Month: September 2020

Vy Le and Dzung Nguyen, the founders and general partners of Do Ventures, an investment firm focused on early-stage Vietnamese startups

New investment firm Do Ventures announced today the first closing of its fund for Vietnamese startups, which is backed by several of Asia’s most notable institutional investors. Called Do Ventures Fund I, the investment vehicle has hit more than half of its $50 million target, with limited partners including Korean internet giant Naver; Sea, whose businesses include Garena and Shopee; Singapore-based venture capital firm Vertex Holdings; and Korean app developer Woowa Brothers.

Do Ventures was founded by general partners Nguyen Manh Dung, former CEO of CyberAgent Ventures Vietnam and Thailand, and Vy Hoang Uyen Le, previously a general partner at ESP Capital. Its first fund will focus on early-stage companies and invest in seed to Series B rounds.

Both of its founders have a long track record of working with Vietnamese startups. Nguyen was an early investor in companies including Tiki.vn, one of Vietnam’s largest online marketplaces; food delivery platform Foody.vn; and digital marketing company CleverAds. Before she became an investor, Le was a serial entrepreneur and served as chief executive officer at fashion e-commerce company Chon.vn and VinEcom, the e-commerce project launched by Vietnamese real estate conglomerate Vingroup.

In an email, Le told TechCrunch that Do Ventures Fund I is industry agnostic, but will structure its investments into two tiers. The first will consist of B2C platforms, including education, healthcare and social commerce, that serve younger users, and are addressing changes in consumer behavior caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The second tier will include B2B platforms that can provide services for companies in the first tier, and allow them to expand regionally with SaaS solutions for data and e-commerce services.

Do Ventures’ founders say that between 2016 and 2019, the amount of startup funding in Vietnam grew eight-fold to $861 million last year. But there are still only a few funds that focus specifically on the country, which means early-stage Vietnamese startups often run into funding gaps.

One of the firm’s goals is to help founders weather the impact of COVID-19, so their companies can continue growing in spite of the pandemic.

“We hope tech startups can enable traditional businesses to digitize faster and better adapt to the new normal,” Le said. “For consumers, we hope tech startups can transform customer experience in all aspects of daily life, and bring more accessibility to consumers in remote areas.”

The firm will take a hands-on approach to its investments, helping companies develop new business models. Do Ventures plans to set up an automatic reporting system that collects data about how its portfolio companies are performing, which its general partners say will enable them support startups’ operations, including product development, business organization, supply chain development, and overseas expansion.

Fintech startup Revolut is expanding to Japan. After testing the service with 10,000 users, anybody can now sign up and open an account. The company originally obtained its authorization to operate from Japan’s Finance Service Agency in 2018.

When you open an account, you get an electronic wallet and a Visa debit card. You can top up your account and spend money with your card, a virtual card, Apple Pay, Google Pay, etc. Revolut sends you instant notifications and lets you freeze and unfreeze your card from the app.

You can also send money to other Revolut users or a bank account. Like in other countries, Revolut lets you exchange money in the app and send money in other currencies. Many users have taken advantage of the service to travel and pay less in foreign exchange fees.

Users in Japan will also be able to create vaults and put some money aside by rounding up transactions and creating recurring transactions. And that’s about it for now.

The company has already launched premium plans in Japan, but it doesn’t give you a lot of benefits other than lower fees on foreign exchange, different card designs, better support and the ability to buy airport lounge access with LoungeKey Pass.

Unlike in the U.K. and Europe, you won’t be able to buy cryptocurrencies, trade stocks, buy insurance products, create Revolut Junior accounts for your children, etc. Revolut is really trying to build a super app in its home country and has massively expanded its feature set over the years.

The company promises that some features, such as cryptocurrency and stock trading, will be available globally. But there’s no release date just yet. So let’s see how the product evolves in the coming months.

Revolut is currently available in the U.K., Europe, the U.S., Singapore and Australia. It currently has 13 million customers.

Image Credits: Revolut

E-commerce has seen a huge jump in the last eight months, driven by consumers shopping more for goods online while spending more time at home during the COVID-19 pandemic. Today, a payments startup out of Amsterdam that has itself seen a surge of growth this year as a result of that is announcing a big round of funding to help it continue expanding its products and international footprint to meet that demand.

Mollie, a startup that offers a simple, API-based way to integrate payments into a site or an app, has raised €90 million ($106 million) in a round of funding led by TCV. The Series B brings the total raised by Mollie to €115 million and notably catapults the startup’s valuation to over $1 billion, founder and CEO Adriaan Mol confirmed in an interview with TechCrunch.

Mollie has been around since 2004 and this is only the second time it’s raised funding — the first was a €25 million round a year ago — which is possibly one reason why it has not been much on the startup radar.

“It built the backend and front end by myself when I still lived with my parents,” Mol said. “It’s the Dutch way. Bootstrap your idea for a pretty long time. I think that’s the foundation of the company.”

Yet Mollie has hit a number of milestones over the last several years that provide some explanation for why it has now arrived on the scene, seemingly out of nowhere, with such a high valuation.

Currently the company focuses mainly on small and medium businesses — a vastly underserved but giant market — and counts some 100,000 merchants as customers, predominantly in the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany. Those customers include some very high-profile names like Wickey, Deliveroo, TOMS (the shoe company) and UNICEF.

