Year: 2019

Through telemedicine and direct-to-consumer sales platforms, startups are streamlining the historically arduous process of accessing contraception.

The latest effort to secure a significant financing round is The Pill Club, an online birth control prescription and delivery service. Consumer-focused investor VMG Partners has led its $51 million Series B, with participation from new investors GV and ACME Capital (formerly known as Sherpa Capital), and existing investors Base10 Partners and Shasta Ventures. The Pill Club declined to disclose its valuation.

Launched in 2016 in San Carlos, California, The Pill Club couples healthcare services with at-home delivery, reaching customers in all 50 states. With a team of doctors, nurses and patient care coordinators, the startup operates its own pharmacy and is licensed to prescribe medication in 35 states. With the new funding, which brings its total raised to $67 million, founder and chief executive officer Nick Chang said he plans to scale the business 50 percent and expand its prescription service across the entire U.S.

“At the end of the day, our company is about empowering women,” Chang told TechCrunch. “What does that mean? It means empowering our patients to make their own healthcare decisions and making reproductive healthcare more common — something to not be shy about or worried about.”

Chang, who has spent his career in medicine and holds an M.D. from Duke University, previously founded Ganogen. The business, which sought to facilitate patient’s access to organ donors, ultimately shut down but was a catalyst to The Pill Club’s formation, as were experiences from Chang’s youth.

“I [grew] up with an older sister who was on birth control since she was 14 for menstrual regulation,” Chang said. “She really felt embarrassed to pick up the medication and to talk to anyone about it and that was really insightful for me. There are so many hurdles in accessing birth control besides clinics being around.”

Some 67 million women between the ages of 13 to 44 live in the U.S.; 19 million of them live in contraceptive deserts, or areas that lack reasonable access to public clinics. The Pill Club wants to eliminate those deserts, as do other companies in the digital health arena.

Digital health has remained one of the hottest destinations for VC investment. In 2018, investors put about $4.5 billion into U.S. companies in the sector, a 17 percent increase year-over-year, according to PitchBook data. Telemedicine startups garnered a record $1.25 billion in funding in that timeframe thanks to large financings for industry leader Oscar, a health insurance startup that raised $540 million in 2018 alone; as well as an $88 million Series A for newcomer Roman, which offers a cloud pharmacy for erectile dysfunction.

Startups focused on women’s health, meanwhile, have continued to garner more attention from VCs. These companies, including The Pill Club and comepetitor Nurx, have not only benefited from the rapid rise of telehealth, but also from a societal shift sparked in part by President Donald Trump and Republican lawmakers’ attempts to limit women’s access to birth control.

“People want to talk about this,” Chang said. “With so much happening from Hollywood to politics … it’s really got some people to say ‘ok, we really need to talk about what we are prioritizing as a society.'”

In addition to accelerating the expansion of its 260-person team, The Pill Club plans to use the investment to explore launching more services within women’s healthcare and to broaden the educational content it offers its customers.

“This is just the beginning of a much broader and bigger movement,” Chang said.

Wendy Tan White, a veteran of the U.K. startup scene — including founding SaaS website builder Moonfruit, which exited to Yell Group for $37 million — is joining Alphabet X (formerly Google X), TechCrunch has learned.

According to sources, Tan White was approached by Google late last year, as she weighed up a number of other options, including raising a VC fund of her own dedicated to “deep tech”. Ultimately, she’s decided to join Google X, where she’ll hold the position of Vice President and will be part of the leadership team.

I understand she’ll be reporting directly Astro Teller, the head of X (or “Captain of Moonshots”). “She will be managing, mentoring and supporting a range of teams across X,” a source tells me.

As well as founding and exiting Moonfruit with her husband Joe, Tan White has recently been a very active investor in the U.K., both in a personal capacity and as former Partner at BGF Ventures, the early-stage U.K. venture capital fund where she remains an advisor.

She led the Open Cosmos Series A for BGF, amongst others. Tan White’s over 30 personal investments, along with her husband Joe, include Public.io, Whitehat, Cleo, CloudNC, OpenCosmos, Automata, Massless, Q-bot, Streetbees, and Xihelm.

