an internet forum or an IRC channel, but designed for mobile. If you’re still defining your identity as a teen, Yubo can help you talk with people who share your interests even if they don’t go to the same school as you.

Yubo is specifically designed for teens, which means that you can’t even create an account if you’re too old for the app. After that, the startup wants you to meet new people and spend time together in the app.

You can find friends with a Tinder-like screen that lets you swipe left or right. Many people think it means that Yubo is a dating app. But Lazimi defends this model by saying that the vast majority of people don’t even meet up in person — he says Yubo is more about finding long-distance BFFs.

The startup knows that having a young user base is a touchy subject. It tries to moderate questionable content as quickly and as effectively as possible. Let’s hope that the company can stay on top of moderation as the platform grows.

But the most interesting part of the app is the live-streaming rooms. Users can get together and host a group live stream. Other users can join the live stream and chat with the hosts. They can talk about the latest Netflix TV show, play the guitar with their friends or just chill and talk about random stuff. It’s a bit like Houseparty meet YouNow.

You can buy in-app items or subscribe to a premium account to boost your live stream, give more visibility to your profile or your friend request.

“The future of social networks is about social discovery. We’re trying to avoid becoming a performance-based network. We don’t want to emphasize likes or views,” Lazimi said.

And that vision is what might differentiate Yubo from other social networks out there. The startup isn’t the only one trying to innovate in the social space. And it’s nice to see that there’s a group of entrepreneurs willing to try different things to go beyond Instagram.

With over one million YouTube subscribers and 500,000 registered users for its supplemental educational videos, Osmosis, which bills itself as the Khan Academy of healthcare, has raised $4 million in new funding.

The round was led by Felicis Ventures, with participation from previous Osmosis investors including Greycroft, Coverys, FundRx, Figure 8, Social Starts, and LearnStart,

“By reimagining medical education, Osmosis is addressing a critical impending global crisis: the need to develop and retrain tens of millions of healthcare professionals over the next decade to meet growing demand,” said Aydin Senkut, founder and managing partner at Felicis Ventures.

Felicis is betting on Osmosis in part because of the increasing demand for healthcare professionals around the world. The company cites statistics claiming that roughly 35 million more healthcare professionals will need to be trained by 2030.

Co-founders Shiv Gaglani and Ryan Haynes met at medical school at Johns Hopkins. Both men had an interest in education and learning — Hayes as a former neuroscientist and Gaglani as a researcher who worked on education. And both struggled to keep up with the mass of material they were being forced to learn in their Gross Anatomy class.

“We wound up building a tool for ourselves and our classmates to collaborate and create flashcards for each other, and that was the seed for Osmosis,” Gaglani said in a March profile for a Harvard University alumni magazine. “We didn’t intend for it to be a company, we were just trying to make learning medicine more efficient.”

Since then, the company has grown from a side project and study aid for the two men to a legitimate business. The two began working on the business full time in 2016 and since then have managed to amass that 500,000 registered user base.

Instead of just a flashcard trading marketplace, the Osmosis platform now contains quizzes and videos using new study techniques like spaced-repetition to ensure knowledge retention.

The service also has a recommendation engine that provides contextually relevant video recommendations, quizzes, and flashcards based on course documents users can upload to the service.

Using a library of over 1,100 videos produced by the former Khan Academy Health and Medicine team — which were poached by Gaglani — students can get supplemental materials providing tutorials on subjects ranging from basic knowledge to the soft skills required on the job.

“When I think about talent, I think about people first. Shiv is a groundbreaking entrepreneur. Education as a whole, specifically medical education, needs to change to alleviate the financial burdens and massive debt that’s crushing young students across America. As these same students are digitally-native, they want convenient, cost-effective and personalized tools for learning, and Osmosis provides exactly that,” said Alan Patricof, Founder and Managing Director of Greycroft .

Gaglani has set itself a goal of educating more than one billion clin;icians and caregivers by 2025.

“We’ll be able to use the funds to increase our reach within our core health professional student markets as well as expand into related allied health fields,” Gaglani said in a statement.

As part of the company’s continuing initiatives, Osmosis is promoting something called Care for Caregivers, which is aiming to remove the stigma around mental illness in the medical industry and an interactive new feature allowing users to see who else is online and learning on Osmosis around the world at the same time.

Uber just unveiled the first design for its Uber Air taxi cabin at Uber Elevate, Uber’s flying taxi conference in Washington, D.C.

The cabin, built in partnership with aircraft interior designer Safran Cabin, is designed to seat four people at a time. Given the number of Uber Air vehicle partners, the MDC is easily modifiable.

“Together with Safran Cabin, we’ve designed for the first time in history, a bespoke aircraft cabin that is truly mission-driven for aerial ridesharing on Uber Air,” said John Badalamenti, Uber Elevate’s Head of Design. “Starting with the customer experience, it’s highly considered from the inside-out, yet extensible across different fuselage profiles, and carefully engineered with a path to certification.”

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Since it’ll be a little while until you get to experience it in real life, Uber partnered with Bipolar Studio to create a VR simulation.

“To realize this design physically in the interactive cabin mockup, combined with the photo-real VR flight experience, has been extremely encouraging. I think we’re at a transitional time for designs like this to serve as the influential typology in aerial ridesharing standards for generations of aircraft to come.”

Uber is on track to begin testing its flying taxi service next year, and plans to deploy the aerial ride-hailing platform to the public in 2023 in Dallas-Fort Worth/Frisco Texas and Los Angeles.