It’s currently on track to process more than €10 billion in transactions this year, representing growth of 100% on a year ago, with some markets like Germany growing 1,000%. And it has been profitable for a number of years at this point.

“We are on the right side of efficiency,” Mol said — Mollie is his nickname among friends. “But we need to invest in new products to stay competitive.”

Indeed, the market for payment service providers is a pretty crowded one, with companies like Stripe and Mollie’s compatriot Adyen also building strong businesses on the concept of providing APIs, and a few simple lines of code, to integrate payment flows into other services. These companies are not only popular, but very well capitalised and poised to continue to develop more tools, as well as simply continuing to grow their international footprint.

Mol says Mollie stands apart from them and the rest of the competition in two key ways. The first is that it provides very localised payment offerings in what remains a very fragmented market, where each consumers’ and merchants’ preferences for what payment methods to use vary a lot country by country (and still are not fully being served by the likes of Stripe).

The second is that it provides a very quick and simple integration that hides a lot of the difficulty of integrating so many different kinds of payment methods. That ease of use both for merchants and customers mean that there is less shopping cart abandonment, and thus higher conversion rates for site visitors. Mol said that the conversion bump can be typically as high as 7%.

“If the journey is super slick and smooth, they don’t drop out, and that is direct revenues for our customers,” he said. (Pricing is transparent but not uniform: it depends on volume, and which payment methods are integrated and used.)

That — alongside the growth rate of a very profitable and efficient company — was part of what attracted TCV.

“The ease of use point is really critical,” said John Doran, a partner at TCV. “It’s so easy that a kid could use it. The idea is to build the Apple of the payments world.”

Mol first came upon the idea of building Mollie when he was integrating a payments service into MessageBird, his previous startup, which provides API-based messaging services (think of it as Europe’s answer to Twilio). At the time, he said he found all of the payments offerings available to be sub-par and too hard to use in the way that he wanted, and so they — specifically Mol himself, who is an engineer — built the solution in-house (literally, his parents’ house: see above).

I asked why the company didn’t simply expand and/or pivot to provide both services under one umbrella, but Mol said the two businesses and ideas were simply too big and not similar enough to develop as one business. So he left MessageBird’s executive leadership — he’s still on the board, though — to focus full-time on Mollie.

That switch to focusing on the payments business has paid off, so to speak.

The next steps for the company, Mol said, will be to continue building out services adjacent to payments — areas like potentially providing working capital for its customers, along with other financial services that SMBs do not generally get from single providers. “We see a whole bunch of products that traditional banks are not offering to SMEs,” Mol said. “They are not incentivised to invest in them because they do not make much money off them.” Those, he added, could include point of sale payments, card issuing, bank issuing, and other banking products.

The Station is a weekly newsletter dedicated to all things transportation. Sign up here — just click The Station — to receive it every weekend in your inbox.

Hello and welcome back to The Station, a newsletter dedicated to all the present and future ways people and packages move from Point A to Point B.

As summer comes to an end, deals have lagged a skosh ahead of what promises to be a busy fall. And while the news cycle continues, there has been a slight dip in intensity. Sounds like a good time to take a break, no? Yup, it is. Next week, there will not be an issue of the newsletter. Don’t worry, it will return Sept. 19.

Email me anytime at kirsten.korosec@techcrunch.com to share thoughts, criticisms, offer up opinions or tips. You can also send a direct message to me at Twitter — @kirstenkorosec.

Alright let’s get to it. First up, deals!

Deal of the week

Deals, we got em. And this week, a new SPAC stands out. Yup, you knew it. I knew it; we all knew another SPAC was coming. Some SPAC merger announcements feel like a desperate attempt by young unproven companies to access capital. That’s not the case this week.

QuantumScape, the solid-state battery company backed by Volkswagen Group, agreed to merge with a special purpose acquisition company Kensington Capital Acquisition Corp. The merger will give QuantumScape a post-deal market valuation of $3.3 billion.

QuantumScape is not a fledgling startup. It’s been around for decade, attracting attention and capital early on from high-profile venture firms like Kleiner Perkins  and Khosla Ventures. Volkswagen entered the picture in 2012 and has invested a total of $300 million in QuantumScape, including $200 million this year.

QuantumScape is going after the capitally intensive goal of attempting to commercialize solid-state batteries for electric vehicles. Solid-state batteries use a solid electrolyte and not a liquid or gel-based electrolyte found in lithium-ion batteries. Developers claim that solid electrolytes have greater energy density, which translates into squeezing more range out of a smaller and lighter battery. Solid electrolytes also are supposed to be better at thermal management, reducing the risk of fire and the reliance on the kinds of cooling systems found in today’s EVs.

Other deals that got my attention … (seems a little light this week, no?)

Geely Automobile Holdings plans to raise 20 billion yuan ($2.93 billion) from a public share sale on Shanghai’s STAR Market, funds that will be used to invest in new car models and technologies, Reuters reported.

Zomato, the Indian food delivery startup, has raised $62 million from Temasek, resuming a financing round that it originally expected to close in January this year. Singapore’s state investment arm Temasek financed the capital through its unit MacRitchie Investments, a regulatory filing showed.

AV spotlight: Yandex

Coverage of automated vehicle technology companies tends to focus on U.S.-based efforts. Rest assured, there is action elsewhere. Yandex, the publicly traded Russian tech giant that started as a search engine, is one of those companies.