Prior to BGF, she was a General Partner at Entrepreneur First, the London-headquartered deep tech company builder, which is backed by Greylock, and remains a popular figure amongst EF alumni.

(I’m told Joe White will remain in his current post as General Partner at Entrepreneur First, and, along with Wendy, will be based in the U.S., where he already spends much of his time.)

Wendy Tan White is also a Board Trustee of the Alan Turing Institute (the U.K.’s National AI Institute), a Member of the UK Digital Economy Council, on the Board of TechNation and Imperial College, DoC. She was awarded an MBE for services to business and technology in 2016 and Women in IT, Business Role Model of the Year 2017.

Just Eat, the takeout marketplace and food delivery service, has acquired Flyt, a startup that offers software for restaurants and restaurant suppliers. The acquisition price is £22 million, which Just Eat says it has financed from cash reserves.

“A further cash consideration may also be payable subject to certain operational and financial criteria being met over the next three years,” discloses the company.

Notably, Just Eat was already one of Flyt’s investors, but this deal sees the takeout behemoth become a majority owner. Existing investors, including Time Out and Entree Capital, have exited. The company is thought to have raised close to £12 million since being founded in 2013.

Described as a leading software platform that helps restaurant groups and restaurant suppliers integrate their point of sale (POS) systems with third-party services, Flyt has obvious synergies with Just Eat, providing technology that helps improve the experience of ordering online.

Better POS integration with various third-party services can help improve a restaurant’s customer experience and its operational efficiency. Specifically, Flyt says its technology platform removes the need for manual restaurant processes, reduces driver wait times in restaurants, and eliminates human error in order processing.

To that end, Flyt currently works with over 3,000 quick service and branded restaurants, including some of the U.K. and world’s largest brands such as KFC, Tim Hortons, Mitchells and Butlers, Pizza Express and Nando’s.

Despite now being owned by Just Eat, the company says it will continue to operate as a standalone platform and brand. Founders Tom Weaver and Chris Evans will continue to lead the business.

As a footnote, prior to the acquisition, Just Eat owned an 8 percent stake. The takeout marketplace says the acquisition will enable it to accelerate the development of Flyt’s technology and offer Flyt’s services to more of its restaurant partners globally.

Peter Duffy, Interim CEO of Just Eat comments: “Bringing Flyt into our Group will accelerate the take-up of these services around the world and allow the Flyt team to innovate with new and exciting technology solutions for the industry. We’ve admired Flyt for some time and are hugely impressed by their technology – integration between Just Eat and our restaurant partners is a critical component to providing world-class food delivery services”.

TaxScouts, the U.K. “tax preparation” startup founded by TransferWise and Marketinvoice alumni, has created some new paperwork of its own. The London-based company has raised £1.2 million in seed funding.

Leading the new round is SpeedInvest, with participation from Finch Capital and SeedCamp. It adds to £300,000 in pre-seed investment that TaxScouts announced six months ago.

Combining “automation” with a network of human accountants, TaxScouts’ service is designed to support you through your annual tax filing preparation and submission. However, the headline draw is that the company charges a flat fee of £99 if you pay in advance, and promises a turn-around of just 24 hours.

To achieve this, the web app walks you through your tax status, income and expenses without assuming too much prior knowledge. This includes asking you to upload or take a photo of any required documents, such as invoices or dividend certificates. The idea is that all of the admin is captured digitally and packaged up ready for an assigned accountant to check.

Last year, I took the service for a spin, the first time in years that I haven’t left my tax return to the last minute. The accountant assigned to me was helpful and his advice seemed quite good. Most importantly, the communication was speedy, both over text and in a call we needed to have to talk through the pros and cons of two alternative ways to expense a car for work.

Meanwhile, I’m told accountants like the service, too, as it potentially enables small practices to scale and therefore take on more clients. Powering this is TaxScouts’ client management system for accountants, which the startup claims is saving 3-5 days of work per month for its accounting partners.

To that end, TaxScouts says it hopes to quadruple its network of accountant partners by the end of 2019. Its longer term aim is reduce the workload of accountants by 80 percent through further “process automation and digital data processing”.