The company has expanded into a number of other, related areas (similar to U.S. counterpart Google) including automated vehicle technology. In January, I rode in their self-driving vehicle (with no human behind the wheel) during a demo on public streets of Las Vegas during CES. I’ve never been a huge fan of demos as it can help companies hide problems with their tech. Yandex’s demo was notable however. The vehicle moved confidently, maybe even aggressively, as it maneuvered around a bus that had stopped in the roadway, it handled left turns as well as a parking garage with ease. (this GIF from Yandex is of a drive in Moscow, fyi)

I mention all of this background because Yandex said this week it is spinning out its self-driving car unit from MLU BV — a ride-hailing and food delivery joint venture it operates in partnership with Uber. The move comes amid reports that Yandex  and Uber were eyeing up an IPO for MLU last year. At the time, the JV was estimated to be valued at around $7.7 billion.

As part of the spin-out, Yandex is investing $150 million into the business, a sum that will include $100 million in equity, plus $50 million in the form of a convertible loan. Yandex is buying out some of Uber’s shares in this process and will now have a 73% stake in the spun-out business, with Uber owning 19%. The remaining 8% will be owned by Yandex self-driving group (SDG) management and employees. Yandex said it has invested some $65 million in the business up to now.

Spinning out the unit could help improve the unit economics and cost base of the MLU unit, as TechCrunch editor Ingrid Lunden noted in her report. But Yandex says that it’s being done to double down on a more focused investment in self-driving.

A different kind of EV startup

This isn’t an electric vehicle startup; it’s more like EV adjacent. And it’s an app!

A number of apps have popped over the past several years — in step with Tesla’s rising popularity. Most aim to let drivers track and plan their routes and often have a social component. Tezlab is a good example, and I’ve written about them before. 

The one I want to introduce you to is called Nikola. The app launched in 2018 as a hobby project of David Hodge, who founded a mass transit app called Embark, which Apple acquired in 2013. Hodge stayed at Apple for several years and then went to Stripe. But the Nikola app compelled him to go out on his own again.

This week, Hodge launched Nikola 2.0. Here’s the gist: Nikola 2.0 is a subscription-based app that provides health monitoring of the owner’s Tesla (just Teslas for now, but Hodge aims to expand).

Image Credits: Nikola

The app, which is only in iOS right now, gives the user information on battery level trends, efficiency, energy consumption, top and average speed as well as stats on weekly ghost drain and driving and charging history, which can be exported for tax or expense report purposes. Users can also check their battery level with the Nikola Apple Watch complication and compare their performance to other Tesla drivers with Nikola Fleet Stats.

What I am interested in is this other new feature called the Nikola report. It is like a Carfax report that an EV owner can share with prospective buyers when they go to sell their electric vehicle. The data collection for the Nikola report feature is just now getting started.

Notable reads and other tidbits

Welcome to the roundup section of the newsletter …

Bay Area Rapid Transit, or BART, is selling personal hand straps that can be quickly thrown onto poles in the train car for folks would rather not touch any surfaces.

GM and Ford have fulfilled their separate multi-million-dollar ventilator contracts — together delivering 80,000 of the devices to the U.S. government.

GM and Honda signed a non-binding memorandum of understanding to establish an automotive alliance in North America. The deal brings together two automakers that have a long established history of working together. The companies will share vehicle platforms, which will be sold under their respective and distinct brands, as well as cooperate in purchasing, research and development and connected services.

Ike, the automated trucking startup, had some big news this week. Ryder, DHL and NFI have chosen Ike as their automated driving technology provider. These fleets, and some others the company has not yet announced, have collectively reserved the first 1,000 trucks powered by its technology.

The startup also lifted the hood, so to speak, on their business model. Ike is taking a SaaS approach to automated vehicle technology.  The company explained in a blog post this week that it will sell a Software as a Service subscription to fleets. Customers will buy trucks equipped with Ike’s validated automation system from its OEM manufacturing partners. Automated trucks will be owned and operated by fleets and “Powered by Ike,” the post read.

REMINDER! Nancy Sun, the co-founder and chief engineer of Ike, will be on our virtual stage for the TC Sessions: Mobility 2020 event October 6 and 7. If you’ve never heard of Sun, or listened to her, be prepared to be impressed. The event is shaping up to be pretty great and we have a few more speakers left to announce.

Lucid Motors, which is set to reveal the Air on September 9, keeps dropping bits of info on the luxury electric vehicle. This time, Lucid announced that the Air is capable of a 9.9-second quarter mile. That’s faster than a Tesla Model S and faster than most production cars on the market.

Metromile, a pay-per-mile insurance company, said it’s teaming up with Ford Motor to provide owners of Ford vehicles equipped with built-in connectivity with personalized car insurance.

Tesla didn’t make it into the S&P 500 as so many had predicted. Tesla fans took to Twitter on Friday to gripe about the decision that welcomed Etsy, Teradyne and Catalan into the S&P.

Torc Robotics and its parent company Daimler Trucks, announced plans to expand their joint self-driving truck on-road testing to New Mexico this month and establish a test center in the Albuquerque area.

The U.S. government rolled out a new online tool designed to give the public insight into where and who is testing automated vehicle technology throughout the country. The official name of the online tool is the Automated Vehicle Transparency and Engagement for Safe Testing Initiative tracking tool. While the design is simple and straightforward, it’s incomplete since it is based off of information that companies have volunteered. Let’s hope this is the beginning of what will become a comprehensive one-stop shop of all automated vehicle technology in the country.

VanMoof, the e-bike company is opening a store in Seattle — its third in the United States. The expansion illustrates the company’s growth, which has accelerated since March as sales of e-bikes in the U.S. popped 85% compared with the same month a year earlier.

Volkswagen released teaser images of its upcoming all-electric ID.4 compact SUV that shows what might just be a nice balance between tech and old timely toggles and buttons. Could this be the Goldilocks story of the EV world? I will find out later this month. Stay tuned.

Reducing consumption by expanding the notion of the rental economy and giving people access to tools and equipment has been something of a startup holy grail for some time.

It’s a model that’s worked famously well for fashion and accessories (just ask investors in Rent the Runway), but has had not had the same resonance for white label goods.

The Shed, out of Richmond, Va., hopes to change that.

Launched by Karen Rodgers O’Neil, a longtime marketing executive, and Daniel Perrone, a serial entrepreneur and technology executive whose previous company, BroadMap, was acquired by Apple; The Shed hopes to take the rental model that Home Depot has turned into a billion dollar business line and take it to the masses.

Unlike Home Depot, The Shed touts its presence in eight categories. Stanley Black & Decker is a marquee early partner and the company’s executives said that others have come on board.

“We don’t buy product,” said Perrone. “We take delivery of all the products and rent them out in the local marketplaces where we do business.”

The only thing the manufacturer provides is the products and some servicing starter kit so that The Shed and its employees can manage and maintain the product.

The Shed founders Karen Rodgers O’Neil and Daniel Perrone. Image Credit: The Shed

Since its launch in April the company has expanded beyond its Richmond, Va. home base to Denver — and will be looking to expand further into Portland, Austin, and San Jose, according to Perrone.

Among the features that the company intends to roll out as it expands is a dynamic pricing capability that will enable manufacturers to wring the most out of their goods when they’re in high demand.

Rodgers O’Neil came up with the concept back in 2012 when she was working as a marketing executive for General Electric out of Boston.  Perrone met Rodgers O’Neil at a networking event in Boston and became convinced that her notion of offering more rental options to encourage a more circular economy and reduce consumption was something that could resonate with consumers.

To be sure, The Shed isn’t the first company to attempt to bring the rental business to a broader array of consumer products in an effort to cut down on consumption. The Los Angeles-based startup Joymode was attempting to do much the same thing. That company sold to an early stage investment firm out of New York.

Joymode’s chief executive, Joe Fernandez spoke about the difficulty of running the business. “Part of the thesis was that by making things available for rental, people would want to do more stuff,” said Fernandez, but what happened was that consumers needed additional reasons to use the company’s service, and there weren’t enough events to drive demand.

By contrast, The Shed isn’t owning any of the inventory, just acting as a broker and managing inventory between local retailers and manufacturers who want to take advantage of the company’s service.

In addition to Stanley Black & Decker, companies like Primus camping equipment have placed their products on The Shed along with Mobility Plus, which added wheelchairs and mobility scooters; and Replacements, the largest china dealer in the country, which is offering a “Party in a Box” for dinner, cocktail or tea parties.

To date, the company has raised $1.75 million from investors and entrepreneurs from the Richmond, Va. area. Now, with 60 manufacturers on board and another 15 to 18 vendors signing up monthly, the company is looking to expand even further.

“I joined with Karen because I saw that this would be a game changer in the rental space,” said Perrone. There are a number of retailers in specific verticals that still don’t transact online, so The Shed becomes their avenue to reach the market, he said.

Happy Labor Day and welcome back to Human Capital, where we unpack the latest in tech labor, and diversity, equity and inclusion. Human Capital will soon be available as a newsletter. Sign up here so you don’t miss it when it drops!

This week, we’re looking at Pinterest’s newest edition to its DEI team, a California bill that seeks to increase racial diversity at the board level, Amazon’s messy week and a court decision forcing Apple to pay its workers for time spent in security screenings.

But first, a quick history of Labor Day, which was first celebrated on September 5, 1882 in New York City following a proposal by the Central Labor Union in the city. On that day, between 10,000 to 20,000 workers took unpaid time off to march from NYC’s city hall to Union Square in what became the first Labor Day parade.

In the time between the first Labor Day parade and when it became a federal holiday in 1894, railroad workers went on strike after George Pullman laid off hundreds of employees and cut wages by 30 percent for those who remained. In May 1894, workers walked out and their union, the American Railway Union, called for a boycott on Pullman train cars. Shortly after, the group representing Chicago’s railroad companies called on the federal government to help shut down the strike. Once federal troops arrived in Chicago, the strike turned deadly as the National Guard killed as many as 30 people.

The troops left in July and, that same month, Labor Day became a national holiday to be celebrated the first Monday in September every year. The strike ended in early August. It’s a complicated history, but it shows labor struggles have been at the heart of American capitalism since the country’s inception (slavery). Now, more than 100 years after the first Labor Day, workers are still fighting for better protections, pay and working conditions.