“With an ever increasing amount of people in the UK experiencing non-standard income and with late fines amounting to billions last tax season alone, the time is better than ever to fundamentally redefine the experience,” says Anthony Danon, Principal at SpeedInvest.

“TaxScouts has built automation that brings simplicity, speed and convenience through a unique approach that creates shared value across taxpayers and accountants. We are excited to be backing such a product-minded team that has led product and engineering in some of U.K.’s best fintech startup stories”.

Axa Venture Partners, the venture capital arm of insurance company Axa, is raising an early-stage fund. Today’s new $150 million fund (€130 million) is called AVP Early Stage II.

Previously, Axa Venture Partners had raised a $110 million early-stage fund back in 2015. So far, it has invested in 40 companies, such as Hackajob, K4Connect, Futurae or Zenjob and Happytal.

When it comes to investment strategy, Axa Venture Partners plans to invest in early startups based in Europe, North America and Israel with this new fund. The firm will invest as much as $6 million per company.

Axa Venture Partners also operates a growth fund and invests in other funds through a fund of funds. And the firm has offices in Paris, London, San Francisco and New York.

The global crypto market may have tanked last year, but notable names have joined forces to develop Bitcoin and blockchain financial services in Japan, which has emerged as one of the world’s most crypto-friendly markets.

Blockstream, a blockchain startup founded by Bitcoin contributors, announced this week that it has launched a joint venture in Japan alongside Digital Garage, an early-stage investor/incubator that’s backed local launches from Twitter, Square and others, and financial services firm Tokyo Tanshi.

Crypto Garage — as the new venture is called — is “is dedicated to building Bitcoin and blockchain solutions for the Japanese institutional market.” The venture was first unveiled last year, and it looks like Blockstream recently came onboard through an undisclosed investment. The startup said it is providing “technical expertise” for the effort.

That’s about all the color on the venture for now, although it has released its first product, “SETTLENET.” That is described as a platform that uses Liquid Network, Blockstream’s blockchain that is designed for exchanges and brokers with a focus on speed and security.

Settlenet — because nobody likes all-caps product names — is said to have already gotten clearance from the Japanese Financial Services Agency (FSA), which regulates exchanges and crypto projects, and its first launch will be a stablecoin for the Japanese Yen. The goal is very much to arm exchanges with liquidity and, as such, the stablecoin will be tradable for Bitcoin pegged to the Liquid sidechain using atomic swaps.

The companies have collaborated for some time already. An existing investor in Blockstream, Digital Garage has plowed a further $10 million into the business in what is its third investment since 2016. That deal takes Blockstream to around $110 million raised to date.

Tokyo Tanshi, meanwhile, is a brokerage firm that was founded over 100 years ago. It has worked with Digital Garage on crypto projects since last year, when the two companies first announced Crypto Garage and a broader goal to operate blockchain financial services in Japan.

On-demand food delivery startup Munchery is ceasing operations effective immediately, the startup announced in an e-mail to customers on Monday.

Founded in 2010, the San Francisco-based business had raised a total of $125 million in venture capital funding, reaching a valuation of $300 million with an $87 million round in 2015, according to PitchBook. Munchery was backed by Greycroft, ACME Ventures (formerly known as Sherpa Capital), Menlo Ventures, e.Ventures, Cota Capital, M13 and more.

“Since 2010, we have been committed to bringing fresh, local, and delicious meals into your homes along with all our customers across the country,” the company wrote in today’s e-mail announcement. “We’ve been delighted to work with world-renowned chefs, experiment with diverse and unique ingredients and recipes, and be a part of your holiday feasts and traditions. We have also enjoyed giving back to our community through meal donations, volunteer service, and so much more.”

The news comes as little surprise considering Munchery laid off 257 employees, or 30 percent of its workforce, in May after shutting down its Seattle, Los Angeles and New York operations. At the time, the company said it planned to double down on its biggest market, San Francisco, which would help it “achieve profitability on the near term, and build a long-term, sustainable business.”