Stay Woke

Pinterest brings on new head of inclusion and diversity

As Pinterest grapples with some internal unrest over claims of racial and gender discrimination, the company has brought on a new head of inclusion and diversity. Its last head of diversity, Candice Morgan, quietly left earlier this year for venture firm GV. 

Tyi McCray, the company’s new global head of inclusion and diversity, previously worked at Airbnb where she held a few different roles. She began as Airbnb’s interim director of Diversity and Belonging before becoming a diversity strategy lead and ultimately, a government affairs and strategic partnerships lead.

McCray will report directly to Pinterest CEO Ben Silbermann. This marks the first time Pinterest is having a head of diversity report directly to the CEO, rather into HR. Facebook did something similar earlier this year when it began having its chief diversity officer, Maxine Williams, report directly to Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg. But Facebook still fell short of having Williams report directly to CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

Diversity advocates for years have been calling for heads of diversity to report directly to the CEO. Many companies, however, have yet to do that. More often, tech companies have their heads of diversity report into the head of HR.

California may soon require more diversity at the board level

The tech industry has been under scrutiny for its lack of diversity for years now. Some progress has been made in terms of representation of Black and brown folks within companies, but not always at the leadership level. AB979, which is heading to California Governor Gavin Newsom’s desk, aims to accelerate diversity at the board level.

The bill would require public companies based in California to have at least one board member from an underrepresented group. If signed into law, the bill would also require companies with between four to nine directors to have at least two board members be from an underrepresented group. For boards with nine or more directors, the bill would require a minimum of three people from an underrepresented group.

The bill defines an individual from an underrepresented community as someone who self-identifies as Black, Latinx, Asian, Pacific Islander, Indigenous and/or as gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender.

This bill seeks to build on top of preexisting law that went into effect in 2018 that mandated publicly held corporations based in California would have a minimum of one female director on its board by the end of 2019. By the end of 2021, companies with five or more directors must have a minimum of two female board members while companies with six or more directors must have at least three female board members.

The 99%

Amazon is a mess

Amazon found itself under scrutiny again over its labor practices. It started when reports surfaced that Amazon was looking to hire an intelligence analyst. Specifically, Amazon in a job posting said it was seeking someone who would inform higher-ups and attorneys “on sensitive topics that are highly confidential, including labor organizing threats against the company.” 

Amazon swiftly took down that job post, saying it was “not an accurate description of the role – it was made in error and has since been corrected,” Amazon spokesperson Maria Boschetti said in a statement to TechCrunch. While Amazon did not give a specific revised description, the company said the role is meant to support its team of analysts that focus on external events, like weather, large community gatherings or other events that have the potential to disrupt traffic or affect the safety and security of its buildings and the people who work at those buildings. 

However, that same day, Vice reported Amazon had been spying on workers for years to monitor for any potential strikes or protests. Amazon has since said it will stop using its social media monitoring tool.

“We have a variety of ways to gather driver feedback and we have teams who work every day to ensure we’re advocating to improve the driver experience, particularly through hearing from drivers directly,” Boschetti said in a statement. “Upon being notified, we discovered one group within our delivery team that was aggregating information from closed groups. While they were trying to support drivers, that approach doesn’t meet our standards, and they are no longer doing this as we have other ways for drivers to give us their feedback.”

Amazon did not comment on how long it had been monitoring closed Facebook groups.

Meanwhile, Bloomberg reported some Amazon Flex drivers have resorted to hanging smartphones in trees in order to get more work in Chicago.

Apple owes its retail workers backpay for time spent in security screenings

Apple has had intense security practices for some time now. Part of that has meant requiring workers to go through security screenings before leaving the store at the end of their shifts. 

The case dates back all the way to 2015, when a group of Apple retail workers in California filed a class-action suit arguing they should be paid while waiting for their bags to be searched.

From the ruling:

Employees estimate that the time spent waiting for and undergoing an exit search pursuant to the Policy typically ranges from five to twenty minutes, depending on the manager or security guard’s availability. Some employees reported waiting up to forty-five minutes to undergo an exit search. Employees receive no compensation for the time spent waiting for and undergoing exit searches, because they must clock out before undergoing a search pursuant to the
Policy.

In February, CA Supreme Court ruled in favor of the plaintiffs. But a US District judge later granted Apple’s request for a summary judgment since some workers part of the class were not required to go through searches since they didn’t bring bags or devices to work. This week, however, an appeals court ruled that it wasn’t relevant if workers did or did not bring their devices or bags to work. Now, Apple must pay more than 12,000 class members for time spent waiting for security screenings.

Apple did not respond for our request for comment.

Don’t Miss

• Carta replies to gender discrimination lawsuit, denies all claims
• Oakland Black Business Fund Launches Investment Platform For Black-Owned Businesses
• Google recruiting group warns minority turnover will continue without clearer diversity goals
• Building paths to funding for Black female founders
• There’s a growing movement where startup founders look to exit to community
• Nigerian Ride-Hail Drivers Are Striking Over Regulations That Leave Them in the Cold

Get ready to spend two days rubbing virtual elbows with the global mobility community’s best and brightest minds and makers. TC Sessions: Mobility 2020 takes place October 6-7, and we’ve packed the agenda with experts, interviews, demos, panel discussions, breakout sessions and a metric ton of opportunity.

Speaking of opportunity, savvy startuppers know to take advantage of every one that comes along, especially when faced with unprecedented challenges and a tanked economy. Jump on board and buy your passes here. Pro tip: we offer both group and student discounts.

If you’re still on the fence (sheesh, tough room), here are five excellent reasons you should attend TC Sessions: Mobility 2020.

Leading voices

Experts. You want ‘em, and we’ve got ‘em. You into autonomous cars? We’ve got Waymo’s Tekedra Mawakana and Argo AI’s Bryan Salesky. Trucks? We’ve got Ike’s Nancy Sun and TuSimple’s Xiaodi Hou. Micromobility? We’ve got Lyft’s Dor Levi and Elemental Excelerator’s Danielle Harris. That’s just for starters and the list goes on and on. Check the agenda here.

Trendspotting

Mobility is a fast-moving target, and success depends in large part on your ability to spot possibilities before they turn into full-blown trends. TC Sessions: Mobility experts and attendees span the mobility and transportation tech spectrum. It’s where you need to be to figure out what’s coming next.

“Attending TC Sessions: Mobility helps us keep an eye on what’s coming around the corner. It uncovers crucial trends so we can identify what we should be thinking about before anyone else.” — Jeff Johnson, vice president of enterprise sales and solutions at FlashParking.

Global networking with CrunchMatch

CrunchMatch, our free, AI-powered networking platform (think speed dating for techies) makes connecting with like-minded attendees quick and painless — no matter where they’re located. A virtual conference means global participation, and you might just find your next customer, partner, investor or engineer living on a different continent. It takes only one connection to move your business forward.

“TC Sessions: Mobility isn’t just an educational opportunity, it’s a real networking opportunity. Everyone was passionate and open to creating pilot programs or other partnerships. That was the most exciting part. And now — thanks to a conference connection — we’re talking with Goodyear’s Innovation Lab.” — Karin Maake, senior director of communications at FlashParking.

The early-stage expo

More than 40 early-stage startups will showcase their mobility tech in our virtual expo. Peruse the exhibitors, peek at their pitch decks, schedule a demo, start a conversation and see where it leads.

Pitch Night

For the first time, TechCrunch will select 10 early-stage mobility startups to compete on October 5, and the top five founders will get to pitch the next day on the Main stage. Get more details here, and if you want in, apply here before September 15.

TC Sessions: Mobility 2020 takes place October 6-7, and we just laid out five reasons why your should join us. Grab all the opportunity and drive (autonomously or otherwise) your business forward.

Is your company interested in sponsoring or exhibiting at TC Sessions: Mobility 2020? Contact our sponsorship sales team by filling out this form.

A few weeks ago, I bought a used paperback mystery for $3 via a small online bookseller. Intrigued that the book came with free shipping, I dug in a bit and was shocked to see that my little impulse purchase traveled through seven different distribution hubs across five states before it got to me. It was loaded and unloaded onto trucks in Indiana, Illinois, Colorado, Nevada and finally California and handled by an unknown number of logistics workers along the way, many of them in the middle of the night.

The logistics of getting the book to me, and the human toll it takes, are mind boggling, but we have become somewhat inured to them.

COVID-19 lockdowns have put a spotlight on the importance and complexity of supply chain dynamics. In a world shaped by the pandemic, our reliance on e-commerce for everything from PPE to toilet paper to hard-boiled paperback mysteries has exploded. A recent report from Adobe found that total online spending is up 77% year-over-year, accelerating growth by “four to six years.” That growth has a very real human cost, and one that we don’t think about or act on enough as a society.

While people recognize the contributions of frontline workers they can see like doctors and nurses, postal carriers and grocery store workers, there’s an entire hidden infrastructure of logistics workers that keeps the online economy humming. These workers are also on the frontlines, but they are behind the scenes. Most earn minimum wage and work long, grueling, high-stress shifts without strong protections in the event they get sick or injured. The fact is that many corporations haven’t made protections for those workers a priority. That was true before COVID-19, but the pandemic gave the issue a renewed urgency, prompting workers from Amazon, Walmart, Target and FedEx, among others, to organize walkouts. And with unprecedented levels of unemployment, more and more people are going to find jobs in the logistics sector.

This Labor Day, it’s time to think about how corporations can better support and protect this vital but often forgotten segment of the workforce.

Better safety in the warehouse

Imagine there’s a package handler at a major manufacturer named Jack who spends his shifts heaving heavy boxes onto a conveyor belt. It’s an arduous movement that Jack will repeat a few thousand times before he punches out. As a 10-year veteran on the job, Jack has performed this singular task on this same warehouse floor more times than he can count. On this particular night, he’s tired after staying up late playing with his kids, and he slips a disk in his back. Unfortunately, Jack’s plight is all too often a reality for millions of workers today.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 5% of warehouse workers in the U.S. experience an injury on the job each year—higher than the national average. After service workers, like firefighters and police, transportation/shipping and manufacturing/production rank second and third as the occupations with the largest number of workplace injuries resulting in days away from work. Jobs that involve heavy lifting, arduous repetition and operating complex machinery come with serious risk.

Injuries can be devastating for workers, both physically and financially. Taking time off work can not only result in lost wages, but also drive people into debt due to health-related expenses, creating health-poverty traps that are difficult to climb out of. Worker injuries are also costly for employers. A study from Liberty Mutual, using data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and the National Academy of Social Insurance, found that serious, nonfatal injuries cost $84.04 million a week in the transportation and warehousing industry. It is in corporations’ best interest to prioritize workplace safety.