Munchery, however, failed to deliver on those promises. On top of the 2018 layoffs, Munchery for years struggled to navigate the challenging plains of on-demand food delivery. To stay afloat, the startup shape-shifted quite a bit from originally launching as a ready-to-eat meal delivery service to delivering meal-kits to creating an $8.95 a month subscription plan for repeat customers and finally, opening up a shop inside a San Francisco BART station in a bid to win over the commuter crowd.

Munchery is just the latest in a line of food delivery startups to shutter. Doughbies, an on-demand cookie delivery business, closed its doors in 2018. Sprig, Maple and Josephine are amongst the others to falter under the pressure of a crowded market.

Munchery didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

On the surface, “Tidying Up With Marie Kondo” sounds like a simple show: Over the course of eight episodes, organizing guru Marie Kondo helps a variety Los Angeles residents sort through their belongings and clean up their homes.

But for some, following Kondo’s KonMari method can be a surprisingly difficult or emotional experience — after all, it’s really about looking at what we own and where we live. And the show has led to broader discussions around things like the value of books and how gender still plays a big role in domestic labor.

So perhaps it’s not surprising that our discussion of the new Netflix series ends up being similarly wide ranging.

In a first for the Original Content podcast, we’re joined by two guest hosts — Sarah Perez and Catherine Shu. The conversation quickly moves beyond a straightforward review into a broader conversation about Kondo’s ideas. It seems like a significant portion of the TechCrunch team has been inspired by the show to start going through their stuff and identifying what “sparks joy,” though some of us have been more systematic and successful than others.

We also discuss Hulu’s surprise release of a Fyre Festival documentary just a few days before Netflix launched a similar film — a situation that’s led the filmmakers behind both projects to point out questionable choices made by their competitors.

You can listen in the player below, subscribe using Apple Podcasts or find us in your podcast player of choice. If you like the show, please let us know by leaving a review on Apple. You also can send us feedback directly. (Or suggest shows and movies for us to review!)

Last September, two former National Football League players launched an app called Politiscope to track the voting records of members of Congress and the bills that they were introducing — and provide non-partisan information about what those bills and votes would mean to voters.

The pro-football-playing brothers, Walter Powell Jr. and Brandon Williams, launched the app to provide an accurate accounting of what Congressional leadership was doing — something the two felt was necessary given the political climate and the ways in which the traditional sources of education on political issues were being called into question.

“A claim of ‘Fake News’ from the current national leaders in response to unflattering news threatens this nation’s democracy and the concept that this great nation was built upon,” said Powell in a statement when the app first launched in September.

Now the two brothers are expanding Politiscope’s reach by launching the Android version of the service.

While the scope of Politiscope may be expanding, the brothers make clear that the company’s mission is still the same. To provide unbiased information sourced from places like the Congressional Budget Office, the Library of Congress, and the Pew Research Center.

Politiscope has two main features in the app.

The first is its “Today in Congress” section, which provides information on all of the proposed legislation that’s making its way through the House of Representatives and the Senate. The app summarizes the bills and gives statements from Republicans and Democrats on how they view the bill that’s been proposed.

The second feature is its profiles of elected officials. The profiles include voting records, business records and other information culled from Federal records and publicly available information to give voters a clear picture of their representatives in government based solely on data.

“Unless you’re studying the actual legislation, it’s almost impossible to find a good source of political information that isn’t at least somewhat slanted, either to the right or the left,” says Powell. “Today’s media is becoming more and more widely split along liberal and conservative lines, and political rhetoric is growing increasingly devoid of clear and objective information. Politiscope exists to eliminate bias and help people understand what’s actually going on in the world of U.S. politics.”

Most founders don’t walk away from their startup after raising $32 million and reaching 1000 clients. But Roger Dickey’s heart is in consumer tech, and his company Gigster had pivoted to doing outsourced app development for enterprises instead of scrappy entrepreneurs.