One challenge is that traditional approaches to workplace safety are slow, inaccurate and costly. Without practical interventions, organizations spend an estimated $2,000+ per worker annually on injury prevention. Within manufacturing and logistics industries, it costs an additional $2,000+ annually for workers’ compensation per full-time employee. Currently, there is no standard solution to preventing workplace injuries while lowering costs, leaving workers like Jack without adequate protections. Fortunately, digital platforms and tools that leverage technological innovation, including sensors and wearables, are advancing new ways to prevent workplace accidents and injuries.

Take for example StrongArm, one of Flourish’s portfolio companies. StrongArm has built a technology platform that integrates a new generation of industrial wearables, big data analytics and smart algorithms. It is designed to modernize industry dynamics for workers, employers and workers’ compensation insurers. The company’s GDPR-compliant wearable hardware devices and data platform called FUSE deliver real-time injury prevention feedback and collect data to support precise interventions for overall injury reduction and has reduced injury rates by more than 40% year-over-year for its clients.

StrongArm has also helped keep workers safe during the pandemic by launching a new suite of capabilities on its FUSE platform, including CDC communication, proximity alerts (i.e., notifications to workers within six feet of one another), and exposure analysis (understanding who has interacted with whom, at what time, and for what duration, exposing any potential contact transfer with accuracy). These enhanced capabilities can get workers back to work faster, earning vitally needed income while reducing COVID-19 risk by 95%.

Fetch Robotics is another company using technological innovation and digital platforms to promote worker safety. Fetch makes an Autonomous Mobile Robot (AMR) that can transport materials within warehouses, factories and distribution centers while also gathering environmental data. This can relieve the burden of heavy lifting from human workers and ensure that conditions, like heat, remain safe in work environments. In June 2020, the company announced that it was launching a disinfecting AMR that can decontaminate spaces larger than 100,000 square feet in 1.5 hours, helping workers stay safe and get back to work quicker amid the spread of the virus.

Employers should do more

In its report titled, “The Impact of COVID-19 on Tech Innovation,” Lux Research found that the outbreak of COVID-19 will likely push corporations with major manufacturing and logistics operations to assess the potential of robotics. More companies will explore how they can automate processes, particularly those that are repeatable and predictable. Findings like these inevitably lead to questions about how increased automation will impact workers — the eternal “will robots take all the jobs?” question. However, we are still a long way away from a world where human workers are obsolete (just ask Elon Musk).

Robots are still not good at picking up small or oddly shaped objects, for instance. For the foreseeable future, corporations will depend on logistics workers and have a responsibility to protect the safety of those workers. It’s not enough to plaster the required OSHA sign on the factory or warehouse floor. Corporations need to do more. Fortunately in this case, the right thing to do is the good thing to do. By embracing technological innovation, promoting worker safety is a win-win.

ThoughtRiver, a London-based legaltech startup that’s applying AI to speed up contract pre-screening, has announced a $10 million Series A round of funding led by Octopus Ventures. Existing seed investors Crane, Local Globe, Entrée Capital, Syndicate Room, and angel investor Duncan Painter also participated in the round.

The UK startup is one of a number applying AI to automate work that would otherwise be done by legal professions with the aim of boosting operational efficiency. Other startups playing in the space include the likes of Kira Systems, LawGeex and Luminance to name a few.

ThoughtRiver argues it has a different focus vs the majority of contract view companies because it’s focusing on pre-signature contracts — with the aim of making securing a deal faster. “Almost all others are just employed to pull data from existing contracts. ThoughtRiver is as much in demand by Sales teams as it is by Legal,” a spokesman told us.

The Series A investment comes after twelve month’s of what it’s billed as significant growth for the 2015-founded startup, which says its automated contract review software is now being used by the likes of G4S, Singtel and DB Schenker. It launched a service at the end of 2017 and now has more than 25 customers around the world, per the spokesman.

It also trumpets inking a strategic partnership with professional services firm PwC — which will see the latter developing a service for its clients powered by ThoughtRiver’s software, according to a press release.

ThoughtRiver touts up to 95% in time and 80% in cost savings vs an initial contract review that’s carried out by in-house lawyers. And ‘faster contract reviews sum to increased deal flow velocity’ is its overarching claim.

On the tech side, ThoughtRiver has created an ontology of contract legal logic, couched as a series of detailed questions which, combined with its natural language processing (NLP) engine, enables its software to pre-screen contracts by generating a risk assessment. It will also suggest tweaks to the legalese to remediate problems, including via a plug-in for Microsoft Word, where customers’ in-house lawyers may prefer to work.

Other benefits the startup touts are data extraction to power contract analytics at scale — such as for due diligence or to assess the impact of regulatory change. Its sale pitch also suggests that easy access to an overview of contractual positions helps customers by enabling better-informed business relationships.

Image credit: ThoughtRiver

ThoughtRiver has already established offices in New York, Singapore, London, Cambridge and Auckland. It says the new funding will be put towards further growth in the US market, where it will be dialling up sales and marketing efforts. Expanding integrations with major tech partners is also on the cards.