So today Dickey announced that he’d left his role as Gigster CEO, with former VMware VP Christopher Keane who’d sold it his startup WaveMaker coming in to lead Gigster in October. Now, Dickey is launching Untitled Labs, a “search lab” designed to test multiple consumer tech ideas in “social and professional networking, mobility, personal finance, premium services, health & wellness, travel, photography, and dating” before building out one

Untitled Labs is starting off with $2.8 million in seed funding from early Gigster investors and other angels including Founders Fund, Felicia Ventures, Caffeinated Capital, Joe Montana’s Liquid Ventures, Ashton Kutcher, Nikita Bier of TBH (acquired by Facebook), and Zynga co-founder Justin Waldron.

Investors lined up after seeing the success of Dickey’s last two search labs. In 2007, his Curiosoft lab revamped classic DOS game Drugwars as a Facebook game called Dopewars and sold it to Zynga where it became the wildly popular Mafia Wars. He did it again in 2014, building Gigster out of Liquid Labs and eventually raising $32 million for it in rounds led by Andreessen Horowitz and Redpoint. Dickey had proven he wasn’t just dicking around and his search labs could experiment their way to an A-grade startup.

“I loved learning about B2B but over the years I realized my true passions were in consumer and I kinda got the itch to try something new” Dickey tells me. “These things happen in the life-cycle of a company. The person who starts it isn’t always the same person to take it to an IPO. Gigster’s doing incredibly well. It was just a really vanilla separation in the best interest of all parties.”

Gigster co-founders (from left): Debo Olaosebikan and Roger Dickey

Gigster’s remaining co-founder and CTO Debo Olaosebikan will stay with the startup, but tells me he’ll be “moving away from a lot of the day-to-day management.” He’ll be in a more public facing role, evangelizing the vision of digital transformation to big clients hoping Gigster can equip them with the apps their customers demand. “We’ve gotten to a really good place on the backs of the founders and to get it to the next level inside of enterprise, having people who’ve done this, lived this, worked in enterprise for a long time makes sense for the company.”

Olaosebikan and Dickey both confirm there was no misconduct or other funny business that triggered the CEO’s departure, and he’ll stay on the Gigster board. Dickey tells me that Gigster’s business managing teams of freelance product managers, engineers, and designers to handle product development for big clients has grown revenue every quarter. It now has 1200 clients including almost 10% of Fortune 500 companies. Olaosebikan says “We have a great repeatable sales model. We can grow profitably and then we can figure out financing. We’re not in a hurry to raise money.”

Since leaving Gigster, Dickey has been meeting with investors and entrepreneurs to noodle on what’s in their “idea shelf” — the product and company concepts these techies imagine but are too busy to implement themselves. Meanwhile, he’s seeking a few elite engineers and designers to work through Untitled’s prospects.

Dickey said he came up with the “search labs” definition since he and others had found success with the strategy that no one had formalized. The search labs model contrasts with three other ways people typically form startups:

• Traditional Startup: Founders come up with one idea and raise from venture firms to build it into a company that’s quick to start and lets them keep a lot of equity, but these startups often fail because they lack product market fit. Examples: Facebook, SpaceX.
• Startup Accelerators and Incubators: Founders come up with one idea and enter an accelerator or incubator that provides funding and education for lots of startups in exchange for a small slice of equity. Founders sometimes learn their idea won’t work and pivot during the program, which is why accelerators seek to fund great teams, but otherwise operate traditionally. Examples: Y Combinator, 500 Startups.
• Startup Studio: The studios’ founders work with entrepreneurs to come up with a small number of ideas while keeping a significant of the equity. The entrepreneurs operate semi-autonomously but with the advantage of shared resources. Examples: Expa, Betaworks.
• Search Lab: Founders conceptualize and experiment with a small number of startup ideas, then focus the company around the most promising prototype. Examples: Untitled Labs, Midnight Labs (turned into TBH)

Dickey tells me that after 80 angel investments, going to every recent Y Combinator Demo Day, and talking with key players across the industry, the search lab method was the best way to hone in on his best idea rather than just going on a hunch. Given that approach, he went with “Untitled” so he could save the branding work for when the right product emerges. Dickey concludes “We’re trying to keep it really barebones. We don’t have an office, don’t have a logo, and we’re not going to make swag. We’re just going to find the next business as efficiently as possible.”