Commenting on the funding in a statement, Akriti Dokania, early stage investor at Octopus Ventures, said: “While the legal sector has been slow to adopt AI compared to other industries, ThoughtRiver has a proven business model based on solving a fundamental issue for lawyers. By using an advanced Natural Language Processing engine to drive faster contract reviews and acceleration of deal flow and business growth, legal professionals can work more efficiently than ever. We are thrilled to support the ThoughtRiver team with its plans for global expansion as the firm disrupts an established market and set of processes.”

Back in 2006, Joseph Heller went to China where he spent the next decade learning about the manufacturing business. Based on that experience he eventually built a startup called The Studio. The idea was to help connect people with a small business idea to manufacturers in China in a fully digital way.

By 2016 he had grown his startup into a $10 million annual business with 100 employees around the world. But when it came to fundraising back in the U.S., Heller found it wasn’t easy for a Silicon Valley outsider to get in the door without connections.

He persevered and in 2018 landed an $11 million Series A from Ignition Partners, which allowed him to expand his business. But he still wondered if he would have done even better with the capital and guidance that comes from working with an early-stage VC firm in Silicon Valley much earlier in the process.

We sat down with Heller recently to learn how he built a company from the ground up with little outside help and what it was like to raise those funds.

Starting out

While Heller was in China, he learned how to navigate the manufacturing landscape and was able to build up a nice consulting business by helping big brands get goods manufactured there. But he saw an opportunity to do more, and especially to help smaller businesses looking to manufacture goods in China in much smaller batches than the big operations would typically require.

The latter was much more difficult to do, and Heller sensed there could be a business opportunity to work with small companies empowered by platforms like Shopify with a way to sell goods online. What they lacked was a way to manufacture them.

“I just felt that it’s crazy that we’ve democratized the ability to set up a web store with Shopify, and use Instagram to get the message out there. Everything’s been democratized for these small brands, but the manufacturing piece was still really hard to penetrate,” Heller told TechCrunch.

He decided to build on that idea by creating a company that would make it easier for small businesses to order custom goods from micro factories in China, giving them access to the same opportunities as big brands, but in much smaller batches. That idea became The Studio.

“We basically ended up building relationships with these small micro factories in China that we trained to run smaller batch manufacturing, and then we built software that enabled these SMBs to place orders with these factories. So instead of having to order 30,000 pieces, they can order 100 pieces,” he explained.

Image Credits: The Studio

Struggling to get meetings

When Heller went looking for funding, he had built the business to $10 million in annual revenue, and he believed that he had a solid enough organization to draw the attention of venture capitalists.

After all, this was a business he had painstakingly built and grown into a healthy early-stage company based on years of experience in the field. He had taken it to market. He had proven product-market fit. He had customers. Seemed like it would be a slam dunk to get funding.

In reality, though, he struggled to get meetings. While Heller, who is Black, says that it can be difficult for Black founders to get access to venture capital firms, he sees it as part of a larger issue of general lack of access for those who don’t have the right connections.

“For starters, there are certain people that just don’t have access to VCs. And it’s not just a Black issue. I think it’s more of an issue of VCs just being very exclusive and it tends to be mostly White people that have those types of connections,” he said.

He added, “If you’re not in Silicon Valley and not in that very exclusive VC club, it’s basically almost impossible to raise money and so that was never even an option for us [early on],” he said. Instead he bootstrapped the company with his own money, but when he had built the company to the level he had, he wanted outside capital, and he believed he was in a good position to get it.

Climbing the mountain

Heller was able to get a meeting through a connection from his days at the University of California, Berkeley, who had been a venture capitalist. That led to other meetings, which led mostly to a lot of disappointment. To be fair, it’s hard for anyone to break into this system and present a compelling case, but Heller had built his business to $10 million in revenue. That had to count for something.

“It was very clear that I was an outsider in Silicon Valley trying to penetrate it, and this was already a $10 million business with a very competent engineering team. We had proven out a lot of things, and I feel that if I were part of that kind of exclusive VC network, we would have raised money a lot quicker,” Heller lamented.

He did note that he believed being Black was at least a factor in his struggle to get attention from VC firms. “It is particularly difficult for African American and other founders to just get initial capital to start their business. I spent a lot of my personal money, and years making mistakes, because I was so far away from the centers of capital,” he said.

Heller says he felt he might have lost something along the way because of that.”I’ve seen countless founders that have good VC connections able to raise $1 million to $5 million seed rounds, with literally no product and just an idea,” he said. “This option was not available to me.”

Getting to yes

After 18 months of meetings, he finally received $11 million from Ignition Partners. He said because of his struggle and the time and energy he took to keep pitching, it was a great feeling of accomplishment when Ignition finally funded his company.

“This was something that I really wanted, and it kind of validated that we did have a real business that was worthy of being funded,” he said.

Although Heller says this year has been difficult for international manufacturing due to the pandemic, he has built his business to $20 million in annual revenue and around 150 employees since getting his A round in 2018.

He also launched a new business earlier this year called SuppliedShop.com, which allows very small businesses to buy ready-made inventory from factories. He reports that the new business is already growing 50% month over month.

Connections certainly count as Heller found, but sometimes it also takes grit and determination and a good idea to build a company. That’s what Heller brought to this process. He still believes that it’s best to look at the outcome, rather than focus on the struggle it took him to get there.

“I do think that, although there is racism and there are these real struggles, I also think people should be recognized for trying to make changes, and hopefully this will be a catalyst for people making more change,” he said.